Books: What the Doctor Said

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BENJAMIN RUSH (399 pp.)—Edifed by George W. Corner—Princeton ($6).

In the summer of 1800, when Dr. Benjamin Rush began his autobiography, he was 54, America's foremost physician, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and an intimate of many of the great and near great of his day. He called his autobiography Travels Through Life, and began it this way:

My dear children,

My life has been a variegated one. Under a conviction that I shall not live to give its details to the younger branches of my family, I have concluded to put upon paper a few incidents that may...