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 HISTORY or MCDICINI: 
 
 A BRIEF OUTI^INE OF 
 
 Medical History from the Earliest Historic Period 
 
 with an Extended Account of the Various 
 
 Sects of Physicians and New Schools 
 
 of Medicine in later Centuries 
 
 BY ALEXANDER WILDER, M. D. 
 
 1 Honorary member of the Authropological Society of Liverpool, (Eng.) 
 Vice-President of the American A kad^in^, late Professor of Philosophy 
 and Psychological Science, Member of the Medico-I,egal Society, Presi- 
 dent of the "School of Philosophy," Member of other Philosophic, Refor- 
 matory and Scientific Societies, Etc., Etc. 
 
 II There are one-story men, two-story men, and three-story 
 men. Fact-collectors are one-story men. Two-story men 
 reason about facts. Three-story men are those who are 
 described as inspired men " 
 
 —OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. M- D- 
 
 LATEST EDITION 
 
 AUGUSTA, MAINE 
 
 Maine Farmer Pubuishing Company 
 
 1904
 
 Copyright, 1809 
 BY S. ]'.. Mrxx
 
 FOREWORDS. 
 
 A history as a record of events should be faithful, 
 impartial and, so far as may be, unimpassioned. 
 There should be neither inordinate praise of individ- 
 uals, nor any unwarrantable degree of blame. The 
 writer is the servant of the reader, and discharges 
 the obligation by candid utterance and a tenacious 
 adherence to actual fact. It is no person's prerogative 
 to judge the motives of another, but the attention 
 belongs strictly to acts and their tendencies. Indeed, 
 it is generally, and perhaps always true, that if we 
 knew others well, we would find less occasion for 
 blaming them. 
 
 Such has been the sentiment of the compiler in 
 preparing this work. While his convictions are posi- 
 tive and without disguise in relation to specific acts 
 and measures when these were directed against per- 
 sonal rights and public welfare, he has been desirous 
 even to eagerness to conform to the law of charity 
 and to recognize whatever was worthy and laudable 
 in individuals. If he is in any just sense to be con- 
 sidered as partisan, it has been in respect to policies 
 and particular propositions, rather than toward the 
 persons bringing them forward, or supporting them. 
 
 It had never been a project contemplated by him 
 to undertake a work of this character. Though from 
 early manhood familiar with the Reform Schools of 
 Medicine and indoctrinated into their leading princi- 
 ples, he had always regarded other individuals whom 
 it would be easy to name, as fitter for the undertaking. 
 There had been propagandism, conflict and contro- 
 versies in which he had taken no part, and from which
 
 IV FOREWORDS. 
 
 he had carefully held aloof. Besides, it might have 
 been better that such a work had been performed 
 while the men were living who could have enriched it 
 with their remembrances of what they had witnessed, 
 and in which they had taken part. It would thus 
 have been completer, and more interesting to the 
 reader. But he was summoned to the undertaking 
 unexpectedly by an official request from the medical 
 organization to which he belonged. On the nineteenth 
 day of June, 1S90, at its annual meeting at Niagara 
 Falls, the following resolution was adopted : 
 
 " Resolved, That Dr. Alexander Wilder be and is hereby 
 requested to prepare a History of Medical Reform during the 
 earlier periods, under the authority and with the sanction of the 
 National Eclectic Medical Association." 
 
 The endeavor has been diligently made to comply 
 with the tenor of the instructions herein given. 
 There has been no labor spared nor proper expendi- 
 ture avoided in order to procure information. We 
 had no personal interest to subserve, nor selfish 
 motive to gratify, other than the rendering of faithful 
 service to a cause. The evolution of the American 
 School of Medicine required patient study and con- 
 templation, as well as careful narration of occurences. 
 It must be traced to its origins and identified in its 
 affiliations. Critical judgment was necessary to deter- 
 mine what to include as essential, and to sift out 
 what was superfluous. It was an obligation likewise, 
 that the men who gave the cause its inception, whose 
 efforts and sacrifices had effected its achievements and 
 successes, and prepared the field for those coming 
 after them to reap the harvest, should receive the 
 meed of honor which they richly deserve. "They 
 are swine," says the Turkish proverb, "who look not 
 up to him who beateth down the acorns.''
 
 FOREWORDS. "V 
 
 U may not be amiss to remark here that we foiin I 
 at the outset curious misapprehensions of the scope 
 and object of this work. Several correspondents 
 furnished descriptions of individual misconduct, and 
 others seemed to suppose that personal biographies 
 were to constitute the principal subject-matter. It 
 would certainly have been gratifying to give sketches 
 of individuals showing that they and their achieve- 
 ments were appreciated ; but this would be a stepping 
 aside from the general purpose of a history as outlined 
 in the resolution which has been quoted. As for the 
 reciting of individual wrong-doing, especially when 
 it was connected with matters having little connection 
 with the direct object, the impropriety is manifest. 
 A historian should have no personal griefs to display, 
 or injuries to punish. He may properly do no more 
 than is suggested m these words of Othello in the 
 tragedy : 
 
 " When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, 
 Speak of me as I am : nothing extenuate 
 Nor set down aught in malice." 
 
 It Was considered advisable to give an outline of 
 Medical History of earlier periods. We can not 
 possess an intelligent view of the Healing Art, beyond 
 the mercenary aims of the craftsman, except we have 
 a fair conception of its career and achievements in the 
 Past. Ignorance and want of appreciation in such 
 respects would be a barbarism. We would that no one 
 of those with whom we have been affiliated should 
 speak or write concerning those that have lived in 
 former periods after a manner that exhibits a lack of 
 accurate knowing ; and it will be gratifying if we 
 fihall have contributed somewhat toward the remedy- 
 ;.ng of the infirmity. I 
 
 It is sometimes objected that a new School of Mec*
 
 V. FOREWORDS. 
 
 icine is an unnecessary innovation, that it is the intro- 
 ducing of a sect or faction where there ought to be 
 harmony, and that it must necessarily be of ephem- 
 eral duration. Whether this judgment is correct the 
 reader and a candid public must decide. Men do not 
 put new wine into old wine-skins, lest it perish. The 
 history of medicine from Hippokrates and Galen till 
 the present time has been replete with innovations, 
 new teachers, new schools, new procedures. There 
 has been no one school, no single medical profession, 
 outside of the priesthoods, extending in an unbroken 
 chain from the indefinite Past to our own Twentieth 
 Century. New phases have manifested themselves as 
 regularly almost as those of the moon in the sky. We 
 may not be astonished at Paracelsus for burning the 
 writings of Galen as no longer suitable for the student 
 of the Healing Art. A distinguished physician of 
 Edinburg upon taking charge of the Library of the 
 University, commanded all books of reference that 
 were ten years old to be removed as obsolete. If any 
 would conjure with old names, like Galen, Rhasis, 
 Ibn Sina, or later ones that have been distinguished, 
 the fact is nevertheless unquestionable, that they have 
 had their time. We may profit by their counsel and 
 examples, but we can not be bound to employ their 
 formulas and procedures. 
 
 Even now, with all the boasted learning of our 
 Modern Time, the diversities of opinion in medical 
 circles are innumerable. There are sects and schools 
 of practice, even where there exists arbitrary author- 
 ity and sentiment to prevent organizing into distinct 
 forms. A one Catholic science of ^Medicine, of inerrant 
 ortnodoxy and faultlessly classified, cannot be intel- 
 ligently affirmed to exist. The medical vista is like a 
 kaleidoscope in which the several dominant opinions
 
 KoKE Words. vii 
 
 ai-pear conspicuous according as the instrument hap- 
 pens to be turned. " I have seen them," says the lace 
 President Jefferson, " the disciples of Hoffmann, Boer- 
 haave, Stahl, Cullen and Brown, succeed one another 
 like the shifting figures of a magic lantern; and their 
 fancies, like the dresses of the annual doll-babies 
 from Paris, becoming from their novelty, the vogue of 
 the day, and yielding to the next novelty, their 
 ephemeral favors." Sentiments that are often scouted 
 as vagary and of revolutionary character, have the 
 sanction of men standing high in the medical pro- 
 fession. Yet the conservatism of established bodies 
 of men is so great as to induce resistance, even to 
 ferocious violence, to changes deserving of a welcome. 
 New views are generally first denounced as false, 
 afterward derided as of little importance, and event- 
 ually accepted with the assertion that they had 
 always been the property of the profession. The 
 first promulgators, however, are seldom included in 
 such favorable reception. 
 
 Yet it must be acknowledged that the professional 
 instruction which has been systematically imparted 
 in the various institutions of medical learning has 
 not satisfied the prevalent unrest in public sentiment. 
 Able practitioners have often commented upon its 
 insufficiency. One physician whom we knew coun- 
 selled his student to attend the medical college where 
 the degree would be easiest to obtain ; declaring that 
 this was perfunctory, and that the real professional 
 knowledge would remain to be acquired afterward. 
 Sir Thomas Watson was more outspoken, averring- 
 that the physician must begin by unlearning what he 
 had learned in the laboratory. With such convictions 
 i the part of teachers themselves, it may be exp-iJi,".ea 
 ;.nat intelligent persons will look beyond for a knowi-
 
 Vlll FOREWORDS. 
 
 edge that is genuine and trustworthy. The state- 
 ment of a medical journal may not surprise us that at 
 the present time there are twice as many students 
 taking lessons in mind-cure and kindred theories, 
 than are to be found in all the medical colleges. We 
 do not care to join in aspersing them as visionaries, 
 when accepted religious authority appears to sustain 
 them, and especially when eminent members of the 
 medical profession give sanction to their assumptions. 
 Hufeland says unreservedly : " There is a region of 
 the man that is never sick ; and to call out the reign 
 of that region makes the sick man well." 
 
 Mr. Jefferson, looking into the future, himself fore- 
 shadowed a new Practice of Medicine which should 
 come into existence in our Western Hemisphere. "I 
 hope and believe," said he, "that it is from this side 
 of the Atlantic that Europe, which has taught so many 
 other things, will be led into sound principles in 
 this branch of Science, the most important of all, 
 being that to which we commit the care of health 
 and life." 
 
 It was necessary likewise, that political independ- 
 ence should be accompanied by medical as well as 
 religious enfranchisement. Enlightenment comes 
 with freedom, and Benjamin Rush, himself a signer 
 of the Declaration of Independence, insisted that the 
 provisions of that instrument should be extended to 
 the medical calling. He declared his hostility without 
 equivocation, to an exclusive and privileged body of 
 practitioners, and affirmed without any mental reser- 
 vation that physicians, in order to be successful must 
 emancipate themselves from the tyranny of the exist- 
 ing Schools of Medicine. Sir John Forbes, physician 
 to the late Prince Consort specified the direction r^ 
 the coming movement, "In the present state of our
 
 FOREWORDS. IX 
 
 knowledg^e," says he, " the Hygienic — Eclectic — 
 Hippocratic — Rational System of curing diseases is 
 the only one that can be justified or safely followed." 
 
 The new movement of which the present American 
 Eclectic School of Medicine is the outcome, it will 
 be seen, was called into existence by the exigency. 
 Its aim was to realize the wants of the times and to 
 employ intelligently the means for satisfying them. 
 It encountered much opposition like preceding 
 attempts at reformation in different spheres of 
 activity. There was a conflict as is related, which 
 lasted for years, and there were gained by it the 
 constitutional rights to which the citizens are con- 
 sidered to be entitled. Yet there remain further 
 advances to be made that are of vital importance. 
 Equal opportunity and impartial justice are uncon- 
 ditional where real freedom exists. There has existed 
 a purpose to smother the Eclectic School by strict 
 silence in relation to its practitioners, and by a 
 studied ignoring of its existence. Even the compilers 
 of the Encyclopaedias, with one honorable exception, 
 have pandered to this object, by excluding any full or 
 even just account of the School, its essential doctrines 
 and literature. These things indicate what is essen- 
 tial to its future career. A foothold should be gained 
 in the open arena among the scientists and master 
 spirits of the time. The principles upon which it 
 was founded, should be tenaciously and strenuously 
 maintained, while a generous hospitality should be 
 extended to every new thought or discovery that may 
 serve to extend our knowledge or to be of actual 
 utility. 
 
 Only great and worthy things have any permanent 
 and absolute existence. A School of Medicine will 
 •exist as long as it really deserves to exist. In Medi-
 
 X FOREWORDS. 
 
 cine as in the higher ethics he only is great who 
 serves : the greatest among us all is the servant of 
 all. As physicians we are not craftsmen and me- 
 chanicals following a calling for the mere pecuniary 
 emolument, nor are we a combination of medical 
 practitioners with personal ends to advance at the 
 hazard of every pledge to the public and of honest 
 principle. It was a criticism of Francis Bacon that 
 "Medicine was a science more professed than labored, 
 and yet more labored than advanced — the labor 
 having been more in a circle than in progression." 
 
 It devolves upon us to redeem it from that imputa- 
 tation. Every man is a debtor to his profession, and 
 may redeem the obligation by adding to its acquire- 
 ments, and by exalting its character and reputation. 
 
 It is in the province of every one, it is accordant 
 with the genius of Eclecticism in Medicine, and it 
 has been repeatedly avowed and pledged, to make 
 every effort to carry forward the medical art to 
 greater acciiracy and perfection. The taint of 
 selfishness enfeebles noble exertion, and dishonors 
 every motive. It causes the individual to lag behind, 
 whenever he aims only or chiefly to secure personal 
 profit. Nor is it innocent to place obstructions in 
 the way of others. Our course is obvious: to cherish 
 an invincible faith in the good and the true, to seek 
 for knowledge as the most precious of treasures, to 
 maintain our purpose resolutely and persistently. 
 
 In this way can be established the right to the 
 front rank in the profession of healing, as well as to 
 realize the highest ideal of the physician, a priest of 
 Nature and interpreter of her holiest Mysteries. 
 
 ALEXANDER WILDER. 
 
 Newark, N. J., September 19, 1900.
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 Grateful acknowledgment is rendered to the per- 
 sons who have, by courtesy and good offices, given 
 assistance in the preparing of this work. Some supplied 
 books and periodicals abounding with valuable facts, 
 and others took additional pains in preparing state- 
 ments. Among them may be enumerated, Messrs. 
 Law and Boyd, of New York, Doctors James Anton, 
 John R. Borland, Harvey E. Bowles, John C. Butcher, 
 Marshall Calkins, Joseph R. Duncan, William M. 
 Durham, Robert A. Gunn, Wm. Collins Hatch, William 
 Hargreaves, Wmi. H. Hawley, Henry Hollembaek, 
 William Jones, John King, Richard E. Kunze, William 
 S. Latta, John Uri Lloyd, Noah R. Martin, Albert 
 Merrell, C. Edwin Miles, S. B. Munn, William Paine, 
 Henry B. Piper, George E. Potter, John vS. Prettyman, 
 John W. Pruitt, John K. Scudder, John Simmons, 
 Thomas Simmons, Herbert T. Webster, J. Milton 
 Welch, A. B. Whitney, A. B. Woodward. Their kind 
 services did much to lighten a task which was 
 truly formidable, and will always be remembered 
 accordingly.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. Archaic Medicine Pages 1-45. 
 
 The Human Healer — Knowledge of the Healing Art a 
 Measure of Civilization — History of the Art as Old as the 
 History of the Human Race— No "Father of Medicine"— 
 The Serpent the Characteristic Symbol — Medical Learning in 
 Egypt — Temple-Universities — Priest-Physicians— Procedures 
 — Surgical Skill— Mr. Sayce's Statement — Specialties — Egyp- 
 tian Physicians in Persia, Babylon and Assyria — The God of 
 Healing — University-Towns — Assyrian Pharmacy — India and 
 Persia — Divine Patrons of the Healing Art — The Vendidad 
 Gives Directions to Beginners — The Yajur- Veda— Indian 
 Physicians Always of the Brahman Caste — Sushruta — Char- 
 aka — Indian Materia Medica — Restrictions of Illegal Practi- 
 tioners — Result — China and Outer Asia — Kathay or Kuita — 
 King Ching-Nun — China in Later Years — Taii Sect — Medical 
 Skill and Freedom— Skythic Autochthones — Their Notions — 
 Shamanism -Prehistoric Greece — Media — Mokh — Agamede 
 — Apollo the Physician of the Gods — Kheiron the Kentaur — 
 Asklepios or ^sculapius — The Asklepiads. 
 
 CHAPTER II. Medicine in Ancient Historic Periods. 46-106. 
 When the Historic Period Began — Superior Knowledge of 
 the Phoenicians — ^sculapius, his Temples and Symbols — The 
 Asklepia or Hospitals — Revolution in Religion and Medicine — 
 Demokedes — CuringaCancer- Eminent Teachers of Medicine 
 — Empedokles— Akron — Anaxagoras— Demokritos — Medical 
 Practice at Athens — Dispensaries and Public Physicians — 
 Plato's Criticism — Slave-doctors — Hippokrates — Dogmatic or 
 Philosophic School — His Doctrines —Ktesias — Aristotle — 
 Theophrastos — Praxagoras — Chrysippos — Erasistratos and 
 the New Methods— General Change of Sentiment — The Alex- 
 andrian School — The Parties of Erasistratos and Herophilos — 
 Zeuxis the Philalethes — The Empiric School -Philinos — Per- 
 gamos, its School and Library — Hebrew Medicine — Essenes 
 — Buddhistic India — Chandragupta — Asoka — His Hospitals
 
 XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 — Physicians in Ancient Rome— Embassy to Epidauros for 
 its Serpent — Archagathos — Cato the Censor — The Methodists 
 — Asklepiades — Laier Methodists — Julius Caesar — Octavianus 
 — Celsus — Pneumaticists or SpirituaHsts — Athenaeos — The 
 Eclectics — Agathinos — Aretaeos — Medicine in Rome Under 
 the Empire — Military Hospitals — The Public Dispensaries — 
 Low Grade of Roman Physicians — Crinas — Thessalos — Dios- 
 korides — Galen-- His Career and Doctrines — Last Years of 
 Ancient Medicine — Decadence of Learning — Nestorians — 
 Their Schools — Actios - Alexander of Tralles — Paul of ^giua 
 — Fall of Alexandria and Oblivion of Learning. 
 
 CHAPTER HL Medicine in the Middle Ages 107-16L 
 
 When Modern History Began — Healing Art a Function of 
 Religion — Its Exercise Permitted and Forbidden — Rise of 
 Islam — Persian Schools — Arabian Learning — The Khalifs — 
 Al Mamun — Medical Authors — Yahia — Honein — Geber the 
 Alchemist — Razes — Ali the Magus— Avicenna — Learning 
 Promoted in the Moslem Countries — Abulkasim — Avenzoar 
 — Philosophic Physicians in Spain — Ibn Tophail— Ibn-Badja 
 — Averroes and Maimonides — Revulsion of Feeling Toward 
 Scholars and Dark Ages — Tribute to Arabian Medicine — 
 Arnold of Villa Nova — Pedro Juliani — Bernard de Gordon — 
 Valesco de Taranta — Chauliac — Healing Art of Earlier Chris- 
 tendom — The Royal Touch — Relics for the Cure of Small- Pox 
 — Religious Revolutions and General Disorder — Gerbert or 
 Sylvester II. — Hildebrand or Gregory VII. — Medicine Made a 
 Distinct Vocation — Medical School at Salerno— Emperor 
 Frederick II. — Universities Founded — University of Paris — 
 Evolution of the Theatre — The University and the Clergy — 
 The College of Surgeons at Paris — Famous Italian Teachers 
 — Anatomy First Taught by Dissections — Mondino — The 
 Other Departments — Low State of Surgical Skill — The 
 Renaissance — Greek Scholars in Italy — Lorenzo di Medici — 
 The Vatican Library Founded — Massilio Ficino and His 
 Circle — Establishes Neo-Platonic Akademy in Florence. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. Medicine IN Renascence 162-192 
 
 Learning Denominated Magic — Medical Literature Discarded 
 — Death-Penalty Inflicted on Learned Men — Restoration of 
 the Hippokratic Dogma — "Solidism" — Botal — Mercurialis — 
 "Gymnastics of the Ancients" — "Medical Art Among the
 
 CONTENTS. XV 
 
 Egyptians"— The "New Learning " in England— Henry Vlf I- 
 — Thomas Lynaker — Authority to License Physicians Vesved 
 in College of Physicians— " Doctor Caius" — The Sweating 
 Disease — Berenger de Carpi. 
 
 Paracelsus — A Reformer and Apostle of Modern Medicine 
 — Denouncing Poisoning by Mercury and Bleeding of Patients 
 — Teaching in the Vernacular — A Pioneer of Direct or 
 Specific Medication— First to Treat Medicine as a Philosophy 
 — His Peculiar Views of Astronomy, Alchemy, and Medical 
 Practice — Magnetism — Doctrine of Signatures. 
 
 Faust — Anatomy in Renascence — Sylvius — Vesalius — He is 
 Denounced to the Inquisition — Eustachi — Columbo and Fal- 
 lopi — Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood— Miguel 
 Serveto— Andrea Cesalpino — Harvey — Ambroise Pare — 
 General Condition of the Surgical Art— Chaumette— William 
 Clowes — Innovations in Medicine and Science — The Chemi- 
 atric School — Clinical Instruction— Giordano Bruno. 
 
 CHAPTER V. Medicine in the 17th Century 193-220. 
 
 Advance in Inquiry and Adventure — Thousands Emigrate to 
 the New World— Scientific Advancement— Johann Keppler— 
 A Philosopher and Enthusiast — His Books Placed on the 
 Index— Galileo — His Career— Van Helmont — Profound In- 
 vestigator into Causes — His Peculiar Doctrines. 
 
 The Rosicrucians— Christian Rosenkreutz— The Fraternity 
 —The Temple — "Lingua Magica" and "Lingua Angelorum" 
 —Robert Fludd— Thomas Vaughan— " Chaos "—Sympathetic 
 Powder — Harvey and His Discovery — Jean Riolan — Italians 
 Claim Merit for Cesalpino — Microscopic Anatomy — Malpighi 
 — Vivisection — Further Discovery — Leeuwenhoek — Meibo- 
 mius — Peyer — Men First Employed as Midwives — Chamber- 
 lain — Drelincourt — De Graaf. 
 
 Neurology — Duverney — V ieussens — Willis — Surgeons — 
 Transfusion of Blood — Richard Wiseman — The Trephine— 
 Flap-Amputations. 
 
 Later Schools of Medicine — Borelli — Bellini— German 
 Eclectics — The Chemiatric School— Francis de la Boe— The 
 "Humoral Pathology" — Thomas Willis — Sydenham— He is 
 Stigmatised as a Sectary — Advocates use of Peruvian Bark- 
 Marks Epoch of Medical Progress — Despises Medical Book 
 Learning and Complex Prescriptions — His Monument.
 
 XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. Medicine in the 18th Century... 221-278 B. 
 Materialism Pitted Against Supersensualism — John Radcliffe 
 — Richard Mead — Advocacy of " Mathemathical Learning" 
 — Boerhaave — Styled " an Eclectic" and a " Modern Galen" 
 — Van Swieten — Haller — Epigenesis and Metamorphosis — 
 Stahl and Hoffman — Theory of Animism — Barthez — Hoffman, 
 a Disciple of Leibnitz — Morgagni — His Great Work— Patho- 
 logic Anatomy. 
 
 The Edinburgh School — Pitcairn - A Champion of the 
 Scientific or Empiric Method — Alexander Monroe — William 
 Cullen — His Theories— The Vis Medicatrix Naturae — The 
 Gregories — The Brunonian System — John Brown — His 
 Theory of Sthenic and Asthenic Disease — His Disciples — 
 Broussais — Blood-Letting a Conspicuous Feature. 
 
 Erasmus Darwin — His " Zoonomia or Index of Organic 
 Life " — Swedenborg — The First Suggestion of a Rational 
 Pathology — Rise of Modern Surgery — Surgeons Formerly 
 Barbers — Medico-Chirurgic College of Berlin — Heister — 
 Haller Teaches Surgery at (jottingen — Petit and the Academic 
 de Chirurgie at Paris — Ecole Pratique de Chirurgie Founded 
 at Paris — Royal College of Surgeons Established at Edinburgh 
 — Barbers and Surgeons Distinguished Under Henry VIII. — 
 William Hunter — Receives Degree on Reputation — Medical 
 Commentaries — Establishes Museum of Pathologic Anatomy, 
 Etc. — Lectures at Newport, Rhode Island — Returns to 
 England. 
 
 John Hunter — A Philosopher as Well as a Scientist — 
 Disgusted with Oxford — Teaches Anatomy and Operative 
 Surgery — Lays Foundation of Modern Practice — Regarded 
 Surgical Operations as Acknowledgment of Imperfect Skill 
 in Art of Healing — His Labors not Appreciated — Manu- 
 scripts Destroyed — Exalted Surgery from a Craft to a Pro- 
 fession — His Views of Biology — The Epigastric Region 
 Identified as the Seat of Affections. 
 
 Jenner and Vaccination — Small-Pox Following the Plague 
 and Asiatic Cholera — Becoming Periodical — Lady Mary 
 Wortley Montagu Persuades the Introduction of Inoculation 
 — Failure as a Preventive — Jesty Vaccinates his Children — 
 Jenner Adopts the Theory of Vaccination — H. Woodvillo 
 Follows — Compulsory Vaccination Now Practiced — Nowhere 
 Popular — Arbitrary Power at Expense of Virtue.
 
 CONTENTS. XVll 
 
 Mesmer and Mesmerism — " Magic Sleep " in Ancient Tem- 
 ples — Gassner — "Animal Magnetism" — Royal Commission 
 at Paris in 1784 — Its Unsatisfactory Report — The New 
 Science Not Adopted. 
 
 Hahnemann and Homoeopathy — Doctrine of Similars Sug- 
 gested by Hippokrates and Others — Proposed by Paracelsus 
 — History of Hahnemann — His Experimentation — His Theory 
 of Disease — New Pharmacy — Persecution. 
 
 Evolution of Modern Chemistry — De la Boe — Robert Boyle 
 — He Believed in the Transmutation of Metals — Becher and 
 Stahl — Their Four Primal Elements, Water, Acid, Earth and 
 Phlogiston — Sir Isaac Newton — Joseph Black — Priestley — His 
 Unpopular Beliefs — His Manifold Literary Attainments — 
 Rejected as a Scientist to Accompany Banks and Captain 
 Cook — Discovers Oxygen — House and Manuscripts Burned 
 by a Mob — Emigrates to Pennsylvania — Cavendish the. 
 " Father of Pneumatic Chemistry " — His Discovery that 
 Water is a Compound Generally Discredited — Accepts the 
 Theory of Phlogiston — Lavoisier — Discredits Phlogiston — 
 Develops a New Terminology and System of Classification — 
 Burned in Effigy — Beheaded — Closing of the Eighteenth 
 Century — Columbus and James Cook — New Impulsion to the 
 Sciences— Changes in the Medical Art — Mear — Stahl — Haller 
 — Bichat — Morgagni — Fothergill — Abenbruzzer — Cullen — 
 Brown — Van Swieten — Culpepper — Botanic Gardens — Botany 
 Taught in Private Schools— The French Revolution the Crisis 
 of the Century. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. Former Years oe the 19th Century.. 279-;ri2. 
 Influence of the French Revolution — Sweeping Utterances 
 of Dr. Benjamin Rush and Others — Mcdern Empiric or Posi- 
 tive Medicine in France— Broussais — Corvisart — Laennec — 
 Bayle — Louis — Trousseau — English Physicians — Marshall 
 Hall — John Hughes Bennett — Remarks of Bennett on Mer- 
 cury, Antimony and Arsenic — Positive Medicine in Ger- 
 many — Rokitansky — Schonlein . 
 
 Researches in Physiology — Bichat — Solly— Grant — Ander- 
 son — Franz Joseph Gall — Spurzheim and George Combe — 
 Phrenology— Other Disciples — Herbert Spencer — Sir Charles 
 Bell— Marshall Hall — Embryology— Wolff— Virchow— Cell- 
 Theory — J. Hughes Bennett and the Molecular Theory — 
 Surgery and Surgical Pathology — Artificial Anaesthesia,
 
 XVIU CONTENTS. 
 
 Gynaecology — Recamier — J. Hughes Bennett— Velpeau — 
 J . Marion Sims and His New Procedures— Women's Hospital 
 in NewYork — Extirpation of the Ovaries — Ephraim McDowell 
 — Walter Burnham — Operators in England — Hysterectomy. 
 "Natural Bone-Setters" — Sweet Family — Treatment of 
 the Insane — Pinel — Tuke— Homoeopathy and its Progress — 
 Medical Schools — Hahnemann and the Organon — Hahne- 
 mann and Later Homoeopathists — Attenuations — Further 
 Refinements of Homoeopathic Doctrine — J. J. Garth Wilkin- 
 son — School of Specific Medicine — Dr. Rau — His Doctrine — 
 Medico-Botanical Society in London — Union of Liberal 
 Physicians Proposed — Sir John Forbes — Queen Victoria and 
 the Royal Family — Hempel and Specific Homoeopathy — 
 Dissenting Views of Homoeopathists — Dr. Wyld — Honig- 
 berger and the " Medium System " — Burial and Resuscita- 
 tion of the Fakir at Lahore. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. The 19th Century Continued 353-401. 
 
 Rademacher the German Eclectic — His Views — The Chrono- 
 Thermal System — Samuel Dickson — Dosimeteric Medica- 
 tion — Dr. Burggrave — The Biochemic System — Dr. Schuess- 
 ler and the "Tissue Remedies" — Hydro-Therapeutics or 
 "Water Cure" — Priessnitz — The Swedish Movement Cure 
 — Chromo-Therapy or Light Cure — General Pleasonton — 
 Seth Pancoast — E. D. Babbitt — Metaphysical Medicine, 
 "Christian Science" — Phineas Parkhurst Quimby — W. F. 
 Evans — Mrs. Eddy — Microbiogenesis and the Germ Theory — 
 Pasteur — Paracelsus and Elemental Spirits — Helmholtz — 
 Bastian — Maudesley — Therapeutic Sarcognomy — Dr. Joseph 
 Rodes Buchanan — Medicine in the Outer World — India — 
 Burma — China — Japan — Korea — The Couvade. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. Evolution of the American Prac- 
 tice OK Medicine 402-447. 
 
 New Impulse — The Healing Art in the Colonial Period — 
 Nicholas Culpepper — Dr. Sleigt — Desire to Resuscitate Blood- 
 Letting — John Wesley's Criticism — Thomas Jefferson — The 
 Early Botanic Practice — Remedies Learned from the Indians — 
 Botanic Physicians Becoming a Distinct Class — Early Teach- 
 ers of Medical Botany — Rafinesque — His Merits Recognized 
 by Agassiz — His Work on " Medical Flora of North America "
 
 CONTENTS. XIX 
 
 — Precursive Work of Medical Reform — Rafinesque's Theory 
 of Pharmacy — Rafinesque and Wooster Beach — Sketch of 
 Dr. Beach — His Success with Asiatic Cholera in 1832 — "The 
 American Practice of Medicine " — Elisha Smith — Instinct of 
 Liberty Suppressed or Blunted by War — Legislation Against 
 Reform Physicians — New York Association of Botanic Physi- 
 c.ans — Medical College. 
 
 CHAPTER X. The Great Conflict for Medical 
 
 Freedom 448-511. 
 
 Samuel Thomson — His New Procedures — Medicinal Plants 
 Enumerated — Professor Waterhouse of Harvard— Testimony 
 of E. M. Hale— Thomson Indicted for Wilful Murder— The 
 Thomson Patents — Visit to Doctors Rush and Barton — 
 "Friendly Botanic Societies" — Women Accepted as Practi- 
 tioners — Prescriptive Medical Legislation — A Medical Church 
 Virtually Created — The Last Straw and the Result — Thom- 
 sonian Physicians Outlawed — Medical Societies Organized. 
 
 John Thomson — Taking the Lead for Repeal of Statutes — 
 Law of 1830 — Efforts in Other States — Conflict Renewed in 
 New York — Forms of Law Used to Destroy the Substance of 
 Liberty — John Thomson Fined for Visiting a Patient — Ala- 
 bama and her Watchword — Convention of Medical Protest- 
 ants — Tables Turned Again in New York — Penalties Re- 
 pealed — Thanks to Assemblyman Haskell — Organization of 
 Medical Societies in Western New York — The First National 
 Association — Worthington and its College — John Cook Ben- 
 nett and His Charters in Indiana — Thomsonian National Asso- 
 ciation — Infirmaries. 
 
 Dr. Benjamin Thompson in Boston and Concord — Division 
 of the Thomsonian School — The " Independent Thomsonian 
 Society" — Morris Mattson — Marshpee Indians and Thomson- 
 ism — The United States Thomsonian Society— Legal Re- 
 strictions on Medicine Repealed — Dr. Geo. McClellan Ap- 
 proves the Thomsonian Medicines — The Victory in Maine — 
 Georgia and the Reformers — How Connecticut Reformers 
 Obtained Their Rights — Medical Conflict and Medical Big- 
 otry in New York — Horatio Seymour an Advocate of Free- 
 dom of Medical Practice — Proposed New Political Party 
 Against Medical Monopoly — Horace Greeley a Zealous Sup- 
 porter of Medical Freedom — The Great Petition Presented 
 in the Legislature — The Law of Enfranchisement passed in
 
 XX CONTENTS. 
 
 1844— The Only Medical Legislation Ever Asked by the 
 People of the State — Rejoicing in Ohio — Speech of Thomas 
 V. Morrow — Medical Liberty Now Opening the Way for 
 More Thorough Study and Investigation. 
 
 CHAPTER XL Medical Colleges and Organizations, 512-571. 
 Medical Colleges Generally Defective in Instruction and 
 Discipline — Reformed Medical Academy — Worthington Medi- 
 cal College — Botanic Medical Colleges — Proposed College in 
 Maine — Attempt to Establish a Botanic College in New 
 York — College Contemplated in New England in 1841 The 
 Botanico-Medical Institute of Ohio — American Medical Insti- 
 tute — The Physiopathic College of Ohio — The Physio-Medical 
 Institute — The Southern Botanico-Medical College — South- 
 ern Botanico-Medical Society — Reform Medical College of 
 Georgia — The College of American Medicine and Surgery — 
 The Georgia College of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery — 
 Partisan Jealousy Outlived — The Botanico-Medical College 
 of Memphis — Dr. Michael Gabbett— " The Southwestern 
 Medical Reformer " — Alabama Medical Institute — Other 
 Botanico-Medical Colleges. 
 
 Early Eclectic Organizations — Pennsylvania Associate Medi- 
 cal Society of Botanic Physicians — John B. Howell — Thomas 
 Cooke — He Declares that "we are Eclectics" — The Eclectic 
 Botanic Medical Association of Pennsylvania — Proposed 
 National Institution for Instruction in Reformed Medical 
 Practice — Overture Rejected — The Reformed Medical School 
 of Cincinnati — The Eclectic Medical Institute Incorporated — 
 Testimonial to Colonel Kilbourne — Dr. Morrow's Address — 
 Efforts to Advance the Cause — Eclecticism in Medicine De- 
 fined — The American Medical Association Organized on Pur- 
 pose to Procure Restrictive Legislation — Its Code of Ethics 
 — The Scientific and Eclectic Medical Institute of Virginia 
 Incorporated — John Thomas. 
 
 Calvin Newton — The Medical School at Worcester — Its 
 Union with the Southern Botanico-Medical College — Attempt 
 of Dr. Alva Curtis to Establish a Rival College at Boston— 
 The Botanico-Medical Society of Connecticut Incorporated 
 with Power to Establish a School for Instruction — The Wor- 
 cester Medical Institution Incorporated — It is Sustained by 
 the Medical Societies — The Name " Physio-Medical " Adopted 
 in Place of " Thomsonian " — Controversery in the Worcester
 
 CONTENTS. XXI 
 
 Medical Institution — Medical School Opened in New York — 
 Softening of Sentiment Toward Eclectic Practitioners — New 
 Platform Adopted at Baltimore — Metropolitan Medical Col- 
 lege Incorporated — Proposed Union with the Worcester Insti- 
 tution — Failure — Charter of College Repealed — First Medical 
 College for Women — Female Medical Education Society — 
 New England Female Medical College — Merged into 
 Boston University School of Medicine — Women's Medical 
 College of Pennsylvania — Its Graduates Not Recognized in 
 Professional Circles. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. Medical Colleges and Organizations. 
 
 Continued 572-597. 
 
 First Reformed Medical Societies — The American Medical 
 Association Formed to Undo Legislation — Call for Conven- 
 tion of Reformed Practitioners — The National Eclectic Medi- 
 cal Association Organized in 184S — Its Protest Against Medi- 
 cal Enactments — Death of Dr. Morrow — Eclectic Medical 
 Schools in New York — General Law for Incorporation of 
 Benevolent, Charitable, etc., and Scientific Societies — The 
 Eclectic Medical Institute of New York — Medical School at 
 Randolph, N.Y. — Central Medical College — Women Admitted 
 — Removed to Rochester — The Syracuse Medical College — 
 Union of the Two Colleges. 
 
 Societies in New York and Brooklyn — New York Eclectic 
 Medical Society — American Medical Association in the City 
 — Eclectic Medical Society of Brooklyn — New York Medical 
 and Pathological Society— Proposed " National College of 
 Physicians and Surgeons" — The "Reform" Movement — 
 Convention in New York and Adoption of the New Name — 
 Platform Adopted at Baltimore — It is Accepted by the 
 National Eclectic Medical Association — Southern Reform 
 Medical Association — Dr. Jerome Cochrane Assails the Plat- 
 form — A " National " Reform Association Deemed Imprac- 
 ticable — The Civil War Extinguishes Rivalships. 
 
 Middle States Reformed Medical Association — The Eclec- 
 tic Medical College of Pennsylvania Incorporated — Dissen- 
 sions — The American College of Medicine — Death of Dr. 
 Thomas Cooke — Dr. William Paine in Philadelphia — The 
 American Eclectic Medical Association of Philadelphia — The 
 Penn Medical College — Dr. Joseph Longshore.
 
 XXU CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. Medical Colleges and Controversies, 59S-654. 
 The Memphis Institute — Dr. William Byrd Powell — Troubles 
 at Cincinnati — The " American Reform Medical Institute '" — 
 Free Lectures at the Eclectic Medical Institute — The American 
 Medical College of Ohio — National Eclectic Medical Asso- 
 ciation at Pittsburg in 1851 — Dr. J. R. Buchanan Recom- 
 mends its Abandonment — Meeting at Rochester — Platform 
 Adopted — Meeting at Philadelphia — President Newton Sub- 
 mits Plan of Organization as a Representative Body — Ad- 
 dress on Medical Education and Action Taken — Fifth Annual 
 Meeting at Worcester — Eulogy of Dr. Newton by Dr. 
 Reuben — Sixth Annual Meeting in New York— Dr. Beach 
 Elected President — Baltimore Platform of " Reform " Medi- 
 cine Adopted — Resolution in Favor of Receiving Women as 
 Students in Medical Colleges — Seventh Annual Meeting in 
 New York — Platform of 1849 Adopted — Renewal of Objec- 
 tionable Legislation Foreshadowed — Eighth Annual Meeting 
 at Cincinnati— Lack of Esprit de Corps. 
 
 Worcester Medical Institution, Continued — Attempt to Co- 
 operate with the Syracuse Medical College — Removal to Bos- 
 ton — Proposed Union with the Metropolitan Medical College 
 — Lectures Suspended — Trouble at the Eclectic Medical Insti- 
 tute — Opposition to the National Association — Divisions — 
 Two Boards and Classes — The Eclectic College of Medicine 
 Established — Final Adjustment of the Controversy. 
 
 Colleges at Philadelphia — Jefferson Medical College — 
 Medical Department of the Pennsylvania Medical College, 
 Incorporated -Franklin Medical College — Dr. McClintock 
 Obtains a Charter for the Philadelphia College of Medicine 
 — Medical Intolerance in Philadelphia — Dr. McClintock 
 Becomes a Professor in the Eclectic Medical College — A 
 Rupture — The " Eclectic Medical College of Philadelphia" — 
 Resolution of the New York Eclectic Medical Society 
 Adverse to the Latter College — General Suspension of the 
 Reform Colleges — "American University of Philadelphia ' 
 Incorporated — Eclectic Medical Society of New York Re- 
 fusing to Recognize Diplomas from the Eclectic Medical 
 College of Pennsylvania — Dr. Paine Effects a Union of 
 Several Medical Colleges — Philadelphia University of Medi- 
 cine and Surgery — Dr. Paine Lays Aside the Name of 
 * Eclectic."
 
 CONTENTS. XXIU 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. Important Events in the Eclectic 
 
 School 655-724. 
 
 Rafinesque's Definition of Eclectic Physicians — The New 
 Pharmacy — Dr. Isaac Jacobs— B. Keith and "Concentrated 
 Remedies" — William S. Merrell, the Father of American 
 Eclectic Pharmacy — Discovery of Resins and Resinoids — 
 " Essential' Tinctures " — Proposed National Eclectic Phar- 
 macopoeia. 
 
 Eclectic Medical Institute, its Changes — Adverse Action 
 of Examining Boards in the Civil War — Insufficiency of 
 Army Surgeons — Dr. William A. Hammond Becomes Sur- 
 geon-General — Medical Partisanship Overruled — Famous 
 Order Against Mercury and Antimony — Excitement in Con- 
 sequence — Dr. Hammond Dismissed and Order Revoked. 
 
 Eclectic Medical Organizations Starting Anew — A Society 
 in Canada West — Eclectic Medical College of the City of 
 New York — Bennett College of Eclectic Medicine — Dr. 
 Scudder and Specific Medication — The Medical Conflict Re- 
 newed — Statute in North Carolina — Dr. John Buchanan 
 Declares in Favor of Medical Enactments — Eclectics Crushed 
 in Canada — Homoeopathic Department in the University of 
 Michigan — American Medical Association Asks that No More 
 Charters be Granted to Medical Colleges Except by its 
 Approval. 
 
 Demand of Eclectic Medical Societies for a National Asso- 
 ciation — Rival Movement at Philadelphia — Call of Societies 
 and Colleges for a Convention at Chicago — The National 
 Eclectic Medical Association Organized Anew — Committee 
 to Prepare a Pharmacopoeia— First Annual Meeting in New 
 York — The Second at Indianapolis — The Third in Columbus, 
 Ohio— The Fourth in Boston— The Fifth in Springfield, 
 Illinois— The Sixth at Washington, D. C— The Seventh at 
 Pittsburg — New Constitution Adopted, Making it a Repre- 
 sentative Body — Eighth Annual Meeting at Detroit — Ninth 
 at Cleveland, Ohio — Important Resolutions — Tenth Annual 
 Meeting at Chicago — Eleventh at St. Louis — Important 
 Decision in Regard to Medical Colleges — Appleton's Cyclo- 
 pcedia and its Misstatements — Twelfth Annual Meeting at 
 New Haven — Thirteenth at Topeka, Kansas — Merrell's 
 Medical Digest and Pharviacopa^ia Approved — Fourteenth 
 Annual Meeting at Cincinnati — Dr. John King's Address on
 
 Xxiv CONTENTS. 
 
 Medical Legislation — Fifteenth Annual Meeting at Altoona 
 — The Sixteenth at Atlanta, Georgia — The Seventeenth at 
 Waukesha — The Eighteenth at Detroit — Standing Committee 
 on Medical Legislation Authorized — It Recommends Vigi- 
 lance Committees in the Several States — Nineteenth Annual 
 Meeting at Nashville, Tennessee — Pennsylvania Resolutions 
 — Twentieth Annual Meeting at Niagara Falls — Dr. Wilder 
 Requested to Prepare a History of Medical Reform in the 
 Early Period — Twenty-First Annual Meeting at Hot Springs, 
 Arkansas — Protests of State Eclectic Medical Societies 
 Against the Creating of a Medical Cabinet Officer — Committee 
 Appointed in Relation to an Eclectic Medical Department at 
 the Columbian Exposition — Twenty-Second Annual Meeting 
 at St. Louis — Vote to Take Part in the World's Congress at 
 Chicago — Twenty-Third Annual Meeting at Chicago in 
 1S93 — The World's Eclectic Medical Congress Auxiliary — 
 Address of the Hon. C. C. Bonney — Classification of Business 
 — Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting at Niagara Falls — Asso- 
 ciation of Eclectic Medical Colleges Formed — Twenty-Fifth 
 Annual Meeting at Waukesha — Resolution Concerning 
 Medical Examining Boards Defeated — Twenty-Sixth Annual 
 Meeting at Portland, Oregon — Twenty-Seventh at Lake 
 Minnetonka — Twenty-Eighth at Omaha — Twenty-Ninth at 
 Detroit — Thirtieth at Atlantic City, New Jersey. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. Eclectic Medical Colleges and Med- 
 ical Societies * 725-762. 
 
 The Attempt at National Organization in Philadelphia — 
 The Organization Formed at Cleveland in 1879 — Its Meeting 
 at St. Louis — Eclectic Societies in Existence — The New Eng- 
 land Eclectic Medical Association — The Eclectic Medical 
 Colleges — The American Medical College at St. Louis — The 
 American Medical University— The St. Louis Medical Col- 
 lege — The United States Medical College— The Court of 
 Appeals of New York Decides a Medical College Neither 
 Scientific nor Literary but Simply Eleemosynary— The Cali- 
 fornia Medical College— The Georgia Eclectic Medical College 
 —Its Experience with the National Eclectic Medical Associa- 
 tion—The Reform Medical College at Macon— The Georgia 
 College of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery — The Indiana 
 Eclectic Medical College— The Beach Medical College— The
 
 CONTENTS. XXV 
 
 Indiana College of Medicine and Midwifery — The "American 
 Medical College of Indianapolis" — "The Indiana College of 
 Eclectic Physicians and Surgeons" — The Iowa Eclectic Med- 
 ical College — The King Medical College — Troubles in the 
 Iowa Eclectic Medical Association — The Iowa Eclectic 
 Medical College Recognized and Again Discarded — Eclectic 
 Departments in the University of Nebraska — The Lincoln 
 Medical College of Cotner University — Michigan Eclectic 
 Medical College — The Eclectic Medical College of Maine — 
 Attempt to Wrest the Charter from the Holders — The 
 "Druidic University" — The University of Florida — Proposed 
 Medical College at Topeka — The Eclectic Medical College of 
 New Jersey — The Colleges at Cincinnati — The Physio-Med- 
 ical College Merges into the American Medical College of 
 Cincinnati — The Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania 
 Disowned — Futile Legislation to Repeal the Charter — Act of 
 Legislature to Repeal the Charter of the Philadelphia Uni- 
 versity Set Aside — The Two Institutions Go Out of Existence 
 — The Proposed Burton Medical College — Proposed College in 
 Connecticut — The Wisconsin Eclectic Medical College — The 
 Eclectic Medical College Association Formed — Its Powers. 
 
 New Auxiliary Societies — The Eclectic Medical Association 
 ol Kansas — It Gains Entire Power of Licensing Physicians — 
 J. H. Bundy — The Eclectic Medical Society of California 
 Formed — Attempts to Procure Legislation— The Michigan 
 Eclectic Medical and Surgical Society — The Eclectic Move- 
 ment in Missouri — The Missouri Eclectic Medical Association 
 — The Eclectic Medical Society of Missouri — Action of the 
 National Eclectic Medical Association — The Eclectic Medical 
 Association of Nebraska — The Eclectic Medical Society of 
 New Jersey— The Eclectic Medical Practice in Western 
 Pennsylvania — District Societies — The Eclectic Medical Asso- 
 ciation of Pennsylvania Organized — The Georgia Eclectic 
 Medical Association — The Union of the Medical Colleges 
 of the State — Dr. Bankston Approves — Confl cts in Alabama. 
 —Dr. Jerome Cochrane a State Health Officer and Bitter Foe 
 — The Eclectic Medical Association of Alabama— Statute 
 Modified— Court Decides that Violation is not a Criminal 
 Offense — Two Eclectic Medical Associations in Arkansas — 
 Their Union— State Board of Medical Examiners— " The 
 Southwestern Medical Journal" — Th ? Eclectic Medical Asso-
 
 XXVI CONTENTS. 
 
 elation of Texas — Eclectic Medicine in Tennessee — Attempt 
 in the General Assembly to Suppress Eclectics and Homceo 
 pathists by Statute — The Tennessee Eclectic Medical Society 
 — The Eclectic Medical Association of Kentucky — The West 
 Kentucky Eclectic Medical Society — Organizations in West 
 Virginia — The Oregon Eclectic Medical Society — The Eclec- 
 tic Medical Association of the State of Washington — The 
 Eclectic Medical Association of Colorado — The Eclectic 
 Medical Society of Utah — The Eclectic Medical Society of 
 South Dakota — The Eclectic Medical Society of the City of 
 Washington — Regions Without Eclectic Organizations — 
 Proposed Societies Embracing Several States — The New 
 England Eclectic Medical Association — General Survey of 
 the Field. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. Botanic and Eclectic Medicine in En- 
 gland 762-835. 
 
 Nicholas Culpepper, the Propounder of Herbal Medication — 
 The English Physician — Astrology Taught as Medical Knowl- 
 edge — Culpepper's Works — Dr. Woodward — "The State of 
 Physics and of Diseases " — Botanic Gardens — Dr. Thornton 
 — Dr. John B. Howell — The Medico-Botanical Society in 
 London — Queen Victoria and Sir James Clark — A. J. Coffin — 
 A Pioneer — Dr. John Skelton — His Treatise — Dr. Beach in 
 England — Dr. Thomas Simmons— Beach's Work Republished 
 in England — British Medical Reform Association Organized 
 — "The Eclectic Medical Board" — "The New Era of Eclecti- 
 cism" — Proposed Eclectic Medical College in London — Dr. 
 Hitchman Withdraws — The National Association of Medical 
 Herbalists— Dr. Joseph R. Hughes at the World's Congress 
 Auxiliary. 
 
 Eclectic Medicine in the British Possessions — Dr. John 
 Broadbent in Australia — "The Botanic Practitioner" — Med- 
 ical Class in India. 
 
 Proscription of Herbal and Eclectic Physicians — De- 
 nounced by Scientists — Thomas H. Huxley — Francis W. 
 Newman — Mr. Gladstone — Parliamentary Legislation Inqui- 
 sitional — The New Remedies Popular. 
 
 Medical Legislation in England and America. 
 
 Petition of Physicians to King Henry V. — Burning Heretics 
 Alive — Wretched Condition of the English People — Mr)nks
 
 CONTENTS. XXVii 
 
 and Priests the Legal Physicians — Bishops Authorized to 
 Grant Licenses — Henry VIIL — Medical Art Made a Secular 
 Pursuit — Lynaker a Priest — College of Physicians Made the 
 Licensing Power — The Boycott. 
 
 Medical Legislation in North American Colonies — Medical 
 Statutes Repealed — Plans for their Reenacting — The Amer- 
 ican Medical Association — Herbert Spencer on Loss of the 
 Instinct of Liberty. 
 
 Proposition Regarding New Medical Colleges — Efforts to 
 Procure Partisan Statutes — Sentiment in the Homoeopathic 
 School — The Eclectic School. 
 
 Synopsis of Medical Statutes. 
 Alabama — Arizona — Arkansas— California — Three Boards 
 of Medical Examiners — Colorado — Electropathists — Connecti- 
 cut — Three Boards — Private Charters not Affected by Statutes 
 — Massagists, Mind-Cure Practitioners and Others Exempt 
 — Delaware — Two State Boards — District of Columbia — Three 
 Boards of Examiners— Florida— Georgia — Three Boards of 
 Examiners — Idaho— Illinois — The State Board of Health a 
 Licensing Board — Indiana — Indian Territory — Iowa — Kansas 
 
 Kentucky — Louisiana — Three State Boards of Examiners 
 
 Maine — Clairvoyants, Etc. , Exempt — Maryland — Two State 
 Boards of Examiners — Massachusetts — Clairvoyants, Etc. 
 Exempted — Michigan— Physio-Medical School Represented 
 — Osteopathy Recognized as Legitimate — Minnesota — "Any 
 Other Agency " Included under the Requirements — Missis- 
 sippi — Medicines Exempted — Missouri — The State Board of 
 Health Predominant— Osteopathic College— Decision of Su- 
 preme Court on the " Good Standing " — Montana — Agencies 
 
 " Material or Immaterial " Included by Statute — Nebraska 
 
 State Board of Health the Licensing Authority — "Otherwise" 
 
 Treating the Sick Included— Nevada — New Hampshire 
 
 Dentists to be Licensed — New Jersey — Faith-Cure Mind- 
 Cure, Etc., Included by Requirements— New Mexico New 
 
 York— Three Boards of Examiners— North Carolina— North 
 Dakota — Dentists Exempted — Ohio — "Other Agency" In- 
 cluded — Dentistry Excepted — Oklahoma — Oregon — Any 
 " Agency " Included— Dentists Excepted— Pennsylvania— 
 Three State Boards of Medical Examiners — Dentists, Sales 
 of Medicines and Manufacturers of Artificial Eyes, Etc. 
 Exempted— Rhode Island— Midwives Excepted — South Caro-
 
 XXviii CONTENTS. 
 
 Una — South Dakota — Tennessee — Itinerant Venders of Drugs, 
 and Other Healers to be Punished— Texas— District Boards 
 of Examiners — Vermont — Virginia — Washington — Any 
 "Agency" Included — Dentists Exempted — West Virginia 
 — The State Board of Health a Licensmg Body — Midwives 
 Exempted — Wisconsin — Midwives and Veterinary Physicians 
 Exempted — Wyoming. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. Publications of the American Reformers 
 
 IN Medicine 836-871. 
 
 Every Great Reform Owes its Success to its Literature — 
 Every Faith Established by its Books — The Future Depends 
 on the Character and Sufficiency of Our Literature — Sir 
 Francis Bacon's Criticism — Thomas Jefferson's Predictions — 
 Pioneers and Teachers of the Nineteenth Century Not Re- 
 miss — As a Rule Disseminate Only Their Own Observations 
 and Opinions — The Lloyd Library — Its Collection an Impor- 
 tant and Necessary Work — Invaluable to the Future Student 
 of Our Medical History — Catalogue of Periodicals on Reform 
 Medicine in the Lloyd Collection — Books and Pamphlets of 
 the Medical Reformers in the Lloyd Library — Periodicals 
 and Books of the Reformers Not Included in the Foregoing 
 Lists — Periodicals by Eclectic Physicians — Periodicals, 
 Books and Pamphlets by Thomsonian, Botanic and Herbal 
 Physicans, Collectively Forming the Most Complete Cata- 
 logue of the Literature on Liberal Medicine Ever Com- 
 piled. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. Later Developments in Surgery and 
 
 Medicine 872-886. 
 
 Predictions of Sir James Y. Simpson — Surgical Art More 
 Conservative Than of Yore — Advancement in Brain Surgery 
 — Thoracic and Abdominal Surgery — Success Rather Than 
 Brilliancy Demanded in Surgical Operations — Highest Ideal 
 of Surgery — Dentistry. Surgical and Mechanical — Dental Sur- 
 gery formerly Practiced by^ Barbers — Dentistry Among the 
 Ancients — At One Time a Part of the Physician's Calling — 
 Art of Replacing Lost Teeth ot Great Antiquity — Artificial 
 Dentures Found in the Mouths of Mummied Human Beings 
 — Julius Caesar and Mark Antony Said to Have Worn Arti- 
 ficial Teeth — Ivory Employed for Making Teeth — Missing 
 Teeth Supplied from Other Mouths — First Dentist in Amer-
 
 CONTENTS. XXIX 
 
 ica — Dr. Joseph Le Maine — Isaac Greenwood — His Son Con- 
 structs a Full Set of Teeth for General Washington — Early- 
 Decay of Teeth Attributed to Medication with Mercury — 
 Fame of American Dentists Unrivaled — Dental Licensing 
 Boards. 
 
 Unrecognized Forms of Therapy — Several Have Claims to 
 Popular Favor — The Physio-Medicalists — National Physio- 
 Medical Association — Hygienic Colleges — American Col- 
 lege of Osteopathy'' — Dr. Andrew V. Still — His Theory of 
 Disease and Method of Cure — EndoTherapy — " Drugless 
 Science " — The American Association of Physicians and Sur- 
 geons — Concluding Remarks.
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 
 
 Carlyle has said : " The profession of the human 
 healer is radically a sacred one, and connected with 
 the higher priesthood ; or rather, is itself the outcome 
 and acme of all priesthoods, and divinest conquests of 
 the human intellect here below — as will appear one 
 day." 
 
 We may not wonder, then, that the earlier Faiths of 
 the world which ascribed the origin of mankind to 
 Divinity, also associated the technique of medicine 
 with the offices of religious worship. They named 
 gods as the first physicians; these famous hero-chief- 
 tains, gifted men who were instinct with enthusiastic 
 fervor, the Rephaim and giant-minds among the tribes 
 and peoples of the earth. The temples were often 
 hospitals to which the sick resorted for counsel and 
 healing medicines, believing that the means of cure 
 had been revealed there by the guardian divinity of 
 the shrine. The priests were regarded as physicians 
 for disorders of the body ; prophets and diviners were 
 consulted for those who suffered from disease, and the 
 wisdom of the philosophers included the knowledge of
 
 2 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 treating physical maladies. Even in later periods, 
 every supposed advance in spiritual ken has been 
 accompanied by the persuasion of superior acumen in 
 regard to the ailments of the body. Pythagoras, 
 Aristotle, Athenaeos, the early Christian teachers, the 
 mystics of later centuries, down to our own times, not 
 only gave instructions to their disciples in arcane, 
 metaphysical and other learning, but also treated the 
 sick and ministered to their bodily injuries. 
 
 Indeed, we may regard it as an axiom, that the 
 knowledge which is anywhere possessed of the art of 
 healing, is the measure of the refinement and civiliza- 
 tion to which the people have attained. Man is civil- 
 ized by virtue of social relations ; and refinement is the 
 becoming divested from grossness, vulgarity, and the 
 evil manners which are characteristic and incident to 
 a living for one's self alone. Selfishness is savagery ; 
 and a state of society in which self-interest is the rul- 
 ing element is hardly yet reclaimed from the state of 
 barbarism. It is of little avail to appeal to skill in 
 mechanics, engineering, and other attainments in the 
 plane of material evolution. These are not adequate 
 proof of spiritual advancement. Kindly sentiment 
 toward others, sincere regard for their welfare, charity 
 in will and act, make the only real culture and civiliza- 
 tion. The art and technique of healing proceed from 
 these qualities, and cannot flourish apart from them. 
 
 It is the province of intelligence, as distinguished 
 from scientific knowledge and artistic skill, to investi- 
 gate causes and origins. Our thought is thus set free 
 from the narrow limits between the cradle and the 
 grave. We become broader, wiser, purer and better 
 for having learned of what has been. There is like- 
 wise a firmer basis for faith and ambition in regard to
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE, 3 
 
 the future, a more accurate knowing ; and the indi- 
 vidual is thereby liberalized, refined and ennobled. 
 By such eating of the Tree of Knowledge, the eyes 
 become open, and the man is as a god. He makes 
 "the divinest conquest of the human intellect." 
 
 The History of the Healing Art is as old as the his- 
 tory of the human race. The amber of antiquity has 
 not preserved the name or any monument of the bene- 
 factor who first ventured upon the attempt to relieve 
 the maladies of his fellow-beings. To know so much 
 would be equivalent to knowing the origins of civiliza- 
 tion, when perhaps they were only germs of which the 
 future could not be readily foreshadowed. What is 
 regarded as learning, erudition, or wisdom, is a treas- 
 ure which others have won and possessed before us. 
 Every great thought has had a precursor, every great 
 man a predecessor. " What has been is what again 
 will be," says the Hebrew sage ; " what has been done 
 is the same as what will be done ; there is nothing new 
 under the sun." We have no Father of Medicine, no 
 Founder of the Healing Art, except in eponym. 
 
 Indeed, upon all questions involving this matter, 
 men of learning in modern times are widely divided. 
 One school inculcates the hypothesis that the human 
 race from the first was capable, by virtue of direct en- 
 dowment from Divinity, of all manner of intellectual 
 and artistic achievement ; another party maintains 
 the contrary sentiment, that all culture has been a 
 matter of slow and gradual development — man having 
 an origin in a low and bestial condition, and begin- 
 ning as in the case of each individual, with a long 
 infancy, childhood and adolescence, which for untold 
 periods gave little promise of the eventful maturing 
 of a being " a little less than gods, crowned with glory
 
 4 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 and honor, and having dominion over all created 
 things." We have no occasion to give an opinion in 
 the matter. So far as we know, the world has never 
 been wholly civilized or wholly savage, but every 
 region in its turn has enjoyed a higher cultivation, 
 preceded and often followed by a period of barbarism. 
 There is good reason, therefore, for the supposition 
 that such cycles of alternate savagery and civilization 
 will continue till the earth shall become unfit, if such 
 a crisis can ever arise, for the sustaining of human 
 inhabitants. The germs of such changes are found 
 in every country and social condition. 
 
 Every country having a literature of ancient periods 
 of its history possesses some account of a healing art. 
 Egypt, India and China, perhaps the most venerable 
 for antiquity, each had a caste of physicians included 
 in the sacerdotal order. The Skythic peoples, likewise, 
 who probably were older than these, abounded with 
 traditions of an ancient lore which embraced the art of 
 divining, the treating of disease, and religious worship. 
 We have no alternative, therefore, except to take such 
 relics and statements as remains, leaving the question 
 of origin with other problems of archaic time. 
 
 By a significant unanimity, the serpent upon the 
 staff has been generally accepted as the S)"mbol of 
 the medical art. Egyptians, Greeks, Germans, South 
 American Indians and North Americans, employed it 
 alike. The asp on the crown of Queen Isis, the Fire- 
 Serpent on the sign-post of Assyrian physicians, the 
 rattlesnake hieroglyphic of Mexico and Brazil, and the 
 ophidian upon the Magic Staff of Apollo, -^sculapius 
 and Hippokrates, all meant the same thing. The ser- 
 pent was the signifier of the occult life principle, and 
 of that knowledge of it which rendered the possessor
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 5 
 
 as a divine or preternaturally endowed being. Even 
 the brazen seraph coiled upon a pole or staff and set 
 up by Moses in the wilderness, we are told, possessed 
 such power, that anyone abovit to die, when he beheld 
 it, recovered from his extreme peril. 
 
 While the serpent was thus arcanely symbolic, the 
 staff was also part of the ancient physician's arma- 
 mentarium. The direction of the Israelitish prophet- 
 abbot to his servant was a meaning one: "Take my 
 staff in thine hand and go thy way ; if thou meet any 
 man, salute him not, and if any salute thee, answer 
 him not again ; and lay my staff upon the face of the 
 child." (A7«^^ II. or IV., iv., 29.) Klearkhos relates the 
 account of a mantis, who, in the presence of Aristotle, 
 by the means of a wand, produced a cataleptic condi- 
 tion, and afterward restored the patient to normal 
 consciousness. Examples are abundant of similar no- 
 tions ; the sceptre of the king was believed to possess 
 magic virtue ; the baton of the magistrate, the rod of 
 the prophet, and the barsom or thyrsus of the divinity, 
 pertain alike to the same category. A physician with- 
 out his staff would have been regarded in ancient time 
 like his fellow, the enchanter, without his wand. The 
 fatness of the symbol of health or " sign of salvation," 
 is therefore abundantly shown. The serpent upon the 
 rod as significative of healing virtue, very justly has 
 been accepted by the medical profession of both hemi- 
 spheres. The story of the book of Genesis was by no 
 means out of place when it described the animal as 
 ministrant at the Tree in the Garden. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 According to Pliny the origin of Medicine as an art 
 and pursuit, was Egyptian. Others, however, have pro-
 
 6 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 fessed to trace it to Arabia, crediting it, after the myth- 
 ologic form of personification, to Arabos, the son of Bel 
 and Babylonia. This was a figurative way of declaring 
 the Chaldaeans the inventors of the Art of Healing. 
 So long, however, as the relative antiquity of the sev- 
 eral countries has not been conclusively determined, 
 we have no occasion to give preference to any of them. 
 The preiiminence of the physicians of Egypt justifies 
 us in noticing them first. That there was a literature 
 in the archaic land of Ham is unequivocal. The " old- 
 est scripture," the Papyrus Prisse, was written upon the 
 erased pages of an earlier work. We are told that 
 before Mena or Menes, who indeed seems to have been 
 a military and probably a foreign conqueror, the gods 
 ruled in Egypt. In other words, the sheiks or priestly 
 heads of the tribes and families were supreme. At 
 that early time there had begun a Bardic period ; and 
 proverbs, legends and songs were common in all the 
 country of the Nile, Whether the reputed founder of 
 the first Monarchy was an actual person is by no means 
 certain. His name is the same as that of the Sacred 
 Bull at the city of On, and he is recorded as having 
 been slain by a crocodile or hippopotamus — the Ty- 
 phon or Satan of Egypt. He was succeeded, it is said, 
 by his son Athoth, or Atuti, who is described as a cul- 
 tured monarch. " Men have books written by him on 
 Anatomy," says Manetho ; " for he was a physician." 
 In the Third Dynasty was a king named Ser, or Tosor- 
 thros, whom Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson considers as the 
 same personage. He was also called Emeph, or Imho- 
 tep, the Egyptian ^sculapius, Manetho declares, " be- 
 cause of his medical knowledge ;" adding, " he was the 
 first who built with hewn stone, and he was also a great 
 patron of learning." All these arts had been exercised
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 7 
 
 under his predecessors, but probably his age was 
 marked by their higher development. Foreign ele- 
 ments were now infused into the national character ; 
 a new religion, a new public policy, and a new litera- 
 ture introduced. 
 
 The pantheon was remodelled, and the divinities 
 known in the later Egypt were now worshipped. Isis, 
 the Great Mother and Madonna, was the goddess of the 
 secret shrine, and bore the Semitic name of Hakhamoth 
 or Wisdom, as being the tutelar genius of the Superior 
 Knowledge and patroness of the art of healing. Ptah, 
 the oldest divinity known in Egypt, was the personi- 
 fied setherial fire that imparts life to everything. 
 Serapis in the later centuries was also a god of life and 
 healing, and the famous Museum at Alexandria was 
 his sanctuary. On the walls of the ruined temples of 
 Amen at Thebes were basso-relievos displaying surgi- 
 cal operations and instruments not very unlike some 
 in use in modern times. 
 
 The god Thoth or Hermes, (the " very great one ") 
 was the tutelary of all sacred and sacerdotal learning. 
 Six of the " Books " inscribed to him were devoted to 
 medicine and surgery, and contained some hundred 
 and fifty prescriptions and modes of treatment. One 
 chapter of eight pages was devoted to the optic nerve 
 and diseases of the eyes, which are still very common 
 in Egypt. The various treatises were set forth as 
 special revelations from the divinity, and the prescrip- 
 tions are accompanied by sentences and invocations 
 for the physician to repeat while making up the medi- 
 cine, and when about to administer it to the patient. 
 The remedies are given for the various external and 
 internal diseases of the body, and the numbers regard- 
 ing the weights and measures are prescribed for each
 
 8 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 drug. While the favor of the god was duly invoked, 
 the learned writers were careful to guard against any- 
 evil result from reckless or improper dosing. 
 
 During the reign of Kheops or Sufi, who likewise 
 was a patron of learning, there was found in a sacred 
 niche of the goddess Mut, a formula for the treatment 
 of wounds. It was perceived in the moonlight by a 
 ministrant of the shrine and brought to the king as a 
 precious discovery. In another papyrus now preserved 
 in the Museum at Berlin is a recipe for the use of the 
 drug uchedu. It had been found at Letopolis in the 
 reign of the king Hesep or Husapati (Joseph) of the 
 First Dynasty, and brought after his death to king 
 Senada of the dynasty next succeeding. 
 
 In course of time experience taught them the use 
 of many new remedies, and we learn from some of the 
 mummies found in the necropolis of Thebes that they 
 had the art of plugging teeth with gold. " The boun- 
 teous land produces very many drugs," says Homer ; 
 ''many of them are excellent when combined, and 
 many are deadly ; and each physician possesses knowl- 
 edge above all men, for indeed, they are of the race of 
 Paieon." They were carefully instructed. The servile 
 and subject classes were regarded as earth-born and 
 inferior, but the youth of superior rank were consid- 
 ered as of diviner mould. The temples were schools 
 of learning in which they were taught in the various 
 branches of knowledge. At On and Memphis were 
 universities surpassing all the others. 
 
 After the expulsion of the Shepherds the monarchs 
 of the New Empire restored the temples to their former 
 importance. Upon the establishment of the Nine- 
 teenth D3'nasty, Seti, the conqueror, resolved to estab- 
 lish an Akadrmeia at Thebes which should equal the
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 9 
 
 priestly seminaries of Lower Egypt, The new sanc- 
 tuary of learning was placed in the Necropolis, on the 
 western side of the River Nile. Such a site was re- 
 garded as perfectly suitable for the schools and dwell- 
 ings of religious teachers, and instructors in science. 
 The cheerful theosophy of the Egyptians allowed no 
 gloomy conceptions to cast a shadow over life in the 
 city of the dead. The " House of Seti " was the larg- 
 est of all the sanctuaries except the one which the great 
 Thothmes had built ; and in it were celebrated both 
 the services for the dead of the royal household, and 
 the arcane and initiatory rites of the gods of the mys- 
 terious West. Great sums were expended for its estab- 
 lishment, for the maintenance of its priests and inmates, 
 and for the support of the several institutions which 
 it comprised. One of these was a department for 
 instruction. Here priests, physicians, astronomers 
 and students in other branches of learning were taught 
 by professors excelling in ervidition ; and when they 
 had attained their senior degree they were admitted to 
 the dignity of "scribes of the temple," or hierogramvia- 
 tcis and entitled henceforth to maintenance from the 
 royal treasury. They were thus enabled to prosecute 
 their studies and researches free of care, and with 
 every necessary facility. There was also an extensive 
 library to which they had free access ; and a paper 
 factory connected with the temple furnished the papy- 
 rus necessary for adding to the immense collection. 
 Every thing that would afford encouragement to learn- 
 ing seems to have been abundantly supplied. 
 
 The sons of the other classes were by no means ex- 
 cluded from participation in these advantages. They 
 might obtain admission to the schools of learning, and 
 were even permitted to enter the sacerdotal body.
 
 lO HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The physicians of Egypt belonged to the sacerdotal 
 order, to the class denomina.ted j>as/i/>/ic>ri, or carriers of 
 the sacred shrine and emblems. Their canons required 
 them to follow prescribed courses of treatment, but 
 they were permitted, under certain regulations, to 
 adopt different methods and remedies, taking the re- 
 sponsibility for consequences. Deriving their support 
 from the lands of the priests, and payments from the 
 royal treasury, they received no fee or honorarium 
 from patients. Whatever payment was made in ac- 
 knowledgment or recompense for their services, be- 
 longed to the temple with which they were connected. 
 They were obliged to attend the poor, and to go on 
 foreign journeys as well as military service, without 
 remuneration. Every temple had its staff of medical 
 practitioners, and whoever required the services of 
 a physician sent thither for him, with a statement of 
 the complaint from which the sick man was suffering. 
 The principal of the medical staff selected the one 
 whom he supposed to be best suited for the case. 
 
 Superior as the knowledge of these priest-physicians 
 was regarded, and arbitrary as was the kingly authority 
 of those times, there is no evidence that any restriction 
 was placed upon practitioners who had not conformed 
 to the prescribed regulations. Indeed, the imposing of 
 such disability and curtailing of the rights and liberties 
 of others, is always indubitable evidence of a low 
 moral and social condition. Knowledge is iDOwer,as we 
 have all been assured, and the person possessing it is 
 therefore better equipped than others for the conflicts 
 and experiences of life. A prohibition to compete in a 
 profession for its honors and emoluments, on the jDre- 
 text of inferior instruction, or the employment of the 
 boycott to crush an honornble rival, is equivalent to
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. II 
 
 the taking for granted that knowledge produces mental 
 and moral feebleness — or rather, it is a confession that 
 that for which protection is sought is something else 
 than knowledge. There can hardly be any profound 
 conviction of right in the matter. 
 
 Hence, although in ancient Egypt the physicians of 
 the privileged class were carefully instructed, and pro- 
 vision was made for the bestowing of their services 
 iipon the poor as well as the rich, there was little im- 
 pediment to the employing of other practitioners. In- 
 deed, empirics and pretenders were as common as in 
 more modern times; clairvoyants and "mediums" 
 practiced as such ; charms and amulets were employed, 
 and pieces of papyrus have been found with written 
 sentences upon them, which had been used for magic 
 purposes. The belief has been current in all ages that 
 hieroglyphics, runes, astronomic, and even alphabetic 
 characters possessed an occult virtue and might be em- 
 ployed with benefit for bodily ills. 
 
 Without doubt the prophets of the temples them- 
 selves cherished faith in certain modes of obtaining 
 superior knowledge, which in modern times would 
 hardly be acceptable. Like the rest of humankind 
 they believed in there being actual communication 
 with Divinity, and that most salutary physical results 
 might thereby be obtained. Sculptures upon the walls 
 of the temples indicate them to have been familiar 
 with the practice phenomena of Animal Magnetism, 
 particularly with the sacred hypnotism. The hand, and 
 especially the forefinger or index medicus, are common 
 in symbolic representation, and imply that they were 
 employed to impart healing virtue. The words of the 
 Syrian general, Naaman, show the generality of the 
 practice among prophet-physicians. "Behold," says
 
 12 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 he, " I said to myself, ' He will surely come out to me, 
 and stand, and call upon the name of his God, and 
 extend his hand over the place, and heal the plague.' " 
 
 Indeed, the term surgery or kheirourgike signifies 
 manipulation, and appears to have been originally em- 
 ployed in that sense. Yet the Egyptian physicians 
 were not without skill in surgical operations. They 
 inserted artificial teeth and plugged cavities, operated 
 successfully for cataract, performed lithotomy both by 
 the suprapubic and the perinatal operations, and made 
 examinations of the bodies of the dead in order to as- 
 certain their maladies. That they were experts in the 
 art of bandaging, is plainly shown by the mummies, 
 and they had some skill with fractures, though this 
 has been doubted. The Hebrew prophet exhibits their 
 method : " Son of man, I have broken the arm of the 
 King of Egypt ; and lo, it shall not be bound up to be 
 healed, to put a roller to bind it, to make it strong to 
 hold the sword." {Ezekiel, xxx., 21.) 
 
 Their extraordinary practice of mummification gave 
 them a very familiar knowledge of anatomy, at least 
 of the internal organism of the human body. Their 
 religious belief, in which their tenacity exceeded that 
 of other nations, led them to this custom. The body 
 of the deceased person was regarded as a form or sym- 
 bol of the god Asar or Osiris, and accordingly it was 
 handled only by priests, the Pastiphori, The account 
 given of the embalming of the Hebrew patriarch, Jacob, 
 by "physicians" or Rephaim, who were "servants" of 
 Joseph, seems in some particulars, not quite to agree 
 with the practice. In the process the abdomen was 
 opened on a line made by a scribe, and its contents 
 carefully removed to be preserved by themselves. 
 The skull was also emptied. The body was then
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 13 
 
 placed in natron for forty days to remove the adipose 
 and putrescent matter ; after which it was swathed in 
 linen bandages and deposited in the sarcophagus. 
 Spicery, precious gums and other articles, costing hun- 
 dreds and even thousands of dollars, were employed 
 for the bodies of the rich and noble ; but natron, com- 
 mon salt and the process of smoking sufficed for 
 corpses of the poor. Papyrus-scrolls were placed in 
 the coffin, and often in addition, amulets, the favorite 
 ornaments, and even playthings. The funeral rites 
 were similar to these at the processions of the mur- 
 dered divinity, Osiris. The body was ferried by a 
 kharun or boatman across the Nile to the amenti or 
 western bank, borne to the temple for the last oi^ces, 
 bewailed for forty days and then deposited in its re- 
 ceptacle. The mourners were professionals, consist- 
 ing chiefly of the almas or maids of the temple, and 
 " boys " that had been set apart to the service of the 
 divinities.* 
 
 Indeed the Egyptian medical knowledge has been 
 both underrated and overrated. The methods em- 
 ployed were the result of long observation, and were 
 often derived from the experience of individuals not 
 belonging to the medical caste In the periods of a 
 waning civilization, it is a common practice to plagi- 
 arize from those whom it is desired to keep out of 
 sight, to contradict them silently, and to assume a 
 scientific knowledge which is not actually possessed. 
 The medical men of the Theban Empire seem to have 
 
 ♦Compare Ecclesiastes^ xii. 5.—" For the man is departing to his house of 
 eternity, and the mourners are going in the streets." 
 
 Also, Gospel according to Mattheiv, xi., 16, 17, (amended version). " h is lilse 
 the boys sitting in the assembly and calling to their al ernates, saying: ' AN'o played 
 the flutes for you and you did not dance; we chanted the dirge and you did not 
 beat your breasts.' "
 
 14 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 done this abundantly, and at the same time to have 
 established a code for practitioners which might not 
 be disregarded. With it, of course, progress in knowl- 
 edge was arrested, till the Shepherd-rulers swept out 
 the rubbish, and enabled the savants of the later period 
 to adopt a broader system of procedure. Mr. Sayce 
 insists that the famous Ebers manuscript, which is 
 dated from the earliest reigns, has no greater antiquity 
 than this. Medicine at this period, he declares, was 
 in almost as advanced a stage as in the age of Galen ; 
 the various diseases were carefully distinguished from 
 one another, and their symptoms were minutely de- 
 scribed as well as their treatment. The prescriptions 
 recommended in each case were made out in precisely 
 the same way as those of a modern doctor. One was 
 derived from a fashionable oculist of Byblos in Phoe- 
 nicia, but the greater part belonged to earlier Egyptian 
 medical men of the first dynasties. They were of 
 mineral as well as vegetable composition, consisting 
 of draughts, blisters, powders and clysters. " Medicine 
 is practiced among them upon a plan of specialties," 
 Herodotus declares ; "each physician treats a single 
 disorder, and no more. Thus the whole country swarms 
 with medical practitioners; some undertaking to cure 
 diseases of the eye, others of the head, others again, 
 of the teeth, others of the intestines, and some those 
 complaints which are not local." It was a maxim with 
 the last of these: " If but a small portion of the body 
 suffers, the whole body is ill." 
 
 The skill and learning of the physicians of Egypt 
 made them famous in the neighboring countries. The 
 prince of Bakhtan (Bashan) sent an embassy to Rama- 
 ses XII. for medical aid for his queen's sister. A royal 
 scribe, " intelligent in his heart and skillful with his
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 15 
 
 fingers," was sent, but to no good purpose. Some 
 years later a second envoy came asking for the ark or 
 sacred boat of Khonsu* or Hermes to be carried to 
 Bakhtan. This was done, a goodly company of the 
 Pastiphori and physicians bearing the receptacle of 
 the divinity. This time the mission was successful ; 
 the princess speedily recovered, and the god received 
 the glory. 
 
 Other sovereigns availed themselves of the services 
 of physicians from Egypt, and not always, it would 
 seem, to their benefit. King Asa of Judaea, it is 
 recorded, became diseased in his feet, and "sought 
 not unto the Lord ; " in other words, he did not con- 
 sult the priests (see Deuteronomy xix., 17) who practiced 
 the healing art, but employed "physicians," or Rephaim, 
 instead. They failed, however, notwithstanding their 
 superior attainments, "and Asa slept with his fathers." 
 
 The kings of Persia, always ready to adopt foreign 
 customs, also procured physicians from Egypt. Kyros 
 or Cyrus sent to King Amasis for " the most skillful 
 of all the Egyptian eye-doctors," and Dareios Hystaspis 
 "had at his court certain Egyptians whom he reckoned 
 the best-skilled physicians in the world." They seem, 
 however, to have been very inexpert as bone-setters. 
 The king had the misfortune to dislocate his ankle, 
 and their manipulations only made the mischief 
 greater. He passed a whole week sleepless from the 
 severe pain. At that time he heard of Dumokedes of 
 Krotona, who excelled as a practitioner of surgery, 
 and had held employments as archiatros for several 
 cities, but was now a slave at Susa. The Greek was 
 brought to the king, and soon succeeded in reducing 
 
 *" He was resorted to," says Professor Tiele, " for the cure of all diseases, or 
 for the exorcism of the evil spirits that inflict them."
 
 l6 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 the dislocation. He afterward interceded successfully 
 for the Egyptians who had been sentenced, for their 
 awkwardness and ill success, to be crucified or impaled 
 on the stauros. Doubtless, the fact was that he was a 
 disciple of Pythagoras, who in turn had been instructed 
 by the Pastiphori of Egypt, inspired him to this mag- 
 nanimity. The lives of the physicians were spared, 
 but after that period the Persian monarchs obtained 
 their physicians from Ionia. 
 
 BABYLON AND ASSYRIA. 
 
 Herodotus makes the extraordinary statement that 
 the Babylonians had no physicians. It was their prac- 
 tice, he affirms, to place the sick person in the public 
 square, and everyone passing by was required to ask 
 him respecting his malady. If the individual making 
 the inquiry had ever himself had a similar complaint, 
 or if he knew of any one else that had suffered from 
 it, he must give advice to the invalid, telling him of 
 such remedies as had been found beneficial. 
 
 This practice, however, was not peculiar to ancient 
 Assyria. Something like it existed in other countries, 
 clear down to the present era. Strabo declares that it 
 was in vogue in Egypt itself, where regular practi- 
 tioners of the priest-caste were numerous, as well as 
 secular physicians. But the vocation was not then 
 exclusive, and there was neither code nor unwritten 
 law to prevent the simple pharmacy and therapeutics 
 known to the people from being employed beneficially, 
 and even accepted by those officially prosecuting the 
 art of healing. Perhaps the modifications that have 
 been made upon the primitive methods, have not been 
 so great an improvement as many may insist. It is 
 very probable, however, that Herodotus referred only
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 17 
 
 to the iatroi (magoi) or professional mediciners, like 
 Demokedes, and the Asklepiads and Hippokratians 
 who were, members of an oath- bound or sacerdotal 
 order. Before his time, the Chaldasan priests, includ- 
 ing the Asaphitn,\i2i(S. been exiled by Dareios Hystaspis 
 and had migrated to Pergamos. This probably 
 accounts for the assertion of Herodotus. 
 
 The existence of the practice of placing the sick in 
 public thoroughfares, is shown by other writers, " Is 
 it nothing to you, all ye that pass by ? " demands the 
 Hebrew prophet ; " Behold and see, whether there be 
 any pain like mine." The synoptic Gospels and Acts of 
 the Apostles mention the same custom. It is recorded 
 that wherever Jesus went, the sick were brought and 
 placed in his way in the expectation that he would 
 restore them to health. 
 
 To suppose that there were not physicians in the 
 Euphratean countries during the archaic period, would 
 be preposterous. The cuneiform records inform us 
 that the earlier Akkadians, inhabiting that region, 
 regarded every seventh day as sulum, or set apart ; and 
 that it was forbidden, even for the king himself, to eat 
 cooked food, to change his garments, to put on new 
 clothing, drive in a chariot, or " take medicine for the 
 ailments of the body." The Assyrian Tablets also con- 
 tain the account of Izdu-bar (/. e., son of the Ethiopian 
 or Indian) the legendary founder of the united sover- 
 eignty of the Babylonian Empire. " Disease had 
 filled his body," and he made his way to Adra-hasis 
 or Hasis-adra, the immortal sage, to be healed. Like 
 Naaman, the Syrian, he bathed in the water, and "cast 
 off his illness. Health covered his skin and restored 
 the hair of his head, hanging down to cover the cloak 
 of his body."
 
 l8 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The god Hea, both with the primitive Akkadians 
 and their Assyrian successors, was the lord of life and 
 Grand Master of " the mysterious Rite, the formula, 
 the all-powerful secret word, which would thwart the 
 efforts of the formidable powers of the Abyss." He 
 was represented by such figures as the triangle by 
 which the cuneiform characters were made, the fish 
 that was symbolized by the peculiar fashion of the 
 priestly dress, and the nisrokh^^ or eagle-headed man 
 bearing the fir-conef in one hand and the mystic 
 reticule in the other. " He was emphatically the god 
 of healing, who had revealed medicine to mankind." 
 (Sayce.) The son of this divinity was Merodakh, \ 
 the Bel of Babylon, revered as the Prince of Light, 
 the Conqueror of the Dragon, the Redeemer of man- 
 kind and bestower of life. He was likewise depicted 
 as holding the cone in one hand and the reticule or 
 other characteristic symbol in the other. He was also 
 the divinity of the planet Jupiter, and hence the prac- 
 tice arose of placing his symbol at the beginning of 
 medicine and magical formulas, as a prayer for his 
 benign offices. 
 
 "Merciful one among the gods. 
 Generator who brought back the dead to life, 
 Silik-mulu-khi,^ the king of heaven and earth, ^ ^^ 
 May the invalid be deHvered from his disease. 
 Cure the plague, the fever, the ulcer." 
 
 ♦Probably the Rokh of the Persian tablets, and the Garuda of the Hindus, as 
 well as the eagle of national standards. 
 
 t The fir-tree and its kindred cone-bearers, all possess medicinal virtue, and were 
 employed both as remedies and as magic or religious emblems. The Akkadians 
 probably brought it froii Media. The Tree of Life was depicted in Assyrian 
 sculptures, as having cones like those of the pine and fir, and they were placed 
 upon the wand or thyrsos which was borne in religious processions. 
 
 t Originally in Akkadian and Hittite dialects, Amarutu-khi, the splendor of the 
 Sun. Cyrus Worshipped him as being the same as Mithras. (Xenoph6n.) 
 
 § Akkadian name of Merodakh, signifying, "The one who brings good to human 
 beings."
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. I9 
 
 It was customary to place the image, or characteris- 
 tic symbol, of Hea and Merodakh, one on each side of 
 the door of the invalid's apartment, and to hang sacred 
 texts about his room and head, in order to exorcise the 
 evil spirits that had caused the disease. Invocations, 
 or rather incantations, were made like the following : 
 
 " Disease of the bowels, disease of the heart, 
 The palpitation of the heart ; 
 Disease of the vision, disease of the head, 
 Malignant dysentery ; 
 The humor which swells, 
 
 Ulceration of the veins, the micturition which wastes, 
 Cruel agony which never ceases, 
 Nightmare, » * * 
 Spirit of the heavens,* conjure it. 
 Spirit of the earth, f conjure it." 
 
 Religious incantation, miraculous and mesmeric 
 •cases, however, by no means comprised all the healing 
 knowledge of the hakhamim, or "wise men" of Babylon. 
 Closely allied as such knowledge was to astrology and 
 occult lore, there was likewise an herbal science which 
 related to the treating of disease. The priests under- 
 stood the ^sculapian art, both on the theurgic and the 
 medical side ; and while employing the resourses at 
 their command, they taught the convalescing patients 
 to believe their cure to have been wrought by the 
 divine operation itself. 
 
 The Assyrians and Babylonians, as has been already 
 intimated, derived much of their knowledge and litera- 
 ture from the more ancient possessors of their country. 
 At a very remote period, believed by many scholars to 
 have extended thousands of years into the past, a 
 
 * Ana, the Most High, the ruler of the universe. 
 tHea.
 
 20 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 people with a language closely resembling that of the 
 Hetrurians, Ugrians and Mongoloid Skyths, emigrated 
 from the Zagros mountains and the Highlands of Media 
 into the valley of the Euphrates, where they founded 
 numerous cities. This was the " Hamitic race of 
 Akkad," from which descended the Chaldaeans of 
 Babylonia, and the priest-caste of Assyria. Among 
 their literary remains were astrologic tablets made 
 when Sargon I. was king of the country. This mon- 
 arch, in his infancy, had been placed by his mother, in 
 the faint hope of safety, in an ark of rushes, and set 
 afloat upon the river Euphrates. His reign, according 
 to the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archceology^ was 
 about 3,800 years before the present era. 
 
 There were " university-towns " in those days, such 
 as Ur-ukh (Erech), Akkad, Nipur, Kutha, Larsa and 
 Borsippa. At an early period in Babylonian history, 
 Mr. George Smith informs us, a great literary develop- 
 ment had taken place, and numerous works were pro- 
 duced which embodied the prevailing myths, religion 
 and science of the day. The antiquity of this litera- 
 ture does not compare unfavorably with that of Egypt. 
 Indeed, Baron Bunsen does not hesitate to ascribe the 
 learning of the latter country to Chaldaean origin. Of 
 course, there were customs in Egypt, such as circum- 
 cision, that were purely African. But the analogies 
 were sufficiently numerous to afford good ground for 
 that judgment. 
 
 It is not to be supposed, however, that the learned 
 men of the Orient were merely astrologers, or that the 
 healing art was simply that of Siberian Shamans, the 
 employment of charms, amulets and conjurations. 
 They had also their medicaments, both internal and 
 external, which they made use of like practitioners of
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 21 
 
 later days. Mr. J. Halevy has preserved the following 
 —Records of the Past, Vol. VI.: 
 
 "For the Eruptions and Humors which Afflict the Body: — 
 
 Fill a vase which has held drugs with water from an inexhaustible 
 well; 
 
 Put it in a sheet of , a reed, some date-sugar, some 
 
 urine, some bitter hydromel; 
 
 Add to it some ; 
 
 Saturate it with pure water [and] 
 
 Pour upon it the water of the [sick] man. 
 
 Cut reeds in an elevated meadow; 
 ;^ .^'Beat some pure date-sugar with some pure honey; 
 ^^■f 7*; Add some sweet oil which comes from the mountain; 
 
 Mix them together; 
 
 Rub [with this ointment] the body of the [sick man]." 
 
 We perceive from this that pharmacy was an art 
 among the Assyrians, and that they were in the habit of 
 O .. keeping medicines in jars and vases made for that pur- 
 pose. We do well to bear in mind that, in those early 
 'l* \^ times, the various branches of learning were not differ- 
 ^"^ '^ entiated, as they have been with us. IMedical knowl- 
 £j edge was included with astronomy, religious worship 
 Z and magic lore, which were ignorantly imagined to be 
 5f beyond the province of the common understanding. 
 O Hence, there has been a direct tendency, equally 
 Q , credulous in another way, to discredit them altogether. 
 
 . ^ ' INDIA AND PERSIA. 
 
 Ut " The Sacred Books of the Parsis recognize the former 
 existence of the Aryan Home-Country in which the 
 ancestral tribes of Hindus and Persians dwelt as a 
 single nation. They reared cattle, tilled the soil, em- 
 ployed horses for riding and the drawing of vehicles, 
 had dogs and other domestic animals, kept bees, made
 
 22 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ale and mead for drinking, raised grain and took it to 
 mill in wagons, had iron tools, tanned leather, navi- 
 gated the water, and fabricated weapons for warfare. 
 An examination of the root-words of the Indo-Euro- 
 pean languages, which proceeded from the archaic 
 Aryan speech, has revealed as much. The primitive 
 Aryans, it will be perceived, had a civilization well 
 advanced, and a religion with a priesthood. That 
 they employed healing plants and had physicians 
 among them, likewise appears. 
 
 The Eranians cultivated the soil and followed the 
 arts of productive industry, while the nomadic Aryans 
 kept flocks, and often encroached upon their fields of 
 grain. It was the story ot Cain and Abel — the agri- 
 culturist and the shepherd. As is the case in all 
 quarrels of families, neighborhoods, sects or parties, 
 the relations of these kindred peoples were charac- 
 terized by intense animosity. The wandering tribes 
 made their way into India, and after long centuries 
 of conflict, established their dominion, and with it 
 developed the Vedic, Brahmanic, and other religions. 
 The Eranians, meanwhile, extended their migrations 
 southward and westward, and formed a distinct em- 
 pire, in which sprang up a worship proximately 
 monotheistic, and directly conflicting with that of 
 their Aryan congeners. 
 
 In their sacred book, the Vendidad, a fargard or 
 chapter is devoted to the art of healing. Zoroaster 
 asks of the deity Ahur'mazda, the all-wise and power- 
 ful, who was the first of men skilled in healing? who 
 was wise, successful, able, eminent, brave, obedient, 
 keeping back sickness and fever from bodies of men? 
 The Divinity answers that it was Thrita. He had 
 besought the Giver of all Good to make known to him
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 23 
 
 the means to combat successfully with sickness, pes- 
 tilence, pain, the burning of fever, the malignant 
 ulceration and foulness in human bodies, which the 
 Evil Spirit, Aramanya (Angramanyas), had engen- 
 dered. 
 
 " Then," adds the Divinity, "I, who am Ahur'mazda, 
 brought into existence the healing plants, many and 
 many hundreds, many and many thousands, many 
 and many tens of thousands, and with them the one 
 Gokarene — the white homa, or tree of life — giving 
 health to the bodies of men. * ^t I counteract sick- 
 ness ; I combat pestilence ; I resist pain, fever, the 
 putrid ulceration, the foulness, the malignant eye 
 which the Evil Spirit inflicts upon human beings — 
 every disorder and mortal ailment, every sorcerer and 
 witch, and every malign influence." 
 
 The aftgel or divinity, Airyaman (the friend), ap- 
 pears to have oeen the ^sculapius, or tutelary of the 
 healing art with the Eranians, their Persian succes- 
 sors, and likewise with the Aryans of the farther East. 
 He is lauded in the Vendidad as the healer of those 
 whom the Evil One had afflicted, the averter of evil, 
 and promoter of happy nuptial alliances He applied 
 his art when the Holy Word was insufficient alone. 
 In the Vedas he is associated with Mitras and Varuna, 
 the lords of the sun and sky, exercises like functions 
 as among the Eranians, and is chief of the piiris, or 
 spirits of the dead. 
 
 In like manner, Thrita, although he is thus cele- 
 brated as the first who exercised the art of medicine, 
 and the hero Rustam as his descendant, is neverthe- 
 less also described as a benefactor of the Hindu tribes, 
 putting an end to diseases, appeasing evil agencies, 
 and assuring long life.
 
 24 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The directions of the Vendidad'va regard to physicians 
 and surgical operations, plainly indicate that when 
 they were written, the Aryan peoples had not sepa- 
 rated. They can not, however, have been very accept- 
 able to those who worshipped Indra and other daevas 
 as divinities. Zoroaster asks : " When Mazda-wor- 
 shippers wish to become physicians, whom shall they 
 first make trial upon — the daeva-worshippers or the 
 worshippers of Mazda ? " To this Ahur'mazda replies: 
 " They shall make trial on the daeva-worshippers first. 
 If a beginner cuts a daevayasnian the first time and 
 he dies, a second time and he dies, a third time and 
 he dies, then he is incapable forever. The Mazdeans 
 shall not consult him, nor shall he wound them by 
 cutting. If they do try him, and he does them injury, 
 he shall undergo the punishment for willful injuries. 
 But when a beginner operates thrice upon dfeva-wor- 
 shippers, and they recover, he is capable, and may 
 heal Mazdeans by cutting as he sees proper." His re- 
 muneration was strictly provided according to the 
 rank and quality of the patient. The same fargard 
 enumerates three classes of practitioners: "physicians 
 with knives, physicians with herbs, and physicians 
 with holy sayings," declaring that there is most heal- 
 ing among physicians who use the manthra spenta, or 
 holy word. A later scripture, the twenty-second far- 
 gard of the Avesia, however, makes the manthra inef- 
 ficacious, compelling the resort to the skill of the 
 angel Airyaman. 
 
