A Senior Army Physician Who Became a Critic
By the winter of 1777-1778, Dr. Benjamin Rush was one of the most prominent physicians in the Revolutionary generation and served as Physician General in the Continental Army’s medical establishment. Official Army medical history describes him as “the most eminent medical man produced by the Revolutionary period” and identifies him as Physician General of the Army when he began to question how hospitals were run under Director General William Shippen Jr.
Rush watched conditions in the general hospitals during the Valley Forge campaign, especially at Bethlehem and other Pennsylvania sites, and concluded structural flaws in the medical system, combined with Shippen’s control of both care and supplies, were harming soldiers.
The December 1777 Letter: A Structural Indictment
On December 8, 1777, Rush wrote to Henry Duer for the information of Congress. In that letter, preserved in the Army’s Office of Medical History, he laid out the British model for military hospitals, which separated three key roles: an inspector of hospitals, a purveyor for supplies, and physicians and surgeons in charge of patient care.
Rush contrasted that with the American system, where the Director General acted as chief physician, inspector, purveyor, and reporting officer all at once. He warned this concentration of power made it “impossible” for one man to know the needs of every hospital and created a situation where a Director General could, in his words, sell supplies “to the amount of a million a year, without a possibility of being detected” under existing controls.
He argued the suffering and mortality he saw in the hospitals were “in part charged to the very nature of the establishment,” not only to wartime hardship.
Complaints About Supplies, Neglect, and Death Counts
Rush’s criticism did not stop at structure. In a February 25, 1778, letter to George Washington from Princeton, written after his resignation, he attached sworn statements from surgeons at the Bethlehem hospital describing specific abuses.
The certificates he forwarded reported wine issued to the hospital as Madeira had been adulterated “in such a degree as to have none of the qualities or effects of Madeira,” the commissary general regularly deducted a third or more from orders of wine, sugar, molasses, and other stores intended for the sick, and large quantities of venison and poultry purchased as hospital stores never reached patients.
The same testimony stated Shippen visited the Bethlehem hospital only once during about six weeks of residence in the village, even while “the utmost distress and mortality prevailed.” Surgeons reported a putrid fever raged for three months, worsened by crowding and shortages of blankets, sheets, straw, and other basics, and that nine of eleven surgeons and many stewards and civilians caught the disease. They estimated some 200 soldiers died at Bethlehem in four months, eight-tenths from putrid fever contracted in the hospital.
Rush also highlighted discrepancies between these reports and Shippen’s official returns. For December, surgeons certified 420 patients and 40 deaths at Bethlehem, while Shippen reported only 320 patients and 21 deaths. Similar patterns appeared at Lancaster, where a coffin-maker certified delivering 120 coffins over a period in which Shippen’s reported deaths were far lower.
Resignation and Appeal to Congress
Rush did not frame his actions as a bid for promotion. In the December 8 letter, he told Congress he would not accept the directorship “for the riches of India” under the current system and wrote that he planned to retire after the campaign since he could not serve “agreeable to the dictates of my conscience and judgment.”
He asked for a hearing before Congress on January 25, 1778, and resigned from his post on January 30. Congress created a committee on January 3, 1778, to inquire into his charges, while Shippen wrote his own defense on January 18, insisting that “very few die” and that “no fatal disease prevails” in the hospitals, claims the official history notes were already irreconcilable with the typhus and putrid fever mortality then raging in Bethlehem and other sites.
In a later letter, Rush complained Shippen had portrayed his criticism as an attempt to displace him, and replied he “aimed only at the happiness of my distressed countrymen and the honor of my country.”
Toward a Court-Martial of Shippen
Rush continued to press for accountability even after leaving the medical department. In a January 19, 1780, letter to Dr. James McHenry, he wrote Shippen had at last been arrested and predicted that the army would now supply the justice that Congress had withheld. He described Shippen’s alleged fraud as “clear as the noonday sun” and said the public should soon hear tales that would make “each particular hair to stand on end.”
By April 20, 1778, Rush had suggested a court-martial, offered to furnish a list of witnesses, and volunteered to appear as prosecutor. Former Director General John Morgan later submitted formal charges of malpractice and misconduct. The Army’s official biography of Shippen records that Morgan’s action came with “the active support of Dr. Benjamin Rush,” and other senior medical officers joined in. The specifications included ignorance and neglect of duty, misapplication of hospital supplies and funds, and false morbidity and mortality reports.
After extensive correspondence, a court-martial convened at Morristown, New Jersey, and Shippen appeared before it in March of 1780. Congress did not finally dispose of the case until August of 1780, when it ordered Shippen to be discharged from arrest following the court’s acquittal. Shippen’s acquittal rested largely on procedural defects and ambiguities in how the medical department had been structured, rather than a substantive finding that the charges were unfounded; Congress later declined to formally approve the verdict, signaling continued doubt about his conduct.
An Early Pattern: Mismanagement, Suffering, and Institutional Resistance
Rush’s complaints traced an entire chain: overcrowded hospitals, contaminated and diverted supplies, inaccurate reporting, and leadership that stayed physically distant from the worst conditions. His letters described hundreds of deaths from hospital-acquired disease and argued most were “artificial” rather than an inevitable result of campaigning, since they came from putrid fevers contracted inside mismanaged institutions.
He urged Congress to separate the role of purveyor from the Director General, which Congress eventually did by creating a separate purveyor’s office under Jonathan Potts. The change recognized the core structural point in his December 1777 letter: medical officers who care for patients should not control the supply accounts that can be manipulated at the expense of those patients.
Echoes in Later Military Medical Scandals
The specific abuses Rush described belong to the eighteenth century: adulterated Madeira, shortages of straw bedding, and wagons moving sugar and wine as “private property.” The pattern he identified, however, has recurred in later military medical controversies.
In 2007, for example, a Washington Post series documented substandard outpatient housing and bureaucratic obstacles at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Reporters described mold, leaks, vermin, and damaged infrastructure, along with complex paperwork that left wounded soldiers waiting months for decisions on care and benefits. Subsequent stories reported hospital officials had long been aware of complaints about outpatient neglect.
That modern scandal differs from Rush’s world in almost every technical detail, yet the underlying issues feel familiar: sick and injured service members caught in systems where leadership, logistics, and oversight break down, and where it takes outside pressure and internal dissent to force change.
Rush’s Place in Whistleblower History
Rush did not use the word “whistleblower,” and his motives mixed professional standards, humanitarian concern, and intense personal and political conflict with Shippen. The record preserved in the Army’s own histories, however, shows a senior medical officer who documented abuses in writing, took his complaints to Congress and the commander in chief, resigned rather than remain silent, and pressed for formal legal accountability.
In that sense, Benjamin Rush stands as one of the earliest clear examples of an American military whistleblower after the 1777 Continental Navy case, and his story shows how early the United States confronted the problem of enforcing medical standards in wartime.
