The medical side of Benjamin Franklin / by William Pepper.

  • William Pepper
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical side of Benjamin Franklin / by William Pepper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    118/202 page 72
    Franklin wrote the following purely medical letter. London, July 14, 1773. To Benjamin Rush.1 Dear Sir: I received your favour of May 1st, with the pamphlet, for which I am obliged to you. It is well written. I hope that in time the endeavours of the friends to liberty and humanity will get the better of a practice, that has so long disgraced our nation and religion.2 A few days after I received your packet for M. Dubourg, I had an opportunity of forwarding it to him per M. Poissonniere, physician of Paris, who kindly undertook to deliver it. M. Dubourg has been trans¬ lating my book into French. It is nearly printed, and he tells me he purposes a copy for you. I shall communicate your judicious remark, relating to the septic quality of the air transpired by patients in putrid diseases, to my friend Dr. Priestley. I hope that after having discovered the benefit of fresh and cool air applied to the sick, people will begin to suspect that possibly it may do no harm to the well. I have not seen Dr. Cullen’s book, but am glad to hear that he speaks of catarrhs or colds by contagion. I have been long satisfied from observation, that besides the general colds now termed influenzas, (which may possibly spread by contagion, as well as by a particular quality of the air), people often catch cold from one another when shut up together in close rooms, coaches, etc., and when sitting near and conversing so as to breathe in each other’s transpiration; the disorder being in a certain state. I think, too, that it 1 Benjamin Rush, 1745-1813. Graduated from Princeton College in 1760. Studied medicine under Dr. Redman for six years and then went abroad and graduated, in 1768, from the University of Edinburgh, with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. On his return, was appointed Professor of Chemistry in the College of Philadelphia in 1769, and in 1789, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic and in 1792, Professor of the Institutes of Medicine and Clinical Medicine. Teaching medicine for fourty-four years to probably about 2250 pupils. In 1776 he was appointed Surgeon-General of the Army for the Middle Department. He was a prolific author, his account of the Yellow Fever being his most celebrated work. Signer of the Declar¬ ation of Independence; President of the College of Physicians; Member of the Amer¬ ican Philosophical Society. 2 Benjamin Rush wrote, “An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America, upon Slave-Keeping.” The second edition, which I have, was published in Philadelphia in 1773.
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