The Rush Light

A complete set.

From Catalog II

The Rush Light was Cobbett's most sustained attack on Rush -- seven numbers of satirical journalism combining genuine medical argument with personal invective, published in the immediate aftermath of the yellow fever epidemics of the 1790s. Cobbett had been arguing since the 1797 epidemic that Rush's combination of aggressive bloodletting and mercurial purging was killing patients faster than the disease itself. The Rush Light escalated those attacks into a sustained campaign, collecting mortality statistics and quoting Rush's published claims against observed outcomes. Rush sued; the jury awarded him five thousand dollars. The complete run of seven issues is one of the rarest American medical periodicals.