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Medical Inquiries and Observations published.

1793

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Known as the "Father of American Psychiatry," Dr. Benjamin Rush first publishes his Medical Inquiries and Observations in 1793. Rush is also known for publishing an article that proposes that leprosy causes Blackness in skin color and that a "cure" could turn African people's skin white, used to support his abolitionist theory that Africans are not predisposed to enslavement because of the color of their skin. Rush bases this claim on the coercive experimentation of another scientist who used muriatic acid, a harsh corrosive, to essentially bleach the skin and hair of an unknown African-American man.