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.

    169/202 page 101
    Philadelphia, March, 1786. To Benjamin Rush. My Dear Friend: During our long acquaintance, you have shown many instances of your regard for me; yet I must now desire you to add one more to the number, which is, that, if you publish your ingenious discourse1 on the Moral Sense, you will totally omit and suppress that most extravagant encomium on your friend Franklin, which hurt me exceedingly in the unexpected hearing, and will mortify me beyond conception, if it should appear from the press. Confiding in your compliance with this earnest request, I am ever, my dear friend, yours most affectionately, B. Franklin. Dr. Rush replied to this letter as follows: “Agreeably to your request I have suppressed the conclusion of my oration, but I cannot bear to think of sending it out of our State or to Europe without connecting it with your name, I have therefore taken the liberty of inscribing it to you by a simple dedication, of which the enclosed is a copy. And, as you have never in the course of our long acquaintance refused me a single favour, I must earnestly insist upon your adding to my great and numerous obligations to you the permission which I now solicit, to send my last as I did my first publication into the world under the patronage of your name.” The following extracts from Benjamin Rush’s writings referring to Franklin are of interest in this connection, by giving us the opinion which he, one of the greatest American physicians, held of Franklin. . . . Sir John Pringle was between sixty and seventy years of age. He was then the Favorite physician of the Queen and Royal family. No relaxation appeared, Dr. Franklin (who was his intimate friend) informed me, in his exertions to obtain knowledge. . . . . . . Dr. Franklin acted, while I was in London, as agent to several of the then American Colonies. It was my peculiar happiness 1 The discourse here alluded to, On the Influence of Physical Causes on the Moral Faculty, was delivered before the American Philosophical Society, February 27th, 1786.
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