ABSTRACT
Benjamin Rush (1745-1813), one of the most famous Americans in the early days of the new republic, fought in the Revolutionary War, signed the Declaration of Independence, and helped found the field known today as psychiatry. Rush, who was particularly interested in mind-body relationships, wrote several essays – including the one excerpted here – that stand among the first investigations of biology and crime, or, as he put it, of the influence of physical causes on the “moral faculty” or ethical capacity. In the course of his work, Rush discovered a few cases of people who seemed to lack the moral faculty entirely – early instances of those today called psychopaths.
