Talk:Benjamin Rush

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[edit] Wikipedia silliness

Anyone notice that Duke University is not in Georgia? Oh, but wait, in the world of wikipedia, it must be. Yet another reason to keep students away from the misinformation that flourishes on wikipedia-- the encyclopedia written by wannabees. Fix your citations, wikidiots. If you want a rating, here is one: lame. TrinTran 05:23, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Fever 1793 is a work of fiction and should not be taken as a source.

Anyone else think Rush was an idiot? I read Fever 1793, and it seemed that he had no idea what he was doing.

Medicine has come a long way since then; to call him an idiot seems a little harsh.

== Medical Freedom in the Constitution of the United States

A Google search for "benjamin rush" medical freedom yields 8140 hits, so this quote is widely known and attributed to Rush, but I was unable to identify the original source.

[edit] Take the religious propaganda elsewhere

Whoa, somebody's got to get off the religion pills here. We want an objective article, not an argument for how great and religious the founding fathers were. If this stuff goes back up I'm tagging the page.

His religious views are fairly significant to his story and are mentioned even at Benjamin Rush.com. I've tried to clean up that section a bit though as it was overly dependent on quotes and gave little information on his own religious history. I'd intended to never edit here again, but on occasion I get tempted. I hope the change was acceptable.--T. Anthony 06:50, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Wait a second, why shouldn't his religious views be included? After all, his religious beliefs are important to history, and provide valuable insight to his personal behavior. The fact that the founding fathers had stong religious convictions ought to be included in the article.

[edit] provide a sense of context

The material on his house felt odd to me, in need of introduction. Perhaps it should have its own section? A lot of his biography appears to be taken up discussing his house, without an explanation as to why this was so central to his life. A separate section could allow the author to introduce these ideas (and not give the reader the sense that this house is more important than his medical work.)

I agree that calling him an 'idiot' would not be useful. True, his ideas have been abandoned. But it takes him out of historical context to rate his ideas against ours - almost all ideas held before the 20th century look foolish today.

It might be fair to note just how misguided his ideas appear today... but only if we're going to add a lengthy section (or connections to a careful article) assessing those ideas, and placing them in the context of other ideas at their time. (The 'controversial ideas' section might clarify whether his ideas were controversial at their time - or just are controversial compared to present ideas.)