The letters of John Adams and Benjamin Rush depict the friendship that grew between the two as the course of history brought change into their lives and forced them to change themselves.
Of particular interest are the dreams both Founding Fathers described in their letters and the evidence Sheila Zarrow has uncovered about how they considered the effects of their dreams.
Rush, in his seminal text on medicine, wrote that dreaming is “as much a native faculty as memory or imagination.”
Dreams have meaning well beyond the personal and the present. They have roots and tendrils that stretch throughout the unknown inner world of our psyches. While we sleep, they make connections between our lives and the lives of others throughout history, back through mythology, and out to the eternal.
Friendship and Healing explores one bright thread in the history of our country through the letters and dreams of two men who were there at its beginning.