 The Sacred Books of the Hindoos indicate a very 
 thorough conception and knowledge of the healing 
 art. The Yajur Veda is itself a treatise upon medi- 
 cine and surgery, and the commentaries upon it by 
 later writers r«"veal the existence of a code and regu-
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 25 
 
 lations sufficiently stringent to satisfy the most exclu- 
 sive champion of medical ethics. The whole authority 
 of the Brahmanic hierarchy was put forth to uphold 
 the sacerdotal dignity of the profession, and to exclude 
 laymen and members of the landed and yeoman castes 
 from ever becoming physicians. What has been at- 
 tempted in European and American countries under 
 the pretext of regularity, higher scientific attainment 
 and governmental license, was imposed in ancient 
 India by caste-rules and the influence of the priest- 
 hood. 
 
 The study of medicine was forbidden to all except 
 men of the Brahmanic rank. Before the youth was 
 permitted to begin it, he was required to pass an ex- 
 amination in regard to his previous instruction and 
 personal character. The final examinations are also 
 described as very severe, enabling but a small number 
 to pass them successfully. It would seem to have 
 been the intention of the Examiners of that period to 
 prevent as many as possible from engaging in prac- 
 tice. By this expedient the endowments of the favored 
 ones might be made as large as could be extorted. 
 They stooped to invoke the civil authority to protect 
 them in this endeavor, and some rajas were found 
 pliable enough to issue decrees to regulate the practice 
 of medicine, and to punish those who ventured to 
 engage in it without having received authority from 
 the Brahmans. 
 
 Let it not be supposed, however, that the free lances 
 that first established the Aryan dominion in North- 
 western India, would patiently tolerate such assump- 
 tion of arbitrary power. The chief of every family 
 . and clan refused to surrender his family religion to 
 the umpireship and direction of the priests. Rajas
 
 26 HISTORY OK MEDICINE. 
 
 and Rajanyas persisted in exercise of sacred functions, 
 and for many centuries disputed the pretensions of 
 the Brahmanic caste. This resistance to priestly 
 usurpation is set forth by the story of Viswamitra, the 
 raja of Kanoj, who contested with the Brahmanic 
 pontiff, Vasist'ha, for the right to officiate at public 
 worship, and to chant the mantras which were believed 
 to assure victory and prosperity to the Aryan cause. 
 He appears to have been the champion of learning, as 
 well as of social equality and despite the false state- 
 ments of the Brahmans to have won in the controversy. 
 Hence he is said to have taught the act of war and 
 mechanical science, and his son, Sushruta, is cele- 
 brated as the first teacher of medicine in India. 
 
 The attainments of the medical practitioner, as laid 
 down in the writing of this distinguished author, were 
 very thorough. " A holy man thus set apart should 
 dissect," says he, "in order that he may know the 
 internal structure of the body. The minutest details 
 were accordingly set forth ; the principal viscera were 
 named and described ; the joints enumerated and 
 their functions explained, the nerves distinguished 
 from the other fibres, and the peculiar constitution of 
 the skin critically defined. The humoral pathology 
 seems to have been the accepted hypothesis, and all 
 theories of temperament and disease were modelled 
 in accordance with that notion. 
 
 Surgery evidently attained a high degree of perfec- 
 tion. The Indian practitioners were superior to the 
 Egyptian. The commentary upon the works of Sush- 
 ruta treats very fully of this art. It explains lithotomy, 
 abdominal section, hysterectomy, as well as various 
 plastic operations, giving very precise directions in 
 regard to the proper modes of performing them.
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 2/ 
 
 THE INDIAN MATERIA MEDICA. 
 
 Sushruta was the first Indian author to make a 
 classification of drug-remedies, and to construct a 
 scientific terminology. He based his arrangement 
 upon the assumption that disease is either an impair- 
 ment or vitiation of the force which permeates the 
 fluids of the body, and influences their circulation, 
 absorption and secretion, or else an inordinate activity 
 of the natural appetites and emotions. The terms 
 used by him imply fixed ideas in regard to the prop- 
 erties of medicinal substances. Sushruta taught, 
 however, that all forms of vitalized matter are con- 
 stant and never exchange their type ; the heavier 
 elements which make up the solids, being never 
 subject to transformation into fluids, and the lighter 
 elements which compose the fluids, never becoming 
 changed into solids. The erroneousness of this doc- 
 trine is abundantly evident. 
 
 Sushruta's classification of medicinal plants has a 
 specific significance, and accords with the more elabo- 
 rate and precise experience of the present day. He 
 is very tenacious of the injunction to use fresh drugs 
 only, as more certain in their properties and powers 
 to control disease. Our manufacturers of botanic 
 and vegetable medicines at the present time, could do 
 well to observe a like carefulness. Organized matter, 
 as all intelligent students of chemistry are aware, 
 evinces a greater energy of action in a fresh state, 
 than after it has been exposed to air or moisture, or 
 to artificial heat, or to comminution or precipitation 
 under the hands of a manipulator. 
 
 Sushruta divided all vegetable remedies into two 
 3arge classes, according to their effects upon the
 
 28 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 human system during the progress of disease ; the 
 first including the evacuants of morbid humors, and 
 the second comprising those which regulate or mod- 
 erate the excessive action of such humors. The two 
 classes bear the Sanskrit names of Sanshod'hana and 
 Sanshamana. The former embraces a miscellaneous 
 group of purgatives, expectorants, diaphoretics, diur- 
 etics and someblood-depurants or alteratives, indicat- 
 ing a belief in the presence of active principles in 
 them which operate through the blood upon special 
 organs or glands in order to relieve the body of a 
 supposed morbific agent, irrespective of the changes 
 which they may severally induce or bring about in 
 restoring diseased parts to health. The second class 
 contains a greater variety of operations. It includes 
 thirty-seven groups of vegetables, the sensible effects 
 of which, upon the various terms of the body are 
 mostly remote or gradual, being indicated in sthenic 
 diseases, or in the chronic stages of disease generally. 
 The writings of Sushruta, however, have been so 
 mutilated as often to leave us in doubt of the modes 
 of preparing many of his remedies. Later experience 
 too, has shown that several of the drugs which he 
 described, have properties materially different from 
 those which he has represented. 
 
 CHARAKA. 
 
 Agnivesha, a writer of the same period, better 
 known as Charaka, was more precise in his classifica- 
 tion, approximating to the more modern European 
 method. He was far broader than his successors in 
 his entire views. He did not aim, he declares, to 
 bind the more talented and enquiring physicians to
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 29 
 
 his descriptions, but rather to guide the less capable 
 practitioner, and those other individuals who were 
 able to help the suffering by the aid of written treat- 
 ises alone. Nor did he lay down his views and meth- 
 ods dogmatically as finalities not to be corrected and 
 improved. Constant experiment and an experience 
 searching far and wide, he indicated, must be the 
 practitioner's true guide in determining the virtues of 
 drugs or their combinations. Accordingly, while devis- 
 ing out of some five hundred different drugs, fifty 
 compound groups for selection, which might satisfy 
 all possible indications in the practical treatment of 
 disease, he invited further investigation of the action 
 of these compounds, and likewise the ascertaining of 
 the virtues of new remedies which might yet be 
 discovered. 
 
 His usual mode of preparing medicines was by 
 steeping and decoction; and in his terms of classifica- 
 tion he had in view the remote and specific action of 
 the remedies upon the functions of the body, or to 
 their efficacy in relieving fixed symptoms and phe- 
 nomena which are the precursors and actual indices 
 of grave disturbances. 
 
 The endeavor, at that remote period, to fence about 
 the orthodox and legalized practitioners with penal 
 statutes, was no more successful in India than in other 
 countries. It failed utterly, as it always must, to pre- 
 serve a medical caste and monopoly, or even to assure 
 thorough knowledge of the healing art. A protected 
 vocation is very certain to languish, except it is con- 
 stantly cossetted. There were heterodox practitioners, 
 all through the early times, in India. The commen- 
 tator upon the works of Sushruta acknowledged their 
 existence, and labored assiduously to vilify them.
 
 30 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 "Such an one," he remarks, "may be known by his good 
 opinion of himself, and his ill will toward the genuine 
 physician. He flatters the friends of the patient, is 
 hesitating and doubtful in the performing of difficult 
 operations, and protests that his want of success is 
 caused by bad attendants. Such men avoid the 
 company of the instructed physician as they would a 
 jungle." 
 
 It will be observed that Charaka, himself the most 
 accomplished medical author and practitioner of his 
 time, cherished no unfriendly sentiment of the kind. 
 He recognized those as worthy who were able by the 
 aid of written treatises, without professional teachers, 
 to help those suffering from disease ; and he sought 
 manfully to communicate to them the proper knowl- 
 edge. He stands divinely high above those who 
 would restrict, limit and proscribe. We are forcibly 
 reminded of the little episode of the Gospel: "And 
 John said : ' Master, we saw one casting out devils in 
 thy name; and we forbade him, because he follow- 
 eth not with us.' And Jesus said unto him: ' Forbid 
 him not.' " 
 
 The boasted superior excellence of the legalized 
 physicians of India did not permanently continue. 
 The writings of the older savants, Sushruta, Atreya, 
 Charaka, Dhanwantari and others were mutilated and 
 interpolated by those who came after them in later 
 centuries. Their study gradually fell into neglect 
 from want of encouragement. Their teachings were 
 misapplied in practice, and their theories misunder- 
 stood in principle. Under the arbitrary restriction 
 of the Brahmanic caste, observation was neglected 
 and the sources of new thought were dried up. The 
 diagnosis of disease became in time a matter of
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 3I 
 
 guess-work and uncertainty, and the treatment empir- 
 ical, hap-hazard and dangerous. 
 
 In this dearth of medical scholarship, the practi- 
 tioners followed servilely after a prescribed routine, 
 and themselves adopted the methods of the charlatan. 
 An eminent native physician thus forcibly describes 
 the low condition of the art : " The nomenclature of 
 diseases, with their classes arranged according to the 
 seat, origin, or nature, was transmitted through suc- 
 cessive generations of enfeebled and depressed intel- 
 lects ; and practitioners of the art were compelled to 
 ply it on the borrowed and indirect testimony of 
 legendary accounts of supposed, and often fanciful 
 virtues of drugs and their combinations. Such un- 
 worthy followers of Sushruta and Charaka being 
 necessarily dwarfed in intellect and warped in observ- 
 ing powers, were compelled to live largely on the credulity of 
 their patients, or by acting in a measure upon their 
 imagination and prejudices ; alternately seeking to 
 kindle hope or to excite fear of loss of health, of death; 
 they themselves, in their turn, trusting to the mercy of 
 chance, or to the fancied contrivances of an erring 
 imagination. This state of medical science still pre- 
 vails among the Hindus unhappily to a large extent." 
 
 CHINA AND OUTER ASIA. 
 
 Everything Chinese, whether historic, scientific or 
 even political, seems archaic. It has been fashionable 
 to decry Chinamen, to represent them as inferior in 
 race and culture, and, at the same time, to adopt their 
 usages and various arts without giving credit to the 
 source from which they were derived. Yet when na- 
 tions now existing were unformed, and people classed 
 as ancient were in their infancy, China was very old
 
 32 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 and had a literature too voluminous to describe. Her 
 trade was world-wide ; articles brought thence have 
 been found in the old monuments of Ireland, and in 
 the tombs of forgotten Egypt. 
 
 When Caleb Gushing was sent by President Tyler 
 as ambassador to China, in 1844, he took occasion, at 
 his first audience with the Minister of State, to set 
 forth the greatness of this country, and in particular 
 the numerous inventions to expedite and obviate the 
 necessity of human labor. The Mandarin listened 
 with true Oriental politeness and simply replied : 
 "All these things we once had here, but our fathers 
 found it better to lay them aside, and leave the work 
 to be done by men." 
 
 The Chinese, like other archaic peoples, were emi- 
 grants from Pamir, or Meru, "thereof the world." 
 They went out, not as conquerors, but as cultivators 
 of the earth, and hence we find their heroes always to 
 be peaceful sons, fathers, and benefactors of the peo- 
 ple. To this fact we attribute the monotony which 
 foreigners describe as stagnation, and the lack of his- 
 tory, such as is made up in other countries with the 
 record ef the crimes and oppressions of rulers, and the 
 suffering and degradation of their subjects, which 
 made the earth antedate, and furnish the model for 
 Pandemonium. 
 
 The name given the country by Marco Polo was 
 Kathay, and to this day the Russians term the peo- 
 ple Khitans. This was once the designation of the 
 population of Asia east of Turkestan, as well as of 
 numerous peoples on the Upper Euphrates, in Syria, 
 Asia Minor, and perhaps Palestine* and Egypt. They 
 
 * Hittites: compare Genesis xxiii., with Kings I. x. 29 and II. vii. 6.
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 33 
 
 were the first historic coiners of money ; and Kroesos, 
 the last Sardic king, was of their race. In the East 
 they were the inventors of paper, discoverers of mag- 
 netism and gunpowder, and manufacturers of silk. 
 Wherever they went, they appear to have carried a 
 written language and to have promoted civilization. 
 Hence we are not unprepared to learn that in that 
 early antiquity, China bore its share in scientific ad- 
 vancement. Conquerors of this country sometimes 
 mutilated or destroyed their records, yet there are 
 evidences remaining of the science of these far-off 
 periods. In the Book of Historic Documents it i^ stated 
 that the King Chin nun, in the "eighth period," in- 
 vented the plough, and made great discoveries in 
 botany. In one day, or season, we are told that he dis- 
 covered seventy species of plants that were poisonous, 
 and seventy other species that were antidotes to them.* 
 Making due allowance for the exaggeration which is 
 characteristic of all Asiatic literature, we can safely 
 take for granted that this age was a time when inven- 
 tion and learning were generously cultivated. 
 
 CHINA IN LATER YEARS. 
 
 About two hundred years before the present era, 
 the Emperor had attempted a revolution in the politics 
 of the country, and commanded the destruction of 
 all books relating to its former history. Those who 
 did not obey were put to death. The result was rebel- 
 lion, overthrow of the Thsin dynasty, and the estab- 
 lishment of the king of Han in its place. The second 
 monarch of the new dynasty caused a collection of 
 books to be made for the Imperial Library. In this 
 
 *A11 Chinese theories are based on the hypothesis of dualism, or light aad dark, 
 male and female, poison and antidote.
 
 34 JilSTORY OF AIEDICIXK. 
 
 he was very successful. vSome thirteen thousand were 
 recovered, of which 868 were upon medicine. Since 
 that period, literature upon that subject has wonder- 
 fully increased, with, however, the Chinese peculiari- 
 ties and little innovation on old methods. 
 
 It is an article in the Chinaman's belief that all dis- 
 eases and calamities are the result of sin. If a man 
 should be killed by lightning, all who heard of the 
 catastrophe would with one voice "condemn him. He 
 must have poisoned some one, or intended to do so ; 
 at any rate, he miist have been guilty of some great 
 crime. Blindness, leprosy, or other bodily ailment is 
 thus ascribed to the operation of a retributory decree, 
 the execution of which is superintended by the ruling 
 powers of the celestial world. The charge of personal 
 blame, however, is often explained as relating to some 
 misdoing in a former term of existence, which is ex- 
 piated in the present life. This notion is essentially 
 Buddhistic. The Tafi sect entertain views somewhat 
 different. They regard health, longevity and other 
 benefits as accruing from a virtuous life. Their found- 
 er, Laotsi, taught that all natures, divine as well as 
 human, were twofold; that there was a Tau, the source 
 of all that might not be named, and also a Tau that 
 was the maternal principle and producer of all phe- 
 nomenal existence. The human soul in like analogy 
 had two phases — a divine essence from the celestial 
 world and a grosser passional product from the earth. 
 It was thus able to impart the life of the higher region 
 to this inferior nature. Salvation was the same as 
 healing, a relief from all suffering of body or mind. 
 Dr. Edkins affirms that they believed that the body 
 could be made impregnable against disease or death, 
 and so like the corporeity of a divine being. Similar
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 35 
 
 beliefs have been entertained in western countries, 
 and seem to find countenance in the New Testament 
 itself. The fact, therefore, only serves to show that 
 the Chinese, in this respect, were like other peoples, 
 both ancient and modern. The large amount of med- 
 ical literature in the Imperial Library is evidence that 
 they were awake to the necessity of applying efficient 
 remedies to disordered bodily conditions. 
 
 Of anatomy they had little knowledge, and in opera- 
 tive surgery they were particularly unskillful. Acu- 
 puncture, which was first introduced in this country 
 by an Eclectic physician, and discredited accordingly, 
 but was afterwards imported from Germany, was prac- 
 ticed in China many thousands of years ago. Inocu- 
 lation for small-pox was performed a thousand years 
 and more before the present era. They use few med- 
 icines derived from the mineral kingdom. Their ma- 
 teria medica embraced almost four hundred different 
 remedial agents ; and the general mode of extracting 
 the active principles was by steeping or boiling in hot 
 water. It has been a popular jest to enumerate the 
 articles used ; but if the drugs and foul materials should 
 be named, which have been current in Europe within 
 the last four centuries, the Chinese would suffer little 
 by the comparison. 
 
 They distilled alcoholic spirits four centuries or more 
 ago, but the use of them as beverages was denounced. 
 They make whiskey, but employ it for preparing me- 
 dicinal tinctures. Indeed, their reputation for skill in 
 medicine and the arts was wide-spread, and continued 
 through the Middle Ages. William of Rubruck bears 
 this testimony respecting them : " These Kathayans 
 are first-rate artists, and their physicians have a thor- 
 ough knowledge of the virtues of herbs, and an
 
 36 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 admirable skill in diagnosis by the pulse. During the 
 campaigns of Hulakan, the grandson of Tamerlane, in 
 Persia, Chinese engineers were employed on the banks 
 of the Tigris, the ancient Assyria, and Chinese astrol- 
 ogers and physicians could be consulted at Tabriz." 
 
 The Penal Code of the "Flowery Kingdom" has no 
 arbitrary prohibition, either by caste-law or the man- 
 date of a privileged order, against anyone desiring to 
 practice medicine. Every man is free to choose his 
 own calling, and to select his medical adviser. If, 
 however, improper practice on the part of the physi- 
 cian, whether by unsuitable drugging or cutting, shall 
 contribute to the death of a patient, an inquest of med- 
 ical men is called to investigate the matter. The 
 penalty is the same as for homicide. If, however, it 
 shall be shown that he acted with no intention to do 
 injury, he is let off on payment of a fine ; but he is re- 
 quired to quit the medical profession forever. Europe 
 and America have much to learn from the East. 
 
 If, as has been sententiously remarked, "the knowl- 
 edge which a people possesses of the art of healing, is 
 the measure of its refinement and civilization," the 
 Chinese nation holds no low rank in the scale. Those 
 who leave it out as a factor in the world's scientific 
 achievements, reckon ill. 
 
 THE SKYTHIC AUTOCHTHONES. 
 
 The numerous tribes at the north and west, the 
 Ugrians, Turanians (Turkmans), and other Skythic 
 hordes, can be dismissed with barely a mention. It 
 may have been in very ancient periods, when a litera- 
 ture was created among them, that a knowledge of 
 healing methods was also disseminated. We have 
 reason to believe that this was the case. Magic, as.
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 37 
 
 all learning was formerly designated, embraced the 
 various arts of social life, the service of mankind, as 
 well as communion with spiritual beings. Herodotos 
 has mentioned, among other customs of the Skyths, 
 their use of the vapor-bath, a practice still common 
 among their Russian descendants. They were familiar 
 with many plants now reckoned as medicinal, includ- 
 ing the narcotics and " witch-herbs," such as the poppy, 
 henbane, hemp, nightshade, monk's hood, stramonium 
 and fox-glove, which were employed to produce ecsta- 
 sy, somnambulic conditions, and other abnormal phe- 
 nomena. They also knew the art of fumigation, both 
 for magical and for remedial purposes. They com- 
 municated their knowledge to the nationsbetter known 
 in history. The Delphian oracle, was first established 
 by them in the prehistoric period, the site having been 
 selected over a fissure in the ground, which sent up a 
 vapor producing anaesthesia in those by whom it was 
 inhaled. It became famous also as a resort for per- 
 sons suffering from various maladies, and Apolld was 
 often designated as Paidn, the healer. 
 
 Peschel has for all the peculiar arts and methods of 
 thaumaturgy the single term, Shamanism. He includes 
 everything mysterious, occult or magical under this 
 head. He finds it convenient to dismiss them with an 
 epithet; but whether this is altogether just may be 
 doubtful. The earlier peoples were religious beyond 
 what we of modern times are able to conceive ; ?nd 
 very naturally their priests and patriarchs had super- 
 vision of all matters beyond the common departments 
 of human activity, among which they included the 
 exorcising of spirits and the healing of diseases. The 
 cognate peoples of Akhad, Media and Assyria partici- 
 pated in the same beliefs. The Tablets deciphered by
 
 38 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Mr. George Smith treat of seven spirits directed by 
 Liibara, that placed illness upon the body of the 
 people, and give significance to the story of the maga- 
 dalen of the Syrian shrine from whom they were ex- 
 pelled. Prayer, sacred chants, sacrifice and peculiar 
 forms of abstinence were employed to propitiate 
 them. The inhabitants of Northern Asia, at the 
 present time, entertain similar notions ; and we, with 
 our boasted superior culture, are not so far removed 
 from them as to be warranted in regarding them with 
 any supercilious disdain. It is easy to prate about 
 superstition, but the quality so called is more deeply 
 embedded in human nature than, perhaps, we are able 
 cheerfully to acknowledge. Much of our dogma, much 
 that is called scientific in medicine, is an outgrowth, 
 from that source. The names have been changed, but 
 the things remain. 
 
 PREHISTORIC GREECE. 
 
 From the East and the North the same notions, arts 
 and methods were transmitted to the Akhaian and 
 Pelasgic countries of Greece. The legend of Medeia 
 of Kolkhis describes her as possessing magic powers, 
 the gift of Hekate or Hakti, the Bhavani of Occidental 
 Asia, queen of night and mistress of the realm of 
 death. Among the arts which she is said to have ex- 
 ercised were the restoration to life, health and youth, 
 and the rendering of the body invulnerable. Mokli 
 or Mokhos, the physician, was also reported as to be 
 a sage deeply versed in natural and physiological 
 science, and as the founder of the knowledge of 
 anatomy. From his descendents, the "prophets" of 
 Sidon, it is said that Pythagoras received "sacred
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 39 
 
 instructions." Homer has described Agamede, as 
 proficient in herbal lore. 
 
 " The fair-haired Agamede, eldest-born 
 Of King Augeias' daughters, was his spouse: 
 And well to her each healing herb was known. 
 That springs from the great earth." 
 
 The poet Theokritos declares her the rival of Kirk^ 
 and Medeia in magic art; the facts being that medical 
 knowledge was included under the denomination of 
 magic, and that is was supposed that a physician could 
 perform superhuman achievements. Hyginos de- 
 scribes her as the mother, by Poseidon, of the heroes 
 Belos, Aktor and Diktys, So closely was the healing 
 art allied, in ancient estimation, with the familiar 
 society of gods. 
 
 Perhaps few people received more from other coun- 
 tries than did the Greeks, and none appear to have 
 been more tenacious in the pretense that all their 
 attainments originated with themselves. Their first 
 knowledge of the healing art was exhibited among 
 the Pelasgic populations of Thessalia and the Pelopon- 
 nesos. Accordingly we find traditions of a King Apis 
 reigning in Argos, as having been the first physician. 
 As if to confuse the story beyond credibility, one 
 legend makes him a descendant of Okeanos; a second, 
 the son of Apollo, the god of healing, and a third as 
 the colonizer of Egypt, afterward commemorated by 
 the Sacred Bull.* It is sufficient for us to understand 
 the myth as signifying that the art of medicine in 
 Greece was coeval with the earliest civilization of the 
 country. 
 
 * It is significant that the syllable Ap appears in the names of the medical gods 
 of Greece. Thus we have ApoWo, Askl/T^ios, or perhaps more correctly. Aisku- 
 la/ius, and the name of Apia for the whole Morean peninsula.
 
 40 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Apolld was the favorite god of the Greeks. Under 
 Asiatic and Libyan influence, Poseidon had been origi- 
 nally worshipped, and the Pelasgic Zeus. With the 
 revolutions of the archaic period, which subverted the 
 basileis, or priest-kings, and substituted the commons' 
 kings or tyrants, the new Zeus of Olympus, the son of 
 Kronos, became the Supreme Divinity. The cult of 
 Apollo was made a part of the new worship, and the 
 son of Zeus was commemorated as the god of music, 
 poetry and divination, and the physician of the gods. 
 Paieon, however, of the older gods is set forth in the 
 y//d;^ as curing the wound of the god Ares, received 
 from Diomedes, and Pluto, when pierced in the 
 shoulder by Heraklds. The Odysseia also declares the 
 Egyptian physicians skilled above all, "for truly they 
 are of the race of Paieon." In honor of Apollo as the 
 god smiting with death, and restoring to health, the 
 hymns chanted in his praise every seventh day of the 
 month were called pczans. 
 
 The Northern Pelasgic myths ascribed the primitive 
 development of the art to a wise personage of Thes- 
 salia, Kheiron. The tribe to which he belonged, the 
 Kentaurs, has been the theme of many fables and the 
 subject of much conjecture. It was common to depict 
 them after the manner of Assyrian sphinxes or 
 cherubs, as human figures above and horses below. 
 Probably it was only a mode of rebus in picture-writ- 
 ing to indicate them as the progeny of the Hippoi, the 
 priests of the goddess Hippa or Rhea among the Mag- 
 netes, as the poet Pindaros has described their origin. 
 The name Kentaur may have been formed, however, 
 from the Semitic terms kahen and tur, and so mean a 
 ]-»riest of the rock-sanctuary. This would be appro- 
 priate for the wise Kheiron, but hardly so well for his
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 4I 
 
 more warlike countrymen. Those who are skillful in 
 deriving every race and custom in Greece from Indian 
 sources, have attempted to trace them from the Gan- 
 d'harvas of Indian fable. Mr, E. Pococke, who is often 
 more plausible, although more imaginative, declares 
 them to have been "Kand'haurs, or emigrants from 
 Kandahar," and akin, as their peculiarities show, to 
 the Catti and Rajputs. The Charon was the sage and 
 counsellor of the tribe. This description tallies with 
 that of Kheiron,* the instructor of Jason the Argonaut, 
 of Herakles, Asklepios and Akhilleus. His abode was 
 in a Sacred Cave, to which all resorted, and mythopoeic 
 lore describes him as the son of Kronos by a Hippeian 
 mother. Two of his pupils, Akhilles and Asklepios 
 were famous for their knowledge and skill in healing. 
 His art seems to have received from him its ancient 
 name, kheirourgike, and the practitioners of Thessalia, 
 were designated at Kheironidae. They even asserted 
 that Kheiron was the ancestor of their family. 
 
 Asklepios or ^sculapius appears to have superseded 
 all the other hero-gods as patron of the healing art. 
 Although the name as well as traditions imply a Pel- 
 asgic origin, he originated beyond the Mediterranean. 
 His Asiatic character is indicated by the symbol or 
 totem by which he was often represented, the serpent 
 upon the stauros or tree of life. In all the East, in 
 Africa and aboriginal America, the healing art was 
 denoted by this figure, the coluber, royal asp, the 
 hooded snake or the rattlesnake. Even the Greek 
 artists who changed the archaic methods, represented 
 the god as an old man with a staff or wand encircled 
 
 * II has been suigested thit the name Kheiron was derived from kJirir, the 
 hand; ami therefore, that the legend sii;niriis th-it the healing art as represented 
 fey him, was chiefly exercised by manipulation, both in the forms of massage and 
 mesmerism. It is apparent that such was the fact.
 
 42 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 by the sacred animal. Hygieia, his daughter, also had 
 a bowl in which the serpent was feeding, or it was 
 coiled around her body and arm. The Tyrians repre- 
 sented the altars with serpents winding round them, 
 or emerging from the receptacle beneath. Even the 
 nahash of the Garden of Eden was ^sculapian. In the 
 dramas of the Asian and Samothrokian mysteries, the 
 demigod was represented as beloved of the Great 
 Mother, self-mutilated, dying and resuscitated again 
 to new life. In Greece his temples had always a ser- 
 pent and its progeny for tenants. When a new shrine 
 was dedicated, a serpent was brought from Epidavros. 
 Ovid relates the account of an embassy from Rome to 
 obtain " the god ^sculapius" for that city, and the mi- 
 raculous circumstances attendant upon their mission. 
 
 Grecian vanity, however, required that the god 
 should be naturalized. Accordingly, the theologists 
 represented him as the son of Apollo the healer. 
 Several temples were designated as his birthplaces ; 
 the principal ones being in Messenia, Thessalia and at 
 Epidavros in Argolis. One legend described him as 
 born in the form of a serpent from the Q^gg of a raven. 
 Another declares him the son of the god by the maid 
 Kordnis, and that he became the ward of Kheiron. 
 He accompanied the other hero-gods on the Argonau- 
 tic expedition, and receiving from Perseus some of the 
 blood of Medusa, performed marvellous cures with it, 
 even restoring the dead to life. For this he was j^ut 
 to death by Zeus himself. 
 
 Homer and the other poets describe his children as 
 inheriting the sacred art. Makhaon was skilled as an 
 operating surgeon and Podaleirios as a physician. 
 Both had their shrines and received homage as gods. 
 The daughters were likewise honored as divine. Their
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 43 
 
 names, Hygieia or health, Aiglaia or radiant virtue, 
 Panakeia the all-healing, and laso the savior from ill, 
 indicate the ^-Esculapian art to have included not only 
 medicine and operative surgery, but every means of 
 preserving the body and restoring it to soundness. 
 
 The healing function was regarded as an attribute 
 of divinity itself. Not only were Kheiron, Asklepios 
 and his children enrolled in the pantheon, and com- 
 memorated by appropriate rites of worship, but the 
 greater deities are described by Homer and other poets 
 as exercising the physician's office. When Diomedes 
 was wounded, the warrior Sthenelos extracted the 
 arrow from his shoulder, and Pallas-Athena breathe 
 into hirn a healing energy which removed all his hurt. 
 He engaged again in conflict, wounding the goddess 
 Aphrodite in the wrist and Ares in the breast below 
 the neck. The god of war recovered under the care 
 of Paion and the goddess was healed by her mother, 
 Dione, who touched the place with her finger. Hektor, 
 the illustrious Trojan chieftain, crushed by a rock 
 hurled by Aias (Ajax) was also restored to life and 
 soundness by Apollo. 
 
 Homer also describes the Grecian chiefs at the siege 
 of Troy as skillful in the healing art. Podaleirios, the 
 son of the Thessalian Asklepios, cared for his brother 
 Makhaon, whose dangerous wound had filled the whole 
 Akhaian camp with dismay. The latter, when Mene- 
 laos was wounded, extracted the arrow, cleansed the 
 injured place and applied healing balsams which his 
 father had obtained from Kheiron. Patroklos in like 
 manner treated Euryplos. 
 
 "As taught by Achilles, who had learned 
 The art from Chiron, righteous in his day, 
 Beyond the other Centaurs."
 
 44 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Pliny had asserted that in that archaic period the 
 art of healing was confined to the treatment of wounds. 
 Even Plato declares that the god considered medical 
 treatment ill bestowed where the patient was not 
 capable of a perfect recovery. Other writers describe 
 the ^sculapian method as consisting of magic or 
 mesmeric agencies, medicines, and surgical appliances. 
 Pindaros writes as follows : 
 
 "Some spells brought back to life ; 
 These drank the potion planned ; for these he bound 
 With drugs the aching wound ; 
 Some leaped to strength beneath the helpful knife." 
 
 With the adoption of the Argive Asklepios as the god 
 of healing, his worship was engrafted upon the initia- 
 tions of the Eleusinia. After the Greater Mysteries 
 were over, the orgies of the god of Epidavros were 
 celebrated upon the eighth day. Sokrates referred to 
 these rites in his dying words : "We owe the cock to 
 yEsculapius." The worship of this god had then 
 extended over Greece and into neighboring countries. 
 The temples were hospitals for the reception and treat- 
 ment of the sick. The Askl^piads, a gens or caste of 
 initiated priests, ministered at the various shrines and 
 treated the maladies of all who sought their aid. 
 
 As every sacerdotal body in ancient times was a 
 secret order having a free-masonry of its own, the 
 ^Esculapian fraternity exercised a like exclusiveness. 
 Fathers instructed their children and teachers their 
 pupils, but only as members of an oath-bound brother- 
 hood, incurring the penalties of the out-caste for any 
 violation of the compact. In time, there came to be 
 two distinct classes of practitioners, the Askl6piads, 
 who possessed the religious and occult learning, and 
 the iatroi who had not been initiated, but were able
 
 ARCHAIC MEDICINE. 45 
 
 from there skill and deftness in treatment, to practice 
 the art successfully. The latter were often slaves, or 
 low-caste men, that were allowed to treat patients in 
 public dispensaries, or such as were too poor to avail 
 themselves of the more costly services. 
 
 The Asklepiads, following the archaic usage, pro- 
 fessed to be lineal descendents of their ancestral god. 
 They even preserved genealogies to prove the claim. 
 Even Hippokrates and the historian Ktesias, as late 
 the Persian period, prided themselves on this divine 
 origin of the families to which they belonged. It 
 would seem as though Hippokrates, by committing 
 his knowledge to writing had disregarded his sacer- 
 dotal obligation, or else we must suppose that he only 
 wrote upon such subjects as others were permitted to 
 to learn. Doubtless, this was the case. Plato in the 
 Republic severely criticises the necessity in a common- 
 wealth for physicians, and castigates Herodikos for 
 having adopted methods different from those of the 
 Asklepiads. Yet no modern civilized State would 
 tolerate the practitioner who should neglect or destroy 
 the life of a patient because of his inability to recover 
 or unfitness to live. 
 
 In the ancient historic period, it became impossible 
 finally to maintain a sacerdotal healing caste. Even 
 the spurious oath which was imputed to Hippokrates 
 was not respected. The famous school of Alexandria 
 seems to have been instrumental in breaking down 
 the wall of partition between the sacred and profane 
 — the Asklepiads and those who were physicians by 
 virtue of culture and native endowment. Medicine 
 as a pursuit implies all this ; aspiring beyond the lust 
 of power, it is the art of doing good to men.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 
 
 Mr. Grote considers the historic period, apart from 
 the illusions of legend, as commencing in Greece with 
 the first Olympiad, 776 years before the present era. 
 In other countries the period may have been some- 
 what earlier, but this date will answer the purpose. 
 At this time the Hellenic national and religious insti- 
 tutions had generally superseded the Pelasgian. All 
 over the world a spirit of unrest was in motion, and 
 change seems to have been imiversal. 
 
 The traditions of the Heroic Age, as appears from 
 Homer, ascribed everything indicative of artistic skill 
 and superior mental attainment to the Phoenicians. 
 They included under this name all the East, Egypt, 
 Assyria and the Khetan countries, as well as Sidon 
 and the other cities of the Levant. The "older gods," 
 Poseidon, Kronos, Rhea, and the Mysteries were from 
 this region, preceding the later divinities of Olympus. 
 
 The healing art was also to be traced to Oriental 
 sources. The Iliad, to be sure, represents that Paeeon 
 was the physician of the gods, but the Odyssey declares 
 that the Egyptian practitioners were of his race. 
 Another poet asserts that it was the god Phoebus- 
 Apollo from whom "physicians have learned the art 
 of delaying death." Even as early as Homer, however,
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 47 
 
 the Oriental divinity Esmun or Bal-Zebul, was already 
 naturalized in Thessalia and the Morean peninsula, as 
 Asklepios (^sculapius), the son of Apollo ; and he 
 presently became the patron god of healing among all 
 Greek-speaking people. He was worshipped with 
 secret rites at Triakka in Thessaly, at Kos, at Knidos 
 in Asia Minor, and in many parts of Greece, but 
 especially at Epidavros; so that more than one legend 
 has sprung up* respecting his adventures. (Grote). 
 The symbols and images of yEsculapius were duly 
 subjected, as far as practicable, to the manipulations 
 of Hellenic art. The squat figure peculiar to him in 
 his earlier character as one of the Kabeirian gods of 
 Egypt, and the composite symbolic forms employed 
 in other Asian countries, were changed to more sym- 
 metric human shapes. We find him accordingly rep- 
 resented somewhat like his counterparts, the Eastern 
 Bacchus and the Kretan Zeus. Of course the serpent 
 and often the dog were retained ; without the sacred 
 animal the delineation would not be complete. A 
 dwarf figure like at that Samothrakia, however, was 
 kept in a hidden recess. On the coins of Epidavros, 
 he was exhibited as an infant nursed by the goat and 
 guarded by the dog. At Korinth and several other 
 places he had the figure of a child holding in one hand 
 the sceptre, and in the other a fir-cone after the man- 
 ner of the Assyrian worship. He was also depicted as 
 a man of mature years, bald, with a flowing beard, and 
 partly covered by his robe, holding the knotted magic 
 staff encircled by the serpent. Sometimes the animal 
 was coiled in the form of a bowl as though to represent 
 the mystic cup of Hygeia. Not unfrequently he was 
 
 * Herodotus declares that the Greeks reckon the nativity of gods from the time 
 when the first knowledge of them was acquired in Greece.
 
 48 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 represented by the serpent alone, and in every 
 Askldpion a living serpent was maintained as his 
 simulacrum. 
 
 The Hieron or holy precinct at Epidavros was long 
 the most famous. It contained a sanctuary, a park or 
 sacred grove, and a theatre capable of holding twelve 
 thousand spectators. Kds, however, was more honored 
 at a subsequent period. Pergamos, the mountain-city 
 of Asia minor, was also famous for its Asklepion, as 
 well as its great library and school of learning. The 
 symbol of the god was a metallic serpent twined itpon 
 a pole like the brazen serpent of the Book of Numbers. 
 At the various temples the Asklepia or festivals of the 
 god were celebrated ; and his priests, the Asklepiads, 
 presided at the altars and initiations. 
 
 The temples were thronged with the sick as well as 
 with worshippers. Only the initiated, however, might 
 enter the sacred precinct, except by permission of the 
 superintending priest. This was granted on condition 
 of undergoing a religious purification, or in other 
 words, the preliminary initiations. Fasting, absti- 
 nence from wine, and bathing were strictly enjoined. 
 Mesmerism and massage were among the chief 
 agencies depended upon. Sleep-houses were always 
 provided and great diligence employed to ascertain 
 whether the patients, when in the hypnotic or clair- 
 voyant condition, had received any suggestion in 
 regard to their treatment. The medicinal means 
 generally consisted of roots, herbs and a careful 
 regimen, together with the various ceremonies, incan- 
 tations and other magic observances. 
 
 It was not attempted, however, to cure persons 
 thoroughly diseased. "Asklepios did not think," 
 Plato informs us, " that a man ought not to be cured,
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 49 
 
 who could not live m the ordinary course, as in that 
 case he would be of no service." Incurables v^^ere 
 carefully excluded from the temples. It was usual 
 when a sick person failed of recovery, to lay the blame 
 upon him instead of upon the treatment. The priest- 
 physician declared to hirti that his unbelief and sins 
 were the cause of failure, or else some ordinance of 
 fate. 
 
 The priests of ^sculapius, the Asklepiads, took sole 
 charge of everything relating to his temples. They 
 were hereditary orders, professing to be lineal 
 descendants of the divinity. Even the Romans, when 
 they imported this worship, established the gens of 
 Acilius as the lineage of the god. It was asserted that 
 they possessed occult knowledge imparted by yEscu- 
 lapius himself. Parents communicated the art to their 
 children, but to impart to any one not of the race and 
 duly initiated was regarded as an act of impiety. 
 "The holy word may only be revealed to the initiated" 
 was the law recorded by Hippokrates ; " the profane 
 may not receive it before initiation." The traditionary 
 form of the oath contains an execration of short life 
 calamity and opprobrium, if the candidate should 
 profane or popularize the knowledge by revealing it 
 to anyone except the children of his teachers, and 
 disciples obligated by this oath and stipulation, accord- 
 ing to the laws of the medical caste. 
 
 It has been thought by some that the Asklepiads 
 were not members of the sacerdotal order. The fact, 
 however, that they had, like other priesthoods, rites 
 of their own and occult doctrines for the initiated, iu 
 enough to set that question at rest. Greece had not 
 in the historic period a caste of priests like Asiatie 
 countries; but none the less there were ministrants at
 
 50 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 the various shrines, and they professed, as at Eleusis, 
 to receive their authority by hereditary descent from 
 the first attendants at the worship of the divinity. 
 The Asklepiads were the traditional sons of ^scula- 
 pius, and constituted a special class, officiating at the 
 sanctuaries of the divinity and obligated to preserve 
 intact his mysteries. 
 
 Their maintenance was derived from the bounty of 
 their patrons. While in later days the iatrists were 
 paid by salaries and stipulated compensations, the 
 Asklepia were supported by the munificence of the 
 grateful. Presents and honoraria were bestowed, 
 sometimes as offerings to the god and sometimes 
 more directly to his priests : it was all the same. 
 Sometimes patients in the sleeping halls, who had not 
 bee" successfully hypnotized, beheld the proxies of 
 the divinity in the act of gathering the votive offer- 
 ings in a bag. Next day, however, it was annoimced 
 that ..^sculapius had borne them away in person. A 
 cock was the usual sacrifice, sometimes a goat, but 
 vessels of gold and silver, paintings and works of art, 
 facsimiles of the parts of the body that had been 
 diseased, of more or less valuable material, were com- 
 mon. Aristides sent to the temple at Pergamos a 
 silver tripod with images upon it to represent yEscu- 
 lapius himself, Hygieia and the dwarf-simulacrum, 
 Telesphoros, the symbolic figure of the secret rites. 
 In later centuries, the treasuries of these shrines 
 tempted the cupidity of conquering generals. Sylla, 
 the Roman consul, emptied the coffers at Epidavros 
 to obtain money for the war against Mithradates. 
 Pergamos was also compelled to submit to heavy 
 contributions. 
 
 A practice of these sanctuaries consisted in the
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 5 1 
 
 inscribing upon tablets the name and history of every 
 sick patient, and an account of the disease, mode of 
 treatment and remedies employed. It was also cus- 
 tomary to engrave the name and description of 
 remedies, particularly of those more recently dis- 
 covered, upon the door-posts and columns of the 
 temple-hospitals. One man left on record an antidote 
 for the poison of venomous serpents; another, a gold- 
 smith, bequeated to the Asklepion at Ephesos the 
 formula of a lotion for the eyes for sufferers who had 
 been abandoned by human aid. Surgical instruments 
 were also presented; Eristratos offered an instrument 
 ■for the extraction of teeth. 
 
 Rome having been for centuries without a caste or 
 profession of physicians, sent an embassy about three 
 centuries before the present era to Epidavros to bring 
 away the ^sculapius to Rome. The legend describes 
 a serpent as making his way from the temple to the 
 city, going aboard the Roman galley, and debarking 
 at an island in the river Tiber, where a temple was 
 at once consecrated to his worship. A company of 
 Asklepiads accompanied the expedition to the new 
 sanctuary. The shrine was greatly celebrated and the 
 Emperor Claudius decreed that all slaves healed at the 
 place should become free. Pliny, ^lianus and Galen 
 have recorded some of the curative agents employed. 
 
 The Asklepiads continued in existence till the sub- 
 version of the ancient worship. The temple of Knidos 
 was closed by the Emperor Constantine. There is a 
 tradition also that St. Hilarios destroyed the JEscula- 
 pian serpent at Epidavros. As the legends of the 
 period abound with stories of Christian missionaries 
 destroying serpents, we need only include this with 
 the others, alike fictitious and alike enigmatic.
 
 52 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The medical art, however, did not remain through 
 this period confined to a privileged and protected class. 
 The seventh, and more particularly the sixth century, 
 before the present era, were characterized by a gen- 
 eral unrest, and by great political and even religious 
 changes. The Pelasgic predominance generally came 
 to an end in Greece ; the old dynasties were superseded 
 by other forms of government ; new divinities and 
 modes of worship were introduced ; schools of philos- 
 ophy came into existence, and everything exemplified 
 the advancing trend of thought. The sacerdotal class 
 was made subordinate; human sacrifices were generally 
 discontinued ; and religion became not only mantic 
 and enthusiastic, but popularized. The healing art 
 participated in the revolution. It was taught in the 
 schools of philosophy, at first under the old obligation 
 of secrecy, but with the dissolution of the Pythagorean 
 brotherhood, its arcane, medical as well as scientific, 
 were made public. latreia or hospitals were estab- 
 lished in the principal Grecian states, and physicians 
 appointed by the government to take charge of them. 
 These employed slave-doctors to attend to those of 
 their own class, while they themselves cared for those 
 in better circumstances. 
 
 In the more liberal atmosphere of the colonies, 
 Magna Graecia, Sicily and Kyrene, philosophic learn- 
 ing enjoyed freedom and opportunity beyond what 
 existed in Greece and Asia Minor. Xenophanes 
 accordingly established his school in Sicily, and Pyth- 
 agoras another at Kroton in Italy. For more than two 
 centuries, the medical practitioners from the colonies 
 surpassed those from the schools of the Asklepiads 
 of Kos and Knidos, in reputation and professional 
 skill.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 53 
 
 DEMOKEDES. 
 
 Herodotus has related the story of Demokedes, with 
 the circumstance and embellishment of a tale in the 
 Thousand and One Nights. It illustrates the changes 
 that were taking place. Demokedes was a native of 
 Kroton, and during his youth had prosecuted the study 
 of medicine. Unwilling to endure the severe temper 
 of his father, he left Italy and sailed to .i^^^gina. Here 
 he began the practice of his art ; and although desti- 
 tute of instruments and other necessary appliances, 
 he quickly surpassed the best-skilled physicians of the 
 place. The next year, the commonwealth appointed 
 him archiatrist or State-physician, at the salary of a 
 talent — about %i,2oo. The year after the Athenians 
 secured him at a higher price — $2,000, and the fourth 
 year, Polykrates, the monarch of Samos, engaged him 
 for two talents. " It was in no small measure from his 
 success," says Herodotus, *' that the Krotonians came 
 to be reckoned such good physicians ; for about this 
 period the physicians of Kroton had the name of being 
 the best, and those of Kyrene, the second best in all 
 Greece." 
 
 Polykrates was afterward treacherously murdered 
 by the Persian satrap Oroetes, and those who accom- 
 panied him were consigned to slavery. Of this num- 
 ber was the physician. Dareios Hystaspis having 
 succeeded to the throne of Persia, commanded Oroetes 
 to be put to death. His property, including slaves and 
 treasures, were brought to Susa. 
 
 The Persian kings at this time, kept Egyptian phy- 
 sicians at their court, as well as magicians and native 
 practitioners. One day Dareios leaped from his horse, 
 while hunting, and dislocated his foot. The Egyp-
 
 54 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 tians were unable to relieve him, and for a week he 
 was sleepless from the pain. Some one then told him 
 of Demokedes, who was immediately brought to him, 
 fettered and in the dress of a slave. The Greek feared 
 that if he should make known his skill and perform a 
 successful operation, he would be detained in captivity. 
 In the ancient belief, before philosophy had changed 
 it, banishment from one's country was regarded as 
 equivalent to capital punishment. Even Sokrates 
 chose instead to drink the hemlock. Accordingly 
 Demokedes pretended to be totally ignorant of surgery. 
 The king sent for officers to come with scourges and 
 pricking-irons. The Greek hesitated no longer. He 
 first proceeded by the use of appropriate remedies to 
 alleviate the pain ; and after the king had become 
 recruited by sleep, he reduced the dislocation and suc- 
 ceeded in restoring the limb to its normal state. 
 
 The king had despaired of a cure, and in his joy 
 conferred every honor upon the physician. Demokedes 
 was introduced to the Sultanas as the preserver of the 
 king. Each of them presented him with a plate heaped 
 with gold coin. A slave became rich by picking up 
 the pieces that dropped. He was also promoted to the 
 post of royal physician, and admitted to the honor of 
 sitting at the royal table. No man stood so high in 
 favor. Dareios had commanded that the unskillful 
 Egyptians should be impaled on the stauros, but at his 
 entreaty spared their lives. When, however, his own 
 wishes stood in the way, he was less generous. 
 
 CURING A CANCER. 
 
 " Moreover," says Herodotus, " it happened that 
 Atossa [Hadassah ?] the daughter of Cyrus who was 
 married to Dareios, had a boil form upon her breast,
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 55 
 
 which after it burst, began to spread and increase. 
 Now as long as the sore was of no great size, she hid 
 it through shame, and made no mention of it to any- 
 one, but when it became worse, she sent at last for 
 Uemokedes, and showed it to him. Demokedes said 
 he could make her well, but she must first promise him, 
 with an oath, that if he cured her she would grant him 
 whatever request he might prefer. On these terms he 
 applied his art and soon cured the abscess." 
 
 Atossa not only recovered perfectly but became the 
 mother of Xerxes and several other children, outliving 
 her husband and exercising great influence in the 
 reign of her son. 
 
 Demokedes had entreated permission to return 
 home. Knowing, however, that the Persian king 
 would not grant the request, he instructed the queen 
 to propose the conquering of Greece. At her sugges- 
 tion, he was sent by Dareios with an expedition to 
 make a preliminary survey, and on arriving at Taren- 
 tura, succeeded in effecting his escape. He returned 
 at once to Kroton, and married the daughter of Milo 
 the famous athlete and disciple of Pythagoras. 
 
 Herodotus probably received this account after he 
 had become a resident of Italy, from the family of the 
 physician. It may have been exaggerated. Dareios, 
 certainly made no attempt against Greece till he had 
 first invaded the country north of the Danube. It is 
 true, however, that from that time Greek physicians 
 were kept at the Persian court. 
 
 EMINENT TEACHERS OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The early philosophers made medical lore a part of 
 their knowledge. Pythagoras had acquired it with the 
 other mystic learning of the Egyptian priests. He
 
 56 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 seems to have given the preference to external medi- 
 cation, but many of his followers were skillful in the 
 treatment of internal diseases. Alkmaeon, who was a 
 disciple at the school of Kroton, afterward gained a 
 high reputation as a philosopher and naturalist. He 
 possessed a considerable knowledge of anatomy, and 
 wrote several medical works. His treatise upon human 
 physiology was supposed to be the most ancient of 
 which we have any knowledge. 
 
 Empedokles of Sicily was also a student of the 
 Pythagorean school, and displayed such skill in the 
 healing art that many believed his powers to be super- 
 human. It was declared that he restored a woman to 
 life who had lain thirty days apparently dead ; that 
 he arrested a pestilenceby turning the waters through 
 a stagnant marsh; and that he delivered a district 
 from the ravages of sirocco by closing up a passage 
 between two mountains. He believed that races of 
 living animals, under favorable conditions, would 
 spring up even from the earth. 
 
 Akron, the fellow-townsman of Empedokles, was 
 held by that philosopher in utter detestation. He 
 seems to have been a kind of Aristophanes, and to 
 have attempted to cast ridicule upon the writings of 
 the sage. He has been regarded by many as the 
 founder of the school of Empii-ic physicians, but this 
 claim is somewhat premature. He was, however, a 
 Periodentes, or visiting physician, making stated calls 
 upon his patients, in order to observe their symptoms 
 and treat them accordingly. He visited Athens at the 
 time of the great plague, and by causing fires to be 
 built near the sick and in unwholesome places, greatly 
 benefited many. He was the author of several medi- 
 cal works that were highly esteemed.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 57 
 
 Anaxagoras of Klazomenae, the friend of Perikles, 
 was also distinguished for the profoundness of his 
 speculations, and his superior attainments in physical 
 science. His views upon medicine and human physi- 
 ology, however, are widely at variance with those 
 developed in later times. 
 
 Demokritos of Abdera appears to have had much to 
 do with the moulding of subsequent opinions. He 
 was an indefatigable student, and accomplished in the 
 learning of his age, religious, philosophic and scien- 
 tific. His countrymen having entertained Xerxes on 
 his return from Greece, the king bestowed upon them 
 royal honors, and left several Mazdean teachers to 
 instruct them in the Oriental learning and doctrines.* 
 The young Demokritos was among their disciples. 
 His father dying, he was left in the possession of a rich 
 patrimony, which he at once devoted to the acquiring 
 of knowledge. He travelled from country to country, 
 to Italy, Egypt and the East, listened to the teachers of 
 philosophy, and finally returned home a master in all 
 departments of learning. He became himself a teacher, 
 introducing new concepts of natural law and opera- 
 tion, as well as of the virtues and properties of medi- 
 cinal plants and various mineral bodies. He gave a 
 new impulse to research in every field. 
 
 MEDICAL PRACTICE AT ATHENS. 
 
 As has been already shown, there were several 
 classes of physicians in Athens. The Republic took 
 care to provide that every one should receive needed 
 medical attention. The Paeonion at the Peirasus and 
 the Asklepion in the city were time-honored sanctu- 
 aries, which were frequented by patients of noble 
 
 * Dareios was a propagandisiof the worship of Ahura Mazda in his dominions.
 
 58 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 birth, and others who had been admitted to the wor- 
 ship of ^Esculapius. In addition there were the iatreia 
 or dispensaries for the commonalty and slave popula- 
 tion. These were in charge of the public physicians, 
 appointed by the Ekklesia or General Assembly f^i the 
 people. Demokedes held the office a year in the time 
 of the Peisistratidse, but under the commonwealth the 
 number of these physicians appears to have increased. 
 After the Persian invasion Athens had a larger popu- 
 lation, and doubtless the imperfect sanitary regula- 
 tions, and the Great Plague in the time of Perikles, 
 made more extensive provision for gratuitous medical 
 treatment necessary. 
 
 Plato decried severely the demand for these institu- 
 tions. "Numerous law-courts and dispensaries are 
 necessary," he said, "because insubordination and 
 diseases have multiplied in the commonwealth. Can 
 you adduce any greater proof of bad and shameful 
 training," he demands, " than the fact of needing 
 physicians and presiding magistrates — and these, too, 
 not only for craftsmen of the lower classes, but also 
 for those who boast of having been well brought up ? 
 * * * And to need the art of medicine, not on 
 account of wounds or some epidemic complaint, but 
 because of sloth and luxurious feeding, — being dis- 
 tended with rheum and flatulence like lakes, and 
 obliging the scholarly Asklepiads to invent new names 
 for the diseases, such as dropsies and catarrhs — do you 
 not think this abominable ? " 
 
 The philosopher was conservative in his views far 
 beyond what would be tolerated at the present time. 
 He was himself carefully instructed in the art of 
 medicine, as it was taught at Kroton and Kyrene, and 
 was thoroughly familiar with the learning of the Ask-
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 59 
 
 lepiads. "Before the time of Herodikos," he remarks, 
 "the Asklepiads did not practice the methods now in 
 use, of putting the patient on a regimen. Herodikos, 
 being a teacher of young men, and himself in weak 
 health, devised a skillful combination of gymnastics 
 and medicine, which served first to render himself 
 very uncomfortable, and afterward many others 
 besides. He succeeded in procuring for himself a 
 lingering death. He was constantly attending to his 
 disease, which was mortal, and therefore impossible 
 to cure. He neglected everything else, that he might 
 employ constant medical treatment, and was always 
 in trouble if he departed in the least from his usual 
 diet. Thus he passed his life, engaged in a long 
 struggle with death, and succeeded by this peculiar 
 skill of his in arriving at old age." 
 
 ^sculapius himself, the philosopher declares, re- 
 garded these matters in a far different light. He 
 treated those only that were still virtually sound but 
 chanced to be afflicted by some incidental complaint. 
 For them he prescribed medicine, but ordered no 
 change of the usual diet. But systems thoroughly 
 diseased, he did not attempt to cure. He did not 
 think that a man who could not live in the ordinary 
 course ought to be cured, as he would be of no service 
 to himself or to the community. 
 
 A description of the practitioners may be of interest. 
 "There are two kinds of physicians, the gentler and 
 the ruder, and two modes of medicating," he remarks, 
 " In other words, there are physicians, and their assist- 
 ants ; but somehow we call the latter class physicians 
 likewise. Whether these assistants are free men 
 or slaves, they acquire their knowledge of the art 
 empiricallv fr')m obeying their masters and observing
 
 6o HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 their methods. With the others the art is a hereditary 
 possession, and is taug;ht as such by free men to their 
 children." "From childhood upward, while learning 
 their art, they gain experience from a large number 
 of patients, and these of a very sickly character. They 
 do this the more thoroughly, if they are themselves 
 afflicted with all kind of maladies, and are not alto- 
 gether of a healthy constitution. It is not by the body 
 however, that they cure the body," he adds ; "but they 
 cure the body by the soul, and if this is in a disordered 
 condition, it is incapable of accomplishing any cure 
 whatever." 
 
 The slave-doctors were employed to do the most 
 unattractive part of the work. They waited upon the 
 callers at the dispensaries, or went from one house to 
 another to prescribe for sick domestics. "A physician 
 of this class," Plato remarks, "never talks to his 
 patients individually or lets them talk about their 
 individual complaints. He prescribes as he sees fit, 
 as though he knew everything about the case ; gives 
 orders after the manner of a tyrant, and then hurries 
 away to another of his sick patients." On the other 
 hand, a free-born practitioner discourses with a free- 
 born patient, making use of speculations of a philo- 
 sophic character, describing the disorder from its very 
 commencement, together with its pathology, and illus- 
 trating the subject by comparison with other cases. 
 '• If," says Plato, "during such a discussion, one of 
 these physicians who practice medicine empirically, 
 knowing nothing of speculative research, should 
 encounter such a practitioner, he would burst into 
 laughter and speak to him in no other language than 
 is ready to be uttered to the majority of the so-called 
 physicians. He would say: 'You stupid dolt! you
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 6l 
 
 are not treating the sick patient, but are imparting to 
 him instruction, almost as though he was desiring to 
 become a physician and not to be in health.' " 
 
 From this time onward to the later centuries, the 
 history of medicine comprises the doctrines of great 
 teachers, and the exploits and rivalries of the various 
 schools and parties. 
 
 HIPPOKRATES. 
 
 Philosophic speculation had led to the development 
 of new views in all the principal fields of thought. So 
 long as the teachers exhibited an external assimilation 
 to the general sentiment of the commonalty, they 
 could enjoy the utmost liberty of belief in their schools 
 and private discussions, apart from the public. In this 
 way various opinions were considered, and eventually 
 great changes and even revolutions accomplished. 
 
 Among the eminent men of that time, Hippokrates 
 has always held a prominent rank. Partly from native 
 genius, but likewise from assiduous study and broad 
 culture, he became illustrious in his own age, and his 
 reputation extended through the centuries after him. 
 
 It is not easy, probably it is not necessary, to ascer- 
 tain to what extent Hippokrates was an innovator, or 
 the introducer of novel doctrines. He was a member 
 of the medical caste, that claimed a'Esculapius himself, 
 for their eponymous hero-ancestor. Like other Ask- 
 l^piads he was instructed at the temple-school of Kos, 
 an island in the Myrtoan Sea, colonized from Epidav- 
 ros. He next sojourned at Athens, where he became 
 a student of Herodikos of Selymbria, and attended the 
 lectures of the most distinguished sophists. Pie after- 
 ward returned to Kos, where he remained till the death 
 of his father. During this period he is said to have
 
 62 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 made copies of the tablets and book-rolls in the 
 Asklepia at Kos and Knidos ; and a scandal set 
 afloat in later centuries imputed to him the burn- 
 ing of those collections, in order that he might 
 supersede them by his own compilations. The 
 honors paid to him in later days by his fellow- 
 citizens, as well as the privileges granted by Athens 
 to Kos on his account, would seem to be a sufficient 
 refutation. 
 
 Hippokrates, like other ancient philosophers, trav- 
 eled over many different countries, sojourning at places 
 where epidemics were raging, and observing their 
 progress and characteristics. In this way he remained 
 with Demokritos at Abdera, when that city was suffer- 
 ing with a pestilential visitation. He was also at 
 Athens during a great plague, which he is said to have 
 arrested. Plato speaks of him as teaching medicine. 
 The Persian king, Artaxerxes Mnemon, attempted after 
 the manner common at that court, to procure his ser- 
 vices, offering him splendid presents, and threatening 
 war against Kos, in case he should not be delivered up. 
 Finally, he established himself in Thessalia, a country 
 famous ever since the days of Kheiron for medical 
 and "magical" knowledge. 
 
 Hippokrates achieved the distinction, which he has 
 since retained in medicine, by creating for it a litera- 
 ture. This made him and his art immortal. He was 
 a hero, not merely of the hour but of the ages. 
 Whether he struck out any new field of knowledge or 
 observation, is not a matter of certainty. His great- 
 ness consisted in his rare success in gathering up 
 what was known, tracing its resemblances and analyz- 
 ing its differences, and so combining all into a rational 
 method.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 63 
 
 He was a philosopher, and while personally familiar 
 with the principal sages of his time, hesitated not to 
 elaborate and propound his own dogmas. He was 
 profoundly religious, but he did not have that blind 
 veneration for things esteemed divine, which hindered 
 him from investigation into the nature and condition 
 of physical occurrences. All causes, he believed, were 
 of divine agency, but their operation waS directed by 
 constant laws and natural conditions. To explore 
 them, with a view to remedy evils and benefit man- 
 kind, was therefore not only lawful but a work of the 
 highest merit. 
 
 The Hippokratian school of medicine bore the desig- 
 nation of dogmaiic, or philosophic ; as teaching and 
 practicing in accordance with a general principle, and 
 not empirically. It placed the art upon a basis so firm 
 that later teachers have generally imitated and modi- 
 fied what was set forth, rather than venture iipon 
 new fields of enquiry. 
 
 Whether the obligation of secrecy was maintained 
 with the former strictness, is questionable. The 
 maxim has been imputed to Hippokrates : " vSacred 
 knowledge may be communicated only to the initiated; 
 the profane may not be taught before their initiation." 
 This, however, was the imperative rule before he was 
 born. It was accounted sacrilege for any to intrude 
 upon a priestly function. He was certain to meet the 
 fate of Korah, Uzzah and King Uzziah. It is certain 
 that Pythagoras, himself obligated in Egypt, initiated 
 all his disciples. But that there was any genuine 
 " Hippocratic oath," apart from the usual sacerdotal 
 requirement, is preposterous. The attempt was made 
 in later centuries, to impose such an obligation upon 
 medical students, but it was a failure. The Pythago-
 
 64 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 rean fraternity had dissolved while Hippokrates was 
 still a young man, and its members had made public 
 its learning, medical as well as metaphysical, astro- 
 nomic and mathematic. What Plato stated in regard 
 to the methods of Herodikos and the Askl6piads, 
 would seem to indicate that no obligation of secrecy 
 was then in existence. 
 
 Several endeavors have been made to ascertain and 
 classify the works of Hippokrates. The success has, 
 however, been problematic. It was the ancient prac- 
 tice for unknown authors to ascribe their works to 
 famous individuals who had lived before ; and for 
 imitators and copyists to insert their own utterances 
 into the texts of authors. The earlier periods of the 
 present era abound with such literature. Mercurialis 
 of Padua attempted the task, three centuries ago, 
 making four categories : i. Works distinctly Hippo- 
 cratic, being in the Doric language and "manifestly 
 authentic," 2. Works of Hippokrates published by 
 his sons and disciples. 3. Works written by others, 
 accordant with his doctrines and ascribed to him. 
 4. Works not in accord with his doctrines, but imputed 
 to him. Louis de Lemas of Portugal, writing about 
 the same time, rejected all but nineteen of these works 
 as spurious. Haller, however, would accept but fifteen 
 as genuine. Gruner threw all but ten ; and Grimm 
 makes the number still less. Professor Link of Berlin 
 is still more iconoclastic, and declares that the Works 
 of Hippokrates, as they are called, are but a collection 
 of treatises by different authors living before the 
 establishment of the school of Alexandria. 
 
 Doubtless, however, enough of his genuine writings 
 were extant at that time to enable his doctrines to be 
 very generally known. It is acknowledged that his
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 65 
 
 views outstripped those entertained in succeeding 
 ages. Galen credits him with the knowledge of 
 scientific anatomy, and asserts that the Asklepiads 
 generally were proficient. He was skillful in diagnosis 
 and in the art of prognosticating. His observations 
 upon "critical days" and the crises themselves are 
 remarkable for their acuteness and accuracy. He was 
 a careful uroscopist, and particular in noting the sputa, 
 coating of the tongue, evacuations, — also the general 
 appearances, the cast of the eyes, the increase or dimi- 
 nution of bulk, the breathing, mental condition and 
 phenomena. In acute disorders, he made great depend- 
 ence upon cooling drinks to further the natural repara- 
 tive action. He prescribed total abstinence from food 
 while a disorder was on the increase, and especially at 
 the critical period, and a spare diet on other occasions. 
 Yet at the same time he required strict attention to 
 the constitution as well as the habits of the patient in 
 regard to food and drink. He discouraged rapid 
 changes in habits and manner of living. Excesses of 
 all kinds were dangerous, and every bodily function 
 ought never to transgress the limits marked out by 
 nature. Those in health should abstain, he said, from 
 all kinds of medicme. He declared cathartics to be 
 the medicine most difficult for individuals to bear. 
 He also disapproved too strict a regimen, as being 
 more hurtful to a person in health than a freer mode 
 of living. In this respect, or in others, it will be seen 
 that he sets aside the methods of his teacher, Herodi- 
 kos, and adheres to the older ^sculapian notion. 
 
 The physician, he taught, should always observe 
 carefully and assist as he best was able the processes 
 of nature. His was the maxim: '■'■ Nature is the first of 
 physicians^ He was very careful not to interfere with
 
 66 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 what he considered reparative efforts, but on the other 
 hand endeavored to promote them. If they seemed 
 to him insufficient he stimulated them, and if in 
 excess, he sought to moderate them. 
 
 In the works ascribed to him, he is credited with a 
 Materia Medica of at least 586 different remedial 
 agents — ^6 mineral, 300 vegetable, and 150 animal 
 substances. His mineral remedies included alum and 
 several salts of lead and copper. The vegetable phar- 
 macopaeia embraced the white veratrum, laurel, 
 euphorbia, carthamos, elder, chenopodium, wild 
 parsley, etc. He seems also to have made great 
 use of honey and honeycomb, and figs were also 
 highly prized. 
 
 Considering the time and circumstances, Hippo- 
 krates appears to have possessed a very proficient 
 knowledge of surgery. He was skillful in the use of 
 bandages, and judicious in his treatment of fractures. 
 He devised several kinds of apparatus for curvature, 
 and the reducing of luxations ; and employed instru- 
 ments like the trephine for injuries of the head. 
 Another maxim attributed to him was certainly much 
 affected by later practitioners : " Those complaints 
 which medicine will not cure, iron will cure ; what 
 iron will not cure, fire will cure ; and what fire will 
 not cure are incurable." 
 
 Hippokrates did not reject philosophy or its meth- 
 ods. His early relations with the sophists and with 
 Demokritos, appear to have colored all his beliefs. 
 He was also more or less in harmony with Pythagoras 
 and the physical doctrines of Herakleitos, and he 
 religiously accepted the notion of supernal agency in 
 all visible operations. He considered it the proper 
 task of the enquirer to find out the laws and conditions
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 67 
 
 by which the agency of the divine beings was deter- 
 mined and according to which it might be foretold. 
 He also adopted with implicit confidence the old belief 
 in magical divination, prophetic dreams and clair- 
 voyance. Familiar as he was with the temple-sleep of 
 the Askl6pia, it was natural that he should fully con- 
 cur in these prevailmg opinions. "Even when the 
 eyes are closed," says he, " the soul sees everything 
 that goes forward in the body." Again, he is explicit : 
 " When the soul has been freed by sleep from the more 
 material bondage of the body it retires within itself, 
 as into a haven, where it is safe against storms. It 
 perceives and understands everything that is going on 
 around it, and represents this condition as if with 
 various colors and forms, and explains clearly the con- 
 dition of the body." 
 
 But the fame of Hippokrates is not founded on any 
 of the specific doctrines imputed to him. He was 
 great because of his breadth of knowledge, and because 
 he made that knowledge accessible to those who came 
 after him, without partiality and for the benefit of all. 
 
 KTESIAS. 
 
 The example of Demok^des was often repeated. 
 " How many there are," says Sokrates, ** whom the 
 King of Persia has caused to be carried away and still 
 keeps near him, merely on account of their talents, are 
 now languishing in perpetual bondage." We have 
 observed that Hippokrates was able to keep himself 
 aloof, although it involved his countrymen in peril. 
 Ktesias, of the rival school at Knidos, was conducted 
 to Susa and made court physician. He belonged to 
 the suite of Parysatis the queen-mother, and treated 
 Artaxerxes Mndmon for his wounds received at the
 
 68 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 battle of Kunaxa. Having access to the archives of 
 the Empire, he compiled histories of Persia, India and 
 Assyria, all of which are lost. It is known, however, 
 that he criticised and often disputed the statements 
 of Herodotus. He added nothing to the literature of 
 his order, doubtless observing the oath of secrecy. 
 
 ARISTOTLE. 
 
 The philosopher Aristotle was also a member of 
 an ^sculapian family. His father, Nikomakhos, had 
 been the physician of King Amyntas, the father of the 
 celebrated Philip, and was the author of several works 
 on Medicine and Natural History. Both parents of 
 Aristotle died while he was young, and he became the 
 ward and pupil of Proxenos of Mysia, whom he after- 
 ward recompensed like a true Asklepiad by adopting 
 and educating his son. At the age of seventeen he 
 went to Athens, where he remained twenty years. He 
 was at first a student of Plato at the Akademeia, but 
 afterward devoted himself to the branches of knowl- 
 edge which should fit him for the labors of his life. 
 After the death of Plato he left Athens and became 
 the tutor of Alexander. At his instance, this prince 
 employed several thousand collectors in Europe, Asia 
 and India to procure animals and specimens for his 
 studies. It was declared hyperbolically that an amount 
 of money equivalent to $Soo,ooo was expended for this 
 purpose. Aristotle, working with his usual energy, 
 made dissections and kept notes of his observations, 
 adding a multitude of important discoveries to medi- 
 cine and the accessory sciences. He compiled fifty 
 books upon comparative anatomy and natural history, 
 illustrating them with anatomical drawings. None
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 69 
 
 of them, however, have reached us. He also quar- 
 relled with his royal disciple, who, however, did tiot 
 withhold assistance to his labors. Returning to 
 Athens, Aristotle opened a School of Philosophy at 
 the Lykeion [Lyceum) where he lectured thirteen years. 
 Though less profound than Plato, and of a more scien- 
 tific tendency, his numerous literary productions made 
 him the principal leader of philosophic thought in 
 Europe and the Muslim world for centuries. 
 
 THEOPHRASTOS. 
 
 Tyrtamos, the Lesbian, first a disciple of Plato, and 
 afterward the favorite student of Aristotle, succeeded 
 the latter as the head of the Peripatetic School. His 
 superior eloquence and enunciation led his admirers 
 to bestow upon him the name by which he is best 
 known, Theophrasios, the divine instructor. The stu- 
 dents thronging his lectures were numbered by thou- 
 sands. Among them were Erasistratos and Niko- 
 makhos. The latter was the son of Aristotle, who 
 had made Theophrastos his guardian and preceptor. 
 Theophrastos was a voluminous writer, composing not 
 only various philosophic works, but likewise numerous 
 treatises upon mineralogy and other subjects. His 
 History of Plants, comprising nine books, was a com- 
 plete system of botany, as it was then known. He 
 also wrote upon medicine. 
 
 PRAXAGORAS. 
 
 Another distinguished Asklepiad, Praxagoras, of 
 Kos, added further to the vocabulary and literature of 
 Grecian medical learning. He made the distinction 
 between veins and arteries in the form which has 
 since been accepted by medical men. One of his
 
 70 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 notions gave intermittent fever its origin in the vena 
 cava, and he taught that the heart was the origin of 
 the ligaments of the body. He was a bold surgical 
 operator, removing the uvula in cases of inflamma- 
 tion, and opening the abdomen in iliac passion, that 
 he might restore the intestines to normal position. 
 
 CHRYSIPPOS. 
 
 Knidos in Karia, a colony from Epidavros, had also 
 a famous temple-school. Ktesias, the historian of 
 Persia, was from one of the Askl^piad families of that 
 city. Chrysippos was also in high repute for his skill 
 and erudition. He visited Egypt in the reign of 
 Nekhtanebos for instruction from the priest-phy- 
 sicians. He would be considered even now as worthy 
 to represent the advocates of safe and simple medica- 
 tion. He administered mild remedies and strenuously 
 opposed all forms of depletion. Pupils in great num- 
 bers resorted to him, some of whom outshone their 
 master. 
 
 ERASISTRATOS. 
 
 Erasistratos eflfected a revolution in the manner of 
 studying medicine. He was the grandson of Aristotle, 
 and inherited his passion for knowledge. He was a 
 native of the island of Keos, a place remarkable for 
 its custom under which the inhabitants at the age of 
 sixty put an end to their existence by drinking hem- 
 lock. Sokrates seems to have been in sympathy with 
 this practice ; for while denying the right of voluntary 
 suicide, he regarded his sentence to die as a not un- 
 welcome exemption from the infirmities often incident 
 to advancing age. Erasistratos became a pupil of 
 Chrysippos at the temple-school of Knidos, and also
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 7I 
 
 of Theophrastos. After spending .several years in his 
 native island, he accepted the appointment of court 
 physician to Seleukos the Conqueror. He was engaged 
 in charge of Prince Antiokhos (Soter) who was wasting 
 away with an unknown disease, of which other phy- 
 sicians failed to guess the nature or the cause. Era- 
 sistratos perceived, by a peculiar quickening of the 
 pulse whenever she appeared, that the prince was 
 madly enamored of his father's wife, Stratonik^, and 
 Seleukos was persuaded upon learning this to resign 
 her to his son. 
 
 The later career of Erasistratos was associated with 
 the establishing of the famous School of Philosophy 
 and Science at Alexandria by Ptolemy Soter. He for 
 a time engaged in the practice of medicine in that 
 metropolis but afterward abandoned it to give ex- 
 clusive attention to his duties as an instructor at the 
 Musaeum. He did not hesitate to depart from prece- 
 dent, even to setting aside the doctrines of Hippo- 
 krates and the Dogmatists, and founding a school of 
 his own. 
 
 He introduced new methods of teaching. Following 
 the example of his master Chrysippos, he cut loose 
 from Empiric precedent. He was the first writer that 
 distinguished Surgery from Medicine in the healing 
 art. He had, like others before him, confined his 
 investigations to the dissecting of the bodies of ani- 
 mals; but now he set at nought the Hellenic prejudice, 
 and engaged in dissections of the human body itself. 
 To his explorations we are indebted for an explana- 
 tion of the function of the brain and cerebro-spinal 
 system, and the discovery of the lacteal vessels, and 
 he appears likewise to have had some perception of 
 the circulation of the blood. He taught the existence
 
 72 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 of the pneuma or spiritual essence, and that it is inhaled 
 with the breath and passes from the lungs to the 
 arteries, becoming the vital principle of the body. Its 
 normal movement sustained the health ; while an 
 obstruction in the veins, repelled the blood to the 
 arteries, and became the cause of disease. 
 
 He reprobated the complicated formulas which were 
 then common among physicians. Like his tutor, 
 Chrysippos, whose procedures he largely adopted, he 
 discountenanced blood-letting, and the use of cathar- 
 tic medicines, depending upon the ligaturing of the 
 limbs, simple if not specific remedies, emetics and 
 enemas, with abstinence, to accomplish the desired 
 ends. At the same time he was a bold surgeon, open- 
 ing the abdomen in case of cancer, or abscess of the 
 liver or spleen, in order to apply remedies. He thus 
 held in turn the office of court physician in Syria, and 
 archiatrist in other places, as well as teacher in the 
 School at Alexandria. He finally returned to Asia 
 Minor to spend the residue of his life. According to 
 the practice of the times, he presented samples and 
 models of his inventions at the temple of the Ephesiau 
 goddess Artemis.* Among them, were a catheter and 
 an instrument for extracting teeth. 
 
 THE GENERAL CHANGE OF SENTIMENT. 
 
 The healing art, thus far, had been almost exclusively 
 associated with the religious orders, and remedies were 
 applied with peculiar ceremonies, invocations, and 
 other accompaniments. But philosophers were de- 
 generating into skeptics, and religious influence 
 waned. The traditions of Europe, the faith of Asia 
 and the dogmas of Egypt had lost their influence. 
 
 *The Great Mother, " Diana of the Ephesi-.ns."
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 73 
 
 The former things were passing away, and all looked 
 as if chaos had begun its reign. The learned cared 
 little to know the the truth, but chose rather to dis- 
 pute about it. 
 
 Nevertheless, with the policy introduced by Alex- 
 ander and Seleukos, began a new era in the world. 
 The disciple of Aristotle had been accompanied by 
 men of learning to the remotest limit of his conquests; 
 and his successors, in their enthusiasm, vied with each 
 other in the promotion of knowledge and general 
 literature. Every ancient country seems at this period 
 to have begun the preparing of historic and religious 
 books. A similar impulse, whether it existed in the 
 air of the time or was imparted, was likewise experi- 
 enced in the nations beyond the Indus. A new phi- 
 losophy, a new worship, and a new literature were 
 cultivated in the northern regions, extending south- 
 ward, eastward and in every direction where the 
 missionaries of King Asoka and his influence had 
 penetrated.* 
 
 THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL. 
 
 After the cordon against foreigners had been re- 
 moved in the later years of the native monarchy, the 
 temple-schools of Egypt became a resort for men of 
 learning from other countries. The earlier philoso- 
 phers, Thal^s, Solon, Pythagoras and Xenophanes, all 
 went thither for instruction ; later came Demokritos, 
 Plato, Chrysippos, Eudoxos. After the accession of 
 Ptolemy, himself a scholar and author, the new city 
 of Alexandria succeeded, as a centre of learning, to 
 the ancient cities of Heliopolis, Memphis and Thebes. 
 
 * The philosophy of Bakkheios, and some say of the Zoroasters.
 
 74 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 
 
 The Museion was the World's University. Every 
 facility for students was afforded. There was a hall 
 where the teachers dined, with corridors for lectures 
 and a theatre for lectures and discussions after the 
 Socratic method. Attached to it was the Botanic 
 Garden, filled with medicinal and exotic plants, and 
 collections of wild beasts and rare birds ; and there 
 were also rooms where hundreds of scribes were 
 employed at preparing papyrus, copying books, writing 
 from dictation and arranging the scrolls in their 
 proper order. " No doubt," remarks Winwood Reade, 
 "most of the Museum professors were narrow-minded 
 pedants ; . . . no. doubt much of the astronomy 
 was astrological, much of the medicine was magical, 
 and much of the chemistry was alchemical. . . . 
 Yet with all this it should be remembered that from 
 Alexandria came the science which the Arabs 
 restored to Europe, with some additions from the 
 Crusades." 
 
 Medical knowledge speedily became prominent, 
 Herophilos of Kalkhedonia, an Askl^piad and disciple 
 of Praxagoras, was the first teacher. He was a zealous 
 anatomist, actually dissecting seven hundred human 
 corpses, and as Celsus declares, even opening the 
 bodies of living criminals in order to witness the phe- 
 nomena and if possible learn the origin of life. He 
 was the founder of pathologic anatomy, and the first 
 who instituted necropsy as a means to discover the 
 causes of death. His writings were numerous, but 
 with the exception of a commentary upon the Aphor- 
 isms of Hippokrates, now in Milan, they have been 
 lost ; and our principal knowledge of his achievements 
 and discoveries is obtained through the works of his 
 most famous successor. He is accredited with having
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 75 
 
 defined the functions of the nervous system, described 
 the structure and appendages of the brain, explained 
 the structure of the eye and pointed out the divisions 
 of the intestinal canal, the vessels of the mesentery, 
 etc. Following out the instructions of Praxagoras, he 
 delineated the pulsation of the arteries, making it the 
 basis of an extended theory of symptomatology, diag- 
 nostic and prognostic. Unlike his rival, Erasistratos, 
 he used blood-letting, and used drugs extensively. 
 There were two parties as a result, but that of Erasis- 
 tratos finally won the field. 
 
 As had been the practice at the temples, the oath of 
 secrecy was administered to students, and for a time 
 was successful in the purpose of keeping professional 
 knowledge away from others. The times, however, 
 were becoming too liberal, and scholars too latitudi- 
 narian. For a time women were forbidden to practice 
 obstetrics, and practitioners interdicted from litho- 
 tomy, which was left to specialists. There were many 
 improvements in surgical apparatus, Xenophon of 
 Kos applied the ligature to arrest haemorrhage ; 
 Ammonios invented lithotrity ; Nileos constructed 
 the plinthion, a square box with pulleys, to be used 
 in the reduction of luxations of the humerus ; Nym- 
 phodoros devised a fracture-box for the extremities ; 
 Amyntas of Rhodes was the author of a bandage for 
 fractures of the nose ; Perigines also of one for dis- 
 location of the shoulder, etc. 
 
 Zeuxis, a disciple of Herophilos, established a school 
 of medicine in Phrygia, which continued in existence 
 for many years. The leading physicians belonging 
 to it bore the designation of Fhilaleihes, or lovers of 
 truth. They are named by Galen with great com- 
 mendation.
 
 j6 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD, 
 
 THE EMPIRIC SCHOOL. 
 
 Philinos, of Kos, belonged to an ^sculapian family 
 and for a time was the disciple of Kerophilos. 
 Instead, however, of adhering to the methods and 
 speculations of that school, he rejected the innovations, 
 and particularly the introduction of anatomy as a nec- 
 essary branch of medical study. The practice of med- 
 icine, he inculcated, to be certain and most likely to be 
 beneficial, should be based upon personal observation 
 {autopsia) and experience {empeirid). Serapion, of Alex- 
 andria, afterward expanded these views to a broader 
 range, and made them more definite and applicable. 
 He wrote against Hippokrates and his methods with 
 great severity, while confining himself almost exclu- 
 sively to researches in Materia Medica, pharmacy, 
 practice of medicine and surgery. The new sect, 
 denominated from its methods, Empdrikoi or Empiri- 
 cists, paid little attention to the causes of disease, 
 but attached the chief importance to symptoms. The 
 physician having observed the same cases at different 
 times under similar conditions, was careful to discrim- 
 inate between those deserving consideration and those 
 which were trivial ; and thus, by comparison with 
 other cases and other means of information, was able 
 to form definite conclusions of great accuracy. 
 
 Although the name of this school of practitioners is 
 employed as a term of opprobrium for dissenting phy- 
 sicians, its methods and doctrines are held in esteem. 
 It continued to exist over the principal countries of 
 the Greek and Roman world from the time of the 
 earlier Ptolemies till its virtual supersedure by the 
 Galenists. It had many able men in its ranks, such 
 as Herakleides, of Tarentum ; Bakkheios, of Tanagra r
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 77 
 
 Glaukias and Menodotos, of Nikomedia. One of the 
 most prolific writers was Nikandros, of Kolophon. He 
 spent some years at Alexandria, but afterward became 
 an admirer of the scholarly King Attalos Philometor 
 of Pergamos. At the death of his father he succeeded 
 him as high priest of the oracle-temple of Apollo at 
 Klaros. He wrote two poems upon poisons and their 
 antidotes, which appear to have possessed much merit. 
 Menodotos is a writer characterized by furious invec- 
 tive. He always wrote of his adversaries the Dogma- 
 tists, with fierce epithets, as tribonikoi, drimuleontes dri- 
 mumoroi cloak-wearers (in imitation of philosophers), 
 fierce lions, furious fools. It seems to have been a 
 stain upon the medical profession, that many of its 
 members disdained the amenities and courtesies, not 
 to mention also the common justice and fair dealing, 
 which are the indexes of erudition, good breeding and 
 refinement. 
 
 PERGAMOS. 
 
 For a time the school and library of Pergamos 
 rivalled those of Alexandria. It is said that after the 
 Persian conquest of Babylon, many of the priests and 
 literati emigrated thither. At the division of the 
 realm of Alexander it became a place of great im- 
 portance. Eumenes II. founded the library, and 
 200,000 books were collected. Ptolemy Evergetes 
 (Physkon) desiring to cripple this enterprise, forbade 
 the exportation of papyrus, which compelled the re- 
 sort to vellum and parchment. Antony afterward 
 presented the entire collection to Kleopatra, to begin 
 anew the library at the Serapion. Attalos, the son of 
 Eumenes, was passionately devoted to botany, and 
 cultivated the well-known medicinal and poisonous
 
 78 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. ' 
 
 plants, henbane, aconite, hemlock and veratrum. He 
 devised also various medical formulas and was skillful 
 in metallurgy. At his death, bequeathing his goods 
 to the Roman people, the Senate interpreted the legacy 
 as comprising the kingdom, and accordingly annexed 
 it to the Empire. 
 
 The reputation of Pergamos as a seat of learning, 
 continued during the Roman period. The temple of 
 ^sculapius was famous, and throngs of invalids re- 
 sorted to it for treatment. There was a mineral spring 
 at the place, as there also was at other Askl6pia. The 
 same means were employed in treatment as elsewhere 
 — fasting, bathing, musical incantation, the temple- 
 sleep, medicines and regimen. The Asians and Assyr- 
 ians believed that there were seven spirits or daemons 
 that obsessed and disordered mankind, as in the case 
 of Mary, the magdalen or temple-girl; and music was 
 a powerful charm for exorcism. The "witch-herbs," 
 poppy, hemp, belladonna and aconite were well known 
 and much used. Oracles and oracular dreams were 
 much depended upon for directions. The Emperor, 
 Caracalla, was a patient there in 215, but to no good 
 purpose. Patients who were healed used to make 
 votive offerings and rich presents to ^sculapius, and 
 his priests were as zealous as those of Bel-Merodakh 
 at Babylon, in disposing of the benefactions. 
 
 HEBREW MEDICINE. 
 
 The Hebrew sacred books recognize the healing art 
 as distinctly a prerogative of the sacerdotal class. 
 Houses supposed to contain infection were to be 
 inspected by the priest-physician; and the person re- 
 covering from contagious disease was prohibited from
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 79 
 
 going abroad from his residence till he had first been 
 examined professionally and permitted. The Levitical 
 law was very rigid in the matter. Even King Asa 
 was regarded as delinquent, because, when having a 
 disease that ultimately proved mortal, he "sought not 
 to the Lord" and his representative priests,* but 
 among Rephaim or " physicians." Yet several of the 
 prophets, writing centuries before the Chronicles were 
 compiled, describe medical matters in Judaea as like 
 those of other countries. In the Lamentations is found 
 a pitiful pleading as of a sick person exposed, in a 
 public place for counsel: "Is it nothing to you, all ye 
 passing by the way ? Look attentively and see if there 
 is any pain like my pain." And again in the prophesy 
 of Jeremiah is a similar scene: •' Thy wound is mortal; 
 no one offereth his help for thy cure; no healing medi- 
 cines {rephath) are applied." And again he demands: 
 " Is there no balm in Gilead ? is there no physician 
 {repha) there ? " 
 
 Ezekiel treats of the bandaging of a broken arm, and 
 Isaiah of ointment for " wound and bruise and fresh 
 smiting." The latter prophet prescribed for King 
 Hezekiah when " sick unto death" from an ulcer or 
 carbuncle, to apply to it a lump of dried figs spread 
 like a plaster. 
 
 Later writers have described the Essenes or healers, 
 a secret fraternity, identical, perhaps, with the Thera- 
 peutists of Egypt. The statements of Flavius Jose- 
 phus, upon which we chiefly depend, are of course not 
 to be implicitly accepted. They seem to have lived as 
 communists, to have had a philosophy and literature 
 of their own, to make medicine and divination a study, 
 and so there was a discipline and an art of healing 
 
 *G>mpare, Denteronomy , xix., 17.
 
 8o HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 peculiar to their own number, Josephus says that 
 they studied the medicinal properties of herbs and 
 stones, and doubtless they acted as physicians to the 
 poor. Perhaps from this practice they obtained their 
 designation; but among themselves they recognized 
 only a Master or episcopos, and called each other the 
 Brethren. 
 
 Their origin is not known, and their end as a distinct 
 people is unrecorded. 
 
 BUDDHISTIC INDIA. 
 
 Ab oriente Lux! Mention has already been made of 
 the physicians and healing art of the Vedic and Brah- 
 manic India. About the time of the death of Alexan- 
 der, Nanda, the King of Magadha in northern India, 
 had died, and soon after Sandrakottos or Chandra- 
 Gupta became king and Lord Paramount of India. He 
 established his royal abode at Pataliputra (Patna,) 
 then the focus of Indian learning and refinement. He 
 was a patron of the Jainas or Hindo Gnostics, and a 
 prince of great ability. Seleukos sent the historian 
 Megasthenes as a minister to his court, and to him we 
 are indebted for having made the Occidental world of 
 that period acquainted with the " Far East." He wrote 
 a book describing scenes and matters that had come 
 under his notice, and gave a description of the healing 
 art as there taught and practiced, which corresponds 
 very closely with its condition as it had existed in 
 Greece. "Next in honor to the Shamans, or ascetic 
 teachers," says he, " stand the physicians. They apply 
 philosophy to the study of the entire nature of man; 
 
 . . and they cure disease by diet, rather than by 
 medicines."
 
 MEDICINK IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 8l 
 
 Asoka, the grandson of Chandra-Gupta, was the most 
 distinguished monarch of India. He had been a Jaina, 
 and had abolished the death-penalty in his dominions. 
 In the twenty-seventh year of his reign, he embraced 
 the dharma or Buddhistic philosophy, and became zeal- 
 ous in its propaganda, sending out, it is said, eighty 
 thousand missionaries to the different countries of 
 Asia, and even to Greece and Egypt. Proselyting, 
 nevertheless, was not the principal characteristic of 
 his reign. He cared for his people, and even protected 
 animals from cruel treatment. One of his rock-inscrip- 
 tions contains this record: " In the whole dominion 
 of King Priyadarsin (Asoka), the friend of God, as 
 also in the adjacent countries, as far as Tamraparni, 
 the realm of Antiokhos and his neighbor-kings, the 
 system of caring for the sick, both of men and cattle, 
 has been everywhere brought into practice; and at all 
 places where useful healing herbs for men and cattle 
 were wanting, he caused these to be brought and 
 planted." 
 
 Asoka filled India with hospitals. He also estab- 
 lished public dispensaries at the four principal gates 
 of Pataliputra. Seven hundred years later, Fa-Hian, 
 a Chinese traveller, visited India and found the hos- 
 pital system of Asoka in full activity. " The nobles 
 and land-owners have founded hospitals in every 
 city," he declares. " In these the poor of all countries, 
 the destitute, the crippled, the diseased, may repair for 
 shelter. They receive every kind of requisite help 
 gratuitously. Physicians inspect their diseases, and 
 order for them, according to their cases, food and 
 drink, decoctions and medicines — everything, in fact, 
 which may contribute to their benefit. When cured, 
 they depart at their own convenience."
 
 82 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 In the year 648, twelve and a half centuries ago, 
 Hiouen-thsang, another Chinese pilgrim, visited India 
 and found the country abounding with hospitals, or 
 "houses of doing good." He speaks of them as enter- 
 taining widows and orphans, and as making gratuitous 
 distribution of food, drink and medicine to the poor 
 and sick. Of these houses, where these beneficiaries 
 were thus cared for, he declares that there was a mul- 
 titude. Hospitality seems to have been carried out in 
 the full sense of the term, making guests of " the poor, 
 lame, halt and blind," who could give no recompense, 
 as well as of the sick and injured that needed a phy- 
 sician. 
 
 PHYSICIANS IN ANCIENT ROME. 
 
 According to historians Rome for many centuries 
 had no physicians. The earlier Romans held learn- 
 ing, philosophy and the arts in contempt. The only 
 accomplishments prized by them were ability to fight 
 and the tilling of the soil. Much as Cincinnatus is 
 lauded for his simple life, while saving his country 
 from foreign foes, he was all the same tenacious of the 
 authority of the patricians and bitterly opposed to the 
 equal rights of the commonality. In his view, then 
 current with his order, plebeians had no country, no 
 rights as citizens, no connubial relations, no religious 
 worship. Servius Tullius had been murdered for en- 
 deavoring to extend to them these franchises, and the 
 Roman Republic long and sternly withheld them. 
 
 ^Esculapius, it is recorded, was brought to Rome in 
 the year of the city 461, about three centuries before 
 the present era. He was not, however, honored with 
 a shrine inside the walls of the city. The Romans 
 permitted the divinities of the subject-races to be
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 83 
 
 worshipped at home, and even by persons of those 
 races at Rome, but they neither admitted those divini- 
 ties into their own pantheon, or established the cultus 
 of Roman gods among other peoples. The coming of 
 the great son of the god Apollo to Rome was described 
 in their annals in the style of a religious legend. 
 
 A pestilence was raging at Rome, and neither re- 
 ligious incantations, the employing of amulets, nor 
 other means with which barbarous races are familiar, 
 were sufficient to arrest its ravages. The oracles were 
 consulted and the command given to invite the god 
 u:Esculapius for help. An embassy repaired to Epi- 
 davros and proceeded to the Asklepion, to supplicate 
 the divinity. A serpent came forth, glided along the 
 way to the city, and on reaching the harbor, went on 
 board the principal galley, where it took up its quar- 
 ters in the apartment of the chief ambassador. On ar- 
 riving at the Tiber, it came upon the deck, and darted 
 to the shore of the Holy Island, now San Bartolomea, 
 where afterward a temple was erected and hospitals 
 were established for the reception of patients. The 
 advent of the divinity is said to have been followed 
 by the cessation of the plague. There being no family 
 of Asklepiads at Rome, the pontiffs fabled that the 
 clan of Acilius, a plebeian stock, were lineal descend- 
 ants of the god, and fixed his anniversary in the 
 month of January, 
 
 The Roman patricians despised the physician's call- 
 ing. They abhorred the class of men who made a 
 trade of caring for the sick and enriched themselves 
 from the misfortunes of others. Nor was it till the 
 year 219 before the present era, that a surgeon, Archa- 
 gathos, from the Peloponnesos, settled in Rome. The 
 Roman people had got along without physicians, says
 
 84 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Pliny, '* for a period of more than six hundred years — 
 a people too, which has never shown itself slow to 
 adopt all useful arts, and even welcomed the medical 
 art with avidity until, after a fair experience, there 
 was found ample reason to condemn it." 
 
 Archagathos had been joyfully welcomed to Rome 
 and admitted to citizenship. The Senate had even 
 appropriated public money to buy for him a house at 
 which to receive his patients and care for them. He 
 did not prescribe for internal maladies, but left them 
 to be treated in the usual way by domestic prescrip- 
 tions, incantations, amulets, and remedies suggested 
 by the oracles. For a time he was popular enough ; 
 but as his methods consisted principally in cauterizing 
 sores and cutting off limbs, admiration changed to 
 disgust, and he became the object of general odium. 
 
