of the most extreme theories, were more sensible in their daily practice
than in their dogmatic statements, I would like to quote a letter of
Rush, which for several reasons is interesting and valuable. No man was
more positive in his beliefs and in the assertion of them than he. His
name is still associated with bleeding and purging, and if we considered
only some of his written assertions, made with the violence which
opposition always aroused in his positive nature, we should pause in
wonder at his great reputation. But what a man says or writes, and what
he does, are often far apart. We are apt to take his most decisive
statements as representative, and thus may seriously err. I have known a
number of men who were really trustworthy physicians, and who yet were
credited by us with a fondness for absurd ideas, which, in fact,
influenced their writings far more than their practice. Rush was to some
extent one of this class. His book on insanity is far in advance of his
time, and his descriptions of disease one of our best tests, most
admirable. Let us see how this physician who bled and dosed heavily
could think and act when face to face with a hopeless case. The letter
to which I have referred was given to the College of Physicians of
Philadelphia at my request by one of its associate fellows, Dr. Hunter
Maguire, of Richmond, Virginia. It is written to Rush's cousin, Dr.
Thornton, in 1789, and has an added interest from the fact that it is a
letter of advice in the case of the aged mother of Washington, who had a
cancer of the breast.


"PHILADELPHIA, July 6, 1789.

MY DEAR KINSMAN:

The respectable age and character of your venerable patient leads me to