Archaeologists can trace Lewis and Clark’s campsites by the mercury left behind from Benjamin Rush’s laxative pills, nicknamed thunderclappers. This deep dive reconstructs the life of the physician who earned a Princeton degree at 14, trained in Edinburgh, edited Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, and signed the Declaration of Independence. As an army surgeon general he wrote a hygiene manual reprinted until 1908, then resigned after anonymous letters criticizing George Washington were traced to him.

The episode examines his heroic medicine of bloodletting and mercury-based calomel during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic, his libel win against William Cobbett, and his recruitment of Philadelphia’s free Black community through Richard Allen. It also covers his work against slavery, for prison reform and women’s education, his flawed theory of race, his role as the father of American psychiatry, the tranquilizer chair, and how he reconciled John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

• A teenage prodigy who signed the Declaration of Independence
• Hospital corruption, the Conway Cabal, and a ruined bond with Washington
• Bloodletting, calomel, and the 1793 yellow fever epidemic
• Abolition, prison reform, and his contradictory views on race
• Treating addiction as a disease and reuniting Adams and Jefferson