 Pliny, who himself believed little in the profession 
 of medicine, but more in oracles and simple home- 
 remedies, has also preserved for us the denunciations 
 of Cato the Censor. He held that all medical services 
 ought to be gratuitously rendered. For this re'ason, 
 he declared, the Romans, although they invited 
 ^sculapius to Rome, placed his sanctuary outside of 
 the city upon the island in the Tiber. Besides, he 
 adds : " The race of Greeks is very vicious ; and, my 
 son, believe this as the voice of an oracle, that, with 
 its literature, it will spoil everything at Rome. It 
 will be worse still if it sends us its physicians. They 
 have sworn among themselves to kill all other nations 
 with their medicines. They exercise their art for the 
 sake of gain, and seek to get our confidence in order 
 to be able to poison us the more easily. Remember, 
 my son, that I charge you to have nothing to do with 
 physicians."
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 85 
 
 That Sturdy old plebeian himself was the author of 
 a treatise upon Family Medical Treatment, the first work 
 of the kind ever compiled by a Roman. He was by 
 no means opposed to the use of medicines. So far 
 from it, Pliny remarks, that he subjoined to his de- 
 nunciation an account of the medical prescriptions by 
 the aid of which he had assured to himself and to his 
 wife a ripe old age. In this treatise he recommends 
 the flesh of the duck, pigeon and hare as food for the 
 sick ; and his remedies are chiefly vegetable — cabbage 
 or colewort being the favorite. His formulas, many 
 of them, are quaint enough. He was a firm believer 
 in charms and incantations. For dislocations he 
 makes the following curious prescription : " Take a 
 green rush, four or five feet long, cut it in two in the 
 middle, and let two persons hold it on your thighs. 
 Begin to sing, and continue to do so until the two 
 pieces are joined together again. Wave a blade over 
 them when the two pieces are joined and touch one 
 another, seize hold of them, and cut them across 
 lengthwise. Make a bandage herewith on the broken 
 or dislocated limb, and it will heal. Sing, however, 
 over the dislocation daily." 
 
 It is the fashion now-a-days to consider everything 
 ancient, so far as it differs from modern usage, as a 
 legitimate theme for scorn and derision. The method 
 of. the old Roman, adhering, pertinaciously as he 
 does, to the ways of his ancestors, can hardly fail to 
 escape. Nevertheless, when we consider the surgery 
 of Archagathos, we must acknowledge in all candor, 
 that the patient would be far safer under the hands of 
 the former than as he would be treated by the Greek. 
 Indeed, though much singing must be a sad bore to
 
 86 HISTORY OF MEDICINt. 
 
 many sufferers, its beneficial magnetic eftect upon, 
 others is well known. 
 
 THE METHODISTS. 
 
 Not till a century had passed do we hear of another 
 physician distinguished at Rome. At that time, the 
 famous Mithradates was making himself master of 
 Asia Minor and Armenia. Asklepiades, a native of 
 Prusa (Brussa), refusing his invitation to reside at 
 court, left his country to seek his fortune elsewhere. 
 Coming to Rome, he began the teaching of rhetoric, 
 but having gained knowledge of medicine, launched 
 forth as a physician. Pliny describes his methods 
 with unconcealed contempt. He was an Epikurean in 
 his philosophic belief, and based all his notions upon 
 that system. He derided Hippokrates, declaring that 
 the study of Nature, upon which the great Koan had 
 insisted so strenuously, was but the study of dying. 
 Profiting by the general aversion of the harsh 
 methods employed by Archagathus, he adopted the 
 opposite expedient of bland and pleasant medicines. 
 He was suave in deportment, fascinating in his man- 
 ners and familiar with every art of winning favor. 
 Indeed, he enjoyed the friendship of the principal 
 men of Rome, and seems to have overcome the 
 ancient prejudice against physicians. It was a favorite 
 declaration of his that diseases had recently changed in 
 type, and that new maladies had appeared, requiring a 
 milder but more efficient treatment. This was sup- 
 ported from a statement of the philosopher Demo- 
 kritos, that various worlds about us were dissolving 
 and disseminating their noxious emanations upon the 
 earth. The change of habits and introduction of
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 87 
 
 luxury into Rome from the East were enough to ac- 
 count for the new diseases and the disappearing of 
 old ones. But the recurring of elephantiasis and hy- 
 drophobia gave plausibility to the assertions ; and it 
 must be acknowledged that he was successful in treat- 
 ment and even preternaturally acute in perception. 
 Meeting a funeral procession one day, he took the 
 body and restored it to animation, impressing the by- 
 standers with the conviction that he had raised the 
 dead to life. 
 
 He taught that inflammation was due to obstruction 
 of the molecules of the body, and dropsy from the dis- 
 solving of the flesh into fluid. He rejected harsh 
 methods, discarding emetics and substituting enemas 
 for cathartics. He made free use of blood-letting, 
 and performed bronchotomy to relieve angina and 
 paracentesis for dropsy. Inculcating that diseases 
 were produced by obstrtictions, his principal means of 
 cure were dieting, abstinence from wine, exercise on 
 foot, riding in litters, bathing and massage. Of the 
 latter method he was particularly enthusiastic and 
 gave minute directions as to its employment. He 
 boasted that he was never sick ; and indeed Pliny in- 
 forms us that he died with no malady, but from an 
 accident. Cicero, who greatly admired his talents, re- 
 marked that " nothing brings a man nearer to the 
 Divine than the giving of health to one's fellow 
 beings." 
 
 The disciples of Askl6piades were regarded as a dis- 
 tinct school, and designated Methodici or Methodists. 
 They were not only highly esteemed at Rome, but in 
 the neighboring Greek-speaking provinces, Illyricum 
 and Sicily, One of them, Marcus Artorius, was the 
 physician of Octavianus, and accompanied him to
 
 88 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Philippi. Receiving a warning in a dream, he per- 
 suaded his patron, although suffering severely from 
 illness, to go into the battle. The camp was seized by- 
 Brutus, and thus the precaution saved the Emperor's 
 life. 
 
 The later Methodists made important changes in the 
 doctrines of the school. Themison of Laodikeia was 
 the first innovator. He divided all maladies into three 
 classes : those characterized by constriction ; those in- 
 dicated by relaxation, and those of mixed symptoms. 
 He used aloes and scammony as purgatives, and re- 
 garded the juice of the plantain as a universal remedy. 
 He employed blood-letting for apoplexy and in 
 surgery made use of the trephine. Juvenal scathes 
 him severely for the many deaths among his patients. 
 He is said to have died of hydrophobia contracted 
 from a friend laboring under the disease. More likely 
 both were suffering from hypochondriasis, which may 
 be communicated by such contiguity. 
 
 Two brothers, Euphorbius and Antonius Musa, 
 Greeks by birth, also achieved distinction. The 
 former was physician to Juba II., King of Mauritania, 
 and introduced the plant Euphorbia, into use as a 
 remedy. Musa had studied medicine in order to re- 
 lieve his father. The Emperor Octavianus had long 
 been in bad health and his complaint was aggravated 
 by the remedies. Musa, by use of the cold bath, suc- 
 ceeded in restoring him. The grateful Emperor pre- 
 sented him with a generous honorarium, decreed him 
 the rank of knight, and placed his statue in the temple 
 of .^sculapius. 
 
 Julius Caesar, when he became arbiter of the des- 
 tinies of Rome, had invited physicians and learned 
 men to live in the Capitol, granting them the rights
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD 89 
 
 of citizenship. Octavianus now issued a decree ex- 
 empting physicians from taxation. Henceforth they 
 were a privileged guild in Rome. 
 
 "This art, however," says Pliny, "did not harmon- 
 ize with Roman gravity." Greeks alone carried on 
 the lucrative profession. If, by any chance, there 
 were physicians who did not come from the Pelopon- 
 nesos or Asia Minor, they were compelled to use Greek 
 idioms and write their prescriptions in bad Greek, as 
 now-a-days it is done in bungling, ungrammatical 
 Latin. 
 
 " People lose confidence in what is intelligible to 
 them," says Pliny. " Even the few Romans who 
 studied medicine thought it necessary to write their 
 prescriptions in Greek, because if they should attempt 
 to treat the disease in any other language, they would 
 certainly lose all credit, even with the ignorant who 
 did not know a word of Greek." Perhaps from this 
 fact the modern practice derives its sanction of mak- 
 ing use of Greek terminology, often to the climax of 
 the absurd, in botanic, chemical, zoologic and other 
 nomenclatures. 
 
 CELSUS. 
 
 iVulus Cornelius Celsus, a native of Verona, living 
 about the commencement of the present era, was con- 
 sidered the principal writer of the Methodic School. 
 He was, like all intelligent physicians, proficient in 
 the other learning of his age. " He touched nothing 
 that he did not adorn." He compiled a cyclopediac 
 work entitled Upon tJie Liberal Arts, in which he treated 
 of philosophy, law, agriculture and medicine. He was 
 thoroughly conversant with the doctrines of the 
 Alexandrian School, and defended the study of anat-
 
 90 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 omy against the Empirics. He was eclectic in his 
 preferences, following Hippokrates in clinic practice, 
 and the Methodists in remedial agents. He was also 
 familiar with surgery, describing the operations for 
 stone, cataract, depression of the skull, iridectomy, 
 etc. He explains also the surgery of the genitalia, how 
 to construct an artificial prepuce, perform infibulation 
 and kindred matters. He was also a believer in reme- 
 dies which are now placed in the category of super- 
 stitions. 
 
 THE PNEUMATICISTS OR SPIRITUALISTS. 
 
 The rise of the Pneumatic or Spiritual school was 
 about synchronous with the present era. Athenaeos 
 was born at Attaleia in Pamphylia ; from which place 
 he afterward went to Rome. He was a critical scholar, 
 and in his writings made the distinction between Ma- 
 teria Medica and Therapeutics. He also wrote a treat- 
 ise upon Diet. He was a philosopher, but rejected 
 the notion of four elements, declaring them only 
 qualities of matter. "About the commencement of 
 the Christian era," says the Rev. W. F. Evans, 
 "Athenaeos of Attaleia, revived the Platonic theory 
 of the existence of an immaterial, active principle, 
 called /«^a;«a or spirit ; and the state of this principle 
 was considered to be the source of health and disease. 
 A medical sect or school was founded under the name 
 of Pneumatists, or Spiritualists, whose practice was 
 based on this principle. Jesus, the Christ, seems 
 to have adopted, or rather to have conformed 
 his practice to that theory, and without deviating 
 from it."
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 91 
 
 THE ECLECTICS. 
 
 Agathinos of Sparta was a disciple of Athenaeos, 
 and is accordingly enumerated among the pneuma- 
 tists. He endeavored to establish a school of medicine 
 upon a rational and philosophic basis, which he de- 
 nominated Episynthetic, as combining the principles 
 and methods of the various sects, so far they could be 
 made to harmonize. His writings, however, are now 
 lost, and we have no means to ascertain the views 
 which he entertained, except as he has been quoted. 
 
 Arkhigenes, a native of Apameia, in Syria, was a 
 student of Agathinos, and held like his preceptor the 
 cardinal doctrines of the Pneumatic school. He once 
 cured Agathinos of a delirium by anointing his head 
 with warm oil. He is often described as the founder 
 of the Eclectic School of physicians. He enjoyed a 
 high reputation among his contemporaries during the 
 reign of Vespasian and later emperors, and for a con- 
 siderable period afterward ; and his treatises on the 
 pulse, chronic diseases, pharmacy, etc., were cited by 
 Galen with warm praise. 
 
 Aretaeos of Kappadokia, however, is generally con- 
 sidered as the brightest luminary of the Eclectic and 
 Pneumatic schools. We have two of his works still 
 remaining — one upon the Causes and Symptoms of Acute 
 and Chronic Diseases, and a second upon the Therapeutics 
 of Diseases. His admirable accuracy of description, the 
 correctness of his views, and the elegance of his style 
 were unexcelled. He appears to have anticipated 
 many of the physiological and medical discoveries 
 which are usually imputed to Galen. In explaining 
 paralysis, for example, he defines carefully the dis- 
 tinct functions of the motor and sensory nerves, and
 
 92 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 sets forth as a prominent exciting cause, indigestion, 
 which is from impairment of the solar sympathetic 
 ganglion. He wrote also upon mania, and gives a 
 very accurate account of jaundice, as well as ulcera- 
 tions of the throat and tonsils. In treating epilepsy 
 he suggests the use of copper. He bled freely, in- 
 cising the arteries and making use of leeches and cup- 
 ping glasses. Veratum alba wa!s a favorite remedy in 
 his armamentarium. He made great use of milk, both 
 from human mothers and from domestic animals ; ap- 
 plied massage ; administered wine and opiates with- 
 out hesitation, but employed few drugs, depending 
 principally upon diet and regimen. He was celebrated 
 above other physicians for a total lack of professional 
 bigotry. 
 
 The Eclectic School abounded with physicians of 
 marked ability, many of whom enjoyed a wide reputa- 
 tion over the Roman world. Nor did it die out till 
 political and other changes had produced a general 
 revolution over the Empire. 
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 
 
 Under Julius Caesar, medical men residing in Rome 
 had received the honors and privileges of citizenship. 
 Octavianus Augustus exempted them from taxation. 
 Nero added to their importance. There were archiatri 
 populares, or chief physicians, in the different wards of 
 the city, and archiatri palatini ox physicians of the Im- 
 perial Palace. These, in time, assumed and exercised 
 a censorship and authority over their fellow-prac- 
 titioners, checking innovation, and discouraging all 
 who were not in strict subordination to their preten- 
 sions.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 93 
 
 Under the Roman Republic learning had small 
 honor, and the medical art was held in contempt. 
 Soldiers dressed each other's wounds and waited on 
 their sick comrades, till Octavianus became Emperor. 
 After that time valetudinaria or military hospitals came 
 into fashion. It was the duty of the prefect having 
 charge of the camp to make sure that the surgeons 
 visited the patients in the hospitals. These valetudin- 
 aria were attached to the winter quarters, and the 
 generals who were in the practice of visiting the sick 
 and wounded there sheltered, are named with great 
 praise. 
 
 The institution of iatreia or public dispensaries, 
 which had been peculiar to the Grecian common- 
 wealths and Egypt, became general in the Empire. 
 There were official physicians everywhere, supported 
 from the treasury. The Gallic cities had established 
 this practice at an early period, and doctors employed 
 artifices similar to those of other politicians to obtain 
 these lucrative positions. The army had its medical 
 staff for the sick and wounded, the lanista for his gladi- 
 ators, the rich man for himself and slaves, the Em- 
 peror for his own person and the numerous servants 
 of the palace. Even the artisans sought to attach to 
 their guilds or collegia poor practitioners who would be 
 satisfied with very moderate fees. Rome abounded 
 also with druggists and apothecaries who sold advice 
 as well as medicines, and even lodged patients. 
 
 Women were also practitioners, and honored for 
 their ability. An inscription contains the words : 
 '''' JulicB Saturnince — incomparabili mediae" — to Julia Satur- 
 nina, the incomparable physician. 
 
 There were also Schohe Medicorum, or meeting-houses 
 for medical men, — perhaps places for instruction — at
 
 94 HISTORY OK MEDICINE. 
 
 Rome, Beneventum, Aventicum, and other places. 
 The laws appear to have been very strict, and some- 
 what resembling the usages of some of the western 
 aboriginal tribes of America. If a patient died from a 
 remedy or malpractice of any kind, the penalty for 
 the physician was banishment or death. Every phy- 
 sician was compelled to sign his prescriptions. 
 
 The Antonines were philosophers, in spirit as well 
 as culture, and regarded themselves as the fathers and 
 protectors, rather than masters of the Empire. They 
 moderated the severity of the laws, founded charitable 
 institutions, and sought to promote the happiness of 
 their subjects. The guilds or trade-societies of the 
 period, were allowed to assume organization and estab- 
 lish worship like distinct municipalities. A rescript 
 fixed the number of public physicians which the cities 
 of the highest, second and lower classes might not 
 exceed. In the small cities five physicians, three 
 sophists or professors, and three grammarians, or pub- 
 lic teachers were authorized ; and in the larger ones, 
 ten physicians, five sophists and five grammarians. 
 These might receive fees, but it was not considered 
 creditable. A decree granted to Metrodoros a golden 
 crown, because he "for twenty years a public physi- 
 cian, has saved many citizens, and now lives in 
 poverty, having refused from them any fees." A 
 special rate, the iatrikon, was levied upon the citizens, 
 in order to defray the expenses. 
 
 The physicians were generally from Greece and 
 Egypt. They were often vain and arrogant ; those at 
 Rome greatly scandalizing their patrons, by holding 
 them in contempt as ignorant barbarians and clod- 
 hoppers. Physicians and surgeons appear to have 
 followed their vocations separately, and we read of
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 95 
 
 specialists, oculists, aurists, dentists, etc., as well as of 
 Court physicians, and medical women who were em- 
 ployed for the diseases of women and children. 
 
 Pliny, the younger, is very severe in his criticisms of 
 the medical practitioners of his time. He describes 
 Crinas of Massalia (Marseilles), who united astrology 
 with his art, subjecting the regimen of the sick to the 
 course of the stars. This individual amassed a large 
 fortune by his profession, which he afterward dis- 
 bursed in the fortifying of several towns of the prov- 
 ince. Another physician of note was Thessalos, the 
 Lydian. He appears to have been pretentious and 
 arrogant in manners, seeking to overawe and brow- 
 beat others by his assumptions. He did not scruple 
 to denounce Hippokrates and other prominent writers; 
 and he even had the audacity to write a letter to the 
 Emperor Nero, declaring that his predecessors had 
 contributed nothing to the advancement of knowledge. 
 He worked his way to distinction by courting great 
 men, and boasted that he could teach the healing art 
 to a student in six months. He used to declare that 
 he was the chief of physicians, and excelled other 
 practitioners. In theory he appears to have been a 
 Methodist, after the manner of Asklepiades, and he 
 wrote on diet and surgery. Galen lost no opportunity 
 to denounce him, and asserted that he had not the 
 least correct notion in regard to the action of medi- 
 cine. He had a large array of disciples, largely drawn 
 from the working classes. Perhaps some of the bitter- 
 ness against him was partisan rancor. 
 
 Avarice, according to Pliny, was the leading charac- 
 teristic of the Roman practitioners of medicine. So 
 great were their gains that artisans, such as boot-mak- 
 ers, carpenters, butchers, tanners, and even grave-
 
 g6 ' HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 diggers entered the profession, while other callings 
 were adopted by physicians who had not been able to 
 obtain a foothold. Galen describes them as char- 
 latans, boorish in manners and contemptible for their 
 ignorance. The greater part of them, he declared, 
 were unable to read, except with great difficulty. He 
 satirically recommends that they should be very care- 
 ful, when discoursing with their patients, not to make 
 grammatical blunders ; and he did not hesitate to as- 
 sert that rival physicians, when at the bedside of sick 
 persons, so far forget themselves that they would 
 abuse each other, thrust out their tongues, and even 
 come to blows. Yet they were, as Galen himself ex- 
 perienced, obstinately tenacious of their regularity 
 and standing as medical men. The more unfit they 
 were in morals and other qualifications the more arro- 
 gant were they in this respect. The archiatri held a 
 sort of predominance over the commonalty of physi- 
 cians, and there were medical societies or guilds that 
 assumed the authority to examine candidates desirous 
 to engage in the practice of medicine. All the same, 
 ignorance was in the foreground, and with the sup- 
 port of their guild in case of prosecution, the laws to 
 punish ignorant or unscrupulous practitioners were 
 incompetent. 
 
 The Roman patricians were not friends to the liberal 
 arts and would not educate their children to a profes- 
 sion, and accordingly were served by foreigners and 
 by self-taught slaves and freedmen. 
 
 DIOSKORIDES. 
 
 The celebrated herbalist, Dioskorides Phakas, was a 
 native of Cilicia. Having been a soldier he had visited 
 many countries, and he employed the opportunities
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 97 
 
 thus offered in careful observation of the flora of those 
 regions. His work on the Materia Medica for more 
 than sixteen centuries was regarded as the highest 
 authority. The thoroughness of his studies is shown 
 by the fact, noted by Dr. Alston, that he enumerates 
 "alone 90 minerals, 700 plants and 168 animal sub- 
 stances." Galen praises him warmly, but Dr. Cullen, 
 of our modern times, who hardly believed any ancient 
 man to be learned, criticises him severely. His works 
 afforded the basis for medical study in the later schools 
 of the Nestorians, the Arabians, and Hindus. 
 
 GALEN. 
 
 Claudius Galenus was born at the metropolitan city 
 of Pergamos in the year 131. He seems, from his own 
 account, to have illustrated the incorrectness of the 
 notion that men inherit their superiority from their 
 mothers. He describes his mother, Xanthippe, as 
 frivolous and unworthy, but his father, Nikon, as 
 scholarly and of an excellent character. The latter 
 himself had instructed his son in the philosophy of 
 Aristotle, and employed a teacher named Gaios to 
 teach the other systems. Directed by a dream, he re- 
 solved, when Galen was but sixteen, to train him for 
 a physician. Pergamos was at that time celebrated 
 for its temple of -^sculapius, its savants and physi- 
 cians. The youth was placed in turn under the tuition 
 of Satyros, a distinguished anatomist, Stratonikos, an 
 Askl^piad, and Aiskhrion, an Empiric. At the age of 
 twenty-one, his father being dead, he went to Smyrna 
 to hear the lectures of Pelops and Albinus at the 
 school of philosophy. Next he journeyed to Korinth, 
 to perfect further his philosophic studies ; after which
 
 98 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 he made the tour of Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine. 
 He then became a student at the School of Alexan- 
 dria. Having served for knowledge for seven years, 
 like the Hebrew patriarch, he received a summons 
 from the priests in his native country to return home. 
 On his arrival the Asklepiads appointed him to the 
 professional charge of the athletes and gymnasts at 
 the temple-school of ^sculapius. A revolt taking 
 place some years later, he left Asia to try his fortune 
 at Rome, in the year 165. He was a philosopher as 
 well as a professional man, and a philosopher was sit- 
 ting upon the throne of the Caesars. He was warmly 
 welcomed by fellow-philosophers, by the Roman Con- 
 suls, and made the friendship of the youth, Septimius 
 Severus. 
 
 It was not long, however, before he drew upon him- 
 self the jealousy and enmity of the Roman guild of 
 physicians. He was infinitely their superior in skill, 
 liberality of sentiment, and erudition, and was hated 
 accordingly. At the desire of the leading men of the 
 city, the savants, philosophers and noblemen, he de- 
 livered a series of public lectures upon Anatomy. This 
 afforded the desired pretext. It was a violation of the 
 code in force among Roman physicians, as well as of 
 the so-called Hippocratic Oath, which forbade the in- 
 structing of non-medical persons in any of the mys- 
 teries of professional knowledge. Galen had been 
 accepted by the priests of the Asklepion at Pergamos, 
 but he found himself totally outside the pale at Rome. 
 But for the favor extended to him by the Emperor, 
 Marcus Aurelius, he might have been arraigned and 
 put to death. He was actually in danger of personal 
 violence, and a tumult created by his adversaries 
 compelled him to desist from lecturing. He was
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. 99 
 
 denounced by all the ribaldrous epithets current among 
 the medical men of that period, and finally in disgust 
 left Rome and returned to the East. A year later, 
 however, he was summoned by the Emperor and his 
 colleague to accompany them on a military expedition, 
 and he afterward became the physician of the Im- 
 perial family. He appears to have held this position 
 of archiatros under Septimius Severus. Returning to 
 Pergamos, he devoted himself to literature, thus becom- 
 ing the oracle of the medical world for fourteen centu- 
 ries. He is said to have died in Sicily in the year 201. 
 
 Galen professed to be Eclectic in his methods and 
 doctrines. He had been carefully instructed by the 
 best teachers in the various medical schools, as well 
 as in the Platonic, Stoic and Epikurean philosophies. 
 He wrote dissertations upon the Timceos and Platonic 
 Dialectic, and professed the greatest admiration for 
 Hippokrates, but in logic and physical science he was 
 a follower of Aristotle. He did not hesitate to de- 
 nounce abusively the doctrines of the various medical 
 sects, declaring that although Hippokrates had opened 
 the true road, he himself had removed the difficulties 
 encountered in it, and extended it over a larger area. 
 
 Whether this temper and assumption of superiority 
 operated to create the animosity which he encountered 
 in Rome, or whether that animosity was the cause of 
 his bitterness of feeling, may be worth considering. 
 
 He regarded the knowledge of the structure of the 
 human body as the foundation of the healing art. In 
 his works, almost every bone and process of bone, 
 every twig of nerve, every ramification of blood- 
 vessel, every viscus, muscle and gland known to 
 modern anatomists, is described with great minute- 
 ness. He appears to have followed Herophilos and
 
 lOO HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 he has been severely criticised by Vesalius, but was as 
 warmly defended by Eustachius. He pointed out 
 clearly the distinction between the cerebral and spinal 
 nerves, as well as the distribution into nerves of mo- 
 tion and nerves of sensation. He also defined the 
 functions of the arteries and veins, and explained en- 
 dosmosis and exosmosis as the " attractive" and " ex- 
 pulsive" faculties. In operative surgery, he confined 
 himself principally to the methods of the Alexandrian 
 school. He gives us an account, however, of an opera- 
 tion which he performed, cutting open the breast-bone 
 of a patient so as to lay bare the heart, in order to 
 give vent to a collection of fluid in the thoracic cavity. 
 He appears, however, to have conformed at Rome to 
 the prejudice against surgical practice ; and in his 
 capacity of archiatros he kept a dispensary and drug- 
 shop in the Via Sacra, to which patients resorted. 
 
 He gave much attention to Materia Medica and 
 Pharmacy, but his medicinal articles from the vege- 
 table kingdom were far less in number than those 
 named by Dioskorides, although he enumerates more 
 animal and mineral remedies. He was very full in 
 his accounts of disease, but not comprehensive. He 
 considered stagnation and putridity as causing every 
 morbid change in the fluids of the body. All fevers 
 were attributed to this source, except the kind called 
 ephemera. Unfortunately, the theory gave rise, at a 
 more modern period, to a mode of treatment most in- 
 jurious. Instead of air, water and a cooling regimen, 
 the curtains were drawn in the room of the sufferers, 
 fires were kept up, and the food and medicine were of 
 the most heating kind. It required the most zealous 
 protest of the later schools to produce a change to 
 more rational measures.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. lOI 
 
 The doctrines of Galen have been declared material- 
 istic. Yet his views appear, sometimes at least, to re- 
 semble those of the pneumaticists. He taught that 
 some varieties of fever had a spiritual cause, and is 
 said to have regarded charms and amulets as superior 
 to medicine. In his philosophy he accepted the doc- 
 trines of Plato and Aristotle, in preference to those of 
 Epikuros, and inculcated the existence of final causes, 
 maintaining that means do not lead to ends, but ends 
 to means. He reiterated the declarations of Hippo- 
 krates in regard to the mantic or divining power of 
 the human soul. " In sleep," says he, " the soul retires 
 into the innermost portion of itself, frees itself from 
 outward duties, and perceives everything that con- 
 cerns either itself or the body." Doubtless he referred 
 to the temple-sleep and hypnotic vision produced by 
 mesmeric manipulation. He must have employed it 
 while a physician at the Askldpion in Pergamos. He 
 certainly predicted the course of a disease with an 
 accuracy apparently preternatural ; and he professed 
 to derive much of his information from this agency. 
 
 LAST YEARS OF ANCIENT MEDICINE. 
 
 After the death of Galen medical learning appears 
 to have declined over the whole Roman world. The 
 various philosophic schools gave instruction, but a dry 
 rot was everywhere. The Serapeion at Alexandria 
 held out longest. Zeno, the Kypriote, for a time at- 
 tracted large classes of students ; and his disciple, 
 Oribasius, of Pergamos, was archiatros or court physi- 
 cian to the Emperor Julian. It was the desire of that 
 monarch to revive the ancient learning, and at his re- 
 quest Oribasius made a compilation or synopsis of the
 
 I02 HISTORY OF MtJJiCINE. 
 
 medical works extant, dividing them into seventy- 
 books, of which all but seventeen are lost. He also 
 published several treatises of his own. The death of 
 the Emperor put an end to such attempts. The Greeks 
 gave up their former zeal for medical studies. A 
 legend was related that St. Hilarios overcame the 
 ^sculapian Serpent at Epidavros. By this we may 
 understand the subversion of the Askl^piads, with 
 their worship and professional labors. Whether this 
 was in anywise a calamity may be a question. Like 
 their Khaldsean predecessors, they seem to have largely 
 deteriorated, becoming more or less a class of diviners 
 and fortune-tellers. They fell into decay and were 
 forgotten. Asklepiodotos for a time, revived the 
 former forgotten learning. He had been a disciple of 
 Proklos in the Eclectic philosophy, and of Jakobos in 
 medicine. He was the author of several works on 
 ethics and physical science, and his medical attain- 
 ments exceeded those of his master. He was familiar 
 with the virtues of medicinal plants, and introduced 
 Veratrum alba again into use. He was also skillful in 
 music and zoology, and also wrote a commentary on 
 the Timceos of Plato. 
 
 " During the first centuries, indeed, of the Christian 
 era," says Professor Dunglison, " theosophy had con- 
 siderable influence over the schools in which medicine 
 was taught. In the first century the opinion generally 
 received was that the Apostles had obtained the 
 faculty of curing all diseases by means of the apposi- 
 tion of the hands or by inunction with holy oils and 
 ointments ; and it was believed that the disciples of 
 Christ had transmitted the power which they had re- 
 ceived from their Master to the elders of each com- 
 munity. * * In the fourth century Christianity had
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. I03 
 
 extended through the Roman Empire, and for the 
 reasons just mentioned, medical education in the pub- 
 lic schools was everywhere totally neglected, if we ex- 
 cept at Alexandria, where, even at that period, it was 
 held in some account." 
 
 The Persian dominion now became the place of 
 refuge for men of learning. The disciples of Nes- 
 torius, outlawed and persecuted by the dominant 
 Catholic authorities at Constantinople, found homes 
 and protection under the blacksmith's apron. There 
 they established the Khaldaean Church in the country 
 of the Euphrates, which soon extended its missionary 
 operations over all the far East, clear to Egypt, India 
 and China. Their converts eventually became more 
 numerous than the communicants of the Catholic 
 Church, both Greek and Roman combined. They 
 were everywhere the patrons of learning. Their uni- 
 versity at Edessa was famous for the influence which 
 it exercised over the Eastern world. Their medical 
 college also became justly distinguished for the num- 
 ber of its professors, their superior scholarship, and 
 the excellence of their doctrines. A public hospital 
 was also established, at which clinical instruction was 
 imparted to students, and the institution was thronged 
 from every region where the Khaldaean Church had 
 attained a foothold. Stephen of Edessa, was one of 
 the most celebrated teachers in this school. 
 
 About the same period a hospital for the reception 
 of the poor was founded at Rome by Fabiola, the friend 
 of St. Hieronymos (Jerome), which has been errone- 
 ously supposed by many to have been the first institu- 
 tion of the kind. 
 
 The Nestorians, however, by no means concentrated 
 all their efforts upon one place or university. Others
 
 I04 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 were established where they could be sustained. They 
 had a school at Nisibis, and at a later period they, in 
 cooperation with the Jews, founded a school of medi- 
 cine at the city of Chondesabur, which was frequented 
 by students from Persia and Arabia. 
 
 Meanwhile, Alexandria continued to hold up the 
 dimming torch of medical knowledge. The Emperor 
 Justinian closed the schools of philosophy, and so put 
 an end to medical instruction in other parts of the 
 Empire. About this time, in the year 543, a plague 
 devastated the Roman world. It attacked all, without 
 regard to climate, season, age or mode of life, and its 
 fatality has hardly been surpassed. Prokopios, who 
 describes, it declares that it carried off ten thousand 
 daily at Constantinople. One-half the population 
 perished ; whole towns were deserted, and the arts 
 were abandoned. Henceforth, barbarism was uni- 
 versal. No physicians of the period made any record 
 of the terrible visitation that could be of service to 
 others, so great was their ignorance. 
 
 Actios, a native of Amida or Diarbekir in Mesopota- 
 mia, flourished at this period. He had studied medi- 
 cine at Alexandria, and wrote extensively upon medi- 
 cal subjects. He set forth Materia Medica with great 
 precision, and is exhaustive upon fever. He also ex- 
 celled in surgery ; being the first writer that has 
 mentioned the Guinea worm, and also skillfully de- 
 lineating the treatment of aneurisms, operations upon 
 the eye, hernia, peritonitis, orchitis, haemorrhoidal 
 tumors. 
 
 In the department of Obstetrics he surpassed every 
 ancient author. He also wrote upon pharmacy and 
 quoted the recipes of King Nekheb, Galen, Hippo- 
 krates and Dioskorides. All the same he was a
 
 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT HISTORIC PERIOD. I05 
 
 believer in the virtues of charms, amulets, prayer and 
 the magic touch. In preparing medicines, he directs 
 an invocation to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob ; 
 and for a foreign body in the oesophagus the surgeon 
 is recommended to treat the patient's neck, and repeat 
 to the offending body the command of the martyr 
 Blaise, to remove itself. He also prescribes the sexual 
 act as a remedy for disorder of the intestines. He 
 considered the water of the Nile as possessing every 
 virtue, and employed a green jasper set in a ring for 
 numerous complaints, remarking that the plain stone 
 was as salutary as one with a dragon engraved upon it. 
 Alexandros Trallianos, — Alexander of Tralles, in 
 Asia Minor, also deserves a notice. No medical writer, 
 whether of ancient or modern times, it is asserted, has 
 treated of diseases more methodically. His method 
 was to describe and arrange them according to the 
 part of the body which they affect, beginning with the 
 head and proceeding downward. He ventured often 
 to differ from Galen, not so much from rivalship as 
 from a desire to be right. He resolutely cautions the 
 physician against the adopting of a plan for the treat- 
 ment of any disease, without first having studied the 
 specific and individual causes ; and urges that he 
 should not be led by any habit of routine, but always 
 consider the age of the patient, the strength, constitu- 
 tion, and mode of living, as well as the season and 
 atmospheric variations ; and especially in acute dis- 
 eases, to observe carefully the efforts of nature. He 
 appears to have made great use of cathartic medicines 
 in gout and rheumatic diseases, such as aloes, scam- 
 mony and colchicum or hermodactylus. He also at- 
 tached great value to magic incantations and amulets 
 worn about the person.
 
 I06 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Paulos ^gineta, or Paul of ^gina, properly closes 
 the category. Little is known of his history, except 
 that he studied medicine at Alexandria before it had 
 been taken by Amru, in 640, travelling afterward in 
 Greece and other countries to perfect his knowledge. 
 He was principally celebrated for his attention to sur- 
 gery, obstetrics and diseases of women, and is by some 
 considered as the first man-midwife in history. He 
 exhibited much originality in his description of opera- 
 tions. He published a work entitled An Abridgment of 
 All Medicine, in seven parts, compiled from ancient 
 writers, with his own observations subjoined. He did 
 not hesitate to differ from Galen and Hippokrates, 
 when his own observation warranted this ; and later 
 writers quote him with confidence. 
 
 The dismemberment of the Roman Empire, the 
 utter overthrow of Persia, and the rise of a new faith 
 in Arabia, changed the entire aspect of the civilized 
 world. With the fall of Alexandria the old order of 
 things passed away. Ancient learning was vanquished 
 in its last fortress. Apollo and -^sculapius were de- 
 throned ; the Askl^piad, Dogmatist, Empiricist and 
 other sectaries passed into oblivion. Only Galen re- 
 mained as the chief luminary of the long night that 
 now hung its black curtain over the medical world.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 Modern History is commonly regarded as begin- 
 ning at the year 476. Adolf, the son of Alarich, had 
 contemplated the extinguishing of the Roman Empire 
 and the establishment of Gothia upon its territory. 
 In that year the last Emperor, Romulus Augustus 
 Caesar, abdicated the throne ; Italy became simply a 
 kingdom, and Gothic countries existed upon the ruins 
 of the Empire. Yet it seems almost as though for the 
 East a period somewhat later would be more suitable. 
 The rise of Islam, the overthrow of the realm of 
 Persia, the disruption of Syria from the Grecian 
 Empire, the fall of Alexandria, with its school and 
 library, were the rolling up of the former heavens and 
 the introduction of a new era upon the earth. The 
 world was then Gothic, Greek and Moslem. 
 
 The sun of knowledge had set all over Europe, and 
 only stars and torches remained to lessen the heavy 
 darkness. All kinds of learning, while not proscribed 
 outright, were, nevertheless, held in low esteem. 
 Kings and clergy alike were illiterate ; barons and 
 bishops were sometimes unable to write their names. 
 The commonalty had sunk into besotted ignorance. 
 
 The art of healing was buried in the same abyss. 
 From its rank as a part of learning it became a func-
 
 Io8 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 tion of religion. " After the sixth century," says Mac- 
 donald, " the monks of the West practiced the healing 
 art as part of their divine calling, by resorting to 
 prayers, relics of martyrs, holy water and other Rom- 
 ish ceremonials ; and innumerable cures are said to 
 have been accomplished by invoking the aid of saints, 
 and other superstitious practices. In the seventh and 
 eighth centuries the remains of the knowledge which 
 had accumulated in the East appears to have been 
 more or less preserved by the monks of the West " 
 
 "physic" and "physicians." 
 
 The Roman missionaries whom the first Bishop 
 Gregory sent to England to convert the Saxons, 
 opened schools there in which medicine was made a 
 study. After the phantom of a new Empire had risen 
 at Rome, teachers were procured from those institu- 
 tions for those just established in France and Germany. 
 In the year 805, the Emperor Charlemagne command- 
 ed that medicine should be added to the curriculum. 
 The term />^jsic, from the Greek word ^vffi? {phusis) the 
 natural constitution, was employed by Hippokrates, 
 and by later writers to signify pharmacy and sorcery, 
 and thus became the designation of this art, and its 
 teachers and practitioners were designated physicians. 
 Some of the glamour of occult power and knowledge 
 hung about the name, and many have continued to 
 believe in their secret heart that the medical prescrib- 
 er could arrest the approach of death and absolve from 
 the penalty of disregarded hygienic conditions. 
 
 For two or three centuries medicine was taught in 
 such fashion in the schools connected with the cathe- 
 drals. The knowledge imparted was inconsiderable.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. IO9 
 
 and the skill and morals of the practitioners were so 
 inferior as to bring scandal and contempt upon them. 
 Finally the various councils of the Gallican and Roman 
 Churches, some centuries afterward, prohibited priests 
 outright from practicing physic or surgery. 
 
 RISE OF ISLAM. 
 
 Meanwhile a new illumination had appeared in the 
 East. The Hanyfite khotan^ Halibi or Mohamed, had 
 been taught in youth the doctrines of the Nestorians 
 at Bostra. "His first and ruling idea was simply 
 religious reform," says Professor Draper — "to over- 
 throw Arabian idolatry and put an end to the wild 
 sectarianism of Christianity. * * * It was an offshoot 
 of Nestorianism ; and not till it had overthrown Greek 
 Christianity in many great battles, was spreading 
 rapidly over Asia and Africa, and had become intoxi- 
 cated with its wonderful success, did it repudiate its 
 primitive limited intentions, and assert itself to be 
 founded upon a separate and distinct revelation." 
 
 The founder of Islam earned an honorable place in 
 the golden book of humanity. The new religious 
 movement of which he was the herald, became the 
 agency for the restoration of literature and philosophic 
 learning to the barbarized nations. He considered 
 himself illiterate, but he prized knowledge beyond 
 valuation. " The ink of the learned is as precious as 
 the blood of the martyrs," the Kuran declares. For a 
 brief season, the enthusiasm of his disciples degen- 
 erated into fanaticism, and like contemporary religious 
 propagandists, they enforced conversion by war and 
 massacre ; but they were early to establish toleration 
 and reinstate learning. They established an Empire
 
 no HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 greater than that of Alexander or the Caisars, in tens 
 of years where the Romans had required hundreds ; 
 and came to Europe — " they alone, while darkness lay 
 around, to raise up the wisdom and knowledge of 
 Hellas from the dead ; to teach philosophy, medicine, 
 astronomy and the golden art of song to the West as 
 well as the East ; to stand at the cradle of modern 
 science and to cause us like Epigoni forever to weep 
 over the day when Granada fell." 
 
 PERSIAN SCHOOLS. 
 
 The Nestorians had preceded the Moslems in en- 
 thusiasm for learning and the dissemination of their 
 doctrines. Their university at Edessa was widely 
 celebrated, and from the School at Nisibis they had, 
 with a zeal like that of the Buddhist Asoka, sent their 
 missionaries to promulgate the doctrines of the Khal- 
 daean Church from Arabia, Abyssinia and Egypt, to 
 India, China and the mysterious North. They trans- 
 lated the works of Aristotle into Persian and Arabic, 
 and placed the writings of Pliny, Galen and other 
 savants before their students in their own language. 
 They were too noble for racial or religious jealousy, 
 and accordingly, in connection with the Babylonian 
 Jews, established the inedical college at Chondesabur, 
 in the province of Khusistan, or Kush, the ancient 
 Susiana. This school continued till the modern 
 period, and its physicians were so widely distinguished 
 that the Emperor at Constantinople, Andronikos III., 
 (1322-1338) sent for them to treat him for a tumor of 
 the spleen. When the first disciples of Mohamed in 
 Arabia were threatened with persecution, they found 
 protection in Abyssinia, under the Nestorian King.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. Ill 
 
 About the same time the Persians had the dominion 
 over Egypt, and learning accordingly received a tem- 
 porary encouragement. Syrian scholars came to 
 Alexandria to revise their versions of the Old and 
 New Testaments, preferring the Greek text as being 
 more accurate than the Hebrew. 
 
 ARABIAN LEARNING. 
 
 At this period, Aaron Ahran, a priest of that city, 
 was distinguished as a physician and medical writer 
 of great ability. He was the author of a compilation 
 entitled Pandects of Medicine, which was translated into 
 Arabic and was the oldest work upon the subject ex- 
 tant among the Arabs. He is the first writer who 
 made particular mention of the small-pox. 
 
 For a brief period, the fanaticism of the Moslem 
 chiefs impelled them to discourage learning. The 
 Khalif Omar is said to have commanded the burning 
 of the few books that remained in the library at Alex- 
 andria. The greater number had been removed and 
 destroyed during the reign of Theodosios. The sub- 
 sequent Khalifs, however, were men of a more liberal 
 character. Ali, the cousin of the Prophet, was a lover 
 of learning. Moawiah, the first of the Ommiade 
 dynasty at Damascus, whose father had been Mo- 
 hamed's adversary at Mekha, began the new order of 
 things with the encouraging of literature. From this 
 time, the Jews and Nestorian Christians labored to- 
 gether ; the Christians principally becoming teachers 
 in Moslem families, and the Jews more generally the 
 physicians. The philosophic and medical works of 
 the Greek authors were translated by them into Syriac 
 and Arabic.
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 THE KHALIFS. 
 
 The Khalif Al Mansur transferred his capitol to the 
 new city of Baghdad, which speedily became a splen- 
 did metropolis. He gave much attention to the pro- 
 motion of the higher learning. He was a liberal 
 patron of astronomy, medicine and law. He founded 
 the university of Baghdad, and for centuries it was 
 among the most eminent in all Moslem countries. 
 Here chemistry was developed as a distinct branch of 
 knowledge, with the aids of the balance, the crucible 
 and distilling apparatus ; and alchemy, so generally 
 misunderstood and misrepresented, was cultivated as 
 a science of evolution. Public hospitals and labora- 
 tories were established, and students thronged them 
 from all countries. At one time there were no less 
 than six thousand, chiefly Christians who had been 
 exiled for their religion. 
 
 THE GREAT AL MAMUN. 
 
 Harun Al Rashid emulated this example of his 
 grandfather, and commanded schools to be opened in 
 every mosque. Al Mamun, however, excelled in such 
 endeavors. He made Baghdad the centre of learning. 
 The Kuran was not permitted to stand in the way. 
 Scholars, he declared, were the elect of God. His 
 energy in the pursuit and cultivation of secular 
 knowledge led the Moslem doctors of divinity to brand 
 him as apostate, and denounce the judgment of God 
 upon him. They condemned him for having inter- 
 rupted the devotions of the faithful, by encouraging 
 the teaching of atheistic philosophy. He believed the 
 earth to be a globe, instead of a plane as the Kuran
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. II3 
 
 represented, and had set astronomers and mathema- 
 ticians to ascertain its circumference. He had caused 
 Grecian literature to be introduced into Arabian 
 schools. He founded libraries, in each of which was 
 a department for the copying of manuscripts, transla- 
 tion and the composing of new works. Every teacher 
 of the higher grades was expected to write a book. 
 The works of Ptolemy, the astronomer, were trans- 
 lated under the name of Al Magest. The Khalif Al 
 Mamun was an enthusiastic collector. Hundreds of 
 camel-loads of books were imported by him, and he 
 even negotiated with the Greek Emperor for one of 
 the libraries in Constantinople. So abundant were 
 books, and so greatly prized, that a physician at Bagh- 
 dad refused a tempting offer to remove to Bokhara 
 because four hundred camels would not suffice to carry 
 his library with him. 
 
 MEDICAL AUTHORS. 
 
 Under these auspices, medical learning greatly pros- 
 pered. Harun placed the physician Yahia ben Masa- 
 iah (Maswa) in charge of the schools at the capitol. 
 After him Honain or Yohanan, a Nestorian Christian, 
 became widely celebrated for his scholarship and in- 
 defatigable diligence. He translated the works of 
 Plato, Hippokrates, Aristotle, Galen, Alexander, Pau- 
 los of ^gina and others ; wrote commentaries upon 
 them and composed several original works. His sons, 
 Isak and David, were also authors and translators. In 
 his writings we find the first mention of academic de- 
 grees conferred by learned societies. The college of 
 medicine at Baghdad, and others at Cairo and else- 
 where, were charged not only with the instruction of
 
 114 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Students, but with their examination as to fitness for 
 the practice of the art of healing. 
 
 The methods in vogue at this period appear to have 
 been crude and often peculiar. Astrology was gener- 
 ally employed and remedies were selected in accord- 
 ance with the aspect of the sky. Uroscopy was re- 
 garded as an important factor in diagnosis, and the 
 physician carefully investigated the previous history 
 both of the patient and his disease. The Thousand and 
 One Tales appear to have been a fair representation of 
 the matter. The works of Galen were generally 
 studied for information in anatomy. Moslem legisla- 
 tion did not permit dissection. Surgery was also 
 limited ; and women were the midwives and operators 
 for hernia, calculus, malversions and other matters 
 pertaining to their own sex. 
 
 Geber of Mesopotamia, sometimes called an alche- 
 mist, developed several chemical and pharmaceutic 
 preparations that were greatly esteemed. Among 
 these were the mercurial compounds, corrosive subli- 
 mate and red precipitate, nitric acid, nitromuriatic 
 acid, and nitrate of silver. Gold, and probably the 
 chloride, was much used by Arabian hakhams. Saber, 
 the head of the school at Chondesabur, compiled a 
 PharmacopcBta, which was published under the authority 
 of the Government, and contained special directions 
 against adulteration and the selling of medicines at 
 too high a price. 
 
 The most celebrated savant oi the Eastern Khalifats, 
 however, was Abu Bekr Mohamed al Rasi, or Razes, 
 so called from his birthplace. Rages in Media. He 
 was placed in charge of the principal hospital at Bagh- 
 dad, about the year 890, and became a distinguished 
 writer and medical authority. He compiled two great
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. II5 
 
 works, the Continent and Al Mansor, and he appears to 
 have added several chemical preparations to the cate- 
 gory of official medicines. Among these were orpi- 
 ment, blue and green vitriol, and borax. He was the 
 first to describe the measles with distinctness, and he 
 wrote ably upon small-pox. He also gave a descrip- 
 tion of spina ventosa and spina bifida, hernia and its 
 treatment, and other surgical topics, borrowing largely 
 from Hippokrates, .^tios and Paulos of ^gina. For 
 cancer he advised against excision, unless the disease 
 was limited ; in which case the entire mass affected 
 should be removed. For bites of rabid animals he 
 prescribed the cautery. 
 
 Ali, a native of Persia, flourished in the same cen- 
 tury, and was sometimes designated the Magus, be- 
 cause of his extensive knowledge of medical, and what 
 was considered occult lore. He wrote a work entitled 
 The Royal Book, which appears to have been a compend 
 or digest of what was extant respecting anatomy and 
 physiology. It was principally computed from the 
 Greek authors and the works of Razes, and was long 
 regarded as the standard authority. 
 
 AVICENNA. 
 
 The chief luminary of medicine in the East, how- 
 ever, was Al Husein ibn Sina, or Avicenna. He was 
 born in 978, at the city of Bokhara, then also a centre 
 of learning. He seems to have been an omniverous 
 scholar, proficient in every department of knowledge, 
 and skillful in making all that he had learned his own. 
 Hence he became the supreme arbiter of medical 
 thought, whom it was temeritous to oppose, or even 
 dispute. His great work, the Canon, was for six cen-
 
 Il6 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 turies the basis of all that was permitted to be taught 
 dogmatically in medical schools. His chief quality, 
 however, appears to have been one of assimilation. 
 He brought together the doctrines and discoveries of 
 those who had preceded him, and put them forth in a 
 new form as his own. Aristotle was the dominant 
 authority in Arabian philosophy, and Galen in medi- 
 cine ; but Avicenna was equal to both. He may have 
 lacked originality, but he had the will and force of 
 character to impress his sentiments on others ; and 
 even at the present day the medical world has not be- 
 come emancipated altogether from his authority. 
 
 LEARNING EVERYWHERE PROMOTED. 
 
 The same passion for literary culture which the 
 Khalifs at Baghdad exhibited was also general in the 
 other Arabian dominions. Colleges were established 
 in Mongolia, Tartary, Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, 
 Egypt, Northern Africa, Morocco, Fez and Spain. 
 The taste for science and its reward was diffused from 
 Samarkand and Bokhara to Fez and Cordova. The 
 son of the mechanic was instructed as well as the son 
 of the nobleman, and indigent scholars received an 
 allowance, as they still do at the great mosque at 
 Cairo. Nestorians and Jews, as well as Moslem 
 savants, were made superintendents of these institu- 
 tions. " The teachers of wisdom are the true lights 
 and legislators of this world," said the great Khalif Al 
 Mamun. 
 
 Meanwhile the realm of the Khalifs became dis- 
 membered by the revolts of ambitious Arabian chief- 
 tains, and by conquests of Northern barbarians. The 
 dynasty of Fatimites, making Fatima the daughter of
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. H7 
 
 Mohamed their Madonna, after the manner of the 
 Christians before them, established a rival Khalifat in 
 Egypt, which for a long time afterward held Northern 
 Africa and menaced the Southern countries of 
 Europe. 
 
 Upon the overthrow of the Ommiad family at 
 Damascus, one of the survivors made his way to 
 Spain, where he succeeded in establishing an inde- 
 pendent dominion. He made Cordova the capital, and 
 established a university, which for centuries was the 
 centre of learning in the West. His successors con- 
 tinued the same liberal policy. In the tenth century 
 Al Hakham H. became Khalif. He was noted for his 
 aversion to war and political intrigues, and for his 
 love of literary culture. He established a library of 
 four hundred thousand volumes, superbly bound and 
 illuminated ; and it is recorded that he had read and 
 annotated them all. He kept a manufactory of books, 
 with copyists and binders, in his palace. Learned men 
 of every faith were welcomed there ; and Christians 
 who were afterward famous as scholars and ecclesias- 
 tics resorted to the schools of Cordova, Seville and 
 Toledo. Gerbert, who became the Pontiff Sylvester 
 n. and proclaimed the Crusade before Peter the Her- 
 mit, had been a student of literature and Moslem 
 learning at Cordova. He may have deprecated the 
 revolution that had occurred in the Khalifat, or he 
 may have desired to screen himself from the imputa- 
 tion of being a student of magic and occult learning. 
 
 The hajib or mayor of the palace, Mohamed ibn Amir, 
 seized the supreme power and held it till the expira- 
 tion of the century. Placing himself at the head of 
 the orthodox party, he caused all books on philosophy, 
 astral science and occult learning to be removed from
 
 Il8 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 the library and burned. He, nevertheless, continued 
 to be a patron of learning. Under his descendants the 
 country was divided into several monarchies, all of 
 them Moorish and Berber, rather than Arabian. 
 
 ABULKASIM. 
 
 When governments are unsettled, and men of merit 
 hold aloof from active participation, many turn atten- 
 tion to philosophic and literary pursuits. This was 
 the case in the countries that had been included in 
 Andalusia. Medical knowledge was theurgic, and 
 surgery languished. Finally, in the latter years of 
 the eleventh century, Abu al Kassim, or Abulkasim 
 became distinguished as a teacher and a writer upon 
 surgery. He found the art in a deplorable condition, 
 and set about to improve it. He described various 
 surgical operations and the instruments used ; and he 
 also prepared a manual for surgeons of the female sex 
 having occasion to practice lithotomy. He also in- 
 vented several instruments ; among them a probang 
 to dislodge bodies from the throat ; an instrument for 
 the treatment of lacrymal fistula, and a needle for 
 operations for cataract. He explained an operation 
 for hydrocephalus, the method of ligation of tumors, 
 amputation of the limbs for gangrene, excision of the 
 tonsils, and tracheotomy. He mentions also several 
 diseases, which some have imagined to have been first 
 observed at a later period. 
 
 AVENZOAR. 
 
 Forty years afterward, Abu Mervan ibn Zohar, or 
 Avenzoar, became famous at Seville. He appears to
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES, II9 
 
 have made use of his own bodily disorders as a basis 
 for observations. He had suffered from inflammation 
 of the mediastinum, terminating in abscess, and wrote 
 extensively upon the disease, as well as upon inflam- 
 mation, dropsy and empyema of the pericardium. He 
 exhibited the genuine Moslem abhorrence of surgery 
 in sexual diseases, denoiincing lithotomy, and even a 
 look upon that region of the body as an indecency. 
 He gave descriptions of abscess of the liver, rupture, 
 fracture of the hip-bone, wounds of the veins and 
 arteries, tumors and other surgical diseases, with the 
 appropriate treatment in each case. He prescribed 
 rectal injections and baths of milk and other nutritious 
 substances, in cases of stricture of the oesophagus. 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PHYSICIANS. 
 
 Philosophy and " magic," as has been elsewhere re- 
 marked, were taught with medicine and other arts at 
 the Arabian schools. The former was the educing of 
 causes and origins, thus accounting for the manifes- 
 tation and results, which are so commonly exalted by 
 the designation of science. Magic, as defined by the 
 Grecian philosopher, Proklos, formed the last or low- 
 est department of sacerdotal knowledge. It comprises 
 the investigation of everything sublunary, its nature, 
 power and quality. In this scope are embraced the 
 elementary substances and their constituents, animals, 
 plants and their products, stones and herbs — in short, 
 the power and essence of everything. ** There is a 
 lamentable departure from Divinity in man," says this 
 philosopher, ** when nothing worthy of heaven or 
 celestial concerns is heard or believed, and when 
 every divine voice is by a necessary silence, dumb."
 
 I20 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Abu Bekr ibn Tophail, born in Spain in iioo, and 
 dying in exile in Morocco in 1186, was one of the pro- 
 foundest thinkers of the time, and exercised a wide 
 influence. He was alike versed in medicine, mathe- 
 matical science and philosophy. He appears to have 
 been a Platonist rather than an Aristotelian, and his 
 writings centre accordingly upon the dialectic of the 
 Akademeia. The world of sense, he declared, was 
 only the shadow and reflection of the world of intelli- 
 gence. " Man, considering the number of his organs 
 and the variety of their function, would seem to be a 
 compound being ; but in looking again at the secret 
 tie which unites all these organs, and their principle 
 of action, he is seen to be truly but an individual ex- 
 istence. This unity is evolved from the unity of the 
 vital principle." 
 
 Abu Bekr ibn Yahia, or Ibn-Badja (son of solitude), 
 a native of Zaragosa, also flourished in the eleventh 
 century. He studied medicine and the liberal sciences; 
 and afterward became the author of several works 
 upon physic, mathematics, and philosophy, among the 
 latter a commentary upon the writings of Aristotle. 
 He was destined, however, to encounter the fanati- 
 cism of his age. Ibn Khakan, a contemporary writer 
 in Andalusia, denounced him as a destroyer of religion, 
 and an affliction to true believers, in that he occupied 
 himself with vain studies, such as philosophy, mathe- 
 matical knowledge, the celestial bodies, and variations 
 of climate, to the neglect of the Kuran and orthodox 
 Moslem doctrine. Like other sages of that time, he 
 was finally compelled to leave his native country and 
 make his residence in the province of Fez, where he 
 died in 1138.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 121 
 
 AVERROES AND MAIMONIDES. 
 
 The most celebrated student of Avenzohar was Abu 
 Waled ibn Rashid, of Cordova, better known as Aver- 
 roes. He was the author of several medical works, 
 which are still preserved in Latin ; but his chief dis- 
 tinction was won in philosophic speculation, to which 
 he devoted himself with the greatest enthusiasm. He 
 wrote a commentary upon the works of Aristotle, in 
 which he embodied a theosophy like that of India, the 
 dogmas of Erigena and others setting forth the doc- 
 trine of emanation and the return of the soul to 
 divinity. It is the fashion now to criticise and speak 
 depreciatingly of the teachings of this writer, but at 
 that time they were adopted over all Europe, by 
 schoolmen, ecclesiastics, and thinking men in all walks 
 of life. 
 
 The greatest luminary of Cordova, however, was the 
 famous Maimonides, the Rabbonu Mosa ben Maimun. 
 Believing, like a conscientious rabbi, that it was a sin 
 to make use of religious knowledge as a craft by which 
 to obtain a livelihood, he adopted the calling of a phy- 
 sician. He was the author of several medical works 
 of much merit, and at a later period became the court 
 physician to the famous Sultan of Egypt, Saladin, 
 holding till his death in December, 1204. Despite his 
 superior excellence in this profession, however, it was 
 cast into the shade by his labors and attainments in 
 philosophy and Hebrew theology. He was praised 
 both in the East and West, as the Great Sage and 
 Teacher, second only to Moses. Perhaps the charac- 
 teristic of his expositions of most interest to non- 
 Hebrews is his interpretation of the Pentateuch and 
 other parts of the Bible as symbolic and allegoric
 
 122 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 narrative, rather than literal history. In philosophic 
 dogma, he followed Aristotle and the explanations of 
 Averroes. 
 
 A consensus of religious belief appears to have been 
 gaining ground at this period in the higher walks of 
 life. Learned men have been described as having the 
 same belief, and never telling what it is. At any rate, 
 they are generally characterized by catholicity of 
 thought and feeling ; while the half-taught are prone 
 to display a violent partisanship. It is so in medical 
 circles, and the history of religion is similar. In the 
 twelfth century there seems to have been a remarkable 
 approximating of religious and philosophic beliefs. 
 The Arabian speculative reasoners were of the school 
 of Averroes ; leading minds among the Jews enter- 
 tained formally the doctrines of Maimonides, and in 
 European Christendom they were current among the 
 learned. The Franciscans regarded them with ap- 
 proval, and doctors in the universities of Paris, 
 Bologna, and Germany taught them to their thousands 
 of pupils. It has even been affirmed that Henry II, of 
 England actually proposed to adopt the Moslem re- 
 ligion ; that his son, Richard I., when engaged in the 
 Crusades, held intimate relations with Mohamedan 
 princes ; and that King John sent an ambassador to 
 the Almohade ruler of Spain and Morocco, offering to 
 make Islam the court religion of England. Similar 
 allegations were made respecting Emperors of Ger- 
 many and princes in France and Italy. Men had be- 
 gun to doubt whether all sanctity was circumscribed 
 between Mount Lebanon, the Desert and the Sea. In- 
 deed, an inscription on the pontifical chair, at the 
 Vatican, disclosed in 1662, represented the Labors of 
 Hercules, an heir-loom of the Republic and first Caesar;
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 1 23 
 
 and again in 1795, when the French under Bonaparte 
 occupied Rome, another examination revealed to view 
 the Moslem creed inscribed on the seat : " There is 
 no God but Allah, and Mohamed is his Apostle." It 
 is by no means improbable that some amalgamation of 
 religious faiths was once contemplated. 
 
 A REVULSION OF FEELING. 
 
 Eras of good feeling are generally succeeded by a 
 crisis and revulsion to the opposite extreme. The 
 ulemas and commonalty in the Moslem countries had 
 been bitterly averse to the liberal sentiments of the 
 princes and savants. The great Khalif, Al Mamun, 
 was decried as a wicked perverter of the true doc- 
 trine, and the teachings of the philosophers were de- 
 nounced in the mosques as tending to remove the 
 distinctions between orthodox and dissenters, and to 
 take away the hope of heaven or the fear of hell as in- 
 centives for good conduct. Military leaders arose to 
 enforce the orthodox dogmas. Nur ed Din, of Irak, 
 led the Atabeks to exterminate philosophers and here- 
 tic Moslems in the countries of Asia. His favorite 
 general, the Kurd Saladin, carried the war into Syria 
 and Egypt, overturning the Khalifat at Cairo, and 
 planting in its place the Turkish dominion. 
 
 There were corresponding changes in the Andalu- 
 sian, now Moorish provinces of Spain. The monarch 
 placed himself at the head of the orthodox party and 
 prohibited the lectures of the philosophers. Many 
 were banished or imprisoned, and several put to death. 
 Averroes himself went into exile, dying in 1 198. The 
 libraries were ransacked and all books not approved 
 by the censors were destroyed. The Jews participated 
 in the revolution. The works of Maimonides were
 
 124 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 burned in their congregations at Montpellier, Toledo 
 and Barcelona. The new ascetic order of Dominicans 
 began a similar proscription in Christendom. A 
 heated controversy took place in the principal cities 
 and centres of learning ; and at the South of France 
 where were numerous sectaries, Jews, Albigeois hav- 
 ing a Pontiff of their own, and others, there was pro- 
 claimed a crusade and war of extermination. The 
 region was converted by war and massacre. The 
 orthodox, who, like Innocent III., seriously doubted 
 the dogmas of the Church, were cruel and murderous 
 to those who manfully avowed their disbelief. The 
 policy was commended and put in force to avoid all 
 argument with dissenters, but to put them to death, 
 as though to strengthen faith by cruelty and intoler- 
 ance. In countries where the authority of the Church 
 overrode that of the political rulers, the Dominicans 
 were empowered to establish the Inquisition as a 
 tribunal to uproot all heretical doctrines. 
 
 Thus the Turks and Mongol barbarians of the East, 
 and the powers of Christendom acted in harmony for 
 the overthrow of liberal learning and religious dissent. 
 " The daylight of science went down over the nations, 
 and an intellectual darkness, which endured for three 
 hundred years, enveloped the general face of society. 
 All the fountains of science were dried up, and the 
 world seemed retrograding into the unillumined chaos 
 of ignorance." 
 
 These were indeed the Dark Ages. 
 
 TRIBUTE TO ARABIAN MEDICINE. 
 
 It may be well to survey briefly the field in which 
 the teachers of those former centuries had labored. 
 Modern writers do not usually give much credit for
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 1 25 
 
 originality or profoundity of research to Arabian 
 writers and practitioners. " A small number of dis- 
 coveries in Materia Medica» or isolated observations," 
 Professor Dunglison declares, "were the only ad- 
 vancements which they made in the science. Anatomy 
 continued in the same state in which the Greeks had 
 left it. The theory of medicine was filled by them 
 with numerous subtilities, but no important acquisi- 
 tion was gained. As for surgery, they had no learned 
 author upon the subject, except Abulkasim. Chem- 
 istry, and Materia Medica, in short, were the only two 
 branches of medicine which were improved by them." 
 Doubtless this sweeping criticism includes the Ju- 
 daean and other physicians belonging to the same 
 period and category. It does not, however, appear 
 candid, generous, or essentially fair and just. The 
 writer appears hardly free from a proclivity to under- 
 rate and represent with partiality those who are not 
 in strict accordance with him. He has not given the 
 Arabian savants full credit for their work as conserva- 
 tors of such knowledge as was worth preserving, and 
 for adding to it such contributions as they were able. 
 They first differenced the pursuit of medicine into 
 physic, surgery and pharmacy, thus opening the way 
 for a broader and more thorough conception of the art. 
 In making the preparation of medicines and chemicals 
 a department by itself, they enabled explorers into 
 that field to arrive at discoveries which have facili- 
 tated the investigations of later centuries. They also 
 invented many surgical instruments ; "attaching too 
 much importance," as Macdonald remarks, " to the 
 mechanical part ot their profession." This criticism, 
 perhaps, is just. Even at the present time too much 
 consideration is given to operative surgery. Mere
 
 126 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 dexterity in this way is not an infallible or sufficient 
 evidence of skill. The physician, who by application 
 of the principles of his art, can prevent the mutilation 
 of the human frame, is entitled to the higher position 
 in the ranks of the profession. 
 
 The deplorable fact is, however, as Professor Dungli- 
 son sets forth, that ''while medical instruction flour- 
 ished in the countries subject to the Moorish princes, 
 and especially in Spain, ignorance possessed the 
 Christian States of the West." Hence it was, that 
 when the rulers of Granada and other Moslem coun- 
 tries interdicted philosophic teaching, and placed 
 obstacles in the way of literary culture, medical 
 knowledge went likewise into the penumbra of the 
 eclipse. 
 
 The former accompaniments of theurgy and astrol- 
 ogy continued to be incorporated with medicine and 
 Aristotelian philosophy, as part of the necessary learn- 
 ing of the physician. Arnold of Villa Nova, a dis- 
 ciple of Raymond Lulli, and a professor in the Uni- 
 versity of Barcelona, was a zealous teacher of occult 
 learning. He was also an expert chemist as well as 
 alchemist, and introduced tinctures into professional 
 use. 
 
 Pedro Juliani, a Spanish author, also belonged to the 
 Arabian school. He compiled several books, both 
 physiological and practical, following the Greek and 
 Arabian writers, and rather simplifying their dogmas 
 than departing from them. He afterward became 
 Pontiff at Rome, adopting, as was the usage of ancient 
 Egyptian kings, the name of John XX. or XXI. 
 
 The most famous of the later physicians of this 
 school was Bernard de Gordon. His name suggests a 
 Scotch origin, but we have no evidence that he was
 
 MEDICINE In the MIDDLE AGES. I27 
 
 not of Gipsy parentage — acquiring the designation by- 
 accident. He was a professor at Montpellier in the 
 early part of the fourteenth century, and wrote a work 
 entitled Lilium Medicince, which displayed great learn- 
 ing and a considerable degree of merit. It possessed 
 the spiritualistic and astrologic features peculiar to 
 the practice of the time. 
 
 A Portuguese writer, Valesca de Taranta, also 
 figured at Montpellier about the same period. He is 
 chiefly distinguished for the employing of arsenic as 
 a local application for cancer. Another teacher at the 
 same university was Henri de Mondeville. He was 
 noted for his skill in surgery, but more than all by 
 having been the preceptor of Guy de Chauliac, the 
 most famous writer on surgery in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury. "The Chirurgie of the latter," says Dr. Charles 
 Creighton, of London, "bears the date of 1363, and 
 marks the advance in precision which the revival of 
 anatomy by Mondino had made possible." He had 
 studied at Montpellier and Bologna, after which he 
 practiced medicine and surgery at Lyons. It was at 
 the period of the " Seventy Years' Captivity" when 
 the Roman Pontiffs had their court at Avignon. Re- 
 moving thither he officiated as physician to three of 
 them in succession, besides gaining reputation as a 
 reviver of the art of surgery. His great work, entitled 
 Inventoriii7n, sive Collectoriufu partis Chirurgicalis Medicincc 
 (a list or recapitulation of the Surgical Department of 
 the Medical Art) was an accurate statement of surgi- 
 cal practice as it then existed. Fallopius ascribes to 
 him the same rank in surgery as was given to Hippo- 
 krates in medicine. Haller describes his work with 
 high praise. Having read all works written up to his 
 time on that important branch of medicine, he care-
 
 laS HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 fully exposed the divers opinions of authors, and duly 
 appreciated each; so that his work may be regarded as 
 an excellent historical sketch of surgery up to his time. 
 
 This work became the basis of surgical instruction, 
 going along with Mondino's celebrated treatise on 
 anatomy, all over Europe. It is said in the author's 
 commendation, that he had himself performed almost 
 all the operations which he described. Among other 
 original matters, he gives the first mention which we 
 have of the Caesarian section. 
 
 At this period there were five varieties of chirur- 
 gists, namely: those applying cataplasms to all kinds of 
 injuries and diseases ; those who only used wine in 
 such cases ; those employing emollient ointments and 
 plasters, going no further ; those making use of oil, 
 wool, potions and charms ; and lastly, " ignorant prac- 
 titioners and silly old women, who had recourse upon 
 all occasions to the saints, praised each other's writings 
 perpetually, and followed each other in one undevi- 
 ating track like cranes." 
 
 Chauliac ascribed the cause of the " Black Death" 
 then prevailing to "the astral influence of the three 
 great planets, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, entering int j 
 conjunction in the sign Aquarius on the 24th of March, 
 1345." This, it will be remembered, was the period 
 when that most dreadful pestilence had set out on its 
 ravages, almost totally depopulating many districts in 
 Europe and carrying off a third of the inhabitants of 
 the earth. 
 
 THE HEALING ART OF EARLIER CHRISTENDOM. 
 
 During the earlier centuries of the present era the 
 care and treatment of the sick were committed to 
 monks, priests and individuals of reputed spiritual
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 129 
 
 powers. Among the agents employed were prayers, 
 inunctions, amulets, sacred relics, and what we de- 
 nominate faith-cure and mind-cure. Philosophers and 
 Christian teachers alike commended these methods. 
 "Prayer calls to our hand the gifts sent down from 
 God," says lamblichos. " Is any sick among you ?" 
 demands the Hebrew Apostle James — "Then let him 
 call to his aid the elders of the assembly and let them 
 pray for him, anointing him with oil ; and the prayers 
 of the faithful shall heal the sufferer." The use of 
 amulets is world-wide to the present day, and they 
 were employed alike by Christians, Gnostics, Greeks, 
 Egyptians and Romans ; and the esteem for relics of 
 saints, with confidence in their virtue, was shared with 
 the Eastern Buddhists. The resort to medicines and 
 physicians was regarded as worldly prudence, if not 
 as unbelief outright. The ministration of persons en- 
 dowed with specific healing power was sought instead, 
 and exorcisms were employed ; so that all recoveries 
 were esteemed as special divine interposition. In this 
 way the charge of the sick continued for a long period 
 in the hands of religious men exclusively. When 
 orders of monks were instituted, the Benedictines be- 
 came the principal surgeons and therapeutists. 
 
 THE ROYAL TOUCH. 
 
 This belief was supplemented by the notion that 
 kings when inaugurated under sacred auspices, had 
 also the power of healing by the imposition of hands. 
 French writers insist that this rite was first practiced 
 in their country. " Philippe I., Louis le Gros and 
 Louis VII., touched for the King's Evil,'" says Michelet. 
 "The kings of England would not have dreamed of
 
 TJO HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 claiming the gift of performing miracles." Guibert 
 adds the information : " The kings of England did not 
 arrogate the gift until they had assumed the title and 
 arms of kings of France." This may have been true 
 in the case of the late Plantagenets, and their suc- 
 cessors, but the example of the earlier Saxon monarch, 
 Edward the Confessor, in the forepart of the eleventh 
 century antedates them all. 
 
 Doctor : " Ay, sir ; there are a crew of wretched souls 
 
 That stay his cure : their malady convinces 
 
 The great assay of art ; but at his touch, 
 
 Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand. 
 
 They presently amend. 
 
 Malcolm : I thank you, doctor. 
 
 Macduff : What's the disease he means ? 
 
 Malcohn : 'Tis called the £v!'l : 
 
 A most miraculous work in this good king : 
 
 Which often, since my hereremain in England, 
 
 I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven, 
 
 Himself best knows : but strangely-visited people, 
 
 All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye. 
 
 The mere despair of surgery, he cures — 
 
 Hanging a golden stamp about their necks. 
 
 Put on with holy prayers ; and 'tis spoken, 
 
 To the succeeding royalty he leaves 
 
 The healing benediction." 
 
 The practice, however, was even older than the 
 Saxon kings of England. It was employed by the 
 Druidic priesthood and by the Skandinavian kings 
 beyond the North Sea, before an English or Conti- 
 nental monarch presumed to employ it. 
 
 In later periods, it was observed that English kings, 
 not becoming such by direct hereditary descent or the 
 fiction of divine right, Protestant as well as any other, 
 were as good as any to heal by their hands. Presently 
 the practice fell into disuse. Indeed, the tables seem
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. I3I 
 
 to have been turned ; the monarchs of Europe, instead 
 of curing king's evil are now themselves very gener- 
 ally afflicted with it. 
 
 RELICS FOR THE CURE OF SMALL-POX. 
 
 The frequent recurring of pestilence, with sweeping 
 mortality, appears to have been a mighty agency to 
 produce disbelief in the power of the clergy and sacred 
 relics to ward off or heal disease. From 987 to 1060 
 there were no less than forty-eight deadly visitations 
 of epidemic. About the year 1000, when Europe was 
 in terror from the expectation of the Day of Judgment 
 and end of the world, the calamities were dreadful. 
 The very order of the seasons seemed to have been 
 inverted, and new laws imposed upon the elements. 
 "A dreadful pestilence made Aquitaine a desert," says 
 Michelet : " The flesh of those who were seized by it 
 was as if struck by fire, and it fell rotting from their 
 bones. The high roads to the places of pilgrimage 
 were thronged by these wretched beings. They be- 
 sieged the churches, particularly that of St. Martin's 
 at Limoges, and crowded its portals to suffocation, un- 
 deterred by the stench around it. Most of the bishops 
 of the South repaired thither, bringing with them the 
 relics of their respective churches. The crowd in- 
 creased, and so did the pestilence ; and the sufferers 
 breathed their last on the relics of the saints." 
 
 RELIGIOUS REVOLUTIONS. 
 
 During the next few years, worse evils followed, al- 
 most too horrible for description. All Europe and the 
 East were scourged by famine and mortality. The
 
 132 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 strong preyed upon the flesh of the weak, children 
 were decoyed away and slain for food, and the very 
 wolves neglecting the corpses of the dead, appeased 
 their hunger upon the bodies cf the living. 
 
 Men abandoned their sins and sought shelter under 
 the shadow of religion. The brigands that thronged 
 the various countries resolved upon amendment of 
 life, promising solemnly at the confessional to abstain 
 from the plundering of travellers when these were 
 journeying under the protection of priests or monks. 
 Tne rich, desirous to expiate their sins and easement, 
 built costly church-structures ; kings and dukes were 
 eager to abandon their thrones and seek repose in 
 cloisters. Lands, houses and slaves were bestowed 
 upon the Church, and often to the credit of the peni- 
 tents the latter were set free. The new Roman Pon- 
 tiff, Gerbert, now Sylvester II., had been a student of 
 profane learning at Barcelona, and as was affirmed, of 
 mathematics and occult literature at the university of 
 Cordova. Many esteemed him a magician, and hated 
 him for his great attachment to the German Emperor, 
 Otho III., who had been his pupil. He now insisted 
 upon a crusade, a century before the rise of Peter the 
 Hermit. 
 
 The world had been full of disorder. The Emperor 
 had interposed his authority at Rome, taking from its 
 Senate and people the power to elect the Pontiff, and 
 exercising it himself. It was not so, however, for a 
 long period. The Church, as denoted by its rulers 
 and to the exclusion of the commonalty, became in- 
 carnate, created anew, and the umpire of Christendom 
 in the person of the carpenter's son. 
 
 This was Hildebrand, the son of the flame, the 
 Christian Bacchus, a Benedictine monk from Clugny
 
 MtDlCINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. IJj 
 
 ill Burgundy. For twenty years he had ruled as 
 chancellor in the Roman councils as the adviser of 
 Pontiffs and Senators, the power behind the Episcopal 
 throne. He was able to procure the absolute prohibi- 
 tion of marriage among the clergy, the vesting of the 
 elections of the Roman bishop in the College of Car- 
 dinals, and what was more, the supremacy of the 
 ecclesiastical authority over the Imperial, and so 
 eventually over Christendom itself. 
 
 MEDICINE MADE A DISTINCT VOCATION. 
 
 After this period the purpose sprung up to dissever 
 the practice of medicine and surgery from the re- 
 ligious profession. The bishops and arch-deacons, 
 were forbidden in the next century, to prescribe for 
 the sick ; but the lower clergy were only restricted 
 from surgery. Up to this time, and afterward. Chris- 
 tian physicians were celibates, and only unmarried 
 men were permitted to engage in practice. It was ac- 
 cordingly not an easy task to separate the two pro- 
 fessions. It required a century of councils, and even 
 threats and disabling censures. Many notable eccle- 
 siastics were eminent as practitioners. Thieddig, of 
 Prague, who had studied at the university of Salerno, 
 was physician to the King of Bohemia ; Hugo, an 
 abbe of St. Denis, was medical adviser to the King of 
 France, and others were equally distinguished. As 
 late as the fifteenth century, John Arundale, after- 
 ward bishop of Colchester in England, was physician 
 to Henry VI.; and other monarchs employed the 
 medical services of abbots. The famous Peter Abelard 
 taught medicine and allowed the nuns in his convent 
 to practice surgery. Hildegard, of the convent at
 
 134 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Rupertsburg, was one of the number. She was widel)- 
 known and honored, and for her medical services, her 
 revelations and miracles, she was canonized as a saint. 
 She prepared a Materia Medica of decidedly original 
 character, directing, among other things, the use of 
 common fern for persons bewitched, herring for the 
 itch, and water-mint for asthma. Considering the age^ 
 and the notions of medicine then current, she was a 
 physician of superior merit. 
 
 THE MEDICAL SCHOOL AT SAT.ERNO. 
 
 " The first medical college established in Europe," 
 says Professor J. W. Draper, " was that founded by the 
 Saracens at Salerno, in Italy." Other writers, how- 
 ever, with plausible reason, assign to it another origin. 
 Dunglison gives the credit to the monks. " Medicine 
 assumed a more imposing attitude," says he, "when 
 the Benedictine monks turned a more particular atten- 
 tion to it, and established two celebrated schools — the 
 one at Monte-Cassino, the other at Salernum." Bill- 
 roth conjectures that the institution at Salerno was 
 founded under the authority of the Emperor Charle- 
 magne in 802 ; but Dunglison seems to give it an 
 earlier date, declaring that it was already celebrated 
 in the eighth century, as regarded the healing art. 
 This appears to be confirmed by the fact that the city 
 was the seat of a Benedictine monastery in the seventh 
 century, and that some of the prelates and higher clergy 
 were distinguished by learning and medical acquire- 
 ments. In 984 Adalberon, bishop of Verona, repaired 
 thither for remedial treatment, but not to any consider- 
 able advantage. "At that period," says Dunglison, 
 " they endeavored to cure the sick by prayer only."
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. I35 
 
 The Saracens from Sicily and Spain held parts of 
 Southern Italy ; and being the chief, almost the only 
 promoters of learning in the world, their influence at 
 Salerno was decisive. " It has by recent researches 
 been clearly established," says J. F. Payne, of London, 
 "that the celebrated Schola Salernatitia was a purely 
 secular institution. All that can be said with certaintj' 
 is that a school or collection of schools gradually grew 
 up in which, especially medicine, but also, in a subor- 
 dinate degree, law and philosophy were taught." A 
 school established by the Saracens would be very sure 
 to be of such a description. 
 
 In the ninth century, the physicians of Salerno had 
 become distinguished, and the city was often called 
 Civitas Hippocratica. Many august and royal persons 
 resorted thither in the next century for the restora- 
 tion of health. William of Normandy was a patient, 
 some years before his invasion of England. The cru- 
 saders, after making it their sanatorium, helped bring 
 it into notice. The students in attendance were 
 numerous, and no distinction was made in regard to 
 race, religion, or even sex. The wives, daughters and 
 other disciples of the professors were equally privi- 
 leged to receive instruction and themselves to serve 
 as lecturers and preceptors. The most noted was 
 Trotula, in the eleventh century. There were also 
 many Jews in attendance as students and probably 
 teachers. The school continued to flourish till the 
 founding of the universities of Naples and Montpellier 
 in France led to its decline. It was not closed till i8i i, 
 by the order of the Emperor Napoleon. 
 
 The doctors of Salerno won deservedly high reputa- 
 tion. At a time when Moslem learning was excluded 
 from many parts of Europe, they furnished a medium
 
 136 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 for its transmission. In their medical practice and 
 theories they chiefly followed Hippokrates and Galen, 
 as well as the Methodists and Empirics, making use 
 of diet and regimen in preference to medicine. They 
 also gave great attention to clinic instruction in the 
 hospitals. Anatomy, curiously enough, was chiefly 
 learned by demonstrations upon the bodies of swine, 
 and one of their writers, Copho, actually wrote a 
 treatise entitled Anatome Porci. The moral analogy, it 
 would seem, might have been somewhat more easily 
 traced, but the physical seems to have answered them 
 very well. Among the books compiled at Salerno 
 were a great number of poems on medical subjects. 
 The fact is, doubtless, that medical men are often 
 prone to give great latitude to the fancy. One of 
 these works, entitled Regimen Sanitatis Salerni, written 
 "for the use of the King of England," in doggerel 
 rhyme, had an immense circulation, was translated 
 and reprinted in different European languages in one 
 hundred and sixty editions. A Medical Compend or 
 Praciica, by Joannes Platearius, was also reprinted 
 several times, and the Antidotariutn, a collection of 
 formulae for compounding medicines, by Nicolaus 
 Praepositus, was very generally esteemed, and became 
 the basis for many works compiled by later writers. 
 Gilles de Corbeil, first a professor at Salerno, and 
 afterward physician to King Philip Augustus of 
 France, composed several poems in Latin hexameters, 
 on medical subjects. Two of these, one on the urine 
 and the other on the pulse, were highly esteemed in 
 professional circles. After the philosophic doctrines 
 of Averroes were generally accepted, there sprang up 
 a great demand for Arabian works on medicine and 
 metaphysics. The conquest of Toledo by Alfonso
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 137 
 
 brought Christendom into more immediate contact 
 with Moslem learning. With the impulse thus com- 
 municated, Jewish physicians, often under the patron- 
 age of bishops, became active in translating the medi- 
 cal and philosophic books into different European 
 languages. 
 
 About this time an enthusiasm for the revival of 
 learning prevailed, and universities were founded in 
 several countries. The Emperor of Germany, Fred- 
 erick II., himself a proficient scholar in languages 
 and natural history, liberally endowed the school at 
 Salerno and established similar institutions at Naples 
 and Messina. He made provision that the professors 
 should receive an income for their maintenance. He 
 also maintained poor students from his own purse. 
 So celebrated was he for his love of knowledge that, 
 as in the case of Charlemagne, whom he greatly re- 
 sembled, the Eastern Moslem princes emulated each 
 other in sending him artistic works as tokens of their 
 friendship. The Sultan of Egypt presented him with 
 an extraordinary tent, in which effigies of the sun and 
 moon revolved, moved by invisible agents, and showed 
 the hours of the day and night in just and exact re- 
 lation. His chancellor, Pietro de Vincis, was a physi- 
 cian, and compiled a code of laws for the Neapolitan 
 dominions. He also wrote the first sonnet extant in 
 the Italian language. 
 
 Under these influences the practice of medicine was 
 included under the regulations of the Imperial Code. 
 Physicians were obliged by it to learn anatomy before 
 everything else; they were required to study diligently 
 the writings and doctrines of Hippokrates and Galen, 
 and were not allowed to practice their profession till 
 they had received from the Board of Faculty at
 
 13'^ HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Salerno and Naples a satisfactory and honorable cer- 
 tificate, besides which they were obliged to pass an 
 examination before the Imperial Chamber, formed of 
 a committee of persons selected as examiners. The 
 restrictions, however, soon fell into desuetude. Queen 
 Ciiovanna, of Naples, attempted to establish them 
 anew, but it was not successful. 
 
 Universities were founded at Bologna and Padua, 
 which became distinguished ; the former adhering to 
 the Galenic tradition, and the latter accepting the 
 doctrines and reasoning of Averroes. The Jewish 
 Rabbis, among the foremost promoters of liberal 
 knowledge, opened schools at Montpellier, Nimes and 
 Carcassonne, where medicine and other branches of 
 learning were taught as at Salerno and Cordova. In- 
 deed, the university at ^lontpellier, from the time of 
 its establishment, with instructors from Spain deeply 
 imbued with the philosophy of Averroes, became dis- 
 tinguished for the practical and empiric character of 
 its teachings, which were in marked contrast with the 
 scholasticism of Paris and other universities. It was 
 equally celebrated for liberality and catholicity. Jews, 
 Moslems, Albigeois and other Christians of the Semi- 
 tic, Iberian and Gothic races taiight and studied to- 
 gether ; and from that time its prestige increased, 
 while that of Salerno declined. Here degrees were 
 conferred ; we now witness the titles of Bachelor, 
 Licentiate and Master conferred upon the students in 
 the various grades of progress. The Jews and Nes- 
 torians of the East had also used academic distinc- 
 tions ; the Arabians had continued them, and the 
 School of Salerno likewise employed them. Only the 
 teachers, however, were styled doctors, which term 
 has simply that meaning ; but after a time, the desig-
 
 MRDICINE IN THE IVIIDDLE AGES. I39 
 
 nation was bestowed instead of " Masters," although 
 not correctly, and hardly in good taste. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 
 
 At Paris in the twelfth century, the faculty of the 
 university had separated from the vSchool of Parvis 
 Notre-Dame, and it was now the most distinguished 
 institution of learning in the European world. Litera- 
 ture is the immortalizing of doctrine and thought, as 
 well as the awakening consciousness of national exist- 
 ence. The dialectic exercises at this institution were 
 the grandest of intellectual gymnastics. From fifteen 
 to twenty thousand students were sometimes in 
 attendance. In the thirteenth century it sent forth 
 seven Roman Pontiffs, and more cardinals and bishops 
 than can be easily enumerated. Raymond Lully and- 
 Dante went thither to sit at the feet of Duns Scotus ; 
 and Roger Bacon, at once a physician, philosopher 
 and occultist, graduated there in 1240. 
 
 There now arose a heated controversy between the 
 University and the religious orders. The King of 
 France, Louis IX., took the side of the clergy. His 
 reign is marked by the establishment of the Gallican 
 Church, by the war of extermination against the Albi- 
 geois, and his two crusades into Egypt. 
 
 In that century, also, many believed the final catas- 
 trophe of the earth immediately impending. The 
 Mongols from ancient Skythia were deluging China, 
 India and Russia; they overthrew the khaHfat, de- 
 stroyed Baghdad, penetrated Germany clear to Mora- 
 via, even devastating ruin itself. The general of the 
 Franciscans had promulgated a book entitled Introduc- 
 tion to the Everlasting Gospel, suggested by an expression
 
 140 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 in the Apocalypse, in which it was declared, that as the 
 Old Testament had been superseded, so would the 
 New, being of the letter only, be replaced by a more 
 lasting evangel of the spirit and higher intellect, the 
 Gospel of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE THEATRE. 
 
 In this period the modern drama had its birth. 
 Priests and monks taking the parts, acted in the 
 chapels the various scenes and events recorded in the 
 New Testament. Here Dante drew the inspiration 
 for his Divine Comedy. The secret worship of the 
 ancient world was dramatic, and from the Bacchic 
 religion the theatre had its beginning. The church in 
 like manner gave the modern theatre its inception. 
 Art means action, drama embodied in architecture and 
 symbolic observances. In this general upheaval Free- 
 Masonry from the East likewise spread its lodges over 
 Europe. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE CLERGY. 
 
 The controversy between the University and the 
 clergy was carried on with a fierce campaign of pam- 
 phlets. It was finally submitted to the Roman Cusia 
 for arbitration. At the instance of Thomas Aquinas, 
 "the Dumb Ox from Sicily," an equivocal course was 
 adopted. Guillaume de St. Amour, the champion of 
 the University, was publicly condemned, but the pro- 
 mulgator of the new Gospel received a less open cen- 
 sure. An order was given by the Pontiff to suppress 
 the book quietly. The doctors of the University, how- 
 ever, burned it in the presence of the people at the 
 Parvis Notre-Dame.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 141 
 
 THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS. 
 
 In the course of these conflicts, Jean Pitard, the phy- 
 sician and confidant of the King, whom he had accom- 
 panied in the Crusades to the Holy Land and Egypt, 
 obtained authority from him in 1271, and founded the 
 College of Surgeons, with St. Cosmo and St. Damiani, 
 for patron saints. He taught surgery regularly for 
 many years, not with any superior ability, but opening 
 the way for others after him. Lanpanchi of Milan, a 
 medicin chirurgique, or lay physician practicing surgery, 
 had been compelled by political changes to leave Italy. 
 Coming to Paris he entered upon a career of high dis- 
 tinction ; and his great work, Grand C/iirurgie, was the 
 text-book at the college for a century. 
 
 FAMOUS ITALIAN TEACHERS. 
 
 From this time onward medical instruction was pro- 
 moted and encouraged in the various universities of 
 Europe. The misgovernment at Bologna had dis- 
 gusted other teachers and students, as well as Lan- 
 panchi, and the schools at Naples and Padua had 
 grown into distinction in consequence. Roger of 
 Parma became a professor and finally Chancellor at 
 the University of Montpellier, and afterward made his 
 countrymen acquainted with the writings of Abul- 
 kasim. 
 
 The professors at Bologna, nevertheless, maintained 
 their high reputation for scholarship. They were 
 more liberal in their sentiments, less circumscribed 
 in their views by tradition, and possessed of superior 
 professional enthusiasm. So great was the perfection 
 to which the medical art had attained, that the
 
 142 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 instruction had become divided, and these professors 
 were classified as physicians, surgeons, physicians for 
 wounds, barber-surgeons, oculists and others. 
 
 Gulielmo de Saliceto, the preceptor of Lanpanchi, 
 was regarded as the best instructor of his time in 
 medicine, surgery and pathology. Like the late pro- 
 fessor Agassiz, he vigorously enforced upon his hear- 
 ers the importance of diligent and critical observation 
 as the only sure way to acquire thorough knowledge. 
 To the study of books he ascribed only a subordinate 
 value. Rolando of Parma also became noted for his 
 explorations and improvements in surgical pathology. 
 
 ANATOMY FIRST TAUGHT BY DISSECTION. 
 
 The most startling innovation, however, was made 
 at Bologna in 13 15, by Mondino de Luzzi. Before that 
 time religious prejudice had interdicted the dissection 
 of the human body as sacrilegious, and the public feel- 
 ing thus engendered had made it perilous to the safety 
 of the individual who would have taken the risk. The 
 professors and students were dependent upon the 
 nomenclatures in use, the descriptions by Galen, and 
 the observations made by examining the bodies of 
 animals. Mondino changed all these methods. He dis- 
 sected and demonstrated the parts of the human body 
 in two female subjects ; and the next year he repeated 
 the performance with a single subject. He compiled 
 a treatise upon the Anatomy of the Internal Organs of the 
 Human Body, which was the standard text-book for two 
 centuries. He did so much that we are warranted in 
 honoring him, as well as his famous pupil Chauliac, 
 for opening new and broader fields for exploration. 
 Nevertheless, dogs will bay the moon, and there are
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 1 43 
 
 men who take pleasure in criticising and depreciating 
 others more exalted than themselves. Mondino was 
 impugned as a copyist of Galen, and for making use 
 of the teaching and terminology of Razes and Avi- 
 cenna. Doubtless he was too much absorbed in his 
 own researches to spend time and energy in devising 
 other phrases and methods ; and certainly there was 
 much that he did not know, and which, perhaps, 
 others after him have not found out. It becomes the 
 lover of real knowledge to seek to profit by what has 
 been ascertained, rather than to waste time and temper 
 on apparent omissions. 
 
 It is true enough, however, that in our time and with 
 the vocabulary and opinions now in vogue, the classifi- 
 cations and descriptions of Mondino have a curious 
 sound. He divides the body into three cavities : the 
 upper one, the head, containing the organs of the ani- 
 mate nature, the middle one or thorax containing the 
 psychal organs, and the abdomen, containing the 
 organism of the physical nature. In this arrange- 
 ment he agrees very closely with the philosopher 
 Plato in the Timaios. His plan of explanation is 
 peculiar. He begins at the lower region of the body 
 to describe the cavities and their contents, and pro- 
 ceeds in due course to the head. The intestines are 
 enumerated in six divisions. The other parts are also 
 carefully set forth more or less accurately. He dis- 
 cusses the shape and distribution of the tissues and 
 membranes, mentioning the disorders to which they 
 are respectively liable. The names employed are 
 often Arabic or a mongrel Greek, somewhat after the 
 modern fashion, as siphak for the peritoneum, zirbus for 
 the omentum, eukharus for the mesentery, monoculus for 
 the csecum, chi/is for the vulva. He gave a very correct
 
 144 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 description of the heart, which contains the rudi- 
 ments of the theory of the circulation of the blood. 
 
 After Mondino came Nicola Betrucci, Pietro del 
 Corlata and others who won honorable distinction in 
 the same field. From this time it became the practice 
 in the several universities of Europe to teach the 
 structure of the human body by ocular demonstration. 
 It was the practice to employ a barber's assistant to 
 dissect in a(l\ance the organs and tissues required for 
 the lecture, using his razor for the purpose. The pro- 
 fessors of anatomy would then read the description to 
 the students from the text-book of Mondino. The 
 statutes of the rival university at Padua prescribed 
 that its lecturers should adhere to the literal text of 
 this work. 
 
 THE OTHER DEPARTMENTS. 
 
 In respect to medicine and surgery, little change or 
 improvement occurred during this period. A few 
 shining lights appeared, but they were ineffectual to 
 dissipate the darkness prevailing over Europe. John 
 of Arden flourished in England in 1360, and achieved 
 distinction by skillful operations for fistula, and for 
 adding the centre-pin to the trepan. Like a true sur- 
 geon, he was not eager to resort to instruments, but 
 insisted that trephining should be limited to the 
 severest forms of injury to the head. His writings, it 
 is quaintly remarked, were written with simplicity 
 and honesty. 
 
 LOW ESTATE OF SURGICAL SKILL. 
 
 Upon the continent of Europe, during the next cen- 
 tury, surgery was " in the hands of barbers and others 
 who coiild neither read n(jr write." Matthaeus Cor-
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. I45 
 
 vinus, the King of Hungary, having been wounded in 
 battle, offered a reward in several countries for a sur- 
 geon to cure him. Johannis von Dockenbourg secured 
 the prize. As a general rule those requiring surgical 
 operations journeyed into the Moslem countries of 
 Asia for the purpose. Good oculists could be found 
 only there. The Moorish Kingdom of Granada was 
 approaching its fall, and its schools were also in decay. 
 
