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.
He gave evidence at an early day of his great surgical abilities. He was indeed a born surgeon, possessing in a remarkable degree that peculiar adaptation to this branch of his profession, without which no amount of study can make a great operator. While a student in the Old World, he performed leading operations with a skill and natural readiness which astonished his instructors as much as they delighted them. He was possessed of a firmness and dexterity of hand, a calm, cool brain, a quick, unfailing eye, a calmness of nerve, a strength of will, and a physical endurance which were Nature's gifts to him, and which rendered him a great surgeon even before he had received his diploma. He did not trust to these natural gifts alone, however, but applied himself to the theory of his profession with a determination and eagerness which nothing could daunt. He was an enthusiast in his studies, and soon became known as the most profoundly-learned young physician of his day. As he advanced in life, he maintained his reputation, keeping up his studies to the last. The great men under whom he studied abroad were delighted with him, and Sir Astley Cooper was loud in his praise. He exhibited so much skill as an operator that he was often called upon to perform operations which the professors would never have dreamed of intrusting to any one else, and he went through each trial of this kind with a readiness and precision which few even of his instructors excelled.