> "Unless we put medical freedom into the (USA) constitution, the time will
> come when medicine will organize itself into an undercover dictatorship. To
> restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to
> others will constitute the Bastille of medical science.  All such laws are
> un-American and despotic."
> - - Dr. Benjamin Rush, Revolutionary war hero, physician, and signer of the
> USA Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Doctor Rush had more than one idea.

Thomas Lord, a medical doctor, on 30 June 1652, was
granted the first license to practice medicine in
New England by the court in Hartford, Connecticut.

   The colony considered medical care for its
   citizens to be a governmental responsibility.
   The General Assembly of Connecticut issued its
   first medical license to a Thomas Lord in 1652,
   and his fees were regulated by the legislature.
   He was also granted an annual salary for caring
   for the indigent sick. In the Colonial Period
   licensed physicians were, as a rule, tax exempt
   and freed from military and other civic duties.
     --Christine Brendel Scriabine, "Health in
       Connecticut"

Rush was a fundamentalist believer in the Bible, who
believed in signs of the Second Coming. Each morning
he read the Psalms in order. He was a member of the
Society for the Suppression of Vice and Immorality,
and condemned "ardent spirits." Rush opposed capital
punishment, alcohol, tobacco, and war. Rush promoted
free public schools financed by the government. Rush
was the first civil leader in America to call for
schools supported by property taxes.

"In 1777, he was appointed Surgeon General of the
 Continental Army. Unhappy with the Army hospitals, he
 complained to General Washington, accusing his superior
 of maladministration. His complaint was referred to
 Congress, which found it unjustified, and he resigned."

    Rush was a proponent of many controversial
    therapies. He was convinced that all diseases
    were essentially caused by fever. He earned the
    serious criticism of some of his colleagues for
    his continued support of blood-letting as a
    treatment for a variety of diseases.

"I agree with you in your opinion of cities. Cowper
 the poet very happily expresses our ideas of them
 compared with the country. 'God made the country
 -- man made cities.' I consider them in the same
 light that I do abscesses on the human body, viz.,
 as reservoirs of all the impurities of a community."
   --Benjamin Rush, Letter to Thomas Jefferson
     (6 Oct 1800)

"Not less destructive [than the physical results] are
 the effects of ardent spirits upon the human mind.
 They impair the memory, debilitate the understanding,
 and pervert the moral faculties. . . . But the
 demoralizing effects of distilled spirits do not stop
 here. They produce not only falsehood, but fraud, theft,
 uncleanliness, and murder. Like the demoniac mentioned
 in the New Testament, their name is 'legion,' for they
 convey into the soul a host of vices and crimes."
   --Benjamin Rush

"Terror acts powerfully upon the body through the
 medium of the mind and should be employed in the
 cure of madness. Fear accompanied with pain and
 the sense of shame has sometimes cured the disease."
   --Benjamin Rush, M.D.

"Rush advocated and practiced terror by designing and
 using the straitjacket, the tranquilizer chair, bath-
 of-surprise (sudden dunking/near drowning), and fear
 of death on numerous inmates in 19th century lunatic
 asylums. Rush locked up his rebellious son in an
 insane asylum..."

"In 1797, the 'father' of American psychiatry, Dr.
 Benjamin Rush--whose face today still adorns the seal
 of the American Psychiatric Association--declared that
 the color of blacks was caused by a rare, congenital
 disease called 'Negritude' which derived from leprosy.
 In an address to the American Philosophical Society,
 Rush said that the only evidence of a 'cure' was when
 the skin color turned white."

"Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence,
 medicalized socially deviant behavior in the 18th Century,
 initiating one of the more prevalent threats to liberty
 in our free society today - the involuntary commitment of
 innocent persons to psychiatric institutions for
 'treatment.'"

Katrina.