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This study focuses on two critical figures in late eighteenth-century America-the physician Benjamin Rush and the journalist William Cobbett- as they clashed in one of the most important trials of post-revolutionary America, a libel trial that pitted medicine against the press, republicanism against federalism, and privacy against the public welfare.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Illustrations
Prolegomena
The Trial Transcript
Constructing the Plaintiff
The Republican Narrative
Yellow Fever and the Jeremiad Narrative
The Image of Fever
Chapter 1: Benjamin Rush and the Culture of Medicine
Quacks and Factions
The Culture of Medicine
Rush's Treatments
Doctors' Wars
Chapter 2: Malpractice Law and Benjamin Rush
Malpractice Law
The Patient's Duty
Medical Authority
Physicians and the Law
Whitworth and Young
Samuel Thomson
Rush and Malpractice
Rush's Decision to Prosecute
Chapter 3: William Cobbett and the Scurrilous Press
Cobbett and the Press
Porcupine and Style
Trial by Press Satire
Porcupine's Prints
Press Feuds
Cobbett's Attacks on Rush
Sangrado the Bleeder
The Vintner's Tales
Chapter 4: Libel Law and William Cobbett
Libel Cases
Eleazer Oswald
Sedition Cases
Cobbett and the Law
Changes in Legal Practice
The Venue: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court
Fleeing the Trial
Chapter 5: Sangrado v. the Cloven Foot, the Trial
The Political Story
The Story of Character
The Secular Jeremiad
The Contribution of Sermons
Cobbett's Self-Defense
Chapter 6: The Trial Concluded
The Judge and the Jury
Cobbett's Counsel
Trial Strategy
Afterword
Cobbett's Flight to England
The Death of George Washington
Peter Porcupine v. Paul Polecat
Bibliography
About the author
Linda Myrsiades is professor emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at West Chester University. She has most recently published Medical Culture in Revolutionary America: Feuds, Duels, and a Court Martial (2009).
