Author: Rush, James
Biography:
RUSH, James (1786-1869: WBIS)
Rush was one of the younger members of the large family of Dr. Benjamin Rush and his wife Julia Stockton. Both his father and his maternal grandfather were eminent public figures and signers of the Declaration of Independence. James to a considerable extent followed in his father's footsteps and remained permanently in his shadow. He graduated from what is now called Princeton University in 1805 and then in 1809 received his MD from the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania, where his father was on the faculty. After further studies in Edinburgh and London, he began his work as a GP in Philadelphia. In 1819 he married an heiress, Phoebe Ann Ridgway; they had no children but were actively engaged in social and philanthropic circles, and travelled together. Rush pursued interests in history and philosophy as well as medicine and published The Philosophy of the Human Voice (1827) and A Brief Outline of an Analysis of the Human Intellect (1865). Besides Hamlet, his only other book of verse is Rhymes of Contrast on Wisdom and Folly (1869), a set of poetical dialogues putting forward the fogeyish thinking of his later years after the death of his wife in 1857. He died at home and left a substantial bequest--attended with numerous conditions which went into litigation--to the Library Company of Philadelphia for the construction of a branch library, the Ridgway building. The bodies of Rush and his wife were placed in a crypt on the side of the building, which was converted to another use in 1966 and at present houses a high school for the arts. (ANBO 15 Aug. 2020)