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Convention: A Daily Journal

Center for Civics Education

Convention: A Daily Journal

Convention: A Daily Journal is a day-by-day journal of the 1787 Constitutional Convention convened by twelve of the original thirteen states to amend the Articles of Confederation and create a “more perfect union.” It chronicles the daily activities of the Convention, profiles the delegates and their interactions with each other, and looks back to life in America in the 1780s. Writing in the first person, the story is told from an “observer” hearing events as told in contemporary newspaper accounts and delegates’ personal notes and letters.


Sunday, July 8, 1787

July 08, 2020 - 4 minute read


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After a week of verbal wrangling with little apparent progress at the Convention, George Washington must be relieved that today is Sunday and the Convention is not in session. “About 12 o’clock rode to Dr. Logans near Germantown where I dined,” he confided in his diary, and “returned in the evening and drank tea at Mr. Morris’s.” He was accompanied by the Maryland delegate with the unusual middle name, Daniel of St. Thomas Jennifer. Two of Maryland’s delegates, Daniel Carroll and John Francis Mercer, have not yet arrived and James McHenry left on June1, leaving only Jennifer, a supporter of the Virginia Plan, and Luther Martin, the fiery proponent of the defunct New Jersey Plan – which explains the frequency of Maryland’s votes in the Convention listed as “divided.”

Dr. George Logan is a physician, farmer, and political leader living at Stenton, near Germantown, the country home built by his grandfather, James Logan, William Penn’s secretary. His Loyalist family sent him to England for schooling and later to the University of Edinburgh Medical School where he received his degree in 1779. When he returned to the United States the following year, he became active in politics and married Deborah Norris, eventually known as “a skilled historian and writer” and the first woman elected as a member of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (although not for many years hence). 

Logan is currently a member of the Pennsylvania legislature and much prefers farming to medicine and was called “the best farmer in Pennsylvania in theory and practice” by Thomas Jefferson.  Several years from now, Logan will participate in negotiations with the French to settle the “Quasi War.” Returning from France, he will learn the Federalist majority in Congress had passed the “Logan Act of 1799,” preventing private, unauthorized negotiations from undermining the government’s position.

Before attending the July Fourth Celebrations earlier this week, Washington visited another doctor, Dr. Shovats [Chovat], to see his “anatomical figures.” Dr. Abraham Chovet is a medical doctor and anatomist who had spent time in France as well the Barbados and Jamaica before establishing himself and his “Anatomical Museum” in Philadelphia in 1774. Since then, the museum has become a major attraction for visitors to the city. 

In 1777, John Adams shared his visit to Chovet’s museum in a letter to his wife, Abigail. He had first spent time viewing Mrs. Wright’s waxworks which included figures of Lord Chatham, Benjamin Franklin, and many others. “There is genius, as well as taste and art in this exhibition,” he wrote, “but the whole scene was disagreeable to me…I seemed to be walking among a group of corpses.”  He had an entirely different view of Chovet’s waxwork “in which all the various parts of the human body are represented for the benefit of young students in anatomy and which were much more pleasing to me. Wax is much fitter to represent dead bodies, than living ones.”

Chovet’s collection is a serious one and later noted by doctors Benjamin Rush and William Shippen, two of the country’s most prominent physicians, who worked to secure it for the Philadelphia Hospital after Chovet’s death.

Benjamin Rush is one of the most remarkable men of this age. Graduating from the College of New Jersey (later called Princeton) at the age of fourteen, he apprenticed under Dr. John Redman in Philadelphia before completing his medical studies at the University of Edinburgh. He opened a medical practice in Philadelphia in 1769 and taught chemistry at the College of Philadelphia and eventually published the first American textbook on chemistry.

As resentment against British dominance spread throughout the colonies, Rush joined the Sons of Liberty and was soon elected to the Continental Congress, serving on the Medical Committee created “to devise ways and means for supplying the Continental Army with medicines.”  As Thomas Jefferson was drafting the Declaration of Independence, which Rush would sign, Rush was busy with Franklin and several others drafting a constitution for newly independent Pennsylvania.

Rush accompanied the Philadelphia militia into battle, once being trapped behind enemy lines, and accepted an appointment as Surgeon General of the Middle Department of the Continental Army. A serious disagreement with Dr. William Shippen over Shippen’s mismanagement of medical resources and Rush’s criticism of Washington’s leadership led to Rush’s resignation. Over time, relationships healed as the cause for independence progressed into the creation of a republic. Rush’s career in medicine has soared. He is active in the movement to abolish slavery; assisted Richard Allen in establishing the African Episcopal Church; promotes a more liberal education for women; stands against capital punishment; and continues to pioneer understanding and treatment of mental illness. 

Doctors in the eighteenth century are generally divided into three practices. Some are general physicians. Others are surgeons or apothecaries. Physicians are considered the elite, holding degrees from universities. Surgeons and apothecaries generally learn through apprenticeships, many starting as “ship’s surgeons.” Anesthesia is unknown and the use of sterile instruments and hygiene is only beginning to take hold. “Purging,” by bleeding, blistering, sweating, vomiting, or other means is common, the end being to balance one’s “humors,” or “bad air” from the body. By these means, rather than healing, doctors improve symptoms by reducing fever, swelling, bleeding, and setting bone fractures. 

It is not surprising that at this time the average life expectancy is  about thirty-three years. One half to two-thirds of children under the age of two die of poor diet, disease, or infection. Almost half of those over the age of sixteen will suffer poor eyesight, a noticeable loss of hearing, and dental problems. Efforts to promote personal hygiene, clean water and healthier diets are already making a difference in America and Europe, but much remains to be done.  

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