Edward Nathaniel Brush

Artist: Thomas C. Corner, Oil on Canvas

Edward Nathaniel Brush was an American physician and a renown editor of medical and psychiatric journals. He was born in Erie County, New York, and attended public and private schools. He entered the Department of Medicine of the University of Buffalo, where he graduated in 1874. In 1871, while still in residency, he began working under the famous physician, Dr. Julius Miner, professor of Surgery, and owner of The Buffalo Journal of Medicine and Surgery.

After receiving his medical degree, Brush opened a private practice in the city of Buffalo, New York. While there he served as editor for 'The Buffalo Journal of Medicine and Surgery' from 1874 to 1878, and published four articles in this medical journal. He lectured on the subject of electro-therapeutics at the University of Buffalo Medical School from 1877 to 1879, and was also a visiting physician at the Sisters of Charity Hospital in Buffalo at that same time. In 1878, he accepted the position of assistant physician at the Utica State Hospital, and practiced inpatient psychiatry there until 1884. At the time, Utica State Hospital owned and published The American Journal of Insanity, with John Gray, as its editor. While employed with Utica, Brush became associate editor of the journal.

In 1884, his former colleague at Utica, John Chapin, was called to the Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia to become physician-in-chief of the Department of the Insane. Chapin invited Brush to join him in Philadelphia as his assistant physician, and Brush graciously accepted the offer. There he worked for two years under Dr. Chaplin, all the while he continued working with the editorial board of The American Journal of Insanity. Sheppard-Pratt Hospital, a private mental hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, opened in 1891, and Brush accepted the job as new physician-in-chief of the facility. He stayed there until his retirement from formal practice in 1920. Also during this time he resumed his academic work, and was a professor of psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Baltimore, from 1899 to 1915. He continued to serve on the editorial Board and as editor of The American Journal of Insanity, which became The American Journal of Psychiatry in 1921 when it was bought by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

Brush was active in psychiatric and mental health activities throughout his professional life. His editorial positions gave him a window on psychiatric activities in the country. He was influential among psychiatric and lay groups. He joined the American Neurological Association in 1890. He served as President of the Baltimore Medical Society in 1908, and the Medical Chirurgical Society of Maryland in 1904-1905. He was an honorary member of the Medico-Psychological Association of Great Britain and Ireland, an honorary member of the Société Royale de Médecine Mentale de Belgique, and was a Foreign Associate member of the Société Médico-Psychologique in Paris. He sat as President of the American Psychiatric Association from 1915 to 1916.

In 1908, Dr. Brush donated all of the bricks for the facade of the new building, according to an article in the Maryland Medical Journal, Volume 34, No. 5.

At the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1921, Dr. Brush, moved that Benjamin Rush's picture should become the emblem of the Association, which had just recently changed its name. The APA has maintained that same portrait of Rush since that time. 

In 1932, at the 40th meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, the annual dinner honored Brush on his 80th birthday. He was presented with a vellum scroll of appreciation for his 41 years on the editorial board The American Journal of Psychiatry, serving as Editor in Chief for 23 years. After his retirement from Sheppard-Pratt Hospital, Brush remained in Baltimore until his death from pneumonia in 1933.