Portal:Philadelphia/Did you know?/June 2011

Dr. Rush, painted by Peale, c. 1818

… that in 1803 Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis to Philadelphia to prepare for the Lewis and Clark Expedition under the tutelage of Dr. Benjamin Rush, who taught Lewis about frontier illnesses and the technique of bloodletting, and provided the Corps of Discovery with a medical kit that included fifty dozen of Dr. Rush's Bilious Pills, laxatives containing more than 50% mercury, which the corps called "thunderclappers"?