Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 65.djvu/481

Rh of the declaration of independence, and is supposed to have written the report, much of which was incorporated in the declaration. He was a surgeon-general in the war of independence, but resigned after two years, owing, it is said, to differences with Washington in regard to hospital stores. Thereafter ho devoted himself to medical work and writing, lint retained wide interests, advocating, among other things, the abolition of slavery, temperance, the higher education of women, international arbitration and religious liberty.

His services at the time of the epidemic of yellow fever in 1793 and his account of it gave him a wide reputation, though he was on the wrong side of the question in a dispute with his fellow physicians as to the cure of the disease by blood-letting. Probably, however, his work on behalf of the insane was his most important service to medical science, lie suggested detached cottages for the care 01 the insane, objecting to the confinement of lunatics in cells as early as 1789. Hush died in 1813. Dr. Wilson in his address at the unveiling of the monument said: "Nearly a century has passed since Benjamin Rush was gathered to his fathers. To his contemporaries he was a man not unlike other men, having his virtues and his faults, a good citizen, a skillful physician, kindly, courteous, benevolent, and having on occasion much fight in him. He was even known to