Benjamin Rush M.D. L.L.D.

Dr. Benjamin Rush appears here in contemplation with spectacles on his forehead, an open notebook beside him, and an image of the University of Pennsylvania Hospital visible in the distance. The American engraver William Satchell Leney based the print on a portrait that Dr. David Hosack, a close friend of the Rush, commissioned from the leading Philadelphia painter Thomas Sully in December 1812, a few months before the sitter's death.

After earning a bachelor's degree at the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), and serving an apprenticeship with a Philadelphia doctor, Rush traveled to Edinburgh between 1766 and 1768 to become an M.D. Letters he sent home during this period demonstrate sympathy for American grievances during the colonial unrest that followed the Stamp Act of 1765. Once back in Philadelphia, Rush taught chemistry at the newly established medical school attached to the College of Philadelphia, joined the Sons of Liberty and, in 1776, signed the Declaration of Independence. During the Revolutionary War he served as surgeon general to the Continental Army. Once American Independence had been secured, Rush maintained his interest in scientific research and joined the American Philosophical Society. While he wrote and spoke against slavery, and was active in the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, Rush was himself an enslaver and owned a Black servant for ten years, whom he bought as a boy, trained as a cook and eventually manumitted, or legally freed. Rush also opposed capital punishment, supported prison reform, and advocated for the education of women.