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16 Returning to Philadelphia in 1772, McHenry apprenticed himself to Dr. Benjamin Rush. McHenry’s work with him proved vital, as Rush was in the process of making a name for himself as a doctor and patriot. Although little written by McHenry during this period survives, enough is known about Rush, their shared religion, and Philadelphia that much can be reconstructed. They were both young. McHenry turned nineteen that year, but Rush was only twenty-six and had set up his medical practice a mere three years earlier; before that, he had been acquiring his own medical education. For five and a half years the teenaged Rush had studied with the locally respected Dr. John Redman. Then, like many of the best colonial doctors, Rush had sailed for Scotland to study at the extremely prestigious Edinburgh Medical School. After two years there, he further honed his skills by observing medicine in the larger hospitals of London, becoming friends with Benjamin Franklin in the process.1 Rush came home headstrong and full of his Scottish mentor’s ideas. As McHenry learned, Rush strongly advocated bleeding. Dr. William Cullen of Edinburgh had taught “that the nervous system is the source of life, and that disease is due to failure of its regulatory powers.” A healthy body existed as a “balanced” system that fever threw out of gear. Some fevers caused “general debility” and chills, which indicated low energy and required “restorative drugs, drinks and diet.” At other times, fever led to heated fits that one tried to reduce through “bleeding, purging and low diet. The adage ‘stuff a cold and starve a fever’ is strictly [true] according to Cullen.”2 Perhaps fortunately for the larger community, the rest of Philadelphia’s doctors followed the ideas of the Leyden school. Less theoretical and more observational than Edinburgh, the Leyden school recommended the mild use two “The Commencement of Our Independence” Dr. Benjamin Rush “Commencement of Our Independence” 17 of drugs and a diet aimed at the individual’s symptoms. They bled seldom and more moderately. Though no more theoretically accurate, the Leyden school’s treatments were milder and less harmful.3 Convinced of the superiority of Dr. Cullen’s system, however, Rush pitted himself against the other doctors in Philadelphia and destroyed what chances he might have had for their sponsorship. Without a patron in Philadelphia’s elite society, Rush courted the Presbyterian denomination in which he and McHenry had been raised. It did some good. “I was once sent for to see a respectable Scotch sea captain in Southwark,” Rush wrote. “[H]e told me that . . . he had made choice of me as physician because he had once witnessed my decent behaviour in . . . the Revd. Dr. Allison’s [First Presbyterian] Church.” Moreover, “his recommendations brought me several families in his neighbourhood.”4 McHenry and Rush were both members of this Scots-Irish Presbyterian community, though the denomination could prove difficult for members to maneuver. Pennsylvania’s famous toleration of different religions had led to intense competition both between and within the denominations themselves, especially during the Great Awakening revival decades earlier. Presbyterians split into the Old Side, which emphasized the need for an educated ministry, and the New Side, which desired an inspired ministry with a personal relationship to God. The two sides even established separate schools to train their ministry. By 1758 the split supposedly had been mended, but tensions survived.5 At the time of McHenry’s arrival in Philadelphia the Presbyterian congregations could still be distinguished by their Great Awakening leanings. Theological divisions, however, were not new to McHenry, for Presbyterians in Ireland had split into four groups, not two, which had still managed a kind of cooperation.6 On this side of the Atlantic McHenry befriended both. For his part, Rush had soon concluded that his New Side Presbyterian sect was “too small and too much divided to afford me much support . . . it was [also] the object of the jealousy, or hatred of the two Societies, viz. the Quakers and Episcopalians, who possessed between them the greatest part of the wealth and influence of the city.” Another way to mitigate financial stresses was to take on paying apprentices. Rush began with only two, but when McHenry joined the number had grown to seven.7 Unless their families lived nearby, apprentices like McHenry lived with the doctor (Rush housed them in a nearby barn) who taught them for an [3.138.113.188] Project MUSE (2024-04-23 08...

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