Rush's Plan For Public Education In America

Around the same time, on March 28th, 1787, Dr. Benjamin Rush proposed his plan for public education in America. He believed that the only security of a republic lay in a proper education. Rush wrote an essay entitled ‘Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic' where the essay consisted of twenty points about how education in the United States should run. The main overall theme of the essay stated that the system of education required that ‘both men and woman should understand the basic principles of democracy, thus creating an atmosphere and attitude for the maintenance of democratic institutions' (Wassenhove). It is interesting to point out Rush's Christian influence on his plan of public education in America. In his plan for …show more content…
The epidemic was so bad that nearly 5,000 out of a population of 45,000 died, while another 17,000 fled the city. Rush believed that the outbreak of yellow fever had originated from a pile of rotting coffee beans located at the docks in Philadelphia. Rush developed a treatment that required bleeding his patients and provided large quantities of mercury (Harvard, "the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, 1793"). Rush remained in the city and tended to thousands of individuals that contracted the disease. Rush firmly believed that the disease resulted in "over- or under-stimulation” of the nervous system. As a result, Rush used his depleting methods, which led to removing too much blood from a sick individual's body, resulting in death. Many critics condemned his theories and medical practices as "dangerous and overzealous" (Osborne, Gerencser). Even when Rush's produces worked, like when Rush himself contracted the disease, he was unable to gather enough solid data to justify his practices (upenn). Rush even believed that blacks were immune to yellow fever, so he asked members of the African Society, such as Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, to help care for the sick and the dead. About two months later, Rush was proven wrong when blacks began to contract the deadly disease (Harvard). In a time where many individuals thought the disease was a result from God punishing the masses, Rush was one of the few that thought outside of the realm of religion as to the reasons behind the disease. Rush's lack of connection to religion could have been the reason behind Rush's treatments and beliefs even though many of his practices in American medicine were to be proven ineffective in treating the disease decades after his death. In 1813, after serving the people of Philadelphia during a typhus epidemic, Dr. Benjamin Rush died on April 19th at the age of

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