Book excerpt: Here, in two volumes, is a collection of over 650 letters (two-thirds of them never before printed) from the pen of Benjamin Rush. A signer of the Declaration of Independence and the 18th century's most distinguished American physician, Rush was also a politician, pamphleteer, social reformer, chemistry professor, psychiatrist, college founder, church founder, and "enthusiastic lifelong student of everything under the sun."--Jacket.