"Thank God! Out of one hundred patients whom I have visited or prescribed for this day, I have lost none." These words are from an entry in the diary of Colonial physician Benjamin Rush on this date, year unknown. Rush, an American physician and professor of chemistry at the College of Philadelphia, was a member of the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Rush, surgeon general of the Continental Army under George Washington, was an enthusiastic supporter of bloodletting and purging. An advocate for treating mental disorders as physical illnesses, he wrote the first American treatise on the subject in 1812.

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