Benjamin Rush
Dr. Benjamin Rush was a prominent Philadelphia physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence who provided Meriwether Lewis with medical training and a medicine chest for the expedition. Rush prepared a list of health rules and medical questions about Native American practices for Lewis to investigate during the journey. He also supplied the expedition's famously potent laxative pills, known as "Rush's Thunderbolts" or "thunderclappers," which contained mercury and were used as a cure-all throughout the expedition. Archaeological evidence of these mercury pills has helped historians trace the expedition's campsites.
Portrait: Charles Willson Peale, 1783, Public Domain
Related Locations
Journal Entries (1)
Documents (1)
Cross-Narrator Analyses
AI-assisted scholarly analyses that cite or discuss Benjamin Rush — showing 2 of the most recent matches.
Sickness on the Clearwater: Three Voices from a Hard Descent
On September 24, 1805, three expedition journals describe the same day on the Clearwater in strikingly different registers — Clark catalogues illness,…
A Fort in Motion: Industry, Diplomacy, and a Rival Company’s Gift
On a cloudy March day at Fort Mandan, Ordway and Clark capture a captain juggling cartography, medicine, and intelligence-gathering — while a…
From Heacock's Writings
1 mirrored articles by Robert Heacock that mention Benjamin Rush.
