Republic of Medicine and the Ethics of Care: Reading History as Narrative Form

In 1790, Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush used the phrase “Republic of Medicine” to describe the community of Atlantic world physicians who were drawn together by their shared commitment to producing knowledge about diseases and their treatments. This paper gives an overview of the late eighteenth-century Republic of Medicine and asks how it can help us to imagine histories of citizenship and of community in counterpoint to the rise of the nation state in the Age of Revolution.

Cristobal Silva, Columbia University, Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow.