[4] Elisha Dick studied with Benjamin Rush, and William Shippen,[5] and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1782.

[6] Dick sold his half of his father's legacy, Marcus Hook property for £985, to Isaac Dutton on April 29, 1783.

[7] Not long after their October 1793 marriage, Dick and his wife settled in Alexandria, where he took over the practice of the ailing William Rumney.

A portrait by him of George Washington, dating to around 1800 and possibly after an original by James Sharples, is owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association.

[9] When Samuell Arell died, Fairfax County voters elected Dick replaced him for the rest of his term in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1794, and he served alongside fellow Alexandrian and former attorney for President Washington Charles Lee,[10] since both also owned property in Fairfax County south of Alexandria (then in the District of Columbia).

Dick became Superintendent of yellow fever Quarantine at Alexandria, and corresponded with Governor James Wood, on October 10, 1798.

[11] He was appointed to the Republican Party Committee of Correspondence, in Virginia 1800, along with Roger West, Francis Peyton, Thompson Mason, and Walter Jones, Jr,[12] and he escorted Thomas Jefferson to an election celebration at Gadsby's Tavern, at March 1801.

[13][14] In 1804 Charles Lee was elected as mayor of Alexandria, then in the District of Columbia, but refused to serve, so Elisha C. Dick was selected instead.

Writing to Governor James Monroe, Dick called for: immediate legislative measures ... to restrain if not entirely suppress the schools supported by [antislavery advocates, who] are constantly inculcating natural equality among the blacks of every description[;] they are teaching them with great assiduity the only means by which they can at any time be enabled to concert and execute a plan of general insurrection.

With his Lodge as Escort of Honor, he accompanied General Washington, and assisted in laying the cornerstone of the National Capitol in 1793.

On December 12, 1799, George Washington spent several hours inspecting his farms on horseback, in snow and later hail and freezing rain.

The next morning, he awoke with a bad cold, fever, and a throat infection called quinsy that turned into acute laryngitis and pneumonia.

Discovering the case to be highly alarming, and foreseeing the fatal tendency of the disease, two consulting physicians were immediately sent for, Elisha Dick who arrived, at half after three, and Gustavus Richard Brown, at four o'clock in the afternoon: in the meantime were employed two pretty copious bleedings, a blister was applied to the part affected, two moderate doses of calomel were administered, which operated on the lower intestines, but all without any perceptible advantage, the respiration becoming still more difficult and distressing.

Upon the arrival of the first of the consulting physicians, it was agreed, as there were yet no signs of accumulation in the bronchial vessels of the lungs, to try the result of another bleeding, when about thirty-two ounces of blood were drawn, without the smallest apparent alleviation of the disease.

"[32]Gustavus Brown later wrote to James Craik, January 21, 1800: Sir: I have lately met Dr. Dick again in consultation and high opinion that I formed of him when we were in conference last month, concerning the situation Of our Illustrious friend, has been confirmed.

You remember how, by his clear reasoning and evident knowledge of the cause of certain symptoms after the examination of the General, he assured us that it was not really quinsy, which we supposed it to be, but a violent inflammation of the membranes of the throat, which it had almost closed, and which if not immediately arrested would result in his death.