A look inside Dr. Benjamin Rush's medicine chest

Commentary. By Gretchen Worden, AMNews contributor. June 25, 2001.

It is not the most remarkable medicine chest in the collection, yet it is among the most valuable treasures owned by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The original owner was Benjamin Rush, MD, one of the founders of the college in 1787, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and arguably the most famous American doctor of his time.

The hardwood chest is typical of those carried by 18th-century physicians. It contained a mortar and pestle for preparing remedies, a scale for weighing ingredients and a measuring beaker.

The medicines in the chest represent a time when two principles governed medical treatment -- the humoral theory dating back to the ancient Greeks and the 18th-century concept that the essence of life was motion and could be felt in the heart and large vessels. Health was associated with optimum strength and excitability of the blood vessels and nerves. Combined with the humoral theory, which regarded illness as caused by an excess or depletion of blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm, this idea called for medications that would restore free motion to the body's fluids.

Without benefit of clinical thermometers or stethoscopes, physicians of the time closely observed symptoms in their patients thought to indicate laxity or hypertension in the fibers or stagnation or overproduction of the humors. [...]