Page 43 - Demo

David Ramsay (left) and Benjamin Rush (right), Fayssoux’s fellow physicians, were both crucial to his medical career and his revolutionary awakening.
with Fayssoux in Charleston. The two did not immediately hit it off—Ramsay admitted in a letter to Rush that he often referred to Fayssoux as “Dr. Fuss O.” Any coolness between them was short-lived and the two young doctors eventually became friends and brothers in arms.
As tensions increased between King George III and his colonies, Fayssoux readily sided with the patriots. When South Carolina raised regiments of provincial troops in 1775, the director of the South Carolina medical department, Dr. David Olyphant, named Fayssoux senior physician. In this role, Fayssoux soon found himself behind the palmetto logs of Fort Sullivan on June 28, 1776.
Commodore Sir Peter Parker’s Royal Navy squadron attempted to batter the little under-gunned and unfinished fort into submission, but Col. Moultrie’s provincial troops rose victorious after landing several strategic blows to British ships. Twenty- five Americans were wounded and five later succumbed to their wounds, raising the fort’s final death toll to seventeen. These were Fayssoux’s first wartime patients.
The South Carolina provincial regiments were brought under the Continental establishment in September 1776, and with them came Dr. Fayssoux. From then
35