 THE RENAISSANCE. 
 
 The fifteenth century was a period of transition. 
 The darkness before the dawn began to be dispelled 
 by gleams of the aurora. Asia was to be left in night 
 while the sun passed over to Europe. The political 
 map of the West underwent changes, such as had not 
 taken place to such extent for centuries ; and there 
 came with them a new birth of art, knowledge and 
 liberal culture. 
 
 The conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 
 1453, with the final extinction of the Greek Empire, 
 was the most important of these changes. The later 
 Byzantine Emperors had sent men of learning as 
 ambassadors to the several countries of Europe, to 
 procure their aid against the common enen:y. One of 
 these, Emanuelo Chrysalore, remained a long time 
 in Venice, and taught there publicly the different 
 branches of learning which had been neglected and 
 forgotten in the countries of the Western Roman 
 Empire after its overthrow. After the fall of Thes- 
 salonika, Theodores Gaza, a man somewhat noted for 
 scholarship, escaped with his literary treasures to 
 Italy. After the final subversion of the Empire mul- 
 titudes of his countrymen followed his example.
 
 146 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Lorenzo di Medici, was then supreme in the Republic 
 of Florence, and gave them a cordial reception. The 
 manuscripts thus obtained now became a powerful 
 agent to make the scholars of Europe familiar with 
 Grecian poetry, history, philosophy and medicine. 
 
 A change was quickly perceived in the methods of 
 learning. Latin had before been the classic speech of 
 Europe, as well as the dialect of prayer-books and 
 breviaries ; now the scholars of Europe began to read 
 Greek. The art of printing had been discovered at 
 the same period, giving a fresh impulse to learning by 
 making it accessible where before it had been excluded. 
 Plato once sold an estate to enable him to purchase the 
 writings of Pythagoras; now a few gold coins were 
 ample for the purpose. 
 
 THE VATICAN LIBRARY. 
 
 Nicolas v., the son of a physician, and himself 
 learned in medicine and other knowledge, was then 
 Pontiff at Rome. Under him the Roman Court was 
 thronged by men of letters, and the Vatican Library 
 was founded. At his instance there were more than 
 five thousand ancient manuscripts collected, and the 
 greater part of the works of the Greek authors were 
 translated into Latin. He also was a liberal patron 
 of the arts, and caused the venerable monuments of 
 the capitol to be preserved and cherished. Rome from 
 this period became the centre of classic art and study, 
 succeeding its fallen rival on the Bosphoros. 
 
 MASSTLIO FICINO AND HIS CIRCLE. 
 
 Foremost among the leading minds of this period 
 was Massilio Ficino. His father was the physician of
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 147 
 
 Cosimo di Medici. This great banker-statesman had 
 met the famous Pletho and been inspired by an enthu- 
 siasm for the Platonic philosophy. He persuaded this 
 physician who had been instructing the son in medi- 
 cine, to let the young man give his attention to the 
 study of Greek in order to translate the writings of 
 Plato. Thus "that Platonic Academy was founded 
 which led to such important results in the history of 
 Italian philosophy and letters." 
 
 In Massilio Ficino the two historic currents of 
 thought were blended together. He was an ardent 
 student of the past, seeking to know civilization and 
 mental culture in their sources, and at the same time 
 he was receptive of inspiration from the spirit of the 
 times in which he lived, and the illumination then 
 coming over the European world. Following in the 
 path already marked out by Erigena, Aosta and Fran, 
 cesco Petrarch, he in a degree anticipated also the 
 views and perception of Giordano Bruno and Tomasso 
 Campanclla. 
 
 He became an ardent receiver of the doctrines of 
 Plato and Plotinos, whose works he translated into 
 Latin, and he was also an eager student of the mystic 
 teachings of the Alexandreian philosophers. Believ- 
 ing profoundly in immortality, he gives us the state- 
 ment that he had made an agreement with a skeptic 
 friend with whom he had discussed the matter, that 
 the one dying before the other should make his pres- 
 ence known to the survivor, and that the friend had 
 actually kept the appointment. Ficino had also an 
 implicit belief in astrology and the Pythagorean 
 theory of numbers declaring that he had himself the 
 unanswerable demonstration of their truth. He enter- 
 tained the notions of planetary influence that were
 
 148 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 current among the leading thinkers of those times, 
 and cherished by many persons not inferior in intelli- 
 gence at the present day. He declared that medicines 
 prepared when the planets Jupiter and Venus were in 
 conjunction in the zodiacal sign Aquarius became thus 
 possessed of a superior healing energy. 
 
 He held likewise to the philosophic notion of the 
 (Ether — a celestial medium pervading all things, by the 
 agency of which the Supreme Energy is incessantly 
 operative, — in which the universe has its existence, 
 and of which light is an affinity motion, planetary and 
 stellar action and organic life are the outcome. Believ- 
 ing this, he conjectured that human beings, by some 
 occult impartation of it to their own vital energies, 
 might receive increase of vigor and prolong life to an 
 indefinite duration. He also attributed similar results 
 to preparations of gold taken internally. Similar 
 notions are found in the works of the Neo-Platonic 
 philosophers with which Ficino was familiar. 
 
 General demoralization now existed over Europe. 
 The Turks menaced all Christendom, and the different 
 countries were incessantly engaged in war or agitated 
 by internal disturbances. The Republics of Italy were 
 now despotic oligarchies, premonitory of final extinc- 
 tion. The Roman prelate, Nicolas V., also became a 
 blasphemous despot, putting an end to the liberties of 
 the capitol, and establishing a reign of terror, ending 
 only by his death. Another Pontiff, Paul II., obtained 
 a disgraceful celebrity by his persecution of men of 
 learning. Sixtus IV., who succeeded him in 147 1, 
 was chiefly famous for his licentious amours and his 
 numerous "nephews." His efforts for their aggran- 
 dizement led to a war with Florence and general con- 
 fusion over Italy. His successors were Innocent VIII.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 149 
 
 and Alexander VI. Under such men social dishonor 
 and low morality generally was the natural condition 
 of society. 
 
 Ficino remembered the declaration of Augustin in 
 regard to Platonism, and actually contemplated the 
 promulgation of a religious philosophy upon that 
 basis. The proposition seems to have met with favor, 
 and Matthaeus Corvinus, the Hungarian King, con- 
 sidering the disturbed condition of Italian affairs, 
 offered him a residence in his dominions and to found 
 an Akademeia for the new cultus. Ficino, however, 
 adhered to Florence as the metropolis of the new 
 reformation, and would not, in this stress of their for- 
 tunes, abandon his patrons, the Medicis. Soon after- 
 ward, with a singular vacillation, he took orders in 
 1473, at the age of forty, and officiated for twenty-six 
 years as a priest. 
 
 He left an immense amount of manuscript at his 
 death, both original works and translations. His 
 writings upon medicine were voluminous, besides the 
 scores of treatises which he prepared upon morals, 
 theology and metaphysics. Philosophy owes him 
 much. 
 
 Among his numerous admirers was the famous Pico 
 della Mirandola. This great scholar was in close sym- 
 pathy with his philosophic utterances, but appears to 
 have discountenanced his extravagances in other direc- 
 tions. Reasonable as this dissent may appear to us at 
 the present time, it was little short of being revolu- 
 tionary at that period. Certainly it was significant of 
 the change then going on in the minds of the scholars 
 and thinkers of Europe. 
 
 The Chancellor Gerson wrote a book in which the 
 dogmas and pretensions of the medical astrologists
 
 150 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 were condemned. He seems also to have held the 
 peculiar notions of the theurgisls at a low estimate. 
 
 Afterward, the University of Paris, more dis- 
 tinguished for scholastic learning than for social 
 morals, added its condemnation, and astrology pres- 
 ently became an heretical belief. 
 
 The celebrated Dominican monk, Savonarola, had 
 been warmly esteemed by Ficino, but the revolution 
 in Florence which overthrew the power of the Medicis^ 
 the patrons of Ficino, had been promoted by him and 
 produced an estrangement. Savonarola was a zealous 
 adversary of the current philosophic doctrines, and 
 assumed to possess prophetic gifts. Venturing finally 
 to attack the corruptions then in the ascendant at 
 Rome, the Pontiff, Alexander VI., retaliated by caus- 
 ing him to be condemned and burned alive as a heretic 
 in May, 1498, 
 
 OTHER ITALIAN TEACHERS. 
 
 Italians appear to have been the principal teachers 
 in the fifteenth century, who attempted to elevate the 
 knowledge and character of their profession. Bartol- 
 omeo Montagnano taught anatomy at Padua, opening 
 fourteen human bodies for his studies. Saladin, of the 
 university at Naples, wrote a treatise upon Materia 
 Medica and Pharmacy. Leonardo Bertapaglia, pro- 
 fessor at Padua, published a commentary upon the 
 fourth book of the Canons of Avicenna. It was an 
 honest endeavor to elevate his calling above the level 
 of barber-surgery, but had no great merit otherwise, 
 except for its exquisitely classic style. 
 
 Three other surgeons, Vincentio Vianco, Branco and 
 Bogani, achieved distinction as the first who attempted
 
 MtDICINE IN THE iMlDDLE AGES. 151 
 
 and successfully performed the rhinoplastic operation. 
 They cut a piece of flesh from the arm of the patient, 
 leaving only a few fibres attached, adapted it to the 
 shape of the nose ; then kept the raw surface in con- 
 tact by binding the limb across the face, and finally, 
 when the adhesion was complete, cut the part entirely 
 away from the arm. Gaspardo Tagliacozzi, afterward 
 improved the method by taking the flesh from the 
 biceps muscle. He used to declare in his enthusiasm 
 that the new nose sensed odorous bodies more per- 
 fectly than the natural organ. 
 
 Alessandro Achillini, of Bologna, was both the pupil 
 and assistant of Mondino, and bore a high reputation 
 both as a physician and a philosopher. He lectured 
 on medicine and philosophy at the university and 
 bore the designation of the "Second Aristotle." He 
 adhered to the school of medicine then in vogue and 
 did not subscribe to the "new learning." His ability, 
 however, rescued him from the opprobrium which it 
 has become fashionable to cast upon the disciples of 
 the Arabian schools. He discovered and described the 
 two bones of the ear, the iticus and the malleus, the 
 seven bones of the tarsus, the course of the cerebral 
 cavities into the inferior cornua, and likewise gave 
 very accurate accounts of the large and small intes- 
 tines, exhibiting greater proficiency than any who had 
 preceded him. He was the author of several works on 
 anatomy, and his philosophic writings were printed 
 in a single folio volume in 1508. 
 
 Germain Colot, a French surgeon in favor with 
 Louis XI., had chanced to witness the operation of 
 lithotomy at Milan, and made experiments himself, 
 first upon a dead body and afterward upon a con- 
 demned criminal. His success had a powerful influ-
 
 152 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ence in establishing the operation amongst surgical 
 practitioners. The principal apparatus for the pur- 
 pose, however, was handed down as a secret, the prop- 
 erty of the family, till the time of Ambroise Pare. 
 
 WRITERS ON ANATOMY. 
 
 Another writer of some merit was Matteo of Gradi. 
 He published a work on anatomy, in which the struct- 
 ures of various parts of the body were treated and the 
 ovaries were correctly described. 
 
 Gabriello de Zerbi, of Verona, was another aspirant 
 for the highest honors as a teacher. He assumed the 
 title of Medicus Theoricus, or the Medical Seer, and pub- 
 lished a work upon anatomy as his own original dis- 
 covery. Hardly an epoch in medical history ever 
 passes in which some vociferous person does not 
 appear, with similar bombastic pretensions of being 
 the wise one, compared to whom all others are of small 
 account. Apart, however, from Zerbi's consequential 
 style and affectation of superior ability, his chief 
 excellence consisted in his skill as a dissector and his 
 actual observations of the structure of the eye and the 
 olfactory nerves. 
 
 INTRODUCTION OF METALLIC MEDICINES. 
 
 The practice of medicine, so far as it was exercised 
 by ecclesiastics, was principally carried on by monks 
 of the Benedictine order. About the year 1450, one of 
 these, Basil Valentin, a German, introduced various 
 metallic substances into the list of remedies. Like 
 other physicians of the time he was a student of 
 alchemy, which he appears to have interpreted in the
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 153 
 
 exoteric and physical sense. Beginning with anti- 
 mony he tested it on his brother celibates with results 
 so untoward that they gave it the uncanny name which 
 it still retains, as deadly to monks. Despite this unpro- 
 pitious beginning, and the fact that inorganic sub- 
 stances are not accordant to the physical organism, 
 the drug continues to be held in esteem. Valentin 
 also discovered the volatile alkali and its mode of 
 preparation from the chloride of ammonium, the use of 
 mineral acids as solvents, the production of ether from 
 alcohol, and the tonic properties of sulphate of iron. 
 
 DISEASES OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The destruction of the Eastern Empire by the Turks, 
 put a summary end to the commerce between Euro- 
 pean countries and India. The ancient accounts of 
 successful voyages round the southern extremity of 
 Africa, suggested expeditions from Europe to ascer- 
 tain the possibility of making a new route for trade by 
 that direction. Columbus, taking inspiration from the 
 early discoveries by Irish and Icelandic adventurers of 
 a continental region south from Greenland, conceived 
 the project of a direct way to India across the Atlan- 
 tic, and succeeding in reaching the West Indies. 
 Sebastian Cabot was more successful, rediscovering 
 the Continent in the Western Hemisphere where the 
 Northmen had ventured before him. 
 
 New diseases appeared with these occurrences. 
 Scurvy, which is said to have been first noticed by 
 German writers in 1482, made fearful ravages among 
 the sailors accompanying Vasco de Gama round the 
 Cape of Good Hope. It broke out repeatedly in other 
 crews making long voyages, and the medical art was
 
 154 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 without a remedy. Finally, however, in 1564, a cure 
 was found out by accident, outside the profession. A 
 Dutch vessel crossing the Bay of Biscay fell short of 
 provisions, and the sailors resorted to the use of the 
 lemons and oranges in the cargo. To their joyful sur- 
 prise, those of their number suffering from scurvy 
 speedily recovered. The credit, however, of intro- 
 ducing lemon juice as a remedy for scurvy was duly 
 promulgated by a medical writer at a later period as 
 his own discovery. It has latterlv been found tn be a 
 remedy for small-pox. 
 
 The " Sweating Sickness," broke out in England in 
 1485, with a fatality like that of the Black Plague of 
 the preceding century. It appears to have been sim- 
 ilar to the miliary fever, a filth-disease of the Con- 
 tinent, and indeed is still familiar in India. Nowhere, 
 however, does it seem to have so great a mortality as 
 in England ; and in later years, when it was carried 
 by the routes of commerce across the North Sea, it was 
 characterized by the peculiarity of attacking English- 
 men with special severity. When the Earl of Beau- 
 fort, afterward Henry VII., invaded England to wrest 
 the crown from Richard III., the disease appears to 
 have existed among the soldiers and adventurers 
 accompanying the expedition. Soon after he had 
 debarked, the pestilence broke out with terrible 
 violence. Most persons who were attacked by it died 
 within twenty-four hours, hardly one in a hundred 
 surviving. These were for a long time in great danger 
 of relapse. Many towns lost half their population 
 from this epidemic. There were several recurrences ol 
 the visitation during the next century. Since that peri 
 od, however, it has, like Asiatic cholera in later years, 
 small-pox and typhus, succumbed to the beneficial
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. I55 
 
 influence of more wholesome ways of living, greater 
 cleanliness and hygienic precautions, and has lost 
 much of its terror. 
 
 In Italy morbus petechialis prevailed. 
 
 SYPHILIS 
 
 The most terrible pest of this period, however, was 
 syphilis. Known by older writers, it now seemed to 
 have assumed a type and malignity never equalled 
 before. As it appeared about the time of the return 
 of the first expedition of Columbus from the West 
 Indies, many declared that it had been brought from 
 the New World. It was first noticed, however, during 
 the invasion of Naples by Charles VIII., King of 
 France ; and designated the Souvenir de Naples^ and the 
 Neopolitan disease. To assign it to either source is 
 absurd. It was partially described by Abulkasim and 
 Avicenna, and afterward by Gulielmo of Salicetta in 
 1280. The Alexandrian Hebrew, Jesus, seems to have 
 known of it. " He that sinneth before his Maker," 
 says he,* "let him fall into the hands of the physician." 
 The author of the Thirty-eighth Fsalm, however, is 
 more explicit. "There is no soundness in my flesh ; 
 no peace in my bones, because of my sins," he declares 
 with a sad wail. "My wounds are noisome and cor- 
 rupt because of my foolishness. I am wretched and 
 bent completely down ; I go moaning the whole day. 
 My loins are full of inflammation, and there is no 
 soundness in my flesh." The disease of the first King 
 Herod of Judaea, as described by Josephus, appears to 
 have been the same malady, and Apion whom the same 
 writer denounces, had a similar complaint. After the 
 
 * EccUsiasticus, xxxviii.. 15.
 
 156 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 famous outbreak in Naples, the pest was carried from 
 country to country, raging with fearful violence for 
 forty years. It was regarded by many as epidemic ; 
 and it leveled all distinctions of rank and fortune, 
 assailing with terrible impartiality the king, the 
 nobleman and the peasant ; the pontiff, cardinal, 
 priest and layman. It passed in its fell course f rorn 
 Naples to Spain and France, thence to Germany and 
 England, onward to Poland and Skandinavia, and 
 from Poland to Russia. The State of Wurtemburg 
 seems not to have been visited till 1538. It extiTpated 
 about a fourth of the population of Europe. The 
 philosophic investigators in pathology may determine 
 for us the extent to which this plague has left its 
 vestiges in the human family, inducing deterioration 
 of stamina, and leading to the development of a 
 numerous category of ailments that would otherwise 
 have been unknown or of little importance. 
 
 MERCURY ADOPTED AS A REMEDY. 
 
 To the empirical experimentation with this com- 
 plaint we are indebted for the introduction of mercury 
 into Western medicine. It had been in use for ages in 
 China and Eastern India. The Materia Medica of Chun- 
 Sin recommends quicksilver and native calomel to 
 destroy worms ; and the knowledge of the drug was 
 probably brought from thence by some of the Euro- 
 pean navigators. The first employment of the article 
 was in Italy in 1497 ; chiefly, it would seem, however, 
 as an external application. Berenger de Carpi gener- 
 ally receives the credit of beginning this mode of 
 treatment. He speedily became famous, and in a 
 single year acquired a net income of six thousand
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 157 
 
 pistoles. His patients were compelled to give him the 
 sums which he demanded, and there was no end to the 
 wealth which he accumulated. 
 
 How he came to entertain the surmise that mercury 
 might be specific in this complaint has been variously 
 conjectured. It was most probable that he was, like 
 other physicians of the period, a dabbler in alchemy. 
 This was simply a mysticism in which mercury 
 denoted a pure or awakened conscience by the opera- 
 tion of which the whole mind and heart became 
 cleansed from evil. De Carpi doubtless interpreted 
 this literally, and so endeavored with the metal itself 
 to eradicate this most foul of virulent animal poisons. 
 
 A prominent physician of Edinburgh remarks that 
 syphilis in the United Kingdom at the present moment 
 is in the stage of an epidemic in its decline. It is, he 
 adds, the case with all infective diseases. This may 
 be fortunate, for there are surgeons professing to 
 believe in the propriety, if not the necessity of inocu- 
 lating the healthy with the virus of the disease as a 
 prophylactic, as others advocate the infecting with 
 other noisome ailments. Perhaps, if syphilis is really 
 declining, the mercurial remedies will likewise go out 
 of fashion, and so give the human family good cat:se 
 to rejoice at being exempted from two of its direst 
 calamities. Deus diem festinet. 
 
 CLOSING OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 The fall of Constantinople was precursory of the 
 modern cycle. A thousand years had nearly passed 
 from the abdication of Romulus in the West till the 
 overthrow of the surviving Eastern Empire. If the 
 former event betokened the introduction of the Dark 
 Ages into Europe, the latter was the introduction of a
 
 158 HISTORY OF MKDICINK. 
 
 new morning. The plunging of the Oriental world 
 into the abyss of Turkish barbarism was incident to 
 the passing of its Sun into the sky of the Western 
 countries. Hence first was witnessed the Renaissance 
 in Italy and a general awakening of the attention of 
 the learned men of the universities. The impulse was 
 transmitted thence into neighboring regions, and the 
 darkness of the former ages was driven away. The 
 adding of the Greek language to the curriculum of 
 liberal studies, the dissemination of Greek learning 
 among the peoples of Europe and the invention of 
 printing were the important factors in the mental 
 revolution. Besides, the wars, disorders and general 
 deterioration of morals in the public policy of the 
 nations, drove the thoughtful and well-disposed out of 
 political life ; and they sought compensation and an 
 asylum for the conscience in literary pursuits. In 
 fact, most revivals of learning have occurred when 
 commonwealths had corrupt or despotic rulers. 
 
 Professor Kohlrausch thus aptly sets forth the 
 results of the change from the Mediaeval to the 
 Modern period. "Although it may admit of dispute 
 whether, upon the whole, we are further advanced in 
 the arts and sciences than many nations of antiquity 
 and the Middle Ages, the progress in the universal 
 spread of knowledge can admit of no question and it 
 is the noble art of printing, which, as the great lever, 
 has effected this glorious object." 
 
 Meanwhile, the New World beyond the Atlantic had 
 come to the knowledge of Europe. The ancient cos- 
 mology of scholars and ecclesiastics was rudely over- 
 turned. The Earth was displaced from its acknowl- 
 edged rank as centre of the universe, and relegated to 
 its former position as an attendant upon the Sun.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 159 
 
 With all these changes, thought all through the 
 learned world was in a ferment and there was an 
 increased receptivity to mental illumination. 
 
 HISTORIC EVENTS. 
 
 The overthrow of the Eastern Empire, which had 
 thus become the prelude to greater enlightenment in 
 Europe, was also the introduction to new perils to 
 Christendom. The Turks made their way to the Dan- 
 ube, with every prospect of conquering Hungary. A 
 crusade was proclaimed against them ; but the old 
 enthusiasm was dead. The mild-mannered Frederick 
 III. was Emperor of Germany, and could not rally the 
 States, even for their own protection. The Roman 
 legate, Capistran, and the Hungarian General, Johann 
 Hunyady, however, collected forces and put the 
 invaders to rout. Their King dying the next year, 
 the Hungarian Diet elected Matthaeus Corvinus, the 
 son of the General to the throne. The new monarch 
 set himself at once to the encouragement of learning 
 in the country. He founded the university of Buda, 
 and offered to Ficino to establish a school of philoso- 
 phy and the liberal arts. But the great Italian scholar 
 was vacillating, and did not accept the proposition. 
 
 Maximilian I., the son and successor of the Emperor 
 Frederick, was perhaps the noblest representative of 
 the Age of Chivalry. He was distinguished above his 
 contemporaries for personal bravery, enthusiasm, and 
 love for adventure. While yet only archduke, he had 
 married the daughter of Charles the Bold, on her own 
 choice, she never having seen him. He came to the 
 imperial dignity at a time when the countries of 
 Europe were governed by kings and lords, both
 
 l6o HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 spiritual and temporal, who had adopted the methods 
 of modern diplomacy, esteeming treachery as sagacity, 
 and esteeming honor as nothing. Maximilian was a 
 man of the former time ; he was sincere in his deal- 
 ings with others and scrupulously kept his word and 
 faith. He was accordingly often overreached. 
 
 Germany, by the old constitution, was at that time 
 the arbiter of the sovereigns of Europe. Maximilian 
 set out to perform effectively the functions of thi-s 
 office by first perfecting the organization of the 
 Empire and providing for the more equable adminis- 
 tration of justice ; and afterward by uniting Christen- 
 dom for a reform of morals and religion at home, and 
 for protection against the Turks. He even entertained 
 the project of being himself elected to the pontifical 
 chair at Rome. 
 
 He was a passionate lover of knowledge ; actually 
 aiding learned men, and finding time himself to com- 
 pose several books. Thus, in every way, while appar- 
 ently unsuccessful in much that he attempted, he 
 opened the way for the new period. He was gentle 
 and merciful, truly the prince, the pure-minded hero, 
 the scholar, the gentleman — in short, all that makes 
 up in the noblest sense, the man. 
 
 " With Maximilian as their last representative," says 
 Professor Kohlrausch, " the Middle Ages passed away; 
 a new period, of which the germ had been sown, now 
 gradually developed itself and became established." 
 
 ENGLAND AND FRANCE. 
 
 In England the conflict between the royal houses of 
 York and Lancaster had resulted in the extermination 
 of a large part of the nobility, as well as of the princes
 
 MEDICINE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. l6l 
 
 of the blood. Henry VII., of the new dynasty of Tudor, 
 a monarch in every moral and other characteristic the 
 reverse of Maximilian, was king during the period of 
 transition. Guided by sordid avarice, he sacrificed 
 the opportunity offered him by Columbus, and then 
 meanly, but with results fortunate for us, won the 
 right of discovery through the enterprise of Sebastian 
 Cabot. 
 
 ■ Meanwhile, learning had received a new impulse at 
 the universities. Richard III., during his brief reign 
 encouraged the liberal arts, and after his overthrow 
 the scholars at Oxford and Cambridge continued the 
 movement. 
 
 France was in no respect behind. The university 
 at Paris, as well as the institutions of the South, had 
 been among the foremost to accept the new order of 
 things. With the accession of Francis I., Henry VIII. 
 and Charles V., the Modern Times had begun.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MEDICINE IN THE RENASCENCE. 
 
 Medicine was among the later of the arts to partici- 
 pate in the mental revolution which superseded the 
 Dark Ages. Having been taught in conjunction with 
 metaphysics and the occult learning denominated 
 mathematics, the first endeavors to let in the new light 
 were equally directed to the several departments of 
 knowledge usually taught in the schools. Thus we 
 have observed that Ficino, who was foremost in the 
 restoration, and those who sympathized with him, 
 directed their efforts chiefly to philosophy as the 
 nucleus around which the new thought should collect. 
 " It was at first very naturally supposed," says Dr. J. 
 F. Payne, " that the simple revival of classical, and 
 especially of Greek literature, would at once produce 
 the same brilliant results in medicine as in literature 
 and philosophy. The movement of reforms started, 
 of necessity, with scholars rather than with practicing 
 physicians — more precisely, with a group of learned 
 men, equally enthusiastic in the cause of letters and 
 of medicine." 
 
 When a breach with former notions and modes of 
 thinking takes place, the neophytes are often vigorous 
 in denouncing, with little or no discrimination, what 
 had been believed. Thus, in earlier centuries, the
 
 MEDICINE IN THE RENASCENCE, 163 
 
 learning of the East was denominated magic and the 
 term made opprobrious, while those who cultivated 
 knowledge were stigmatised as sorcerers. The Albi- 
 geois, Waldenses and early reformers in religion were 
 alike so denounced. A person or sentiment made 
 odious is half overcome. The pursuit of knowledge 
 was thus transformed from wisdom-craft to witch- 
 craft and denominated the "black art." 
 
 In a similar temper the leaders of the Renascence 
 discarded the medical literature of the Middle Ages as 
 barbarism, and scouted the writings of the Arabians 
 as profane, if not actually worse. In Spain, where the 
 Christian and Moslem faiths had been in immediate 
 collision, the death-penalty, under religious auspices, 
 was sometimes inflicted upon such as studied them. 
 
 The Italian professors, however, adopted the more 
 judicious policy of leading medicine back to its earlier 
 sources. They substituted the writings of Hippo- 
 krates, Galen and other eminent physicians for those 
 of the Arabian authors. Few scholars, however, had 
 any knowledge of the Greek language, and even few 
 physicians were learned men. It was necessary, there- 
 fore, to begin by the translating of those works into 
 Latin, then the common language of scholars in all 
 European countries. 
 
 RESTORATION OF THE HIPPOKRATIC DOGMA. 
 
 The first to engage in this undertaking was Nicola 
 Leoniceno. He was a native of Vincenza, and for 
 upward of sixty years a professor in the universities 
 of Padua and Ferrara. He had become an accom- 
 plished Greek scholar, and now made a translation of 
 the writings of Hippokrates. which he was assiduous
 
 164 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 in explaining in his lectures. Fortunately he was an 
 eclectic and not a bigot or even a dogmatist in his 
 beliefs. While enthusiastic in his devotion to the 
 "new learning," he was also conscientiously diligent 
 in selecting from the doctrines and practice of the 
 Arabian physicians whatever he regarded as true and 
 beneficial. He was followed by Giovanni de Monti 
 and others. 
 
 Hippokratic Medicine was now speedily carried from 
 Italy to France, where it became the leading school. 
 Johannis Giinther, of Andernach, for some time a pro- 
 fessor in the Faculty at Paris, made a " new departure" 
 by translating the works of Galen and Hippokrates 
 into French. Fernel, another eminent representative 
 of the school at Paris, wrote a treatise in refutation of 
 the humoral pathology as set forth by Galen, and first 
 suggested the doctrine of "solidism," afterward pro- 
 pounded and taught by Hoffman and his school. 
 
 Lommius, a disciple of Fernel, practicing medicine 
 at Brussels, also published a work in Latin, entitled 
 Observationes Medicales, which enforced the doctrines of 
 Hippokrates. Botal, likewise a student of Fernel, and 
 chief physician to the kings, Henry II. and Charles IX. 
 of France, attained distinction by his recommendation 
 of profuse blood-letting, in which he was hardly sur- 
 passed by the famous Sangrado. His contemporaries, 
 Duret, Piso and Holler, also warm admirers of Hippo- 
 krates, were more cautious and conservative in this 
 respect, adhering more closely to the Hippokratic 
 teaching. They wrote ably upon prognosis and other 
 practical topics. 
 
 After these writers there followed a multitude of 
 redactors, scholiasts and commentators, who devoted 
 themselves to elucidations of the doctrines of Galen
 
 MEDICINE IN THE RENASCENCE. 165 
 
 and Hippokrates, citing them as oracles not to be 
 questioned or doubted. Prominent among these were 
 Zwinger of Basel, who wrote on practical medicine ; 
 Mercurialis, who published a work upon the Gymnastics 
 of the Ancients, and also Amato Lusitano and Prospero 
 Alpino, the author of a treatise on the Medical Art 
 amo/ig the Egyptians. 
 
 Giovanni Argentine, a physician of Piedmont, who 
 taught in the universities of Pisa, Naples and Turin, 
 was distinguished as a reformer in the methods of 
 teaching. He insisted strenuously upon the old 
 Empiric doctrine that observation and experience 
 constituted the foundation of all rational instruction 
 in medicine. He found supporters in several of the 
 principal universities, among them Joubert and Ron- 
 delet, of Montpellier. 
 
 THE "new learning" IN ENGLAND. 
 
 The turning-point in English history began with 
 the Tudor dynasty, and the modern age was fairly 
 introduced when Henry VIII. came to the throne. 
 This king, who was neither hero, saint, nor monster, 
 but a man with many faults, was both able and popular. 
 He was of versatile ability, skillful in engineering, 
 music and literature, well read in theology, and atten- 
 tive in the observance of religious duties. He suc- 
 ceeded in war and soothed down insurrections at home 
 by forgiveness. For thirty-six years of his reign he 
 was regarded abroad and in his own dominions as a 
 model king. He was among the best physicians of his 
 age, and established medicine and surgery on new 
 foundations. He was a warm friend to men of learning, 
 and his encouragement gave a new impetus to the 
 efforts for disseminating knowledge.
 
 l66 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 He made choice of the celebrated Thomas Lynaker 
 for his physician, and continued his favor and patron- 
 age without interruption. Lynaker was a native of 
 Canterbury, and is distinguished as the first English 
 scholar who wrote in the Latin language. He had 
 been instructed in Greek learning by William of Sell- 
 ing, and entered the university of Oxford in 1480, 
 becoming a Fellow of All-Souls' College four years 
 later. Accompanying his preceptor on an embassy to 
 Italy, he entered the university at Bologna under 
 Poliziano. Among his fellow-students were the sons 
 of Lorenzo de Medici, one of whom was afterward the 
 pontiff, Leo X, Lynaker subsequently received the 
 degree of Doctor in Medicine at the university of 
 Padua, and returned to Oxford. Here he appears to 
 have been better known as a philosopher than as a 
 physician. He translated the works of Aristotle into 
 Latin, and also those of Galen ; and several writers 
 affirm that he also made a Latin version of Hippo- 
 krates. He formed one of a circle of distinguished 
 scholars who were active in the promoting of classics 
 and philosophic learning. In 1501 he was appointed 
 tutor to Arthur, the Prince of Wales, upon whose death 
 he engaged in the practice of medicine in London. 
 After the accession of Henry VIII., and his appoint- 
 ment as physician to that monarch, he speedily became 
 the acknowledged head of his profession in England. 
 Among those who consulted him were Cardinal Wol- 
 sey, Archbishops Warham and Fox. Some years later 
 he took orders as a priest. He resumed literary pur- 
 suits, and prepared a Greek Grammar for the use of 
 the royal princess Mary. 
 
 Conscioiis that he was the member of a learned pro- 
 fession rather than of a mere bread- winning craft, he
 
 MEDICINE IN THE RENASCENCE. 167 
 
 recognized his indebtedness to it by efforts to promote 
 medical study in England. He employed his vast for- 
 tune to establish a chair of Greek medicine at the 
 University of Oxford, and also began the foundation 
 of the Royal College of Physicians in London. He 
 was aided by the King in this enterprise, and the insti- 
 tution became the model of similar ones in other 
 countries. 
 
 Before this time the authority to license physicians 
 in London had been exercised by the bishops, and 
 generally leechcraft had been carried on by priests. 
 It was afterward, vested in the College of Physicians. 
 
 " DOCTOR CAIUS." 
 
 John Kaye, a native of Norwich, succeeded to the 
 work so auspiciously begun by Lynaker. It is hardly 
 necessary to remark that he was the " Doctor Caius" 
 whom Shakspere has commemorated in " The Merry 
 Wives of Windsor," it being a fashion of scholars at 
 that period to give their names a Latin or Greek form. 
 He was a ripe scholar, having studied medicine and 
 the classic languages in Italy. He founded the medi- 
 cal college at Cambridge, and was the author of several 
 works. Two of his treatises describe the fifth out- 
 break of the "Sweating Disease" in England in 1551. 
 One of them was in English and entitled, "^ Bokc or 
 Counseill Against the Disease commonly called the Sweating 
 Disease," and the other in Latin having the name " Z><? 
 Ephemerd Britannicd." He gives the remarkable state- 
 ment that this disease, so mortal in England, did not 
 extend to Scotland, but passed over to Calais, Brabant 
 and other places, affecting Englishmen but not the 
 natives.
 
 l68 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 BERENGER DE CARPI, 
 
 The "greatest discoveries which occurred during 
 the sixteenth century" are ascribed by many writers 
 to Berenger de Carpi. He was a native of Modena, 
 and for many years a professor at Bologna. He 
 excelled as an anatomist, dissecting more than one 
 hundred bodies, and making several discoveries in 
 regard to the internal structures of the body. Sprengel 
 also gives him the credit of having made several 
 improvements in surgery. His introduction of the 
 use of mercury in syphilis has already been mentioned 
 in the preceding chapter. He was a zealous worker, 
 and wrote several books which were received with 
 great favor — a Compe?id, Isagogce or introduction, and 
 Commentaries upon Mondini, in which last work he cor- 
 rects mistakes of that distinguished author, and gives 
 minute descriptions of the various organs and textures 
 of the human body. 
 
 PARACELSUS. 
 
 In point of genius, original research and intuitive 
 sagacity, Paracelsus deservedly holds a superior rank. 
 He was foremost among those whose labors introduced 
 the new epoch in medicine, and his explorations were 
 so extensive and profound that they have never been 
 thoroughly apprehended. His father, Wilhelm Bom- 
 bast, of Hohenheim, in Wurtemburg, was a physician 
 of excellent scholarship, and instructed the young 
 Philipp in philosophy and medicine as they were 
 taught at the time. The youth was very precocious, 
 and after a term of study with several distinguished 
 churchmen, entered the university at Basel in 1509, in 
 his nineteenth year. After this he became a pupil of 
 the celebrated Tritheim, Bishop of Spanheim, who
 
 MEDICINE IN THE RENASCENCE. 169 
 
 taught him philosophy, alchemy and the properties of 
 metals. He next spent a period in the laboratory of 
 Sig-ismund Fugger in the Tyrol,* where he attained 
 greater proficiency in chemistry and metallurgy. 
 Then, following the example of Demokritos, Hippo- 
 krates and other ancient sages, he, at the age of twenty, 
 made the tour of Europe, traveling on foot, visiting 
 the various mines, and consulting with learned men 
 and others in his quest for information. " I have pur- 
 sued knowledge at the risk of my life," he said of 
 himself; "and I have not been ashamed to learn of 
 peddlers, news mongers and barbers." 
 
 Passing from Muscovy into the dominions of the 
 Great Khan, he was made a prisoner and brought to 
 that monarch, who promptly set him at liberty. He 
 accompanied the son of that prince on an embassy to 
 Constantinople, where, as Van Helmont informs us, 
 he became the disciple of an "Arabian" physician, his 
 own countryman, named Trismosinus or Pfeiffer, who 
 imparted to him the knowledge denominated in 
 alchemic diction, the "philosopher's stone." 
 
 Returning by way of the Danube to Italy and Ger- 
 many, he served for some time as a surgeon in the 
 imperial army. His reputation for skill and learning 
 was now acknowledged by the scholars of the time. 
 Among those who consulted him professionally was 
 the celebrated Erasmus of Rotterdam. Going to Basel 
 in 1526, he was appointed town physician, and shortly 
 afterward, at the recommendation of the Reformer 
 CEkolampadius, was chosen by the city council pro- 
 fessor of philosophy and medicine in the university. 
 
 He now adopted the title of " Utriusque Medicince 
 Doctor," or teacher of both branches of medicine, and 
 
 *The Fuggers were the principal bankers and moneylenders of Europe.
 
 170 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 following a practice in vogue among scholars, he took 
 the name by which he is best known, Paracelsus^ as 
 another Celsus. He was bold in his innovations. 
 Rejecting the current Aristotelian philosophy and 
 method, he accepted the Platonic doctrines. He added 
 new observations to what was known of surgery. 
 " The dead level of tradition is broken first by two 
 men of originality and genius, Paracelsus and Par6," 
 is the testimony of Dr. Charles Creighton. "Apart 
 from the mystical form in which much of his teaching 
 was cast, Paracelsus has great merits as a reformer of 
 surgical practice. 'The high value of his surgical 
 writings,' says Haser, 'has been recognized at all 
 times, even by his opponents.' It is not, however, as 
 an innovator in operative surgery, but rather as a 
 direct observer of natural processes, that Paracelsus 
 is distinguished. His description of 'hospital gan- 
 grene,' for example, is perfectly true to nature ; his 
 numerous observations on syphilis are also sound and 
 sensible, and he was the first to point out the connec- 
 tion between cretinism of the offspring and the goitre 
 of the parents." 
 
 Paracelsus was more famous, however, as an apostle 
 of modern medicine. He would not be bound by the 
 consensus of opinion entertained by the majority of 
 the medical profession of the time, but unsparingly 
 denounced it as an artificial system consisting of a 
 gibberish unintelligible to the common people, a 
 science which was only an invention to cheat and 
 deceive, and an art, not of curing the sick but of 
 worming into the favor of the rich, swindling the 
 poor, and gaining admittance to the tables of men 
 of high standing. " You live upon imposture," he 
 declared, "and the aid and abetment of the legal
 
 MEDICINE IN THE RENASCENCE. 171 
 
 profession enable you to carry on your impositions 
 and to evade punishment by the law." 
 
 He avowed the highest respect for the teachings of 
 Hippokrates, but discaided the practice founded upon 
 the writings of Galen, Razes, and Avicenna, burning 
 them in the presence of his class. " Popular medicine," 
 he declared, " knows next to nothing about any dis- 
 eases that are not caused by mechanical means, and 
 the science of curing internal diseases consists almost 
 entirely in the removal of causes that have produced 
 some mechanical obstruction in the body. But the 
 number of diseases that originate from unknown 
 causes is far greater than those that come from 
 mechanical causes ; and for such our physicians know 
 no cure, because not knowing such causes, they can- 
 not remove them. All that they can prudently do is 
 to observe the patient and make their guesses about 
 his condition ; and the patient has good cause to rejoice 
 if the medicines administered to him do him no serious 
 harm and do not prevent his recovery. 
 
 "The best of our popular physicians are the ones 
 who do the least harm. But, unfortunately, some poison 
 their patients with mercury, and others purge or bleed them to 
 death. There are some who have learned so much that 
 their learning has driven out all their common sense, 
 and there are others ivho care a great deal more for their otvn 
 profit than for the health of their patients. A disease does 
 not change to accommodate itself to the knowledge of 
 the physician, but the physician should understand 
 the causes of the disease. A physician should be the 
 servant of Nature, and not her enemy ; he should be 
 able to guide and direct her in her struggle for life, 
 and not throw, by his unreasonable interference, fresh 
 obstacles in the way of recovery." {Paragranum.)
 
 172 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Such utterances speedily brought down upon him 
 the bitter animosity of his colleagues. They soon 
 became prolific in finding pretexts for attacking him. 
 Paracelsus had departed from the general practice of 
 giving his lectures in the Latin language, but employed 
 the vernacular Swiss-German dialect, and they made 
 this an ostensible reason for charging him with 
 ignorance. He was a stranger, unknown to them, 
 they declared, which was a mortal offense to a Swiss ; 
 he had been made a professor without their approval, 
 and they did not know, they asserted, whether he had 
 ever received any medical degree. Besides, he was 
 profaning and vulgarizing the medical art by making 
 its mysteries known to the laity, and was a man to be 
 got out of the way at all hazards. The apothecaries 
 joined in the cry. They were enraged because he as 
 city physician had insisted upon ascertaining their 
 fitness to compound medicines, and whether their 
 drugs were pure and sold at prices not exorbitant. He 
 had also offended them by writing his prescriptions in 
 German instead of Latin, and becau-se his formulas 
 were simple and did not consist of from forty to sixty 
 or more different ingredients. Indeed Paracelsus was 
 a pioneer teacher of direct or specific medication. 
 
 The crowning act of enmity, however, was the 
 ingratitude and treachery of the Canon of Lichtenfels. 
 He had been given up to die by his physicians ; but 
 Paracelsus had succeeded in restoring him to health. 
 He turned upon his benefactor, accusing him of sor- 
 cery, necromancy and drunkenness. The City Council 
 of Basel, to its own disgrace, took sides with the 
 ecclesiastic. Paracelsus indignantly denounced their 
 action, and to escape prosecution for his temerity, left 
 the city.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE RENASCENCE, 173 
 
 After a series of journeyings he came to Nurem- 
 berg. The physicians of this place, on learning of his 
 arrival, published him as an impostor and charlatan. 
 He replied by asking for patients suffering from 
 incurable diseases. Several cases of elephantiasis 
 were produced and successfully treated. Finally, in 
 1541, the Prince Palatine, Duke Ernst of Bavaria, 
 invited him to make his home at Salzburg. The 
 malignity of his enemies pursued him to this place 
 of refuge, and he was treacherously murdered by 
 assassins, September, 1541. 
 
 The works imputed to Paracelsus are numerous, 
 and probably include treatises by others of his school. 
 They seem to embrace every topic comprised at that 
 time in the curriculum of medicine. From the earliest 
 periods, not only drugs and surgical expedients, but 
 prayer, religious offices, faith, philosophy, magic, 
 astrology and pneumatology were included in the art 
 of healing. We need not be surprised, therefore, that 
 Paracelsus treated of them in his writings. Indeed, 
 he entertained religious and theosophic opinions 
 greatly resembling those of Jakob Boehmen, and many 
 of his utterances would furnish appropriate themes 
 for the Society of Psychical Research. 
 
 Yet they who counted him a visionary, like those 
 who call him an ignorant pretender, would reckon ill. 
 "The highest merits of Paracelsus," says Giordano 
 Bruno, " is that he was the first to treat medicine as a 
 philosophy, and that he used magical remedies in cases 
 where the physical substances were not sufficient." 
 
 Paracelsus believed medicine to be a holy art, and 
 the practice a sacred calling which the unworthy and 
 irreverent can not understand. He described it with 
 a terminology partly current at the time, and partly
 
 174 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 consisting of words of his own devising and selecting. 
 "The knowledge of Nature is the foundation of the 
 science of medicine," said he; "and it is taught by 
 the four great departments of science : Philosophy, 
 Astronomy, Alchemy and Physical Science." By 
 philosophy he meant the true perception and under- 
 standing of cause and effect ; and he adds, that " in 
 this understanding rests the indication of the true 
 remedy." " He must, above all, be in possession of 
 that faculty which is called Intuition, and which can- 
 not be acquired by blindly following the footsteps of 
 another ; he must be able to see his own way. If you 
 wish to be a true physician you must be able to do 
 your own thinking, and not merely employ the 
 thoughts of others. What others teach you, may be 
 good enough to help you in your search for knowledge, 
 but you should be able to think for yourself and not 
 cling to the coat-tail of any authority, no matter how 
 high-sounding the title of the latter may be." 
 
 By astronomy is signified the mental sphere of the 
 being. The influences of the seasons, hot and cold, 
 dryness and moisture, light and darkness, are also 
 included. " Man's diseases do not originate in himself, 
 they originate from the influences which act upon him 
 and enter his constitution. If the air becomes vitiated, 
 it may poison man's body ; if the astral influences are 
 in a state of corruption, they may do likewise." 
 
 To be an alchemist is to "understand the Chemistry 
 of Life. Medicine is not merely a science, but an art; 
 it does not consist merely in compounding pills and 
 plasters and drugs of all kinds ; but it deals with the 
 processes of life, which must be understood before they 
 can be guided." " A powerful will may cure where a 
 doubt will end in failure. The character of the phy-
 
 MEDICINE IN THE RENASCENCE. I75 
 
 sician may act more powerfully upon the patient than 
 all the drugs employed." " The physical surroundings 
 of the patient may have a great influence upon the 
 course of his disease. If he is waited upon by persons 
 who are in sympathy with him, it will be far better 
 for him, than if his wife or attendants wish for his 
 death." "The physician should be well versed in 
 physical science. He should know the action of medi- 
 cines and learn by his own experience and by the 
 experience of others. He should know how to regulate 
 the diet of the patient ; the ordinary course of disease, 
 and the premonitory symptoms ; the innumerable 
 remedies in nature, which are hidden from the eyes of 
 the vulgar, but opened to the perception of the wise." 
 
 Paracelsus also insisted strenuously upon the 
 natural qualifications of the physician. " He who can 
 cure disease," he declares, " is a physician. To cure 
 diseases is an art which can not be acquired by the 
 mere reading of books, but which must be learned by 
 experience. Neither emperors nor popes, neither col- 
 leges nor high schools can create physicians. They 
 can confer privileges and cause a person who is not a 
 physician to appear as if he were one, but they cannot 
 cause him to be what he is not ; they can give him 
 permission to kill, but they can not enable him to cure 
 the sick." "There are artificially-made physicians 
 and there are born physicians. The latter possess 
 their talent from birth, and it may be unfolded and 
 grow like a tree if it is properly nursed. He who has 
 no natural talent to be a physician will never succeed. 
 He who is not a physician in the spring of his life, 
 will not be one in the autumn." 
 
 " One of the most necessary requirements for a phy- 
 sician is perfect purity and singleness of purpose. He
 
 176 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 should be free of ambition, vanity, envy, unchastity, 
 pomposity and self-conceit, because these vices are 
 the outcome of ignorance, and are incompatible with 
 the light of divine wisdom which should illuminate 
 the mind of the true physician." 
 
 Paracelsus was the first to make use of the term 
 magnetism to express certain agencies and phenomena. 
 He taught that the archceus or primordial life-essence 
 was distributed in all parts of the healthy human 
 body, and that it was of a magnetic nature, attracting 
 or repelling other sympathetic or antipathetic forces 
 belonging to the same plane. " The vital force is not 
 enclosed in man, but radiates around him like a lumi- 
 nous sphere, and it may be made to act at a distance. 
 In these semi-material rays the imagination of man 
 may produce healthy or morbid effects. It may poison 
 the essence of life and cause diseases, or it may purify 
 it after it has been made impure, and restore the 
 health." Again he says : "The invisible forces act- 
 ing in the visible body are often very powerful, and 
 may be guided by the imagination and be propelled 
 by the will." He explains that this is accomplished 
 through the principle, which he denominates mu7nia. 
 This is the vehicle of life ; " it is a spiritual substance 
 containing the essence of life, and it can be brought 
 again by art into contact with dying frames and revive 
 them if the vital organs of the latter are not destroyed." 
 The peculiar influence of one person upon another as 
 well as its employment for beneficial and even bane- 
 ful purposes are abundantly shown. Paracelsus was 
 strongly in favor of employing the magnet itself for 
 healing purposes, and gives explicit directions. He 
 knew the powers of mineral, human and animal mag- 
 netism, and his doctrines in regard to human magnetism
 
 MEDICINE IN THE RENASCENCE. 177 
 
 have since been abundantly confirmed. Lessing, 
 in 1769, proved that Paracelsus, and not Mesmer, was 
 the original discoverer. He also mentions hydrogen 
 as an element the existence of which was a recognized 
 fact,* and it has been affirmed that he also knew of 
 nitrogen and oxygen. 
 
 He taught that there were five causes of disease and 
 five methods for treating diseases, each of which was 
 sufficient for them all. There were accordingly five 
 classes or sects of physicians. There were those who, 
 like Galen and Avicenna, treat diseased conditions 
 with appropriate remedies ; those who, like the Empiri- 
 cists and Homoeopathists, make use of specific reme- 
 dies which have certain affinities for certain morbid 
 conditions ; those who cure diseases by employing 
 their will-power ; those who, like Hippokrates and the 
 employers of magic, make use of spiritual forces ; and 
 those who cure by faith alone. "Among these five 
 classes the first is the most orthodox and narrow- 
 minded, and they reject the other four because they 
 are not able to understand them." 
 
 The doctrine of Signatures has often been mentioned 
 with accompanying sneers. As Paracelsus explains it, 
 its reasonableness is very plain. " This signaiufti, or 
 specific indication, is a certain organic vital activity 
 giving to each natural object a certain analogy to a 
 certain condition produced by disease, and through 
 which, in specific diseases, health may be restored in 
 the diseased organisms." This hypothesis, it will 
 readily be perceived, underlies the doctrine of 
 Hom.oeopathy and the dogma of direct and specific 
 medication. 
 
 * Kemshead : Inorganic Chemistry^ p. bb.
 
 178 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 THE SCHOOL OF PARACELSUS. 
 
 The disciples of Paracelsus appear to have been 
 numerous. His works were published and eagerly- 
 sought for, and the treatise on Surgery was regarded 
 as a classic. ^ His philosophic, theurgic and other 
 writings, however acceptable to their readers, hardly 
 came within the province of medical history, as it has 
 come to be understood in later centuries. 
 
 Contemporary with Paracelsus was the celebrated 
 scholar, Henry Cornelius von Nettesheim, more com- 
 monly known as Cornelius Agrippa. After graduating 
 at the University of Cologne he was employed by the 
 Emperor Maximilian in diplomatic service. He next 
 served in the army, but soon abandoned active life for 
 science, and engaged in the formation of a secret 
 society of theosophists. He was invited to the Uni- 
 versity of Dole, in Burgundy, in 1509, and lectured on 
 the work of Reuchlin, De Verba Mirifico, which gained 
 for him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. Later he 
 published a treatise on Occult Philosophy, in which 
 he had the help of the abbot Tritheim. In 15 11 he 
 attended the Schismatic Council at Pisa as theologian, 
 making for himself thereby bitter enemies in religious 
 circles. In 1515 he delivered a course of lectures on 
 the jPoemander of Hermes, and received the doctor's 
 degree in law and medicine. Three years later he 
 became the Syndic at Metz, where he was constantly 
 in collision with the monks and the Inquisitor Savin, 
 whose ill will was increased by his persistent defend- 
 ing of a woman accused of witchcraft. In 1522 he 
 returned to Geneva and engaged in the practice of 
 medicine, and the next year was appointed town phy- 
 sician of Friburg. In 1523 he was made court physician
 
 MEDICINE IN THE RENASCENCE. I79 
 
 to the queen-mother, Louise of Savoy, at Lyons. 
 She demanded of him to make some astrological 
 calculations, and upon his refusal dismissed him, 
 withholding his compensation. He returned to the 
 Netherlands, becoming historiographer to Charles V., 
 and writing several works. Owing to the hatred of 
 the Dominicans, he was kept in turmoil all his life and 
 his memory vilified after death. 
 
 FAUST. 
 
 The story of Doctor Johann Faust has been so dis- 
 torted, as to lead one to regard it as fictitious. He 
 was, however, a real character, a native of the duchy 
 -of Weimar, and brought up at Wittemberg, where, at 
 the university, he took the degrees, first of Doctor of 
 Divinity, and afterward of Doctor in Medicine. He 
 is mentioned by Gessner, Melanchthon, and others, 
 and was well-known to Cornelius Agrippa and Para- 
 celsus. Like the physicians of the time, he was versed 
 in the Arabian learning, which afforded to his adver- 
 saries the opportunity to stigmatize him as a sorcerer 
 and in league with evil demons. In this way, a man 
 eminent in scholarship, a devoted and successful phy- 
 sician, was successfully calumniated, till our principal 
 conceptions of him are formed from Marlowe's 
 ^^ History'' and Goethe's immortal poem. 
 
 ANATOMY IN THE RENASCENCE. 
 
 Jacques Du Bois, who Latinized his name into Syl- 
 vius, was the first master of anatomic science in France. 
 Finding that philosophy and literature afforded scant 
 prospect of wealth, he entered the University of Mont-
 
 l8o HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 pellier, about 1525, and obtained the medical degree. 
 Returning to Paris, now fifty-one years old, he taught 
 anatomy in the College of Trinquet, and afterward 
 became professor of surgery in the Royal College. His 
 chief improvement was the injection of the blood- 
 vessels. He was characterized by great coarseness of 
 manners, persistent adherence to Galen, and an intense 
 jealousy of every one exhibiting talent for original 
 research. He taught only from the carcasses of 
 animals, and his great pupil, Vesalius, criticises him, 
 but Sprengel defends him as a correct and able 
 teacher. 
 
 About the same time flourished Charles Etienne, or 
 Stephanus. He was a Huguenot in religion, and was 
 accordingly excluded from official appointments, actu- 
 ally dying in prison, where he was confined on that 
 account. He made various discoveries, among them 
 the nutritious foramina of bones, various ligaments 
 and muscles, the branches of the trifacial nerve, the 
 valves of the veins, and the existence of the ganglionic 
 or sympathetic nervous system as distinct from the 
 pneumogastric nerve, 
 
 VESALIUS. 
 
 Andreas Vesalius, however, is credited with the 
 introducing of the new era into the history of anatomy. 
 He was born at Brussels in 15 14, and after receiving 
 an education at Louvain, he became a student of Du 
 Bois in 1528. He soon perceived the insufficiency of 
 the methods of instruction in France, and accordingly 
 made his way to Venice, to prosecute his studies to 
 better purpose. In 1536, he accepted an invitation to 
 Padua, to demonstrate anatomy, and seven years later
 
 MEDICINE IN THE RENASCENCE. l8l 
 
 he was invited likewise to Bologna and Pisa. He per- 
 formed the duty of professor at the three universities 
 during the same winter. In his teachings he made a 
 new departure. Mondino and Berenger di Carpi had 
 been circumscribed in their utterances and investiga- 
 tions by the acknowledged superior authority of Galen 
 and the Arabian physicians of the Middle Ages. 
 Vesalius had the courage, like Paracelsus, to set their 
 claims aside, and undertake a new arrangement for 
 anatomic instruction. He was twenty-five years old 
 at the time, and in three years had perfected his plan, 
 which, after some time, was adopted over Europe. 
 Shortly afterward he was appointed court physician 
 to Charles V., and continued in the same office with 
 Philip II. Royal favor, however, was not powerful 
 enough to exempt him from the enmities engendered 
 by professional rivalry and popular prejudice. He 
 was persecuted all through his official career, and 
 entirely employed in attendance upon patients, and in 
 defending his methods and innovations. His enemies 
 finally conquered. He had been engaged in examin- 
 ing the body of a grandee, when the heart was 
 observed to palpitate under the knife. He was imme- 
 diately denounced to the Inquisition, and barely 
 escaped its severest penalties, through the influence 
 of the king, supplemented by a promise to make a 
 pilgrimage to the Holy Land. While at Jerusalem, 
 he accepted the invitation of the University of Padua 
 to become again its professor of anatomy, to succeed 
 his deceased friend, Fallopius. On his way, however, 
 he was shipwrecked at Zant6, and died from privation 
 in the fiftieth year of his age. 
 
 Vesalius is described by his biographers, not as a 
 reformer as reformers are generally to be found, but
 
 182 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 as making his innovations after the most approved 
 methods of conservative scientism. He attempted no^ 
 revolution of the methods in vogue, but only to rectify 
 errors and add to the store of information then 
 possessed by physicians. He had been carefully edu- 
 cated in the opinions of the time, and although pro- 
 fessional jealousy and religious hostility embittered 
 his life and hurried him to his death, he neither broke 
 with the Church nor with the orthodox medical fra- 
 ternity, but died as he had lived. 
 
 He was the author of the first anatomic plates, 
 executed after nature, and his writings accurately 
 described the sphenoid bone, the divisions of the 
 sternum and sacrum, the vena azygos, the ductus venosus^ 
 the omentum, the structure of the pylorus, the csecal 
 appendix, the mediastinum and pleura, and the 
 anatomy of the brain. 
 
 His influence by no means ceased with his death. 
 Anatomy was no longer hampered by tradition or 
 religious prejudice. Instructed by his writings, and 
 inspired by his example and the predominant spirit; 
 of the time, a multitude of inquirers an investigators 
 arose throughout Christendom to carry on the work 
 which he had begun. 
 
 EUSTACHI. 
 
 The credit awarded to Vesalius, however, ought irt 
 justice to be divided with his contemporary, Bar- 
 tholomeo Eustachi. He was celebrated for his obser- 
 vations of the internal ear, the tube which bears his. 
 name, the anatomy of the teeth, and for his investiga- 
 tions of the intimate structure of organs. He employed 
 lenses to assist him in his work. He had completed a
 
 MEDICINE IN THE RENASCENCE. 183 
 
 series of anatomic engravings in 1552, but was unable 
 to publish them. The facts, however, were so impor- 
 tant, that Lauth remarked, that, if he had succeeded 
 in giving them to the world, anatomy would have 
 attained in the sixteenth century all the perfection of 
 two hundred years later. Eustachi fell under the dis- 
 pleasure of the authorities, and his works were placed 
 in the Papal library, leaving others to make his dis- 
 coveries anew. 
 
 COLUMBO AND FALLOPI. 
 
 Two of the pupils of Eustachi were Columbo and 
 Gabriello Fallopi. The former was his successor at 
 Padua, and afterward became a professor at Rome. 
 He gave a more correct description of the heart and 
 its vessels, the ventricles of the larynx, the pulmonic 
 circulation, anatomy of the internal ear. Fallopi was 
 a professor first at Pisa, and afterward at Padua. He 
 rectified the knowledge then possessed of the anatomy 
 of the ear, and corrected several mistakes of Vesalius. 
 He directed attention also to the genitalia, discover- 
 ing the canal which bears his name. 
 
 OTHER TEACHERS OF ANATOMY. 
 
 Aranzi, professor of anatomy at Bologna, has the 
 credit of giving the first correct account of the 
 anatomical peculiarities of the human foetus. He also 
 described the inferior cornu of the ventricles of the 
 brain, giving them the name of hippocampi, and also 
 explained the fourth ventricle as the cistern of the 
 cerebellum. Varoli, the physician to the pontiff, Gregory 
 Xni., gave a fuller description of the brain and its 
 anatomy, than any of his predecessors.
 
 184 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 No inferior place should be assigned to the able 
 savant, Miguel Serveto, better known by his Latin- 
 ized name of Servetus. He was the author of a treatise 
 entitled De Trinitatis Erroribiis — Errors of the Trini- 
 tarian Doctrine — published in 153 1, in which, while 
 expounding his philosophic notions, he set forth the 
 imperviousness of the septum cordis, and the flow of 
 the blood by what he terms an unknown route, by the 
 pulmonary artery through the lungs and thence by the 
 pulmonary vein to the left auricle and ventricle of the 
 heart ; from which, he adds, it is conveyed by the aorta 
 to all parts of the body. He was burned for heresy at 
 Geneva, in 1553. Six years afterward Columbo forcibly 
 and distinctly announced the circular course of the 
 blood as a discovery of his own, and maintained that 
 the pulmonary vein contained not air, but blood mixed 
 with air, brought from the lungs to the left ventricle 
 to be distributed through the body. From these two 
 authors, William Harvey received his first conception 
 of the circulation of the blood, to which he deservedly 
 owes his fame. 
 
 The claim is made, with great plausibility, that 
 Andrea Cesalpino, of Arezzo, in Tuscany, preceded 
 him, having made this discovery in the year 1569. 
 According to Dr, Giulio Ceradini, professor in Genoa, 
 he "discovered the physiological and continued pass- 
 age of the blood from the arteries to the veins across 
 the capillary anastomosis in all parts of the body, and 
 defined by circulation the perpetual motion of the 
 blood from the veins to the right heart, from this to 
 the lung, from the lung to the left heart, and from the 
 left heart to the arteries ; producing in 1593 the experi- 
 mental proof of this circulation, in the fact that the 
 veins, when tied in any part of the body, swell between
 
 MEDICINE IN THE RENASCENCE, 185 
 
 their original capillaries and the ligature, and when 
 cut, let out first the black venous blood, and then the 
 red arterial blood." Harvey, however, makes no men- 
 tion of this, although he names others in the same line 
 of investigation. It is not the first time, however, 
 that two men, not acting in concert and not even 
 knowing each other, have made like discoveries. It 
 seems to be a law of the mental universe, that when 
 new knowledge is dawning upon the world, those who 
 are sensitive and perceptive, are first to learn it, and 
 may do so at the same time. Probably, therefore, as 
 Dr. McDonald suggests, both Harvey and Cesalpino 
 conceived the idea of the mechanism of the circulation 
 of the blood independently of each other, though the 
 verdict of history is in favor of Harvey. 
 
 FABRICIO. 
 
 Hieronymo Fabricio was a pupil of Fallopius. He 
 merits distinction for his efforts to render anatomic 
 knowledge more precise, and for his endeavors to 
 illustrate obscure points by researches in comparative 
 anatomy. In this way he investigated the formation 
 of the foetus, the structure of the oesophagus, stomach 
 and bowels, and the peculiarities of the eye, ear and 
 larynx. His great merit, however, consists in his 
 demonstrations of the membranous folds in the 
 interior of the veins, to which he gave the designation 
 of valves. He was also distinguished for the introduc- 
 tion of the modern trephine, and for the employing of 
 the tube in tracheotomy. His work on surgery 
 passed through several editions, and affords an 
 excellent summary of the condition of the art at that 
 period.
 
 l86 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The chief advances were made in two directions. 
 The use of firearms had become general, requiring 
 more specific attention accordingly for the peculiar 
 class of injuries which they inflicted. The introduc- 
 tion and general prevalence of syphilis attracted 
 general attention to the treatment of diseases of the 
 urinary organs. Mayerne, of Venice, acquired a wide 
 reputation by the use of bougies for stricture, having 
 cured Henry III., of France, who had contracted it in 
 that city when on his way home from Poland. Indeed, 
 many of the later improvements in this depart- 
 ment seem to have been suggested from the same 
 cause. 
 
 AMBROISE PAR£, 
 
 At that time surgical operations were of a rude 
 character, cruel in the extreme, and often hardly less 
 to be dreaded than death itself. The light that was 
 dawning upon the learned world was little perceptible 
 in this department. Ambroise Pare, who was first to 
 introduce a new form of practice, was only a barber's 
 apprentice and by no means a scholar or professional 
 man. Nor did he consider that fact derogatory to him- 
 self or to his calling. Then, and till the time of John 
 Hunter, surgical practitioners consisted generally of 
 barbers, farriers, spayers of female swine, and even 
 cobblers and tinkers. Dexterity, rather than educated 
 skill, was held in highest esteem. 
 
 Pare excelled in tact and originality. He became a 
 pupil at the Hotel Dieu, and when Francis I. invaded 
 Piedmont in 1535 he accompanied the army. Here he 
 ventured upon the innovation of bandaging gunshot 
 wounds instead of applying hot oil. His success
 
 MEDICINE IN THE RENASCENCE. 187 
 
 encouraged him to perseverance, and he printed a 
 treatise on the subject at Paris in 1545. The same 
 year he became prorator for the celebrated Du Bois 
 (Silvius), and in 1550 he published a second work 
 upon anatomy. He made bolder innovations. He 
 was the first to apply the suture for hare-lip, taking 
 his cue from the practice of tailors and women in 
 winding their thread around their needles. His 
 greatest improvement consisted in the introduction of 
 the ligature for large arteries, and so rendering ampu- 
 tation on a broader scale possible for the first time 
 in history. This innovation, however, was fiercely 
 opposed, and its inventor was bitterly denounced by 
 the medical men of the time. They not only resorted 
 to the base expedient of decrying his professional 
 knowledge, but they also ridiculed the idea of hanging 
 a man's life upon a single thread, when boiling pitch 
 had stood the test so long. It was of no avail for Pare 
 to defend the use of the ligature by a demonstration 
 of its success. He resorted to spurious quotations 
 from Galen and others to show that it was no innova- 
 tion, but that it had been known and approved by 
 them. It was left for a later generation to adopt his 
 practice. The children of the men who persecute and 
 murder prophets not unfrequently disclaim the act 
 and build monuments to the martyrs. 
 
 By the French army, however. Pare was beloved 
 almost to actual worship. He accompanied the cam- 
 paigns from 1535 till the battle of Moncontour in 1569, 
 and on one occasion the discovery of his presence in 
 a besieged garrison so inspired the troops that they 
 rallied and attacked-the enemy with renewed courage, 
 putting them to rout. He was equally a favorite with 
 the kings of France, and was in succession the surgeon
 
 l88 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 to Henry II., Francis II., Charles IX., and Henry III. 
 On the night of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, Pare, 
 who was a Huguenot, actually owed his life to the 
 personal exertions of the king himself. 
 
 Notwithstanding the endeavors to discredit him 
 with the profession. Pare found men of eminence who 
 were willing to adopt his improved methods. Among 
 these were Maggi Leone, then a professor at Pavia, 
 Botal, the phlebotomist, then physician to Henry II. 
 and Charles IX., Guillaumeau and others of high 
 distinction. 
 
 Pare had evidently been an offender, because, like 
 Paracelsus, he used the language of the people in his 
 books, and so made unprofessional readers familiar 
 with his methods and sentiments. He was a French- 
 man, and employed none of the recondite, allegoric 
 and metaphysical utterances characteristic of the Swiss 
 author. In the present period when everything tran- 
 scending a bald materialism is a subject for contempt, 
 and is carefully ignored in surgical teachings, this 
 fact may tend directly to commend him to favor. 
 
 GENERAL CONDITION OF THE SURGICAL ART. 
 
 Antoine Chaumette, an eminent surgeon, was the 
 author of an able treatise relating chiefly to syphilis 
 and associated complaints, and also to gunshot wounds. 
 William Clowes, who accompanied the army of the 
 Earl of Leicester to the Netherlands, also published a 
 work upon army surgery, based upon his observations 
 and experiences. He also issued a small book upon 
 the Morbus GalHcus, and a few years later he prepared 
 " A Right Faithfull and Profitable Treatise upon the King's 
 Evil."
 
 MEDICINE IN THE RENASCENCE. 189 
 
 " Surgery in the sixteenth century," says Dr. Charles 
 Creighton, " recovered much of the dexterity and 
 resource that had distinguished it in the last days of 
 antiquity, while it underwent the developments opened 
 up to it by new weapons of warfare. The use of the 
 staff and other instruments of the 'apparatus major, 
 was the chief improvement in lithotomy. A 'radical 
 cure ' of hernia by sutures superseded the old applica- 
 tion of the actual cautery. The earlier modes of treat- 
 ing stricture of the urethra were tried ; plastic opera- 
 tions were once more done with something like the 
 skill of Brahmanical and classical times ; and ophthal- 
 mic surgery was to some extent rescued from the 
 hands of ignorant pretenders." 
 
 " It is noteworthy," he continues, " that even in the 
 legitimate profession, dexterous surgical appliances 
 were kept secret ; thus the use of the ' apparatus major' 
 in lithotomy was handed down as a secret in the 
 family of Laurence Colot, a cotemporary of Pare." 
 
 INNOVATIONS IN MEDICINE AND SCIENCE. 
 
 The actual improvements in medical practice in this 
 century were far less than might have been expected. 
 The failure of the Galenic remedies to cure the pre- 
 valent disease of the century, led, as has been observed, 
 to the employment of new remedies, so that mercury 
 and antimony became familiar to practitioners. They 
 were bitterly opposed, however, both by the Faculte 
 de Medecine at Paris, and by the College of Physicians 
 and the Society of Apothecaries in London. Arnold 
 of Villenova and Raymond Lulli were recognized 
 as leaders of the so-called chemical or chemiatric 
 school.
 
 190 HISTORY OF MEDICINE, 
 
 Clinical instruction in hospitals was introduced in 
 the university of Padua by Giovanni de Monte, who 
 lectured on the patients at the hospital of St. Francis. 
 This has been a prominent feature of instruction in 
 Europe ever since. 
 
 In opinion, however, there had been a less decided 
 •cutting loose from the past, but rather a steady grow- 
 ing as from infancy to adolescence, and a greater 
 readiness to carry new convictions to the foreground. 
 Enterprise was bolder in its ventures ; religious faith 
 now dared show itself in open day in resolve to free 
 the individual conscience from the domination of 
 hoary, but usurped, authority. 
 
 The very earth had been rudely torn from its 
 foundations, and thrust forth in its truer character as 
 a globe revolving in the infinite space. Copernicus 
 (Kopernik) had dared more, and proclaimed it but a 
 single planet in the family of the solar universe. 
 Pythagoras and Egyptian temple-sages had taught 
 this as a sacred mystery which profane ears might not 
 hear of ; the Khalif Al Mamun had been denounced 
 for it by Moslem imans as an atheist attempting to 
 remove the sites of heaven and hell ; and now, a cent- 
 ury after the fall of Constantinople, the work of the 
 Prussian monk was condemned by the Inquisition, 
 prohibited by the Congregation of the Index, and 
 stigmatized alike by Martin Luther and his former 
 Roman Overlord as false Pythagorean doctrine, 
 destructive to religion and subversive of the Holy 
 Scripture. To dethrone the earth from the central 
 dominating position, giving her many equals and not 
 a few superiors, seemed indeed like a terrible con- 
 ception. It took away apparently all claim almost 
 upon the divine regard, because such claim could not
 
 MEDICINE IN THE RENASCENCE. igi 
 
 be exclusive, and with this came the mental fear of 
 the overthrow of the entire theologic structure. The 
 ancient usage and privilege engaged in a mortal 
 struggle to restrain the advancing movement of 
 scientific explanations, but only to be worsted in the 
 encounter. Thus it has always been, and thus it will 
 always continue to be. 
 
 A few years after the death of Copernicus, there was 
 born the man to defend the new doctrines, and first to 
 die for having promulgated them. Giordano Bruno 
 was likewise a monk, and as such was amenable to the 
 spiritual authorities. He early learned to doubt the 
 cardinal points of belief, and from careful observation 
 of phenomena in the sky, became a firm receiver of 
 the Copernican doctrines. In a work on the plurality 
 of worlds, he ventured to declare that the common 
 notion was untrue : the earth was not a flat surface 
 supported by pillars and foundations ; nor was the sky 
 a firmament or the floor of the angelic heavens. 
 
 Bruno was likewise a philosopher, and averred his 
 belief in the Supreme Mind, an Intellect of which the 
 visible world is only an emanation and manifestation 
 originated and sustained by force derived from it ; 
 and that if this creative and sustaining force should be 
 withdrawn, all things would at once disappear from 
 existence. 
 
 He was followed from place to place by spies and 
 emissaries of the Inquisition, making his residence in 
 turn in Switzerland, France, England and Germany. 
 Finally he was persuaded by a treacherous Venetian 
 nobleman to accept a position in his household, accused 
 by him, and betrayed to the familiars of the Holy 
 Office. In those days, when the ecclesiastic authority 
 was often dominant over the civil government, there
 
 192 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 could be no sequence except of a cruel kind. Bruno 
 was surrendered by Venice to the officials of the 
 Inquisition at Rome, where he was imprisoned two 
 years, subjected to their peculiar treatment, accused 
 of teaching doctrines subversive of the Catholic faith, 
 and finally burned at the stake, February 16, 1600. His 
 monument commemorates the occurrence. 
 
 This tragedy closes our review of the sixteenth 
 century.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 MEDICINE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The Renascence was now accomplished. New 
 thought was at work opening the way for new 
 methods of action, and new conceptions of philosophic 
 and scientific truth. The seventeenth century was 
 thus characterized by an advance well defined in the 
 fields of inquiry as well as adventure. 
 
 The re-discovery of the American continent had 
 itself been productive of great changes in the social 
 and political condition of Europe. To be sure, Spain, 
 claiming the entire region by virtue of a pontifical 
 grant, had strenuously resisted every attempt of 
 colonists of other countries to plant settlements in the 
 new territory. Adventurous seamen, nevertheless, 
 traversed the ocean, exploring the seas and shores of 
 the New World, and even committing acts of piracy. 
 The destruction of the Invincible Armada effectually 
 terminated the Spanish supremacy, leaving only the 
 power to snarl and execrate, with bated breath, the 
 emigrants from the several regions of Europe who 
 ventured to find new homes beyond the Atlantic in 
 the territory which Spain had claimed as exclusively 
 her own. Religious dissent, which neither Romanist 
 nor Reforming rulers or divines were willing to per- 
 mit, now led thousands to seek in the New World that
 
 194 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 freedom and exemption from cruel persecutions which 
 they could not enjoy in the Old. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC ADVANCEMENT. 
 
 Both Romanist and Lutheran were for a time as one 
 in hostility to the scientific inquiry of the age.* All 
 the same, however, the schools of Europe were agitated 
 by the new discoveries and the theories which these 
 demonstrated. It was not so much skepticism and 
 doubt that were dominant, but a deeper spirituality 
 and a tendency to the esoteric beliefs of the old phi- 
 losophers, which characterized the teachers of the new 
 learning. Hence it was denounced alike by the clergy 
 of every creed, as atheism, sorcery, and communion 
 with the evil powers. The accusations for witchcraft 
 became numerous in every country. It was easier to 
 burn innocent folk alive on such a charge than to meet 
 them by open argument. 
 
 While Bruno was languishing in the dungeons of the 
 Inquisition, Johann Keppler was preparing to take the 
 torch which had been forcibly wrested from his hands. 
 Keppler was a native of Wurtemberg and had been a 
 student of theology. He had, however, accepted the 
 mystic religious belief then current among deep- 
 thinking men, as well as the proscribed theory of the 
 Copernican system. Leaving the university of Tubin- 
 gen in 1594, he became a professor in the university 
 at Gratz, where he prepared his first treatise. Six 
 years later he was invited to Prague by Tycho Brahe, 
 whom he afterward succeeded as Astronomer Royal 
 to the Emperor Rudolph II. His genius now seemed 
 to have risen like the fabled Phoenix from the ashes 
 of Giordano Bruno, and similar persecutions followed
 
 MEDICINE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. I95 
 
 him. He was attacked by Romanist and Lutheran 
 with equal animosity, accused of atheism and hounded 
 from city to city. Even his mother was prosecuted as 
 a witch, and he spent five years to defend her. The 
 Emperor, always poor, was unable to pay him his 
 salary, and he left Prague to become again a professor 
 in a university, and afterward astrologer to the cele- 
 brated Wallenstein. 
 
 Keppler was of a philosophic disposition as well as 
 enthusiast. The modern notions of induction enable 
 us to learn but little, and that with no certain assur- 
 ance ; and the scientists, accordingly, who work upon 
 that line, allow the understanding and logic-faculty 
 to usurp the office of the rational and creative powers, 
 and shut themselves out of three-fourths of their 
 minds. No great discovery ever was made, La Place 
 truly declares, without a great guess. Keppler, with 
 the genius of a Plato and a Swedenborg, and as by 
 prophetic insight, became cognizant of the laws and 
 processes which are active in the universe. He com- 
 prehended the subtile secret key to nature, the fact 
 that man and the universe are built after one pattern, 
 and have the same origin. Sweeping away the chaos 
 of cycle and epicycle in the sky, by which the former 
 notions of learned men had been pervaded, he evoked 
 in its place the celestial order and harmony, and 
 showed conclusively that numerical and geometric 
 relations connect the distances, times and revolutions 
 of the planetary earths. 
 
 Keppler died poor, and his books were placed on the 
 Index of Prohibited Reading J nevertheless he fully real- 
 ized his exultant assertion : '* I have stolen the golden 
 vases of the Egyptians to build up a tabernacle for my 
 God far away from the confines of Egypt."
 
 196 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 GALILEO. 
 
 The invention of printing had made the general 
 diffusion of learning possible and certain. Its bene- 
 fits were supplemented by the discovery of the tele- 
 scope. Ancient savants in Assyria and Babylon had 
 employed lenses to aid them in the forming, and after- 
 ward in the deciphering of their minute wedge-shaped 
 characters. Doubtless, likewise, Chaldasan astron- 
 omers had taken advantage of the same device to 
 explore the constellations of the sky, and to ascertain 
 the approach of hostile armies ; but the invention was 
 no longer known. Even Francis Bacon was declaring 
 his disbelief in the utility of optical instruments in 
 scientific inquiry, when in 1609 Galileo Galilei of 
 Florence, constructing a telescope, directed it toward 
 the sky, and speedily became able to demonstrate the 
 truth of the Copernican system, which Bacon had 
 rejected with a sneer of contempt. He showed con- 
 clusively that the sun was the centre of the cosmic 
 universe and the earth but a single member of the 
 planetary group ; and also, that other planets had 
 moons revolving round them. Aristotle was proved 
 to be in fault ; Copernicus had maintained the truth. 
 
 The persecution which had consigned Bruno to the 
 stake, and embittered the life of Keppler, was now 
 employed to silence the utterances of Galileo, First 
 came the trite charges of atheism and blasphemy ; 
 then a prohibition to announce his discoveries ; after- 
 ward the dungeon of the Inquisition, the peril of the 
 torture-chamber, and, finally, after his death, the 
 denial of interment in consecrated ground. 
 
 Copernicus, a century before, had been more wary. 
 Knowing that a similar fate would be visited upon
 
 MEDICINE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 197 
 
 him he delayed the publication of his astronomic 
 doctrines till the very last hours of his life. 
 
 Mrs. Partington, with her broom, failed to drive 
 back the tides of the ocean. The proscription of 
 Copernicus and his doctrines, the martyrdom of 
 Bruno, the persecution of Keppler and his mother, the 
 tortures of Galileo and refusing of a grave, were not 
 sufficient to arrest the great waves of light which 
 were deluging the religious and scientific world. 
 The telescope was mightier than proscription 
 enforced by the rack and fagot. Before half a cen- 
 tury had passed from the immolation of the noble 
 martyr at Rome, it became impossible to find an 
 astronomer in all Europe who did not accept the doc- 
 trines that the sun was the centre of the planetary 
 universe, and that the earth turned every day vipon 
 its axis and made a revolution every year around the 
 sun. 
 
 The stone which the builders rejected, had now 
 become the head of the corner ; and the one described 
 by the prophet as cut from the mountain and hurled 
 without hands to smite the image of Serapis on its 
 feet, was now becoming a mountain to fill the whole 
 world. 
 
 VAN HELMONT. 
 
 The same movement and inspiration that had caused 
 science to make a new departure were also operative 
 in medicine. The peculiar mystic and theosophic 
 genius which distinguished Bruno and Keppler, was 
 also characteristic of Jan Baptista Van Helmont. He 
 was a native of Brussels, and of baronial rank, holding 
 the titles of lord in several fiefs. He was educated at 
 Louvain, and began the study of natural science in
 
 IpS HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 the Jesuit school. Repelled, however, by their hard 
 and dry philosophy, he turned with avidity to the 
 mystic writings of a Kempis and Tauler. Adopting 
 the peculiar life there set forth, he made over his 
 possessions to his sister, and withdrew entirely from 
 high society. He now entered upon the study of 
 medicine, graduating in 1599. He read carefully what 
 had been inculcated by the accepted authorities, but 
 was greatly dissatisfied both with the methods and the 
 results. He next took up the writings of Paracelsus, 
 and gave them his hearty approval. Having received 
 his degree, he followed the example of his master and 
 of the ancient philosophic physicians, journeying 
 through France, Italy, Switzerland and England. He 
 finally married a lady of wealth and engaged in prac- 
 tice, gratuitously treating the poor, and dying in 
 1644. 
 
 Van Helmont was a diligent student and investi- 
 gator, eager to ascertain the causes of all the phe- 
 nomena of life. Hence his strong attraction for the 
 doctrines of Paracelsus He was the author of several 
 works — Ortus MedidncB, or the Origin of the Medical 
 Art, Theory of Paradoxes^ Cure of Wounds^ Tartar in Wine 
 God in Man. They are replete with the theosophy and 
 mysticism which characterized much of the literature 
 of the period, while at the same time they abounded 
 with other learning of acknowledged worth. He was 
 a Platonist, and believed that essential and original 
 knowledge had been imparted to every one, which was 
 perceived when external influences were in abeyance. 
 He inculcated, accordingly as the Great Secret, that 
 there was an energy in every one capable of working 
 upon other objects through the suggestion and power 
 of the imagination, and of so impressing itself upon
 
 MEDICINE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 199 
 
 Others as to continue thus operating. By virtue of 
 this energy and force man ruled over physical nature. 
 
 He was, therefore, of course, a firm believer in ani- 
 mal magnetism, as well as in the power of the human 
 will and imagination in the exercise of the art of heal- 
 ing. He regarded the common medical knowledge as 
 insufficient for its purpose, and as far removed from 
 the real power which God has conferred for healing. 
 His own presence, he declared, was often sufficient to 
 cure the sick without other remedies. He operated 
 through his own will, he affirmed, not only upon indi- 
 viduals, but also to impart a healing virtue to medi- 
 cines. In his own case he relied more upon this agency 
 than upon physical means. He declared that many 
 herbs acquire an extraordinary power from the 
 imagination of the individuals gathering or manipu- 
 lating them. Nevertheless he regarded the art of 
 medicine as magnetic and supra-natural, rather than 
 as the simple employing of drugs. 
 
 He also inculcated that " the sun-tissue in the region 
 of the stomach is the chief seat and essential organ of 
 the soul," the genuine seat of feeling and emotion, as 
 the head is of comparison and memory. From that 
 point the light and warmth proceed and diffuse them- 
 selves over the body, and also the life which prevails 
 in the organism. The will, however (the bias humanurti), 
 is the first of all powers, and the fundamental cause of 
 all activity. 
 
 As a chemist, many writers consider Van Helmont 
 as the greatest one living before Lavoisier. He was 
 the first to give the name of gas to aeriform bodies 
 and he observed that the application of heat would^ 
 disengage gases as well as the dissolving of the various 
 carbonates and metals in acids. But for him, says
 
 200 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Deleuze, it is probable that steel would have given no 
 new impulse to science. While, therefore, in these 
 materialistic times it is common to pass over his 
 theosophic and psychologic doctrines in silence, if not 
 with contempt, his contributions to chemistry compel 
 respect ; and the propounders of later systems are find- 
 ing their discoveries in the departments of tabooed 
 knowledge already set forth in his works. In regard 
 to medication, he only employed mild treatment and 
 that with admirable success. Much of his practice 
 however, as has been remarked, was gratuitous. 
 
 THE ROSICRUCIANS. 
 
 About the year 1610 appeared a little book in Ger- 
 many, entitled The Discovery of the Brotherhood of the 
 Rosy Cross. It announced the existence of a secret 
 fraternity of philosophic and benevolent individuals, 
 whom it described as having been instituted as a Temple 
 by Christian Rosenkreutz, and to be proclaimed to the 
 world in 1608, a hundred-and-twenty years after his 
 death. This book created an immense excitement ; it 
 was still a time when the stake and scaffold were in 
 fashion, and while some invoked fire from heaven 
 upon the unknown benefactors, others recommended 
 the punishment of the wheel. 
 
 The avowed object of the fraternity was to amelio- 
 rate human suffering, to advance knowledge and 
 enlightenment, and to promote charity among human 
 beings. Whether there was any actual organized 
 society has been disputed. If it did exist it kept 
 itself like the ancient Gnostics, aloof from being 
 known. This much is certain, that the red cross 
 which designated them was the badge of the Knights
 
 MEDICINE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 20I 
 
 of the Temple ; and there was a conventional language 
 extant among the thinking men of Europe, called the 
 Lingua Magica and the Lingua Angelorum, which they 
 understood and the uninitiated sciolists were never 
 able to comprehend. To this blundering we are 
 indebted for much that is affirmed about the scientific 
 men and others of the Middle Ages. They had suc- 
 cessfully obeyed the maxim : " Learn to know all, but 
 keep unknown." 
 
 The Rosicrucians, it was declared by writers, were 
 especially distinguished by their knowledge of the 
 medical art. They did not employ charms and devices 
 to captivate the fancy, but made use of simple reme- 
 dies with extraordinary success. In this may be per- 
 ceived their resemblance to the methods of Van 
 Helmont. 
 
 Robert Fludd, of Oxford, in England, was regarded 
 as among the most illustrious of the fraternity. He 
 was a physician of superior attainments, and passion- 
 ately fond of study. He was the author of several 
 works, now preserved as curious. In his writings he 
 emphatically disdains the notion that men can not be 
 philosophers, except they put their knowledge to some 
 ordinary worldly use. 
 
 Thomas Vaughan, also an Oxonian, seems to have 
 been regarded as a Master in the Brotherhood. He 
 also was a physician, and wrote much, using the pseu- 
 donyms of Cosmopolita and Eugenius Philalethes. 
 Vaughan wrote particularly about the elixir of life, 
 and many seem to have believed that like another 
 Mejnour, he survived into the later centuries. 
 
 The doctrine was taught that an aura, magnetic 
 virtue, etherial spirit or fire exists in all natural sub- 
 stances, making them more or less sensitive and
 
 202 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 animate, according as they were freed from material 
 obstruction. Thus, all minerals, by virtue of this 
 principle, have the rudimentary possibility of becom- 
 ing plants and growing organisms ; thus all plants 
 have rudimentary sensitives which may, in the course 
 of ages, enable them to perfect and transmute into 
 new creatures, lesser or higher in their grade, nobler 
 or meaner in their functions. In regard to gold, it 
 was affirmed that it was constituted from sunbeams 
 and light suffused into a material matrix, and that it 
 had a strong tendency to transfuse other materials 
 into itself. 
 
 It will be borne in mind that Basil Valentine, as 
 well as other alchemists, wrote in this style ; and 
 whether the language should be interpreted literally 
 or metaphorically, or in both senses, the intelligent 
 reader may judge. Whether Van Helmont, Keppler, 
 Paracelsus, Jakob Boehmen and others of that time, 
 who may be supposed to have entertained like senti- 
 ments, were Rosicrucians is also to be answered as we 
 best are able. Certainly many notions now current 
 in learned circles had been then anticipated. A phy- 
 sician, professing to be a member of the mystic 
 brotherhood, bearing the name of Chaos, came to 
 Vienna, where he acquired a fortune. The Emperor, 
 Ferdinand III., admitted him to the nobility, and he 
 afterward devoted his property to the founding of an 
 orphan asylum. 
 
 SYMPATHETIC POWDER. 
 
 Nostrums represented as having been prepared by 
 Rosicrucians, were offered in profusion to the public, 
 and much imposture and charlatanry became current 
 under that name.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 203 
 
 About this time Sir Kenelm Digby, of Montpellier, 
 gained fame by a remedy known as " Sympathetic 
 Powder." It was not applied to the wounded or 
 affected part, but to weapons inflicting the hurt, which 
 were sprinkled with it and dressed with salve several 
 times a day. Meanwhile the wound itself was washed, 
 bound up closely and left with no further attention. 
 It is hardly necessary to explain why wounds under 
 this treatment generally healed more readily than 
 under the too common practice of frequent disturbing 
 of the sore. 
 
 HARVEY AND HIS DISCOVERY. 
 
 Despite the work of Keppler and Galileo, and the 
 other grand achievements of this period, the discovery 
 of the circulation of the blood must be enumerated 
 among the most important. It effected a revolution 
 not simply in the current views of physiology and 
 pathology, but in every scientific theory which was 
 allied to them. Although it did not exalt medicine to 
 the rank of an " exact science," it was an active factor 
 in sweeping from it an immense number of illusive 
 notions. 
 
 William Harvey had been a student at Padua in the 
 last years of the sixteenth century. He learned from 
 his preceptor, the celebrated anatomist, Fabricio, of 
 the existence of valves in the veins, and himself tested 
 the matter by experimental inquiry. He had also 
 become familiar with the exploration of the lesser 
 circulation, as given by Servetus and Colombo. Com- 
 bining these facts together, he prosecuted the subject 
 till he had fully demonstrated the existence of the 
 general circulation from the left side of the heart by
 
 204 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 the aorta and its subdivisions to the right side of the 
 heart by the veins. 
 
 Meanwhile he returned to England, in 1602, and 
 became physician to James I., continuing in that func- 
 tion under Charles I. He also received the appoint- 
 ment of professor in the College of Physicians in 
 London 1615, where, in 1619, having perfected his 
 demonstrations, he made known his discovery of the 
 general mechanism of the circulation. The storm 
 which he encountered was fierce and threatening. 
 Medical men are generally conservative and constitu- 
 tionally averse to innovations which cast their notions 
 and methods into the shade. Hume, the historian, 
 remarked accordingly, the significant fact that no 
 physician in Europe who had reached forty years of 
 age ever to the end of his life adopted Harvey's doc- 
 trine of the circulation of the blood. It ran the gant- 
 let of the schools, was severely attacked on every side, 
 and the promulgator himself personally denounced 
 for obtruding it upon the public attention. When a 
 scientific fact cannot be successfully met, dishonest 
 adversaries usually vent their spite upon the person 
 who brought it to view. Then the pretense is made 
 that the discovery or invention is of no value, involv- 
 ing it and its discoverer in a common odium. This 
 failing, the next expedient is to assert that it really is 
 not new, that some one of their own number has dis- 
 covered it, or at least introduced it, so that the merit 
 is claimed as all their own. 
 
 Such is the course followed in our later times, 
 especially in the medical world ; such was literally 
 the experience of William Harvey. After he left 
 Padua the great theme of discussion was in respect to 
 '■'■the Harvey Paradox." The Faculty of Medicine in
 
 MEDICINE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 205 
 
 Paris led off in the attack. Leichner, in 1646, entitled 
 an essay of his own : " De Motu Sanguinis, Exercitatio 
 Anii-Harveiana,'' Concerning the Motion of the Blood, 
 a Discourse against Harvey. Even Zacharia Silvius, 
 in 1648, in a preface to Harvey's Exercitatio Anatomica 
 denominated the theory, a new and unheard-of opinion 
 respecting the motion of the heart and circulation of 
 the blood. 
 
 The demonstrations, however, proved too much for 
 the opposition. Jean Riolan, of Paris, who seems to 
 have always been on the alert to cast unworthy impu- 
 tations upon doctrines not emanating from approved 
 sources, was the most violent adversary of the new 
 theory. He was compelled, in this controversy, to 
 meet the evidences which Harvey had adduced, by 
 others of equal force and plausibility. This was 
 impossible, and finally, yielding the argument he 
 embraced the new doctrine and became its most zeal- 
 ous apostle. 
 
 Italian writers, however, were not willing to con- 
 cede the merit of original discovery. The leading 
 medical authorities of Europe having accepted the 
 theory of the circulation of the blood, they promptly 
 hastened to the next resort common in such cases, 
 and denied the claim of its novelty. They boldly 
 declared that the same discovery had already been 
 made in Italy the previous century, by Andrea 
 Cesalpino, a Tuscan savant of distinction.* This was 
 in 1593, five years before Harvey, then but twenty 
 years old, had become a student at the University of 
 Padua. They accordingly accused him of having 
 falsely claimed for himself in his book published in 
 1628, the credit of first bringing to light this moment- 
 
 * See page 184.
 
 206 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ous truth, and only award to him the doubtful merit 
 of " carrying on successfully a conflict against igno- 
 rance and prejudice by divulging this great discovery 
 which Cesalpino had made." 
 
 The general consensus of opinion now concedes the 
 honor to Harvey. Our attention is directed accord- 
 ingly to the results of the great discovery. It placed 
 physiological knowledge upon new foundations, and 
 opened the way for explorations in new directions. 
 
 MICROSCOPIC ANATOMY. 
 
 The doctrine of the circular motion of the blood was 
 finally adopted as affording the most satisfactory 
 explanation of many facts in regard to the structure 
 of the body which had not been before understood. 
 Immediately research took a fresh impetus, and the 
 literature of the profession was enriched by valuable 
 contributions from prominent investigators. Malpighi, 
 of Bologna, afterward physician to Innocent XII., was 
 among the first to employ the microscope in his inves- 
 tigations. This brought down upon him the disap- 
 proval of his associates, who declared that the study 
 of microscopic anatomy was adverse to the true 
 interests of medical practice. Malpighi practiced 
 vivisection, opening the bodies of living animals, and 
 he made many of his most striking discoveries in this 
 way. He demonstrated the course of the corpuscles 
 of the blood in the minute vessels, thus corroborating 
 the fact of the communication between the veins and 
 the arteries. Harvey had proposed the theory of 
 capillary circulation, and four years after his death, 
 Malpighi demonstrated its truth. The latter also dis- 
 covered the plan of structure of the secreting glands,
 
 MEDICINE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 207 
 
 the vesicular structure of the lungs, the lower struct- 
 ure of the epidermis, the cortex of the kidneys, and 
 the follicular bodies of the spleen to which his name 
 has been affixed. He was the first to investigate the 
 gray matter of the brain, which he considered as 
 glandular in structure, and that its function was to 
 secrete the "animal spirits." This opinion was also 
 entertained by Leeuwenhoek, from whom it was after- 
 ward quoted by Emanuel Swedenborg. 
 
 Discoveries in anatomy by means of the microscope 
 became numerous. Gaspardo Asellio in 1627 demon- 
 strated the existence of the chyliferous vessels ; Men- 
 tel, following Eustachio, observed the thoracic duct : 
 Wesling of Vienna, in 1634, gave the first delineation 
 of the lacteal vessels; Highmore distinguished between 
 them and the mesenteric veins; Wirsung and Pecquet, 
 in 1647, discovered the common trunk of the lacteals 
 and lymphatics ; and Jolyffe of England, simultane- 
 ously with Olaf Rudbeck of Sweden, ascertained the 
 distinction between the lacteals and lymphatics and 
 the termination of the latter. Thomas Wharton was 
 first to give a general description of the glands, and 
 Glisson distinguished himself by a minute description 
 of the liver, with an account of the stomach and intes- 
 tines. 
 
