In the spring of 1813, Abigail Adams wrote to her friend Julia Rush inquiring after the death of Julia’s husband physician Benjamin Rush. “[O]h how shall I address you. how offer the consolation I need for myself upon an occasion which has torn my heart in anguish, filled by Bosom with Grief, and so overwhelmed me by the magnitude of Bereavement, that I cannot utter my feelings.” Although separated by a considerable distance—Quincy, MA to Philadelphia, PA—the Adams and Rush families were close, and they expressed their mutual grief through letters after Benjamin’s demise from typhoid, typhus, or some other “low fever” on April 13, 1813. The raw emotion in Abigail’s first letter to Julia is full of sentiment and empathy for a friend. However, in their continued correspondence, emotion was accompanied by analysis of Benjamin’s final disease and a rational assessment of the failings of the human body.
Throughout my research on Benjamin Rush, his wife Julia has been an ever-present but often invisible force. Though married for nearly 37 years, records of their relationship are fragmented, surviving in a few mentions by friends and letters between the Rushes when they were infrequently apart. Few of Julia’s letters to Benjamin survive, and those that do are mostly from a few distinct periods: their courtship in 1776, the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, and occasional notes from summers or trips apart. Other snippets come from Benjamin’s autobiography (full of praise for Julia) and complementary depictions of her kindness and intelligence from other notable men, including physician Charles Caldwell, president of Princeton University Samuel Stanhope Smith, and Latin American revolutionary Francisco de Miranda.2
Too often, Julia’s voice is frustratingly missing. Nevertheless, we can learn about her by paying careful attention to those fragments, evidence not only of her social importance but often her medical knowledge. Married women were expected to be the primary medical caregivers in early nineteenth-century families, doing the day-to-day work of helping the sick recover, even when married to a physician. As a wife, mother, and reader of medical texts from Benjamin’s library, Julia seemed to have an informal but still sophisticated grasp of medical knowledge. Through her correspondence, Julia demonstrated that medical expertise, even narrowly construed, was not limited to men or physicians. Her observations challenge us to think more deeply about the expertise of women in general, and doctor’s wives in particular. When Benjamin died, it was Julia’s expertise that came to bear on her grieving process. Julia’s accounts and analysis took the place of similar assessments Benjamin made as a professional, communicating the details, causes, and consequences of illness to their mutual friends.