Jun 25, 2024 - Sale 2674

Sale 2674 - Lot 68

Price Realized: $ 6,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
"[THE MEDICAL FIELD IN] OUR COUNTRY ABOUNDS IN TORIES" RUSH, BENJAMIN. Autograph Letter Signed, "Benj'n Rush," to Dr. Samuel C. Mitchell, thanking for information concerning the spleen and "thymus" gland, complaining that American medicine is full of colonial sympathizers, wishing success to his new medical institution, and remarking that such institutions (including his own) are not sufficiently challenging to the students. 2¼ pages, 4to, written on a folded sheet, holograph address panel on terminal page with postmark; holes from seal tear with minor loss to text, remnants of mounting along center vertical fold on terminal page, faint uneven toning overall, description written along upper edge of first page in unknown hand. Philadelphia, 1 August 1811
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"Many, many thanks to you for your facts in Support of the Uses which I have ascribed to the Spleen and Thymus gland. They are directly in point to my opinions, and I shall not fail of acknowledging my obligations to you for them in my lectures next Winter. . . .
"Our Country abounds in tories in medicine, as well as in politicks. Many of our physicians admit nothing to be new or true that is not distilled to us . . . . You Sir have done much to establish the originality and independence of American Genius in Science. . . .
"As proof of the Colonial Spirit of medicine in our Country . . . I will mention a . . . fact. Two physicians in our city once zealous advocates for the domestic origin of the yellow fever have lately veered . . . to the opposite side of the question.
"'O! that I were a dog said General Lee (when he heard of the sentence of the Court Martial that condemned him) that I might not call man my brother'--O! that I were a farmer that I might not call such physicians my brethren. . . ."
The American colonies suffered repeated outbreaks of yellow fever, especially at Philadelphia and Baltimore, two cities whose medical authorities adopted opposing views about the transmission of the disease. Benjamin Rush in Philadelphia was the foremost proponent of the view that yellow fever spread by contaminated air, while opponents argued that the disease is spread by person-to-person contact. Rush argued that the contact view led many to believe that the disease came from abroad, suggesting policy that encouraged quarantine over public hygiene. Neither view quite hit the mark, since the mosquito was found to be the vector of yellow fever in the late 19th century.