Four narrative volumes. Each chapter is a story; the objects appear where the story reaches them, with the photograph and the full entry. Any chapter can be printed as catalog pages.
Catalog I · 7 chapters · 44 objects
Contagion, Controversy, and the Origins of American Medicine. This catalog began with a letter. Framed above the cabinet that now holds forty-four other items, the letter is from Benjamin Rush, written in October 1793 from his sickbed, at the height of the most lethal epidemic in American history.
Catalog II · 9 chapters · 50 objects
The Mentor and the Physician. This catalog begins with a letter that does not survive. In the summer of 1766, Benjamin Franklin wrote an introduction for a twenty-year-old Philadelphia physician named Benjamin Rush, who was about to sail for Edinburgh to complete his medical education.
Catalog III · 5 chapters · 46 objects
The Printing, in Order: Boston, London, and Philadelphia, 1722–1795. Benjamin Franklin was a printer for the whole of his life and a statesman for the last third of it, and he never let anyone forget which came first. He signed himself 'B.
Catalog IV · 3 chapters · 34 objects
The Electrical Philosophy, the Politics, and the Making of a Republic. The catalogs that precede this one follow Benjamin Rush through the epidemic and the friendship, and Benjamin Franklin through the press. This fourth volume turns to Franklin after the press: the natural philosopher, the politician, and the sage.
