When Ramsay was going to settle down at Charles Town in 1773, Rush did a great favor for him. In writing a letter to recommend Ramsay for the same post he had declined, he wrote:
He is far superior to any person we ever graduated at our college; his abilities are not only good, but great; his talents and knowledge universal; I never saw so much strength of memory and imagination, united to so fine a judgment. His manners are polished and agreeable — his conversation lively, and his behaviour, to all men, always without offence. Joined to all these, he is sound in his principles, strict, nay more, severe in his morals, and attached, not by education only, but by principle, to the dissenting interest.
With the help of Rush, Ramsay was introduced to Charles Town and started his career as politician, historian, as well as physician. Although Ramsay left Philadelphia, Ramsay continued his correspondence with Rush and maintained their friendship until Rush’s death on April 19, 1813. Even if Rush was died, at the request of The Medical Society of South Carolina, Ramsay published An Eulogium upon Benjamin Rush, M.D to praise his great contribution in the history of American medicine.
In fact, Ramsay took his practical work under Dr. Thomas Bond. However, it was Rush who exerted the greatest influence on him. In Ramsay’s life, he “never broke the magical spell that Rush cast upon him in these years, and he continued to venerate his teacher and champion his ideas during the remainder of his life. This friendship without doubt provided the most important personal influence on his professional life.” For Ramsay and his wife Martha, Rush was an important friend, from whom they owned their intellectual debts. Therefore, to understand the inner minds of Martha, as well as Ramsay, it is necessary for us to put them into the context of Philadelphia’s Christian Enlightenment.
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