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Learn about one of America's forgotten founding fathers -- Dr. Benjamin Rush. Rush was a renowned writer, reformer and medical pioneer who touched virtually every page in the story of our nation’s founding. He was Franklin’s protegee, the editor of Common Sense, and Washington’s Surgeon General. Rush was a fierce progressive advocate – a vocal opponent of slavery and prejudice by race, religion, or gender, and a champion of public education – even as his convictions threatened his name and career, time and again. He was a confidant, and often the physician, of Washington, Adams and Jefferson. As a doctor, Rush became known as the “Father of American Medicine” and the “Father of Psychiatry”, whose brilliant, humane insights and institutional reforms revolutionized the understanding of mental illness in ways that still reverberate.

About the presenter: Dennis J. Curran served as a Massachusetts judge for 16 years, including in the Superior Court from 2006 to 2018. Prior to his time on the bench, Curran worked as an Assistant District Attorney and First Assistant Legal Counsel to the Governor, in addition to work in private practice. A graduate of Boston Latin School, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia School of Law, Curran has taught law at Tufts University, Roger Williams University School of Law, and Brown University.

Sponsored by the Tewksbury Friends of the Library and a collaboration of Massachusetts Libraries.

RECORDING NOTE: This program will be recorded. All registrants will receive the recording via email within 48 hours of the program.