Dr. Rush’s skill and heroic conduct in his efforts to stay the ravages of the plague made him famous, not only in his own country, but throughout Europe, and during the latter part of his life he received most gratifying evidences of this fact.  In 1805 the King of Prussia sent him a coronation medal, and the King of Spain tendered him his thanks for his replies to certain questions addressed to him concerning the causes and proper treatment of yellow fever.  In 1807 the Queen of Etruria presented him with a gold medal as a mark of respect; and in 1811 the Emperor of Russia sent him a testimonial of his admiration of his medical character.

In 1799 he was made treasurer of the United States Mint, which position he held until his death.

Dr. Rush’s writings were voluminous, and embraced a variety of subjects.  His medical productions occupy a high place in the literature of the profession, and his political essays were one of the features of his day.  He was a man of profound learning, and it is astonishing that one so constantly occupied with the duties of an engrossing profession should have found the time for such close and thorough general reading.

He was a sincere and earnest Christian, and held the Bible in the highest veneration.  He wrote an able defense of the use of it as a school-book, and for many years was vice-president of the Philadelphia Bible Society, which he helped to establish, and the constitution of which he drafted.  He held skepticism and atheism in the deepest abhorrence, and in his own life affords a powerful refutation of the assertion one hears so often, that profound medical knowledge is apt to make men infidels.

He died in Philadelphia on the 19th of April, 1813, at the good old age of sixty-eight, leaving a son who was destined to render additional luster to his name by achieving the highest distinction as a statesman.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

VALENTINE MOTT.

Valentine Mott was born at Glen Cove, on Long Island, on the 20th of August, 1785.  His father, Dr. Henry Mott, was an eminent practitioner in the city of New York, where he died in 1840, at the age of eighty-three.  Valentine Mott was carefully educated by private tutors until he reached the age of nineteen, when he entered Columbia College, New York, as a medical student, and at the same time became a private medical pupil of his kinsman, Dr. Valentine Seaman.  At the age of twenty-one he graduated with the degree of M.D.; but feeling that he had not acquired as good a medical education as the schools of the Old World could afford, he sailed for Europe in 1806, within a few weeks after his graduation at Columbia College.  Proceeding to London, he was for more than a year a regular attendant upon St. Thomas’, Bartholomew’s, and Guy’s hospitals, where he conducted his clinical studies under the direction of Abernethy, Sir Charles Bell, and Sir Astley Cooper.  He chose Sir Astley Cooper as his private instructor, and became one of his favorite pupils; and also attended the lectures of Currie and Haighton.  From London he went to Edinburgh, where he attended the lectures of Hope, Playfair, and Gregory, as well as the prelections of Dugald Stewart.  From Edinburgh he went to Paris, and completed his studies in the great hospitals of that city.