Web of Healing

Rush’s Testimony about Durham’s Expertise, 1788

Transcription of the Text

To The Pennsylvania Abolition Society
Philadelphia, November 14, 1788

There is now in this city, a black man of the name of James Derham, a practitioner of physic, belonging to the Spanish settlement of New Orleans on the Mississippi.  This man was born in a family in this city in which he was taught to read and write and instructed in the principles of Christianity.  When a boy, he was transferred by his master to the late Dr. John Kearsley, Jr., of this city, who employed him occasionally to compound medicines and to perform some of the more humble acts of attention to his patients.

Upon the death of Dr. Kearsley, he became (after passing through several hands) the property of Dr. George West, surgeon to the Sixteenth British regiment, under whom, during the late war in America, he performed many of the menial duties of or profession.  At the close of the war he was sold by Dr. West to Dr. Robert Dove, of New Orleans, who employed him as an assistant in his business, in which capacity he gained so much of his confidence and friendship that he consented to liberate him, after two or three years, upon easy terms.  From Dr. Derham’s numerous opportunities of improving in medicine, he became so well acquainted with the healing art as to commence practitioner at New Orleans under the patronage of his last master.  He is now about twenty-six years of age, has a wife but no children, and does business to the amount of three thousand dollars a year.

I have conversed with him upon most of the acute and epidemic diseases of the country where he lives, and was pleased to find him perfectly acquainted with the modern simple mode of practice in those diseases.  I expected to have suggested some new medicines to him, but he suggested many more to me.  He is very modest and engaging in his manners.  He speaks French fluently and has some knowledge of the Spanish language.  By some accident, although born in a religious family belonging to the Church of England, he was not baptized in his infancy, in consequence of which he applied a few days ago to Bishop White to be received by that ordinance into the Episcopal Church.  The Bishop found him qualified, both by knowledge and moral conduct, to be admitted to baptism, and this day performed the ceremony in one of the churches in this city.

— BENJAMIN RUSH

Note

This testimonial by Benjamin Rush on behalf of black physician James Durham is available at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in the correspondence of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.  It also appeared in its full text in Herbert Morais’ The History of the Negro in Medicine. – J. Radin

Also see Durham's letter to Rush. For further information about Durham, see the section about him in our discussion of secondary sources in the African American node.

Source

Benjamin Rush. Letters from James Durham to Benjamin Rush. (The Historical Society of Pennsylvania).