Science Quote by Benjamin Rush

Scandal, Rush suggests, is less a monster to be slain than a fever that breaks on its own. The line lands with the cool confidence of a physician: don’t amputate what will heal; don’t panic and make the patient worse. As a scientist and doctor in an era when reputation could function like currency, Rush is warning that our frantic attempts to stamp out gossip often serve as fresh oxygen. The “we” matters: he’s not scolding some abstract public, he’s implicating the very people tempted to “manage” the story - friends rushing to defend, institutions issuing denials, moralists publicly prosecuting private behavior. The impulse to kill scandal becomes the method by which it stays alive.

The subtext is almost modern PR theory, delivered in 18th-century cadence. Scandal has a lifecycle; it thrives on attention, novelty, and a sense of pursuit. When you chase it, you authenticate it. When you litigate it in public, you extend it. Rush’s verb choice, “dies,” is the tell: scandal is natural, organic, even predictable. It isn’t defeated by force; it burns through fuel and then collapses.

Contextually, Rush lived through a new, noisy media ecosystem - partisan newspapers, pamphleteering, personal feuds dressed as public virtue. In that world, scandal was both entertainment and political weapon. His sentence is a manual for restraint: keep your hands off the contagion, let time and boredom do their work, and don’t confuse moral outrage with effective action.