Highlight 1 · BR-2022.001
Rush's Boerhaave
The Van Swieten commentaries with Rush's bookplate, inscribed to his student — the chain of teaching in one volume.
Read the featureHighlights of the collection
The objects the collection is proudest of, each with the story of why it is here. They appear in their catalogs too; these are the pieces to begin with.
Highlight 2 · BR-2023.022
Rush to Physick
Cleghorn's Minorca, edited by Rush, inscribed by him to Philip Syng Physick — the father of American surgery.
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Highlight 3 · BR-2026.003
'I am too weak to visit Mr. Davis'
Rush's letter from his sickbed at the height of the yellow fever, October 17, 1793.
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Highlight 4 · BR-2026.002
'Read, observe and think'
Rush's advice to a former student, August 2, 1798 — the motto he lived by and wrote into his autobiography.
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Highlight 5 · BR-2022.019
Monroe to Rush
A future president asks Rush — and Physick — about his daughter, May 26, 1811.
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Highlight 6 · BR-2023.017
The Address upon Slave-Keeping
Rush's first controversial tract and 'his first effort in behalf of the Negroes,' 1773 — nine copies at auction in 125 years.
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Highlight 7 · BR-2023.005
The Unrecorded Thermometer
Rush's Moral and Physical Thermometer as a printed broadside for public display, New York, 1811 — previously unknown.
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Highlight 8
The Library Company Catalogue
The shelf-list of the first subscription library in America, printed by its founder's press, 1764.
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Highlight 9
Franklin's Stove
The Pennsylvania fireplace of 1744, followed through its French and American descendants.
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Highlight 10 · BR-2023.031
Medicine among the Indians
Rush's oration of 1774 — the first treatise on Native American medicine published in North America.
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Highlight 11
The Smallpox Pamphlet
Douglass against inoculation, Boston 1722 — printed by James Franklin, with his brother Benjamin at the case.
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Highlight 12
The Cato Major
Franklin's finest piece of printing and the first classical translation published in America, 1744.
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Highlight 13
The Dry-Gripes
The first medical treatise written and printed in America, from Franklin's press, 1745.
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Highlight 14
Anthony Newhouse, Papermaker
A signed document of 1747 from the man whose mill supplied Franklin's press.
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Highlight 15
The Last New Jersey Laws
Franklin's final official printing for New Jersey, 1748, in the original printed wrappers.
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Highlight 16
Poor Richard, 1763
One of the finest surviving examples of Franklin's almanac, with its original stitching.
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Highlight 17
The Seely Commission
A wholly unrecorded Franklin printing: a military commission of Pontiac's War, 1763, with the provincial seal.
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Highlight 18
The Jerman Almanac
Franklin's earliest surviving almanac, 1731 — the only known copy in private hands.
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Highlight 19
The Paxton Boys
An eyewitness account, in a single sheet, of the massacre that opened the crisis of 1764.
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Highlight 20
The Liberty Tree Lantern
A very rare surviving lantern from the night Boston lit the elm for the repeal of the Stamp Act, May 1766.
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Highlight 21
The Last Royal Governor
William Franklin's answer to Congress, printed two weeks before his father signed the Declaration.
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Highlight 22 · YF-2025.011
Lines on the Death of Hilary Baker
A broadside elegy for the mayor of Philadelphia, dead of the fever in 1798.
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