Stuff we never think about...............

     Rush wanted to accomplish just one more thing before leaving Congress.  For some time, he had been lobbying General Washington on the need to inoculate American soldiers against smallpox.   On February 13. 1777, in a formal letter to the general on behalf of the medical committee, he requested that Washington order all his troops to be inoculated.  He suggested that until this was done, the southern troops that were heading up from Virginia to join him in New Jersey and Pennsylvania should not travel through Philadelphia "where the infection now prevails."  Washington agreed.
     By making sure the troops were inoculated, this three-paragraph letter may well have saved more lives than anything else done by Rush or any other physician involved with the Revolutionary War.

-Stephen Fried,  Rush:  Revolution, Madness & The Visionary Doctor Who Became A Founding Father