 Later in the century Meibomius published a treatise 
 on the anatomy of the eyelids; and Peyer, in 1677, 
 discovered the agminated glands which bear his 
 name. 
 
 The innovation of employing men instead of women 
 in obstetric practice was introduced by Julien Clement 
 in 1676. It is said, however, that the practitioners did 
 little more than copy the work of Eucharius Rhodion, 
 entitled The Byrthe of Mankynde, first published in 1540,
 
 2o8 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Hugh Chamberlain distinguished himself by the 
 invention of the obstetric forceps in 1672, keeping the 
 secret for his own profit. 
 
 Drelincourt, of a Huguenot refugee family in Hol- 
 land, endeavored to set forth the changes induced in 
 the uterus by impregnation, and also to elucidate the 
 development of the foetus. Regnier De Graaf made 
 an investigation of the pancreas, and also of the struct- 
 ure of the sexual organism, recording many impor- 
 tant observations ; but, unfortunately, his labors were 
 cut short prematurely by death at the age of thirty- 
 two. 
 
 NEUROLOGY. 
 
 Duverney, of the Royal Academy of Sciences at 
 Paris, distinguished himself by giving the first accu- 
 rate account of the organism of hearing. He appears 
 to have been the first who demonstrated the fact that 
 the cerebral sinuses were the nervous receptacles of 
 the brain, receiving the veins of that structure, and 
 emptying into the jugular veins. He was ver)^ accu- 
 rate in his explanations of the ganglia, the medulla 
 oblongata and its pyramids, the formation and dis- 
 tribution of the intercostal nerve, the spinal cord, and 
 the process of ossification. 
 
 Raymond Vieussens, also, in his great work on neu- 
 rography, in 1684, made important additions to what 
 was then known. He gave new light in regard to the 
 configuration and structure of the brain, spinal cord 
 and nerves ; and presented the views in regard to the 
 sympathetic nerve and ganglionic system, with the 
 formation and connections, which were generally 
 adopted by anatomists.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 209 
 
 The most distinguished writer upon anatomy in the 
 seventeenth century was Thomas Willis. He was one 
 who felt able to afford to give due credit to those who 
 aided him ; and he accordingly acknowledged his 
 obligations to Wren and Millington, and in a more 
 marked degree to Richard Lower. His candor was as 
 meritorious as his contributions to science. His 
 anatomy of the brain and nerves was minute and 
 elaborate above all who preceded him. He made the 
 arrangement of cranial nerves now in common use, 
 and described the various structures of the encephalon, 
 the striate bodies, the optic thalami, the four orbicular 
 eminences, the peculiar appearance of the cerebellum, 
 and in particular the remarkable anastomosis of the 
 vertebral and carotid arteries forming the " Circle of 
 Willis." To him particularly, as well as other writers 
 of celebrity at that period, the world is indebted for 
 aid to comprehend the physiology as well as structure 
 of the nervous system. 
 
 SURGEONS. 
 
 The advance in surgery is less noted by writers. 
 Professional pique, doubtless, was a principal reason ; 
 the art being still associated with the calling of the 
 barber and other crafts characterized by skill with 
 mechanics' instruments. The increase of anatomic 
 knowledge, however, compelled more diligent atten- 
 tion to the modes of operating ; and naturally as well 
 as necessarily, this tended to exalt the surgeon's 
 vocation. Thus in France, it was usual for the demon- 
 stration in anatomy and surgery to be given by a 
 physician; but in 1671, the king decreed that the
 
 2IO HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 lectures should be delivered by a surgeon. In Ger- 
 many, likewise, were surgical authors and prac- 
 titioners of note ; among whom were most eminent, 
 Fabriz von Hilden, the introducer of the tourniquet ; 
 Schneider, Heister, and Rau of Leiden. The latter 
 was distinguished as " the most successful lithotomist 
 that ever lived." He, however, refused, even to his 
 own pupils, to divulge his method of operating. The 
 operation by the lateral method came to great perfec- 
 tion in the hands of Jaques Beaulieu. The experiment 
 of crushing the stone in the bladder was likewise 
 attended with success. 
 
 Transfusion of blood was also performed, and several 
 members of the Royal Society, such as Boyle and 
 Lower, took much interest in it. The success, though 
 somewhat encouraging, was not so much so as to jus- 
 tify persistence in the practice. 
 
 Richard Wiseman is called the " Father of English 
 Surgery," and the " Pare of England." He was sur- 
 geon to James L and Charles L, taking the part of the 
 Royalists in the Civil Wars, and accompanying Prince 
 Charles in his exile. After the Restoration he held 
 the office of Sergeant-Surgeon to Charles IL and James 
 n. He was the first to advocate amputation before the 
 setting in of fever, in cases of gunshot wounds and 
 other injuries of the limbs. He introduced the prac- 
 tice of treating aneurism by compression, and improved 
 the method of procedure for hernia. His work. Seven 
 Chirurgical Treatises, first appeared in 1676 ; and related 
 to tumors, ulcers, anal diseases, scrofula, wounds, 
 fractures, luxations, and syphilis. Several editions 
 were published. 
 
 Trephining was freely employed ; Philip William, 
 Prince of Orange, is said to have undergone the opera-
 
 MEDICINE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 211 
 
 tion seventeen times. Other operations, which had 
 been anciently common, seem to have been again 
 called into use. Flap-amputation, which the Roman 
 surgeons practiced, was again introduced by Lowd- 
 ham, of Oxford, in 1679. Another author, however, 
 gives the credit to James Young of Plymouth, who 
 also advised limited compression of the main artery 
 while operating. In short, it appears, the principal 
 endeavor, at this time, was to perfect the surgical art 
 as it was already known, and make good use of the 
 skill already in hand, rather than to launch out into 
 new fields. 
 
 LATER SCHOOLS OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The new theory of the circulation of the blood, and 
 other causes, did not, at first, produce apparent results 
 upon the current practice of medicine. Indeed, there 
 has been a tendency to accommodate theories to the 
 methods and remedies in vogue, rather than to modify 
 the methods to meet the new light and conditions. 
 The ancient dogmas were not eliminated, but attempts 
 were made to reconstruct medicine upon a physiologi- 
 cal basis. Several schools thus came into existence, 
 which continued till another century. 
 
 Borelli, of Naples, was teacher of mechanics and 
 anatomy at Pisa. He was a zealous believer in the 
 mathematical and mechanical doctrines taught by 
 Keppler and applied to the laws of motion, and he 
 entertained the conviction that the motions of animals 
 were thus controlled Bellini was a student at Pisa, 
 and adopted these opinions. The human body, they 
 taught, was a collection of tubes forming an hydraulic 
 medicine ; and they actually estimated the force of the
 
 2 12 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 circulation of the blood and other fluids through the 
 vessels. They did not, however, regard the propelling 
 force as solely mechanical, but rather as proceeding 
 from the fermentation of the blood, which thus disen- 
 gaged the vital spirits, and by their agency forced the 
 blood through the body. The sole object of respira- 
 tion, Bellini held, was to push the blood through the 
 capillary vessels with an adequate amount of force. 
 The movement of the bones and muscles was explained 
 by the theory of the lever ; digestion was considered 
 as essentially a process of trituration ; and nutrition 
 and secretion were set forth as dependent upon the 
 tension of the vessels. Fevers were also explained by 
 the hypothesis of mechanical action. Nevertheless, 
 the theories of disease led to no radical or important 
 change in therapeutics. 
 
 These doctrines were favorably received in all the 
 universities of Europe. In Italy, Germany, and Eng- 
 land they were accepted by the leading practitioners. 
 Steno, Lower, Baglivi, and Cole of England were 
 among the champions, and Pitcairn, for many years 
 professor at Leiden, was one of the most distinguished 
 exponents of the system. Even Boerhaave adopted 
 the theories respecting secretion and inflammation. 
 
 GERMAN ECLECTICS. 
 
 About this period there appeared a school of medi- 
 cine in Germany, known by the title of "Eclectic 
 Conciliators." Conspicuous among them was Daniel 
 Sennert, a professor of the University of Wittemberg, 
 It was an attempt to harmonize the conflicting doc- 
 trines, by a system embodying the principal teachings 
 of Hippokrates and his successors, the psychic and
 
 MEDICINE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 213 
 
 magnetic views of Paracelsus, and the " new learning" 
 of the age. The century was what is now denominated 
 credulous, and we need not be surprised, therefore, 
 to learn that these Eclectics believed in witchcraft, 
 actual communion with diabolic powers, the alchemic 
 theory of transmutation, and the doctrines promul- 
 gated by Van Helmont and his distinguished son. 
 
 THE CHEMIATRIC SCHOOL. 
 
 Francis de la Boe succeeded the younger Van Hel- 
 mont, as an exponent of the "chemical" school. He 
 was the son of a French Huguenot sojourning in Hol- 
 land, and for fourteen years held the position of pro- 
 fessor of medicine at Leiden. He was a man of 
 superior learning, and on intimate terms with Leibnitz 
 and other eminent scholars. While accepting many 
 of the doctrines of Van Helmont and Paracelsus, he 
 took, in many respects, an independent position, more 
 in consonance with the new views of pathology and 
 chemistry. 
 
 The "humoral pathology" was the orthodox theory. 
 It was held that disease was produced by the abnormal 
 condition of the fluids of the body, and also that medi- 
 cine acted through their agency. The " chemical 
 school " discarded this notion, substituting in its place 
 the theory of chemical disturbances. The principle 
 which characterized this school was not, as many have 
 unwittingly imagined, the employing of chemical, and 
 especially mineral medicines, in opposition to the cur- 
 rent " Galenic remedies." The great stress, instead, 
 was laid upon pathology, the causation of disease. De 
 la Boe endeavored to construct the whole theory of 
 medicine over upon the new views of chemistry and
 
 214 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 the doctrine of the circulation of the blood. He made 
 account, therefore, of anatomic as well as chemical 
 changes. In his conception, fermentation played an 
 important part in the vital processes; and "acridities," 
 or chemical disturbances of these processes were the 
 cause of fever and other diseases. Sometimes the dis- 
 turbing agencies that predominated in the fluids and 
 secretions of the body were acid and sometimes alka- 
 line. Nervous diseases were supposed to be induced 
 by disturbances of the "vital spirits." Accordingly, 
 the remedies employed by this school were sometimes 
 chemical and sometimes Galenic. De la Boe was far 
 more moderate in the practice of blood-letting than 
 physicians of later schools. 
 
 Students from all parts of Europe thronged his lect- 
 ures ; and his doctrines were widely spread over 
 Holland and Germany. The School of Paris, under 
 the influence of Riolan and Guy Patin, made a fierce 
 war upon them ; but, at a later period, they were dis- 
 seminated over France and Italy. 
 
 Thomas Willis himself promulgated them in Eng- 
 land. He was in full harmony with De la Boe, and 
 accepted the doctrines of Paracelsus. He regarded all 
 bodies, organic and inorganic, as constituted from the 
 mystic elements, " spirit, sulphur, and salt," and that 
 ferment, or the " intestine movement of particles," 
 was the explanation of many of the processes of life 
 and disease. The sensible properties and physical 
 attractions of the animal fluids and solids depended 
 upon the different proportions, movements, and com- 
 binations of these particles. These views were elabo- 
 rately set forth by him in his treatise, Pharmaceutic^ 
 Rationalis, or Rational Pharmacy. The changes in the 
 medical creed have relegated this work to oblivion,
 
 MEDICINE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 215 
 
 but his description of nervous diseases, and his account 
 of diabetes, the earliest on record, are acknowledged 
 as " classical contributions to scientific medicine." 
 Mr. Willis died in 1675. 
 
 SYDENHAM. 
 
 The next great luminary in the medical horizon of 
 England, in the seventeenth century, was Thomas 
 Sydenham. This " English Hippokrates," as his later 
 admirers call him, had entered the university of 
 Oxford in 1642, but belonging to the Roundhead party, 
 he soon afterward abandoned his books to take a com- 
 mand in the army of the Parliament against Charles I. 
 He graduated at Oxford in 1648 a Bachelor of Medi- 
 cine, and it is supposed also pursued the study at 
 Montpellier. Fifteen years later he passed the exami- 
 nation of the College of Physicians, and was licensed 
 "to practice medicine in Westminster and six miles 
 around." Finally, in 1676, he received the degree of 
 Doctor of Medicine from the university at Cambridge, 
 his son being at the time an undergraduate. Perhaps 
 this last fact had some influence in the matter. 
 
 The fame of Sydenham, like that of most superior 
 men who are benefactors, was chiefly posthumous. 
 Making little display of his learning, yet boldly strik- 
 ing outji course for himself which was not according 
 to the approved methods, though well acquainted with 
 the works of the ancient physicians, and closely follow- 
 ing Hippokrates, he was described as "not a profound 
 man of science." He was greatly blamed for not using 
 the professional jargon. To the day of his death, and 
 for years afterward, he and his followers were stigma- 
 tized by the orthodox practitioners of the time as
 
 2l6 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 "sectaries." The College of Physicians cherished 
 little affection for him ; at least, it never reached far 
 enough from the heart to warm the shoulder. In a 
 letter to Robert Boyle, written in 1688, the year before 
 his death, Sydenham thus remarks : " I have the 
 happiness of curing my patients — at least of having it 
 said that few miscarry under me ; but cannot brag of 
 my correspondency with some others of my Faculty," 
 
 His writings comprise about six hundred octavo 
 pages in Latin. He published a treatise on his Method 
 of Curing Fevers in 1666, adding two years later, a 
 chapter on the Plague, and a revised edition in 1676 ; 
 a Letter on Epidemics, and a second on Lties Vejierea, 
 addressed to two Cambridge professors, in 1680 ; and 
 a Dissertation in 1682, setting forth the treatment of 
 small-pox and hysteria ; a tract on Podagra and Dropsy; 
 and, finally, the Processus Integri, an outline sketch of 
 pathology and practice. Twenty copies only were 
 originally printed in 1692 ; but it has been several 
 times reprinted. 
 
 He made as little as possible of the dogmas and 
 traditions of his craft. His predominant idea was to 
 take up diseases as they presented themselves in 
 nature. Most forms of ill health, he insisted, had a 
 definite type comparable to the types of animal and 
 vegetable species, and the conformity of type in the 
 symptoms and course of a malady was due to the uni- 
 formity of the cause. He dwelt, nevertheless, upon 
 the "evident and conjunct causes," the morbid phe- 
 nomena, not seeking after causes that were remote. 
 Acute diseases, like fevers and inflammations, he 
 regarded as a wholesome conservative effort of the 
 organism to meet the blow or shock of some injurious 
 influence operating from without ; following in this
 
 MEDICINE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 217 
 
 the Hippokratic teaching, as he likewise did the 
 method laid down by the illustrious Ionian, of watch- 
 ing and aiding the natural crises. Chronic diseases, 
 however, were attributed by him to a depraved state 
 of the fluids of the body, which was due principally 
 to errors of diet and manner of life. " Acutos dico, qui 
 ut plurimum Deuin habejil author em siciit chrouici ipsos nosT 
 Nevertheless, he introduced the practice of bleeding 
 in fevers and inflammations to a degree that had 
 before been unexampled ; and in this he was followed 
 at a later period by men like Bran, Rush, Broussais, 
 and the great body of practitioners of the nineteenth 
 century, till the lancet of the physician became a more 
 deadly weapon than the arms of the soldier. Honor- 
 able and praiseworthy as was his career in other 
 respects, a greater misfortune than this innovation 
 entailed can hardly be cited. It made the so-called 
 art of healing an art fearfully destructive to human 
 life. Yet Sydenham himself was awake to the vices 
 of the depletive treatment, and as he remarked humor- 
 ously but over-truth fully, he sometimes consulted his 
 patient's safety, as well as his own reputation, by 
 doing nothing at all. 
 
 In the treatment of small-pox he seems to have 
 encountered the severest criticism. The stimulating 
 regimen then in vogue, and most disastrous in its 
 results, he utterly discarded, and instituted for it cool 
 air and saline medicines, with a success that at that 
 time was rare. 
 
 He declared that there was an "epidemic constitu- 
 tion " peculiar to every year and season, which he con- 
 ceived to depend upon atmospheric, but more essen- 
 tially upon inscrutable telluric causes. The prevalent 
 type of the acute disease he observed to vary accord-
 
 2l8 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ing to the year and season, and he held that the right 
 treatment could not be ascertained till the type was 
 known. 
 
 For a time he was regarded with vague esteem 
 among practitioners for his successful treatment of 
 small-pox, his employment of laudanum and his advo- 
 cacy of the use of Peruvian bark for quartan agues. 
 Some, however, of the ablest and most talented men 
 of the time, not hampered by narrow professional 
 jealousy, were awake to his intrinsic worth. Boer- 
 haave, of Leiden, was wont to speak of him to students 
 as the Phoebus of the art, and the true type of a Hip- 
 pokratic man. Haller, when arranging a Scheme of 
 Medical Progress through the Ages, marked one of 
 the epochs as beginning with Sydenham. The College 
 of Physicians in 1810 built him a monument. "I 
 believe," says his biographer, R. G. Latham, " that 
 the moral element of a liberal and candid spirit went 
 hand in hand with the intellectual qualifications of 
 observation, analysis and comparison." To this 
 eulogy Dr. Charles Creighton adds : " He is indeed 
 famous because he inaugurated a new method and a 
 better ethics of practice, the worth and diffusive 
 influence of which did not become obvious, except 
 to those who were on the same line with him- 
 self." 
 
 Among the correspondents of Sydenham were Mor- 
 ton, Robert Boyle and John Locke. The great philoso- 
 pher was himself a physician of thorough training, 
 and his hearty sympathy with the "English Hippo- 
 krates." He took occasion in a letter to W. Molyneux 
 to compare the several methods then in vogue, and to 
 give the preference distinctly to the now famous Eng- 
 lishman.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 219 
 
 " You cannot imagine," he remarks, " how far a little 
 observation carefully made by a man not tied up to the 
 four humors, [like the Galenists,] or to sal, sulphur or 
 mercury, [like the alchemists and followers of Para- 
 celsus] — or to acid and alcali, which has of late pre- 
 vailed [with the disciples of Willis] — will carry a man 
 in the curing of diseases though very stubborn and 
 dangerous ; and that with very little afid common things, 
 and almost no medicine at all." 
 
 It is perfectly natural, however, to seek for knowl- 
 edge and methods which shall be ample for every 
 exigency. It was therefore creditable to the medical 
 investigators of the seventeenth century that they 
 endeavored to develop theoretic systems which should 
 comprise the sum of what was beneficial for human 
 suffering. There may have been then, as we find it 
 now, a love of ruling which impelled selfish men to 
 lord it over their fellows, and to seek by arbitrary 
 ethics, and even by intrusive legislation, to silence 
 and crush those who did not subscribe to their require- 
 ments. Yet dogma is essential to an intelligent grasp- 
 ing of facts, and a physician without a theory is little 
 else than a sorry empiric. 
 
 Sydenham, it is true, had a profound contempt for 
 the book-learning of his time, and actually recom- 
 mended a person desirous to study medicine, to read 
 Don Quixote as a valuable work. Nevertheless he was 
 well acquainted with the various systems of practice 
 extant and only attempted to substitute for them the 
 better method of studying the natural processes and 
 their normal and abnormal manifestations. Simple 
 treatment rather than complex prescriptions, he held, 
 was generally most successful in restoring deranged 
 functions of the body and restoring the normal
 
 220 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 activity. Yet he had his theories, as any one can per- 
 ceive, and he sometimes made complicated prescrip- 
 tions. But he followed the Sokratic and Platonic 
 method, to develop from the facts at hand the causes 
 and conclusions, and to act as each case required, with- 
 out regard to the symmetry of his theoretic views, or 
 even consistency between his practice and avowed 
 sentiments. He did what he judged best at the time 
 for the patient, leaving the matter of dogma and 
 hypothesis to be adjudicated by itself. 
 
 The seventeenth century which had been introduced 
 by such men as Keppler and Galileo, was concluded 
 with Isaac Newton. Medical theory kept in step with 
 their advance, and itself entered upon a new epoch. 
 When therefore, we begin with the succeeding cent- 
 ury, we notice a continuation of the same notions, 
 explorations, and schools of thought as characterized 
 its predecessor ; and indeed we must arrive beyond its 
 first decades before perceiving any essential changes. 
 It is so, however, in all ages ; we can find few mile- 
 stones in human progress to enable us to take a 
 reckoning, yet when we survey mankind from age to 
 age, we are not long in discovering that the world 
 does move.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The new doctrines and scientific discoveries which 
 had disputed the ascendency of the former time-worn 
 dogmas and theories, continued to agitate the world 
 during the earlier years of the eighteenth century. 
 This period, in fact, was little else than a supple- 
 mentary chapter to the volume. It was characterized, 
 like the previous century, by innovation, controversy, 
 and revolution. Materialism in science as well as in 
 ethics was pitted against supersensualism, the flesh 
 lusting against the spirit and each seeming to triumph 
 in its turn. 
 
 The history of medicine exhibited the same pecu- 
 liarities. At Leiden the physical and mathematical 
 doctrines were preponderant ; at Halle the attempt 
 was made to establish the animistic doctrine as suffi- 
 cient to account for all that related to physiology, 
 pathology, and the whole art of healing. European 
 practitioners were divided in their allegiance between 
 the respective teachers. 
 
 John RadclifiEe, who had followed closely after 
 Sydenham in avowed contempt for the book-learning 
 then extant, disavowed all the medical systems of the 
 time, remarking that he belonged only to the school 
 of common sense. He is described as both a popular
 
 222 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 and sagacious practitioner gifted with rare insight,* 
 and he stood at the head of his profession in London. 
 Like other despisers of literature he left no memorial. 
 He was evidently willing to learn and profit selfishly 
 from the labors of others, contributing nothing valu- 
 able in return. 
 
 His friend and disciple, Richard Mead, attained to 
 greater distinction. He was the son of a Non-Con- 
 formist minister at Stepney and attended school at 
 Utrecht, but having decided to study medicine he 
 repaired to Leiden where Herrmann and Pitcairn 
 were the principal lecturers. In 1695 he graduated at 
 Padua as Doctor of Philosophy and Medicine, and 
 returned to Stepney to begin the practice of his pro- 
 fession. In 1703 he was elected physician to St. 
 Thomas' Hospital, and appointed lecturer at the Sur- 
 geons' Hall, On the death of Radcliffe, in 17 14, he 
 was recognized as the principal medical man of Lon- 
 don ; attending Queen Anne on her death-bed, and 
 serving the Prince of Wales (afterward George II.) in 
 1727 as his physician. Mead was a man of remarkable 
 mental activity and an ardent champion of the 
 "mathematical doctrines" as taught at Leiden. "It 
 is very evident," he says, "that all other means of 
 improving medicine have been found ineffectual by 
 the stand it was at for two thousand years ; and that 
 since mathematicians have set themselves to the study 
 of it, men already begin to talk so intelligently and 
 comprehensively, even about abstruse matters, that it 
 
 * He was sent for in December, 1694, to visit Queen Mary, then ill with small- 
 pox. On arriving at the palace he first inquired of the court physicians what their 
 treatment had been. They described it minutely. Radcliffe immediately said : 
 "Gentlemen, the Queen is a dead woman; I wish you good morning." Then 
 taking his hat he went away without even seeing her. His diagnosis of the treat- 
 ment was correct ; in a very short time the Queen died.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 223 
 
 is to be hoped that mathematical learning' will be 
 the distinguishing mark of a physician and a 
 quack." 
 
 Nevertheless, despite his tenacity of opinion and 
 unseemly readiness to apply an opprobrious term to 
 those who differed from his views, Mead was not suc- 
 cessful in his own endeavors to make use of the New- 
 tonian and mathematical principles for the explanation 
 of bodily functions, and to show that atmospheric 
 pressure and the influence of the sun and moon were 
 the chief causes of disease. In 1702 he published a 
 treatise on Poisons^ explaining them as acting only on 
 the blood. This hypothesis, however, he was com- 
 pelled to modify ; and, accordingly, in 1708, in a later 
 edition, he ascribed the disturbances produced to the 
 "nervous liquor," which in turn he explained as a 
 quantity of the "universal elastic matter" (or lumini- 
 ferous aether) that is diffused through the universe. 
 
 James Keill also endeavored to apply the same prin- 
 ciples to the explanation of bodily functions, and with 
 a great degree of success. 
 
 None of these men founded a School of Medicine. 
 There were no medical colleges in England of a char- 
 acter to compare with the universities upon the conti- 
 nent of Europe ; and experience showed then, as it 
 does now, that for a physician to take high rank in 
 the medical world, an academic position of rank was 
 necessary. He must be a teacher if he would be a 
 leader of his age. 
 
 BOERHAAVE, 
 
 Fortunately for his influence and celebrity, Boer- 
 haave was fully equipped in this respect, as well as in
 
 224 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 his profound learning and extensive information. He 
 had also been a student of theolog}-, and having 
 received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from a 
 humble institution in Guelderland, he immediately- 
 engaged with ardor in the studies belonging to the 
 profession. In 1701 he was appointed to the chair of 
 Institutes of Medicine at Leiden. He retained his 
 connection with the university many years, succeed- 
 ing Hatton as lecturer on Botany and Medicine, Bidloo 
 in the chair of Practical Medicine, and afterward 
 adding to these the professorship of Chemistry, and 
 discharging also the office of Rector. In this way he 
 worked incessantly, lecturing five hours each day and 
 performing professional service. He was the organ- 
 izer of the modern plan of clinical instruction ; and 
 the hospital at Leiden, though having but twelve beds, 
 now became the centre of medical influence in Europe. 
 Many of the leading physicians of England also took 
 their degrees at the university, and the reputation of 
 Boerhaave surpassed that of his predecessor De la Boe, 
 as well as those who followed him. 
 
 In his inaugural address he praised Hippokrates as 
 the model of the physician, but he avowedly followed 
 the methods of Sydenham ; from whom, however, he 
 widely differed in the importance which he attached 
 to ancient dogma, as well as modern discovery. 
 Indeed, he aimed to form a system which should 
 include the principal features of all the great teachers, 
 taking the Hellenic teachings for the groundwork, 
 and making the scientific acquisitions of his age 
 available as the superstructure. Thus selecting his 
 doctrines from the current notions of his age, he has 
 been generally styled " an Eclectic," while at the same 
 time his accepting of the theory of humoral pathology
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 225 
 
 also won for him the title of " the Modern Galen." In 
 the language of his panegyrist, " he with wonderful 
 address assimilated the Galenic doctrine of humors to 
 his chemical doctrine, and gave them a specific char- 
 acter founded upon their chemical relations. The 
 mechanical philosophy then attracting universal 
 attention, added to the fabric ; the vessels were cones 
 and cylinders ; and the fluids consisting of various 
 particles adapted only to given apertures, were at 
 times forcibly impelled and impacted in vessels to 
 which they were not fitted, and consequently pro- 
 duced numerous complaints." 
 
 Futile and even injurious as we now would consider 
 a treatment founded on such a hypothesis, Boerhaave, 
 nevertheless, was everywhere popular, Peter the 
 Great, of Russia, often attended his lectures ; and a 
 Chinese mandarin wrote him a letter. He was not 
 simply a physician made by books and teachers, but 
 was endowed with an intuition which enabled him to 
 perceive and describe distempers before others could 
 find any symptoms at all. He was simple in his man- 
 ner, methodical and precise in his instructions, elo- 
 quent in language and graceful in delivery. He was 
 often lively in his lectures, fond of mirth, but never 
 coarse or satirical. In his profession he was diligent 
 and condescending and his great skill enabled him to 
 acquire wealth. He died with a fortune of two million 
 florins. 
 
 One of his disciples. Van Swieten, carried his doc- 
 trines to Vienna and founded a school there ; and his 
 nephew, Kaauw Boerhaave, engaged in a lucrative 
 practice at St. Petersburg. The latter was the author 
 of a treatise upon the Influence of the Nervous 
 System.
 
 226 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 HALLER. 
 
 Another disciple of Boerhaave was the distinguished 
 Albrecht von Haller, sometimes called the " Father of 
 Modern Physiology." He was an incessant student 
 and investigator, surpassing Boerhaave himself in his 
 encyclopaedic information, and more profoundly 
 acquainted with the literature and biography of medi- 
 cine than any other man living before or since. 
 Graduating at Leiden he accepted the professorships 
 of Medicine, Anatomy, Botany and Surgery in the 
 university at Gottingen, then just founded by George 
 II., as elector of Hanover. He was a brilliant experi- 
 mentalist and a most prolific writer, composing eighty- 
 six books and twelve thousand reviews of books in 
 seventeen years, besides poetry. He was in many 
 senses an innovator upon the doctrines in vogue 
 among medical teachers. From the first he had 
 accepted the theory of generation known as epigenesis, 
 propounded by William Harvey, that the forming of 
 the new organism takes place by the successive differ- 
 entiation of a relatively homogeneous rudiment into 
 the various parts and structures. To this theory, 
 Malpighi had opposed the doctrine which Harvey 
 styled metamorphosis — that the new being exists as an 
 entirety in the ovum antecedently to the process of 
 growing, and that all that occurred during gestation 
 or incubation is the sim^ple expansion or unfolding of 
 organs that already exist. He had been led to this 
 conclusion by observing with his microscopes that the 
 body of a chick was seen in the Qg'g before th.e punctum 
 sanguineum makes its appearance. This was contrary 
 both to the theory of Harvey, and also to the ancient 
 opinions of Aristotle that still dominated the schools ;
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 227 
 
 and the study of microscopic anatomy was denounced 
 accordingly by the old physicians, who did not scruple 
 to heap invective and calumny upon the head of Mal- 
 piglii.* After a time, however, Haller accepted the 
 new hypothesis, and his reputation as the first physi- 
 ologist of Europe was powerful to secure its adoption. 
 He also introduced the doctrine of irritability instead 
 of that of an animal spirit, to account for involuntary 
 muscular and nervous activity, explaining by it the 
 various phenomena of the body. 
 
 His views were severely criticized all over Europe ; 
 but Faber of Paris adopted them, and other writers, 
 like Cullen, appear to have been influenced by them. 
 He has since been overshadowed, but he certainly 
 made the university of Gottingen one of the most 
 famous in Germany. 
 
 STAHL AND HOFFMAN. 
 
 The university at Halle was founded in 1693, by 
 Frederick I., and speedily became celebrated from the 
 distinction acquired by its professors. The medical 
 systems which they promulgated were accepted for 
 many years by practitioners in Germany, and deserve 
 attention for their prominent characteristics. 
 
 George Ernst Stahl was a graduate at Jena, and 
 became physician to the duke of Weimer in 1687. 
 Seven years later, at the earnest suggestion of his 
 friend and fellow-student, Hoffman, he was made 
 professor of medicine at Halle, and in 17 14 was 
 appointed physician to the king of Prussia, dying at 
 Berlin, May 14, 1734. His first publication, Theoria 
 Medica Vera — the True Theory of Medicine — appeared 
 
 ♦ His brother fought a duel over the controversy, killing his antagonist.
 
 228 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 in 1707, It is a zealous protest against the material- 
 ism which was becoming prominent among teachers 
 and writers upon medicine. " His principal title to 
 glory," says Renouard, "is for having recalled the 
 attention of his contemporaries to the natural tenden- 
 cies of the animal economy to the reaction of the vital 
 forces (or the soul) in diseases — a reaction and tend- 
 encies which physico-chemical doctrines too much 
 lost sight of." {^History of Medicine, page 534.) 
 
 Stahl accepted the humoral pathology on the ground 
 that the health of the body consists in the conserva- 
 tion and maintenance of the fluids in a state of 
 integrity and perfect mixture. vSuch a condition, how- 
 ever, can be regarded only as an effect; and the funda- 
 mental cause, therefore, must be the immaterial and 
 rational soul. He believed with Des Cartes that all 
 motion implies and requires the aid of a spiritual 
 motive agency. All voluntary muscular motions are 
 of this character, as none of the muscles are a force, 
 but only the instrument of a force. It is equally true 
 that the unconscious and invisible physiological move- 
 ments and processes are effects, of which the soul or 
 spirit is the producing cause. 
 
 Stahl recognized two morbid conditions ; the one a 
 plethora or over-fullness, the other a cacochy/nia, or 
 depressed condition of the fluids. He taught that 
 every pathologic affection was produced from the 
 reaction of the soul against the morbific agent, and 
 that the totality of the symptoms of any given case of 
 disease only represented and indicated the succession 
 of vital movements. Hence the physician should 
 either do nothing, or direct his effort to aid the soul, 
 which is the actual vis medicatrix naturce, to restore the 
 bodv to a normal and healthy condition. This, as will
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 229 
 
 be perceived, is the "expectant method," so much 
 employed by the French. Stahl and his followers 
 were largely in favor of placebos, and strenuously 
 opposed to the use of active drugs, like opium and 
 Peruvian bark ; while bleeding, emetics and such like 
 "remedies" were regarded by them with little 
 favor. 
 
 This psychal principle, the soul or anima, corresponds 
 closely with the archeus or ruling force of Van Hel- 
 mont, and somewhat with the " nature " to which 
 Sydenham so strenuously referred his causes. To it 
 may be attributed many actions which are denomi- 
 nated instinctive, and those which are considered 
 intuitive. Stahl was the reviver of anifuism in Ger- 
 many. The theory was also adopted in France, but 
 with modifications. Stahl had treated of no inter- 
 mediary principle between the soul and the body, but 
 Barthez propounded the theory of the vital principle or 
 formative force, intermediate between the superior 
 intellective element and the body.* 
 
 It is usual to skim over these theories with an air of 
 indifference, as though they were too fanciful for 
 serious inquiry, and hence they have been silently 
 excluded from the medical curriculum. 
 
 Frederich Hoffman was also a professor at Halle for 
 almost fifty years, and owed much of his celebrity to 
 
 * Paul Joseph Barthez was a native of Montpellier, where he received the 
 degree of Doctor of Medicine, when he had only attained eighteen years of 
 age. He was distinguished for having held numerous appointments and testi- 
 monials in other professions. He became consulting physician to Louis XVI. in 
 1780, and to Napoleon I. in 1802. He enjoyed a high reputation in Europe but not 
 among English-speaking people. His principal work was the Nouveaux EU- 
 mens de la Science de V Homme — New Elements of the Science of Man, and in it 
 he unfolds his animistic doctrine of the vital or formative force. He was one of 
 the strongest opponents of the theory which would explain the phenomena of life 
 by physical or mechanical laws.
 
 230 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 that fact, apart from his great industry and talent. 
 He belonged to a family that had been engaged in 
 medicine for two hundred years. He was born in 
 1660 — the same year as Stahl, graduated at Jena about 
 the same time as his famous colleague, and accepted 
 the position of professor of medicine in 1693. He was 
 reputed as a skillful physician, having the Emperor 
 Charles VI. and Frederick of Prussia for patients; and 
 he emulated the archiatrists of Rome, Greece and 
 Egypt in rendering professional services gratuitously, 
 and subsisting upon his professional stipend. He was 
 an accomplished pharmacist as well as chemist, and 
 both made and sold remedies, keeping the formulas 
 secret.* At his death he made them over to the 
 Orphanage at Halle, which continues to derive an 
 income from them at the present time. The Anodyne 
 is still vended in this country, as well as other secret 
 medicines under his name. Through his recommen- 
 dation, many of the mineral springs of Germany came 
 into repute as health resorts. 
 
 Hoffman was a philosopher of the school of Leib- 
 nitz, the alchemist and supposed Rosicrucian, who 
 inculcated the dogma of a " preestablished harmony 
 between the soul and body." He imitated his great 
 master by an endeavor to construct a system of medi- 
 cine in analogy with this doctrine, which should har- 
 monize the animistic and spiritual views of Stahl with 
 the materialistic dogmas of other teachers. After the 
 common manner of the time, he based his medical 
 tenets upon a complete theory of the universe. The 
 source of life he taught, was the ether, which pervades 
 all things. It is breathed from the atmosphere, and 
 
 r 
 * A maxim of his probably helped to involve him in disfavor in professional 
 
 circles : " Avoid medicines and physicians if you value your health."
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 231 
 
 keeps all animate beings alive. It assimilated in the 
 brain, forming the pneuma or " nervous fluid " by which 
 the body is sustained. 
 
 In regard to pathology Hoffman agreed substantially 
 with his colleague ; teaching that health depended 
 upon the maintenance of a proper tone in the body, 
 and that some diseases were sthenic, or resulting from 
 excess of tone or "spasm," and others were asthenic 
 or produced by atrophy or want of tone. His reputa- 
 tion stood very high, and his work upon Systematic 
 Rational Medicine, written in Latin, was translated and 
 passed through several editions. 
 
 MORGAGNI. 
 
 Pathologic Anatomy as a distinct branch of medical 
 study originated with Giovanni Battista Morgagni. 
 He was a native of Forli, and belonged to a family in 
 good circumstances. He early displayed extraordinary 
 talent, and in 1698, at the age of sixteen, began as a 
 student of philosophy and medicine at Bologna, gradu- 
 ating with both Faculties as Doctor three years later. 
 He next became prosector to Valsalva who had been 
 a pupil of Malpighi, and succeeded him soon after- 
 ward as demonstrator of anatomy at the university. 
 His reputation at this early age stood high, and in his 
 twenty-fourth year he was elected president of the 
 Academia Inquietarum, one of the associations of learned 
 men and inquirers, with which Italy abounded. He 
 signalized his management by discouraging the tend- 
 ency to abstract speculation, then so general, and by 
 enforcing exact anatomic observation and reasoning. 
 He published his discourses to the Academy in a 
 volume which established his reputation throughout
 
 232 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Europe. Resigning his post at Bologna he engaged 
 in the practice of medicine in Forli, where he soon 
 attracted a large body of patrons. His eulogist 
 describes him as displaying the highest qualities of 
 the physician : " in observando atientus, in prcedicendo 
 caiitus, in curando felix" — careful in observing, cautious 
 in predicting, fortunate in curing. 
 
 He soon tired, however, of professional work, and 
 again sought employment as an instructor. The death 
 of his friend Guglielmini at Padua made this attain- 
 able, and in 17 12 he was appointed to the chair of 
 theoretic medicine. He held the position with the 
 highest honor till his death, sixty years later. Three 
 years after this appointment, he was promoted by the 
 Venetian Senate to the chair of anatomy, a place which 
 had been filled by Vesalius, Fallopius and other illus- 
 trious teachers. He appears to have enjoyed uninter- 
 rupted prosperity. He received a bountiful stipend ; 
 he was highly esteemed by his fellow-professors ; he 
 enjoyed the friendship of distinguished senators and 
 the highest ecclesiastic dignitaries ; students from all 
 parts of Europe attended his lectures ; he was elected 
 into the Academies of Europe and the Royal Society 
 of England ; and no person of any eminence in learn- 
 ing came to Padua without visiting and conversing 
 with him, while all were charmed with his polished 
 manners, his character and teaching. He was a many- 
 sided man, writing on a variety of subjects, classic, 
 historic and antiquarian, as well as medical. Indeed, 
 he seems to have been diffident in setting forth his 
 own professional attainments. He edited and pub- 
 lished the works of Valsalva and Guglielmini, adding 
 biographic sketches and commentaries of his own, 
 noted for their exquisite elegance of style ; but he
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 233 
 
 waited long before entering the field with his own 
 productions. 
 
 Only two or three writers had attempted to describe 
 the anatomy of diseased organs and parts of the 
 human body. Many had deplored this omission ; 
 Harvey himself remarking that more was to be 
 learned from the dissection of one person dying with 
 consumption or other chronic malady than from ten 
 that had been hanged. Theophile Bonet, of Neuchatel, 
 indeed, had written the Sepukhretufn, a work which 
 Haller praised as being a pathologic library in itself. 
 But it was prolix, often inaccurate and sometimes even 
 misleading from its ignorance of normal anatomy. 
 Apparent accident led Morgagni to take up the sub- 
 ject. He had just finished his edition of Valsalva in 
 1 741, and was taking a respite from work with a young 
 friend in the country. They were discoursing together 
 upon the Sepulchretum and its defects, when the young 
 man suggested that Morgagni should put his own 
 observations upon paper. It was arranged accord- 
 ingly that he should write a series of letters for his 
 friend's perusal. Seventy of these were prepared, and 
 finally in 1761 were published as a systematic treatise, 
 in two folio volumes, entitled : De Sedibus et Causis 
 Morborum per Anatomen Indagatis — the Seats and Causes 
 of Disease, revealed by Dissection. 
 
 The work was arranged in five books, each of which 
 was dedicated to a representative of one of the five 
 learned societies of which Morgagni was a member. 
 It embraced the record of six hundred and forty dis- 
 sections, and gives a description of the morbid con- 
 ditions of the body through its entire extent. The 
 symptoms during the course of the malady are pre- 
 fixed, and discussed from the point of view presented
 
 234 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 by the conditions after death. All ranks of life, from 
 peasant to cardinal, furnished subjects for these 
 letters. Many were cases of Morgagni's own early 
 observation ; others were from unpublished records of 
 Valsalva and Albertini. 
 
 This treatise was the collected observations, experi- 
 ences and acquired knowledge of his lifetime. He was 
 in his eightieth year, when, as Creighton elegantly 
 remarks, " he brought out the great work which, once 
 for all, made pathological anatomy a science, and 
 diverted the course of medicine into new channels of 
 exactness or precision." It was not only famous at 
 the time from its author's great reputation, but to the 
 present time, it is acknowledged that it was the begin- 
 ning of an era of progress in pathologic knowledge 
 and practical medicine. " Although Morgagni was 
 the first," adds Mr. Creighton, " to demonstrate the 
 absolute necessit)^ of having diagnosis, prognosis and 
 treatment on an exact and comprehensive knowledge 
 of anatomical conditions, he made no attempt (like 
 that of the Vienna School sixty years later), to exalt 
 pathological anatomy into a science disconnected from 
 clinical medicine and remote from practical needs. 
 His orderliness of anatomical method (implying his 
 skill with the scalpel), his precision, his exhaustive- 
 ness, and his freedom from bias are his essentially 
 modern or scientific qualities ; his scholarship and 
 high consideration for classical and foreign work, his 
 sense of practical ends (or his common sense), and the 
 breadth of his intellectual horizon prove him to have 
 lived before medical science had become largely tech- 
 nical or mechanical. Symptoms from this time ceased 
 to be made up into more or less conventional groups, 
 each of which was a disease ; on the other hand, they
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 235 
 
 began to be viewed as * the cry of the suffering organs,' 
 and it became possible to develop Sydenham's grand 
 conception of a Natural History of disease in a catho- 
 lic or scientific spirit." 
 
 THE EDINBURGH SCHOOL. 
 
 According to Sir Robert Christison the first chair 
 of medicine was instituted in the University of the 
 city of Edinburgh in 1685, " through the energy and 
 influence of three of the most remarkable medical 
 men of the day in Scotland, Sir Andrew Balfour, Sir 
 Robert Sibbold and Dr. Pitcairn." The latter was the 
 instructor of Mead and Boerhaave, at Leiden. He had 
 been somewhat undecided in his choice of a profession, 
 applying himself in turn to divinity, law, and mathe- 
 matics ; finally entering on the study of medicine at 
 Edinburgh, then pursuing it further at Paris and 
 graduating at Rheims. He began practice in Edin- 
 burgh, but in 1692 became professor of medicine at 
 Leiden. Having returned home, however, to fulfil an 
 engagement of marriage, the father of the bride 
 objected to her residence abroad ; and Pitcairn settled 
 once more at Edinburgh. 
 
 He appears to have been a man of jovial temper 
 fond of drink and disputations. He was often engaged 
 in violent quarrels, both with physicians and clergy- 
 men ; with the latter from his hatred of Calvinism, 
 and with the former from professional rivalry. 
 Desirous of procuring subjects for dissection, he 
 applied for the unclaimed bodies of paupers. This 
 proposition the chief surgeons of Edinburgh opposed, 
 but he succeeded in obtaining the necessary per- 
 mission from the Town Council, thus laying the
 
 236 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 foundation of the " Edinburgh School of Medical 
 Learning." 
 
 He was a determined adversary of philosophic 
 explanations as well as of the iatro-chemical doc- 
 trines, and an avowed champion of the scientific or 
 empiric method. "Nothing," he declared, "more 
 hinders physic from being improved than the curi- 
 osity of searching into the natural causes of the effect 
 of medicines. The business of man is to know the 
 virtues of medicines ; but to inquire Whence they have 
 that power is a superfluous amusement since nature 
 lies concealed. A physician ought, therefore, to apply 
 himself to discover by experience the effects of medi- 
 cine and diseases, and reduce his observations into 
 maxims, and not heedlessly fatigue himself by inquir- 
 ing into their causes, which are neither possible nor 
 necessary to be known. If all physicians would act 
 thus, we should not see physic divided into so many 
 sects." 
 
 As has already appeared, parties and rival schools of 
 medicine were as numerous and rancorous as in later 
 periods ; each faction tugging at its own corner of the 
 blanket and striving with all its might to pull it away 
 from the others. Although governments were more 
 arbitrary and despotic then, the expedient of establish- 
 ing one party in medicine absolute and supreme over 
 others had not been adopted in the United Kingdom. 
 
 Major Pitcairn, who commanded the firing of the 
 first volley at Lexington, in the American Revolution, 
 was a descendant of the Scotch professor. 
 
 Alexander Monro, the first, became professor of 
 anatomy at Edinburgh in 1720. His principal fame 
 rests upon the fact that he was the first to hold the 
 place, and was the author of works upon osteology and
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 237 
 
 comparative anatomy. His son and namesake was 
 appointed joint professor in 1756, and appears to have 
 been an investigator of much merit and originality. 
 He made many important contributions to our ana- 
 tomic and histologic knowledge. His son succeeded 
 to this professorship but was not so famous as his two 
 ancestors. He did his part, nevertheless, in maintain- 
 ing the reputation of the school. 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN. 
 
 Scotch medicine, however, in the eighteenth cent- 
 ury, boasted of William Cullen as one of its brightest 
 jewels. He was a native of Hamilton, in Lanarkshire, 
 and began his career as a surgeon's apprentice in 
 Glasgow. Here he had access to an extensive medical 
 library and attended several classes in the University. 
 At the end of his apprenticeship he became surgeon to 
 a merchant vessel and afterward settled as a practi- 
 tioner in a rural parish. In 1734, at the age of twenty- 
 four, he made his way to Edinburgh, then becoming 
 somewhat distinguished for its medical school, and 
 spent two winter sessions. He was also one of the 
 founders of the Royal Medical Society and Students' 
 Association in that city. Leaving Edinburgh he set- 
 tled in Hamilton, where he soon gained a high repu- 
 tation and was employed by the leading families, 
 including that of the Duke himself. At this time 
 William Hunter became his pupil, remaining with 
 him three years. In 1740 Cullen took the degree of 
 Doctor of Medicine from the University of Glasgow, 
 and from that time confined himself to the practice of 
 physic, relinquishing surgery to a partner. Four years 
 later he removed to Glasgow. The medical school of
 
 238 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 the university was as yet but imperfectly organized 
 and Cullen became a lecturer on the theory and prac- 
 tice of medicine, botany, materia medica and chemis- 
 try. His ability as an instructor, his facility in 
 imparting knowledge upon difficult subjects and his 
 ardent enthusiasm attracted students and made him 
 very popular. In 1751 he received from the king, at 
 the instance of the Duke of Argyll, the appointment 
 of professor of medicine, but he continued to lecture 
 upon chemistry, of which he was passionately fond. 
 
 In 1756 he received from the town council of Edin- 
 burgh, the appointment of joint professor of chemistry 
 in the university of that city, and held the chair for 
 ten years. Four years later he delivered a course of 
 lectures on materia medica, which were surreptitiously 
 published in London and widely circulated. He was 
 afterward appointed professor of the institutes of 
 medicine, and in conjunction with Dr. John Gregory, 
 gave lectures upon the practice of physic. He died in 
 1790. 
 
 CuUen's fame appears to have rested upon his ability 
 as a teacher, rather than upon the speculations which 
 he promulgated. He took exception to the doctrines 
 of Boerhaave, then universally taught in the schools, 
 and strongly opposed the humoral pathology. He 
 was equally dissatisfied with the conceptions of Stahl, 
 because they gave no countenance to the heroic prac- 
 tice which he inculcated and pursued. His theory 
 placed disease in the solid structures of the body, and 
 he divided the various forms into four classes : pyrexia, 
 or fevers ; neuroses, or nervous disorders ; cachexice, or 
 depraved conditions, as in scurvy ; and locales^ or local 
 complaints like cancer. He taught the doctrine of 
 spasm or debility, attributing to it all the phenomena
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 239 
 
 of febrile disorders. He referred rheumatism to spasm 
 of the muscular fibres arising from an incessant flow 
 of blood to the origin of complaint, and gout to atony, 
 especially of the organs of digestion. He rejected the 
 notion of a peculiar morbific matter in these diseases, 
 but in his explanation of scrofula and several others, 
 he adopted the hypothesis of an acrimony of the fluids. 
 He laid great stress upon the agency of the vis inedi- 
 catrix naturce, and taught the existence of a nervous 
 fluid and vital principle. He also ascribed a peculiar 
 faculty to the brain, which he denominated " irrita- 
 bility of the sensorium " and declared that it excited 
 the muscles to action independently of the mind and 
 will. Upon this hypothesis his system was princi- 
 pally founded. The circulation of the blood, there- 
 fore, would not be explained by mechanical laws, the 
 angles at which the arteries divaricated were repre- 
 sented as exercising little influence, and lentor, 
 viscidity and acrimony, whether acid or alkaline, were 
 regarded as having no tendency to produce diseases. 
 The whole was resolved by him into motions regulated 
 by the vital principles, and chiefly induced by the 
 activity or torpor of the extreme arteries. 
 
 THE GREGORIES. 
 
 John Gregory, the colleague of Dr. Cullen, belonged 
 to a family remarkable for hereditary genius. Sixteen 
 of their number held professorships in British univer- 
 sities. David Gregory, of Kinardie, practiced medicine 
 among the poor gratuitously. He was passionately 
 fond of scientific pursuits, and having procured a 
 barometer, he became involved in difficulty. He pre- 
 dicted changes in the weather, and was arraigned
 
 240 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 before the presbytery of Aberdeen on the charge of 
 witchcraft, but succeeded in proving his innocence. 
 His death took place in 1720. His brother, James 
 Gregory, was the inventor of the telescope which bears 
 his name, and published several mathematical works. 
 From him descended the professors of medicine who 
 contributed to the reputation of the school at Edin- 
 burgh as well as other institutions with which they 
 were connected. 
 
 The son and namesake of James Gregory occupied 
 that position at King's College in Aberdeen, and was 
 succeeded by his son, James, who died in 1755. The 
 younger brother of the latter, John Gregory, com- 
 pleted his literary course at Aberdeen, and then 
 attended the medical classes at Edinburgh University. 
 In 1745 he went to Leiden to complete his studies, and 
 while there received from the college at Aberdeen, 
 without having made application for the honor, the 
 degree of Doctor of Medicine. Returning home he 
 was made professor of philosophy, but resigned it 
 because it interfered with his practice as a physician. 
 In 1755 he succeeded his deceased brother as professor 
 of medicine at King's College. Nine years afterward 
 he removed to Edinburgh, in the hope to enlarge his 
 business as a practitioner, and was made professor of 
 physic in the University. 
 
 James Gregory, his oldest son, accompanied him to 
 Edinburgh, and there went through the course of 
 classic and literary study, afterward, in 1774, gradu- 
 ating in medicine. Two years later the father died, 
 and he succeeded to the vacant chair. In 1790 he was 
 made joint professor of medicine with Doctor Cullen, 
 who died soon after, leaving him in sole occupancy. 
 He became the author of various philosophic and
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 241 
 
 literary works, and was generally acknowledged as 
 standing at the head of the medical profession in 
 Scotland. His classes increased in size from year to 
 year till the time of his death, in 1821. Dr. William 
 Gregory, the late Professor of Chemistry at Edin- 
 burgh, was his son. 
 
 THE "BRUNONIAN SYSTEM." 
 
 John Brown, of Scotland, has sometimes been styled 
 the last systematizer of medicine. He was truly a 
 "son of the people." His father liad been a day- 
 laborer in the parish of Bunkle, in Berwickshire, and 
 he was born there in 1735. Young Brown was destined 
 for the trade of a weaver, but his schoolmaster, per- 
 ceiving him to be a youth of promise, persuaded his 
 parents to let him study for the pulpit. Accordingly, 
 at the age of twenty, he made his way to Edinburgh, 
 and entered the classes at the university, support- 
 ing himself by private tuition. Presently, however, 
 he abandoned theology for medicine, and having 
 attracted the notice of Dr. Cullen, was employed by 
 him as a tutor in his family, and on some occasions as 
 an assistant in lecturing. A chair becoming vacant 
 in the university. Brown aspired to fill it. Suspecting 
 Dr. Cullen to be insincere or indifferent in regard to 
 his claims, he broke off friendly relations and soon 
 afterward undertook an independent course of lectures, 
 promulgating doctrines of his own in opposition to 
 those of his former patron. 
 
 He seems to have taken his cue, nevertheless, from 
 Cullen. The latter taught that the strength or debility 
 of the bodily organism depended upon a certain state 
 of excitement or collapse of the brain and nervous
 
 242 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 system. Brown based his theory upon the hypothesis 
 of excitability. He inculcated that the whole phe- 
 nomena of life, health as well as disease, consist in 
 stimulus, and nothing else. The exciting powers were 
 set forth by him as a joint activity of external forces 
 and the functions of the system itself. These call 
 forth the vital phenomena — " sense, motion, mental 
 function and passion."* Diseases were classed as 
 sthenic and asthenic, the result of an excess or deficiency 
 of excitement and requiring treatment accordingly. 
 The remedies for the former condition were bleeding, 
 low diet and cathartic drugs ; for the latter, stimula- 
 tion. To his credit it must be added, that he 
 regarded ninety-seven per cent, of the complaints as 
 of the debile and asthenic character. 
 
 A theory so simple attracted followers, and both in 
 Scotland and upon the continent of Europe, the 
 " Brunonian system " was, for a time, cordially 
 received. The fact that it formed a milder mode of 
 treatment than the common method was a great 
 recommendation, and Brown appears to have been the 
 first advocate of the feeding treatment in fevers. He 
 was sagacious enough to perceive that convulsions 
 and deliriums, then commonly regarded as symptoms 
 of inflammation, were very generally actual signs of 
 weakness. 
 
 In England, where ideas or innovations from a 
 foreign country or a subject province, are seldom 
 willingly accepted, the new doctrine met with little 
 
 * Bonnet, of Switzerland, living in the last century, published a work entitled 
 Palingenesie Philosophique^ setting forth the same doctrine, which was then cur- 
 rent in Europe. All knowledge, according to his theory, originates in sensations; 
 sensations follow vibrations in the various nerves appropriate to each ; and lastly, 
 the nerves are made to vibrate by the action of outward objects upon them. Ideas 
 were described as sensations in condition only.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 243 
 
 favor. In Scotland, Brown's own home, he had 
 numerous partisans among medical students, and 
 many personal conflicts took place between them and 
 those opposing his views. In Italy, he received 
 enthusiastic support. Rasoni, of Pavia, became a 
 champion of the new doctrine, but afterward adopted 
 in place of the theory of stimulation, his own notion 
 of counter-irritation. Joseph Frank, also a professor 
 at Pavia, was likewise a believer in the Brunonian 
 theory, and upon his removal to the university of 
 Vienna, taught it to his classes. Girtanner first pro- 
 claimed it in Germany, but had not the manliness to 
 give the source. Weikard was their avowed champion. 
 Roeschlaub promulgated them in a modified form. 
 The students at Gottingen were zealous in their 
 advocacy ; indeed, the enthusiasm was as great in 
 Germany as in Italy or Scotland. 
 
 Broussais evidently belonged in the same category. 
 When lecturing at the Military Hospital of Val-de- 
 Grace in Paris, he promulgated views similar to those 
 of Brown, declaring the principal cause of disease to 
 be over-irritation, which from being at first local, 
 extended itself through sympathy to different parts of 
 the body. He published an Examen of his doctrines in 
 1816, which drew upon him the hostility of the whole 
 orthodox medical profession in Paris. In time, how- 
 ever, he was triumphant. The leading physicians 
 adopted his opinions. Even the Medical School of 
 Paris itself taught them, and Broussais became the 
 professor of pathology.* 
 
 * Blood-letting was a conspicuous feature of this mode of practice ; and Brous- 
 sais uttered as a maxim : " Bleed the patient till he is white." It became also the 
 ruling practice in America, and is still continued in countries of Europe.
 
 244 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ERASMUS DARWIN. 
 
 Whether we are ready or unwilling to accept his 
 hypothesis, Erasmus Darwin is deserving of respect- 
 ful mention. He was a graduate of medicine at Edin- 
 burgh, and followed the practice of his profession at 
 Lichfield, removing in 1781, at the age of fifty, to 
 Derby, where he finished his career. He was of broad 
 scholarship, full of ardent scientific enthusiasm, and 
 novel if not bizarre in many of his notions. Like 
 many of the medical writers of the Middle Ages, he 
 recorded his ideas in verse. In his treatise entitled 
 Fhytologia he declared his opinion that plants possess 
 will and sensation. The work, however, which con- 
 tains the most significant of his views on medical sub- 
 jects is the Zoonotiiia, or Laws of Organic Life, published 
 in 1794. It contained both a system of pathology and 
 a treatise on generation. In the former, he followed 
 in the footsteps of Hoffman and others who had 
 already noticed the peculiar sympathy or consensus 
 which subsists between particular organs of the body. 
 He went further, however, and demonstrated that 
 their chief error consisted in the partial views taken 
 of the physical economy. The living system had been 
 considered as a simple whole, without a proper con- 
 sideration of the reciprocal influence of the different 
 organs upon each other. He further perceived that 
 disease is generated and unfolded into form, as well 
 as removed, by the same organic laws and forces by 
 which the body itself is developed and preserved. 
 Taking this as his starting-point and adding the 
 observations of his predecessors, illustrated and con- 
 firmed by his own experience, he deduced a system 
 of pathology and therapeutics which he regarded as
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 245 
 
 founded upon the general laws of animated nature. 
 For example, he rejected the explanations which 
 former writers had given of febrile disorders, assign- 
 ing them to chemical and mechanical causes, and 
 attributed, instead, the succession of symptoms to 
 irregular actions of the nervous, vascular and absorb- 
 ent systems ; setting forth how, in consequence of the 
 intimate relationship of the several organs and the 
 influence possessed mutually by each, the derange- 
 ment of one part is followed by similar or opposite 
 affections of others. 
 
 His views of generation almost appear to have been 
 taken from those of the distinguished scientist and 
 philosopher who is the subject of the next division. 
 They both taught " that one and the same kind of 
 living filaments is and has been the cause of organic 
 life." 
 
 "Would it be too bold to imagine," Darwin demands, 
 "in the great length of time since the earth began to 
 exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commence- 
 ment of the history of mankind — would it be too bold 
 to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen 
 from one living filament which the Great First Cause 
 endowed with animality, with the power of acquiring 
 new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by 
 irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations, and 
 thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve 
 by its own inherent ability, and of delivering down 
 these improvements by generation to its posterity, 
 world without end ? " 
 
 SWEDENBORG. 
 
 A speculator and investigator into the same sub- 
 jects among innumerable others was the celebrated
 
 246 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Emanuel Swedenborg. In his Prodromus, printed in 
 1734, as well as in his tractate upon the Red Blood \iQ 
 has prosecuted a course of study and reasoning 
 analogous to that of Darwin after him. Though 
 Swedenborg was a scientist equal to the profoundest 
 of his time, he attached himself to no class of school- 
 men — a circumstance which gave later writers a pre- 
 text to ignore him altogether. He, nevertheless, 
 accepted the discoveries which had been made as 
 means to enable him to develop the ulterior principle 
 of things. His studies were without exclusiveness ; 
 he explored every department of learning and brought 
 away treasures from them all. His genius, remarks 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, began its lessons in quarries 
 and forges, in the smelting-pot and crucible, in ship- 
 yards and dissecting-rooms. He anticipated much of 
 the science of the nineteenth century ; anticipated the 
 views of modern astronomy in regard to the genera- 
 tion of planets by the sun; in magnetism, some impor- 
 tant experiments and conclusions of later students^ in 
 chemistry, the atomic theory ; in anatomy, the dis- 
 coveries of Schlichting, Monro and Wilson ; and he 
 first demonstrated the office of the lungs. 
 
 He was born when the notions of scholars were 
 bursting from their cocoons of the previous centuries, 
 taking new forms and with them developing new 
 powers to soar, as well as to perpetuate their kind. 
 Harvey had taught the circulation of the blood ; Gil- 
 bert, that the earth was itself a magnet ; Des Cartes, 
 that vortical motion was the secret of Nature ; New- 
 ton, the universal gravitation ; Malpighi, that the all 
 of Nature subsists in its least forms ; Swammerdam, 
 Leeuwenhoek, Winslow, Eustachius, Heister, Vesalius, 
 Boerhaave, what they had learned by scalpel and
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 247 
 
 microscope. Swedenborg made himself familiar with 
 all. He was a very Viking in his aggressive experi- 
 mentation, thorough in his explorations, analytic in 
 his methods, systematic in his elucidations, and " not to 
 be measured by whole colleges of ordinary scholars." 
 His scientific works, now translated into English, 
 though perhaps somewhat obscure in their language 
 from the employing of the terminology formerly in 
 use, are a perfect mine of treasure for the earnest 
 investigator. His accomplished translator. Dr. J. J. 
 Garth Wilkinson, of London, speaks in no measured 
 terms of his physiological and other knowledge. 
 "Science," he remarks, "is no tradesman and works 
 not for the improvement of any calling ; but solely 
 because truth is good. Such science for the human 
 body has been cultivated by the non-medical Sweden- 
 borg." 
 
 Dr. Wilkinson likewise claims for him, with good 
 reason, the first suggestion of a rational theory of 
 pathology. " Strange as it may appear," he affirms, 
 "the present science does not present any physiologi- 
 cal knowledge of what these pathological states may 
 be. The science which lies at the basis of pathology 
 is not yet opened. Pains, aches, swellings, and symp- 
 toms generally, glide along the body by terribly broad 
 bridges of structure, of which the anatomist wots not. 
 Well, there is wanted somebody besides this prim 
 anatomist, to unfold the case. Our Swedenborg, 
 Licentiate of No-College, is one of the men in whose 
 works we have found a beginning of instruction on 
 this subject. He has wonderfully indicated for us 
 many of the great bridges and highways of vibrations 
 and influences, and in so doing has thronged with 
 living states and forms parts which were previously
 
 248 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 dispersed, lying in sand-heaps of cell-germs. To the 
 New Pathology, which chronicles the passage of states 
 through Man, he is as yet the most important con- 
 tributor from the physiological side." 
 
 At the very moment, however, when his learning 
 was in the highest repute all over Europe, Sweden- 
 borg superadded to his scientific labors, the teaching 
 of novel religious and teleologic doctrines. He even 
 declared with the greatest sincerity, that his spiritual 
 senses had been opened, so that he was able to hold 
 converse with spirits and angels, and be the witness 
 of spectacles and occurrences in their world. It may 
 be thought that in his case, as was affirmed of Sir 
 Isaac Newton and others, that his long pursuit of 
 exhaustive analysis had resulted in abnormal mental 
 conditions. Those who knew him personally were of 
 a different judgment. His scientific works certainly 
 exhibit no such obliquity or aberration. Many things 
 are recorded of him to show that his memorabilia were 
 not all hallucination of disordered faculties, but the 
 testimony of a clear-headed as well as conscientious 
 man. Indeed, it may be shown, that there have been 
 others in the world of medicine professing, perhaps, 
 with less good reason, that they had attained analo- 
 gous powers. " His dominant end was spiritual and 
 moral," says his biographer, " and it preserved his 
 mind alive in a long course of physical studies, and 
 empowered him to see life and substance in the other- 
 wise dead machinery of creation." 
 
 The effect of taking views so broad, profound, and 
 at variance with the tendencies of the time, was that 
 his works were very generally discredited. Men of 
 titled distinction and professional rank usually treat 
 every one entering upon their special field as an
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 249 
 
 intruder. We remember a clergyman who would not 
 read our treatise upon the Soul on the pretext that 
 the writer was a layman. Another clergyman rebuked 
 the late Gerrit Smith for speaking in the pulpit on a 
 Sunday, because he had not been formally ordained. 
 So, too, the Protestant clergy of Sweden and other 
 countries placed the theological works of Emanuel 
 Swedenborg upon their index. His doctrines, how- 
 ever, now furnish much of the material for sermons 
 and religious essays, great diligence being employed 
 to prevent any divining of the source from which it 
 was derived. Medical teachers followed the same 
 examples. They regarded as an arrant heresy the 
 doctrine, which he had taught so clearly and so con- 
 clusively, that disease has no independent existence, 
 but is only disorder of the organism of the body. 
 Indeed, all reform in the profession of medicine has 
 come, and probably it must always be introduced, from 
 outside of its ranks. None the less, however, is it 
 regarded by the titled members as an offense or 
 scandal, and they are ready and zealous to proclaim 
 and inflict woe upon the individual by whom such 
 offense shall have come. Yet, with them truth, though 
 not its apostles, is certain to prevail. 
 
 The works of Swedenborg of most interest to the 
 student of medicine and physiology, are his treatises 
 upon the Animal Kingdom^ the Economy of the Animal 
 Kingdom, the Philosophic Reasoning Concertiing the Infinite, 
 the Red Blood, Generation, etc. All these have been 
 translated by Dr. Wilkinson. No candid and intelli- 
 gent person can read any one of them without a sense 
 of profound wonder at the breadth of the writer's 
 knowledge, and the enlarging of his own views and 
 conceptions of the subjects therein treated.
 
 250 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 RISE OF MODERN SURGERY. 
 
 " More than any other man, he made us gentlemen," 
 is the tribute which Sir Benjamin Brodie pays to Johrw 
 Hunter. Before the eighteenth century surgery had 
 been an art in low repute. The Council of Tours had 
 denounced it as unworthy of a priest and beneath the 
 notice of a scholar, and it had sunk to a mere handi- 
 craft that any man of mechanical ability could exer- 
 cise. Its practitioners, in the sixteenth century, con- 
 sisted of barbers, farriers, swine-spayers, cobblers and 
 tinkers. Even Ambrose Pare was a barber. In the 
 Prussian Army it was part of the duty of the regi- 
 mental surgeon to shave the officers. 
 
 The attempt was made to exalt the calling once 
 more to the rank of a learned profession. Of course, 
 in Continental Europe the Governments were relied 
 upon for the initiative. At Berlin, in 1714, Holtzen- 
 dorff, the surgeon-general, founded amedico-chirurgic 
 college, and a school of clinic surgery was joined with 
 it in 1728. Laurence Heister, professor at Helmstadt 
 and Altorf, published a system of surgery which 
 became a text-book all over Europe. The University 
 of Gottingen was established by the Elector of Han- 
 over (George II. of England), in 1734, and the cele- 
 brated Haller immediately received the appointment 
 of professor, to teach surgery in conjunction with 
 anatomy, medicine and botany. In Paris, M. Petit won 
 a high reputation, and his work on diseases of the 
 bones obtained for him the complimentary title of 
 father of that department of pathology. In 1731 the 
 Academic de Chirurgie was established with him for its 
 head. It at once set up a very high standard and was 
 characterized by great exclusiveness. Finally, in 1743,
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 25 1 
 
 an edict of the government abolished the Association 
 of Barbers and Surgeons, which had been established 
 under Louis XIV., and so removed the obstacle to the 
 exaltation of the latter calling in Paris to the distinc- 
 tion of a learned profession. Later on, the Ecole Pra- 
 tique de Chiriirgie was also founded, with MM. Chopart 
 and Desault among the first professors. The latter 
 made many invaluable contributions to operative sur- 
 gery, its literature and apparatus. 
 
 The corporation of the Royal College of Surgeons 
 at Edinburgh was established by James IV. in 1505, 
 with authority to teach surgery and grant degrees. 
 Its graduates give lectures on the various branches 
 of medicine and auxiliary sciences, and these extra- 
 academic courses are recognized by the university. It 
 does not appear, however, that the college in earlier 
 periods had any great influence in elevating the rank 
 of its pupils. "In London and Edinburgh," says Dr. 
 Charles Creighton, " the development of surgery pro- 
 ceeded on less academical lines, and with greater 
 scope for individual effort." The elder Monro became 
 professor of anatomy to the Company of Surgeons in 
 the latter city in 17 19, transferring his title and 
 services to the university the ensuing year. As he 
 was the first systematic teacher of medicine and 
 surgery there he is regarded as the father of the 
 Edinburgh Medical School. In both London and 
 Edinburgh the Company of Barbers and Surgeons had 
 long been in existence as one corporation. Under 
 Henry VIII. the two professions, as both were con- 
 sidered, were united in one corporation; the barbers 
 being restricted to blood-letting and the extracting of 
 teeth, and the surgeons prohibited from "barbery or 
 shaving." In 1745, the two callings were separated
 
 252 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 by act of Parliament, and surgery then was ready to 
 attain a higher eminence in the United Kingdom. 
 
 WILLIAM HUNTER. 
 
 Medical Study, both in England and America, is 
 associated with William Hunter as in certain respects 
 a pioneer. He was a seventh child in a Scotch family 
 of Lanarkshire, and began his education for the pulpit. 
 Religious scruples, however, deterred him, and he 
 took the advice of Dr. William Cullen to turn his 
 attention to medicine. He lived with Cullen as his 
 student for three years, at Hamilton, and thought to 
 go into partnership with him. He repaired to Edin- 
 burgh for a winter, in 1740, and the next season made 
 his way to London. Here he was employed by Dr. 
 James Douglas as a tutor to his son and as a dissector. 
 In 1746, he delivered a series of lectures on operative 
 surgery to a society of naval practitioners, and was 
 asked to include anatomy in his instructions. He was 
 eloquent as a speaker, as well as thorough in his 
 teachings.* The next year he became a member of 
 the Corporation of Surgeons. He, however, gradually 
 renounced surgery for obstetric practice. In 1748 he 
 was appointed surgeon-accoucheur to the Middlesex 
 Hospital, and in 1750 received the degree of Doctor of 
 Medicine from the University of Glasgow — an honor 
 which he richly repaid. It would seem that he was 
 honored on his reputation and not on having been a 
 student of the institution. He also became a licentiate 
 of the College of Physicians in 1756, just after his 
 return from a lecturing course in America. In 1762 
 
 *At that time, in Europe, a complete course upon anatomy, comprised but 
 twenty-three lectures, and the demonstrations were made upon a single cadaver, 
 while to explain the operations in surgery the carcass of a dog was used.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 253 
 
 he was consulted by the Queen, and two years after 
 was made her physician-extraordinary. 
 
 His great weakness was an inordinate love for con- 
 troversy. He had a fierce dispute with the Monros as 
 to which had first been successful in injections of the 
 tubuli testis. Unluckily for his reputation Haller had 
 forestalled them both. He and his partner Hewson 
 also demonstrated the office of the lymphatics, which 
 afforded a theme for another contention with the rival 
 Scottish professors. He also disputed the discovery 
 of congenital hernia, which Haller had already 
 described. His Medical Conwientaries contain details of 
 these matters. At a later period he quarelled with 
 his brother John about the priority of a discovery, and 
 the two became estranged for life. He pleaded in his 
 own extenuation that it was a characteristic of anato- 
 mists to be impatient of contradiction, and that others 
 ought to be patient with them, because "the passive 
 submission of dead bodies " rendered the crossing of 
 their wills less bearable. 
 
 His great work on* the Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus 
 was published in 1774, and will remain a lasting 
 memorial of his scientific ability and enthusiasm. 
 
 Private dissecting-rooms and theatres for the teach- 
 ing of anatomy, managed by eminent practitioners, 
 were the favorite resorts for surgical and other instruc- 
 tion. William Hunter applied to Lord Grenville, then 
 prime minister, in 1765, for the grant of a plot of 
 ground on which he might establish "a museum in 
 London for the improvement of anatomy, surgery, and 
 physic," offering to expend ^7,000 for its erection, 
 and to endow a professorship of anatomy in connec- 
 tion with the institution. He was put off ; his patience 
 soon became exhausted and he undertook the enter-
 
 254 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 prise in his own way, building a house for himself in 
 Great Windmill street, with lecture-halls and rooms 
 for dissection. Here he placed his collections in 
 pathologic anatomy, natural history, minerals, shells, 
 fossils, ancient coins and medals. All these would 
 have become the property of his contemplated 
 museum ; but, as a result of the supercilious neglect 
 of the British Minister, they were bestowed at his 
 death, together with a classical library, which he had 
 collected at great cost, and an endowment of ^8,000, 
 upon the University of Glasgow. 
 
 Hunter was passionately fond of lecturing He con- 
 ceived, as he used to say, " that a man may do infinitely 
 more good by teaching his art than by practicing it." 
 His lectures are described as being of two hours' dura- 
 tion, simple in diction, but profound in matter and 
 minute in demonstration, yet never dry or tedious, 
 and richly illustrated by anecdote. In 1754 he visited 
 America and delivered courses of lectures on surgery 
 and anatomy accompanied by dissections, at Newport, 
 Rhode Island, the first ever delivered in this country. 
 He seems, however, not to have found what he 
 regarded as sufficient encouragement, and accordingly 
 returned to England in 1756, to enter upon a more 
 brilliant career. He was thrifty and amassed a large 
 fortune. Honors came to him. He was made a licen- 
 tiate of the College of Physicians in 1756 ; he became 
 physician-extraordinary to the Queen in 1764 ; he was 
 elected Fellow of the Royal University in 1767, and of 
 the Society of Antiquaries in 1768 ; and became, in 
 1780, an Associate of the Royal Medical Society, and 
 in 1782 of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. 
 Though infirm in health he would not give up lectur- 
 ing. His last lecture was given, in spite of protests
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 255 
 
 and remonstrances, but a few days before his death. 
 He fainted at the close, and was carried home to die. 
 This event occurred March 30th, 1783. 
 
 JOHN HUNTER. 
 
 "In this world," says Goethe, "there are so many 
 voices, and so many echoes." True, the voices speak 
 into the empyrean and are returned from it as by the 
 photophone to those of subsequent periods having the 
 faculty to perceive as well as hear ; the echoes are all 
 around us and aspiring to drown the utterances and 
 silence the speaker. There are those in learned pro- 
 fessions who would disparage and even reject a gem 
 because of its setting. We may follow an eloquent 
 tongue and popular doctrine ; the few and the true 
 seek after real knowledge. 
 
 John Hunter echoed no man's opinions. Schools 
 did not make him ; he made schools. The unconscious 
 bias which pecuniary interest produces in others had 
 no influence with him. He never truckled to win 
 applause. His accomplished brother loved knowledge 
 as if for the sake of being able to impart it, but he 
 prized it for its own intrinsic worth, willing to share 
 the treasure with others as a common benefit, rather 
 than to employ it magisterially as a means to domi- 
 nate over the minds of others. He had no sympathy 
 with the empiric methods so much in vogue. He was 
 unwilling to resemble " the Chinese philosopher whose 
 knowledge consisted only in facts ; " he aspired to 
 learn the principles on which his art was based. For 
 whatever he was to do or teach he demanded the 
 reason. He had the spirit of the philosopher rather than 
 that of the mere scientist.
 
 256 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 His youth had fortunately been spent after a man- 
 ner which did not impair the force of his genius. He 
 was the youngest of ten children, and by no means 
 robust in physical constitution ; and so, not being 
 hurried to school, was successful in avoiding the over- 
 teaching and overtraining in those studies and dis- 
 cipline which load the memory but surfeit the 
 understanding. In 1748, at the age of twenty, he 
 made his way to London to enter his brother's class 
 in anatomy, and speedily became a skillful dissector. 
 He next attended the lectures and operations of the 
 celebrated Cheselden at the Chelsea Hospital, and 
 afterward became a surgeon's pupil at St. Bartholo- 
 mew's, where Pott was then engaged. Already he 
 had begun the career of discovery and invention 
 which was his distinguishing characteristic. While 
 in his brother's class he ascertained and demonstrated 
 the descent of the testis in the human foetus, the rami- 
 fications of the nasal and olfactory nerves, the forma- 
 tion of pus and the nature of the placental circulation. 
 This last discovery led to a life-long disagreement 
 with his brother William, who some years after 
 claimed it as his own. 
 
 In June, 1755, he was persuaded to enter one of the 
 colleges at Oxford, but he left in disgust two months 
 after, declaring that his true instincts would not per- 
 mit him " to stuff Latin and Greek at the university." 
 His brother, after returning from America, offered 
 him the place of lecturer in his school, but his diffi- 
 dence and lack of confidence in his ability to speak, 
 led him to decline. An attack of pneumonia, in 1759, 
 warned him to establish his health more firmly. He 
 procured a surgeon's appointment in the army, employ- 
 ing his leisure in physiological and other scientific
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 257 
 
 researches. In 1763 he retired from the service on 
 half-pay, and immediately began his career as a sur- 
 geon in London, eking out his slender income by 
 teaching practical anatomy and operative surgery to 
 a private class. He made a study of comparative 
 anatomy, procuring the carcasses of animals from the 
 Tower of London for his purpose. A rupture of the 
 tendo Achillis prompted him to experiment upon the 
 treatment of such accidents, and thus he laid the 
 foundation of the modern practice. He was elected a 
 Fellow of the Royal Society in 1767, and became also 
 a member of the Corporation of Surgeons. He now 
 began to take house-pupils ; among whom were Edward 
 Jenner, W. Guy, Dr. Ph)'sic, of Philadelphia, and 
 Everard Howe. Among his students at the hospital, 
 who were, by the way, never numerous, were Aberne- 
 thy, Cline and Astley Cooper. 
 
 After 1772 he lived during the autumn at a house 
 which he had built at Brompton, where he carried on 
 his biologic researches. Jenner used to supply him 
 with animals for his experiments ; but he also pro- 
 cured them from all parts of the globe. Bees, hornets 
 and wasps were diligently studied by him for twenty 
 years. No man so busily engaged in professional 
 practice ever conducted so many physiological and 
 pathological investigations, yet he was scrupulous in 
 regard to unnecessary experimentation. It was his 
 maxim that "experiments should not be often 
 repeated merely to establish a principle already 
 known and admitted ; but that the next step 
 should be the application of that principle for useful 
 purposes." 
 
 He also began, in 1772, to give lectures on the theory 
 and practice of surgery. His purpose was to test his
 
 258 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 own knowledge, and to express his views correctly. 
 Others had misstated them and even taken the credit 
 of them, his brother among the number. For two 
 years he delivered his courses free, but after that he 
 made the usual charge of five guineas. He surpassed 
 other lecturers in the extent of the work, speaking on 
 alternate evenings, from October to April, eighty-six 
 lectures in all. He was unable to speak extemporane- 
 ously, but read his lectures in an embarrassed and 
 ungraceful manner, hardly looking from the manu- 
 script. His expressions were often unintelligible to 
 his pupils. He had, however, none of the supercilious 
 arrogance which some teachers are prone to exhibit. 
 He would criticize freely his own errors as well as 
 those of others, often declaring that he was likely to 
 think differently upon a subject the next year. His 
 desire and great incentive in lecturing was to be 
 understood and appreciated ; and he would, accord- 
 ingly, at the close encourage and even invite his 
 hearers to discourse, without reserve, upon what he 
 had been saying. He taught others that he thereby 
 himself might learn. 
 
 True surgeon as he was, John Hunter regarded 
 operations as the acknowledgment of imperfect skill 
 in the art of healing. He would even compare them 
 to " the acts of the armed savage, who attempts to get 
 that by force which a civilized man would get by 
 stratagem." He aimed to dispense with them, wher- 
 ever it was justifiable, and when unable to do this he 
 sought to diminish their severity. 
 
 His ability was generally acknowledged. After the 
 death of Pott, in 1788, he was recognized as the first 
 surgeon in England. Already, in 1786, he had been 
 appointed Surgeon-extraordinary to the king, and in
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 259 
 
 1783 he was elected a member of both the Royal 
 Society of Medicine and the Royal Academic of Sur- 
 gery at Paris. He now built a museum for his collec- 
 tions, which at this period had cost him $50,000. It 
 was the ambition of his life to perfect it, fearful that 
 nobody else would continue his work. " When I am 
 dead," he remarked to a friend, " you will not soon 
 meet with another John Hunter." Yet his biologic 
 labors were little appreciated by his contemporaries 
 in England. They were unable to divine his purpose. 
 His conception of morphology as the only true basis 
 of systematic zoologic classification was admitted, but 
 they regarded his investigations among the lower 
 animals as worthless. Even Sir Joseph Banks, then 
 president of the Royal Society, shared this sentiment. 
 What Hunter did was, therefore, literally " without 
 the solace of sympathy or encouragement of approba- 
 tion," as well as without collateral assistance. He 
 spared no expense to effect his purpose, but employed 
 his income and exhausted his private fortune in the 
 endeavor. 
 
 He seemed almost to do without sleep. He was 
 engaged at the dissection of animals from six to nine 
 each morning ; then he received patients till twelve, 
 visited out-door patients till four, when he dined. He 
 did not drink wine, but fortified himself for his lect- 
 ures by a dose of laudanum. After dinner he slept 
 an hour ; then employed himself in superintending 
 experiments, preparing and reading his lectures, and 
 making records of the day's dissections. He corrected 
 and transposed incessantly whatever he wrote. He 
 left a prodigious amount of manuscript at his death — 
 ^'literally a cart-load," says his biographer — all of 
 which, including his eighty-six surgical lectures, his
 
 26o HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 brother-in-law, Sir Everard Home, remorselessly 
 destroyed. 
 
 His death seems to have resulted from the endeavor 
 of his colleagues to cross him. The governors of St. 
 George's Hospital had been induced, in 1793, to pro- 
 mulgate a rule that no person should be admitted as 
 a student unless he presented certificates of having 
 already been educated for the medical profession. 
 This was aimed directly at Hunter. Two young 
 Scotchmen presented themselves without such certifi- 
 cates, and he made application to the Board to relax 
 the rule in their behalf. While he was talking one of 
 his colleagues interrupted hiin with a flat contradic- 
 tion. He retired immediately into the next room and 
 fell insensible. He never recovered consciousness. 
 His age was sixty-five. His body was privately 
 buried, but in 1859 it was removed to Westminster 
 Abbey. 
 
 Hunter was careless of achieving fame. " We are 
 but beginning to learn our profession," said he, to his 
 friends. He was impatient of the adhering of his 
 fellow-practitioners to the time-honored errors of his 
 profession ; and used to say that if he had promoted 
 professional knowledge it was because of his disposi- 
 tion to distrust opinions, and to examine every subject 
 for himself. It was a maxim with him that, " no man 
 was ever a great one who wanted to be one," and he 
 never overcame his diffidence. 
 
 He is honored as having established comparative 
 anatomy as a science, and for bringing to light the 
 principles which after his death became the ground- 
 work of the later teaching. He elevated the art of 
 surgery from the rank of a craft to that of a profession, 
 and in the expressive language of Sir Benjamin
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 261 
 
 Brodie, "more than any other man, he helped to make 
 tis gentlemen." 
 
 John Hunter extended investigation over a broader 
 field, however, than surgery and the various depart- 
 ments of anatomy. He explored the realms of physi- 
 ology, and sought to understand the philosophy as 
 well as the phenomena of life. He did not accept any 
 mechanical or chemical theory, nor reject the existence 
 of the soul because he did not find it in the human 
 cadaver. He was in no sense a materialist. " Mere 
 composition of matter does not give life," said he," for 
 the dead body has all the composition it ever had." 
 Being an agency leading to modification of matter, but 
 not consisting of it, he taught that vitality "either is 
 something superadded to matter, or else consists in a 
 peculiar arrangement of certain fine particles of mat- 
 ter, which being thus disposed acquire the properties 
 of life." He probably favored the doctrine of arche- 
 biosis, the genesis of living matter de novo in the 
 absence of living parentage. There were, he declared, 
 neither positive proofs for it nor against it. Life 
 itself, he used to say, could be regarded as a fire or 
 something similar, and might for the purpose of dis- 
 tinction be called "animal fire." He held that the 
 blood possesses a vitality of its own, more or less 
 independent of the animal in whom it circulates. The 
 maintenance of that vitality is from the atmosphere. 
 " Breathing seems to render life to the blood," he used 
 to say; "and the blood continues it to every part of 
 the body." Pathologic phenomena were discerned by 
 him to be the results of perturbation of those laws of 
 life by which the healthy organism subsists. wSuch 
 notions were too profound and philosophic for the 
 time and country in which he lived, but he lived in a 
 world of thought above and beyond.
 
 262 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 BICHAT. 
 
 Another genius of the eighteenth century to supple- 
 ment the labors and discoveries of that period was 
 Francois Xavier Bichat. He was a native of Thoirette^ 
 and his early instruction in medicine was begun by 
 his father. He attended college at Nantua, and then 
 went to Lyons to prosecute the study of anatomy and 
 surgery. The revolutionary disturbances in that city 
 led him to seek refuge in Paris, where he was adopted 
 by the celebrated surgeon, Desault, as a member of his 
 own family. Desault died in 1795 ^"^ Bichat repaid 
 his service in true Hippokratic fashion, by editing his 
 works and contributing to the snpport of his widow 
 and son till his own death. In 1797 Bichat began to 
 lecture independently, first on operative surgery, and 
 afterward adding physiology to his course. He 
 speedily became a popular teacher, and the new doc- 
 trines which he put forth commanded the attention of 
 the medical schools of Paris. In 1 799 he was appointed 
 physician to the Hotel Dieu, which afforded him a 
 wide field for observation. He prosecuted dissection 
 on a more extended scale, and began a new classifica- 
 tion of diseases and a work on Materia Medica. His 
 ardor, however, was greater than his strength. An 
 attack of fever was increased, if not occasioned by 
 breathing the tainted air of the dissecting-room, and 
 he succumbed July 22d, 1802. 
 
 His new views of physiology were published by him 
 in three papers in the Memoirs of the Societe M/dicale, 
 to which he belonged, and again in his treatise on the 
 Membranes. But in his Re'cherches Physiologiques sur la 
 Vie et surlaMorthQ defines them more fully, and finally 
 in his Anatomic Generale he sets them forth at length.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 263 
 
 He was the first to simplify the study of anatomy and 
 physiology by reducing the complex structure of the 
 organs to the simple or elementary tissues which enter 
 into them in common. His R^cherches were important 
 for the distinction which they set forth between organic 
 nervous functions, and the office of the brain and 
 spinal system. He classified life as organic and 
 animal, and indicated the epigastric centre as the 
 starting-point. "Life," he declared, "offers us two 
 remarkable modifications, the one common to vege- 
 table and animal ; the other belonging exclusively to 
 the latter." The animal, therefore, he seemed to 
 regard as the outcome of the other. " Thus it might 
 be said," he remarks, " that the vegetable is only the 
 sketch, or rather the groundwork of the animal ; and 
 that for the formation of the latter it has only been 
 requisite to clothe the former with an apparatus of 
 external organs by which it might be connected with 
 external objects." He was very clear in elucidation 
 of the distinct features. He cited the fact of two 
 hemispheres of the brain, the anatomic character of 
 the spinal cord, and the arrangement of the cerebro- 
 spinal nerves, as suggesting their duality and divisi- 
 bility. The organic life, common to plants and 
 animals alike, possesses the functions of nutrition 
 essential to the maintenance of the whole ; and these 
 in turn depend upon organic sensibility which " the 
 zoophyte enjoys as perfectly as the most perfectly 
 organized quadruped. While, therefore, the one is 
 characterized by its right and left sides, and by its 
 periodical cessations in sleep, the other is simple and 
 individual; and soasBichat remarks, "we live internally 
 almost double the time that we exist externally." 
 Nevertheless, while thus penetrating the mystery of
 
 264 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 physiologic duality and setting forth the constitution 
 of the cerebro-spinal organism, he seems not to have 
 attained a concept as definite in regard to the epigas- 
 tric centre. In fact, he associates the liver, lungs, 
 heart and stomach as jointly constituting that impor- 
 tant department in the animal economy. There, in 
 his view, were the seats of the passions. " If in 
 general," says he, " we refer to the epigastric region 
 the sensible impressions of our affections, the reason 
 is that all the important viscera of that organ are 
 there concentrated." 
 
 Later investigators have carried their explorations 
 further and demonstrated the existence of a distinct 
 and extensive nervous system, having its beginning 
 and centre at the solar or semilunar ganglion. This 
 sympathetic or ganglionic system consists of the 
 various ganglia of the viscera and spinal region with 
 the various prolongations, bands and fibres which 
 bind them to other parts and organs. From the solar 
 or semilunar ganglion as the common centre, the rest 
 of the organism proceeds as a plant from its germ, 
 differentiating afterward into the various tissues and 
 structures. 
 
 JENNER AND VACCINATION. 
 
 Edward Jenner was the son of a clergyman in Berk- 
 ley, England, and was born on the 17th day of May, 
 1749. He received a common English education, and 
 then became an apprentice to ]\Ir. Ludlow, a surgeon 
 at Sodbury, and afterward a pupil of John Hunter, 
 with whom he remained two years. When Captain 
 James Cook returned from his first voyage. Sir Joseph 
 Banks, who had been the naturalist of the expedition 
 employed Jenner to help him in preparing his collec- 
 tions.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 265 
 
 Jenner afterward, at Hunter's request, prepared 
 papers on the habits of the cuckoo and hedgehog. 
 One of them was communicated to the Royal Society, 
 and he was elected a Fellow. In 1792 he received the 
 degree of Doctor of Medicine in absence, from the 
 University of St. Andrew. 
 
 For more than a century epidemics of small-pox had 
 occurred. The disease had been long known in Asia, 
 but its first mention in England was by Holinshed, 
 who applied the name inaccurately to the visitation of 
 plague in 1377.* The disease was observed to be epi- 
 demic in France in the sixteenth century, and received 
 the name of petite verole. It appeared afterward in 
 England, but not so severely as to excite alarm till 
 1667, 
 
 One form of epidemic is usually succeeded by 
 another analogous to it. With the ceasing of the 
 plague in 1667 small-pox appeared. Like its congener, 
 the Asiatic Cholera, it had been chiefly circumscribed 
 to Asia ; but now, from some occult cause, it broke 
 through its former limitations and became of periodi- 
 cal recurrence in the West. It was not, however, till 
 1667, that the total of deaths from small-pox in Lon- 
 don became a large one. 
 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, having accompanied 
 her husband when ambassador to Turkey in 17 16, 
 became acquainted with the practice of inoculation. 
 She afterward persuaded Doctor Maitland to intro- 
 duce it into England. But it was observed that the 
 patients were about as liable as ever to contract small- 
 
 *H. Strickland Constable: Our Medical Men. "An eminent physician 
 once said to me that all the Zymotic diseases from nettle-rash to Oriental Plaeue, 
 are probably only varieties of one thing, dove-tailing into each other wiili inlinite 
 complexity, like colors."
 
 266 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 pox ; and several persons, among whom was the 
 youngest son of King George III., died with the 
 disease thus produced. Dr. Bromfield, a surgeon of 
 the Court, and Dr. Langton, of Salisbury, attacked the 
 practice in pamphlets. All this, however, did not con- 
 vince practitioners. As is generally the case, a radi- 
 cal change of sentiment requires a new generation of 
 men. Nevertheless, many non-medical men became 
 very distrustful. 
 
 It had been observed among the dairy farms that 
 milkers sometimes contracted a peculiar pustular dis- 
 order from the nipples of milch cows. In 1774 a man 
 in Dorsetshire named Jesty inoculated his children 
 with the purulent material. It produced a disease 
 which it was conjectured, might be a preventive. 
 Jenner took up the notion, but was met with example 
 after example in which milkers so infected had after- 
 ward contracted small-pox. He propounded the hypo- 
 thesis that the bovine disease was a form of variola. 
 He modified his theories repeatedly, till the efforts of 
 others led to a more uniform statement. 
 
 Dr. H. Woodville, of Edinburgh, had also become 
 interested in the matter, and being a man of tact and 
 energy, succeeded in gaining more general favor for 
 the new procedure. It was now introduced into 
 Europe and America, and gradually made its way to a 
 wide approval. 
 
 In the latter half of the nineteenth century, it has 
 been enforced very generally by compulsory legisla- 
 tion ; and soldiers in the armies, sailors in the navy, 
 pupils in the public schools, and even members of 
 private families are arbitrarily obliged to submit to it, 
 often repeatedly. 
 
 Nevertheless, compulsory vaccination is nowhere 
 popular. In Switzerland the people obtained a
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 267 
 
 referendum or plebiscite, and defeated an enactment 
 for it by an overwhelming majority. In Great Britain 
 the recent Parliamentary Commission reported favor- 
 ably to the removal of compulsion, and the Parliament 
 in 1899 enacted that parents and guardians having 
 conscientious objections to the practice, their children 
 might be exempted. Similar dissatisfaction exists in 
 other countries. The dependence for the enforcing of 
 this operation is chiefly upon arbitrary power, and 
 arbitrary power is always acquired at the expense of 
 virtue. 
 
 MESMER AND MESMERISM. 
 
 If it was a deserved tribute to Galvani, Volta and 
 Faraday to give their names to their scientific inven- 
 tions, a like consideration would warrant a similar 
 recognition to Anton Mesmer. Besides, the term that 
 has been invented, hypnotism, does not imply in its 
 etymology all that " Mesmerism " means; and we hes- 
 itate accordingly to accept the substitute. 
 
 Like other knowledge, the facts and phenomena of 
 Mesmerism have been known for ages. The Ionian 
 and Hellene philosophers comprehended something of 
 them ; priests in the temples practiced the art, and 
 paintings in the tombs of archaic Egypt represent 
 patients in the magic sleep.* 
 
 ♦The term magic anciently sitjnilieil everythinj^ venerable and scientific, but 
 has been later degraded to an evil meaning It has been used to decry skilful 
 inventions, recondite knowledge, and belieis that did not conform to the presci ibed 
 standard. The Roman Emperor Valentinian seems to have set the example ; and 
 since that Pagans, Gnostics, heretics and Jews have been punished as guilty of 
 sorcery. In France witchcraft (or wisdom-craft) is termed vauderie o\ Waldensian 
 art. The first person e-xecuted on the charge in the North American Colonies, was 
 Margaret Jones, of Charlestown, Massachusetts. 1656. Her real offense was that 
 she denounced blood-letting and kindred medical practice, and treated the sick 
 with vegetable remedies In Danish law, the designation of witchcraft is quack- 
 salverie, or use of mercury, and a Homoeopathist was, not many years ago, 
 imprisoned in St. Thomas on that charge. Hut the " witch-herbs," belladonna, 
 Veratrum, aconite, etc., are now accounted official.
 
