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.Few of his works in Bengali, of which therewere 32 published items, dealt with social questions.A greater num-ber of reform ideas were reserved for his English publications, ofwhich there were 40, and there he touched upon women s rights, free-dom of the press, inheritance rights, and caste issues.Most of hispublications in both languages were about religious subjects.Othermissionaries were disturbed by his study of Christianity, especially,the Gospels.He wrote The Precepts of Jesus, which presented theUnitarian view that Jesus is the great teacher.Roy came to the atten-tion of British and American Unitarians who found him learned,eloquent, and opulent and mistakenly assumed he was a liberalChristian.Englishman Thomas Belsham was excited that Roy wasteaching the doctrine of the divine Unity. In September 1821 Roy and his convert William Adam and othersfounded the Calcutta Unitarian Committee whose purpose was edu-cational and informational.A Calcutta Unitarian Society was alsoformed, but it closed after Adam left India in 1830.Back in theUnited States a number of articles were published about Roy, andalso his views on Hinduism and Christianity.He struggled withChristian identity in the 1820s, but because of caste restrictions, henever intended to convert from his Brahmin caste Hinduism.In 1827a new British Indian Unitarian Association was formed to reorganizethe earlier Unitarian Committee.Adam and Roy had frequently beenat odds over how Roy s Anglo-Hindu School would operate.Then RUSH, BENJAMIN (1745 1813) " 405during the early months of 1828 Roy decided on a new approach thatwould mean the organization of the Hindu Unitarians into a newgroup.The first service for the Brahmo Samaj, or Society of God, asa Hindu reform movement, was held on August 28, 1828.Roy de-cided to reject a specific Christian or Unitarian name for his newgroup, so that Hindu cultural, religious, and caste identity could bemaintained.In 1830 he traveled to England, where he spent the lastthree years of his life, often in the company of British Unitarians.Moncure Daniel Conway, the American abolitionist, identified Roy sarrival as the dawn of the new interest of cultured England in Hindureligion. Roy was met by all the leading Unitarians, including Har-riet Martineau and Sarah Flower, the author of Nearer My God toThee. Roy is buried in the Unitarian churchyard in Bristol, where hehad gone to visit the reformer Mary Carpenter, the daughter of theminister Lant Carpenter.When the American Joseph Tuckermanwent to England, and visited Roy, he referred to him as the most ad-vanced Christian he met there.RUSH, BENJAMIN (1745 1813).The Father of Psychiatry andsigner of the Declaration of Independence, was also an active social re-former and Universalist.Born on December 24, 1745, in Byberry,Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, Rush was the fourth of sevenchildren born to John and Suzanna Rush.His father, who was a farmerand maker of firearms, died when Benjamin was only five, and thefamily moved into the city where Suzanna set up a grocery and chinashop.She spent some time educating her children, and then at age nineBenjamin went to the Academy in Nottingham, Maryland.He earnedsome college credit there, and then finished at the College of New Jer-sey (now Princeton).He received a B.A.in 1760 when he was 15 anddecided to be a physician.He studied at the Pennsylvania Hospital(where he was later a staff member, 1783 1813) but then went abroadto finish his training.He studied at the University of Edinburgh in 1766and two years later was granted a doctor s degree.When he returnedhome, he took a position at the College of Philadelphia as a chemistryprofessor.He later published the first textbook on chemistry written byan American, Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Chemistry.Rush was an active member of the Philosophical Society, and hisimpulse toward reform surfaced when he published a pamphlet 406 " RUSH, BENJAMIN (1745 1813)against slavery and founded the Pennsylvania Society for Promotingthe Abolition of Slavery.He had become a convert to republicanismin Edinburgh.He met Thomas Paine and worked with him on thedrafts for Common Sense.He attended the Continental Congress,signed the Declaration, and later became a surgeon-general in theContinental Army.During his service Rush became concerned aboutconditions in the hospitals and wrote an influential but controversialreport.He was eventually forced to resign.In 1775 he returned tovisit his old school in New Jersey and met and fell in love with JuliaStockton.They were married a few months later, and eventually had13 children, of whom nine survived infancy and childhood.After thewar Rush began to argue for many types of reform.Essays, whichwere first published in the newspaper and later gathered in bookform, advocated for penal reform, the abolition of capital punish-ment, and a new system of education.He set up the first free medicaldispensary in the country.When the new federal constitution was be-ing written Rush wrote a plan for a Department of Peace to comple-ment the intended Department of War.Many of his medical accomplishments occurred after Rush be-came the chaired professor of the theory and practice of medicine atthe new University of Pennsylvania.After suggesting some curricu-lum changes there, he argued with the provost and then left to founda separate school, which is now Dickinson College.In 1793 he wascriticized for suggesting that a yellow fever epidemic was caused bypoor sanitation, and he also worked tirelessly for its victims.He hadlong advocated better treatment of the insane, and his book, MedicalInquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind, was aforerunner of the modern science of psychiatry.He made Philadel-phia the center for medical education in the country
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