Doctor, teacher, patriot and humanitarian, Benjamin Rush was one of the great figures of young America. As physician-general of Washington's armies, Dr. Rush fought death and disease through the harrowing years of the Revolution. With Thomas Paine he collaborated on Common Sense, the courageous pamphlet which defied British tyranny and kindled the fires of American freedom. As a congressman, his name is forever glorified on the Declaration of Independence.

Born in Philadelphia, Rush was already a college graduate at the age of fifteen and apprenticed to a prominent physician. Unable to procure adequate schooling in America, he went to the University of Edinburgh and completed a brilliant education in London and Paris. Returning to Philadelphia at the age of twenty-three, he became Professor of Chemistry in our first medical college and wrote our first chemistry textbook. Rival doctors, jealous and ignorant, ridiculed his new methods, but Rush was dogged as well as dedicated. He risked his medical reputation for the sake of what he believed to be true and risked a charge of treason when he and Thomas Paine published Common Sense. Within a few weeks the pamphlet converted thousand of Tories to the ideal of American independence.

When war exploded, it brought the dread diseases of typhus, typhoid, smallpox. Half of Washington's troops were sick before major battles were even fought. Rush joined the army as physician-general and served as a frontline doctor. After the Revolution, he battled the frightful yellow fever epidemic which swept Philadelphia. He too seemed doomed by the disease, but he survived to begin his greatest work — merciful treatment of the insane. His famous book on diseases of the mind earned him the title of Father of American Psychiatry.

Benjamin Rush was a man of heroic stature, and his story is epic in scope, encompassing revolution, romance and political intrigue. The author creates the life-sized portrait of a doctor at the crossroads of science who traveled a lonely path toward truth.

From the dust jacket