 268 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Paracelsus, occupying a middle place between former 
 lore and the later learning, did not hesitate to use the 
 term magic in its genuine sense as denoting knowl- 
 edge of the highest order. To him also must be given 
 credit for very explicit descriptions of animal magne- 
 tism. The "mumia"* was defined by him as the 
 " true elixir vitae" which contains within it the potency 
 of the life itself. " It may act from one human being 
 directly upon another," he affirms ; " or it may be con- 
 nected with some material and visible vehicle, and be 
 employed in that shape." 
 
 There is reason, however, to suppose that the art as 
 explained had been understood by others before Para- 
 celsus. As much was intimated by Avicenna and 
 others of the Arabian School, and, indeed, by Hippok- 
 rates himself in advance of all. It has since been 
 set forth by Kircher, Cornelius Agrippa, and others of 
 later time. 
 
 In 1758 Joseph Gassner, a priest in Swabia, began 
 similar procedures. He taught that diseases arose 
 from obsession by evil spirits and employed parapher- 
 nalia and a peculiar manner influential to impress and 
 overawe the credulous; nevertheless, he effected won- 
 derful cures, and had a great reputation in higher 
 circles. From him and by observing his procedures 
 Mesmer derived many of the conceptions. 
 
 Friedrich Anton Mesmer was born at Weiler, in 
 Switzerland, in the year 1734. He studied medicine 
 under Van Swieten and De Haen at the University of 
 Vienna, and received his degree in 1766. His inau- 
 
 *This term is from the Persian and denotes an envelope or covering. It is 
 derived from mum signifying wax, and, as applied in Egypt, eitiier relates to wax 
 used in the embalming of the dead, or else to the body as enveloping the soul.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 269 
 
 gural thesis was entitled : " On the Influence of the Planets 
 Upon the Human Body." Pursuing his investigations, 
 he discovered the art of inducing catalepsy or artificial 
 somnambulism. Perceiving that magnets were not 
 necessary in the procedure, he adopted for the art the 
 designation, yet widely recognized, of " Animal Mag- 
 netism." His first attempt to make known his dis- 
 coveries was in 1775, when he published a little work 
 entitled : " A Letter to a Foreign Physician^' setting forth 
 the invaluable results which it afforded in medical 
 practice. He established a hospital in Vienna for the 
 reception of patients, but encountered bitter persecu- 
 tion, which compelled him to leave Germany. 
 
 Coming to Paris he soon became widely celebrated, 
 and many noblemen were among his patrons. Finally 
 in 1784 a Royal Commission was formed at Pans, con- 
 sisting of four physicians and five savants belonging 
 to the Academy, to make an investigation of the 
 claims of the new Science. Of the number were : 
 Bailly, Lavoisier, the chemist; Jussieu, the naturalist; 
 Dr. Guillotin and Benjamin Franklin, of America. 
 M. Bailly prepared the report, but he came short of 
 meeting the issue, and the report, so far from pro- 
 ducing conviction, actually imparted new confidence 
 to the champions of the new science. D'Eslon, Ber- 
 gasse, the Comte of Puysegur and others, continued 
 their investigations and experiments, reporting results 
 which even now seem visionary and fanciful. Clair- 
 voyance and other phenomena were among their dis- 
 coveries. France, ever since, has furnished the ablest 
 expositors and practitioners of the art, and it won 
 recognition from the Academy in tlie coming century.
 
 270 HISTORY OF MEDICINK. 
 
 HAHNEMANN AND HOMCEOPATHY. 
 
 The cardinal doctrine of Homoeopathic Medicine, 
 Similia similibus curantur, or similars as remedies for 
 their counterparts in disease, had been suggested 
 many times in former centuries. Even Hippokrates 
 himself made observations which might have culmi- 
 nated in a genuine Homoeopathic practice. The 
 alchemists among the Arabian physicians had similar 
 conceptions. Paracelsus was positive in his declara- 
 tions. ^^ Simile similis cura, non contraiHum^'' he boldly 
 affirmed: like cures its like, and not that which is con- 
 trary. " Whoever will practice the medical art with 
 merit may make insignificant things efficacious," he 
 again affirmed. " A fever is not cured by a cold, nor 
 a cold disorder by heating. On the contrary a similar 
 often cures disorders of a like character." 
 
 Not, however, till the latter years of the eighteenth 
 century was the concept elaborated into a distinct 
 method and promulgated as such to the world. 
 
 Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann was born 
 at Meissen in Saxony, April loth, 1755. He pursued 
 the study of medicine at Leipsic and Vienna, taking 
 the degree at Erlangen, in 1779. He returned to 
 Leipsic in 1789 and engaged in the translating of 
 foreign medical books. While employed in this way 
 upon CuUen's Materia Medica he was forcibly ' 
 impressed by several of its discrepancies as well as by 
 contradictions which had fallen under his own observa- 
 tion. Taking the hint from Haller, he himself under- 
 took a system of experimentation to ascertain the 
 effect of different medicines upon persons in health, 
 and from the results he deduced his conclusions. 
 
 Setting aside the rule of " contraries " as established 
 by Galen, he affirmed the hypothesis of similars ; that
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 271 
 
 the medicine which would produce a certain morbid 
 action upon a person otherwise in health was the 
 proper specific remedy for diseases of an analogous 
 character. He propounded the dogma that a disease 
 is manifested by the symptoms ; that these symptoms 
 as a whole constituted the disease, adding that it is 
 not caused by a material substance, but is always a 
 peculiar derangement of the health. He accordingly 
 declared that diseases are spiritual dynamic derange- 
 ments of the spiritual vital principle. The cause, 
 therefore, would not be perceptible to the corporeal 
 senses. He attributed chronic diseases, not so much 
 to the contamination of morbific material as to a 
 psoric miasm ; excepting those, however, which are 
 due to syphilis or sycosis. He summarily discarded 
 the practice of bleeding patients, but had a strong 
 faith in drugs when administered according to his 
 theory. He regarded them as the real curative 
 agencies, and prescribed them according to their 
 pathogenetic power. 
 
 It was a doctrine in pharmacy that the combining 
 of several drugs in a prescription increased the effi- 
 cacy. Indeed, scores of ingredients were often thus 
 included, sometimes of materials nauseous and even 
 absolutely too filthy to name. Each drug was regarded 
 as auxiliary to the others. Hahnemann, on the con- 
 trary, directed only a single medicine at a time. Nor 
 did he rest content with innovations that were chiefly 
 negative. He pushed his way into a new field with 
 another sky and atmosphere. It is a matter of history 
 that few comparatively have found it, and a larger 
 part of them have not tarried. Hahnemann pro- 
 claimed the theory of attenuation, by means of which 
 the body of each drug should be reduced to minute-
 
 272 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ness, while the actual virtue as a remedy should 
 remain. This was to be effected by trituration, suc- 
 cussion and dilution. These processes, he insisted, 
 brought into operation "the spiritual power which 
 lies hid in the inner nature of medicines." 
 
 Administered in bulk this would not and could not 
 be, and the condition of the patient, he insisted, would 
 be made worse. In the new form, however, no medic- 
 inal disease would be produced, and at the same time 
 the subtile cause of the evil would be encountered on 
 its own ground in the interior nature.* 
 
 Hahnemann continued to publish his views and to 
 treat patients in accordance with them, steadily gain- 
 ing adherents. But in Germany, as in America, there 
 arose in the earlier years of the nineteenth century 
 a movement among the less scholarly but more 
 numerous grade of physicians to suppress rival 
 modes of practice by arbitrary measures. Persecu- 
 tion was kindled against Hahnemann, and finally he 
 was forbidden to prepare or dispense his own medi- 
 cines. He accordingly left Leipsic in 1S21 and became 
 physician to the Grand Duke of Anhalt-Kothen. In 
 1835 he removed to Paris. Here he was consulted by 
 patients of every country and in all walks of life. 
 His death took place in 1843. 
 
 EVOLUTION OF MODERN CHEMISTRY. 
 
 The modern science of Chemistry appears to have 
 had its inception in the theories of the chemiatric 
 school of the sixteenth century. De la Boe, the 
 
 * Dr. John B. Newman, in his work on Fascination^ pronounces Homoeopathy 
 a disguised form of mesmerising. The manipulation of drugs he describes as mes- 
 merising them, and cites a direction of Hahnemann, "in serious cases to strokethe 
 patient down with the palm of the hand till relief is obtained."
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 273 
 
 founder of that school, taught that zymosis or fermen- 
 tation was the important factor in vital processes, and 
 that the disturbing of them produced activities. 
 From these he held that fevers and other disorders 
 took their rise. These activities were sometimes of 
 an acid and at other times of an alkaline character. 
 He accordingly made use of chemical preparations for 
 remedies. 
 
 These doctrines were enforced by him during his 
 career as professor at the University of Leiden. They 
 were further elaborated by others after him, and pre- 
 pared the way for the scientific concept of chemical 
 affinity. 
 
 Robert Boyle was the first to contest the views of 
 De la Boe. He was a many-sided man, and equally at 
 home in theology, philosophy and physical science 
 and wrote extensively on all these subjects. 
 
 It was his belief that there existed a " first matter," 
 parts of which differed from one another in certain 
 qualities or accidents. He doubted whether all com- 
 pound bodies consisted of the same number of ele- 
 mentary principles. Like his contemporary scientists, 
 Boyle was a believer in the transmutation of metals ; 
 and by his influence the statute of Henry IV., pro- 
 hibiting the making of gold and silver, was repealed. 
 
 Becher and Stahl, however, were the first to develop 
 the theory — chemical action and the constitution of 
 compounds. They enumerated as the four primal 
 elements : water, acid, earth, and phlogiston or the 
 essence of fire. Their expositions, curiously as they 
 may now sound, were legitimately deduced from the 
 premises, and seemed to account very fairly for the 
 various changes in bodies. Sir Isaac Newton like- 
 wise contributed his researches in regard to the 
 
 18*
 
 274 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 nature of gases and the method of generating them. 
 Dense bodies, he taught, were rarefied by the process 
 of fermentation into the several kinds of air. He also 
 further observed that the atmosphere contained par- 
 ticles of different nature, by which it was fitted 
 to be the breath of life to vegetables and animals. 
 
 The next long step was taken by Dr. Joseph Black. 
 He had been a student of Dr. Cullen at Glasgow, under 
 whose instruction he acquired a superior skill in 
 chemical manipulation. He made the discovery 
 which was destined to overthrow the theory of phlo- 
 giston. He demonstrated that the caustic property 
 of alkalies did not depend upon the absorbing of a 
 suppositious fire-essence, but upon combining with a 
 gas that was not identical with the atmosphere. This 
 gas he termed " fixed air," as not being found separate, 
 but combined with solid bodies. He also proved the 
 existence of latent heat. 
 
 Joseph Priestley was the next contributor to chemi- 
 cal knowledge. He was a native of Yorkshire, and 
 his earlier education under the Rev. Philip Doddridge 
 had been chiefly directed to theology and the ancient 
 languages. He became distinguished for extraordi- 
 nary proficienc}'^, and also for heterodoxy of belief. 
 He was at home in every department of learning and 
 speculation. His literary works embraced such 
 themes as mathematics, grammar, history, philos- 
 ophy, physiology, theology, logic, the interpretation 
 of prophecy, physical science, politics and sociology. 
 He advocated the American side of the controversy 
 in 1775, and the Republican cause in the French Revo- 
 lution. Thus he belonged to the coming nineteenth 
 century, rather than to the eighteenth, and he 
 encountered the experiences of a man living in
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 271; 
 
 advance of his time. Making the acquaintance of 
 Dr. Franklin, he wrote a treatise on Electricity, and 
 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. James 
 Watt and Erastmus Darwin were his familiar friends. 
 
 He was widely awake to the necessity of scientific 
 attainment as a means to liberalize education. His 
 erudition was so extensive that it was contemplated 
 in 1 77 1 to appoint him to accompany Captain Cook 
 to the South Sea ; but he was rejected on account of 
 his religious sentiments. In 1774 he published the 
 account of his experiments with the carbonic, chlorine 
 and nitrogenous gases. In this was contained his 
 eventful discovery of oxygen, or as he named it, 
 '' dephlogisticated air." The scientific world had not 
 yet outlived the hypothesis of phlogiston ; but this 
 fact interfered rather with classification than with 
 the results in the field of science. 
 
 While Dr. Priestley was serving as preacher at 
 Birmingham, in 1791, his house and chapel were 
 burned by a mob. The rioters waded knee deep in 
 manuscripts, the labor of a lifetime, and they were 
 utterly destroyed. In 1794 he emigrated to America 
 and made his home at Northumberland in Pennsyl- 
 vania. He continued his researches ten years longer, 
 dying in February, 1804. 
 
 Henry Cavendish in a measure supported the work 
 of Dr. Priestley, and earned the distinction of Father 
 of Pneumatic Chemistry. He demonstrated the radi- 
 cal difference between hydrogen and nitrogen, and 
 showed that water which had been regarded for 
 unknown ages as a single element, is itself a com- 
 pound. Yet the savants of the time almost unani- 
 mously regarded the proposition as incapable of 
 defense. They could not conceive that water, being 
 itself incombustible, should have inflammable air for
 
 A^6 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 a constituent. Nevertheless Cavendish as well as 
 his opponents accepted the hypothesis of phlogiston. 
 
 At this period every discoverer had recorded his 
 work and endeavored to explain the results in con- 
 formity with the accepted theories. These were often 
 based on defective hypothesis, and the nomenclature 
 was often so imperfect as itself to constitute a serious 
 difficulty. The student endeavoring to master the 
 science had need of great acumen to keep from being 
 led astray. It was time for a man to appear who was 
 able to verify the several discoveries, to trace the 
 relations of the various substances, to correct the 
 former errors, and to make a classification of the 
 elements and their compounds which would enable 
 the student to perceive readily their constituents. 
 
 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was born in Paris in 
 1746. His father, a wealthy tradesman, gave him a 
 thorough chemical education, and encouraged him in 
 his scientific pursuits. The discoveries of Black, 
 Priestley and Cavendish had unfolded the possibili- 
 ties of Chemistry. Lavoisier repeated their experi- 
 ments, sometimes contradicting their theories and 
 even somewhat arrogantly claiming their honor. As 
 early as 1765, when barely nineteen years old, he pub- 
 lished his doubts of the theory of phlogiston, and ten 
 years later he described the preparations and proper- 
 ties of oxygen, but made no reference to the discovery 
 by Priestley.* He next found out the constitution of 
 the atmosphere, and followed by the theory that 
 "dephlogisticated air" was the universal generator 
 of acids and metallic bases. He also abandoned the 
 notion that hydrogen was the phlogiston, which had 
 been generally adopted by the chemists of all Europe. 
 
 ♦ As Dr. Priestley was an Englishman and a Unitarian in religion, Lavoisier 
 being a Frenchman and a Catholic, superciliously ignored his existence.
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 2/7 
 
 Liebig says of him that "he discovered no new 
 body, no natural phenomenon, that was previously 
 unknown ; but all the facts established by him were 
 the necessary consequences of the labors of those who 
 preceded him. His merit, his immortal glory con- 
 sisted in this : that he infused into the body of science 
 a new spirit ; but all the members of the body were 
 already in existence, and rightly joined together." 
 
 Lavoisier, with the aid of several learned and 
 devoted friends, was enabled to effect his purpose of 
 a more perfect system of classification. In 1787 he 
 brought out the Chemical nomenclature, consisting 
 to a great extent of a new terminology comprising 
 names which assured a ready comprehending of the 
 constitution of the compounds. For a while the inno- 
 vation was hotly opposed, and Lavoisier was burned 
 in effigy in Berlin.* Nevertheless the new classifica- 
 tion has been generally adopted, and is still in use, 
 somewhat modified, however, in later years. In 1794 
 Lavoisier was arrested and sentenced to the guillo- 
 tine. The applications for mercy on the ground of 
 his services as a scientist were met with the reply : 
 *' The Republic has no need of savants." La Grange 
 paid him the tribute : " A moment suffices to cause 
 his head to fall, but a hundred years will not be long 
 enough to produce another like it." 
 
 The subsequent history of chemistry belongs 
 entirely to the nineteenth century. Gay-Lussac, 
 Dalton, Berzelius, Dumas and others have extended 
 the field, and enabled the mode of classification to be 
 greatly improved. Oersted, Sir Humphrey Davy, and 
 his great disciple Michael Faraday have elucidated 
 electromagnetism and traced its manifestations in 
 
 * Some of this feeling appears to still exist in Germany. The medicines pro- 
 duced in the laboratories and especially those used by Homceopathists, originally a 
 German School, are generally named after the former style.
 
 2*78 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 chemical affinity and decomposition. All these mat- 
 ters, however, pertain to publications of a different 
 character. We have only to do with the relations of 
 the science to the medical art. From the time of 
 Geber, alchemy and the later chemistry have in turn 
 been regarded as auxiliary to the science of heal- 
 ing. The simples, which earlier physicians chiefly 
 employed became less and less esteemed, and were 
 largely abandoned to housewives and rural prac- 
 titioners of modest pretensions. Chemistry almost 
 superseded Botany in the medical curriculum. 
 
 THE CLOSING OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The eighteenth century was remarkable as a period 
 of transition. The political changes great as they 
 were, had not been the principal occurrences. There 
 were upheavals in the different countries from the 
 very foundations of society, and new theologic opin- 
 ions had begun to crowd into the back-ground the 
 dogmas which had been made sacred by their age. 
 Columbus adding a new Continent to human knowl- 
 edge had placed a fulcrum for Arkhimedes to over- 
 turn former beliefs, and James Cook supplemented 
 the work by revealing the wonders of the Ocean. 
 
 Science expanded its boundaries and required the 
 establishing of new departments. Botany, Chemistry, 
 Astronomy and Physics all received new impulsion, 
 which has gained in force, increasing the scope of 
 human knowledge, and accumulating discoveries till 
 we are hardly able to enumerate them, and it seems 
 almost impossible for the world itself to contain the 
 books that record them. Electric science had its 
 beginning with Franklin, who was speedily followed 
 by Priestley, Galvani, Volta, Oersted and others ; and
 
 MEDICINE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 278-^ 
 
 now it is including every field of human enterprise, 
 as though entirely competent to fulfil every want of 
 man. The savants of the French Academy, however, 
 had not ceased to laugh at the concept of moving 
 vehicles and navigating by steam, but the time was 
 near when derision was to be superseded by wonder. 
 The Medical Art, as has been already observed, had 
 undergone many transformations in theory, variable 
 and somewhat indefinite, but by no means insignifi- 
 cant. Surgery was removed from the stall of the 
 barber and exalted into a profession at its side, as 
 requiring both learning and artistic skill. The arena 
 of medical theory exhibited the spectacle of numerous 
 hypotheses and conjectures, as well as important dis- 
 coveries. Mear taught that the sun, moon and stars 
 influenced the functions of the human body ; Stahl 
 held that phlogiston, the essence of fire, was a con- 
 stituent of natural objects, and that the soul was the 
 source of health and disease ; Haller insisted that the 
 virtues of medicines should be ascertained from their 
 effects upon healthy persons. Bichat gave the results 
 of his investigations in anatomy and neural physi- 
 ology, which led the way to the establishing of a new 
 school of medicine. Morgagni presented his investi- 
 gations in morbid anatomy, so essential to a correct 
 knowledge of pathology. Fothergill explained diph- 
 theria and neuralgia, forms of disease which had been 
 before but little comprehended; Abenbruzzer invented 
 the art of diagnosis by percussion ; Cullen ventured 
 upon a classification of diseases analogous to that of 
 classes, orders, genera and species in Botany ; Brown 
 propounded the hypothesis that diseases were purely 
 sthenic and asthenic ; and others brought forward 
 favorite notions as so many contributions to the lore 
 or medicine. Van Swieten, under the patronage of
 
 27»B HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Maria Theresa, revived the Vienna School of Medi- 
 cine, which now became the most distinguished in 
 Continental Europe. Here Hahnemann and Mesmer 
 received the preliminary technical instruction which 
 equipped them for their respective undertakings. 
 
 There were many others who had their concepts to 
 offer as additions to the general stock — numerous 
 wand-bearers, but few who gained a place inside the 
 shrine. The common people in many districts retained 
 the ancient prepossession in favor of a pure vegetable 
 pharmacopoeia. The works of Culpepper had largely 
 fixed this sentiment in England ; and there was also a 
 considerable literature of modest pretensions extant 
 over the kingdom. We read of Botanic Gardens in 
 England and upon the Continent ; one of these is 
 mentioned in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica" as hav- 
 ing been maintained by a Miss Elizabeth Blackwell. 
 In the absence of schools for instruction in Botanic 
 Practice, like the colleges of John Hunter, Cheselden 
 and Abernethy, the practitioners taught the use of 
 simples to their students. A condition of affairs 
 very similar, existed in several parts of Europe. 
 
 The philosophic element appears to have been sub- 
 stantially eliminated in later years from medical 
 study, and to have given place to methodic empi- 
 ricism. The crisis of the Century occurred in the 
 French Revolution, which changed the old habits of 
 thought, shook Society to its foundations, introduced 
 new principles of legislation, and gave new impulses 
 to intellectual pursuits. It was to be expected that 
 the medical art, despite the reluctance toward inno- 
 vation, should participate in the transformations. 
 Indeed, so completely had this been the case that 
 when the nineteenth century began, it only con- 
 tinued what had been already set in operation.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 It seems co be a conceit of every period of history 
 that it is more enlightened than the preceding ages. 
 Every generation of humankind appears to imagine 
 that it has arrived somewhere near the final principles 
 of knowledge, and that its horizon comes very near 
 toward including all the sky and all the earth. The 
 younger ones in a community are eager to exalt 
 themselves by depreciating the attainments and ex- 
 perience of others. Egotism commingled with vanity, 
 when it is made conscious of knowledge and wisdom 
 beyond its own circle of vision, is very prone to put 
 forth the effort to show them not to be worth the 
 possessing ; and when their value cannot longer be 
 thus concealed, then to make the pretense that all 
 had been possessed already. 
 
 The expositors of medicine in the Nineteenth 
 Century often display these proclivities in their com- 
 pleteness. It is common among those who loudly 
 boast of belonging to an " ancient and time-honored 
 profession." They rail at the barbarisms, the super- 
 stitions, and the passion for comprehensive theory 
 which prevailed among those who preceded them. 
 The century was ushered in by such a disposition 
 among those who aspired to be the leaders in profes-
 
 28o HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 sional circles. Every writer seeking prominence 
 appears to have aimed for it by attacks upon others. 
 
 The French Revolution had been instrumental in 
 sweeping the older France out of existence, and in 
 making it impossible to maintain the ancient order of 
 things elsewhere. What has taken place since that 
 period has principally been the passing away of the 
 Old and the developing of the New. In this category 
 belongs the Art and Practice of Medicine. Its fore- 
 most teachers did not hesitate to talk like iconoclasts. 
 " I am insensibly led," says Dr. Benjamin Rush, "to 
 make an apology for the instability of the theories 
 and practice of Physic. Those physicians generally 
 become the most eminent in their profession who 
 soonest emancipate themselves from the tyranny of 
 the schools of physic." Again, he exclaims: "What 
 mischiefs have we done, under the belief of false facts 
 and false theories I We have assisted in multiplying 
 diseases; we have done more, we have increased their 
 mortality." More comprehensive and confirmatory 
 was the assertion in Lacon : " Physicians have been 
 tinkering the human constitution for about two thou- 
 sand years to cure diseases ; and the result of all their 
 discoveries is, that brimstone and mercury are the 
 only two specifics. Diseases remain what they were 
 before." 
 
 One eminent practitioner, more explicit, affirms 
 that, " After the practice of bloodletting was intro- 
 duced by Sydenham, during the course of one hundred 
 years, more died of the lancet alone than all who, 
 in the same period, perished by war." A pretty se- 
 vere arraignment of medical practice in the eigh- 
 teenth centur)', and by no means unjust. "The 
 unhappy patient is bled until reaction occurs," says
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 281 
 
 Dr. J. Mason Good ; "there is no longer any rallying- 
 or reactive power remaining, and he gives up the 
 ghost in a few hours to the treatment of the disease." 
 Mackintosh adds to this his testimony : " Many 
 patients are over-purged with drastic medicines to 
 the aggravation of disease, while others are bunged 
 up with opium." 
 
 It cannot be denied that the practice of medicine, as 
 it existed at the beginning of the century, was richly 
 deserving of the sweeping denunciations which the 
 leading practitioners so unqualifiedly bestowed. The 
 theories had been changed, and continued to be 
 changed, yet under them all, with little exception, 
 the same reprehensible procedures were maintained 
 as the regular orthodox system that might not be bet- 
 tered, till the century had approached its noon. All 
 this time it was insisted that they were scientific, and 
 every deviation from them was stigmatized as quack- 
 ery and empiricism. 
 
 Yet this pretension was set forth in all its hollow- 
 ness by able writers. "The object of all science," 
 says Dr. John Abercrombie, "is to ascertain the estab- 
 lished relations of things, or the tending of certain 
 events to be uniformly followed by other events." 
 Dr. Gregory emphasizes this statement more forcibly: 
 "The perfection of every science consists," he declares, 
 "in the exact assignment of effects to their causes, 
 and the expression of their operation in intelligible 
 language." He applies his definition to the matter in 
 hand: "Upon no subject have the wild spirit and 
 eccentric disposition of the imagination been more 
 widely displayed than in the history of medicine." 
 Dr. Good adds his testimony : " The language of 
 medicine is an unintelligible jargon."
 
 282 HISTORV OF MEDICINE. 
 
 If it was such when these declarations were written, 
 what has it become now when the resources of the 
 Greek Lexicon are taxed to their utmost to furnish 
 names for the simplest and even the most familiar 
 things ? Apothecaries stand aghast, and often aban- 
 don in utter despair the attempt to compound pre- 
 scriptions written in the technical dialect for coal-tar 
 preparations. This practice may be regarded as a 
 scientific necessity, but it is more probable that another 
 motive lies behind it. " There is a language of priests," 
 says Professor J. P. Lesley. " Every language of 
 modern times is stamped with this priest-language all 
 over the outside, is full of it inside, in its flesh and 
 in the marrow of its bones." The priesthood origi- 
 nally created and constituted the medical profession ; 
 and now that religion has become divorced and disas- 
 sociated from medicine, the effort is made to endow the 
 legalized practitioner with the power, authority and 
 exclusive sanctity which the clergy of the Sixteenth 
 Century were endowed with. For this reason, per- 
 haps, many countries of Europe prohibit the confer- 
 ring of the medical degree, except the candidate shall 
 have received the prescribed classical education. This 
 condition not being required m the United States, 
 affords a pretext for withholding recognition from 
 American degrees. The alchemist of beforetime had 
 his jargon, and medicine thus follows in its lead. We 
 may yet see in our New World a general miming of 
 the Old. 
 
 The next generation and century will probably have 
 occasion to pass judgment as to whether those who 
 now judge the masters of the former medical thought, 
 are not therein condemning themselves by doing sim- 
 ilar things. Animism, chemiatrics, spagiric medicine,
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 283 
 
 the solidistic and humoralistic pathologies, are now 
 out of fashion, and are, therefore, convenient things 
 to sneer at. But the crudities, the credulities, the 
 absurdities current in the Nineteenth Century, and 
 legitimated as scientific and orthodox, are little fur- 
 ther removed from destructive criticism than their 
 predecessors. " It is only in the dark circle of ignor- 
 ance," says Sir H. Holland, "that knowledge is 
 regarded as certain and complete." Sir William 
 Hamilton adds : " Our little dream of knowledge is a 
 little light surrounded by darkness." When the pos- 
 sessors of learning modestly seek to give it its true 
 value, we are ready to render to it the due honor. 
 But when sciolism, the partial knowing, is proclaimed 
 dogmatically, and penal laws, as well as social pro- 
 scription, are brought into requisition to enforce it as 
 the supreme authority, it oecomes a degenerate despot- 
 ism, utterly repugnant to an enlightened civilization. 
 
 MODERN EMPIRIC, OR POSITIVE MEDICINE. 
 
 The Positive School of Medicine had its beginning 
 in France, almost immediately after the Revolution. 
 Bichat had laid the foundation upon which Broussais 
 and Bouillaud erected their superstructure of " MMe- 
 cine Physiologiquey The doctrines of Brown appear to 
 have permeated it throughout. Broussais taught that 
 the gastero-enteric region was the cause of fevers, and 
 also of many other maladies now classed as nervous. 
 His chief remedy was bloodletting, for which purpose 
 he generally employed leeches. He was a professor 
 at the hospital of Val-de-Grace, where it is reported 
 that he made use of one hundred thousand leeches in 
 a single year. He at first encountered fierce hostility 
 from his brother physicians, but finally his views
 
 284 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 were very generally accepted, and in 183 1 he was 
 appointed professor of pathology in the Academy of 
 Medicine. 
 
 Corvisart introduced percussion and " physical 
 diagnosis," and Laennec supplemented them by the 
 invention of the stethoscope. He also devoted him- 
 self to the investigation of pathological anatomy, 
 with immense success. Gaspard Laurent Bayle also 
 prosecuted researches on tubercle and the other 
 changes incident in consumption. The labors of 
 these men combined to begin a new era in clinic 
 medicine. 
 
 Another result was the overturning of the notions 
 of Broussais. The credit of this achievement belongs 
 to Louis, the author of the works justly celebrated on 
 consumption and typhoid fever, M. Louis also intro- 
 duced what is called the " Numerical and Statistical 
 Method," which his eulogists commend as aiding to 
 establish an exact science of medicine, and as remov- 
 ing the chief objections to regarding it as an induct- 
 ive science. Gaverret systemized his methods, and 
 Butonneau, Cruvilhier, Rayer, and the more distin- 
 guished Trousseau, were luminaries of the new Posi- 
 tive School of Paris. 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 In England, however, medical study, for a long 
 time, was almost stationary. The theory of Erasmus 
 Uarwin, and the teachings of the Hunters, had more 
 influence, and there was more attention paid to 
 morbid anatomy. After the overthrow of the first 
 Napoleon, English physicians began to learn and fol- 
 low the methods of their French contemporaries. 
 Sir John Forbes translated the works of Laennec and
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 285 
 
 Avenbrugger, and William Stokes, of Dublin, after- 
 ward published treatises on the use of the stetho- 
 scope. Hope and Latham investigated morbid anat 
 omy, and were followed by Bright and Addison, 
 whose discoveries in diseases of the kidneys rendered 
 their names familiar to all. 
 
 Dr. Marshall Hall, distinguished for his researches 
 on the nervous system, began his career by acquiring 
 a thorough knowledge of the medical art, as taught at 
 Edinburgh and on the Continent ; after which he 
 began practice at Nottingham. He speedily became 
 popular, because of his superior skill in puerperal 
 cases and his disuse of bloodletting. 
 
 Dr. John Hughes Bennett was an innovator, in 
 sympathy to some extent with the School of Reformed 
 Medicine in America. He took his degree at Edin- 
 "burgh, and then went to Paris, in 1837, to study clinic 
 medicine and the use of the microscope. He was one 
 of the founders of the Medical Society of Paris, and 
 became its first president. On his return to Scotland, 
 he soon gained a high reputation as an independent 
 thinker and teacher. In 1841 he received the appoint- 
 ment of Professor of the Institutes of Medicine at 
 Edinburgh. He published several works, the princi- 
 pal of which. Clinical Lectures and a Text-Book of Physi- 
 ology, went through several editions. He seems to 
 have taken many exceptions to the current medical 
 practice. At the meeting of the British Medical 
 Association, in 1866, he procured the appointment of 
 a committee to investigate the subject of mercury and 
 other reputed cholagogues. The committee made 
 many experiments and observations, and finally re- 
 ported in 1869 that mercury did not increase the bili- 
 ary secretion in any case, but actually diminished it
 
 286 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 whenever purgation or impairment of the health had 
 been induced. Dr. Bennett afterward made the fol- 
 lowing statement of his conclusions : 
 
 " I entirely agree with you as to the inutility or 
 injurious character of mercury. As to antimony, I 
 long supposed it to dissolve the excess of fibrine in 
 the blood, but find I do just as well without it. The 
 influence of arsenic is very doubtful. I never give it. 
 Indeed, it may be questioned how any chemical ele- 
 ment, which forms no part of the animal body, can be 
 of the slightest service in curing or relieving the 
 morbid conditions." 
 
 POSITIVE MEDICINE IN GERMANY. 
 
 It was at the " New Vienna School " that positive 
 medicine had its principal centre in Germany. Its 
 chief luminary was Karl Rokitansky, the cele- 
 brated writer on pathologic anatomy.' The honor, 
 however, of being the "regenerator of scientific medi- 
 cine," is given by its disciples to Johann Lukas 
 Schonlein. He was a professor, first at Wurzburg, 
 then at Zurich, and finally for twenty years at Berlin. 
 He succeeded in establishing in Germany the methods 
 which were current in France and England ; and so 
 far as his influence went, they were adopted in place 
 of the systems which had prevailed in his native 
 country. His principal innovation, however, in which 
 originality was involved, was the promulgation of the 
 existence of a parasitic fungus in the disease called 
 favus. In fact, he may be regarded as the originator 
 of the various theories and researches pertaining to 
 parasitic pathology. 
 
 The other countries of Europe may be passed over. 
 The field is too large, and the laborers in it are too
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 28y 
 
 many to permit the mentioning. Enough let it be, 
 that those who made themselves and their opinions 
 distinguished, above others their equals, and perhaps 
 their superiors, are noticed. The historian is often 
 compelled, even when the purpose is strictly impar- 
 tial, to resort to such makeshifts. Besides, a mode of 
 practice with which a writer is not in accord will be 
 better described by those who have believed in its 
 efficacy. 
 
 RESEARCHES IN PHYSIOLOGY. 
 
 All intelligent medical practice depends upon a 
 proper understanding of physiology. The aim of 
 philosophic theories and investigations of ancient 
 periods was directed to this end. It was an exploring 
 above nature into metaphysic, in order to ascertain 
 what constituted nature. Students in the later cen- 
 turies directed their inquiries to the various phases 
 and phenomena of life as exhibited in organized 
 structures, animal and vegetable. The humoral 
 pathology taught by Galen, and accepted by his 
 successors down to Stahl and Boerhaave, the solidism 
 of Fernel, and the school of Hoffmann, were derived 
 from such observations. Early writers taught that the 
 brain, the heart, and the blood, were the seat of life 
 and sensation. Harvey, following them, declared 
 that only the blood possessed vital properties. Other 
 researches, however, threw doubt upon this proposi- 
 tion, and drew attention to the entire nervous system. 
 " Without a nervous system," an eminent writer affirms, 
 " there is no animal — there can be none ; without a 
 circulating one, there are myriads." 
 
 Bichat, in his Kecherches Physiologiques, extended the 
 scope of this idea, setting forth that there are two
 
 288 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 kinds of vital phenomena ; and accordingly divided 
 the nervous material of the body into two systems, 
 calling" one the nervous system of organic or vegeta- 
 tive life, and the other the nervous system of animal 
 life. The former of these he referred to the epigastric 
 region for its origin. Solly, taking his cue from the 
 correspondence of its anatomic arrangement with 
 that of the molluscous animals, designated it the 
 " cyclo-ganglionic nervous system." He declares that, 
 "although it is difficult, most probably on account of 
 its minuteness, in many of the lower animals, to 
 demonstrate the existence of the nervous system of 
 vegetative life, as distinct from the animal life, there 
 is no doubt that it always exists." {On the Brain, 1836.) 
 Dr. Grant corroborates this opinion by the remark, 
 that the nerves of sensation and motion closely accom- 
 pany each other, forming by their union, cords or 
 columns, or a cet-ebro-spinal axis ; but that the sympa- 
 thetic or ganglionic nerves form a more isolated system. 
 To this system Anderson and others assign the cell- 
 germs, which are the rudiments of organized beings. 
 Every function purely physical, and essential to life, 
 the animal warmth, the nutritive process, instinct, 
 emotion, pertains to this system of organic life. 
 
 The physiology and constitution of the Brain were 
 in like manner described by Franz Joseph Gall, of 
 Vienna. His works upon the Nervous System passed 
 through several editions, and wers highly esteemed. 
 In 1S02, the government of Austria, at the instance of 
 the clergy, forbade the teaching of his peculiar doc- 
 trine, as dangerous to religion ; but going to France, 
 he found numerous sympathizers among the ablest 
 professors, such as Broussais, Andral and St. Hilaire. 
 His disciples, Kaspar Spurzheim and George Combe,
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 289 
 
 further elaborated the new system, adopting for it the 
 name of Phrenology, and it was accepted by Archbishop 
 Whately, Elliottson, Macnish, and others of like prom- 
 inence, and by Professor Caldwell, Dr. Nathan Allen, 
 and others in the United States. As a recognized 
 science, it has not been actually received by those who 
 profess to be authoritative ; it is still in the usual 
 English process, first to be denied outright, and then 
 to be accepted, withholding due credit from the dis- 
 coverer. It is true, however, that Unzer and Pro- 
 chaska had already set forth many of the essential 
 features of the new science, and that Bonnet asserted 
 that every portion of the brain has a distinct function 
 of its own. Herbert Spencer also affirms the funda- 
 mental principle of phrenology very tersely : 
 
 " No physiologist can long resist the conviction," 
 says he, " that different parts of the cerebrum sub- 
 serve different kinds of mental action. Localization 
 of function is the law of all organization whatever ; 
 separateness of duty is universally accompanied with 
 separateness of structure, and it would be marvellous 
 were an exception to exist in the cerebral hemi- 
 spheres. Let it be granted that the cerebral hemi- 
 spheres, are the seats of higher psychical activities ; 
 let it be granted that among these higher psychical 
 activities there are distinctions of a kind which, 
 though not definite, are yet practically recognizable, 
 and it cannot be denied, without going in direct oppo- 
 sition to established physiological principles, that 
 these more or less distinct kinds of psychical activity 
 must be carried on in more or less distinct parts of 
 the cerebral hemispheres." 
 
 Even J. Hughes Bennett, while discarding the pecu- 
 liar localizations of the phrenologists, acknowledged 
 the merit of the discoverers ; declaring that " the
 
 290 HKTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 names of Gall, Spurzheim and Combe, ought ever to 
 be legistered among those whose labors have greatly 
 contributed to advance our knowledge of the physi- 
 ology of the brain." 
 
 The cerebellum, it may here be noted, is undoubt- 
 edly the organ for that function which has been 
 unsuitably denominated " unconscious cerebration." 
 It is untiring, incessant in its activity, never resting, 
 but carries our thoughts silently to conclusions, 
 matures actions into habits, and preserves the life 
 while the functions of the brain are suspended, as in 
 sleep. 
 
 Gall was the first to describe the spinal cord as an 
 organism distinct from the brain, and to prove that 
 it has a specific and independent office of its own, and 
 is, therefore, not conditioned by consciousness or 
 volition. Walker, following him, gave a description 
 of the cord, its functions, qualities and peculiar con- 
 formation. After him came the men whose teachings 
 are now controverted on one ground or another. 
 
 Sir Charles Bell has the credit of having originated 
 the modern method of studying physiology. He 
 feegan with a volume giving the anatomy of the nerv- 
 ous system and the organs of special sense. In 1804, 
 he removed from Edinburgh to London, and there 
 published his remarkable treatise on the Anatomy of 
 Expression. It was designed to show how the influence 
 of the mind was propagated to the muscular frame, 
 and to explain the muscular movements which usually 
 accompany the various emotions and passions. In 
 1807, followed his treatise on the Anatomy of the Brain, 
 announcing the discovery of the different functions 
 of the nerves, corresponding with their relations to 
 different parts of the brain. He likewise explained
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 29I 
 
 the peculiar arrangement of the spinal nerves, also 
 set forth by Walker, that the anterior roots are motor, 
 and the posterior roots sensory. He was vividly 
 conscious of the importance of his discoveries, and in 
 his exultation wrote to a friend : "I really think that 
 this new Anatomy of the Brain will strike more than the 
 discovery [by John Hunter] of the lymphatics being 
 absorbents." 
 
 His expectations were abundantly verified, and the 
 result was a complete overturning of the current 
 opinions. For years the notion was entertained, that 
 everything of the character of a nervous system in 
 the lower races of animals belonged to the cerebro. 
 spinal axis, or some structure corresponding to it. 
 
 Dr. Marshall Hall, having removed to London, con- 
 tinued to employ himself in physiological investiga- 
 tions. His studies of the pernicious effects of blood- 
 letting were of vital importance to patients. In 1829, 
 he made his grand discovery of the capillary circula- 
 tion, thus completing the theory of William Harvey. 
 He published the account of it in his Critical and 
 Experimental Essay, showing that the minute blood- 
 vessels between the arteries and veins serve to bring 
 the blood into contact with the various tissues of the 
 body. 
 
 The achievement, however, for which he was most 
 distinguished, was his discovery of the reflex func- 
 tions of the nervous system. His monograph on the 
 Reflex Function of the Medulla Oblongata and the Medulla 
 Spinalis, in 1832, excited great attention on the con- 
 tinent of Europe, particularly in Holland and Ger- 
 many ; and M. Flourens described it as " a great epoch 
 in physiology." From that time Nervous Diseases 
 constituted a department in pathology and nosology,
 
 292 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 and Doctor Hall became the highest acknowledged 
 authority upon the various derangements of health 
 resulting from abnormal conditions of the nervous 
 system. 
 
 In 1837, he published another work entitled : " On 
 the True Spinal Marrow and the Excito-Motor System of 
 Nerves." It was an endeavor at the classification and 
 explanation of the distribution of the entire cerebro- 
 spinal nervous system. He adopted the doctrine 
 which had been propounded by Gall, that the spinal 
 cord is an organic structure distinct from the brain, 
 endowed with a specific vitality, and having its appro- 
 priate functions. These he denominated " excito- 
 motory," and he attributed to them likewise the 
 phenomena of reflex action. He supposed that there 
 existed an additional set of nervous fibres, incide7it and 
 reflex, by which the diastaltic functions were per- 
 formed. This he believed to be demonstrated by 
 beheading a frog and removing its viscera. 
 
 " I beg leave to repeat," says he, " the cerebrum, the 
 centre of the spinal cord of nerves, and all the gan- 
 glionic system, have been removed from this animal ; 
 and yet when I pinch the extremity, it moves so as to 
 be obviously perceptible at the remotest part of this 
 theatre. You observe something remains. That which 
 remains I venture to call the true spinal marrow," 
 
 Dr. Hall treats of the several operations of the 
 nutritive functions, and also the uterine function, as 
 excito-motor. Other experiments and observations 
 have since disproved this theory, and now the phe- 
 nomena of reflex action are ascribed to the ganglionic 
 nervous system. The text-books generally, however, 
 are comparatively meagre in regard to this depart- 
 ment. While the cerebro-spinal system and the
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 293 
 
 nerves of sensation are diligently explained in all 
 their minute particulars, the ganglionic system, which 
 underlies all that can be known of vital function, is, 
 in a great measure, overlooked and neglected. 
 
 The Nineteenth Century has been distinguished by 
 large contributions to Embryology. The works of 
 the great founder of this science, Kaspar Friedrich 
 Wolff, which had been discredited for sixty years 
 through the influence of Haller, were now translated, 
 and their teachings followed up by such investigators 
 as Oken, Meckel, Tiedemann, Panda ; and after them, 
 by Von Baer, now regarded as the greatest among 
 modern embryologists. 
 
 The theory of cell-development, to the exclusion of 
 other hypotheses, was zealously promulgated by lead- 
 ing histologists, and had the support of the various 
 schools. All physical organization was imputed to 
 the cells, and its beginning traced back to the original 
 cell or cell-substance of the ovum. Virchow, the great 
 champion of the dogma, asserted that " the cell is 
 really the ultimate morphological element in which 
 there is any manifestation of life, and that we must 
 not transfer the seat of any real activity to any point 
 behind the cell." * 
 
 To this hypothesis, Dr. J. Hughes Bennett opposed 
 a bold denial, and affirmed that the basis of the organ- 
 ism and the seat of vital activity, was the elementary 
 molecule. He sustained his position by the history of 
 the embryo, and the process of nutrition in the glands 
 and nerve-ganglia, and in all alterations of texture. 
 He also remarked that histologists had been unsuc- 
 
 * This doctrine became current about the middle of the century. The first 
 lecture delivered on physiology by the writer was devoted to an explanation of the 
 cell-theory, which was then a novel one to physicians as well as students.
 
 294 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 cessful in their attempt to trace all tissues back to 
 cells, and accordingly had universally acknowledged 
 that cells themselves must originate in the first in- 
 stance from a formless or molecular fluid, which 
 Schwann has denominated blastema. Even Virchow 
 admitted the existence of ultimate granules ; and 
 other upholders of the cell-theory confess that the 
 potential part of the cell is not the wall or the nucleus, 
 but the contents or protoplasm. 
 
 " The molecular theory of organization," says Ben- 
 nett, " must ultimately constitute the basis for the 
 arts of horticulture, agriculture and medicine." 
 
 SURGERY AND SURGICAL PATHOLOGY. 
 
 It is a peculiarity of modern professional study, that 
 a greater desire is manifested for instruction in sur- 
 gery than practical medicine and the kindred depart- 
 ments of knowledge. The labors of John Hunter, 
 Blumenbach, Dupuytren, and their contemporaries, 
 have been sedulously followed up all over the civilized 
 world. The clinic teaching, as exemplified by Syme 
 and Lawrence, resulted in a wide diffusion of surgical 
 knowledge through all ranks of the medical profession. 
 The methods of procedure have been largely changed; 
 anaesthesia, hygienic appliances, and a host of new 
 devices have been added. Dr. Charles Creighton enu- 
 merates among these the following, as the more impor- 
 tant, namely : the thin-thread ligature for arteries, 
 the revival of torsion for arteries, the practice of drain- 
 age, aspiration, the plaster-of-Paris application, the 
 re-breaking of badly-set fractures, galvano-caustics 
 and ecraseurs, the general introduction of re-section 
 of joints, tenetomy, operation for squint, successful 
 ligature of the external iliac artery for aneurism of
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 295 
 
 the femoral, ligature of the subclavian, crushing of 
 stone in the bladder, removing of the cyst in ovarian 
 dropsy, the discovery of the ophthalmoscope, the ap- 
 plication of the laryngoscope, and various additions 
 to the resources of aural surgery and dentistry. 
 
 Perhaps, in the coming century, the anticipation of 
 enthusiastic individuals will be realized, that there 
 will be no incurable diseases. Then much of the 
 necessity for harsh and violent remedial procedures 
 would be obviated. The maiming and mutilating of the 
 human body is repugnant to our instincts, and seems 
 almost like forms of sacrilege. In present conditions, 
 however, we must do the best that we know. It is 
 very certain that there is often an undue eagerness of 
 surgeons to perform unnecessary, and even dangerous 
 operations. Nevertheless, the life of President Garfield 
 might probably have been saved if a courageous and 
 skillful surgeon had ventured to make an exploratory 
 incision into the abdomen, as Dr. J. Marion Sims 
 suggested. We may also repeat the statement so con- 
 fidently made, that at the present time, but nine per 
 cent, of all operations in amputation have a fatal ter- 
 mination. It is to be supposed, that those cases are 
 not included, which are reported as successful, and the 
 patients die afterward in consequence of the procedure. 
 When useless and unnecessary operations shall no 
 longer be performed, the results will be much more 
 gratifying. 
 
 In Surgical Pathology, there has been a steady ad- 
 vance. With the better methods of living, and the 
 various social improvements, epidemics are less de- 
 structive, and the rate of longevity heightened. vSur- 
 gical diseases are more amenable to treatment and 
 far less mortal. The knowledge possessed, and the
 
 296 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 improvements actually made, are of far greater value, 
 in a scientific as well as humanitarian view, than those 
 of any antecedent period. 
 
 ARTIFICIAL ANESTHESIA. 
 
 The general introduction of anaesthesia as an auxil- 
 iary in surgical operations, has been generally wel- 
 comed by both patient and operator. It takes rank 
 among the memorable discoveries of the century. It 
 is very certain, however, that neither the conception 
 nor the art itself is of recent date. Much had been 
 already achieved by the peculiar catalepsis of mes- 
 merism, and hopes were confidently entertained that 
 satisfactory results would be produced, when etheriza- 
 tion was brought into practice. This is speedier in 
 producing the desired insensibility, but, at the same 
 time, it is infinitely more hazardous. The greater 
 certainty, however, has enabled it to supersede its 
 worthier rival. 
 
 The concept of deadening pain by artificial means 
 is very ancient. Herodotus, Pliny and Dioskorides 
 mention drugs that were employed for the purpose. 
 Mandragora was used by Italian physicians. The 
 Skyths of olden time inhaled the vapor of hemp to 
 produce intoxication, and we have read of a Chinese 
 physician who anaesthetized his patients with a prep- 
 aration of Cannabis, in order to obviate the pains of 
 surgical operations. The Brahmans understood the 
 art, and employed it at satis to protect the widow from 
 feeling the flame when on the funeral pyre. It has also 
 been affirmed, that physicians of the Middle Ages, 
 who were proficient alchemists, were skillful in the 
 producing of insensibility by artificial means, and 
 that many of the marvellous exhibitions of uncon-
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 297 
 
 sciousness to pain were the effect of drugs and vapors. 
 It is certain, however, that mental exaltation, from 
 whatever cause, will have a similar result. Soldiers in 
 the fury of the battle, often scarcely feel the deadly 
 wounds inflicted upon them ; and the accounts of the 
 religious martyrs in the hideous torture-chambers of 
 the Dark Ages, and even of the victims burning alive 
 at the stake, would suggest that rapture had suppressed 
 the sense of physical pain. We know that with the 
 approach of death, the patient is rendered oblivious 
 of suffering ; and it has even been affirmed, that 
 the art had been taught of holding the breath and 
 employing other means by which to suspend pain, 
 or at least to procure its mitigation. The Convul- 
 sionnaires and other enthusiasts used to exhibit con- 
 ditions of anaesthesia which we know little about, 
 and which some profess to consider it a proof of 
 superior intelligence to discredit and deny. The 
 famous Witch Trials brought out testimony, which 
 seems to be indisputable demonstration of the 
 possession of such an art. To a reflective mind, 
 unbiased by prejudice or preconceived notions, the 
 evidence must appear as proof of a knowledge which 
 may have been since forgotten, although in scientific 
 circles so-called, it be unknown and ignored. We may 
 apply to the latter the words of Humboldt : "A pre- 
 sumptuous skepticism that rejects facts without exam- 
 ination of their truth, is, in some respects, more injuri- 
 ous than unsuspecting credulity." 
 
 Sir Humphrey Davy appears to have been the first 
 to comprehend the feasibility of employing anaesthesia 
 for surgical purposes. He discovered that the nitrog- 
 enic protoxide would, with comparative safety, re- 
 move the sense of pain, and to a great degree set the
 
 298 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 mental faculties free from the bodily investiture, 
 "It may be used with advantage," he confidently de- 
 clared, " in surgical operations in which no effusion of 
 blood takes place." His great pupil and successor, 
 Michael Faraday, perceived similar effects from the 
 inhaling of sulphuric ether; and several American 
 physicians demonstrated this by experiment. Yet the 
 suggestion remained unheeded till the century had 
 approached its meridian. Then, as though the idea 
 was floating hither and thither in the mental atmos- 
 phere, so that those awake to such things might simul- 
 taneously become cognizant of it. Dr. Crawford W. 
 Long, of Georgia, Horace Wells, of Hartford, and 
 William T. G. Morton, of Boston, the latter two being 
 dentists, ventured to employ it in their practice. 
 Wells used the nitrous oxide and Morton sulphuric 
 ether. So great was Morton's success that he em- 
 ployed it in the hospital where a patient was to un- 
 dergo removal of the jaw. The credit of the discovery 
 was finally conceded to him, but not till after much 
 opposition and legal conflicts. These induced him to 
 abandon his profession, and shortened his life. 
 Abroad the discovery met with more speedy apprecia- 
 tion. Robert Lister, the eminent British surgeon, as 
 soon as he had learned of it, proceeded to employ it, 
 and the practice soon became general in Great Britain 
 and on the Continent. Since that time, in the re- 
 versal of professional sentiment, the physicians of 
 Boston have erected a monument to Morton, and in 
 Georgia a tablet has been set up in honor of Dr. 
 Long. 
 
 Sir James Y. Simpson, of Edinburgh, was the first 
 to employ anaesthesia in midwifery, and he had the 
 gratification of annulling the fearful suffering. He
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 299 
 
 was obliged, however, to encounter hostility from the 
 Scotch clergy, who charged him with atheism and 
 irreligion. He was setting aside the Divine ordinance, 
 they declared : " In sorrow shalt thou bring forth 
 children." The next year, 1847, Simpson learned of 
 the efficacy of chloroform and substituted it for ether. 
 From that time the employment of anaesthetics has 
 been regarded as an essential feature in surgical 
 practice. 
 
 GYNECOLOGY. 
 
 The medical and surgical diseases of women have 
 constituted a prolific field for investigation and ex- 
 periment, and it has been assiduously cultivated. 
 True, that Nature, in her mysterious operations, has 
 always been partial to the female sex in all races of 
 living beings, and has granted to woman a greater 
 longevity, as a general rule, than she permits to less 
 favored man. Nevertheless, as the world now moves, 
 the various ailments peculiar to women make up the 
 larger part of the physician's employment. We leave 
 it to the educator and pathologist to explain whether 
 this fact is an incident of their physical organization, 
 an unavoidable concomitant of the abnormality of our 
 modern civilization, the result of imwholesome per- 
 sonal habits and social customs, or a whim engen- 
 dered by improper training, which has made ill health 
 fashionable and a thing to be enjoyed. Certain it is 
 that the condition is very general, especially in this 
 country. Medical teachers and writers have accord- 
 ingly differentiated these complaints, and set apart a 
 special sub-division of medical and surgical practice, 
 giving it the somewhat incongruous designation of 
 gynecology. Properly, the term relates to female human 
 beings as a whole, their traits and peculiarities ; in
 
 300 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 this connection, it indicates little besides their dis- 
 eases and surgical treatment. 
 
 The obstetric art, which unquestionably pertains to 
 this department, was universally regarded from 
 earliest history as the province of women only. The 
 records in the Bible, the inscriptions and other monu- 
 mental evidence obtained by archaeologists, the litera- 
 ture which has been preserved from ancient periods, are 
 conclusive in this matter. The midwife was a woman 
 who was everywhere held in honor. " They feared 
 God," says the author of the book of Exodus^ "and He 
 caused their households to prosper." The philosopher, 
 Sokrates, narrates, with complacency, that he was the 
 son of a midwife, and makes her art an illustration of 
 his method of teaching. Pliny speaks of women who 
 were physicians as being of the nobility, one of them 
 bearing the title of " iatromea* regionis su(b prima" — the 
 noblest female physician of her district. The Arabians, 
 through the Middle Ages, left the obstetric art with 
 the female sex. The employing of men for this office 
 is one of the modern innovations. The "wise 
 woman " has been supplanted in this and many other 
 countries. This fact is coincident with the develop- 
 ment of the art of gynaecology. 
 
 The diseases of women, however, were under no 
 such restriction. Hippokrates, Galen, and Aretaeos, 
 discoursed of metritis, induration, displacements, 
 menstrual irregularities, leucorrhoea, ulcerations of 
 the womb, etc., and Actios mentioned the speculum, 
 
 * A female physician. From latftOS, a physician, and fxaia, 
 a midwife, or nurse. The iatromea of Rome and Italy were Greeks, and 
 because of their skill they had been permitted to remain when the 
 Romans e.xpelled their countrymen from the peninsula. The Romans 
 left the arts and professions generally to people of the subject nations.
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 3OI 
 
 sponge tent, sound, caustics for ulcers, dilatation of 
 the cervix uteri, injections, hip-baths and other appli- 
 ances. Indeed, the remark of Aristotle was abun- 
 dantly warranted in this matter, as well as generally, 
 that " probably all art and all knowledge have been 
 often fully explored and again forgotten." 
 
 M. Recamier is generally regarded as the founder 
 of the modern school of gynaecology. He is credited 
 with having discovered the speculum in i8or, but this 
 is a mistake. Both Astruc and Ambroise Pare were 
 acquainted with the instrument. Recamier, however, 
 was the first in making much use of it in his practice. 
 He also employed a curette. But it was a long while 
 before English practitioners overcame their prejudice 
 against these appliances. Sir James Y. Simpson, of 
 Edinburgh, was the earliest physician of note among 
 them to occupy this field of investigation. He wrote 
 extensively upon uterine pathology, describing pelvic 
 cellulitis, haematocele, fluxions, etc., and recom- 
 mended the sound, sponge tent, and other means of 
 diagnosis. Before him there had only French writers 
 given attention to these subjects, but now the profes- 
 sional interest in them became general. 
 
 Dr. J. Hughes Bennett, himself a student in the 
 hospitals of Paris, and deeply imbued with the senti- 
 ments of Recamier and Lisfranc, also took part in the 
 same labors. He published his work on XXi^ Inflamma- 
 tion of the Uterus, in 1845, and was able afterward by 
 his intense zeal and energy to arouse the attention of 
 medical men, not only in Great Britain, but on the 
 continent of Europe, and in America. Many of his 
 statements were disputed by contemporary writers 
 like West and Tyler Smith, but the importance of his 
 labors cannot be denied. His general theory described
 
 302 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 inflammation as the starting-point in uterine affec- 
 tions, of which menstrual troubles and leucorrhoea 
 were merely symptoms ; the inflammation being con- 
 fined, in most cases, to the cervical canal. Dr. Smith 
 insisted with Lisfranc that, as a result of the inflam- 
 mation, the parenchyma was engorged. 
 
 M. Velpeau was the next author of distinction in 
 this department, and his theory of displacements as 
 being the cause of most uterine affections, was ac- 
 cepted by the leading physicians of Paris. As a 
 result, there was a general inventing and applying of 
 pessaries. The professional sentiment, however, has 
 since been changed, and the belief is now commonly 
 entertained that displacement is the effect rather than 
 the cause of inflammation. 
 
 Dr. James Marion Sims, a physician of Montgom- 
 ery, Alabama, made his name memorable for his new 
 inventions and procedures. Coming to New York in 
 1853, he endeavored to bring to the attention of his 
 professional brethren what he had accomplished in 
 operative surgery for lacerations and other injuries 
 of the female organism. The umpires of professional 
 opinion, to whom he communicated his discoveries, 
 received him coldly. From Nazareth or a Nazorean 
 would nothing good be recognized. Those who de- 
 rived information from Francis, Mott and Stevens, 
 followed their example. Sims then turned to others 
 whom they were superciliously ignoring.* Dr. Elijah 
 Whitney, a graduate of Union College, with "certain 
 
 ♦Dr. Sims long remembered these his first friends in New York, for their ser- 
 vices so vital to his success. He responded afterward, by a declaration against 
 the Code of Medical Ethics, from which he and they alike were sufferers. When he 
 became President of the American Medical Association, at the time of the Centen- 
 nial Exhibition in 1876, he took occasion in his address to pronounce against it as 
 effete and moribund, and advised to " let it die."
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 303 
 
 honorable women," and a few others, reached out to 
 him the fraternal hand, and opened the way for him 
 to make his discoveries known to the public, and to 
 those who had need of them. In this way he was en- 
 abled to open the Women's Hospital of the City of 
 New York. He and his fellow-laborers thus intro- 
 duced a new era into that department of surgery. 
 What Recamier began and Simpson improved, James 
 Marion Sims brought to greater perfection. While, 
 however, his procedures were adopted by those who 
 had before scouted them, he himself encountered 
 some of the usual experiences of apostles and innova- 
 tors. He was supplanted and superseded by those 
 who had followed in his footsteps, and were thereby 
 able to secure for themselves many of his honors. 
 
 EXTIRPATION OF THE OVARIES. 
 
 Another of the modern additions to operative gyn- 
 aecological surgery is the extirpation of the ovaries. 
 It has become an operation of frequent occurrence, 
 and is employed for tumor, dropsy, and even painful 
 menstruation. It seems to have been adopted, like 
 other procedures, from the laity. The unsexing of 
 female domestic animals has been for hundreds of 
 years a common practice in many agricultural dis- 
 tricts. The spaying of swine was performed by the 
 herdsmen of ancient Greece, as well as by the mod- 
 erns ; and milch cows were sometimes castrated in 
 order that the period of lactation might be extended 
 for an indefinite period uninterrupted. The Lydians 
 unsexed young women for the purpose of ministering 
 to the sensual tastes of the wealthy and powerful. 
 Later in the ages, we have the account of a swine- 
 herder in Hungary who, in a rage at the lasciviousness
 
 3°4 
 
 HISTORV OF MEDICINE. 
 
 of his daughter, compelled her to undergo the 
 operation. 
 
 Nobody, however, seems to have dreamed of it as a 
 remedial measure till the eighteenth century. Several 
 prominent surgeons then began to discuss the subject 
 — Schlenker in 1722, Willius in 1731, Peyer in 1751, 
 Targioni in 1752, and Delaporte, who, in 1758, formally 
 proposed the operation to the Royal Academy of 
 Surgery of Paris. Laumanier, of Rouen, by accident, 
 having made a mistake in diagnosis, actually removed 
 a diseased ovary in 1781. 
 
 In England, likewise, the proposition was urged 
 with great energy. John Hunter advocated it with 
 his customary boldness, and Dr. Percival Pott ven- 
 tured to perform the operation in a case of inguinal 
 hernia. 
 
 D'Escher, a student at the University of Montpel- 
 lier, read a thesis in 1808, setting forth a specific 
 method for the excision. 
 
 So far, however, it was but preliminary discussion. 
 Public sentiment, as well as natural instinct, was 
 averse to such an act of mutilation, and surgeons had 
 not boldness or assurance to venture upon its per- 
 formance. Indeed, the penalties for mayhem and 
 malpractice, so often invoked and so inexorably en- 
 forced, were enough to deter every one but the most 
 resolute. 
 
 Finally, however, American surgeons proved suffi- 
 ciently temeritous. Dr. Ephraim McDowell, of Dan- 
 ville, in the State of Kentucky, ventured upon the 
 operation in 1809. The result was satisfactory, and 
 the patient lived till 1834. He afterward operated 
 thirteen times, eight of the patients surviving. The 
 next American to undertake the removing of the
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 305 
 
 ovaries was Dr. Nathan Smith, of New Haven, meet- 
 ing with like success. 
 
 Dr. Walter Burnham, of Lowell, in the State of 
 Massachusetts, and Professor of Surgery and Opera- 
 tive Midwifery in the Worcester Medical Institution, 
 became distinguished for his skill and wonderful suc- 
 cess in this department of surgical practice. He was 
 a man of rare ability, remarkable for presence of 
 mind, deftness and sagacity ; and as a surgeon he had 
 few equals in America. As early as 1823, when still a 
 youth, he had heard Dr. Smith describe the operation 
 to his father ; and after he had himself graduated in 
 medicine, while a practitioner in Northern Vermont, 
 he made a careful study of ovarian tumors as he ob- 
 served them in necropsies. 
 
 At that time, no adequate description of these affec- 
 tions had been given, and Dr. Burnham was obliged 
 to work out the various problems for himself. He 
 found a patient in 1839, and made the necessary 
 arrangements for operating, but she died the night 
 before the time appointed. His first actual attempt was 
 made in 185 1, at Branford, Connecticut, with gratifying 
 results. A few months later he operated upon a 
 patient at Meriden, removing a tumor weighing fifty- 
 four pounds. The patient, however, was greatly 
 debilitated, and died from peritonitis a few days 
 afterward. 
 
 At this period it was an undetermined question 
 among medical men whether the extirpation of 
 ovarian tumors was ever a justifiable procedure. Dr. 
 Burnham was severely criticized on every hand for his 
 venturesome course. A leading journal denounced 
 the procedure as "barbarity under the name of 
 science." Bitter hostility followed him for many 
 
 20
 
 3o6 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 years. Twice he was threatened with prosecution for 
 manslaughter, but the recovery of the patients de- 
 feated the malignant purpose of his enemies. He was 
 once actually arrested in Canada for having per- 
 formed the operation, but was speedily set free from 
 custody. A professor of surgery in one of the medical 
 colleges of the city of New York, in 1875, declared his 
 regret for Dr. Burnham's success, as he considered 
 the procedure unjustifiable ; and he boldly affirmed, 
 in a lecture to his class, that not one such operation 
 in a hundred could possibly be successful, and the 
 patient recover. 
 
 Walter Burnham attained his celebrity by his skill 
 and the good fortune which attended him. He was a 
 lover of his kind, upright and conscientious, and in no 
 way fool-hardy, vain or conceited. He made no boast 
 of what he accomplished, nor was he ever eager to 
 perform an operation. He acted from conviction, be- 
 lieving that every case of the kind was certain other- 
 wise to go on sooner or later to a fatal termination, 
 and assured from actual experience that the pro- 
 cedure was far less dangerous than had been appre- 
 hended. At the same time, however, he declared it 
 to be one of the most dangerous operations which a 
 surgeon is called upon to perform. 
 
 It should be borne in mind that Dr. Burnham had 
 few of the facilities enjoyed by the distinguished 
 surgeons of later years, and he was obliged to leave 
 his patients to the care of other practitioners, and 
 such nurses as were at hand. So bitter was the pro- 
 fessional feeling, that physicians of the dominant 
 school refused to take charge when he had performed 
 an operation. He finally yielded, for the sake of his 
 patients, severing his connection with his former
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 307 
 
 associates and affiliating with the other party. His 
 death took place in 1883, in his seventy-sixth year. In 
 the course of thirty years Dr. Burnham performed 
 the complete extirpation of the ovary 281 times, hav- 
 ing 51 fatal cases. Several of these were from inci- 
 ' dental causes, for which he could not be regarded as 
 in any way to blame. 
 
 Dr. Lizars introduced the procedure into Scotland 
 in 1823, with the most unfortunate results. Dr. 
 Charles Clay afterward urged it upon the attention of 
 surgeons in England to such acceptance that men like 
 Lane, Wells and Tait took it up and became famous 
 for their skill and the multitude of their operations. 
 They lost only about one in three of their patients. 
 This seems to be about the general rule. 
 
 In Germany^ however, the fatality from ovarian 
 section was truly excessive. Simon reported that out 
 of sixty-one cases only twelve completely recovered; 
 and Scanzoni speaks of the operation as " a pro- 
 cedure by which Langenbeck has lost five out of six, 
 and Kirwisch four out of five." 
 
 Since that period, nevertheless, it has attained ex- 
 traordinary favor in certain professional circles, 
 especially in America. The patients may be num- 
 bered by hecatombs. With the sanction of the great 
 names enrolled in its advocacy, any one who should 
 protest, or even question the propriety of operating 
 in trivial or curable cases, would be virtually crushed 
 into silence. He would need very deep conviction 
 and heroic courage for the attempt. The fearful 
 humiliation which is inflicted, as well as the attending 
 mortality, seems hardly to be taken into the account, 
 and the procedure is so common as to constitute one 
 of the favorite operations of the Nineteenth Century.
 
 3o8 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Occasionally, however, there has been a word of 
 emphatic dissent, even in high places. Dr. Abraham 
 Jacobi, of New York, describing the many ways of 
 becoming or appointing professors nowadays in med- 
 ical colleges, suggests, with exquisite irony, the fol- 
 lowing as sure : 
 
 " Write a text-book while you are young. 
 " Operate on two alleged lacerations daily, and let 
 no more than fifty per cent, die of septicaemia. 
 " Prove that the best place for ovaries is in a jar." 
 
 A physician of Michigan, when at a post-graduate 
 dinner in New York, was more forcible in his utter- 
 ances. " I would as soon keep a powder house in the 
 region of everlasting fire," said he, "as be a woman 
 with ovaries in the city of New York." 
 
 Some time, perhaps, when a higher conscientious- 
 ness pervades the medical profession, and there pre- 
 vails an enlightened and reformed public sentiment, 
 there may dawn a better day. 
 
 HYSTERECTOMY. 
 
 Walter Burnham was the first surgeon of modern time 
 who ventured upon the excision of the womb. It was 
 upon the occasion of his fourth operation for ovarian 
 disease, and took place on the 26th of June, 1854. He 
 had found, upon opening the abdomen of the patient 
 that instead of an enlarged ovary as he had supposed, 
 there was an interstitial fibroid attached to the fun- 
 dus, and involving the uterus itself. The left ovary 
 was enlarged, and there was a cyst adhering to the 
 other, which contained a dark sero-albuminous fluid. 
 With characteristic promptness. Dr. Burnham decided 
 to remove the entire organ, with its appendages, clear 
 to the cervix. The recovery was very tedious, but at
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 309 
 
 the end of five weeks the wound had closed, all 
 morbid discharges ceased, and the general health was 
 good.* In his account of this operation he adds the 
 following statement of his own position : 
 
 " Although this case terminated favorably, I would 
 not easily be induced to make another attempt to ex- 
 tirpate the uterus and ovaries, or even to remove the 
 uterus, under almost any condition ; and the opera- 
 tion should never be attempted without due consid- 
 eration of the consequences of submitting the patient 
 to such formidable risk." 
 
 This extraordinary operation, with the wonderful 
 recovery, was announced to the entire medical pro- 
 fession in the various publications, as opening a new 
 field for gynaecologic surgery. The illustrious operator 
 was lauded everywhere for his successful achieve- 
 ment, and his name was in a fair way to become as 
 famous in professional circles as that of Hunter, 
 Pare, or Desault. It transpired, however, that he 
 presided at meetings of physicians of the Reformed 
 School, and had actually been elected President of 
 the National Eclectic Medical Association, at its 
 annual session at Worcester, in 1854. Then all was 
 changed, and his skill and success were consigned to 
 a significant silence. His patients were made to 
 suffer; it was unethical to take charge of them, and 
 they were liable to be left to linger, and even to die, 
 uncared for. Such was the bigoted partisanship of 
 the members of a profession claiming to be scien- 
 tific, in a country boasting of liberal institutions and 
 an advanced Christian civilizatioA. Under this con- 
 
 * This patient was thirty-eight years old, and was living in 1884, thirty years 
 after the operation. The morbid discharges which Professor Burnham describes 
 corroded the skin wherever they came in contact with it, and their malignant 
 quality was only amelioiated by lotions of chlorinated soda.
 
 3IO HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 dition of things, Professor Burnham became again a 
 member of the Massachusetts Medical Society. 
 
 An account of his operations was read at the meet- 
 ing of the American Medical Association in 1878, and 
 afterward published in the Transactions. He had per- 
 formed the new operation fifteen times in all, three 
 of the patients recovering. The cases were generally 
 those with fibroid tumors ; the patient being in low 
 health, without energy to rally from the shock, and 
 sometimes not receiving proper care. Under more 
 favorable conditions, there would doubtless have been 
 more fortunate results. But the truth undoubtedly 
 is, as Abernethy declared, that it is owing to our 
 ignorance that there is any necessity for instruments 
 to cure diseases ; and we are, therefore, warranted in 
 the hope and expectation that remedial measures 
 adequate to the exigency may yet become known. 
 
 THE " NATURAL BONE-SETTERS." 
 
 During the war of the American Revolution, 
 Job Sweet, of Rhode Island, became widely known 
 for his expertness in reducing fractures and dislo- 
 cations. The French commander at Newport, Gen- 
 eral Rochambeau, repeatedly had his services in 
 requisition for operations which the army surgeons 
 were unable to perform. Colonel Aaron Burr, several 
 years afterward, employed him to replace the dislo- 
 cated hip-bone of his daughter, after other surgeons 
 had not succeeded. . This peculiar knack or faculty 
 appears to have been possessed by others of the 
 family; Sweet's father and grandfather having been 
 so distinguished, and their descendants still exercis- 
 ing the art. It is not easy to suppose it a natural gift 
 or inheritance, and yet some facts connected with the
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 311 
 
 matter seem to imply as m^uch. The various mem- 
 bers of the family are generally without a liberal 
 education and belong in the humbler walks of life. 
 Even when very young, they have reduced disloca- 
 tions with admirable deftness, broken bones anew 
 which had not been properly set at first, and per- 
 formed kindred operations. 
 
 Old Job Sweet was accompanied one day by a 
 prominent physician of Boston to visit the anatomical 
 museum. As he passed by a mounted skeleton he 
 suddenly stopped, and with the remark that he had 
 never seen one before, he pointed to a small bone in 
 the foot, which he declared to be wrong side up. This 
 was disputed, but when he had changed its position, 
 it was conceded that he was correct. 
 
 A son of his was operating one day upon the fract- 
 ured femur of a patient. A spectator, knowing him 
 to be uneducated, asked him how he was able to re- 
 place the bones so exactly. He replied that he did 
 not know, but that he was just as certain of the posi- 
 tion of the bones when he operated, as though he saw 
 them with the naked eye. William Sweet, a grandson, 
 equally celebrated, made the following quaint ex-^ 
 planation : " I see the bone that I am going to set 
 just as plainly as if it had no flesh upon it. I say 
 that ' I see it,' but of course I do not see it." He evi- 
 dently implied a mode of perception that made the 
 matter plain to him, but which he had no command of 
 words adequate to describe. 
 
 Similar accounts are given of Ur. Kittredge, of 
 New Hampshire. His manners and methods appear 
 to have been very similar to those of the Sweets ; he 
 was equally famous in the community, untaught, but 
 possessed of great penetration and sagacity.
 
 312 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Among wonderful operations by members of this 
 family was one more remarkable than the others. 
 The late Joseph P. Hazard, of Peacedale, had displaced 
 the semilunar cartilage, and on applying to several 
 eminent surgeons of Newport and Providence, was 
 informed by them all that its restoration was beyond 
 the surgical art John Sweet, a country farmer, was 
 next called, and in a few minutes accomplished the 
 task. These testimonies may be multiplied. The 
 wife of William Lloyd Garrison, the famous aboli- 
 tionist, was a patient of one of the family, and he 
 published a glowing description of the matter. 
 
 Members of the family at Fall River, New Bedford, 
 Hartford, and elsewhere, besides the Narragansett 
 homestead, still practice the art. It is said, however, 
 that Dr. Reid, a physician of Rochester, in the State 
 of New York, some years ago, obtained a knowledge 
 of the procedure and announced it to the profession 
 as original with himself. In any light that we view 
 the subject, whether this art was in some sense in- 
 tuitive, or whether it has been transmitted as an heir- 
 loom from generation to generation through cen- 
 turies, it is remarkable. 
 
 TREATMENT OF THE INSANE. 
 
 Perhaps there is no better criterion of the civiliza- 
 tion and moral advancement of a people than is 
 afforded by the treatment bestowed upon the insane. 
 In the Dark Ages they were virtually outside the 
 protection of the law, and were abused worse than the 
 beasts. Till recently, and even now in some common- 
 wealths, the legislation and jurisprudence are little 
 improved. The insane person is held unable to trans- 
 act business, but is often hanged for capital crime.
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 313 
 
 The facility is almost unbounded in many states of the 
 American Union to- deprive individuals of their 
 liberty as by a lettre de cachet, wrongfully as well as 
 rightfully, and to follow up the measure by a seques- 
 tering of their property. There is an unrecorded his- 
 tory of such matters, extending even to the present 
 period, which, if it should be disclosed, would excite 
 the popular indignation beyond bounds. 
 
 Slowly, as if reluctantly, has progress been made in 
 the care and curative treatment of persons suffering 
 from mental alienism. In this country, and in 
 Europe, the practice has been to place the most hope- 
 less and difficult of managing in the houses provided 
 for paupers, or in bedlams, and even to incarcerate 
 them in prisons. The neglect and iii- treatment which 
 they received, were often little short of atrocious. In- 
 dividuals wrongfully confined, and patients but mildly 
 deranged were rendered hopelessly insane. In the 
 general deficiency of psychic knowledge, and of nerv- 
 ous and other disorders which directly effect a dis- 
 turbance of the mental condition, a license was per- 
 mitted to keepers and attendants not greatly unlike 
 that allowed to the guards at a convict prison. 
 
 During the present century there have been many 
 attempts at amelioration. Many of the improvements, 
 however, have been more in form, than radical. It is 
 still too easy to procure incarceration on a trumped- 
 up charge of mental incompetency, and too difficult to 
 extricate a sane person once in the toils from the 
 power of his enemies. There is, however, great im- 
 provement in European legislation. In England, no 
 lunatic may be received in an asylum for profit or de- 
 tained, except on proper evidence and on the personal 
 responsibility of the individual ordering the deten-
 
 314 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 tion. Full opportunity is given to procure expert 
 examinations and discharge under proper conditions, 
 from custody. In the continental countries, every 
 evidence offered is reviewed by an expert, before the 
 case is decided by the court having jurisdiction. 
 
 To Philippe Pinel and William Tuke must be 
 ascribed the awakening of public attention to this 
 matter. They had conceived the idea of setting insane 
 patients free from arbitrary restraint, believing that 
 an appeal to their moral nature would be followed 
 by somewhat of success to resist and even to overcome 
 abnormal influences. Both tried the experiment, the 
 former at the Bic^tre in Paris, and the latter at the 
 York Retreat in England. It took long to procure 
 any general adoption of this principle; but it has gener- 
 ally been very successful in the way of relieving the 
 condition of those hopelessly insane, and enabling 
 others to recover their health and return to human 
 society. Those who reluctantly assented to the over- 
 whelming evidence, resorted to the makeshift argu- 
 ment that the type of insanity had changed in the 
 Nineteenth Century, whereas it was only the type of 
 treatment that had altered. 
 
 Various experimental plans have been adopted in 
 France and Belgium, looking to the restoring of 
 patients to normal condition by proper treatment, 
 wholesome employment, and the arousing of the 
 moral sensibility to proper activity. In Great Britain 
 the same general line of procedure has been adopted, 
 and as a result the violent forms of madness formerly 
 the theme of romantic stories, have almost disappeared. 
 Whenever in this country or elsewhere the prisons 
 and poor-houses have been exchanged for more com- 
 fortable abodes, the benefits and improvement have
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 315 
 
 been most marked. As neurologic and psychologic 
 knowledge shall be better understood, and the path- 
 ology of this class of disorders is rationally and practi- 
 cally studied, there will arise philanthropic persons 
 equipped for their work, skillful both in medicine and 
 in the applying of moral and mental discipline, energic 
 to "heal the sick and cast out devils," if not to raise 
 the dead outright. Much of a cheering character has 
 been accomplished in many places, and due credit 
 should be given to those who have brought it about ; 
 but there remains infinitely more to be accomplished 
 in other fields, and of an aspect far from encouraging. 
 
 HOMCEOPATHY AND ITS PROGRESS. 
 
 During the Nineteenth Century Homoeopathy has 
 made very encouraging progress among the more in- 
 telligent classes of society. From being scoffed and 
 derided as a visionary practice, " the quackery of the 
 drawing-room," as distinguished from the Botanic 
 practice affected by the " plain people," it has become 
 recognized in scientific circles as possessing actual 
 value. True, it has been nowhere inaugurated like 
 its great rival, with the rank and official standing of 
 a National Established Church of Medicine ; and it is 
 not able, therefore, to work hand in glove in any 
 country with the State Religion, so that it may, by 
 harsh and vindictive measures, strive to weed out 
 dissent. Those accordingly, who regard such author- 
 ity as indicating the true standard, and its exercise as 
 proper and professional, will continue still to regard 
 Homoeopathy as not successful. It little matters with 
 such persons whether that which is uppermost be in- 
 trinsically right or wrong. 
 
 A deputation of English Non-Conformists once
 
 3l6 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 waited on Lord Chancellor Thurlow to propound their 
 grievances and asked to be favored like the Estab- 
 lished Church. After hearing them a little while he 
 cut them off with these words : " Gentlemen, I am 
 against you. I am an upholder of the Established 
 Church. Not that I care at all for the Established 
 Church ; but I uphold it because it is the Established 
 Church. Get your damned sect established in its 
 place and then I will uphold that." 
 
 Although Homoeopathy has been proscribed and 
 prohibited by the Civil Power in countries of Europe, 
 and excluded from fraternal recognition by the self- 
 constituted umpires of medical sentiment, because its 
 practitioners do not conform to the Established Dogma 
 of Regularity, they may derive comfort and assurance 
 from the observation made by Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
 that the effect produced by arbitrary measures usually 
 turns out to be exactly opposite to what was intended. 
 
 It is not so very long since there were penal laws in 
 many of the American States, making the practice of 
 medicine outside the prescribed line, a misdemeanor, 
 punishable by fine and imprisonment. Persecutions 
 followed that were not unworthy of an Alva or a De 
 Montfort. Then was made an appeal to the people, 
 and with the dissemination of liberal opinions the 
 obnoxious statutes were everywhere abrogated. The 
 circle of movement has been again described, and the 
 former experience is repeated. Canada and England 
 set the example for Americans. But Reformed Medi- 
 cine, Homoeopathy, and other advanced movements 
 have obtained a foothold in the Western Hemisphere 
 from which they cannot be dislodged, except their 
 own supporters abandon the field. 
 
 The first physician who introduced Homoeopathy
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 317 
 
 into the United States was Dr. Johannis B. Gram. 
 He began in the city of Boston, in 1825, but received 
 little notice or favor except from the German popu- 
 lation. 
 
 In 1835, Dr. Detwiler established at Allentown, in 
 the State of Pennsylvania, a seminary for the instruc- 
 tion of medical students, by the modest title of the 
 " North- American Academy of Homoeopathic Medi- 
 cine." About this time there was a general ferment 
 in the medical world, and public sentiment in the 
 United States was setting in favor of liberty and 
 liberality in the practice of medicine. The new insti- 
 tution was successful in attracting attention, but re- 
 ceived only a moderate support. It was in no sense 
 American, and its instructions were given in the Ger- 
 man language. 
 
 Dr. Constantine Hering was a participant in the en- 
 terprise, and resolved to extend its operations. Re- 
 moving some years afterward to Philadelphia, he 
 procured from the Legislature in 1848, an act of incor- 
 poration for the " Homoeopathic Medical College of 
 Pennsylvania." This institution was well under 
 headway, when it encountered an obstacle common in 
 the history of medical institutions, ambition for mas- 
 tery, and dissensions among the patrons and instruct- 
 ors. In 1867 a division took place and the "Hahne- 
 mann Medical College " was organized. Better sense, 
 however, came to the rescue, and in 1869, the rival in- 
 stitutions were merged together under the charter of 
 the former, but adopted the name of the latter. The 
 Hahnemann Medical College is now the parent school 
 of Homoeopathic Medicine for both hemispheres, and 
 in its appointments and facilities it ranks fairly with 
 the first medical colleges of America.
 
 3l8 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The Legislature of Michigan having created a State 
 Univers-ity at Ann Arbor, a department of Medicine 
 was established in it by the Board of Regents. In 
 this were taught the doctrines of the Old School 
 in the form that existed at that period of the Nine- 
 teenth Century. The Homoeopathic physicians of the 
 State next contended for professorships of Homoe- 
 opathy. It was bitterly opposed, but vigorous effort 
 and earnest appeals to the sense of justice, both of 
 members of the Legislature and their constituents, 
 effected the object. Much chagrin and rancor were 
 exhibited for years at this proceeding, but the step 
 was never retraced. The example has since been 
 followed in the universities of Iowa and Minne- 
 sota. 
 
 The other Homoeopathic colleges are at Cleveland, 
 Chicago, St. Louis, New York, Boston, Detroit, Cin- 
 cinnati and San Francisco. One of the two in New 
 York is solely for the instruction of women. Most of 
 the colleges, however, are open alike to students of 
 each sex. They are generally prosperous, and from 
 year to year are becoming more so. Like most col- 
 leges in America they are private corporations. 
 
 The Homoeopathists of America are very compactly 
 organized, and cherish a warm esprit de corps. Their 
 National Institute has about two thousand mem- 
 bers, and they have societies in excellent working 
 order in thirty-two of the states, besides smaller 
 associations in the principal cities and districts of the 
 country. They have also an extensive literature, and 
 all the necessary facilities for occupying a broader 
 field.
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 319 
 HAHNEMANN AND THE LATER HOMCEOPATHISTS. 
 
 In his great work, the Organon, Hahnemann set forth 
 disease as the entire sum of the symptoms arising 
 from or consisting in a disturbance of the harmoni- 
 ous action of the vital principle " by the dynamic 
 influence of a morbific agent which is inimical to 
 life." He declares accordingly that "the physician 
 must avail himself of all the particulars that he can 
 learn, both respecting the probable origin of the 
 acute malady and the most significant points in the 
 history of the chronic disease, to aid him in the dis- 
 covery of their fundamental cause, which is com- 
 monly due to some chronic miasm. In all researches 
 of this nature he has to take into consideration the 
 apparent state of the physical constitution of the 
 patient, particularly when the affection is chronic, 
 the disposition, occupation, mode of life, habits, social 
 relations, age, sexual functions," etc. 
 
 Thus Hahnemann looked upon the perceptible 
 phenomena of the disease as means of arriving at a 
 knowledge of their generating cause — which is, so to 
 speak, an intellectional, unsensuous fact, exclusively 
 determinable by the pure reason, or intuition, anterior 
 to all sense-perception and elevated into the specula- 
 tive region of the causative principles of nature. He 
 plainly rejected the materialism which pervaded the 
 great body of modern medical teaching. 
 
 MEDICAL TREATMENT. 
 
 Hahnemann recognized three methods for the ac- 
 complishing of cures, namely : the allceopathic or hetero- 
 pathic, the exanthiopathic^ and the homccopathic. Nature 
 he held to be incapable of curing an existing disease 
 by means of one that is dissimilar ; hence energetic
 
 320 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 drugs administered upon the allasopathic principle 
 are ineffectual to remove the disease. Thus, for 
 example, the combination of mercurial and syphilitic 
 symptoms constitute a frightful and unmanageable 
 disease, which, if not absolutely incurable, yields 
 only to the most careful and persevering treatment. 
 The exantiopathic method is merely palliative, and is 
 likely through its alternate or reactive effects, to 
 aggravate the original complaint. Only the homoeo- 
 pathic treatment, therefore, is left to be employed. 
 The medicinal agent creates a medicinal disease which 
 is more intense than the other, which usurps the 
 place of the other, and is, in its own turn, extinguished 
 by the vital forces, leaving the vital principle in its 
 former state of integrity. The efficacy of medicines, 
 therefore, depends upon their pathogenetic character. 
 
 ADMINISTERING OF MEDICINES HOMCEOP ATHIC ALLY. 
 
 A prominent feature in the mode of administering 
 remedies consisted in their attenuation. This was 
 for the purpose, Hahnemann declared,^ of developing 
 the spiritual power jvhich lies hid in the inner nature of 
 medicines. The inherent spirit and principle of the 
 medicinal agent is thereby set free and is made availa- 
 ble by temporarily connecting it with some neutral 
 body, as sugar of milk, alcohol, or water. This cura- 
 tive influence is detached more readily from such 
 a neutral body so as to act promptly upon the disease. 
 Hahnemann and his disciples believed accordingly 
 that the medicinal power of a drug is not only 
 developed, but is rendered more intense by their 
 peculiar mode of preparing the attenuations. The 
 more complete the attenuation, the more potent and 
 certain, they taught, the remedial energy will become.
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 32I 
 
 In order then to bring his system of practice to 
 higher perfection, Hahnemann inculcated the specific 
 mode of administering medicines and directed the 
 giving of a single remedy at a time for a definite 
 result. " In no instance is it requisite," said he, " to 
 employ more than one simple remedy at a time for a 
 definite result." Not only did he denounce the poly- 
 pharmacy which was in vogue, the employing of for- 
 mulas including a prodigious number of ingredients 
 in a mixture, but he disapproved even of the combin- 
 ing of a small number of remedies in a prescription. 
 " In no instance is it requisite," said he, " to employ 
 more than one simple medicine at a time." Hence 
 the strict Homoeopathic physician never adds two or 
 more medicines together, although he may administer 
 remedies in alternation at suitable intervals. 
 
 FURTHER REFINEMENTS OF HOMCEOPATHIC DOCTRINE. 
 
 Disciples of Hahnemann appear to have carried the 
 spiritualism of his teachings even beyond the master 
 himself. Several of them inculcated that the smelling 
 of medicines is often sufficient. Professor Joseph 
 Rodes Buchanan discovered S5^mptoms and results 
 actually produced by the holding of medicinal sub- 
 stances in the hand carefully shielded from any direct 
 physical contact. M. Granier, of Nimes, explains the 
 matter as follows : 
 
 " Medicines are fluidic powers ; they are living 
 things {etres) that man may create at his will. I wish 
 I could say that they are occult powers, forming the 
 chain between the world and the tomb. I am con- 
 vinced in my own mind, however, that our faculty 
 of observation, placed on the confines oi fiuidic dynam- 
 ism, might cast its scrutinizing glances into the tin- 
 seen world.
 
 322 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 It is more than probable, nevertheless, that Hahne- 
 mann did himself entertain similar conceptions. This 
 seems to be indicated by the facility with which his 
 utterances have been adopted into different forms of 
 belief which have appeared in later years. Dr. 
 J. J. Garth Wilkinson, of London, himself a receiver 
 of the "Heavenly Doctrine " of Emanuel Swedenborg, 
 and familiar with the magic and psychal phenomena 
 of modern spirtualism, declares that " the practical 
 blessings of the new medicine are dependent chiefly 
 upon the Science of Correspondences, which, bringing 
 poison and medicine together with a complete fitness, 
 poisons the disease and kills it ; and secondly, upon 
 the smallness of the dose — or we would rather say — 
 the use of the spirit and not the body of the drug." 
 Given in this way, he adds, they are more like spirits 
 than material bodies. 
 
 SCHOOL OF SPECIFIC MEDICINE. 
 
 About the year 1820, the medical world was agitated 
 by a general movement for a higher scientific advance- 
 ment, and for greater breadth and freedom of indi- 
 vidual judgment. The cocoons were quick with a new 
 life, and the tenants became impatient of swaddling- 
 bands. Conservatism had ruled with an iron hand, 
 but it must give way and forbear to check enquiry 
 when the time for the new birth is fulfilled. 
 
 The influences which were active to produce dis- 
 integration in the various elaborate dogmatic sys- 
 tems, were exhibited in their full force in the ranks of 
 the Homoeopathic school. Perhaps this was because 
 it was the latest, and therefore less contracted and 
 able to withstand disrupting influences. As early as 
 1820, there had arisen in southern Germany a spirit of
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 323 
 
 dissent from many of the doctrines promulgated by 
 Samuel Hahnemann. Eminent physicians had given 
 his theories a cordial welcome, but felt conscious at the 
 same time that the system was still immature, and 
 required further development. For a time, however, 
 they refrained from any open questioning. In re- 
 ligious bodies there has been a disposition to regard 
 any differing from the standards as virtual apostasy, 
 and individuals offending in that way were exposed 
 to the treatment of renegades. It has been the same 
 in the various medical circles. Nevertheless, it is 
 not practicable to suppress honest conviction by the 
 despotic pressure of any consensus of leading opinion. 
 Majorities are not the arbiters to determine what is 
 true, and new wine cannot long be compressed into old 
 vessels. It was perfectly natural, therefore, and 
 indeed inevitable that men in the Homoeopathic 
 ranks who had already foregone professional stand- 
 ing and emolument for the sake of what they 
 regarded as a higher truth, should be desirous to 
 eliminate from the new doctrine any crudeness, or 
 vestige of error that might still inhere. Accordingly, 
 as early as 1824, Doctor Gottlieb Ludwig Rau, of 
 Hesse, published a treatise* with the purpose to im- 
 press upon his fellow Homoeopathists the importance 
 of possessing more thorough scientific and technical 
 knowledge. He disputed the authority of any umpire 
 to determine what should be received as true doctrine, 
 and expressed distrust of the metaphysic which 
 underlies the leading doctrines of Hahnemann. 
 "Others have felt the necessity like myself," he 
 declared ; " they have proclaimed it without fearing 
 
 * Ueber den Werth des Honibopathischen Heih<er/ahrens — The Value of the 
 Homoeopathic Practice of Medicine.
 
 324 HISTORV OF MEDICINE. 
 
 the reproaches of those who delight in servile obedi- 
 ence, and have made every endeavor to discover 
 errors, to procure the rejection of inadmissible hypo- 
 theses, to submit dubious assertions to a severe criti- 
 cism, and above all, to develop the New Doctrine." 
 
 To sciolists and practitioners without thorough 
 education, such a proposition is never acceptable. Able 
 men of the Homoeopathic school welcomed the publi- 
 cation as auspicious of a more gratifying condition of 
 affairs. While retaining their regard for Hahnemann 
 they were reluctant to accept his notions in regard to 
 medical study, and failed to appreciate the refined 
 and philosophic theories which he propounded. They 
 acknowledged the value of medical systems to guide 
 in practice, measuring their correctness from the 
 application of their principles. " Medicine cannot be 
 studied like a mechanical trade," Rau declared ; "in 
 every school of practice the physician must possess 
 the necessary preliminary knowledge." 
 
 These utterances presently met with a hearty re- 
 sponse all over Germany. A journal was established 
 in 1836 to explain and defend them, and not long 
 afterward a medical congress was held at Magdeburg, 
 at which the exceptionable doctrines of Hahnemann 
 were formally repudiated and a platform was adopted 
 which affirmed the theory of Specific Medicine. 
 
 It was necessary that a text-book should be pre- 
 pared to set forth dogmatically the principles of the 
 new movement. To meet this want. Dr. Rau issued 
 his celebrated work, the Organon of Specific Medication,^ 
 
 * Organon der spectfischen Heilkunst. von Dr. Gottlieb Ludwig Rau, 
 Grossherzoglich Hessischen Hofrathe und Physicus zu Giessen mehrerer gehlerter 
 Gesellschaften Mitgliede. Non qua itur, sed qua eundon est. Leipzig. 
 Verlag von Ludwig Schuman. 1838. Pp. 392.
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 325 
 
 in which he sets forth fully his position. In his pre- 
 face he defines his sentiments and motives : 
 
 " Neither attachment to a system, nor party spirit, 
 but an ardent and profound conviction of the superior 
 importance of the Specific Art of Healing \Heilmethode\ 
 has inspired me for seventeen years to active effort 
 for its promulgation. When, after a practice of 
 twenty-two years, I became acquainted with its 
 principles, which had been but imperfectly developed 
 at that time, I was led to believe that it would 
 presently emerge from its isolated condition as an 
 empiricism, and take an exalted rank by the side of 
 the other schools of medicine. 
 
 " Even the sentiment of gratitude to Samuel 
 Hahnemann, the founder of this doctrine, could not 
 prevent me from being conscious of its imperfections. 
 Indeed, it was because I fully appreciated the superior 
 importance of the Specific Principle of Healing 
 \_Heilprinceps\, that I regarded it as a sacred duty for 
 me to devote my energies to this branch of knowledge. 
 For this reason there was nothing in the world suffi- 
 cient to hold me back from following this conviction — 
 neither the contempt which brainless partisans openly 
 express for every aspiration for higher attainment 
 in science, nor the coarse language which the blind 
 champions of the old dogmatism saw fit to employ in 
 their unscrupulous attempts of later years to destroy 
 the young school, nor the propensity which has been 
 carried out by certain authors, and especially by 
 several contributors to medical journals to call its 
 adherents by nicknames, the mere repeating of which 
 would be an insult to every sense of decency. 
 
