The Rationalized Religion：Samuel Davies and John Redman's Influences on Benjamin Rush

Samuel Davies, a Presbyterian schoolmaster of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, played an important role for Rush’s religious education, too. Davies’s sermon for Rush was “a call for personal conversion, regeneration, and reform — in the tradition of the Great Awakening — but it was more. It was a call for social conversion, regeneration, and reform — in the tradition of the Enlightenment as well.” In September 1760, when Rush was awarded the Bachelor of Arts degree at the College of New Jersey, Davies wrote a letter of recommendation to Dr. John Redman, a “Log College” alumnus and Philadelphia’s leading physician, and asked him to offer an apprenticeship for Rush. With the help of Davies, Rush got an opportunity to work with Redman and learn medical knowledge from him, which made good preparation for pursuing his medical degree at Edinburgh.

In Rush’s life, Dr. John Redman helped him to know enlightened medical science. In February, 1761, Rush became a medical apprentice to Dr. Redman and served him for six years until he finally made his decision to pursue his medical degree at Edinburgh. Dr. Redman had taken his medical degree at Leyden and became a prominent physician in Philadelphia. As Hermann Boerhaave’s student, Redman naturally asked Rush to study Boerhaave’s works on physiology and pathology “with the closest attention.” In fact, at Dr. Redman’s house, Rush not only read the standard medical works of Hermann Boerhaave, the great Leyden teacher, but read Thomas Sydenham, the “English Hippocrates.” Sydenham’s texts, especially those dealing with the epidemiological theories, was lately adopted by Rush. Recognizing the fact that Sydenham’s contribution to the medicine was neglected and “many invaluable truths” contained in his works, Rush even promoted the publication of The Works of Thomas Sydenham M. D. in Philadelphia in 1809.