EULOGIUM ON THE LATE DR. RUSH.

We have before us an introductory discourse to a course of lectures lately delivered in the college of physicians and surgeons, by Dr. David Hosack, professor of the theory and practice of physic and clinical medicine, in the university of the state of New-York. After an exordium, giving an account of the additional means of instruction recently provided in the medical establishment of New-York, Dr. H. proceeds to point out what he deems the proper method of cultivating the science of medicine. He recommends the inductive system of philosophizing, as the only sure means of acquiring correct principles in science, and enforces the same by the celebrated examples of Bacon, Boyle, and Newton, in physics of Reid, Beattie, and Stewart, in metaphysics; and of Hippocrates, Sydenham, and Boerhaave, in medicine. After dwelling particularly upon the respective merits of these distinguished medical characters, he concludes with the following eulogy on our countryman, the late Dr. Benjamin Rush.

Bur, gentlemen, while we thus revere the great and good of the old world, let us do homage to merit in the new. While we acknowledge the benefits which the science of medicine has received from the physicians of Europe, let us not be unmindful of the debt of gratitude we owe to a native of our own soil, who was no less an ornament to human nature, than his various exertions have been precious to his profession, to science, and his country.

Your feelings, I trust, will be in unison with mine, while, in addition to the numerous offerings of public and private respect, which have been paid to the memory of Doctor Benjamin Rush, we devote a few moments to the contemplation of the professional attainments, the public services, the moral and religious character, which make up the portrait of that distinguished philosopher and physician.

Doctor Rush was born on the 24th December, 1745, on his father's estate, about twelve miles from the city of Philadelphia. His ancestors followed William Penn from England to Pennsylvania, in the year 1683. They chiefly belonged to the society of quakers, and were all, as well as his parents, distinguished for the industry, the virtue, and the piety, characteristic of their sect. His grandfather, James Rush, whose occupation was that of a gunsmith, resided on his estate near Philadelphia, and died in the year 1727. His son John, the father of Dr. Rush, inherited both his trade and his farm, and was equally distinguished for his indus

try and ingenuity. He died while his son Benjamin was yet young, but left him to the care of an excellent and pious mother, who took an active interest in his education and welfare. In a letter which I had the pleasure to receive from Dr. Rush, a short time before his death, and which was written upon his return from a visit to the tomb of his ancestors, he thus expresses the obligation he felt for the early impressions of piety he had received from his parents:

"I have acquired and received nothing from the world which I prize so highly as the religious principles I inherited from them; and I possess nothing that I value so much as the innocence and purity of their characters.'

But this was not the only source of that virtue and religion for which he was so eminently distinguished. His mother, as if influenced with a presentiment of the future destinies of her son, resolved to give him the advantages of the best education which our country then afforded: for this purpose he was sent, at the early age of eight or nine years, to the West Nottingham Grammar School, and placed under the care of his maternal uncle, the Rev. Doctor Samuel Finley, an excellent scholar and an eminent teacher, and whose talents and learning afterwards elevated him to the presidency of the college of Princeton. At this school young Rush remained five years, for the purpose of acquiring a knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, and other branches necessary to qualify him, as preparatory for a collegiate course of study. But under the tuition and guidance of Dr. Finley, he was not only instructed in classical literature; he also acquired what was of no less importance, and which characterized him through life-a habit of study and observation, a reverence for the christian religion, and the habitual performance of the duties it inculcates for his accomplished and pious instructor not only regarded the temporal, but the spiritual welfare of those committed to his care.

At the age of fourteen, after completing his course of classical studies, he was removed to the college of Princeton, then under

* The letter here referred to was originally addressed, by Dr. Rush, to the Hon. John Adams, Esq. late President of the United States: from a copy of the same, sent to the author by Dr. Rush, several of the preceding interesting particulars have 'been taken.

the superintendence of President Davies, one of the most eloquent preachers and learned divines our country has produced.

At college, our pupil not only performed his duties with his usual attention and success, but he became distinguished for his talents, his uncommon progress in his studies, and especially for his eloquence in public speaking. For this latter acquirement, he was doubtless indebted to the example set before him by President Davies, whose talents as a pulpit orator were universally acknowledged, and were frequently the theme of his pupil's admiration.

Dr. Rush received the degree of bachelor of arts in the autumn of 1760, at the early age of fifteen. The next succeeding six years of his life were devoted to the study of medicine, under the direction of Dr. John Redman, at that time an eminent practitioner in the city of Philadelphia. Upon commencing the study of medicine, the writings of Hippocrates were among the very first works which attracted his attention; and, as an evidence of the early impression they made upon his mind, and of the attachment he had formed to them, let it be remembered, that Dr. Rush, when a student of medicine, translated the aphorisms of Hippocrates from the Greek into his vernacular tongue, in the seventeenth year of his age. From this early exercise he probably derived that talent of investigation, that spirit of inquiry, and those extensive views of the nature and causes of disease, which give value to his writings, and have added important benefits to the science of medicine. The same mode of acquiring knowledge which was recommended by Mr. Locke, and the very manner of his commonplace book, was also early adopted by Dr. Rush, and was daily continued to the last of his life. To his records, made in 1762, we are at this day indebted for many important facts illustrative of the yellow fever, which prevailed in, and desolated the city of Philadelphia, in that memorable year. Even in reading, it was the practice of Dr. Rush, and for which he was first indebted to his friend Dr. Franklin, to mark with a pen or a pencil, any important fact, or any peculiar expression, remarkable either for its strength or its elegance. Like Gibbon," he investigated with his pen always in his hand;" believing with an ancient classic, that to study without a pen is to dream-" Studium sine calamo somnium."

Having with great fidelity completed his course of medical