 "In asserting the right to express my judgment in 
 regard to the matter under consideration, I believe 
 that I am abundantly justified by the purpose which I 
 have already declared to make use of all laudable 
 means to extend our knowledge so as to avoid becom- 
 ing one-sided. In the course of study which 1 had 
 marked out for myself, other men of eminence and 
 superior learning have gone beyond me, and others
 
 326 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 have taken their place at my side. I had hoped, there- 
 fore, that a fellow-worker of greater experience and 
 erudition would take up the subject from the foun- 
 dation and construct a system of Therapeutics. This 
 expectation, however, has not been fulfilled. The 
 want of such a structure, complete in its several parts, 
 has been keenly felt, and I considered it high time to 
 bring out a work of this character in order to enforce 
 on the young practitioner the reasons for thoroughly 
 studying the system in all its essential principles, as 
 well as to show adversaries of Specific Medication 
 [Het'/kunst] the superiority of principles firmly estab- 
 lished to those which are founded upon scientific con- 
 jecture, and so to furnish to an extent, a summary of 
 what has been lacking heretofore to make this doc- 
 trine complete. For this purpose this book has been 
 written. 
 
 " When therefore, I follow the example of Hahne- 
 mann and select the title Organon, let no one charge 
 me with presuming to believe that I was bringing to 
 perfection a doctrine which is still capable of greater 
 development. Instead of that I must expect, — indeed 
 I earnestly desire and hope, that through a more 
 liberal expanding of the human mind and further ex- 
 perience, much of what we have so far learned will 
 present a different appearance. But I am likewise 
 certain that intelligent investigation will establish 
 the conviction that what has, after years of long and 
 careful testing, been recognized as true and right, must 
 supersede what is known only as the belief of a single 
 individual. So long as Truth is the common property 
 of all mankind, it may not be assumed that any one 
 person holds it as his exclusive possession ; and there- 
 fore, what any one sincerely believes to be true it is 
 the most sacred duty of his life to proclaim." 
 
 With such convictions, taking a broader conception 
 of his calling, and refusing to be circumscribed and 
 limited, even by the authority of a teacher whom he 
 highly revered, Rau boldly entered the field with the
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 327 
 
 new form of doctrine. He had given due credit to 
 those who had preceded him, and he was frank to 
 acknowledge the probability that we would never 
 arrive at a solution of the problems of nature which 
 would be perfectly satisfactory. He criticised the 
 theories then in vogue as being views of fact from 
 only one side. "When we consider the narrow limits 
 of our physiological knowledge," says he, "we shall 
 not be astonished at the obscurity of pathology ; and 
 thus at once will be made manifest the vagueness and 
 uncertainty of our therapeutic postulates. True, this 
 uncertainty is denied by a great number of physicians 
 — particularly, by those narrow-minded practitioners, 
 who accord unlimited faith to the text-books and to 
 the lectures of their teachers ; or, perhaps, by those 
 who have too high an opinion of their own wisdom to 
 admit that the splendor of the Medical Art is darkened 
 by extensive spots. On the other hand, however, 
 many distinguished practitioners and celebrated 
 writers have complained of the imperfections of our 
 knowledge, and have shown that those who know the 
 most feel them most keenly." 
 
 Rau deprecated the trend of pathology to gross 
 materialism, " There are pathologists," he remarked, 
 " who are at the point of overlooking the existence of 
 a vital activity, and who reject almost everything 
 which they do not either see or hear. The stetho- 
 scope, pleximetre and microscope, are their surest 
 means of diagnosis ; and there are physicians now-a- 
 days who know more about the movements and cover- 
 ings of the blood-disks, than about the mode in which 
 morbid conditions develop themselves." 
 
 He also refers pointedly to the violent adversaries 
 of the Specific mode of treatment, and shows that
 
 328 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 they differ in opinion among themselves on about 
 every important subject. Finally he declares that 
 although we possess a large number of excellent de- 
 scriptions of disease, all our knowledge in regard to 
 the causes of disease is scarcely anything but specu- 
 lative, and a tissue of contradictions. 
 
 With equal plainness, he reprehended the half- 
 instructed disciples of Hahnemann. They were not 
 able, he declared, to appreciate what had been done to 
 render their school more stable and scientific, but 
 ridiculed every such endeavor with a vehemence 
 deserving of severe censure. He likewise rebuked 
 the presumption with which they, after having made 
 one or two lucky cures, were so apt to consider them- 
 selves perfectly capable of treating any disease suc- 
 cessfully. Even Homoeopathy itself, as promulgated, 
 he believed to fall short of the mark. " The New 
 Doctrine, as it has been set forth by Hahnemann, and 
 received as sacred by a great number of his disciples, 
 does not, in our opinion, satisfy a just and impartial 
 criticism." 
 
 The attempt to combine Homoeopathy with the 
 other system, Rau declared, was certain to prove 
 fruitless. The therapeutic principles of the Old 
 School are contrary to those of the New School. The 
 antipathic or exanthiopathic method has proved inade- 
 quate ; the revulsive method has merit, but is carried 
 too far ; the specific method, developed by Hahnemann, 
 is more certain and effective. Dr. Rau, accepting his 
 doctrine of healing, nevertheless criticises absolute 
 rejecting of what has been learned and discovered 
 before him. 
 
 " All that Hahnemann requires is a careful study 
 of the external phenomena of a disease. These, in
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 329 
 
 his opinion, are sufficient to enable a physician to 
 select the proper remedy. It is needless to say that a 
 method, which embraces only the external phenomena, 
 cannot be anything else than symptomatic." 
 
 Conscientious believers of the Specific Method had 
 long felt, he remarks, that Hahnemann's treatment was 
 uncertain. External symptoms are not the only 
 indications of what is required for a cure. They con- 
 stitute the reflection of some internal dynamic dis- 
 order which only the mind can apprehend, but which 
 must be known in order to place the treatment on a 
 safe basis. Rau proposes accordingly to perfect the 
 work which Hahnemann began, " by picking out the 
 particles of truth in whatever system he may find 
 them, and by means of the Specific principle, arrang- 
 ing them into one harmonious whole." 
 
 The bold attitude which he assumed, as is usually 
 the case with leaders of new thought, was widely dis- 
 tinct from that of other Homoeopathists. Indeed, 
 there were few ikons that he professed to worship. 
 His ground was not very unlike that taken by Dr. 
 Rush. " The most successful and the most celebrated 
 practitioners," he affirmed, " are those who have kept 
 aloof from systems and have been eclectics." 
 
 He refused to accept the psora-theory in its entirety, 
 and declared that the classification of diseases as 
 acute and chronic, was of very little use in practice. 
 Yet he admits that the psora-doctrine had had consid- 
 erable influence in the development of the dogma of 
 Specific Medication, and had led to the discovery of 
 truth, which even the most devoted partisans of 
 Hahnemann failed to perceive. He also affirmed that 
 there are a great many diseases, the inveterate char- 
 acter of which is owing to a disturbance of the vital
 
 330 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 action of the vegetative system, from which proceed 
 the abnormalities which are generally designated by 
 the term dyscrasia. " It is true," he adds, " that 
 syphilis, sykosis and psora occasion many disorders, 
 and that diseases \krankheiten\ which are occasioned 
 by a contagium, unless radically cured, frequently 
 leave a morbific principle with organism, which mani- 
 fests itself in different forms. Nevertheless, it is 
 equally true that diseases greatly resembling one 
 another, and exhibiting the known forms of dys- 
 crasia, frequently arise from other causes that 
 are equally obstinate, without originating from a 
 contagion." 
 
 His theory of Life and its Manifestations lies at the 
 foundation of his doctrines, and should, therefore, 
 receive careful attention. It reminds one of former 
 philosophic theorems. 
 
 " Individual life cannot exist when contact with the 
 outer world does not take place, through which, 
 according to the principle of Twofold Causation, 
 activity is brought into existence. For life itself is 
 not the energy ; it is the manifestation in active 
 form, and the entity through this inner force, on 
 account of which reactions against the universe 
 \makrokosnios\ take place. * * * The reacting 
 process takes place in the organism, and is an abnor- 
 mal condition of the organism, but not of a different 
 life. The phenomena which characterize the process 
 of reaction take place agreeably to the laws of the 
 organic vitality. If, therefore, disease is a mere 
 modification of the reacting process, it is impossible 
 for the organism to react against its own reaction." 
 
 Again, when treating of the effects of drugs, he 
 lays down the postulate, that the vital process is neither 
 mechanical, nor chemical, nor stoichometric, nor elec- 
 tro-galvanic, but is a higher energy which a«vails itself
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 331 
 
 of these subordinate principles in the performance of 
 its functions. 
 
 He explains reaction as identical with the natural 
 healing energy [natur heilkraft\ — the power of the 
 living organism to oppose harmful influences. He 
 distinguishes between reaction and counter -2iQ.X.\.0Ti. 
 The former he defines as an energy of the organism 
 primarily excited by the influence of an external 
 agent ; and the other as synonymous with "secondary 
 action," and contrary to primary action. Hahnemann 
 regarded the latter as being the real curative action, 
 whereas physicians of other schools consider botZ^ 
 forms to be curative. 
 
 In the department of Therapeutics, Dr. Rau exhib- 
 ited a like proclivity to discrimination. Disease, he 
 explained as being a vital process, which manifests 
 itself to our senses by symptoms. In order to know 
 these correctly, aetiology and anamnesis are indispen- 
 sable ; the former as upholding the causes, and the 
 latter as setting forth the unhealthful influences 
 previously existing, which opened the way for the 
 disease. There are always two agencies cooperating 
 in the production of disease : an external, which is 
 the morbific cause, and an internal, which is the 
 organism itself. Rau affirmed the doctrine of Syden- 
 ham and others — that the general character of diseases 
 at any given period, is determined by the prevalent 
 sidereal, telluric and meteorologic influences. The 
 determining influence will manifest itself, more or 
 less, in every single instance. 
 
 Our epidemics generally illustrate this fact. The 
 late Dr. John M. Scudder, of Cincinnati, remarked at 
 a meeting of the Connecticut Eclectic Medical Asso- 
 ciation, in 1892, that he had observed every recurrence
 
 332 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 of Asiatic Cholera in this country, and that the type 
 on each occasion differed materially from the others. 
 The medical treatment, which in one epidemic was 
 most successful, was in the others, more or less, a 
 failure. 
 
 The statement of Hahnemann in regard to blood- 
 letting, that no one has a drop of blood too much, and 
 it is wrong to shed it, took the medical world by sur- 
 prise. When he made it, physicians generally had 
 gone mad after venesection. Other gifted men, of 
 various periods, had taught the same sentiment. 
 Chrysippos, Eristratos of Alexandria, and Van Hel- 
 mont, are of the number. Dr. Rau, however, took a 
 different view. " There may be excessive secretions," 
 said he, " of mucus, gastric juice, bile, semen, cerumen, 
 sweat, urine, serum ; why not of blood ? There is no 
 physiological reason why the blood should be an 
 exception." 
 
 Dr. Rau also disagrees with Hahnemann in regard 
 to the mingling of several ingredients in a prescrip- 
 tion. He cites the fact that mineral waters that have 
 wonderful healing virtues are compound substances 
 and that vegetable remedies themselves, and the 
 salts, are in no sense simple elements. Many pharma- 
 ceutic compounds are known to possess therapic 
 value, and several have become standard preparations 
 in the pharmacopoeia. Among these he names calomel 
 and opium, ammonia and tartar emetic, nitre and 
 lauro-cerasus, cinchona and tartaric acid. He re- 
 marks, however, that it is wrong to make m.edicinal 
 compounds, as we sum up numbers, and to suppose 
 that the effect of all the substances intermingled con- 
 tains the effect of each in its generic form. " There 
 is no doubt whatever," he declares, " that compound
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 333 
 
 prescriptions may be used with advantage in some 
 cases, provided that we have previously ascertained 
 their pathogenetic effects upon the healthy organism." 
 
 He likewise takes exception to the refinements of 
 Hahnemann in regard to dynamisation. He asserts, 
 positively, that the notion that the medicinal powers 
 of a drug are developed by attenuation, can properly 
 apply only to the earths and metals, and these virtues 
 are completely developed in the first clear, transparent 
 solution. " If that poiver were increased by the attenuating 
 process, every remedial agent would be converted into a deadly 
 poison." 
 
 He accepted the theory that the dynamic force of a 
 drug may be separated from its material substratum, 
 and transferred to the attenuating vehicle, like the 
 electric fluid from the cylinder to the conductor. But 
 he objected strenuously to the use of the term spiritual 
 in connection with dynamised medicinal agents. A 
 spiritual thing, he argued, is understood to be some- 
 thing not material, whereas the medicinal agent, even 
 though it be ever so minute in dimension, is still 
 matter. 
 
 Plausible and conclusive as this reasoning may 
 seem, we opine that the vision of the master has 
 transcended the logical faculty of the other. It is 
 significant, that the division of sentiment and prac- 
 tice in the ranks of Homoeopathy had its inception in 
 this very matter. 
 
 Rau acknowledged frankly, that all our knowledge 
 of pharmaco-dynamics was only fragmentary. There 
 had been no right system developed — no systematic 
 arrangement of specific remedies, with an explanation 
 of their virtues. Whether such a classification would 
 be possible at a future period, he did not attempt to
 
 334 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 predict. The physician must disentangle the chaos 
 of symptoms, separate the essential and constant 
 effects from those which are only accidental, and 
 obtain clear perception of the dynamic action of the 
 drug which he proposes to employ. " Too many," he 
 affirms, "too many think themselves competent phy- 
 sicians, whose only claims rest upon the possession of 
 a medicine-case and a Repertory of Specific Medicines^ 
 
 Dr. Rau employed only the drugs more commonly 
 in use. He sought not to add new remedies to the 
 number, but to unfold their specific properties and 
 application. He, nevertheless, sternly deprecated the 
 violent medicines in vogue among other physicians. 
 
 " Nature, the great Teacher, shows us the way to 
 cure disease without the use of cruel and dangerous 
 drugs," he declares. The remedy should be chosen, 
 he insisted, not because it is capable of producing 
 symptoms which are similar to those of the disease, 
 but because the general state of the organism arising 
 from the action of the drug is similar to the general 
 character of the disease. 
 
 The efforts of Dr. Rau and those in sympathy with 
 him resulted in the general reception, especially in 
 Southern Germany, of the tenet of Specific Medicine 
 differing in essential particulars from the teachings 
 of Hahnemann. " Under the leadership of such men 
 as Rau, Griesselich, Trinks," says Dr. Charles Hempel, 
 " they organized an opposition to the Master, which 
 has completely changed the aspect of the Homoeo- 
 pathic School in Germany." 
 
 He further describes them that they had the courage 
 and the talent to elevate it beyond the narrow limits 
 of a mere science of sensual symptoms to the exalted 
 rank of a rational and queenly Truth, to which chem-
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 335 
 
 istry, anatomy, pathology, and physiology became 
 subordinate and obedient, but indispensable support- 
 ers. They denied the fundamental dogma that the 
 Homoeopathic system was the only method of cure, 
 and even declared Hahnemann himself to be wrong 
 in applying to the various Old-School systems the 
 collective name of Allopathy. 
 
 Rau made choice of the designation Specific Medi- 
 cation \^Specifischen Heilkuntz\ because he thought it 
 likely to attract more disciples and give less offense. 
 In fact the difference between his followers and the 
 physicians of the Old School consists not so much in 
 the means and medicines used as in the rule by which 
 they are employed. It became, therefore, the prov- 
 ince of others to establish a reform in medicinal 
 agents as well as in the prevalent theories. 
 
 The new doctrines appear to have had a marked in- 
 fluence upon medical sentiment generally, both in 
 Great Britain and elsewhere. There had been an in- 
 creasing ferment in opinion for years, bringing new 
 opinions to the surface. The Botanic and Reformed 
 Schools of medical practice sprung up in the 
 United States, and their distinctive doctrines met 
 with warm sympathy among all classes in Eng- 
 land. A Medico-Botanical Society was formed in 
 London and continued for many years, having for its 
 objects an improvement in medical procedures and 
 ulteriorly a complete reformation in the practice of 
 medicine. Members of the nobility and of the more 
 intelligent classes, were identified with the move- 
 ment. The Royal Family signified an unequivocal 
 preference for physicians whose sentiments were 
 liberal. Sir James Clark was appointed in 1835 phy- 
 sician to the Dutchess of Kent and the Princess Vic-
 
 336 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 toria ; and upon the accession of the latter to the 
 British throne, she placed him at the head of the list of 
 Royal physicians, despite artful endeavors to prevent. 
 For a time the hope was confidently cherished that 
 there would be a radical change in medical practice, 
 and a union of enlightened and liberal physicians of 
 various shades of sentiment upon a common basis. 
 The British and Foreign Medical Review, conducted by Dr. 
 John Forbes, afterward physician to the Prince 
 Consort and Royal household, supported the propo- 
 sition. Dr. Balfour, of Edinburgh, visited Dr. Fleish- 
 man's Homoeopathic Hospital at Vienna, in 1846, and 
 gave his observations in a letter which was published 
 in the Review. He testified to the extraordinary fre- 
 quency of recoveries at the institution, but left the 
 question open whether they were the result of the 
 treatment, or of the healing energy of nature unob- 
 structed by medication. Dr. Forbes commented at 
 length upon the subject, declaring that the case had 
 not been proved for Homoeopathy. He also took 
 occasion to reiterate the position which he had taken 
 several years before, upon the general subject, 
 namely : 
 
 " I. Nature is more powerful in the curing of disease 
 than has been commonly supposed. 
 
 " 2. Prevailing notions in regard to the curative 
 properties of medicines should be re-investigated. 
 
 " 3. Nature as a vis medicatrix has more to do with 
 restorative operations than has been generally be- 
 lieved ; and 
 
 "4. The Hygienic — the Eclectic — the Hippocratic — 
 the Rational System of treating disease is the only 
 one that can be justified and vindicated." 
 
 Sir Humphrey Davy has justly remarked that there 
 are much greater obstacles in the overcoming of old
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 337 
 
 errors than in the discovery of new truths. It was 
 nut practicable to unite the different schools, of medi- 
 cine, or even to continue the movement for a better 
 and more enlightened practice. The disciples of 
 Cullen, Brown, and Broussais, and the favored class 
 of Continental physicians were not willing to harmon- 
 ize together with those who did not subscribe to their 
 dogmas. The jealousies and antipathies of the latter 
 also were too active, strengthened as they had been in 
 many instances by the remembrance of willful injury, 
 persecution and misrepresentation. Dr. Forbes was 
 obliged to suspend the publication of the Revieiv, and 
 the endeavor to establish a School of Liberal Medicine 
 was abandoned. 
 
 Meanwhile the radical changes which had been in- 
 troduced into the Homoeopathic Practice in Germany 
 were extended to other countries. Dr. Charles J. 
 Hempel was the first in America to controvert the 
 peculiar doctrines of Hahnemann. Pie published a 
 treatise entitled the Organon of Specific Homa-opathy, in 
 which he deliberately charged Hahnemann with hav- 
 ing sought to foist upon the medical profession a sys- 
 tem that was both incomplete and partially unsound. 
 Adopting to a great degree the distinctive sentiments 
 of Dr. Rau, he set forth disease as being not merely a 
 juxtaposition of symptoms, or subjective sensations, 
 but a condition of the organism, a disturbance 
 of normal action — an inferior degree of health. The 
 intelligent observer is aware, he adds, that the phe- 
 nomena of disease are as definite and logical as the 
 phenomena of health, and that the physiological func- 
 tions serve as a basis to pathologic facts and symp- 
 toms. It would therefore be impossible for a phy- 
 sician to trace the phenomena of disease to their point
 
 338 HISTORV OF MEDICINE. 
 
 of beginning — where the organism first became in- 
 vaded by the morbific principle, unless he possesses 
 the most accurate knowledge of physiology and 
 pathology. Without such knowledge, the art of 
 healing would remain hereafter the same as it has 
 been in a great measure heretofore, a system of specu- 
 lative theories and hypothetic assumptions. 
 
 A drug, in order to acquire the character of a 
 remedy in a given case of illness. Dr. Hempel incul- 
 cates, must invade the organism by the same door, so 
 to speak, as the morbific principle. The similarity, 
 which is the essence of the Homoeopathic dogma, should 
 not pertain merely to the outward resemblance of the 
 drug-symptoms to the symptoms of the disease. It 
 must go deeper and apply to the drug-disease reflected 
 by its pathogenic symptoms and likewise to the mor- 
 bid conditions or pathologic state of the organism. 
 He concludes accordingly with this important decla- 
 ration : 
 
 "The formula should, therefore, imply a perfect 
 CORRESPONDENCE bctweeu the drug-disease and the 
 natural pathological disturbance ; and in order to 
 leave no doubt that this compound similarity or per- 
 fect correspondence is the import of the formula, 
 a more adequate expression thereof would be : 
 correspondentia correspondentibus curantur." 
 
 This proposition, it will be observed, is in accord, if 
 it does not denote an actual accepting of the doctrine 
 of Emanuel Swedenborg, that there exists a corre- 
 spondence between all things spiritual or psychic, and 
 all things physical. Indeed, there has always been a 
 strong partiality of members of the "New Church" 
 for this " New Practice " of medicine. "All things 
 which bring harm to man are called uses" says Sweden-
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 339 
 
 borg ; " but evil uses, — because they are of use to the 
 evil for doing evil, and they conduce to absorb malig- 
 nites — thus also to cures." The " Homoeopathic law," 
 set forth by Hahnemann, is not accepted, how- 
 ever, by all New-churchmen. "An artificial disease 
 is not induced," says Mr. W. E. Payne, in the New 
 Church Repository, "but the operation is a commin- 
 gling of like spheres beyond the influence of the 
 law of elective affinity, and consequently a removal 
 of all opposing spheres beyond the circuit of the 
 action of each." 
 
 Dr. Sharp, of Rugby, England, reiterates the senti- 
 ment of Dr. Hempel, namely : That the doctrine of 
 similars should not have regard to the symptoms 
 merely, but likewise to the pathology of the case ; 
 also, that the drug used should be one that shall 
 affect the very organism that is disordered. He fur- 
 ther declared that Homoeopathy cannot become a 
 science till it shall be founded upon what he calls 
 Organopathy\ or upon a more careful consideration of 
 the seat of the disease, than Hahnemann has incul- 
 cated. 
 
 Dr. Kidd, of London, goes so far as to deny the ab- 
 soluteness of the fundamental dogma of the Homoeo- 
 pathic School. He taught that there were two laws 
 of cure, both that of similarity and that of contraries. 
 In his treatise on the Laws of Therapeutics, he adheres 
 to the concept of the relation between the action of 
 medicines upon the healthy and their curative idea 
 in sickness ; but he insists that in most cases that this 
 relation is either of similarity or of contrariety. He 
 then deduces the following principles : 
 
 " Looking to the observation of facts apart from 
 theoretic speculations, two prijjiary laws of therapeutics
 
 340 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 unfold themselves. These two laws of therapeutics 
 may well be called Galen's Law founded upon the rule 
 of contraria contrariis, and Hahnemann's, or the Hotnao- 
 pathic Law founded upon the relationship of similars." 
 
 Dr. George Wyld, of London, widely known as a 
 Homoeopathist, carried these postulates to their log- 
 ical conclusion, and in a letter to the Lancet, in 1877, 
 proposed the actual disbanding of the Homoeopathic 
 School, assigning for it the following reasons : 
 
 " I. That the views expressed by Hahnemann are 
 often extravagant and incorrect. 
 
 " 2. That Hippokrates was right when he said that 
 some diseases are best treated by similars, and some 
 by contraries ; and therefore it is unwise and in- 
 correct to assume the title of Homxopathist. 
 
 " 3. That although many believe that the action of 
 the infinitesimal in nature can be demonstrated, its 
 use in Medicine is practically, by a large number in 
 this country [England], all but abandoned," 
 
 This assertion of Doctor Wyld in regard to the pro- 
 fessed Homoeopathists of Great Britain, is likewise 
 true of the majority of the Homoeopathists in America. 
 There are those, however, who still adhere to the high 
 attenuations of medicaments, and to the dogma that 
 the causes of disease are spiritual or dynamic. But 
 those who are in accord with the refinements and 
 high spirituality of the doctrines of Samuel Hahne- 
 mann are comparatively few ; and they are generally 
 regarded by the others as visionary, and even as 
 ultraists. Unlike their leaders, Rau and his associates, 
 the latter class in this country generally adhere 
 tenaciously to the designation of Homoeopathist and 
 subscribe formally to the doctrine of similars. In 
 this matter, however, they are no more inconsistent
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 341 
 
 than is common in other circles. Parties in politics 
 are seldom correctly defined by the names which 
 they bear. It is almost universally the case that sects 
 and schools cease, after a little while, to adhere strictly 
 to the beliefs which first brought them into existence. 
 It is not in the province of this work to handle the 
 problems which are thus presented. That medicines 
 do not always act alike with individuals of different 
 temperament, has been often observed. They some- 
 times aggravate as well as ameliorate a morbid con- 
 dition. There are likewise forms of disease which do 
 not correspond to the effects of any known drug in 
 the materia medica. We are at a loss to know how 
 aconite has, according to the principle of similars, 
 any place in a Homoeopathic medicine-case. As a 
 general fact, however, modern physicians of the 
 Homoeopathic school, do not often stickle for any 
 rigid adherence to their theory, but take the plausible 
 ground that their first obligation is to the patient and 
 their duty to employ the best means at hand for his 
 benefit. They generally, but not all of them, adhere 
 to the usage of administering a single remedy at a 
 time, according to the theory of Specific Medication, 
 but they frequently give doses far the reverse of 
 infinitesimal. Some employ by preference the rem- 
 edies and therapeutic measure of the Eclectics, lead- 
 ing many individuals to mistake their professional 
 character ; while others follow in the wake of the Old 
 School, apparently more desirous to receive some 
 formal recognition from Allopathists than to endure 
 social ostracism and political proscription for the sake 
 of principle. Hempel asserted that modern Homoe- 
 opathy is not at all like the old-fashioned Hahnemann- 
 ism, and its advocates declare that its procedures are
 
 342 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 more curative and beneficial. This may be true ; 
 certainly it is difficult for a physician to accomplish 
 much good with a mode of treatment when he does not 
 enter into the spirit of it, or believe in its utility. 
 
 Hahnemann seems to have expected that the general 
 dissemination of Homoeopathic doctrines would have 
 the effect to take the medical art out of the hands 
 of a professional caste, and to domesticate it in 
 the homes of the community. This expectation has 
 not been realized. An advanced civilization tends 
 necessarily to differentiation of opinions, employ- 
 ments and professions. The ideal of a progressive 
 commonwealth is : equal opportunity for all in a land 
 of equal rights. To this end there must be diversity 
 of occupations. To require every individual to 
 execute all the callings, to be his own physician, tailor, 
 shoemaker and tiller of the soil, would be a progress 
 toward savagery ; and to establish a single school of 
 medicine, inhibiting and suppressing all others, is to 
 place an obstruction in the way of an ideal civilization. 
 
 HONIGBERGER AND THE "MEDIUM SYSTEM." 
 
 The French Revolution was the boundary between 
 the former and later Europe. Under its influence, 
 the various departments of scientific investigation 
 exhibited new energy. Medical study received a new 
 impulse, which was presently extended to the field of 
 therapeutics. The favor extended to Homoeopathy 
 in intelligent circles in Europe, and the various 
 Reform movements in America, indicated the setting 
 of the wind. As far away as India the influence was 
 perceived, and a new system was developed, which 
 not only conferred benefit where it was promulgated,
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 343 
 
 but provided a storehouse from which European and 
 American innovators in medicine did not hesitate to 
 procure material for their own work. This was the 
 Medium System. 
 
 Johann Martin Honigberger, its founder, was born 
 at Kronstadt, in Transylvania, in 1795. He early- 
 developed scholarly tastes, becoming first a skillful 
 linguist, and afterward graduating in medicine. He 
 then set out to seek his fortune. "A secret impulse," 
 says he, " an inward voice, urged me toward the East." 
 He left home in the spring of 1815, making his way 
 slowly through the Principalities, and reached Con- 
 stantinople in December of the next year. In 1817, 
 he continued his way through Asia Minor, obtaining 
 little patronage in his profession, but suffering from 
 various endemic disorders. Finally, in 1819, he was 
 able to visit the " Holy Places." He went thence into 
 Egypt, and engaged in the service of Mehemet Ali, 
 the Viceroy. The plague breaking out, soon after- 
 ward, he resigned and made a hurried departure to 
 Tripoli, in Syria. 
 
 Small-pox raged here in the epidemic form, cutting 
 off infant and adult alike, with a terrible fatality 
 Dr. Honigberger resorted to vaccination, thus intro- 
 ducing the art into Syria. He described his success 
 as very great. He was, however, confounded by later 
 experience. "When he afterward performed the oper- 
 ation at Lahore, in India, his vaccinated patients 
 contracted small-pox like others. He imputed this to 
 fault in the virus. " At that time," he remarks in his 
 biography, " I had forgotten having read somewhere 
 that vaccine matter might be procured by inoculating 
 a cow with the venomous matter taken from the small- 
 pox, and that the venom is thus turned into a remedy."
 
 344 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 While in Syria, Honigberger paid a visit to the 
 Sheikh of the Druses, at Besherri, and observed that 
 the inhabitants of the place were not affected by vac- 
 cination, and that none of them took the small-pox. 
 
 In 1823, he became the physician to Daoud [David], 
 the Pasha of Baghdad. Learning at a subsequent 
 period that several French officers were at Lahore 
 organizing the army of Runjeet Singh, the chieftain 
 of the Sikhs, and had no European physician, he 
 resolved to go thither. He set out accordingly, and 
 succeeded in reaching Isfahan, but was compelled to 
 return. In December, 1829, he undertook the journey 
 with better success, arriving at Lahore the following 
 April. He entered the service of the Maharaja, and 
 remained for four years. The passion for home then 
 seized upon him, and he obtained leave to resign. 
 Returning by way of Kabul, Bokhara, Karakum, 
 Orenburg and Russia, he spent a season at Kronstadt, 
 and then made the tour of the Continent. 
 
 Hahnemann, worried by medical persecution, had 
 made his residence at Paris. Here Honigberger visited 
 him, and was delighted at his reception. " The open 
 and good-natured Homoeopathist," he says in his 
 diary, " made many interesting revelations to me 
 respecting his New Method of Healing." Honigberger 
 afterward visited Kothen, and obtained from Dr. 
 Lehmann, Hahnemann's apothecary, a quantity of the 
 genuine Homoeopathic medicines. He spent the 
 summer of 1836 at Vienna. Here he was attacked 
 with Asiatic cholera. He treated it with ipecacuanha 
 prepared by Dr. Lehmann, and recovered in six hours. 
 He was now a Homoeopathist. 
 
 His next enterprise was to introduce the New 
 Method into Turkey. The plague was raging at
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 345 
 
 Constantinople, and every house that was regarded 
 as infected was closed. Honigberger made his way 
 to the hospital at Pera, and without any special per- 
 mission, attended the patients at his own expense. 
 He employed the Homoeopathic treatment, and with 
 encouraging success. He remained at the Turkish 
 capital two years, and had an extensive practice. 
 
 Word now came to him that Runjeet Singh desired 
 him to return to Lahore. He set out accordingly, in 
 company with General Ventura. Upon reaching 
 Pali, in India, he was attacked with the plague pecu- 
 liar to that region, and treated it successfully with 
 Ignatia, a remedy of which he had learned in Armenia. 
 He arrived at Lahore, but too late to be of service to 
 his former patron. Runjeet Singh was very ill. The 
 Homoeopathic treatment was employed, and promised 
 good results ; but a consultation of native physicians 
 was held. These were Hakhims,* pundits,f and 
 astrologists. Of course, Honigberger was overruled. 
 Another mode of treatment was adopted, and the 
 Maharaja died in two weeks. 
 
 This was the prince in whose presence the sadt or 
 fakir, Hari Dhas, by voluntary effort, asphyxiated 
 himself. He was buried in a grave enclosed by a 
 wall, and the place watched by a guard. Barley was 
 sown over the spot as a further precaution. At the 
 end of forty days, the Maharaja, General Ventura and 
 several Englishmen witnessed the disinterment and 
 resuscitation. Dr. Honigberger gives this account 
 as it was related to him by General Ventura. The 
 same fakir underwent this experience several times, 
 
 * " H^:'se Men," the title given by Arabians to their physicians. 
 + A. pundit is a learned man of the Brahman caste.
 
 346 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 once remaining underground four months. Can it be 
 that this peculiar faculty is a relic of the habit of 
 hibernation possessed by human beings in far-off 
 ages? 
 
 Dr. Honigberger remained at Lahore till 1849, 
 when the annexation of the territory of the Sikhs to 
 the British dominion put an end to his official career. 
 During this period he had accumulated an invaluable 
 amount of knowledge in natural history, archaeology, 
 and the methods of treating the sick in vogue in 
 India. He observed the success of the natives in the 
 employment of mesmerism, and noted the perfect 
 anaesthesia produced by Dr. Esdaile, at Calcutta, 
 which enabled the painless performance of many 
 capital and other surgical operations. He made a 
 large collection of Kashmirian plants, which were 
 afterward arranged and classified by European botan- 
 ists. His distinction as a savant and physician was 
 acknowledged by the leading scientific journals. He 
 was the author of several learned treatises, in bothi 
 English and German. The proceeds of their sale,' 
 which amounted to a considerable sum, he devoted to 
 the establishing of an educational school in his native 
 town. 
 
 Such was this man, worthy to rank among the bene- 
 factors of the world. Always looking for opportunity 
 to be of service in cases of mortal necessity, broad in 
 sympathy, yet never forgetful of his own, Johann 
 Martin Honigberger should not be left unremembered. 
 
 Our chief interest in him on the present occasion, 
 however, relates to the peculiar medical system which 
 he propounded. For twenty years he had followed 
 his profession after the manner in which he had been 
 instructed. He then adopted Homoeopathy, under
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 347 
 
 circumstances highly favorable. He was not bigoted 
 or one-sided, however ; he used to say that a rational 
 physician may be successful by both systems. Yet, 
 while abandoning the one, and finding much to 
 approve in the other, he could not accept unquali- 
 fiedly the teachings of Hahnemann. He had a varied 
 and not altogether satisfactory experience in the New 
 Method. In many cases the most minute doses 
 proved efficacious, but in other instances they pro- 
 duced no benefit whatever. " I am bound to confess," 
 he finally declared, " that in the majority of cases, the 
 results which I obtained from Homoeopathy were not 
 favorable ; I felt persuaded that larger doses would 
 have been better." 
 
 He describes the two systems, "• Alloeopathia and 
 Ho77i(jeopathia,'' as two opposite poles, and condemns 
 the violent and heroic methods of the former, with 
 its enormous pills and powerful mixtures, alike with 
 the feebleness and inertia of the latter, with its pyg- 
 maean flasks containing Liliputian pills and minute 
 drops. " I found," said he, " that the enormous doses 
 generally administered by the Alloeopaths, and also 
 the iiifinitesimal ones used by the Homoeopaths, were, 
 both of them, far less beneficial than they should be. 
 This observation induced me to investigate the matter 
 with much earnestness ; and in the extensive practice 
 which I had at Lahore, I was induced to adopt the 
 medium bettueen these itvo exireines.'" 
 
 Then, as though believing a propitious fate awaited 
 his peculiar doctrines, notwithstanding their apparent 
 trimming, he adds : 
 
 " I knew full well that in politics the juste jnilieu 
 does not enjoy a great share of credit, especially since 
 Louis Philippe has lost by it the throne of France ;
 
 348 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. • 
 
 but that which is incongruous and inconsistent in 
 politics may be otherwise in the Empire of Science ; 
 and the numerous successful results, which I have 
 found the Medium System to have effected, have 
 tended strongly to confirm these convictions." 
 
 Honigberger arraigns the heroic or " Alloeopathic " 
 practitioners for their violent medication, and their 
 unwillingness to investigate or adopt improvements. 
 
 " It would be much better when such medicines are 
 used in undiluted doses only, to desist from using 
 them. It is really pitiable, when all other Arts and 
 Sciences have made such important progress, that 
 Medicine should continue stationary ; that its profes- 
 sors, from an unwillingness to investigate the nature, 
 virtue or proper use of medicinal substances, should 
 fancy themselves bound to condemn simple yet effica- 
 cious plants to oblivion, as things which Providence 
 has created for the delight of our eyes only, and which 
 are sure to injure us, should we attempt to use them. 
 Where are the Salvia, the Ruta, Euphrasia, Impera- 
 toria ? As for the deadly poisons, calomel and opium, 
 these glitter as fatally brilliant in the East Indian 
 medical horizon as they do among English physicians." 
 
 In selecting his Materia Medica, Honigberger 
 pleaded earnestly in favor of procuring remedies 
 from the indigenous plants of every country. This 
 he frankly avowed was for economical reasons. He 
 accordingly enriched his collection by many medicinal 
 plants belonging to the Flora of India. Nevertheless, 
 he was not an advocate of remedies exclusively from 
 the vegetable kingdom. He experimented with ser- 
 pent-poison and other animal substances, and actually 
 employed metallic rings, some of silver and zinc, and 
 others of copper and zinc, as prophylactics against 
 cholera. He even continued the practices of bleeding
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 349 
 
 and blistering, which he had learned in his earlier 
 years. 
 
 He enumerates all the principal mineral remedies — 
 mercury, arsenic, antimony, lead, copper, zinc, iron, 
 silver, and their compounds — and tells of their use by 
 native Indian practitioners. He employed some, if 
 not all of them, himself ; only, however, in the small 
 doses peculiar to the Hahnemannian practice. The 
 medicinal properties which he ascribes to many of the 
 vegetable remedies differ more or less from the 
 descriptions in American books, especially those of 
 the Eclectic School. This may be explained in a 
 great degree by the fact that much of his information, 
 as he acknowledges, was derived from natives, and he 
 was liable accordingly to many mistakes. It is also 
 well known that the differences of soil and climate 
 manifest their effects by modifying the essential 
 properties and even the constituents of plants. 
 
 In regard to nostrums Honigberger affected no ex- 
 clusiveness or ill feeling. He embraced them in his 
 apostolic eclecticism, — to " prove all things and hold 
 fast that which is good." Accordingly he included 
 Morrison's and Holloway's pills, and Warburg's fever 
 drops in his Materia Medica, and administered them 
 in small doses. 
 
 The prominent characteristic features of the Medium 
 System, it will be perceived, consisted in the employ- 
 ing of specifics, in the smallness of the dosage, and in 
 pleasant medicines. " I am convinced," says Honig- 
 berger, "that specifics do not act mechanically, but 
 physically, being in connection with the malady as 
 iron with the magnet ; and that not the quantity, but 
 the quality of the remedy produces the desired 
 effect."
 
 350 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The specifics which he commended were those of 
 which he had himself tested the efficacy. He mentions 
 the Homoeopathic method of triturations long con- 
 tinued, and the hypothesis that electricity is thereby 
 evolved and its properties imparted to the medicine. 
 He does not seem to credit this notion, but declares 
 as his own belief that fifteen to sixty minutes will be 
 sufficient time for the triturating of the medicaments. 
 He insists, however, that every physician ought to pre- 
 pare the remedies which he prescribes. Apothecaries, 
 he remarks, are often ignorant, and apt to make mis- 
 takes, and they sometimes have a practice of substi- 
 tuting other drugs for the one prescribed, while the 
 physician is responsible for the results. 
 
 In regard to minute dosage, Honigberger defends 
 it, because that the same medicine acts very differ- 
 ently according to the quantity of the dose, or the 
 interval at which it is administered. "Therefore," 
 says he, " since we are aware that medicines in minute 
 doses possess peculiar properties and powers, it is our 
 bounden duty to make ourselves acquainted with this 
 mode of using them, and it is imperative for us to fore- 
 go such notions and principles, hereditary or acquired, 
 as are founded on prejudice. Minute doses alone can 
 produce medicinal action. Properly employed, they oper- 
 ate beneficially, because their action is confined to 
 that part of the body which is the seat of disease, 
 while the remainder of the system is not attacked or 
 weakened ; if improperly employed, they cannot, from 
 minuteness, be very injurious." 
 
 His theory of their operation was as follows : 
 " Small particles of medicaments dissolved on the 
 tongue by the saliva, mix with the chyle on entering 
 the stomach, and their effect is then conveyed by the
 
 FORMER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 351 
 
 electric or magnetic action of the nerves, to the 
 remote parts over which they are destined specifically 
 to operate." 
 
 Of the matter of pleasantness in the administering 
 of medicines, Honigberger made great account. " Be- 
 sides the other advantages which this [Medium] 
 System possesses," says he, '' the remedies are adminis- 
 tered in so agreeable form that they may be taken 
 without the consciousness that they are medicinal. 
 This is worthy of attention, as it removes one of the 
 many difficulties which obstruct the way of the phys- 
 ician in the exercise of his profession." He adds this 
 further ingenious reasoning : " Nature, in placing at 
 our disposal such vast stores of medicinal treasures, 
 surely never conceived the revengeful action of pun- 
 ishing those who had recourse to this aid. It is more 
 consistent with reason to suppose that they were 
 benevolently endowed by nature with their peculiar 
 flavor to warn us against the danger of using them too 
 freely." 
 
 He accordingly made great use of the lozenge or 
 tablet in his preparations. Sometimes he coated medi- 
 cines with sugar, but he generally chose to mingle the 
 remedy and sugar through the entire lozenge. 
 
 Honigberger fully appreciated the obstacles which 
 his innovations must encounter from those who were 
 attached to the older methods, and likewise the 
 ingratitude which is the lot of public benefactors. To 
 those opposing him from pecuniary interest, ignorance 
 or prejudice, he answered with no argument but 
 silence. Of others, however, he was more considerate, 
 "It cannot be expected," he said, "that men should 
 abandon their lengthy prescriptions and familiar 
 methods, to study new ones ; or that they should be
 
 352 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 persuaded that minute doses could produce effects 
 more salutary and more rapidly than larger ones." 
 
 He put forth no attempt to found a distinct school 
 or party in medicine. His aim was to make his 
 doctrines and discoveries as widely beneficial as possi- 
 ble, without regard to his own fame or personal ad- 
 vantage. He hoped that others would continue his ex- 
 periments and perfect his methods. He sought in his 
 writings, to adapt them to the understanding of every 
 man and make them suitable for the use of families 
 and private individuals, as well as physicians. " It 
 often happens," he remarked, " that he who has but a 
 slight knowledge of medicine, and understands the 
 peculiarities of his own constitution, is able by the 
 timely application of a suitable remedy, entirely to 
 remove, or lessen any illness with which he may be 
 attacked." 
 
 Having duly explained his methods and principles, 
 Honigberger submitted them to the public attention. 
 " If," said he, " my work meets with a favorable recep- 
 tion and is considered useful, I shall feel happy in 
 having attained my most ardent wishes." 
 
 In this spirit he added his discoveries and expe- 
 rience to the stock of knowledge already possessed by 
 the world, placing it there as the woman in the 
 parable hid her leaven in the meal, to remain unre- 
 garded till the whole mass should be leavened.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. — CONTINUED. 
 
 RADEMACHER, THE GERMAN ECLECTIC. 
 
 Another luminary in the medical sky, whom we 
 shall regard with interest, was Johann Gottfried 
 Rademacher. He appears to have had the career 
 characteristic of a sage, having been carefully kept 
 in the background and left unnoticed while living, 
 but finding acceptance for his doctrines after he was 
 dead. He was a pupil of Hufeland, and after he had 
 graduated in medicine he entered into practice in the 
 town of Goch, in Rhenish Prussia, in 1792. For 
 twenty-one years he administered remedies and cared 
 for his patients after the ways which he had been 
 taught. Presently, however, his observations and 
 experience convinced him that the current methods, 
 though considered as scientific and regular, were not 
 beneficial. 
 
 Paracelsus has said : " I threw myself with fervent 
 enthusiasm on the teachers ; but when I saw that 
 little resulted from their practice except killing, 
 death, laming and distorting ; that the greatest num- 
 ber of complaints were deemed by them incurable, 
 and that they scarcely ever administered anything but 
 syrups, laxatives, etc., with everlasting clysters, I
 
 354 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 determined to abandon such a miserable art, and to 
 seek truth by some other way." 
 
 Similar to this was the course pursued by Rade- 
 macher. Being a very conscientious man, a diligent 
 observer and investigator, with a philosophic as well 
 as scientific temper, he engaged in earnest search for 
 a profounder knowledge, which should reveal to him 
 better procedures and assure him better results. He 
 consulted the writers of the fifteenth century, and 
 quickly perceived the meaning of their arcane ex- 
 pressions, and peculiar jargon, which have misled so 
 many superficial readers and reasoners into a false 
 understanding of the doctrines which they actually 
 held and sought in this way to promulgate. 
 
 Rademacher explains the motive which led the 
 alchemists to shroud their notions in an obscure 
 terminology as being for protection. They sought 
 thereby to shield themselves from persecution and 
 cruel punishments at the hands of the Galenists, 
 the " regular " physicians of the time. As the laws 
 were then administered, the penalty of imprisonment, 
 the torture-chamber, and even death threatened the 
 practitioner who fell under their displeasure. 
 
 Rademacher described the alchemists as original 
 thinkers and investigators, and as being proficient in 
 natural science ; while the others were little else than 
 theorizers, deriving all their opinions and professional 
 knowledge from those who had been taught in the 
 same way, and never venturing to depart from the 
 established routine. He had made himself familiar 
 with the philosophic and more advanced views of the 
 time. He had studied diligently the works of Para- 
 celsus, Van Helmont and Emanuel Swedenborg of 
 whom he was a warm admirer. He was himself a
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CONTINUED. 355 
 
 man of extensive learning, but when he became an 
 author he followed the example of the great master, 
 Von Hohenheim, and instead of the obscure diction 
 and technical language so often employed, wrote in the 
 vernacular of the common people.* This brought 
 down upon him the ire of many of his learned friends, 
 and induced many publishers to refuse to print his 
 books. It is a curious whim and diverting at times, 
 that men professing the love of learning should insist 
 on the employing of a terminology which the common 
 reader or hearer cannot readily understand. Acknow- 
 ledging in words that education is essential to the 
 public safety, they actually, from affectation, or a more 
 ignoble motive, seek thus to obstruct the commu- 
 nicating of vital and important knowledge. They 
 cannot be said to emulate the example of the sun 
 who holds his seat among the brightest stars, but 
 grudges not to bestow his light and warmth upon the 
 humblest one that lives on the earth. 
 
 In 1814, Rademacher began his reformed practice. 
 He was strictly eclectic in his methods and followed 
 closely upon the principles laid down by Von Hohen- 
 heim, adopting what was proved to be healthful and 
 discarding every baneful agent. His medicines were 
 chiefly from the vegetable kingdom. He made the 
 significant remark in his Vindication, a work published 
 in 1848, that he might, perhaps, resort to bloodletting 
 in organic disease of the liver and spleen, or even to 
 the exhibition of mercurius vivus in ileus, but never- 
 theless, that during a practice of twenty-five years, 
 from 1816 to 1841, he had never found it necessary. 
 He had employed a simple and kindly treatment with 
 
 " Think like the wise, but use the language of the many."— Aristotle.
 
 356 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 his patients, and succeeded better than with the 
 former methods. 
 
 Among the medicines which he employed, were 
 cream of tartar, acetate of potassa, sulphur, Epsom 
 salts, and various preparations of zinc and lead. He 
 also made great use of the acetate of iron, lauding it 
 warmly. He depended, however, very largely upon 
 botanic remedies, and obtained with them the best 
 results. 
 
 Unlike most of the luminaries whose works have 
 been permitted to shed light upon the world, Rade- 
 macher was simply a practitioner of medicine in a 
 town of modest pretensions, and not the robed pro- 
 fessor of a metropolitan university. He was, doubt- 
 less, more accurate and certain in what he uttered, 
 but he was likewise far less sure of a favorable intro- 
 duction to public attention. 
 
 In 1841, he completed his great work, and entitled 
 it : A Vindication of the Art of Healing, True i?i Principle 
 and Confirmed by Experience, as Taught by the Old Masters 
 of Medicine, but now Generally Misufiderstood j together 
 with a True statemcfit of its Practical Demonstration in 
 Twenty five Years of Clinic Practice.* In it he vindi- 
 cated the medical doctrines of Paracelsus and his 
 successors, and added his own contributions which 
 had been gathered from a rich mine of experience. 
 Thus he forcibly illustrated the inspired remark of 
 D. A. Wasson : 
 
 " An Arabian hospitality as well to the suggestions 
 
 * Rechtfertigeng der von den Gelehrten missbekannten ver siandesrechten £rfakr- 
 ung sheilleher der scheidekunstigen Geheimdrzie, und treue Mitteheilung des 
 Ergebuisses einer 2s-jdhrigen Eprabung dieser Lehre ant Krankenbetie ; zion 
 JoHANN Gottfried Rademacher. Berlin : 1841, Druck und Verlog von G. 
 Reimer. In two volumes.
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. — CONTINUED. 357 
 
 of ancient tradition as to the adventure of modern 
 thought, belongs to genius as its insuperable trust." 
 
 Rademacher was truly a man who dared follow 
 what best accorded with his convictions. He wrought 
 and wrote for the future. He had none of that bigotry 
 of progress, which, from selfish interest or a fanatic 
 devotion to that which may be about to prevail, is 
 ready and eager to belittle all that has been. 
 
 His writings were in the popular style, giving to 
 pedantic schoolmen their pretext for decrying his 
 doctrines. Rademacher, however, was not only wise 
 enough for a great effort, but wise enough for a great 
 persistence. He whom error cannot pervert will not 
 be harmed by it. In 1846, at the age of seventy-five, 
 Rademacher prepared a second edition, and in 1848 a 
 third one was published. " And the common people 
 heard him gladly." 
 
 If often seems, when new thought or new knowl- 
 edge comes to the world, that individuals remote 
 from each other, and perhaps having no direct com- 
 munication, apprehend it at the same time. It has 
 been so with scientific discoveries. When Rademacher 
 was engaged with his new methods and weaving them 
 together into a coherent system, a kindred movement, 
 the Reformed Practice of Medicine was coming into 
 form and making ready to take rank as a distinct 
 school in America. 
 
 THE " CHRONO-THERMAL SYSTEM." 
 
 In 1835 there was published in London a little 
 treatise bearing the following significant title : 
 Fallacy of the Art of Physic as Taught in the Schools. It 
 was nothing less than an arraignment of the prac-
 
 358 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 tice of bloodletting and heroic medication, which had 
 been universal among physicians in Great Britain, 
 Europe and America. It also propounded a new and 
 simpler principle for the administering of remedies, 
 under the designation of the Chrono- Thermal System. 
 The author was Dr. Samuel Dickson, a native of Edin- 
 burgh, then residing at Cheltenham and actively- 
 engaged in practice. He had graduated at the Uni- 
 versity of Glasgow, and served for many years as a 
 medical officer in India. He gave the following 
 account of his position : 
 
 " It was my fate — I can scarcely call it my fortune — 
 to make two most important discoveries in medicine, 
 namely : The periodicity of movement of every organ and 
 atom of all living tissues, and the intermittency and unity 
 of all diseases, however named and however produced. 
 To these I added a third : the Unity of Action of Cause 
 and Cure; both of which involve change of temperature. 
 Such is the groundwork of the Chrono- Thermal System" 
 
 Dr. Dickson gives the following summary of the 
 new doctrine : 
 
 " The phenomena of perfect health consist in the 
 regular repetition of alternate motions or events ; each, 
 like the different revolutions of the wheels of a watch, 
 embracing a special period of time. 
 
 " 2. Disease, under all its modifications, is, in the first 
 place, a simple exaggeration or diminution of the 
 amount of the same motions or events, and being uni- 
 versally alternative with a period of comparative health, 
 strictly speaking, resolves itself into Fever — remittent 
 or intermittent, chronic or acute j every kind of structural 
 disorganization, from tooth-decay to pulmonary con- 
 sumption, and that decomposition of the knee-joint, 
 familiarly known as white-swelling, being merely 
 'developments' in its course — tooth-consumption, 
 lung-consumption, knee-consumption.
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CONTINUED. 359 
 
 " 3. The tendency of disorganization, usually de- 
 nominated acute or inflammatory, differs from the chronic 
 or scrofulous, in the mere amount of motion and tem- 
 perature : the former, being more remarkably char- 
 acteristic of excess of both, consequently exhibits a 
 more rapid progress to decomposition or cure ; while 
 the latter approaches its respective terminations by 
 more subdued and therefore less obvious alternations 
 of the same action and temperature." 
 
 Dr. Dickson subscribed heartily to the maxim of Hip- 
 pokrates: ^^Omntufn morborum unus et idem est" — the cause 
 of all diseases is one and the same. With a theory so 
 simple and comprehensive it was easy to sweep into 
 the waste-basket and garbage-box, the whole compli- 
 cated, and often inconsistent classification of diseases 
 with their multifarious names and distinctions, as friv- 
 olous and absurd. 
 
 In his explanation of his system and mode of prac- 
 tice. Dr. Dickson considered ague or intermittent 
 fever as the type or model of all the maladies to 
 which man is liable. The other forms, such as remit- 
 tent or typhus fever, rheumatism, pneumonia, the 
 exanthemata, etc., he regarded as varieties. The steps 
 or stages are analogous in all, namely : Chills, fever, 
 and cessation of the attack, which last is comparative 
 health. Hence, whatever the form of the complaint, 
 the propriety of adopting any remedial measure has, 
 in every case, more or less relation to time and tem- 
 perature. Medicines should be administered, as a 
 general thing, during the cessation of the attack, with 
 the view of extending this condition and preventing, 
 or at least retarding, a new occurring of the violent 
 symptoms of the malady. 
 
 Dr. Dickson denounced bloodletting with the 
 vehemence of Martin Luther, or an apostle of a new
 
 360 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 crusade. Few are the diseases he affirmed, which the 
 loss of blood may not of itself produce. " The symp- 
 toms of Asiatic cholera are the identical symptoms of 
 a person bleeding slowly away from life." Magendie 
 mentioned pneumonia as having been occasioned by 
 loss of blood, and all know that the functions of diges- 
 tion and respiration are impeded by the same cause. 
 More deaths were from the lancet than the lance. 
 
 He also deprecated the surgical influence that pre- 
 ponderates in the medical schools, and quoted the 
 declaration of Shakspere with approval, that the art 
 of operators had " no art in it." He added his own 
 conviction that, " if physic were better cultivated, 
 there could be little need for such an opprobrium in 
 medicine as operative mutilation." 
 
 He likewise deplored the preference of English 
 women for male over female practitioners of midwifery. 
 He declared that it enabled persons badly educated to 
 worm themselves into the confidence of patients, and 
 by arts and collusion, to monopolize the entire prac- 
 tice of medicine. More children perish, he affirmed, 
 by the meddlesome interference of the^e persons, than 
 have ever been saved by the aid of their instruments. 
 He quotes, with cordial approval, the memorable re- 
 mark of Sir Anthony Carlisle : " The birth of a child 
 is a natural process, and not a surgical operation." 
 
 For the Homoeopathic dogmas, Dr. Dickson exhibited 
 little patience. To the assertion of Hahnemann, that 
 life resembles nothing that does not live, he replied 
 that the phenomena embraced by the term resemble 
 every thing of which our senses can take cognizance. 
 He himself defines life as " electricity in its highest 
 sense, even as the attraction of gravitation is electric- 
 ity in its lowest sense." According to his theory
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. — CONTINUED. 361 
 
 medicines exert an electric influence upon the organ- 
 ism ; but he remarks, that they are by no means uni- 
 form in their effects upon different patients. " Like 
 every force in nature," he declares, "our remedial 
 powers all act by causing attraction or repulsion, and 
 every remedy can act both ways in different individuals. All 
 remedial agencies have the power of producing in- 
 verse motion ; and so, in this way, they cure or alle- 
 viate in one case, while \.\iQy cause or aggravate disease 
 in another." 
 
 Hahnemann further sets forth the manner in which 
 we may know beforehand the medicine which is the 
 surest method of cure in each given case of disease. 
 As soon as we have under our eyes the table of 
 the particular morbid symptoms produced on a healthy 
 man, it only remains for us to have recourse to mere 
 experiments. These alone are capable, he afhrms, of 
 determining what are the medical symptoms, the 
 symptoms produced by the medicine in the healthy 
 subject, which always arrest and cure the like morbid 
 symptoms (diseases) in a rapid and durable manner. 
 
 Dickson declared to the contrary, that if Hahne- 
 mann had known that every medicinal power being a 
 repulsive force in one individual, and an attractive 
 force in another, may act inversely in any two cases 
 of the same disease, he would never have written this 
 statement. Dickson then adds, that if there be a truth 
 more sure than another in physic, it is this : " That 
 until we have absolutely tried a medicinal agent in 
 any given case, we can not possibly tell whether it 
 shall be a remedy or an aggravant in that particular 
 case. Trial and experience are your only guides. 
 This much, however, you may, in the majority of cases 
 of any given disease, point out : That such agents as
 
 362 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 have generally a definite power for good or evil, over 
 definite parts of the body, are the class from which 
 you are to expect the most benefit in a disease of such 
 parts ; but which of them, the experience of that case 
 itself can only tell you. 
 
 " So far, the art of physic is, and ever will, I fear, 
 remain imperfect." 
 
 Having thus repudiated what he denominates "the 
 exploded doctrine of Specifics," or remedies which 
 always arrest and cure certain morbid symptoms, 
 Dickson calls in question the dogma of Similars in the 
 following terms : 
 
 " The doctrine that like cures like was so obvious as 
 to be a popular axiom in every age ; but it is only the 
 minor of a major proposition, a fragment of the great 
 Abstract Law : Atiy given power applied in a particular 
 degree, and at particular periods, may cause, cure, aggravate, 
 or alleviate, any given forjn of disease, according to the consti- 
 tution of the particular patient'' 
 
 "Awful is the duel between Man and the Age in 
 in which he lives," says Lord Bulwer-Lytton. Dr. 
 Dickson realized this to the supreme moment. He 
 was fiercely assailed by the medical journals, and 
 what he termed " the organized opposition of the 
 Schools — the Brodies, the Chambers, and the Clarks." 
 The champions of the lancet and blood-bowl over- 
 flowed with rancor at being assured that they were in 
 the wrong. On the Continent of Europe, the works 
 of Dickson met with a more friendly reception. They 
 were translated and reprinted in France, Germany, 
 Sweden and America. 
 
 Everywhere they bore their fruit. Finally, although 
 Dickson was a prophet achieving no honor in his 
 own country, his methods and theories won accept-
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CONTINUED. 363 
 
 ance. To avoid any just acknowledgment, and hide 
 the fact of retreat and surrender, refuge was sought 
 in that common resort of mediocrity : the statement 
 that the type of diseases had changed. Dr. Dickson 
 announced the result in 1845, in the following forcible 
 language : 
 
 " The Chrono-Thermal Principle is denied, disguised, 
 and plagiarized ; but the Chrono-Thermal Practice 
 secretly triumphs on every hand ! " 
 
 dosimetric MEDICATION. 
 
 Following closely upon the various reforms and 
 improvements in Medical Practice, was the method 
 known as Dosimetric Medication. It was first promul- 
 gated about the year i860, by Dr. Burggrave, of the 
 University of Ghent, and has since met with a very 
 favorable reception. It has been adopted by about 
 one-fifth of the physicians in France, and by more 
 than ten thousand upon the Continent. It likewise 
 obtained a foothold in Great Britain, and later in the 
 United States. The late Dr. William Hitchman, of 
 Liverpool, a graduate of the University of Erlangen, 
 and former president of the British Eclectic Medical 
 Conference, adopted it during the later years of his 
 life ; and Dr. Richards Gray gave a very complete 
 summary of the doctrine with warm commendation, 
 in his address to the World's Congress of Eclectic 
 Physicians and Surgeons, at Chicago, in 1893. 
 
 The name is derived from the peculiar mode of 
 dosage, although its advocates have a very well 
 defined theory of pathology and therapeutics. Dr. 
 Burggrave strenuously asserted that Dosimetry was 
 by no means a system of medicine, but only a better
 
 364 HISTORV OF MEDICINE. 
 
 method of treating the sick. His attention was directed 
 to the matter by observing the great mortality among 
 the patients undergoing surgical operations in the 
 Hospital of Ghent. About two-thirds of them died 
 either of traumatism or of purulent infection. Later 
 on, the antiseptic dressing of Lister was adopted, and 
 the number fell to fifteen or twenty per cent. 
 
 Burggrave regarded the traumatic fever as due to a 
 stoppage of blood in the capillary vessels, caused by 
 a paralysis or fatigue of the vaso-motor nerves which 
 control the circulation. The stagnation first produced 
 heat and then inflammation ; and so was the origin of 
 congestion, change of texture, and finally of lesions. 
 He called to mind a successful treatment of intermit- 
 tent fever and cholera, in Russia, by Dr. Mandt, of St. 
 Petersburg, and tried it upon patients with fever in 
 the hospital. Mandt employed extracts of medicinal 
 plants, but Burggrave substituted alkaloids, such as 
 strychnia, to give tone to the ganglionic nervous 
 system, and veratrin and aconitine, to arrest the fever. 
 He succeeded in bringing the mortality in the hospi- 
 tal to five, and even at times to two and a half per 
 cent. He thus made the discovery that it is some- 
 times possible to prevent the fever, and very often to 
 jugulate it outright. 
 
 Dr. Burggrave distinguished two periods in a dis- 
 ease ; the first dynamic, presenting only functional 
 disturbance ; and the second, organic, accompanied by 
 a change of tissue. In the first of these periods, the 
 physician should use the most active means to jugu- 
 late the disease, or cause it to abate. From this fact 
 Dr. Burggrave educed his rule, to give an acute attack 
 an acute treatment, giving his medicines in small doses, 
 and repeating them till the desired effect is obtained,
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CONTINUED. 365 
 
 regardless of the quantity of medicine administered. 
 Dr. Gray, in his Address, thus explains the principles 
 underlying this rule of practice : 
 
 " We all agree, that wherever there is general dis- 
 turbance and special disorder, the former resides in 
 the vascular system, and the latter in some special 
 organ. They are physiological troubles, dependent 
 upon susceptibility, which it becomes imperative to 
 moderate. The Medical Art consists in rendering 
 organic lesions latent and stationary, and in causing 
 functional disorders to cease, instead of creating a 
 greater disorder, as in the Empirical Method. To 
 counteract these physiological troubles, Nature has 
 given us therapeutic agents of a general and special 
 kind ; and the Dosimetric Practice shows us how to 
 make use of them more readily. No time is lost in 
 waiting for the development of disease. Whether it 
 be cerebral, thoracic, or abdominal trouble which 
 confronts the physician, the dosimetrist attacks the 
 presenting symptoms, and is thus enabled to anticipate 
 organic lesions." 
 
 The peculiar mode of dosage consists in the employ- 
 ing of "parvules" prepared in accordance with these 
 principles ; although the various tinctures of Eclectic 
 and Homoeopathic manufacturers are used for similar 
 purposes. The theory of Dr. Bocnninghauser assumes 
 that medicaments have affinity, not only for particular 
 morbid conditions, but for distinct sides of the body. 
 Due consideration is also to be had for the differences 
 existing in each patient, as to sensitiveness, disposi- 
 tion and temperament. The parvules are given, one 
 or two, every ten or fifteen minutes, till the physio- 
 logical effect of " calmness " is produced. 
 
 Small dosage facilitates the absorption of the medi- 
 cine, and at the same time makes it certain that the 
 needed ouantity will not be exceeded. The physician
 
 366 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 begins with small doses, and increases in quantity and 
 potency as the system of the patient becomes accus- 
 tomed to the medicament. The Dosimetric Law is 
 TIME : to acute diseases, a rapid treatment ; and to 
 chronic, lengthened intervals ; as for example, one or 
 two hours between doses. " In my own practice," 
 says Dr. Gray, " alternation is the rule — one medicine 
 night and morning ; the second, either before or after 
 meals. At times the disorder or disease may require 
 a third, as in pneumonia, for instance. Then I usually 
 employ Bryonia, aconite and phosphorus every half- 
 hour, in alternation, till the symptoms are subdued ; 
 then at longer intervals. In a rheumatic diathesis, a 
 fourth is added, each singly — either Rhus toxicoden- 
 dron or Cimicifuga racemosa." 
 
 Dosimetrists affirm that the Dosimetric Method is 
 the practice of Medicine employing the active princi- 
 ples of plants in small doses, mathematically measured, 
 and scientifically adapted to the various abnormal 
 conditions. Nevertheless, the remedies which they 
 use are by no means, all of them, derived from the 
 vegetable kingdom. Sepia, hepar sulphuris, phos- 
 phorus, and other agents of the Homoeopathic phar- 
 macopoeia are found in the Dosimetric catalogue. 
 " The preparation of its medicaments is as perfect," 
 Dr. Gray declares, *' as the present state of knowledge 
 permits. Chemistry has placed within our reach 
 powerful agents to control disease, transcending any 
 before realized or possessed. As compared with sixty 
 years ago, an enchanter's wand can now be waved 
 over disordered or diseased conditions, arresting 
 agonizing pain, and procuring for the fever-tossed 
 invalid calm repose, without detriment to the system 
 itself."
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CONTINUED. 367 
 
 It will be noticed that the claims here made declare 
 the attaining of a degree of precision and exactitude 
 approximating actual perfection. The teachings of 
 pathology are only of service, we are told, in so far as 
 they explain and make clear the appearances of dis- 
 order and disease, thereby assisting clinical observa- 
 tion. It does not appear, however, that the distinct- 
 ive views of Dosimetric practitioners vary widely, or 
 separate them necessarily from other schools already 
 mentioned. They appear to agree substantially with 
 the sentiments of Rau and Hempel ; and indeed, their 
 advocates plead that they are in harmony likewise 
 with the doctrines of the Eclectic School. There is 
 no umpire with authority to decide the matter, nor is 
 there occasion for judgment. The course adopted by 
 the physicians themselves must be the criterion. 
 
 THE BIOCHEMIC SYSTEM. 
 
 Dr. Schuessler, of Oldenburg, in Germany, has the 
 distinction of founder of the Biochemic system of 
 therapeutics. It purports to be founded upon re- 
 searches in biology, cellular pathology, spectrum anal- 
 ysis, minute anatomy, analytic chemistry, and kindred 
 sciences. Schuessler connects in his work the various 
 inorganic substances that pertain to the various 
 tissues of the body, and deduces this fundamental 
 principle : " The structure and vitality of the organs 
 depend upon the presence of the necessary quantities 
 of these organic constituents." Disease is caused by 
 a loss or deficiency, or by an excess, of some of these 
 constituents ; and its cure is to be accomplished 
 accordingly by making up the deficiency and restor- 
 ing the chemical equilibrium of the histological ele- 
 ments. If the Mood be deficient in iron, soda and
 
 368 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 potassa ; the brain and nerves lacking in phosphate, 
 the muscles in potassium, the bones in phosphate of 
 lime ; then by this method of procedure we add the 
 wanting elements, and the disease is cured. 
 
 Schuessler following the astrologic notion, it has 
 been said, classified the human system in twelve 
 departments, and debased twelve " tissue-remedies," 
 as they are termed, to meet their respective diseased 
 conditions. There is much plausibility in his principal 
 theories, and they have been favorably received by 
 man)" physicians, chiefly of the Homoeopathic school. 
 The tissue-remedies, it is explained, are not so much 
 of the nature of medicines as of food for some consti- 
 tutional want, " supplying the deficiency of cell-salts." 
 This would seem to be in conformity to the declar- 
 ation of Hippokrates, that it was in the dietetic needs 
 of mankind that medicine had its origin. 
 
 HYDRO-THERAPEUTICS, OR " WATER-CURE." 
 
 The water treatment as a remedial practice, had its 
 origin at Griifenberg, in Austrian Silesia, about the 
 year 1829. It had inception from an accident. 
 Vincent Priessnitz, a farmer, having had the misfor- 
 tune to break several of his ribs, found the application 
 of water more efficacious than the lotions of the phy- 
 sician to relieve the sharp pains and inflammation. 
 Following the clew thus obtained, he made use of the 
 same treatment with excellent result in various dis- 
 eases. He afterward began to administer it to his 
 neighbors, with a success that speedily made the pro- 
 cedure celebrated, and caused Grafenberg to be 
 thronged with patients. 
 
 Lord Bulwer-Lytton also came, and his eloquent 
 description of the treatment was widely read and
 
 THE ININETEENTH CENTURY. CONTINUED. 369 
 
 admired. Captain Claridge, having had the experi- 
 ence as a patient, introduced the Water-cure into 
 England, and within a brief period sanatoriums were 
 established there and in America. 
 
 By this time the medical authorities of Austria were 
 in arms. Inspired by professional jealousy they insti- 
 tuted a legal prosecution, and procured a royal com- 
 mission of enquiry. Priessnitz was made to undergo 
 a vigorous examination ; his methods were scrutin- 
 ized, and even the sponges used in them were torn in 
 pieces and subjected to chemical analysis in the hope 
 to detect him practicing medicine surreptitiously. 
 There was no way found open, however, to interrupt 
 him except to prohibit the use of water for washing 
 and in the place of drugs, a procedure which would 
 have excited general ridicule. The attempt at inter- 
 ference seemed only to make Priessnitz and the water- 
 treatment more generally known through all civilized 
 countries. 
 
 Having thus overcome legal and professional hos- 
 tility, the next stage was reached. A puerile endeavor 
 was made to show that the Water-cure was of English 
 origin. John Floyer, of Litchfield, it appears, had 
 published a book in 1702, entitled : Fsyc/iroloiisia, or 
 the History of Cold Bathing, both Ancient and Modern. Dr. 
 J. S. Hahn, of Silesia, followed with another in 1738, 
 upon the Healing Virtues of Cold Water; and in 1797, 
 Dr. Currie, of Liverpool, printed a third upon a 
 broader basis, with the title of Medical Reports on the 
 Effects of Water as a Remedy in Fevers and Other Diseases. 
 The work of Dr. Hahn was republished in 1S04, by 
 Professor Oertel, and had, together with a translation 
 of Dr. Currie's book, an extensive circulation, creating 
 a general enthusiasm. When Priessnitz himself came
 
 37© HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 into notice at a later period, Professor Oertel was his 
 warm and generous supporter. 
 
 In fact, despite the English claim of precedence the 
 remedial use of water in the various modes of appli- 
 cation had been inculcated by early writers, among 
 whom may be enumerated Asklepiades of Prusa, 
 Antoninus Musa, Galen, Rhasis, Avicenna and Cardan. 
 The Silesian peasant, however, had derived his con- 
 cept from none of them, but was original in his 
 methods. He triumphed alike over the persecutors 
 at home who had endeavored to crush him by arbitrary 
 power, and the plagiarists abroad who sought to take 
 from him the honor of his own discoveries. 
 
 The earlier hydropathists, following the example of 
 Priessnitz himself, circumscribed their procedures to 
 patients with chronic diseases, and made use only of 
 the severer methods. Presently, in 1852, John Smedley, 
 of Matlock, in Derbyshire, attempted a milder form, 
 using warm as well as cold water. The new method 
 became very popular, and to a great degree, super- 
 seded the other. 
 
 The Water-treatment has been found efficacious 
 not only in the restoration of the body as a whole, 
 but it has likewise been employed in local affections 
 with like advantage. At the present time, however, 
 it seems to be in use more generally at sanatoriums, 
 and in surgical and other cases, as an auxiliary to 
 other procedures, than as itself the sole remedial 
 agent. 
 
 THE " SWEDISH MOVEMENT-CURE." 
 
 The procedure technically designated Kinesipatky, 
 but popularly known as the "Movement-cure," had a 
 somewhat romantic origin. Ling, the Skandinavian
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. — CONTINUED. 37I 
 
 poet, was led to it by reading of the prodigious 
 strength of the ancient Northmen. He found that 
 by beating a rheumatic arm, he cured the pain ; and 
 following up the matter so suggested by a series of 
 experiments, he brought into existence the new 
 method. 
 
 The procedure consists in the applying of external 
 motions, active and passive exercise to the body, and 
 likewise in rendering these motions so special as to 
 operate upon particular organs or parts. There are 
 several thousand of these remedial movements, and 
 with them are included posture, friction and per- 
 cussion. 
 
 A study of the ancient classics will bring to notice 
 that gymnastics constituted an essential part of the 
 youthful training. To this fact must be attributed to 
 a very great degree the extraordinary strength dis- 
 played by athletes, and indeed, quite generally at the 
 games and other public occasions. Like methods are 
 employed at the present time in countries not com- 
 monly ranked as civilized. The massage or shampoo, 
 rubbing, lifting, were all borrowed from them, and 
 are now applied with great advantage, sometimes by 
 masseurs, sometimes by professional " rubbers," and 
 likewise by the medical attendants themselves. 
 
 The Movement-cure was formally introduced into 
 the United States about the year i860, and though 
 perhaps not so generally received as it deserves, it 
 has proved wherever it has been employed, a valuable 
 auxiliary to other remedial measures. 
 
 CHROMO-THERAPY, OR LIGHT-CURE. 
 
 Many years ago a curious little treatise was pub- 
 lished anonymously in London, with the imposing
 
 372 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 title of The Key of the Universe. It assumed at the out- 
 set that there must be some possible created intelli- 
 gence to whom the universe interprets itself ; and 
 although not setting at nought the inductive method 
 so much boasted of in modern times, the author 
 asserts that there is in the human intellect a pre- 
 science which usually anticipates discoveries. He 
 declares the Universe to be an organic structure, 
 every part of which is dependent upon every other. 
 He accepts the scientific hypothesis of ether as the 
 primitive physical principle, including all the forces 
 which are recognized as back of all natural phenomena. 
 Of this ether, he regards Light as an affinity^ and con- 
 siders it to consist of force only. He adds, in illustra- 
 tion of the supposition: " For, since any force may be- 
 come any other, and all matter being force, it follows 
 that, in this sense. Light is as much matter as any 
 term that precedes it in the series." Being the ether 
 itself in that mode of manifestation, it is of the same 
 nature in all departments of the universe. Hence, in 
 the former world-religions, it was the symbol of all 
 that was sacred, and believed to constitute the body 
 of Divinity itself. Its property of magnetism deter- 
 m.ines the form and nature of minerals, and dictates 
 the mode of growth of every plant, causing the 
 plumule of the seed to develop upward, and the 
 radicle, in a corresponding degree, to extend down- 
 ward. Animal life is evolved likewise from the same 
 principle. 
 
 The late General A. J. Pleasonton, of Philadelphia, 
 made the discovery that certain rays of light influ- 
 enced vegetable and animal life, hastening growth to 
 a remarkable degree. He published a little mono- 
 graph on the subject, which excited much attention
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. — CONTINUED. 373 
 
 and experimenting. He denied the old theories of 
 centripetal and centrifugal force, declaring that light 
 was the first thing created, as declared in the book of 
 the Genesis, and that from it were evolved the agencies 
 known as heat, electricity and magnetism. 
 
 Dr. Seth Pancoast also published a little treatise, in 
 1877, on the same subject, and had collected material 
 for a larger work setting forth his views upon that 
 and associated topics. His death took place before he 
 was able to publish the results of his work, and its 
 future disposition is left to his son, with full discretion. 
 Dr. Pancoast endeavored to bring the cruder notions of 
 General Pleasonton into more philosophic and scien- 
 tific form, and with a fair degree of success. He 
 inculcated that the new theory was taught in the 
 Bible, the Hebrew Kabala, and by the ancient philoso- 
 phers. He declared light to be the positive force in 
 Nature, " the source, the sustainer, the renewer of the 
 universe and of all life therein." * All organic forms 
 he described as being "developed to manifest light as 
 Life ;" and deduced therefrom the theory that " Light 
 is Nature's own and only specific for disease of all 
 kinds." Being the source of life, he declared it best 
 calculated accordingly to prolong life by maintaining 
 equilibrium in the organic system and restoring it 
 when impaired by disease. " To strengthen this influ- 
 ence," he adds, "we have the fact that the virtues of 
 medicines are largely received from light." 
 
 ♦ Dr. Pancoast thus explains the production of earthy material : " Ether is the 
 hyU ol the ancient philosophy. It is invisible, except when polarized. Oxygen is 
 the positive and hydrogen the negative polarization of the ether. Water is gen- 
 erated by the combustion of hydrogen with oxygen, and earth is a precipitate of 
 water." He declares accordingly, and he assured the writer personally that he 
 had himself produced a copious precipitate from pure oxygen and hydrogen in 
 hermetically sealed glass, and successfully confirmed the experiment by repetition.
 
 374 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Dr. E. D. Babbitt has also propounded a Science of 
 Cure in which the Solar rays are employed as the 
 principal agency, though without ignoring other 
 therapeutic means. To the theory he gives the name 
 of Chromopathy, or Healing by Light and Color. It 
 involves the same principles as are enunciated by Dr. 
 Pancoast, and he being of a less speculative temper, 
 appears more likely to bring his methods more directly 
 into practical application. He has devised apparatus, 
 lenses, thermolumes and other fixtures, for the pur- 
 pose of employing sunlight in various forms and 
 shades of color, so that it may be adapted to the 
 wants of the patient, whatever the case. 
 
 He is also familiar with the mesmeric art, massage, 
 electro-therapeutics, as well as ordinary medication, 
 and blends all these " finer forces " in his treatment 
 whenever he deems it proper. This in the present 
 state of our medical knowledge, will be of no manifest 
 advantage. 
 
 The same properties and virtues which are in the 
 solar ray are also found in the electric light. We learn 
 from microscopists that water abounding with micro- 
 organisms, of various character, noxious and innoxious, 
 becomes freed from them upon exposure to sunlight. 
 Further experiment has demonstrated the same fact 
 in the case of the electric light, showing it also to be 
 actinic. Apparatus for its employment as a therapeutic 
 agent was on exhibition at the World's Fair, at Chi- 
 cago, and received favorable notice. Whether the new 
 therapy will supersede the common methods, it is 
 hardly safe to predict ; but there is no doubt of its 
 utility as an auxiliary. The finer forces are, doubtless, 
 sufficiently potent as they are properly applied.
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CONTINUED. 375 
 
 METAPHYSICAL MEDICINE, "CHRISTIAN SCIENCE," ETC. 
 
 From the earliest periods of human history, there 
 have been recognized modes of healing the sick, by 
 other than the agencies in common use. It is a belief 
 entertained by the most gifted and intelligent as well 
 as by the less favored and ignorant. It exists with 
 little change among many populations of the East, 
 and is cherished by large numbers of individuals 
 belonging to countries of the West. Hippokrates, 
 Galen and other notables of the medical world, 
 regarded charms and amulets as possessing healing 
 virtue and employed them accordingly ; and certain 
 individuals were believed to exercise the power of 
 removing disease, by touch, prophetic words, or act of 
 will. Even among those who reject unqualifiedly all 
 claim of marvelous gifts and faculties as being pos- 
 sessed and exercised by any at the present time, there 
 are very many who tenaciously hold it as a funda- 
 mental religious truth that miraculous cures and other 
 deeds beyond our common powers, took place at other 
 epochs. It would come with an ill grace from such to 
 cast opprobrium upon others for believing that an 
 energy which had been efficacious in former ages to 
 restore the sick and enfeebled, is still operative and 
 successfully exercised. 
 
 The class that sneeringly decry such things as super- 
 stitious and refuse any candid consideration of their 
 merits, virtually acknowledge apprehension that they 
 are themselves in the wrong. It may be, likewise, that 
 they have forgotten the fact that the term superstition, 
 which they flippantly use to denote vulgar credulity 
 once signified the superior faculty of comprehending 
 the really true— a higher tribunal than that of willful
 
 376 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 disbelief or judgment biased by tradition and preju- 
 dice. 
 
 Leading members of the medical profession have 
 deprecated the crudeness of the common professional 
 knowledge, and acknowledged the weak point in their 
 art from not understanding the influence of mental 
 causes to induce disease and promote health. Schiller 
 the poet, himself declares that "a physician whose 
 horizon is bounded by an historic knowledge of the 
 human machine, and who can distinguish termi- 
 nologically and locally the coarser wheels of the intel- 
 lectual clock-work, may be, perhaps, idolized by the 
 mob, but he will never raise the Hippocratic art above 
 the narrow sphere of a mere bread-earning craft." 
 
 Dr. Forbes Wmslow, an English physician of emi- 
 nence, makes the following emphatic statement : 
 
 "The physician is daily called upon m the exercise 
 of his profession to witness the powerful effects of 
 mental emotion upon the material fabric. He recog- 
 nises the fact, although he may be unable to explain 
 the rationale. He perceives that mental causes induce 
 disease, destroy life, retard recovery, and often inter- 
 fere with the successful operation of the most potent 
 remedial means exhibited for the alleviation and cure 
 of bodily suffering. Although such influences are 
 admitted to play an important part, either for good or 
 for evil, I do not conceive that, as physicians, we have 
 sufficient appreciation of their great importance." 
 
 With such conviction on the part of leaders, even 
 materialistic in their notions of therapeutics, and the 
 corresponding unrest and desire for better methods in 
 all circles, we cannot wonder that there should be 
 explorations into other fields, and even into regions 
 often regarded as vague and visionary. Thus we 
 observe a recurring" to the old practice of simples and
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CONTINUED. 377 
 
 vegetable remedies, so ably set forth by Nicholas Cul- 
 pepper in 1650 ; then mesmerism entered the arena, 
 bringing in electricity and magnetism for auxiliaries; 
 and Homoeopathy with the theory and procedures 
 closely verging upon the spiritual. Religious teachers 
 arose who professed to have the ancient apostolic 
 gift to perform miracles. This was a function which 
 the Roman Church has always recognized as still in 
 exercise, but which the later Protestant bodies have 
 generally ignored, as belonging to a dispensation long 
 gone by. The psychologic revelations from mesmer- 
 ized patients, and the revival of Spiritualism in a new 
 aspect helped to turn attention toward this neglected 
 department. 
 
 Accordingly there sprang up individuals here and 
 there who professed to heal the sick without medicine, 
 or else with remedies signified to them by occult 
 means ; some affirming that they were aided by 
 superior agencies after the ways set forth in the New 
 Testament,* and others that they operated through 
 the faculties inherent in every person. 
 
 About the year 1840, mesmerism or animal magnet- 
 ism had begun to attract notice in America. Among 
 those experimenting in this direction was Dr. Phineas 
 Parkhurst Quimby, of Belfast, in the state of Maine. 
 He was expert in producing the trance, and employed 
 the agent in the treatment of his patients. The phe- 
 nomena of clairvoyance and the revelations thus ob- 
 tained, led him to further researches in the depart- 
 ment of psychology. He soon found in man, his 
 biographer informs us, a principle or a power that was 
 not of man himself, but was higher than man, and of 
 
 * Mark, ix., 23. " All things are possible to him that believeth."
 
 378 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 which he himself could only be a medium. He also 
 declared that he had discovered that " disease is 
 only an erroneous belief" and upon this discovery he 
 founded his method of cure. He accordingly gave up 
 the practice of mesmerism, and the use of remedies 
 however prescribed, and thenceforward adopted the 
 new procedure. Of this success another writer says : 
 
 " Had he lived in a remote age or country, the won- 
 derful facts which occurred in his practice would have 
 now been deemed either mythical or miraculous, he 
 seemed to reproduce the wonders of the Gospel his- 
 tory, etc." 
 
 About 1863, the Rev. W. F. Evans, of Claremont, in 
 New Hampshire, a minister of the New Jerusalem 
 Church, became a disciple of the new doctrine, and 
 soon afterward engaged in the practice. He also pub- 
 lished six duodecimo volumes, giving an explanation of 
 the theory and treatment, its scientific character and 
 harmony with the declarations of various writers of 
 modern and ancient periods. His style is simple and 
 attractive, and the reasoning cogent and not always 
 easy to answer. Following the Swedenborgian rule of 
 analogy, he declares every physiological process a cor- 
 respondence, or effect of some psychologic action; and 
 diseases a consequent of abnormal psychic or moral 
 conditions, which may be remedied by mental opera- 
 tions. Nevertheless he speaks very favorably of 
 manipulating and mesmeric passes. " All diseased 
 conditions," he remarks, " connect us with disordered 
 and unhappy mind in the other world. To cure dis- 
 ease is to 'cast out devils,' or to break our sympathetic 
 consociation with undeveloped spirits." 
 
 Nevertheless, he does not let go of scientific knowl- 
 edge. " Whatever the physiological change which is
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CONTINUED. 379 
 
 demanded, the universal life-principle, which we call 
 nature^ is making an effort to effect it, and we may- 
 augment her curative endeavor by forming in our 
 minds the idea of the change. Here knowledge is 
 power, and refined medical science an auxiliary to the 
 mental system of cure. And we would take occasion 
 to remark, that no intelligeiit practitioner of the mind- 
 cure will ignore wholly medical science. Mind is the 
 only active principle in the universe. The mind of a 
 skillful surgeon performs marvels in saving the lives 
 of people." 
 
 As has been already intimated, the practitioners of 
 this school insist that "metaphysical healing," or 
 phrenopathy, is substantially in harmony with the 
 teachings of the philosophers, and is essentially the 
 method inculcated and pursued by Jesus, as set forth 
 in the New Testament. 
 
 No claim is made by them to original conception of 
 the idea, with regard to the theory of cure by mental 
 influence, exerted through the imagination, or imag- 
 ing faculty. The idea has existed thousands of years 
 in the Orient. The term metaphysical is employed be- 
 cause the theory of healing thus named is based upon 
 the laws which govern the intelligent side of human 
 nature. It is the subjective before passing to the ob- 
 jective. " To know anything purely," says Sokrates, 
 in the Phado, "we must behold with the soul itself." 
 
 Although the various schools of Mental Healing 
 appear to be based upon the same principles, they dif- 
 fer quite widely in theories. Among them are the 
 disciples of Hiram E. Butler of the Esoteric, W. P. 
 Phelon of the Hermctist, S. P. Waite, A. J. Swartz, and 
 Mrs. Willmans. Perhaps, however, the most insistent 
 of all are the followers of Mrs. Mary J. Eddy, of
 
 380 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Boston, the teacher of " Christian Science." Why this 
 name has been selected, whether as a matter of prin- 
 ciple or simply to attract notoriety, we do not ask. It 
 seems to be a misnomer. The mode of treating the 
 sick appears to be substantially identical with that of 
 Doctors Quimby and Evans. The mode of propagan- 
 dism is by the instructing of classes wherever there is 
 opportunity, and the establishing of " Faith-Homes " 
 in different places for patients and students. The 
 doctrines constitute a religion as well as a secular 
 practice of the art of healing, and several churches of 
 " Scientists " have been formally organized, with stated 
 services and preachers. Mrs. Eddy is very generally 
 recognized as the spiritual leader, and several, who 
 have revolted against her assumptions, describe her 
 as imperious and exacting. This, however, has always 
 been a characteristic of the prominent individuals in 
 religious, scientific and secular enterprises, and they 
 often persecute seceders as unworthy and culpable. 
 
 It is contemplated to procure legislation that will 
 bring the various methods of "mind-cure," "faith- 
 cure," " prayer-cure," etc., within the jurisdiction of 
 the recently created medico-judicial authorities. This 
 must naturally appear in the light of rapacity and lust 
 of arbitrary power, without just reason. The dog 
 that cannot eat hay, is hardly a suitable judge to sit 
 in the manger and dictate to oxen. There are many 
 thousands who believe in the efficacy of these modes 
 of treatment. They find such healing described and 
 commanded in the New Testament,* and with many 
 of them, the doctrines have all the sanctity of a relig- 
 ious faith. Such legislation will be inevitably regarded 
 
 * J antes ^ v., 14, 15 ; Matthew^ viii., 13, 16 ; ix., 8, 22, 35 ; xv., 28 ; xix., 2 ; John, 
 iv., 47-53 ; v., 9 ; xiv., 12, ei passim.
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. — CONTINUED. 381 
 
 as of the nature of religious proscription, and will be 
 included in the same category with the murderous 
 persecutions that have made the Middle Ages infamous, 
 
 MICROBIOGENESIS AND THE GER.M-THEORY. 
 
 Among the various theories promulgated in the 
 Nineteenth Century, one of the most prominent is the 
 Parasitic Origin of Disease. It is chiefly the outcome 
 of microscopic explorations, and has much plausibility 
 for its support. We remember well a statement by 
 Addison in the Spectator, in which it was affirmed that 
 every where, in the air, in every humor in the human 
 body, and upon every green leaf, there abounded 
 innumerable minute organisms. In 1832, when the 
 Asiatic Cholera was extending its ravages around the 
 globe, and had just reached America, there were many 
 who attributed it to animalcules in the air. The con- 
 ception of contagious and infectious diseases as origi- 
 nating from micro-organismsis, however, by no means 
 a recent one. Kircher advanced it in the Seventeenth 
 Century, and Line, the botanist, gave it his counte- 
 nance. Leeuwenhoek, in 1675, discovered rod-like 
 creatures with the microscope. Nevertheless, the 
 older theory continued to be entertained of a morbific 
 poison acting chemically, and setting up a process of 
 degeneration in the living tissues. About 1836, 
 Schwann, of Germany, discovered that putrefaction 
 was due to something in the air, which heat could 
 destroy. 
 
 In 1849, Pollender observed little rods in the blood 
 of animals suffering from splenic fever. Davaine 
 pronounced them the specific virus of the disease. 
 
 About 1865, Pasteur, in France, by his researches 
 and publications, imparted new vigor to the theory.
 
 382 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 He taught that fermentation is always due to micro- 
 scopic plants or animals, and assumed that there was 
 a specific germ for every disease in man and animals. 
 This would, if true, place medical practice upon 
 another basis from any yet accepted. His greatest 
 sensation was produced by the announcement that he 
 had discovered the true nature of hydrophobia, and a 
 sure method of curing it by inoculation. Dr. Robert 
 Koch, of Germany, made a more exhaustive study of 
 the whole subject, and developed a more complete 
 hypothesis. Bacilli and micrococci were declared to 
 exist for each specific complaint, and in many instances, 
 it was proposed to cultivate or rear them, in order 
 to be applied by inoculation as remedies and prophy- 
 lactics. Others followed in the same track, till an 
 extensive literature had been produced, and a consid- 
 erable number of adherents were obtained, eagerly 
 hailing the new theory with enthusiasm, as elevating 
 medicine to the rank of an exact science. 
 
 Paracelsus appears to have anticipated the new 
 doctrine, when propounding his theory of " elemental 
 spirits." It is now promulgated and taught dogmat- 
 ically, that zymotic and epidemic diseases are due to 
 vegetable parasites of an indefinite minuteness, which 
 gain an entrance into the body through the medium 
 of the air, water, food, or some other way ; increasing 
 with incredible fecundity, exhausting the strength of 
 the individual or injuriously affecting him in some 
 other direction. On this hypothesis, various obsoles- 
 cent drugs, like mercury and antimony have been 
 called into a new reputation as germicides, and culture- 
 germs" for inoculation have obtained considerable 
 notoriety. Indeed the hypothesis has almost become 
 a dogma. Such diseases as measles, scarlatina, diph-
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. — CONTINUED. 383 
 
 theria, leprosy, tuberculosis, cholera, and the long 
 array of fevers, are enumerated as the product of the 
 microbe tribes, bacteria, bacilli, micrococci and 
 vibriones. Many a fine-spun theory has been drawn 
 out, like silk from the belly of a spider, to account for 
 the ways in which they do their deadly work. Hospi- 
 tals, long notorious as hot-beds of erysipelas and sep- 
 ticaemia, furnished a text, as abounding with micro- 
 scopic parasites. Lister gained a wide celebrity, by no 
 means undeserved, for his devices of antiseptic agents 
 and precautions to render surgical wounds safe from 
 infection. His success in averting erysipelatous in- 
 flammation and hospital gangrene, must be gratefully 
 acknowledged. 
 
 Helmholtz affirmed that vibriones from the atmos- 
 phere abounded in catarrhal and other morbid secre- 
 tions. He found that they could not penetrate cotton 
 fibre, and accordingly proposed the wearing of respir- 
 atory bags at the nostrils to be filled with it, to pre- 
 vent them from being inhaled with the breath. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, they can get in by the 
 mouth, and so the expedient never became popular. 
 
 Practitioners of eminence and extensive observation 
 have as confidently opposed the theory. Dr. Joseph 
 Thomas, after an exhaustive review of the theory, 
 confessed that some of the conclusions are hardly 
 warranted by the researches, and that others seem 
 unscientific, however much of truth maybe contained 
 in other inferences. Sir Lawson Tait was so certain 
 of the innoxious character of the micro-organisms, 
 that he declared himself perfectly willing, if enough 
 of them could be obtained, to apply them to surgical 
 wounds ; Beckingham threw the gauntlet down with 
 equal temerity. " The germ-theory," he affirmed to be
 
 384 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 " an assumption of causes of the existence of which 
 we have no evidence, to account for effects which they 
 do not explain." 
 
 Dr. Bastian, professor of pathology in the London 
 University, gave an explanation of the existence of 
 micro-organisms that appears perfectly tenable. They 
 are not generated in the body, he asserts, till it has 
 become already disorganized ; certainly no intelligent 
 person would suppose that the worms that devour a 
 putrefying carcass were the cause of the creature's 
 death. They belong solely to the processes of decay, 
 contributing to the promotion of corporeal disinte- 
 gration. 
 
 These arguments were met by new hypotheses, re- 
 sembling makeshifts by which to save a favorite 
 theory. It was conceded that several varieties of 
 bacteria were healthful, and that even the " comma 
 bacillus " of Asiatic cholera was harmless till age and 
 further development converted it into a source of 
 infection. This is virtually conceding that the 
 germ-theory has no substantial ground on which 
 to stand. 
 
 Professor Henry Maudesley, however, is even more 
 positive in his assertions. " Disease," he declares, "is 
 not a specific morbid entity, that like some evil spirit 
 takes possession of the body, but a condition of 
 degeneration from healthy life." Its name depends 
 upon the part of the body primarily affected. " Per- 
 haps," says Mr. Wolfe, " minute animalcula may be 
 present in different stages of decay of tissue, and are 
 assumed to be the cause instead of the consequence." 
 Dr. Forbes Winslow declared that " mental emotion 
 and shock to the nerves may cause almost any disease;" 
 and adds as a curious fact : " There are medical men
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CONTINUED. 385 
 
 who will tell you that no complaint can be caused 
 without some subtile poison in the blood." 
 
 Such is the present stage of the controversy, and it 
 forcibly illustrates the fact that the underlying- prin- 
 ciples of pathology are but little comprehended by 
 many teachers and practitioners of medicine. With- 
 out doubt it will last for years to come. The dogma 
 adopted by a generation will last till another gener- 
 ation appears and then pass out of sight. In another 
 century and in a more philosophic age, it will become 
 a theme of wonder, if not of diversion, to intelligent 
 men. 
 
