FACT OF THE DAY

Hailed as one of the nation's top singles strips in the 1967 bestseller, Coffee, Tea or Me? The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses, Chicago's Rush Street was named for Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of four physicians to sign the Declaration of Indepencence. Ben Franklin was Rush's benefactor when he was a medical student in the UK and he served as a surgeon in the Revolutionary War Army. Rush Presbyterian St. Luke's hospital in Chicago is named after the impatient doctor (he once pissed off George Washington), who is credited wtih curing the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. A proponent of bloodletting, he was also one of the first to push the then-revolutionary idea that mental illness is a disease rather than proof of possession by demons, and is considered to be the father of psychiatry. He headed the US Mint from 1797 to 1813 and his poor wife bore him 13 children. Ouch.