So what influence did Rush have on the independence movement and on medical culture?

It's difficult to overstate the impact that Rush had on the early independence movement.

He was a renowned genius with almost total recall, graduated from Princeton at the age of 14 before apprenticing to John Redman, arguably the most famous American physician in Philadelphia, and getting his medical degree at Edinburgh, and then walking the wards with the likes of William Hunter in London and John Pringle, the founder of military medicine, and then came back to be professor at what is now Penn Medical School, the only medical school at the time in the colonies.

And he rose in both medical and political circles in colonial Philadelphia.

In the early 1770s, he was actually quite young and junior compared to men like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who were about a decade older than Rush.

But Rush had this keen sense of personality and was able really to see into the individuals, into their lives, into their motivations and perspectives, and helped guide particularly the Boston delegation, who was very much in favor of independence at a time when the rest of the country had not yet come around to that idea, into how to negotiate the delicate political maneuvers to slowly move this country towards independence.

He later encouraged, in 1775, Thomas Paine to write Common Sense, actually suggesting the title, which was arguably the most influential tract that swayed many colonists to support independence.

And then what roles did the other four physician signers have in both US politics and the medical profession?