rush 'rəsh n
1) a rapid and extensive wave of peristalsis along the walls of the intestine <peristaltic \rush>
2) the immediate pleasurable feeling produced by a drug (as heroin or amphetamine) called also flash
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(rush) Benjamin, 1745–1813. American physician and statesman, born in Philadelphia; he was the first professor of chemistry at the College of Philadelphia and wrote the first American book on chemistry. Rush was a Surgeon General in the Continental Army and physician to Pennsylvania Hospital, where he introduced clinical instruction; he was the founder of the Philadelphia Dispensary (the first in America), founder of the Philadelphia College of Physicians, and professor of the Institutes of Medicine (i.e., physiology and pathology) and Clinical Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Rush was the first American to investigate mental illness, to write on cholera infantum, and to notice focal infection in teeth; he was a founder of experimental physiology; and he also wrote on alcoholism, personal hygiene, and public health and on the great yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia (1793). Rush's views on that epidemic (that it originated locally and was not imported) and his treatment of the sufferers (excessive purging and blood letting) caused controversy and lawsuits.Medical dictionary. 2011.