A bogus Benjamin Rush quote: contribution to the history of pharmacracy

Abstract

Benjamin Rush (1746–1813), the ‘father’ of American psychiatry, is perhaps best known as the inventor of the ‘tranquilizing chair’. In recent decades, political and psychiatric activists have attributed a quotation to him in which he allegedly warned: ‘To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science.’ The source of this quotation cannot be found, and Rush’s remarks about ‘medical despotism’ are inconsistent with the body of his work. Other examples are cited to illustrate the thesis that false attributions, used to support and advance particular ideological causes, are remarkably resistant to efforts at correction.