• floofloof@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    THESE PILLS WERE the pride and joy of Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the Founding Fathers and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Rush was also the man President Thomas Jefferson considered the finest physician in the republic.

    In that opinion, Jefferson was probably alone, or at least in a small minority. Dr. Rush’s style of “heroic medicine” had caused his star to fall quite a bit by this time — especially after the Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic of 1793, when his patients died at a noticeably higher rate than untreated sufferers.

    Fun fact: one of that guy’s descendants was Stockton Rush, the late Ocean Gate asshole.