When People in Charge Believe They Are God or the Voice of God

Sometimes, we appoint people to positions of power, and they let that power go to their heads. These people are frequently charismatic and well-spoken. However, their appointment affects their logic and reasoning skills. This can be especially dangerous when a medical authority stops looking at scientific research and believes he has found the answer to a health solution--even if that solution is extreme and not supported by facts.

The model example of this is Benjamin Rush. Benjamin Rush was a Founding Father. He was also one of the first doctors teaching at the first American Medical University. He held many high positions, but when Yellow Fever struck, he believed that he had the best idea for dealing with the plague. Bleeding patients had actually fallen out of favor in Europe. It was an old-fashioned method of dealing with disease by the 1790s. Supportive care was becoming the norm, but when Rush tried it he claimed it killed 4 out of 5 of his patients. He switched to the old tried and true method of bleeding and purgatives to make people throw up. Since severe yellow fever causes stomach bleeding, he saw that they would vomit "black bile" and felt he was doing his job to get rid of the excess. He still lost patients, so he took his measures to the next extreme. He drew so much blood from his patients, his front yard became a bloody mess--literally. He even caused the other doctors of his day to squirm. He prescribed ten times the amount of purgatives that any other doctor would prescribe. A battle between the doctors raged in the newspapers. Throughout it all Rush maintained that he never lost a patient once he enacted these measures. He believed that despite bleeding falling out of favor in Europe, America was a different place and therefore required different treatment methods. He believed there was only one disease--fever-- and there was only one treatment for that disease--aggressive bleeding. He believed God had divinely given him this idea. And he taught this to all his students and published books on it for other doctors to read.

That Rush had 5 assistants and 3 of them died during the Yellow Fever outbreak, makes the modern historian question his record. If he lost 0 of the patients he treated, how did he lose 60% of his assistants? One researcher traced as many of his patients as he could and discovered 46% of them had died from Yellow Fever. His school of medicine probably contributed to George Washington's death.
Although the debate during and after the Yellow Fever epidemic was harsh, he only was pushed into resigning from his position regulating public health. He kept his teaching job, and was almost appointed to another one, but Alexander Hamilton, one of his most vocal opponents blocked it. Rush had radical ideas, but unfortunately they were not founded on science. His zeal caused him to ignore the deaths he caused or perhaps his stubbornness caused him to keep killing others. His followers loved him regardless.

The result was that bleeding remained prominent as a treatment for more than 50 years--but only in the United States. Leaders are important, but it is also important to recognize when someone should not be in a leadership position, especially in medicine, and those people who make bad choices, such as when doctors supported smoking, they should be removed from their positions and more humble people placed there instead. Medical leaders must look at research and never assume they have all the answers.