John Rush to Thomas Jefferson, 15 October 1804
From John Rush
[on or before 15 Oct. 1804]
Sir
In presenting you with the Elements of life I have given you merely the Alphabet of this science. Mankind are not yet prepared for the consequences which would flow from principles, deduced from Nature and reason. Physical morality can never perfect human nature, while the physical world and its enjoyments, are abandoned for that of the moral—I have therefore touched lightly on solid ground. But perhaps I have unfolded the true germ, from which has sprung a great portion of error, by unfolding the difference, between the truth of ideas and the truth of facts;—a difference, that though known to many Philosophes, has not by them been applied, to establish first principles.
To you Sir my allusions will be familiar; and your mind can much better supply what I have omitted to conclude. I wrote only for men of science, but with this reserve, that if attacked by pretenders, I should explain some things in a manner somewhat subversive1 of their logical reasonings—I might have shown them, that it requires a stronger effort of the mind, to comprehend the truth of a simple proposition, than it does to understand, the most abstract proposition in metaphysics.
I have been asked, why I did not consider the doctrine of “Epigennesis” or preexisting germs? but I have provided for this,—for if every known form of matter consists in the particular union of Chemical Elements, the germ is nothing else but chemical matter, resulting from affinity; and its vegatation, or expansion, the consequence of other matters agreeably to Affinity—We talk of Embios in the semen masculinum; I have seen them, and lo! they were tadpoles, which upon mixture with the fluid in the female organs, undergoes a total decomposition—at any rate a chemical change is proved to take place, for if every germ were a man in minature, we should have a thousand at a birth—but all these are decomposed and go to form the heart and arteries, which perhaps first appear—These certainly do not appear until the germs have undergone a Change.
With Sentiments of high respect I am Sir your Obt
J Rush
RC (DLC: TJ Papers, 144:25011-12); undated; addressed: “Thos. Jefferson. President of the United States”; endorsed by TJ as received 15 Oct. and so recorded in SJL with notation “with a pamphlet.” Enclosure: John Rush, Elements of Life, or, The Laws of Vital Matter (Philadelphia, 1804); No. 981.
John Rush (1777-1837) was the eldest son of Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush and his wife, Julia Stockton Rush. In 1790, he enrolled at his father’s alma mater, the College of New Jersey, but after two years of disciplinary offenses and lackluster scholarship, he was brought home. After a short apprenticeship under his father, Rush went to sea, first as a commercial sailor and then as a naval surgeon. In 1804, he completed his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania. Although the degree opened up professional opportunities in Philadelphia, Rush chose to travel to South Carolina and Cuba before reentering the navy as a sailing master. In 1808, he was relieved of duty and ordered to Washington, perhaps for hospitalization, after a series of quarrels and “gunplay” aboard ship. Rush attempted suicide in 1809 and by the next year was confined to Pennsylvania Hospital’s psychiatric ward, where he remained until his death. Ironically, the paper that Rush sent TJ was on the topic of insanity, supporting his father’s theory that the condition was caused by a malfunction of cerebral blood vessels (J. Jefferson Looney and Ruth L. Woodward, Princetonians, 1791-1794: A Biographical Dictionary [Princeton, 1991], 429-39; , 3:279n).
1. MS: “subvesive.”