 THERAPEUTIC SARCOGNOMY. 
 
 In 1842, Dr. Joseph Rodes Buchanan, a physician 
 of Louisville, in Kentucky, made public a theory of 
 cerebral physiology, unique in character, yet perfectly 
 consistent in detail, based upon investigations and 
 speculations extending over a period of seven years. 
 With the glowing enthusiasm of a young discoverer, 
 he submitted it to leading medical men and scientific 
 bodies, but only to be repulsed with scorn. A profes- 
 sor in the Pennsylvania University, and Dr. Forry, of 
 the New York ATcdical and Surgical Journal, at first 
 accepted his views, but were soon overawed by the 
 opprobrium inedicorum, which forcefully excludes every 
 innovating doctrine from a candid hearing. " I soon 
 found," said he, " that the well-disciplined army of 
 the followers of the European system were deter- 
 mined not to investigate a demonstrable, but revolu- 
 tionary science, and that I was as obnoxious as Harvey 
 ever was." 
 
 Even the Phrenological societies, themselves not 
 established inside the scientific cordon, hesitated to
 
 386 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 receive his novelties and deductions from their 
 system. 
 
 At this time the "American Medical Institute," for 
 the instruction of medical students of the Independent 
 Thomsonian School, was organized in Cincinnati, with 
 six professorships, to open in November, 1842. Dr. 
 Buchanan accepted the chair of Institutes of Medicine 
 and Diagnosis ; and abstracts of his papers were pub- 
 lished in the True Thomsonian. The enterprise, how- 
 ever, did not meet with sufficient encouragement to 
 become a permanent institution. 
 
 Dr. Buchanan now made friends with the pioneers 
 of the American Reformed Medical Practice — Doctors 
 Wooster Beach, Thomas V. Morrow, and their associ- 
 ates. The Eclectic Medical Institute of Cincinnati 
 was incorporated by the Legislature of Ohio, and in 
 1846, he accepted their invitation to become Professor 
 of the Institutes of Medicine and Medical Jurispru- 
 dence. Here he remained ten years, teaching the new 
 doctrine with acceptance. The hostility to him was, 
 however, made more intense. He submitted a memoir, 
 in 185 1, to the American Association for the Advance- 
 ment of Science, but his adversaries procured its sup- 
 pression. The Eclectic Medical Institute fell into the 
 hands of an adverse faction, and his chair was vacated. 
 
 He attempted to present the result of his investiga- 
 tions to the American Medical Association, but Dr. 
 Samuel D. Gross, of Philadelphia, advised him to seek 
 his audience outside of the medical profession. The 
 Association would never take any notice of any dis- 
 covery that he might make or demonstrate, because 
 its members were precluded by their caste. They 
 were governed by it, and he was not. 
 
 This is the principal, and perhaps the only, reason
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. — CONTINUED. 387 
 
 why few medical men outside the ethical cordon 
 become recognized in scientific circles, even when 
 their merits are of the highest order. It is the price 
 which a sincere and conscientious man must pay for 
 moral independence. In order to obtain a friendly, or 
 even a fair hearing for a new doctrine, it is necessary 
 to rear a new generation. 
 
 Dr. Buchanan for a time gave up all attempt to 
 disseminate his views. He then resumed them, reviv- 
 ing his publication, the Journal of Ma?i, and writing 
 several works to explain the new system. He opened 
 a College of Therapeutics at Boston, and lectured for 
 several years. 
 
 His treatise on Therapeutic Sarcognoiny presents a very 
 full description of his peculiar doctrines and methods, 
 He is utterly at issue with the materialism and unspir- 
 itual tendencies that characterize modern science and 
 medical writers ; and accepts, with due reservation, 
 the animistic doctrines of Van Helmont, Stahl, John 
 Hunter, Bichat, and others, as further developed and 
 modified by later discovery. " The philosophical basis 
 of Sarcognomy," he declares, " is the threefold consti- 
 tution of man, and the very intimate sympathy and 
 parallelism of soul, brain and body, which enables us, 
 through any one of the three, to affect the other two 
 in a corresponding manner." All forces and faculties 
 belonging to man have their special seats in the brain, 
 and corresponding positions in the body. "Every 
 elementary power or tendency culminates in a certain 
 locality." 
 
 Upon this basis, the entire superstructure is devel- 
 oped. In acting upon the triple combination of soul, 
 brain and body, he teaches that in remedial proced- 
 ures we may fix our attention upon any one of them,
 
 388 HISTORV OF MEDICINE. 
 
 as may appear best. The object of all treatment is 
 the restoration of health. This is accomplished by 
 removing from the blood all noxious or imperfectly 
 vitalized elements, and promoting the absorption and 
 removal of all objectionable structures, such as the 
 tubercle of consumption, or the cells of cancerous 
 matter, leaving the vital force to act unencumbered. 
 More than this, however ; for such is only the nega- 
 tive side of the matter. " After the restoration of 
 morbid organs, and relief from morbid conditions, we 
 should energize the faculties and organs which give 
 the highest conditions of health." The energetic 
 healer will not limit himself to treating the derange- 
 ments of the body. One may be relieved from disease, 
 and yet be extremely liable to falling again into 
 depraved conditions. The permanent improvement 
 of the constitution requires an increase of the moral 
 power. All hygienic treatment should be ethical in 
 tendency, and the healer should aim to leave his 
 patient, if possible, with an exalted energy in his 
 higher nature, which should tend to lead him into a 
 better and healthier life. 
 
 In his proposed therapeutic revolution. Dr. Buchanan 
 by no means favors a destructive and intolerant icon- 
 oclasm, which would discard the knowledge and 
 achievements of the medical profession. He simply 
 regrets its devotion to professional dignity, reputa- 
 tion and pedantic learning, instead of looking solely 
 to curative means and measures, from whatever 
 source they come. In his own procedures he incor- 
 porates them all, seeking to apply them according to 
 the principles which he maintains. Animal magnet- 
 ism, massage or mechano-therapy, electro-therapeu- 
 tics, hygiene and drugs, are all employed. Although
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CONTINUED. 3S9 
 
 not subscribing to the hypotheses of Metaphysical 
 Medicine, in regard to the unreality of disease, etc., 
 he approves of many of the methods. Of course, all 
 are modified and subordinated to the theory of Sar- 
 COgnomy. He enumerates patients who were success- 
 fully treated on the principles set forth ; among 
 them, the late Secretary Seward and Thurlow We.ed, 
 well known in American politics. Among the exam- 
 ples of diseases cured are paralysis, nervous shock, 
 deafness, various diseases of vision, spinal meningitis, 
 neuralgia, rheumatism, lumbago, asthma, continued 
 fever, peritonitis, puerperal fever, inflammation of the 
 female organism, cancer, Bright's disease, cholera, etc. 
 Whether the doctrine of Therapeutics, as taught by 
 Dr. Buchanan, shall ever be generally received, it is 
 deserving of candid and careful examination. Its 
 expositor may be considered somewhat visionary, and 
 even dogmatical ; but he must be recognized as a 
 scholar of superior attainments, conscientious in his 
 investigations, sincere and earnest, possessing the 
 principal qualities of a reformer. He has certainly 
 penetrated to a field of thought and knowledge in a 
 department that has been too much overlooked, and 
 farther than has been currently acknowledged as 
 scientific. Perhaps another generation may arouse 
 from its apathy and sensualism, and give that atten- 
 tion to the subject which its intrinsic importance 
 deserves. 
 
 MEDICINE IN THE OUTER WORLD. 
 
 India. — Two classes of physicians have long divided 
 the medical practice of Hindustan. The hakhams, or 
 " wise men," are the Moslem practitioners, and the 
 pundits, or "scholars," the Indian. Their professional
 
 390 HISTORY OF MEDICINE, 
 
 knowledge is largely from traditional origin ; that of 
 the former class being from the Arabian universities 
 of the Middle Ages, and the latter class professing to 
 derive their authority from the works of Charaka, and 
 other writers of acknowledged orthodoxy. Many of 
 their procedures would be regarded with contempt by 
 Western physicians, yet such superciliousness can 
 hardly be a characteristic of really superior intelli- 
 gence. These hakhims and pundits have much 
 knowledge that is worthy of candid attention. Dr. 
 Honigberger, who spent many years in India, admit- 
 ted the theoretic information which the native sur- 
 geons and oculists possessed, although he denied 
 their skill. They adhere tenaciously to the peculiar 
 practices which were in fashion not long ago in 
 Europe, making use of amulets, charms and religious 
 incantations ; and many of them are experts in mes- 
 merism. Some of them know how to fortify the body 
 against the bite of venomous serpents. 
 
 There are many other races in India, however, than 
 Hindus and Mughals, but they are generally to be 
 relegated to the category of uncivilized nations. 
 
 Many of the discoveries in medicine and remedies 
 which were introduced into Europe during the Middle 
 Ages, had been already known in the East, giving 
 credibility to the surmise that they had been kept 
 secret, like religious Mysteries. Yet even in our own 
 time and in our own country, it is a practice by no 
 means uncommon for physicians and apothecaries of 
 the old school of practice to put forth and palm off 
 remedies as having been discovered and introduced 
 by themselves, although perfectly aware that the same 
 articles and preparations had been known and used by 
 practitioners of another school. The Materia Medica
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CONTINUED. 391 
 
 has been greatly enriched by this mode of procedure, 
 which seems to be considered as more ethical than if 
 any honorable ackowledgment had been rendered. 
 
 Long before Berenger de Carpi ever lived, the phy- 
 sicians of India had employed mercury in their prac- 
 tice, making use of calomel for syphilis and mercurius 
 vivus, or corrosive sublimate, for pneumonia. The 
 hakhamshad antimony, and the natives were familiar 
 with arsenic as a remedy. There were likewise other 
 mineral drugs in common use. 
 
 There is an extensive Medical Flora in the vast 
 peninsula. Some of the plants are of the same species 
 as those of Europe and America ; others of the same 
 genera, but different species, while by far the greater 
 number are known only in India. Indeed, the country 
 itself seems to belong to a former geologic period, and 
 not only its fauna and flora, but even many of its 
 human tribes, pertain largely to prehistoric time. 
 American Eclectics will be interested to learn that a 
 species of Podophyllum grows in Kashmir, and is used 
 for purposes like those of its western congener. 
 Capsicum, is abundant, but serves principally as a 
 condiment for food. Such remedies as Xanthoxylum 
 aromaticum, Taraxacum, Caulophyllum, Menisper- 
 mum, Hyoscyamus, Crocus, Calamus, Uva ursi, Rhodo- 
 dendron, Rhamnus, Nepeta, — all of which are official 
 in India — almost exhibit the veteran physicians of 
 the Farther East ready to join hands with the prac- 
 titioners of the New School of American Medicine. 
 There are likewise native medicinal plants like those 
 which are indigenous in India, but not known else- 
 where. 
 
 Nostrums and proprietary medicines are as abun- 
 dant there as in western countries. They are often
 
 392 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 characterized by the prodigious number of ingredients. 
 Aphrodisiacs are in great demand. This is a peculi- 
 arity of all Asiatic countries. The populations of the 
 remoter East are as fond of swallowing medicines for 
 imaginary ailments as the inhabitants of other regions 
 of the earth. 
 
 Burma. — The Burmese have an elaborate, if not 
 recondite theory of disease, which is very curious and 
 full of interest. It is evidently derived from the 
 theosophic beliefs of Aryan India. Their sages 
 describe the human body as composed of five primal 
 elements or principles, anciently enumerated as earth, 
 caloric, water, air, and the mystic aether or akasha. 
 They teach that upon each clay of the week one of 
 these elements is preponderant, and that there is 
 accordingly a liability to some specific form of disease. 
 They also insist that every disease must have a dis- 
 tinct treatment peculiar to itself. Among the reme- 
 dial agents they make use of unctions, cathartics and 
 astringents. They likewise employ lime-juice, lime 
 water, cassia, calamus, tamarind, cocoanut, — also 
 sugar, plumbago, camphor, cinnamon, croton oil, 
 agnus castus. Their materia medica, it is plain, was 
 taken from that of western India. 
 
 There are several forms of illness, the physicians 
 declare, for which no medicine should be adminis- 
 tered. Prolonged sickness, and perhaps death, they 
 declare, would be the consequence. It is accordingly 
 made the duty of the medical practitioner to learn the 
 exact symptoms and nature of the disease, before he 
 attempts to treat it with medicines. 
 
 They also have elaborate theories of the various dis- 
 orders. For example, they represent small-pox as
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CONTINUED. 393 
 
 having seven distinct types.* One of them appears to 
 be the disorder elsewhere known as "prickly heat." 
 
 Although they make great account of lime-juice, 
 which, indeed, is almost specific for small-pox, as well 
 as other exanthematous diseases, it is said that they 
 give very small encouragement of being able to effect 
 a cure of the complaint. This may be on account of 
 the defective hygienic provision made for patients, 
 superadded to the discouraging prognosis ; or it may 
 be that our information, which has been derived from 
 unfriendly sources, has not given us a correct state- 
 ment. The Burmese have practiced inoculation from 
 very early times. 
 
 " They have a very curious and recondite theory of 
 gynaecology. They suppose that at the climacteric 
 periods of puberty and the menopause, women have 
 an excess of the elementary principle of water ; and 
 that during the middle period the calorific principle is 
 in the ascendant. "When nursing infants are ill, the 
 medicines are administered to the mother. Midwifery 
 is never practiced by mea except when the Burmese 
 regular treatment fails. A woman dying in childbed 
 is believed to be impure and therefore incapable of 
 the nirvana, or state of bliss. Hence in cases of mortal 
 peril, the hated foreign accoucheur is called upon, as 
 a lesser calamity. 
 
 Patients under ten years of age are never treated 
 with hot medicines or stimulating food. With indi- 
 viduals over fifty the same rule is observed. In 
 adults, it is required that the medicine shall be 
 
 * This seems to be somewhat in harmony with Miss Florence Nightingale's 
 statement : " I have seen small-pox growing up in first specimen, when it could not, 
 by any possibility, have been caught. Nay, more ; I have seen diseases begin, 
 grow up, and pass into one another."
 
 394 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 mild and the food nutritious. During the period of 
 adult life, hot medicine and heating food in moder- 
 ation are employed. To patients over ninety no 
 medicine whatever is administered, but food of a deli- 
 cate character is prescribed. Nonagenarians are by 
 no means uncommon in Burma. This shows beyond 
 dispute that the ways of living in that country, how- 
 ever objectionable they may appear to us, are by no 
 means to be decried as so very inferior to those of 
 the occidental world. 
 
 • China. — The Healing Art as practiced in China is 
 not well comprehended by foreigners, and the leading 
 men of that country insist that it has not been intelli- 
 gently, or even fairly, described. This charge is very 
 likely to be well founded. It has long been the cus- 
 tom in Europe and America to defame and depreciate 
 whatever existed among other people. Scientists and 
 others of more pretension habitually decry what they 
 do not understand, and malign whatever is a depart- 
 ure or at variance from prescribed belief and routine. 
 Sneers are employed in such cases as being more in- 
 fluential than reasoning. 
 
 The Chinese have been accused of various forms of 
 vice, even to the disgusting practices which have been 
 common in Western Asia for thousands of years, 
 engendering there the most foul and deadly plagues. 
 Later and more impartial evidence, however, shows 
 them to be as moral as Europeans, if not more so. 
 They are certainly more peaceable ; they do not find 
 war to be necessary every few years, and they have 
 suffered their country to be overrun, as by the archaic 
 Khitans (Hittites) and modern Mantshus, and even 
 subjected, because of their non-resistant proclivities.
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CONTINUED. 395 
 
 Their diseases, like those of other countries, are 
 largely due to unwholesome diet and personal habits. 
 Synochus, rheumatism and intermittent fever prevail 
 everywhere. They suffer from dyspepsia like the Amer- 
 icans, and are afflicted with diseases of the eyes as 
 badly as Egyptians. Leukokythaemia is frequent 
 among them, with enlargement and hardening of the 
 spleen ; and stricture of the oesophagus is not uncom- 
 mon. Skin-diseases are numerous ; and yet, while 
 measles and small-pox are frequent, scarlet fever, 
 which is many times more deadly, is said to occur 
 but rarely. 
 
 China abounds with physicians, and their theories 
 of medicine, like those of the medical writers of Mediae- 
 val Europe, are largely based upon their metaphysics. 
 They teach the existence of the Yin and the Yank — 
 energy and potency, the active and passive principles 
 of the universe, and so govern their remedial proced- 
 ures accordingly. They take great account of the 
 pulse, and like the hakhams of Moslem countries, and 
 some occidentals, make great parade over examining 
 it. Like the Burmese, they believe in the Five Prin- 
 ciples, and build their pathologic theories upon the 
 notion of the undue influence of some one or more of 
 them. 
 
 The mineral drugs which for a few of the later cent- 
 uries have been so popular with European and 
 American practitioners, such as mercury, lead, copper, 
 and arsenic, have been in vogue with Chinese physi- 
 cians for ages. Probably the first knowledge of these 
 agents as medicines was obtained from them. Many 
 coincidences form this supposition, as they were 
 adopted in Europe soon after exploring expeditions 
 had returned from the East. Chinese practitioners
 
 396 HISTORY OF MEDICiNfE. 
 
 themselves, however, use gentler and more Ceftah*? 
 remedies. They commonly prescribe medicines be- 
 longing to the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and 
 hold in high esteem such articles as gentian, oil of 
 sandal-wood, prickly-ash and ginseng. They have 
 made use of acupuncture from time immemorial. 
 They also make use of the " witch-herbs " so much 
 employed in the Middle Ages to produce catalepsy, 
 trances, and clairvoyant visions, in which category 
 were used hemp, the poppy, henbane, nightshade and 
 stramonium. Their great use of opium seems to have 
 been prompted by the fact that opium-smoking had 
 been found to be prophylactic for pulmonary and 
 bronchial disorders. The Christian converts in 
 China and the islands of the Pacific Ocean are greatly 
 subject to such afflictions. The abandoning of opium 
 and the changes of the modes of dress are probably 
 the occasions of this. 
 
 The medical formulas employed by Chinese physi- 
 cians exceed twelve thousand. Among other things 
 they make use of various excretory and other noisome 
 substances, man)' of which, not excluding the most 
 filthy and repulsive, had their place likewise in Eng- 
 lish and European pharmacy. In this matter it 
 would come with a very ill grace for the Occidental 
 pot to criticise the soot upon the Oriental kettle. 
 Indeed, dead cockroaches are still imported into 
 America from Russia ; cobwebs are objects of med- 
 ical study, and some Homoeopathic investigators have 
 proposed the virus of the filthiest and most venomous 
 ulcers to be added to the list of remedies. The 
 Chinese brews can be no worse ; besides which, copy- 
 ing from China is an old practice. The fee of a 
 Chinese physician, however, is but a few cents ; and
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CONTINUED. 397 
 
 in that essential matter the Western practitioners 
 have changed. 
 
 So long as there is hope for the patient, the due 
 amount of effort is put forth in his behalf. Not 
 only are medicines diligently administered, but the 
 friends are zealous in their endeavors to placate the 
 spiritual beings that they believe to have power in 
 the case. They regard diseases and casualties as hav- 
 ing a supernatural origin. Hence a Chinaman will 
 not atteiupt to rescue a drowning person, or even to 
 treat a bodily disorder after it has passed a certain 
 stage. He would consider it as improper interfering 
 with the designs of the Supernatural Powers. 
 
 Magic arts, charms and amulets are believed to 
 transmit a healing virtue. The means known to us 
 as clairvoyance, "mind-cure," "faith-cure," "prayer- 
 cure," have been employed in China from remote 
 antiquity. 
 
 Japan. — The description given of the medical art in 
 China applies very closely to its condition in Japan. 
 The former relations with China and Korea were very 
 intimate, and as a result, the literature, arts and relig- 
 ion of the " Celestial Empire " were transplanted 
 into the "country of the gods." Japan abounds with 
 medicinal plants, and the native physicians are very 
 skillful in their use. They also have much deftness 
 in surgery. Acupuncture, the discovery of an Eclec- 
 tic physician, has been a familiar matter in Japan 
 and China for many centuries. They also make use 
 of occult arts to remove disease, as well as prayer, 
 charms and amulets. In earlier centuries Japanese 
 physicians had a pharmacy and therapeutics of their 
 own. After the country became a Chinese colony
 
 398 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 other methods were employed. About 1552 the 
 Spaniards and Portuguese introduced European 
 physicians, who established colleges and hospitals. 
 After their expulsion the methods of the Chinese 
 school were revived. Finally, in 1824, Dr. Van Siebold 
 began practice at Nagasaki after modern European 
 usages. In 1849, vaccination was introduced and 
 afterward made compulsory. The European medical 
 machinery is now in full operation ; schools, hospitals, 
 dispensaries, societies, libraries and museums, and a 
 national pharinacopaeia. The result is an excelling 
 in surgery, ophthalmic practice and dentistry. The 
 nobility and the larger part of the population, however, 
 adhere to the former modes of medication and are 
 described as eclectic in their methods. 
 
 Korea. — The population of the " Hermit Kingdom, ' 
 appears to have been of Dravida origin, but Chine-se 
 literature and institutions are in the ascendant. 
 There is high regard paid to learning, and all stu- 
 dents are required to pass Boards of Examiners, 
 before engaging in any profession. Of course, money 
 stealthily paid to the examiners very frequently 
 assures the successful result. There are two branches 
 of the medical profession, one for the royal service 
 and another for the people. In detail, medical prac- 
 tice in Korea is not widely distinct from that of China. 
 
 Indeed, in the principal countries of Eastern Asia, 
 the healing art has been esteemed as belonging to 
 the province of religion. Evil and unfriendly spirit- 
 ual beings were regarded as the chief agents in pro- 
 ducing disease. The "elemental spirits" described 
 by Paracelsus may be traced in the current beliefs of 
 the Oriental peoples ; and perhaps also their counter-
 
 THE NINETEENTH .CENTURY. CONTINUED. 399 
 
 parts, the microbes, micrococci, bacilli and other 
 animalcules, which have been introduced to notice by 
 later explorers and brought forward to the sanctities 
 of scientific baptism. It was supposed that the clip- 
 pings of the hair and nails, and even the refuse of the 
 food afforded niduses and receptacles for these malign 
 operators to employ for the purpose of the inflicting of 
 maladies. Hence every remedial device had regard 
 to such beliefs. Counter-charms were in general use. 
 Every body had a totem, amulet, or talisman to pro- 
 tect from the mysterous assailants. The Northern 
 Asiatic races have their Shamans or sorcerers, to whom 
 they resort to counteract disease by occult medicines 
 and ceremonies. The Chinese, Thibetans and other 
 savage people of Austral Asia attempt to provide 
 against disease and obnoxious spiritual infestations 
 by burning the food left uneaten at a repast, as 
 well as the exuviae of their bodies. Even at the 
 ancient Israelitish festivals and sacrifices, the Mosaic 
 statute required a similar procedure with the fat of 
 animals and the uneaten flesh.* 
 
 Among the uncultured tribes some of the practices 
 are very absurd, sometimes pitiful, and sometimes 
 almost ludicrous. The cotwade must be included in the 
 latter category. When a child was born the father 
 takes the place of the mother and receives the atten- 
 tions and coddling incident to the occasion. Marco Polo 
 found this custom in Yunnan, a southwestern province 
 of the Chinese dominions, and other writers describe 
 it as prevailing in other "Turanian " populations and 
 in distant regions of the globe. Lubbock treats of it 
 as existing among the Basques of Spain. It was re- 
 garded by the natives of Africa and South America 
 
 * Exodus yXi^.^xo \ xxii. 18; xxxiv., 25.
 
 400 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 as a sacred rite. It had its origin, probably, in the 
 antique notion that the father is the sole author of 
 the child's existence, and that the child is accordingly 
 in some occult manner vitally dependent upon the 
 condition of his health. Every excess and other 
 infraction of hygienic rules are therefore strictly pro- 
 hibited during the period of couvade, and if any mis- 
 fortune should occur to the infant, the father and not 
 the mother, would be held to be blameworthy. 
 
 The belief in obsession as the cause of death and 
 disease has been entertained by every people. Our 
 own ancestors in England and Europe, and the earlier 
 colonists of New England, New York and the Southern 
 colonies, hanged men and women on the charge of 
 disordering individuals by voudou, and other occult 
 acts. The trial by ordeal was an expedient to detect 
 persons who were supposed to be thus guilty. 
 
 Always the same notion prevailed, in one form or 
 another, that supernatural forces, evil demons, ele- 
 mental spirits, pervading noxious and refuse sub- 
 stances, were the causes of calamities to individuals 
 and communities ; and thus exorcisms, incantations, 
 prayers, magic plants, and finally, Medean prepara- 
 tions, were employed to deliver the afflicted from 
 their toils and malign operation. 
 
 Perhaps, in these " superstitions," as they are some- 
 times termed, there are more germs of truth than we 
 are ready at first glance to perceive. The influence 
 of mental conditions to disturb the bodily health, or 
 to restore it, is well known to be a powerful factor in 
 medical practice. The virtues of drugs are beyond 
 the province of chemistry to ascertain, yet they are 
 directly associated with the vital energies of medici- 
 nal plants and the magnetic conditions of the sub-
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CONTINUED. 40! 
 
 stances. It matters little whether we term these 
 things "spirits," "forces," "properties," or some 
 other cunningly-devised appellation. We may seek to 
 evade the matter by plausible explanations or equiv- 
 ocations, yet we shall inevitably be brought back to 
 the starting point. The Medical Art began with such 
 a belief in mystic and occult principles, and it has not 
 yet gone a great distance further. In the present 
 state of medical knowledge, it will be well, therefore, 
 to withhold sneers, and to cultivate with assiduity 
 the faculty of veneration — which is, after all, the true 
 master-key of knowledge.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 
 
 RING IN THE NEW ! 
 
 " There are epochs in the history of the human 
 race," says Lamartine, " when the decayed branches 
 fall from the tree of humanity, and when institutions 
 grown old and exhausted leave space for fresh institu- 
 tions full of sap, which renew the youth and recast 
 the ideas of a people." 
 
 The Eighteenth Century had passed its meridian 
 and waned into its afternoon, when the subject- 
 colonies of Great Britain in the Western Hemisphere 
 discarded the old relations and set out upon their 
 new career of independent commonwealths. No more 
 should there be a King with his nobles and Church- 
 men to command their action. The reign of sceptre, 
 belt and crosier, they decreed, must give way to 
 government of the People, by the People, for the 
 People. Thenceforth Religion, no longer in the meshes 
 of unholy alliance with the secular powers, was 
 exalted to a higher seat in the individual conscience. 
 Knowledge, no more to be esteemed an exclusive 
 possession of privileged persons, was made the par- 
 taker of a like consecration to the common good. 
 The People, now baptized in the fire and spirit of 
 liberty, began to prove their new-found strength 
 in directions where they had before been arbitrarily 
 forbidden.
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 403 
 
 The new impulse pervaded the Art of Healing. 
 Heretofore this had taken form in every country in 
 accordance with antique custom. Europe had fol- 
 lowed in the wake of Asia, and her schools took 
 their first instruction from the Universities of 
 the Jew and Muslim. The medical art was over- 
 shadowed by scholastic subtleties, and embraced 
 doctrines now set aside as vague and visionary. 
 Presently other schools and methods came into 
 notice, often in rivalship, if not open hostility to 
 one another. Thomas Jefferson, writing to Doctor 
 Wistar, declared that he had seen the various schools 
 and theories of medicine, " disciples of Hoffman, 
 Boerhaave, Stahl, Cullen and Brown, succeed each 
 other like the shifting figures of the magic lantern ; 
 and their fancies, like the dresses of the annual doll- 
 babies from Paris, becoming, from their novelty, the 
 vogue of the day and yielding to the next novelty 
 their ephemeral favors." 
 
 The culmination in every country had been the 
 establishing of a professional hierarchy analogous to 
 a National Church, domineering in its spirit and in- 
 tolerant of diversity of opinion ; and the inevitable 
 consequence was an intellectual stagnation, from being 
 protected too much. There was an accumulation of 
 literature abounding with an ostentatious display of 
 Latin and Greek terminology, and little improve- 
 ment in medication or procedures. " In two thousand 
 years," says Lacon, " the result of all their discoveries 
 is that brimstone and mercury are the only two spe- 
 cifics ; diseases remain what they ever were." 
 
 The methods of the Old World were assiduously 
 engrafted upon the medical practice and legislation 
 of the New. The old Man of the Sea upon the
 
 404 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 shoulders of Sinbad the Sailor fastened not more 
 tightly to his captive. The consequences were often 
 most deplorable ; death on the pale horse and hadaean 
 misery followed in the wake of the procession. 
 
 At length the attention of the leading public men 
 and teachers was aroused to the insufficiency and 
 destructive character of the current medical treat- 
 ment. Benjamin Rush, a student of William Cullen 
 and a supporter of Brown, did not hesitate to declare 
 that the very theory and practice of medicine which 
 Philadelphia had adopted from Great Britain, to dis- 
 seminate over America, had proved a dismal failure. 
 He also confessed that the physicians themselves were 
 ignorant of disease and the proper remedies, and that 
 the remedies which were employed did not possess 
 the proper efficacy. 
 
 He went farther. Having subscribed his name in 
 1776 to the Declaration of American Independence, 
 and thus declared himself in favor of impartial free- 
 dom, he began the Nineteenth Century with this 
 memorable protest against medical legislation. 
 
 *' Conferring exclusive privileges upon Bodies of 
 Physicians, and forbidding men of equal talents and 
 knowledge from practicing medicine within certain 
 districts of cities and countries, are Inquisitions — 
 however sanctioned by ancient charters and names — 
 serving as the Bastiles of our profession." 
 
 Such was the warning from the highest medical 
 authority of his day, in America. To it he added his 
 woful confession : "We have assisted in multiplying 
 diseases, and increased their mortality." 
 
 The large catalogue of complaints, classified and 
 curiously arranged in modern nosologic mortuary 
 records, abundantly confirm this declaration of impo-
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 405 
 
 tency. It was certainly high time to wrest the lancet 
 from the hands of physicians, and to consign it to rust 
 and oblivion. More urgent was the necessity to raise 
 up a new generation of practitioners who would bring 
 forth its legitimate fruits. Every intelligent commu- 
 nity must always demand a therapeutic art which is at 
 once benign and efficacious, a method which is both 
 merciful and certain, worthy of the enthusiasm of the 
 prophet and the unflagging zeal of the apostle. 
 
 Why, the question may pertinently be asked, why 
 may we not have such, as an American School of 
 Medicine ? We must realize the wants of our own 
 time, and employ intelligently the means for satisfy- 
 ing them. In doing this, it is by no means necessary 
 to break abruptly or violently with the Past, but only 
 to refuse to be in servile subjection to it. We can 
 hold aloof from former procedures and doctrines, 
 purely because they are inadequate, because they 
 have not only failed of approval with the more sensi- 
 ble among non-professional men, but also have been 
 weighed by the most eminent of medical teachers and 
 practitioners, and by them found wanting. We are 
 abundantly warranted in pleading for the American 
 Practice, because its methods, and its assortment of 
 remedies, better meet our requirements, and because 
 the latter are supplied chiefly from the Flora, the 
 medicinal waters, and innumerable resources of the 
 Western Hemisphere. But, aside from these advan- 
 tages, we may contend for it for reasons which will 
 commend themselves to every American patriot, and 
 every lover of his race ; because it is the Medical 
 Practice most in harmony with liberal knowledge, 
 with the spirit of broad investigation, and with the 
 sound principles of Human Freedom. It had its in-
 
 406 HISTOKY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ception in these, and side by side with them it must 
 run its career. 
 
 THE HEALING ART IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 
 
 The practice of Medicine in America, during the 
 colonial period, was simple and unpretentious. The 
 facilities afforded to the medical student for learning 
 the art consisted chiefly in familiar association with 
 rural practitioners, the observing of their procedures, 
 and a diligent prosecuting of such opportunities as 
 the country afforded. Individuals of an inquiring 
 habit of mind, persons skilled in woodcraft, and 
 expert housewives, learned the use of the medicinal 
 plants growing in the forests and neglected fields. 
 Much invaluable knowledge was acquired in this way. 
 The natives also possessed many important medical 
 secrets. All these were treasured up in families and 
 communicated to the various members. Pamphlets 
 were printed to disseminate such information, and to 
 explain certain procedures which had been found 
 salutary in the treating of the sick. Much of this 
 knowledge has been preserved and cultivated, but 
 much has unfortunately been lost. 
 
 A physician, well grounded in the traditions of the 
 former period,* enumerates many of the remedies 
 then employed from the vegetable kingdom, giving 
 them their common, unpretentious names of " yellow 
 dock, sarsaparilla, wintergreen, birch bark, elecam- 
 pane, comfrey, sassafras, plantain, whitewood, dande- 
 lion, snake-root, hardback, horse-radish, peppermint, 
 spearmint, red peppers, Indian tobacco, wormwood, 
 tansy, yarrow, star-grass, marsh-mallow, Indian hemp 
 
 * Dr. Rufus W. Griswold, of Rocky Hill, Connecticut.
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 407 
 
 l^Apocynum], wild ginger, mullein, pink-root, night- 
 shade, barberry, sweet flag, catnip, wormseed, golden 
 thread, dogwood, skunk-cabbage, bittersweet, slippery 
 elm, boneset or thoroughwort, blue gentian, crane's 
 bill, pennyroyal, frostwort, henbane, blue flag, butter- 
 nut-bark, juniper berries, burdock, wild-cherry bark, 
 flaxseed, pumpkin seeds, parsley-root, May-apple, 
 black alder, elder-berries, white-oak bark, sumach ber- 
 ries, rosemary, blackberry-root, willow-bark, sage, 
 blood -root, skullcap, seneca [I^o/ygala'j^mvLSta.rd, golden 
 rod, queen's root, stramonium seeds, uva ursi, valerian 
 \CypripediHm\ hellebore, prickly ash, touchwood, agri- 
 mony, sweet fern, mandrake, marjoram, colt's foot 
 YTussilago\ mistletoe, Peruvian bark." 
 
 The treatise upon Herbal Medicine, by the cele- 
 brated Nicholas Culpepper, was known to the more 
 intelligent practitioners. It bore the title of The 
 English Physician — Enlarged^ and its title page bore the 
 quaint description : " A Compleat Method of Physick, 
 whereby a Man may preserve his Body in Health or 
 Cure himself, being sick, with sucn things only as 
 grow in England, they being most fit for English 
 Bodies." This edition of the work was published in 
 1704, and contained accounts of three hundred and 
 sixty-nine plants, setting forth their astrologic,* as 
 well as remedial character. We find many of them 
 at the present time equally common in America, and 
 frequently in use as medicines. Among them are, 
 agrimony, avens, bittersweet, nightshade, gentian, 
 flower-de-luce, cleavers, comfrey, pennyroyal, dande- 
 
 * " If we knew all the qualities of the stars," says Dr. Franz Hartmann, " we 
 would find that the quality of each of them is represented on the earth by some 
 plant." This was the doctrine taught in the universities of Europe during the 
 Middle Ages. Paracelsus actually classified his remedies under the head of the 
 seven planets, and many of them are now used in the same way as he directed.
 
 408 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 lion, mullein, poplar bark, willow, catmint, thorough- 
 wort, eyebright. Quaint and antique as the work may- 
 be, it contains much information of great utility. 
 
 Every doctor had his favorite medicines, pills, and 
 other preparations, and he often kept their composi- 
 tion a secret. Some of them were very crude, and 
 their efficacy would seem to us now as depending 
 very much upon the credulity of both physician and 
 patient, to be even tolerated. They remind us of the 
 old Warburg Tincture, or rather of the ingredients 
 resembling those of the former pharmacy, which we 
 find enumerated as elements of the brew in the caul- 
 dron of the Urd Sisters, in the tragedy of Macbeth. 
 There was little pretense of medical ethics in 
 the former centuries, but the same opprobrium 
 that was lavished upon dissenters and heretics in 
 religious communities, was bestowed with like inten- 
 sity of hatred by medical men upon those who did 
 not follow their procedures. 
 
 The clergy of the American colonies sometimes 
 united medical practice with their pastoral duties, 
 thus ministering to mind and body alike, and perhaps 
 to equal advantage. Many of the governors and other 
 magistrates, also prescribed for the maladies of their 
 neighbors. Mothers of families, and the maiden aunts 
 abounding in Yankeedom, took charge of their own 
 households, and attended to others who desired their 
 help. They had almost exclusive direction of the 
 obstetric art. Physicians were sparse, and were 
 chiefly consulted in extraordinary emergencies. 
 
 Surgical skill was extremely rare. Here and there 
 were individuals of little technical acquirement, but 
 possessed of tact and ingenuity, for operative pro- 
 cedures. A practitioner of this class in New Hamp-
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 409 
 
 shire, by the name of Kittredge, has been already 
 named. He reduced fractures and dislocations with 
 wonderful skill. Also Captain Benoni Sweet, of Rhode 
 Island, and his descendants were equally distinguished. 
 The members of this family exhibited deftness in this 
 direction, almost intuitive, and accompanied by cor- 
 responding results. In other respects they were not 
 so wonderful, and indeed, several of them incurred the 
 imputation of charlatanry. They were characterized 
 by the fault unpardonable in the unwritten code of 
 New England, unthrift. Their services were in requi- 
 sition during the Indian and Revolutionary wars. 
 
 Technical instruction during the colonial period, 
 and indeed for many years of the Nineteenth Century, 
 was very meagre and superficial. Libraries were 
 always small, and there was comparatively little to be 
 learned from the books. The medical student, as a 
 general custom, attended his preceptor, and acquired 
 from him a knowledge of the medicines and proced- 
 ures which he was himself to employ. After several 
 seasons, he ventured to begin professional work on 
 his own account. It is probably not more than just 
 to remark, that as practitioners, the average American 
 physicians thus educated were not inferior to their 
 brethren beyond the Atlantic ocean. Indeed, one of 
 their successors affirms that their patients with acute 
 diseases recovered in a proportion as large as similar 
 patients get well at the present time. It must be 
 added in further justice that these statements sliould 
 be confined to one school of practitioners. Better 
 success attends the others. 
 
 They let blood as zealously as Sangrado of old, and 
 actually attributed to this operation whatever recov- 
 eries took place. Pringle, who flourished in the fore-
 
 4IO HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 part of the Eighteenth Century, quoted Sydenham, 
 Boerhaave and Bellini, in favor of this exhaustive 
 depletion ; Rush and his contemporaries followed 
 Pringle. The doctrine which Cervantes had in jest 
 imputed to his physician, was promulgated in sober 
 earnest. As late as 1841, Dr. Sleigt, a physician of 
 Philadelphia, while holding a public discussion, 
 asserted that five-sixths of the blood was superfluous, 
 and being loaded with the seeds of disease, it was 
 better to discharge it from the body. So they bled 
 for every thing pretty much alike, for fever, preg- 
 nancy, consumption, even attempting it for Asiatic 
 cholera. In many communities, individuals had 
 become enthusiastic to be bled periodically, as their 
 descendants did to be vaccinated. 
 
 This state of sentiment continued till past the mid- 
 dle of the century. By this time the new-coming 
 physicians of the several schools had succeeded in 
 changing the popular sentiment, and compelled a 
 suspension of the prevailing practice.* The lancet 
 was reluctantly surrendered. In order to cover the 
 retreat, the plea was put forth that the type of diseases 
 had changed. The real truth, however, was that 
 there was a different type of patients. Yet the desire 
 to resuscitate the practice of blood-letting appears 
 above the surface every little while, as may be per- 
 ceived from utterances by leading men like Bowditch, 
 
 * It was a maxim of Broussais : " Bleed the patient till he is white." In 1832, 
 the French soldiers and colonists of Algeria suffered a fearful mortality. At Bona, 
 out of five thousand men, eleven hundred died — two out of every seven in the hos- 
 pital. Dr. Maillat, of Paris, was then placed in charge. His observation con- 
 vinced him that the fatality was due to venesection. He made many experiments, 
 finally substituting quinia. The mortality was reduced to one in forty-six. He 
 then promulgated the new quinine treatment, and had the satisfaction of seeing it 
 adopted in France thirty years after. The present excessive use of this drug in 
 America may be, like the women's fashions, a style adopted from Paris.
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 411 
 
 Flint, Fordyce Barker and Jacobi. Revolutions in 
 countries, however, and in popular sentiment, are 
 followed by a partial return near the former points in 
 the circle ; and the hope is now cherished that by aid 
 of legislation, the former supremacy will be again 
 established and a revival enabled of the practice of 
 blood-letting. This may all be possible, but it seems 
 hardly probable, even then, that individuals of com- 
 mon intelligence will be induced to believe that their 
 blood is in any degree superfluous. A new theory 
 must thus be devised, and it can not last long. 
 
 The attempt had been made, as has been already 
 mentioned, to introduce technical instruction from 
 the Old World. The medical practitioners of Europe 
 were then divided into schools reflecting the doctrines 
 of Cullen, Hoffmann, Stahl and Boerhaave. The 
 sentiment most current in England very naturally 
 had the preference. William Hunter came from Lon- 
 don and delivered several courses of lectures, but 
 received little encouragement. Other endeavors had 
 little more success. The physicians of the colonies 
 being mostly self-taught men, were attached to their 
 own notions and methods, and hardly willing to 
 accept the views of others, however eminent their 
 reputation. They were probably equal as practi- 
 tioners to their trans-Atlantic contemporaries. They 
 were, all of them, graphically described by the Rev. 
 John Wesley in terms by no means flattering, but in 
 most respects over-true. 
 
 " As theories increased," says he, " simple micdicines 
 were more and more disregarded and disused ; till in 
 a course of years the greater part of them were for- 
 gotten, at least in the more polished nations. In the 
 room of these, abundance of new ones were intro-
 
 412 HISTORV OF MEDICINE. 
 
 duced by reasoning, speculative men ; and those more 
 and more remote from common observation. Hence, 
 rules for the application of them, and medical books, 
 were immensely multiplied ; till at length. Physic 
 became an abstruse science, quite out of the reach of 
 ordinary men. Physicians now began to be held in 
 admiration, as persons who were something more 
 than human. And profit attended their employ, as 
 well as honor ; so that they had now two weighty 
 reasons for keeping the bulk of mankind at a distance, 
 that they might not pry into the mysteries of their 
 profession. To this end they increased those difficul- 
 ties by design, which were in a manner by accident. 
 They filled their writings with abundance of technical terms 
 utterly unintelligible to plain men." 
 
 Under such a condition of matters, physicians were 
 justly criticized for their deplorable ignorance of 
 disease, its treatment and proper remedies; and mem- 
 bers of their own fraternity were loudest in con- 
 demnation. Patients undergoing their treatment were 
 often hopelessly crippled, and the sick room was a 
 veritable torture-chamber.* 
 
 It was plain at the beginning of the Nineteenth 
 Century that a new mode of practice was a leading 
 want of the time. The instinct of self-preservation 
 forbade imperatively that Americans should longer 
 be dominated by the kaleidoscopic dogmas and the 
 destructive forms of treatment extant in Europe ; and 
 at the same time it demanded of them not to submit 
 to a system of medical procedure here at home which 
 its leading expositors almost unanimously acknowl- 
 
 * Captain James Riley, of Middletown, Connecticut, who was shipwrecked in 
 1815, and enslaved for a time by the Tuaregs of the Sahara, declared afterward 
 that his sufferings and privations in the African Desert were not to be compared 
 with what he underwent from medical men to little benefit. He finally became 
 a Thomsonian and treated himself with success, recovering his health.
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 413 
 
 edged to be flagrantly at fault, declaring its " facts " 
 to be so many lies. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson had the fullest warrant for his 
 sweeping utterance : " I believe we may safely affirm 
 that the inexperienced and presumptuous herd of 
 medical tyros let loose upon the world destroys more 
 lives than all the Robin Hoods, Cartouches and Mac- 
 heaths do in a century." 
 
 With such convictions as these, supported by per- 
 sonal observation and the voluntary confessions of the 
 leading medical writers of the time, the great Father 
 of American republicanism, put forth the memorable 
 prediction, the Earnest of a New Practice of Medicine 
 to spring up in America, which should supersede the 
 pernicious European systems, and be unlike them — 
 actually conservative of life and restorative to health. 
 "I hope and believe," said he " that it is from this 
 side of the Atlantic that Europe, which has taught us 
 so many useful things, will be led into sound princi- 
 ples in this branch of science, the most important of all, 
 to which we commit the care of health and life." 
 
 What Jefferson thus foreshadowed, the builders of 
 the American Practice of Medicine, every one in his 
 own sphere and place of activity, have striven to 
 realize. 
 
 THE EARLY BOTANIC MEDICAL PRACTICE. 
 
 The origins of the American Practice of Medicine 
 were as humble as those described of Christianity 
 itself, as well as of every beneficial movement, and 
 are as difficult to ascertain with strict historic accu- 
 racy. It was a time when communication between 
 distant places was far from easy, and when facilities 
 for liberal instruction were few. Except in the cities
 
 414 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 and more populous districts, organization for mutual 
 improvement, or even for defense against persecution, 
 was very hard to effect. Every practitioner of reform- 
 atory views, like the famous Harry Wynd, of Scottish 
 story, "fought for his own hand." If he should have 
 been asked to describe diseases or to give his reasons 
 learnedly for his mode of treatment, he would very 
 probably have been compelled to answer in terms like 
 those of Talbot, the introducer of Peruvian bark : " A 
 fever is something which I cannot define, but which I 
 ■can cure ; whilst you, perhaps, may be able to define 
 but cannot cure it." 
 
 The belief was general, as recognized by Culpepper 
 and others, that every region of the earth produced 
 indigenous medicinal plants that were ample for the 
 cure of the diseases there prevalent. The experience 
 of the early colonists of America, as has been already 
 shown, appeared to verify the notion. It was known 
 that the native tribes possessed the knowledge of 
 such plants, and that they employed them success- 
 fully. White men occasionally, who had been suffer- 
 ing from ailments or injuries that baffled the current 
 medical skill, were successfully cured with their simple 
 concoctions. 
 
 Thus the belief became widely entertained that 
 the aboriginal tribes of the American forest were pos- 
 sessed of extraordinary skill in the Healing Art, and 
 the title of " Indian Doctor," which has been so often 
 fraudulently employed, has been very frequently a 
 sure introduction to popular favor. 
 
 Samuel Smith, the historian of the " Province of New 
 Jersey," added his testimony, that the natives "Were 
 very studious in observing the virtues of roots and 
 herbs, by which they cured themselves of many bodily
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 415 
 
 distempers, both by outward and inward applications ; 
 they, besides, frequently used sweating and the hot 
 bath." 
 
 REMEDIES LEARNED FROM THE INDIANS. 
 
 Many of the early Botanic physicians of America 
 appear to have obtained their first conceptions of med- 
 ical knowledge from intercourse with the natives. In 
 some instances they had been led into captivity, and 
 so had the opportunity to learn the procedures and 
 remedies employed by their captors. In other cases 
 there were individuals of Indian descent who brought 
 their skill to the knowledge of their white neighbors, 
 by living among them and treating their various 
 maladies. White men likewise cultivated friendly 
 relations with native practitioners, and learned from 
 them the plants and methods of treatment which they 
 had found beneficial. 
 
 Rafinesque, the Bartons, Elisha Smith, and earlier 
 writers, obtained in such ways a very wide knowledge 
 of the medicinal plants which were in use among the 
 aboriginal inhabitants. These were numerous enough 
 to make a very complete Materia Medica by them- 
 selves. The category includes the following remedies 
 now universally known as peculiar to the Eclectic 
 School of Medicine, namely : 
 
 Podophyllum, Phytolacca, Iris, Leptandra, Aletris, 
 Helonias, Collinsonia, Chionanthus, Asclepias tube- 
 rosa, Apocynum, black and blue Cohosh, Chelone, 
 Euphorbia, Agrimonia, Xanthoxylum, Cactus, Gentian, 
 Chenopodium, Equisetum, Lycopus, Hepatica, Hy- 
 drastis, Convolvulus, Arum, Arbutus, Geranium, 
 Geum, Gaultheria, Sanguinaria, Lobelia, Dioscorea, 
 Scutellaria, Spiraea, the various plants named " snake-
 
 4l6 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 root," Sumac, Golden rod,Viburnum , Galium, Erigeron, 
 Alnus, Veratrum Viride, and many others. These 
 have since been manipulated in many ways,* and con- 
 stitute a class of remedies not excelled by those of any 
 rival school. 
 
 BOTANIC PHYSICIANS BECOMING A DISTINCT CLASS. 
 
 It has been shown already that during the colonial 
 period, the medicines employed by physicians were 
 chiefly, if not generally, obtained from the vegetable 
 kingdom. As, however, the influence of the trans- 
 atlantic schools and practitioners became more gener- 
 ally prevalent, these fell more and more into disuse, 
 and even somewhat into discredit. Mercury, antimony, 
 arsenic, venesection and the fly-blister became the 
 formidable agents. The professional treatment, that 
 of Brown and Broussais, under which General Wash- 
 ington died in 1799, illustrates forcibly how wide was 
 the departure. 
 
 Nevertheless, there were physicians remaining who 
 still were true to the principle of safe and more 
 benign medication. Very generally they were practi- 
 tioners who had obtained information as they were 
 able, in regard to the remedial virtues of plants and 
 the proper methods of treating the sick, and so had 
 entered upon their calling, dependent upon their 
 native tact, intuition and home-acquired knowledge. 
 They very often began their remedial procedures 
 upon themselves and with their near relatives, and 
 were so successful that their neighbors were induced 
 to seek their aid. Thus with humble beginnings they 
 had continued till it had become necessary for them 
 
 * See Digest of Materia Aledica and Pharmacy, by Albert Merrell, M. D. 
 Prepared under authority of the National Eclectic Medical Association.
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 417 
 
 to abandon their manual employments and assume 
 formally the duties of the medical profession. 
 
 Few of them, however, left any record. The con- 
 ditions of colonial and frontier life were not favora- 
 ble to the writing of books. It has been an unseemly 
 practice of their adversaries to taunt them as 
 illiterate. It comes, however, with a very ill grace. 
 Deficient as they may have been in book learning, 
 they were endowed, most of them, with a degree of 
 skill, and they had acquired a knowledge of remedies 
 and a cleverness in employing them which amply 
 justified their claims as physicians. They easily won 
 and retained confidence, for their patients increased in 
 larger proportion than those treated in the fashiona- 
 ble way, and without being permanently crippled, or 
 made miserable for life, as was not unfrequently the 
 case with the others. 
 
 That Botanic physicians, however, were not so 
 illiterate as was pretended, is illustrated by the fact 
 that Samuel Thomson himself desired to become the 
 student of one, and was precluded by reason of his 
 defective common-school education. At that time, 
 physicians, as a general fact, had very meagre ele- 
 mentary instruction. Many, and probably the ma- 
 jority, had not a decent primary education, and were 
 not able to write grammatically. It is by no means 
 altogether different at the present time. The stand- 
 ard of medical learning in all ranks of the medical 
 profession can be easily measured by the fact that in 
 1853, the Legislature of the State of New York passed 
 an act ostensibly for the incorporation of medical 
 colleges, but actually to prevent such incorporation, 
 declaring in it that the condition for receiving the 
 degree of Doctor in Medicine should be an at<"endance
 
 4l8 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 at medical lectures for two terms of twelve weeks 
 each. The courts of the State went further, evidently- 
 regarding medical learning as other than scientific. 
 In 1884, the Court of Appeals rendered a decision 
 adverse to the United States Medical College, solely 
 upon the ground that a medical college is neither a 
 scientific nor literary, but only an eleemosynary in- 
 stitution. 
 
 It is worth our while in this connection to bear in 
 mind that in the earlier years of the Nineteenth 
 Century, the very period when the attempt was in 
 full energy to suppress medical non-conformists by 
 oppressive statutes and vigorous persecution, the 
 established school of medicine itself and the medical 
 colleges existing under its auspices, were themselves 
 in very ill repute with intelligent men. Professor 
 Rush himself declared, in 1801, that " those physicians 
 generally became the most eminent who soonest 
 emancipate themselves from the tyranny of the 
 Schools of Physic." 
 
 This was certainly a testimony from a high quarter 
 in favor of independence of medical colleges by mem- 
 bers in the profession, of original methods of practice 
 and of the courageous adoption of new and better 
 procedures. It was almost equivalent to the extend- 
 ing of a fraternal welcome to innovators, and even to 
 practitioners who entertained diverse views. Dr. 
 Rush demonstrated his sincerity and liberality by 
 giving a friendly reception to Dr. Samuel Thomson, 
 in 1813, and commending his doctrines to a candid 
 examination. It is the genuine scholar and physician, 
 the manly man, who is glad to learn and profit from 
 any source of information, without question of its 
 acceptance by others.
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 419 
 
 A significant recommendation has been given in 
 later years to the remedies employed by the early 
 Botanic and Reformed physicians. Very many of 
 them have been adopted and palmed off upon the 
 public as " new remedies," by writers and others who 
 were by no means friendly to that school of practice ; 
 the precaution being taken at the same time, how- 
 ever, to avoid any rendering of credit due, or even 
 an honest mention of the sources from which the 
 medicines had been learned — and going so far, some- 
 times, as to name some individual of their own parti- 
 san complexion as having " introduced them to the 
 medical profession."* 
 
 Efforts have been made at a later period to induce 
 physicians to supply themselves with the various 
 products of coal-tar and petroleum, these being made 
 conspicuous by unmeaning and unpronouncable names. 
 Their success is, however, by no means assured. The 
 condition is very general among the "plain people," 
 that medicines, in the preparing of which drugs of a 
 mineral origin have been discarded, are of more 
 certain benefit and safer in administration. The 
 nostrums which are hawked over the country or kept 
 on sale by apothecaries, are far more likely to attract 
 purchasers when certified to be wholly of botanic origin. 
 
 ♦This phrase is but an aping of the Old World ecclesiasticism. It is a covert 
 insinuation that Eclectic, Botanic and Homoeopathic physicians do not belong to 
 the medical profession. 
 
 The medicines to which allusion is here made now flood the market. Among 
 them are the various preparations of which Aletris, Viburnum, Chionanthus, 
 Podophyllum, Phytolacca, and Stillingia are ingredients. The " Stillingia Com- 
 pound," which has been manufactured by W. S. Merrell, and sold by Eclectic 
 physicians for half a century, was adopted in this manner, backed up by a 
 remarkable statement from Dr. J. Marion Sims to justify the " introduction." It 
 is now advertised and sold under a variety of names as official, and forcibly 
 illustrates ethics without morals.
 
 420 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Indeed, it has been the general belief and conviction 
 from the times of Hippokrates, Chrysippus and Pliny- 
 till the present, that the remedies which are the most 
 certain to accomplish the purposes for which they are 
 intended, as well as to leave no disease after them — a 
 morbid condition possibly worse than the one for 
 which they had been administered — are from the 
 vegetable kingdom. 
 
 EARLY TEACHERS OF MEDICAL BOTANY IN AMERICA. 
 
 Though Botany is now, as a general fact, too little 
 studied in American medical colleges, it was more 
 highly regarded in the earlier years of the Republic. 
 There were many accomplished instructors, among 
 whom we may name John Torrey, of the University 
 of the City of New York ; Doctor Short, at Transyl- 
 vania University, in Kentucky ; Stephen Elliott, of 
 Charleston ; Lewis Beck and William TuUy, at Albany, 
 and others at different places. They endeavored dili- 
 gently to develop and disseminate the knowledge of 
 the indigenous medicinal plants. Several of them 
 published their observations ; William Barton, of 
 Philadelphia, described fifty plants, and Dr. Jacob 
 Bigelow, of Boston, treated of sixty, giving also illus- 
 trations. They were preceded by Samuel Henry, who 
 issued his Medical Herbal in 1814, containing an 
 account of about one hundred and sixty medicinal 
 plants. This author, like Culpepper and other early 
 writers, did not give the scientific classification, and 
 his book, though having a large sale, was severely 
 criticised by Rafinesque and others. Indeed, it has 
 been a cause for regret and deep humiliation, that so 
 lew practitioners, even among those who profess to 
 belong to a school of Botanic Medicine, have deemed
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 42I 
 
 it worth their while to acquire any thorough or con- 
 siderable knowledge of Scientific Botany. This has 
 been a serious drawback, and has afforded to their 
 rivals a plausible pretext for claiming to have been 
 original discoverers and introducers of new remedies 
 obtained from the medicinal plants indigenous in 
 America. 
 
 RAFINESQUE. 
 
 The study of the American Flora was prosecuted 
 with marked thoroughness and ability by Constantine 
 Smaltz Rafinesque. This distinguished savant was 
 the son of a French resident at Galatea, a suburb of 
 Constantinople, where he was born in 1784. He early 
 manifested a passion for natural history. In 181 2, he 
 came to Philadelphia, and there prosecuted his studies 
 with such facilities as he was able to obtain. Return- 
 ing to Europe, he spent some years in Sicily, and 
 became the author of several valuable scientific 
 works in the French language. He came again to 
 America in 1815, but had the misfortune to be ship- 
 wrecked off the eastern shore of Long Island, and so 
 to lose all his books, manuscripts and other property. 
 He thus entered the country penniless ; but he was of 
 a temper too elastic to be totally disheartened. He 
 made a journey directly afterward to the West, as 
 "the West" then existed, in order to pursue his 
 studies in natural science. 
 
 In 1817, he was appointed to the Chair of Botany in 
 Transylvania University, Several years later he 
 returned to Philadelphia, and made it his final resi- 
 dence. He became the author of several works on 
 History, Botany and Science ; and prepared the first
 
 422 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Hand-Book in this country that could, to any consid- 
 erable extent, meet the wants of the intelligent bota- 
 nist and physician.* Its illustrations, over one hun- 
 dred in all, are very accurate and beautiful. The 
 plates were purchased in 1840 by Dr. Thomas Cooke, 
 of Philadelphia, and w^ere reproduced by him in the 
 Botanic Medical Reformer, and also by Dr. Wooster 
 Beach, in his work on the American Practice. 
 
 Professor Rafinesque is described by a later scien- 
 tist as " one of the geniuses that occasionally appear 
 to puzzle people of steady habits." He was outspoken 
 in his opinions, indefatigable as an explorer and 
 investigator, and possessed of remarkable originality. 
 He spent a long time in the valley of the Mississippi, 
 where he had opportunity to observe the native 
 American peoples, the Choctaws, Chickasaws and 
 Cherokees of the South, as well as the tribes then 
 living north of the Ohio river ; to learn their proced- 
 ures with the sick, and the remedies which they 
 employed. His impressions in favor of a vegetable 
 Materia Medica, and of a reformed practice of med- 
 icine in accordance with it, were deepened into con- 
 victions which he recorded in no equivocal language 
 in his Manual of Medical Botany. He declared, without 
 hesitation, that "the popular belief that every country 
 produces simples suitable to cure all their prevailing 
 local diseases, is not devoid of truth." He further 
 remarked that " there are many modes of effecting 
 cures by equivalent remedies, but vegetable substances 
 
 • Medical Flora ; or Manual o/ Medical Botany o/ the United States o/ North 
 America. Containing a Selection of above loo Figures and Descriptions of Med- 
 ical Plants, with their Names, Localities, Properties, History, etc., and Notes or 
 Remarks on nearly 500 Equivalent Substitutes. In Two Volumes. By C. S. 
 Rafinesque, A. M., Ph. D. 1828-30. Philadelphia.
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 423 
 
 afford the mildest, most efficient, and most congenial 
 to the human frame." 
 
 The contemporaries of Rafanesque appear to have 
 been morally blind to his merits, as well as mentally 
 incapable of understanding his teachings. They 
 passed him by accordingly as a man of no account. 
 Scientific men often act like political leaders, and 
 consider the new man as their rival. Their favorite 
 way for disposing of him is to smother his influence 
 by ignoring his meritorious achievements. Rafinesque 
 was keenly sensitive to the treatment which he 
 received, and in the caption or motto of his later 
 treatise. On the Fishes of the River Ohio, he indicated his 
 unfriendly emulators in sharp language : 
 
 " The art of seeing well, of noticing and distin- 
 guishing with accuracy, the objects which he per- 
 ceives, is a high faculty of the mind, unfolded in a 
 few individuals, and despised by those who can 
 neither acquire it nor appreciate its value." 
 
 His work on the Medical Flora of North America 
 was treated with a neglect almost supercilious. At 
 that time the Linnaean system of classification was in 
 full favor, and he had the temerity to propose a 
 Natural Method, which possessed no attraction for 
 superficial scholars. He was thus at odds with the 
 received science of his time, and suffered accordingly 
 the fate of those who are thus in the advance. At a 
 later period, however, he received the meed of 
 honor. The first to acknowledge his merits were the 
 professors of Harvard University. Agassiz, himself 
 of foreign birth, paid him this tribute : 
 
 " Both in Europe and in America he has anticipated 
 most of his contemporaries in the discover)' of new
 
 424 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 genera and species in those departments of Science 
 which he cultivated most perseveringly, and it is but 
 justice to restore them to him whenever it can 
 be done." 
 
 Professor Asa Gray followed this noble suggestion, 
 and included in his Manual of Botatiy thirteen of the 
 genera, eight sub-genera and sixteen species of the 
 plants which Rafinesque had described. The sage 
 had died neglected, and then had his monument. 
 
 The introduction to the Medical Flora is a very com- 
 plete presentation of the whole subject. The learned 
 professor, as with the ken of a prophet, had almost 
 foreseen and divined the advent of the new American 
 Reformed School of Medicine, and he threw the gate 
 wide open for its arrival. We transcribe his language 
 on the subject : 
 
 " 1. The Science of Botany was at all times intimately con- 
 nected with Medical Knowledge. 
 
 " 2. Several ancient nations, such as the Grecians, Romans, 
 Hindus, Chinese, etc., considered Medical Botany as equivalent 
 to both botanical and medical knowledge. 
 
 " 3. Medicine was then, and is still, among such nations, noth- 
 ing more than the application of an empirical knowledge of vege- 
 table substances. 
 
 "4. Thence, the usual vulgar division of Plants into the five 
 great classes of Aliments, Simples, Poisons, Flowers and Weeds 
 — or alimentary, medical, poisonous, ornamental and useless 
 plants. 
 
 "5. At the revival of learning in Europe, this notion being 
 general, the first works on Botany were, of course, mere sketches 
 of Medical Botany, and comments on Grecian and Roman writers. 
 
 " 6. When Tournefort and Linnaeus, about a century ago, 
 became botanical reformers, and made Botany a separate Science, 
 their efforts and improvements were resisted by those who, at all 
 times, contend against useful innovations. 
 
 " 7. Linnaeus in his Materia Uledica gave a model of Syste-
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 425 
 
 matic Medical Botany, equally concise, perspicuous and accurate ; 
 but destitute of the help of figures. 
 
 " 8. This model was followed by Schoepf [of Erlangen Univer- 
 sity] in his Materia Medic a of North America, the first great 
 work on our medical plants, published in German and in Latin, 
 toward 1787. This small work of Schoepf has never been trans- 
 lated nor republished in America ; although highly deserving of it. 
 
 "9. When America was settled, the native tribes were in pos- 
 session of many valuable vegetable remedies, discovered by long 
 experience, the knowledge of which they gradually imparted to 
 their neighbors. 
 
 " 10. This knowledge, partly adopted, even as far as Europe, 
 and partly rejected by medical skeptics, became scattered through 
 our country in the hands of country practitioners. Herbalists, 
 Empirics, and Botanists. 
 
 "II. Schoepf collected his materials from them and noticed 
 about three hundred and sixty plants as medical ; but he did not 
 go everywhere, nor exhaust the subject, since nearly double that 
 number are actually in common use in different states of the 
 Union. 
 
 " 12. Since the United States have become an independent and 
 flourishing nation, much has been done to teach and spread correct 
 medical knowledge. 
 
 " 13. The establishment of Medical Schools, Chairs of Materia 
 Medica, of Medical and Systematical Botany, Medical and Botanic 
 Gardens, Infirmaries, Hospitals, have largely combined to impart 
 medical and botanical knowledge, through the professional 
 class. 
 
 " 14. This purpose has been aided by numerous publications of 
 learned physicians and botanists, medical works, pamphlets, and 
 journals. Pharmacopoeias, Dispensatories, Inaugural Theses, etc. 
 
 " 15. Notwithstanding all these means, it is a positive and 
 deplorable fact that but few medical practitioners apply them- 
 selves to the study of Botany, and therefore are deprived of the 
 aid of comparative Medical Botany. 
 
 " 16. It is not less certain, but still more deplorable, that beyond 
 the immediate sphere of medical knowledge, the majority of the 
 people are yet a prey to medical credulity, superstition and delu- 
 sions, in which they are confirmed by the repeated failures of 
 theorists and occasional success of empirical rivals.
 
 426 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 "17. Even in large cities and in the centre of medical light 
 Empirics are thriving, because they avail themselves of the 
 resources afforded by active plants, often neglected or unknown 
 to the regular practitioners. 
 
 " 18. It is not, perhaps, so well known that there are in this age 
 and in the United States, American Marabouts, who, like the 
 Marabouts of the wilds of Africa,* attempt in some remote places 
 to cure diseases by charms, prayers, blowing, spitting, etc." 
 
 " AS OTHERS SAW THEM." 
 
 Medical practice in America, it is plain to see, 
 Rafinesque did not regard as coming within the 
 conditions of a learned profession. He presents 
 the following view of the field, which is by no means 
 flattering : " It is therefore necessary to spread still 
 further correct medical knowledge. The state of 
 medical knowledge is such in the United States as to 
 require a greater diffusion of acquired knowledge, 
 aided by freedom of enquiry, liberal views, and mutual 
 forbearance." 
 
 It is plain to any one conversant with the history of 
 that period, that when Rafinesque was writing there 
 was a deplorable condition of affairs, mental and 
 moral. Arbitrary laws existed in many of the states, 
 physicians were persecuted by rival practitioners 
 with a barbarous malignity, arrogant intolerance was 
 displayed toward every difference of sentiment on 
 medical methods, and bitter jealousies were rampant 
 
 * The Murabuts (Aimara6ai/ian) aie ihe remains of a powerful Muslim sect 
 that for seventy years ruled in Spain, Barbary and the Sahara Desert, close to 
 Negroland. They arose in the middle of the eleventh century in the western part 
 of Morocco, and were characterized by remarkable enthusiasm. They gained the 
 dominion of Spain in 1073, but were driven out by the Almohades or Mahdi 
 dynasty in 1147. They then gave up political affairs to become, like the Jews, a 
 religious body only. They are venerated by the Berber population for their 
 sanctity, and treat the sick by medicines, mesmeric procedures, etc. The famous 
 Abd-el-Kader was a Marabout.
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 427 
 
 everywhere. Rafinesque thus describes the several 
 classes then engaged in practice : 
 
 " 20. The Practice of Medicine is now exercised by three sets of 
 men or classes of practitioners : i, The Rationals ; 2, the Theo- 
 rists; 3, the Empirics. 
 
 "21. The /^atio/ia/ medicsd men are liberal and modest, learned 
 and well informed, neither intolerant nor deceitful, and ready to 
 learn or impart mformation. They comprise the Jmpro7>ers, 
 Eclectics, and Experimentalists. 
 
 "22. The Improvers study nature, and the human frame, 
 write their observations, and improve medical knowledge. 
 
 " 23. The Eclectics * are those who subject and adopt in practice 
 whatever is found beneficial, and who change their prescriptions 
 according to emergencies, circumstances and acquired knowledge. 
 
 " 24. While the Experimentalists are those who are directed by 
 experience and experiments, observations, dissections and facts. 
 
 " 25. But Theorists are often illiberal, intolerant, proud and 
 conceited ; they follow a peculiar Theory and Mode of Practice 
 with little deviation, employing but few vegetable remedies, and 
 enlisting under the banner of a Teacher or Sect.f 
 
 "26. They are divided into many sects, always at war among 
 themselves and their rivals. Such as the Brownists, Galenists, 
 Mesmerians, Skeptics, Chemicalists, Colomelists, Entomists, etc. 
 
 " 27. The Empirics are commonly illiterate, ignorant, deceitful 
 and reserved ; they follow a secret or absurd mode of practice, or 
 deal in patent remedies. 
 
 "28. They include the Herbalists, vulgarly called the Indian 
 or Root Doctors, and the Steam Doctors, who follow the old 
 
 * This is the first application of the term " Eclectic " to designate any school 
 or class of practitioners of medicine during the Nineteenth Century, and the 
 definition here given is sufficiently full and explicit to describe the physicians who 
 afterward adopted the appellation. It is not so easy, however, to perceive why 
 the other groups, the " Improvers ■' and "Experimentalists," were not included 
 with them instead of being distinguished as separate bodies. 
 
 t It is common now to deny that this class of practitioners is a sect. Its mem- 
 bers style themselves " the medical profession " as the Roman Christians, denomi- 
 nate their ecclesiastical corporation " the Church," meaning thereby to exclude 
 others from that distinction. The animus is the same in both cases ; Rafinesque's 
 description holds good, nevertheless, substantially.
 
 428 HISTORY OF MEDICINE, 
 
 practice of the natives, the Quacks, or dealers in nostrums, the 
 Patent Doctors, the Prescribers of Recipes, the Marabuts, etc. 
 
 " 29. All these classes need instruction in the natural knowl- 
 edge of medical substances ; and it ought to be afforded to them 
 so that they might become properly acquainted with those which 
 they employ or may avail themselves of. 
 
 ' ' 30. Medical Sciences have lately been widely enlarged by 
 borrowing the help of all the Natural Sciences ; and the enlightened 
 physicians begin to avail themselves of all the materials they can 
 command, rendering all the sciences subservient or auxiliaries to 
 their pursuits." 
 
 A PRECURSIVE WORK OF MEDICAL REFORM. 
 
 For the furtherance of the end here set forth, 
 Rafinesque devoted his efforts. It was his avowed 
 purpose to make botanical knowledge accessible to all. 
 He spared himself neither time nor exertion. He 
 made journeys over fourteen out the twenty-four 
 states then comprising the American Union ; perform- 
 ing over eight thousand miles of actual travel. He 
 laid all alike under contribution, holding a voluminous 
 correspondence with leading botanists and physicians, 
 and never scrupling to seek from the illiterate the 
 results of their experience. He never despised knowl- 
 edge, he declares, because it came from an uncouth 
 mouth. He tested his peculiar facts on himself and 
 others. Thus he employed fifteen years before giving 
 to the public the result of his labors. 
 
 Rafinesque was warmly opposed to the exclusive 
 spirit and action of professional men in regard to the 
 dissemination of scientific knowledge. He did not 
 hesitate to declare his purpose to endeavor to make 
 botanical learning accessible to all. The popular 
 knowledge of the natural science had been prevented 
 in the United States, he declared, because the first 
 books published in them had followed the world of
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 429 
 
 Splendid European publications intended for the 
 wealthy only, or for public libraries. " Works of 
 general utility," said he, " ought to be accurate, com- 
 plete, portable, and cheap. Such alone can spread 
 the required correct knowledge, and suit every class 
 of readers." He accordingly announced it as the aim of 
 his work to be " a portable work of Medical Botany 
 for the daily use of medical students, physicians, 
 druggists, pharmacians, chemists, botanists, florists, 
 herbalists, collectors of herbs, heads of families, 
 infirmaries, etc." 
 
 He set forth the importance of the subject in plain, 
 but forcible terms. In botany, he remarks, the great 
 majority of medicinal substances have been ascer- 
 tained and rendered available, and the study of med- 
 ical equivalents enables to detect and compose 
 botanical and medical equivalents. " Medical Botany, 
 teaching to know and appreciate the greatest number 
 of articles employed in Materia Medica, is become 
 indispensable to the enlightened physician. Vegetable 
 Chemistry analyzes vegetable substances, discusses 
 their actual principles and ascertains the equivalent 
 or incompatible substances. Even Pharmacy, by the 
 aid of Botany and Chemistry, has become a science. 
 Druggists and chemists who sell vegetable articles or 
 drugs, ought to be botanically acquainted with them, 
 so as to distinguish the genuine kinds and detect the 
 frauds or blunders of the collectors and herbalists." 
 
 It had been ascertained, he explains, that there are 
 nearly six hundred medical plants in the United 
 States, actually known and used as such ; of wnich, 
 however, many are merely medical equivalents. Of 
 this number he made choice of one hundred and five 
 as being the most active and efficient medical types ;
 
 43© HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 and he prepared pictures and descriptions of them for 
 his treatise. He likewise mentioned many of the 
 others as substitutes or succedanei, -possessing apparently 
 the same qualities and properties. In fact, he remarks, 
 they are mostly used for one another throughout the 
 country. He aimed to give in concise terms, a com- 
 plete knowledge of them in their botanical, medical, 
 chemical and historical points of view, prefixing to 
 his account, the general principles of botanic science 
 as preliminary guides. 
 
 rafinesque's theory of pharmacy. 
 
 The purpose as well as the trend of the writings of 
 Rafinesque was to regenerate the art of medicine in 
 his adopted country, that it might become an art of 
 healing as well as an exercise of the mental faculties. 
 He had witnessed its numerous failures, and believed 
 them to be the result of obnoxious medication supple- 
 menting the ignorance of the prescribers. He sought 
 to remedy all this by bringing into notice the indige- 
 nous medicinal plants of the United States, explaining 
 their technical classifications in simple language, and 
 setting forth definitely their specific virtues. " Every 
 medical plant," he declared to be "a compound medi- 
 cine prepared by the hands of Nature in the most 
 suitable form for exhibition and efficacy in suitable 
 cases." 
 
 By no means, however, did he approve of the prac- 
 tice which has since come into general favor, of sepa- 
 rating the medicinal principles by chemical manipu- 
 lation. "The active principles of medical plants may 
 be obtained in a concentrated form by chemical oper- 
 ations," he admitted, "and their efiEects are then
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 43^ 
 
 stronger and quicker, but less congenial to the human 
 frame than in their natural pristine condition." 
 
 Rafinesque likewise took a position very decided 
 against the extreme notions of polypharmacy, which 
 were current, and inveighed forcibly against the prac- 
 tice of jumbling scores of ingredients into a single 
 formula. While he inculcated the doctrine that all 
 vegetable substances are compounds, and that it is 
 proper to combine several medicinal agents in pre- 
 scriptions, he insisted that they should be compatible 
 and in accordance with the same principle as nature 
 herself enforced. The following are some of his state- 
 ments and declarations : 
 
 There are several modes of efEecting cures by equiv- 
 alent remedies ; but vegetable substances afford the 
 mildest, most efficacious, and most congenial to the 
 human frame. 
 
 Few plants possess a single [uncompounded] prop- 
 erty ; but many are commonly blended together in 
 the same plant. 
 
 Different parts of a plant have often separate quali- 
 ties and properties. 
 
 Medical substances becoming more powerful by 
 admixture, those which enter by vital action into the 
 organs of plants are rendered more powerful by inti- 
 mate combination. 
 
 By combining several medical plants in prescrip- 
 tions, their effect is increased. 
 
 Nauseous or noxious plants may be rendered grate- 
 ful and available by combination with others of a 
 different character. 
 
 But all combinations must either coincide, or correct 
 each other, or else they are superfluous and useless. 
 
 When too many substances are mingled, or several 
 that do not coincide, they often impair one another. 
 
 The combining of substances which exert a chem- 
 ical action on each other must be avoided, unless a 
 peculiar medical result is required.
 
 432 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 These principles are now very generally recognized 
 by intelligent pharmacists and physicians. Having 
 brought his work to a close, he laid it as an offering 
 upon the altar, trusting that in due time it would be 
 found acceptable. " If this labor," said he, " may suit all 
 classes of readers, and all who employ medical plants, 
 the wishes and objects of the author will be fulfilled." 
 
 Thus modestly did he set forth his work. He 
 had, however, too sharply indicated the shortcomings 
 of medical practitioners for his views to meet their 
 ready acceptance. Hence his words fell on unwilling 
 ears, and were as an unknown language. They long 
 proved a seed sown by the wayside, among thorns, 
 and on the surface of rocks. A later generation, how- 
 ever, began to learn his worth, the most accomplished 
 savants have gladly availed themselves of his learning 
 and classifications. 
 
 RAFINESQUE AND WOOSTER BEACH, 
 
 Nevertheless, the labors of Rafinesque were not 
 without fruit during his life-time. He did not succeed, 
 as he had contemplated, in bringing over the leading 
 physicians to his views, or in persuading them to 
 drop the current methods of Brown, CuUen and 
 Boerhaave. The old bottles were unfit as receptacles 
 for his new wine ; they would have been sure to 
 burst with the ferment. His work met with scant 
 favor. He was obliged to find his friends in the high-* 
 ways and hedges. He had been impatient of the 
 illiteracy exhibited by earlier writers and practi- 
 tioners of herbal medicine, and had expressed his 
 feelings with undue warmth. Yet it was among them 
 that he was to find the first good ground for his sow- 
 ing, with promise of an abundant fruitage. He also
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 433 
 
 discovered that many of whom he had spoken with 
 harshness, were really intelligent, with an eager desire 
 for broader knowledge and more general scholarship. 
 There was at that time little concert of action to 
 enable any successful effort for the bettering of 
 medical practice. Eminent members of the profes- 
 sion acknowledged its glaring defects, even admitting 
 that as carried on it was rather a curse than a benefit 
 to mankind. The various teachers and authors had 
 accumulated a huge number of books, with little im- 
 provement of methods. A writer in the Western 
 Medical Reformer, in 1837, described the situation and 
 the evolution of a new school in medicine : 
 
 " Facts well attested existed in sufficient number to 
 form a harmonious system ; but these were scattered 
 over a vast field of voluminous works, mixed up with 
 error and misconception, an hundred fold, so as to ren- 
 der it almost the labor of a life- time to correct and col- 
 lect them. But the science of medicine being founded 
 chiefly upon observation, the truth must be sifted from 
 this mass, laborious though the task might be, or not 
 obtained at all ; as the experience of no otie man 
 would suffice as a guide in practice. 
 
 "In this state of things the highest desideratum 
 was some great Eclectic * to perform the herculean 
 task of munching at the abounding chaff and obtain- 
 ing the hidden grain ; and possessed of sufficient 
 
 * This term seems to have been first applied in a letter to Samuel Thomson by- 
 Professor B. Waterhouse of the Harvard Medical School. " Now," says he, " my 
 sagacious, industrious and much-respected Emiikic or Eclectic, if you like the 
 latter term better." Some years later, Dr. Beach vjras having an argument 
 with Dr. I. J. Spcrry, a prominent physician of the " Reform " or Thomsonian 
 school, and was setting forth his notion of retaining what was useful in the old 
 practice, when the latter exclaimed half disdainfully : " You are an Eclectic." 
 Dr. Beach quickly replied : " You have just given me the term which I have 
 wanted ; I am an Eclectic." Probably, however, he did not imagine that those 
 entertaining his sentiments would be classed under that designation, as he 
 generally designated them simply " yi^y^rwjv/ physicians."
 
 434 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 talent to combine, arrange and systematize facts when 
 arrived at. But this was not all. Remedial research 
 had been too much confined to one kingdom, the 
 mineral ; and the resources of others, especially the 
 vegetable, required development. Both these deside- 
 rata have been attained to an almost incredible though 
 still imperfect extent, in Dr. Wooster Beach, the 
 Founder of the Reformed System of Medicine. 
 
 Wooster Beach was born at T^rumbull, in the State 
 of Connecticut, in the year 1794. He early displayed 
 the qualities which were exemplified in his subsequent 
 career. He was a many-sided man, always desirous 
 to do the right so far as he could see the right, sincere 
 in conviction and earnest in purpose, deeply religious 
 of temper, and enthusiastic in his endeavors to re- 
 form the art of medicine, because he believed it to be 
 the most certain means to be useful to others. He 
 early became imbued with a strong distrust of the 
 current medical practice, and was familiar with the 
 sweeping criticisms bestowed upon it by such men as 
 Rush, Hamilton and Gregory. He was convinced 
 that " the present practice of physic and surgery, so far 
 from being founded on correct principles, was actually 
 a curse to society," and believed that better remedies 
 existed for diseases than the lancet, mercury and 
 other drugs in common use. At this period a German 
 Botanic physician, Dr. Jacob Tidd, of Amwell^ in New 
 Jersey, had been engaged in successful practice for 
 half a century. Dr. Beach became his student and 
 finally succeeded him at his death. Nor did he stop 
 contented with this. He continued his researches, 
 scrupling not to learn from any source of information, 
 but seeking it from scholarly physicians, Indian 
 doctors, herbalists, female practitioners, nurses, and 
 any body who could tell him anything worth the know-
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 435 
 
 ing. His reputation as a successful practitioner led to 
 invitations to the city of New York. The laws of the 
 State made it a penal offense to practice medicine 
 without the authority of the dominant school, and he 
 became a student at the medical department of the 
 University, graduating in due form and becoming, as 
 the law directed, a member of the New York County 
 Medical Society. 
 
 Dr. Beach attempted unsuccessfully to introduce 
 the Reformed practice through the medium of the 
 medical profession. He discovered, however, that 
 "an art founded on observation can never arrive at 
 any high degree of development while it is confined to 
 a few who make a trade of it." In his conception, 
 knowledge of every kind should be regarded, not as 
 the exclusive property of a privileged number, but as 
 the common right of all. "The only hope of a 
 reformation and revolution in medicine, under Divine 
 Providence," he declared, "is the dissemination of our 
 principles through the mass of the community." 
 
 He now began his career as a public teacher, and 
 following the example of John Hunter and others, 
 opened an infirmary, which afforded ample oppor- 
 tunity for clinical observation, and was afterward 
 expanded into the Reformed Medical College of the 
 City of New York. These were carried on for years 
 with such good effect as to assure a permanent begin- 
 ning for the American Practice of Medicine. Though 
 never partial to the extensive curriculum of medical 
 colleges, Dr. Beach was quick to put forth efforts to 
 elevate the standard and make the Reformed phy- 
 sicians skillful as practitioners. His aim was not to 
 cultivate the notion of a fixed or routine system, but 
 to release the mind from the dogmas of creeds and
 
 436 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 systems, the doctrines of the medical schools as they 
 were then taught, and to direct it into the broad field 
 of investigation. He secured the permanency of his 
 system, not so much from the theoretical and induct- 
 ive processes of his reasoning, as from the practical 
 results of his clinical teaching. 
 
 In 1S32, occurred the first visitation of Asiatic 
 cholera in America. It seemed to come from an 
 unseen power, with no apparent connection with any 
 ordinary cause to disseminate the contagion. It 
 appeared in Quebec, in June ; then in Albany, then 
 in New York, the 17th of July. 
 
 The first seizures were of individuals remote from 
 one another, who had had no communication with any 
 infected place or individual. It often neglected the 
 abodes of filth and wretchedness to revel in districts 
 at once clean and well drained. It was truly no 
 respecter of sanitary conditions, and seems never to 
 have been. 
 
 The physicians of New York generally treated their 
 patients with calomel, and such were almost sure to 
 die. A resolution of the Common Council had for- 
 bidden the accepting of certificates of death, except 
 from a " regular physician," but the senseless provis- 
 ion was now repealed. Alderman John Palmer, of 
 the Tenth Ward, appointed Doctor Beach to take 
 charge of all poor patients in that district, who should 
 be attacked by the epidemic. His assistants were 
 generally physicians of the dominant school, but they 
 obeyed his directions loyally. The visitation lasted 
 three months, during which they prescribed for about 
 one thousand cases of cholera, with successful results 
 nowhere equalled. 
 
 Doctor Beach remained at his post in New York,
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 437 
 
 teaching, conducting a religious journal, and attend- 
 ing to the duties of his profession. He added to 
 these the compiling of medical works. The new 
 school of practice, with new institutions for the incul- 
 cating of its doctrines, made new text-books neces- 
 sary. His great work, TJie American Practice of Med- 
 icine^ in three volumes, was published in 1833, and 
 became at once the standard work of Reformed 
 physicians. Copies of it were sent to the various 
 sovereigns of Europe. They submitted it at once to 
 their Court Physicians, who generally gave the work 
 unqualified commendations. Hufeland replied with 
 a golden prize-medal from the King of Prussia, and 
 the diploma of Corresponding Member of the Medical 
 and Surgical Society of Berlin. Similar medals were 
 conferred by other sovereigns — by William IV., of 
 England ; Louis-Philippe, King of the French ; the 
 kings of Holland, Saxony, and Wurtemberg, and by 
 the Grand Duke of Saxony. His Holiness, Gregory 
 XVI., was not behind in acknowledgment. " Seeing 
 this work honored by so many sovereigns of Europe, 
 and by so many distinguished professors in the two 
 hemispheres," he added his testimony with a medal. 
 Some of the letters were autographs from the 
 sovereigns themselves. The declarations of the 
 savants in medicine were most flattering. " The 
 work which has just flowed from yoiir learned pen," 
 said Baron Von Lehr, of Wurtemberg, Privy Coun- 
 sellor, " will not fail to attain the approbation of all 
 enlightened connoisseurs." Baron Alibcrt, of the 
 Hospital of St. Louis, in Paris, added his commenda- 
 tion : " It is a model of analysis, and a masterpiece of 
 method and medical experience." Professor von 
 Walther, surgeon to the king of Bavaria, wrote to
 
 438 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Doctor Beach personally : " This work, so interesting 
 and instructive, places you in the rank of the most 
 celebrated authors of our art." 
 
 The medical societies of Leipzig, in Saxony ; Bam- 
 berg, in Bavaria, and Wetterau, in Germany, in their 
 turn transmitted diplomas of membership. Other 
 persons in the higher walks of life wrote acknowl- 
 edgments equally flattering in their terms. At this 
 time, it will be borne in mind, the leading minds of 
 Europe were contemplating the evolution of a new 
 Rational Practice of Medicine, to supersede the unsat- 
 isfactory procedures then in vogue, and were ready to 
 welcome every proposition which might conduce to 
 that end. 
 
 Doctor Beach was by no means unrecognized in his 
 own country. Leading citizens, members of the bar 
 and medical profession, judges and clergymen, were 
 among those who commended him and his works. 
 Dr. James R. Wood, of the Bellevue Hospital Medical 
 College, declared him one of the great men of the age. 
 
 Rafinesque also, cordially gave his adhesion to the 
 new American Practice, as the realization of his own 
 aspirations. In a letter to Dr. Beach, tinder date of 
 January 6th, 1840, he says : 
 
 " I must now state again, that I think highly of 
 your medical work. I belong, like yourself, to the 
 Reformed Practice of Medicine, and agree with you 
 much better than with the Thomsonian, Homoeo- 
 pathic, and Botanical Empirics. Your system is a good 
 one. If not perfect, it is better at any rate, than most 
 of the fashionable systems — Galenian, Brunonian, or 
 mineral. Your system of Surgery appears both 
 benign and safe, and much better than the old butch- 
 ering system."
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 439 
 
 Thus, generously and manfully, did Rafinesque 
 render honor where he believed it due. He now 
 witnessed the dawn of the new morning, when 
 the methods of Cullen, Brown and Boerhaave, which 
 had prevailed everywhere during the preceding night, 
 were likely to be supplanted by greater intelligence 
 among the people, better methods of medical treat- 
 ment, and by broader views among jurists and legis- 
 lators of personal rights and constitutional liberty^ 
 He had desired to see the coming day, and believing 
 that he saw it, he was glad. 
 
 A few months later, on the tenth of September, 
 1841, he passed from among the living. 
 
 Before, however, his works received due attention, 
 a generation had gone by. Then, Professor Agassiz, 
 himself also of foreign birth, Asa Gray, and others, 
 began to praise his scientific achievements. His 
 works were collated and published in 1884. As with 
 other illustrious explorers in the world of science, the 
 justice which had been denied to him in his life-time, 
 was thus acknowledged by this rearing of his literary 
 monument forty years after his death. 
 
 " Get one hero," says D. A. Wasson, " and you may 
 get a thousand." This titterance was now verified. 
 
 ELISHA SMITH. 
 
 Reformed physicians have been aptly described by 
 one of the veterans of the school, as " formidable in 
 numbers, and spread over a wide domain, but as re- 
 quiring for centralization and power, yet to learn the 
 uses of combination and unity of action." The 
 centrifugal force seems to have been the stronger. 
 The love of ruling produces animosity and contention
 
 440 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 where there ought to be confidence and fraternal co- 
 operation. 
 
 About the time when peace was declared between 
 Great Britain and the United States, in 1815, Dr. 
 Elisha Smith began the practice of medicine as a 
 Botanic physician in the " Genesee country," not far 
 from the present city of Rochester, in Western New 
 York. He speedily attained a flourishing practice. 
 He was endowed with superior genius, and appears to 
 have possessed the qualities necessary for a leader of 
 opinion. He had acquired an excellent medical 
 education for the period in which he lived. About 
 this time Dr. Samuel Thomson published his work, 
 and Dr. Smith perceiving it to be as he considered 
 incomplete, conceived the project of compiling another 
 which should be broader in sentiment, more complete , 
 and accurate. He was destined, however, to be inter- 
 rupted for a season. 
 
 In the years succeeding a war, there is a decided 
 trend toward arbitrary and multifarious legislation. 
 This has been observed ever since the close of the 
 late civil war in America, and it was likewise the 
 case after the war of 181 2. The instinct of liberty 
 was suppressed or blunted outright. The attention 
 of the people was turned from matters of princi- 
 ple to subjects of material profit and advantage. 
 The occasion was seized to incorporate afresh into 
 the legislation of the states on the Atlantic seaboard, 
 from Maine to Georgia, statutes making the practice of 
 medicine except by physicians of the dominant school, 
 a misdemeanor. Pennsylvania* and the Western 
 
 * Governor J. B. Shultz is entitled to the credit of exempting Pennsylvania 
 from this dishonor. A bill similar in provisions to the Black laws of the other 
 states had passed both branches of the legislature, at the instance of the Medical
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 448 
 
 States generally were the honorable exceptions. It 
 was made a penal offense to treat the sick, except by- 
 virtue of a license or permission granted by a civil 
 magistrate or some medical society. The diplomas of 
 medical colleges in those days were not valid as 
 licenses, except a special statute invested the institu- 
 tion with authority equivalent to that possessed by 
 medical societies. 
 
 Though a patient recovered perfectly, and it was 
 due to the heterodox medical treatment, and especi- 
 ally if he had received no benefit but only harm from 
 the other physicians, these facts by no means excul- 
 pated the benefactor. An Apostle of the Christian 
 religion, and even the Son of God himself would have 
 been an offender under this legislation. Botanic 
 physicians were thus virtually outlawed. They were 
 forbidden to accept a fee, however freely given, or to 
 be in any manner recompensed for their good offices. 
 The Spotted Beast and Two-horned Dragon-Prophet 
 of the book of Revelation * seemed to have taken the 
 control, as thus described, of the medical legislation 
 of the country. 
 
 Society of the State. The stalwart and clear-headed governor returned it 
 vetoed, as being unconstitutional as well as inherently unjust. The judicial 
 subterfuge of " Police Power," which has been in later years put forward by 
 courts and legislatures as their authority for overriding personal rights and the 
 constitutional safeguards of liberty, appears not to have been employed in those 
 days, except in the case of negroes in certain of the slaveholding states. 
 
 * Revelation^ xiii : " And it was given him to make war with the saints, and to 
 overcome them ; and all that dwell upon the Earth shall worship him, whose names 
 are not written in the Book 0/ Li/c. * * And I beheld another Beast coming 
 up out of the Earth ; and he had two horns like the Lamb, and he spake as the 
 Dragon. And he exerciseth all the authority of the First Beast in his presence, and 
 causeth all the Earth and them that dwell therein to worship the First Beast. * * 
 And lie caused all, both small and great, rich and i>oor, free and bond, to receive a 
 mark in their right hand or on their foreheads — and that no matt niight buy or sell, 
 sa7'e he that had the Mark 0/ the Beast, or the number 0/ his ?iame."
 
 442 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 In the charter of the Royal College of Physicians 
 of London, is a provision allowing all persons to make 
 use of the indigenous medicinal plants of the country 
 for the cure of diseases, but under the condition of 
 receiving no fee or compensation for the service. A 
 similar clause was inserted in most of the prohibitory 
 medical statues of the United States. Perhaps this 
 sorry permission would have been withheld, but for 
 the fact that a strict application of the statute might 
 otherwise transform the very law of nature directly 
 into crime, making the mother who ventured to do 
 something for her suffering child liable therefor to 
 fine and imprisonment. 
 
 Yet at the very moment when this war was waging 
 the country abounded with crippled individuals, made 
 physical wrecks from the medical treatment which it 
 was sought by this legislation to protect from compe- 
 tition and to enforce as far as practicable, upon unwill- 
 ing patients. On the other hand, those treated by 
 Botanic physicians very generally recovered from 
 their maladies, and none of them had been made lame 
 or permanently distempered from the operation of 
 the medicines which had been administered to them. 
 
 In 1818, the legislature of New York took a further 
 step in the same direction and enacted a statute for- 
 bidding the degree of Doctor of Medicine to be con- 
 ferred upon any person who had not complied with the 
 requirement of preliminary study with a physician of 
 the dominant school. It was amended a year later, 
 to be more precise and definite, in the following terms: 
 "No person shall, after the first day of May, 1821, be 
 admitted to an examination for the practice of physic 
 or surgery, who has not studied for four years with 
 a regular physician or surgeon."
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 443 
 
 This made it impossible, as the law was construed 
 and enforced, for any person, however proficient, to 
 obtain the degree, except he was known or assumed 
 to be hostile to the Reform doctrine. Even though 
 he should comply literally with the prescribed con- 
 ditions, there were certain to be pretexts and eva- 
 sions at hand convenient to find and multiply in 
 order to assure his rejection. 
 
 The remarkable prediction of William Harvey, the 
 discoverer of the circulation of the blood, was thus 
 again fulfilled to the letter : 
 
 "After the space of so many hundred years' experi- 
 ence, 7iot one single medicine has been detected that has 
 the least force directly to prevent, resist and expel a 
 continued fever. Should any, by a more sedulous 
 observation, pretend to make the least step toward the 
 discovery of any such remedies, their hatred and 
 envy would swell against him as a legion of devils 
 against virtue. The whole society will dart their 
 malice against him with all the calumnies imagina- 
 ble, without sticking at anything that would destroy 
 him root and branch. For he wJw professes to be a re- 
 former of the art of Physic must resolve to run the hazard 
 of the martyrdom of his reputation^ life and estate T 
 
 The enactment produced astonishment among the 
 foremost minds of the country. That a republican 
 legislature should be more arbitrary and proscriptive 
 than a monarchy, seemed anomalous. Professor 
 Waterhouse writing a letter of introduction for Dr. 
 Samuel Thomson to Dr. Samuel P. Mitchill, then 
 Senator in Congress for New York, made this vigorous 
 protest : 
 
 " How came your legislature to pass so unconstitu- 
 tional an act as that called the ' Anti-Quack Laiv ' — such
 
 444 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 as the Parliament of England would hardly have ven- 
 tured on ? * For tvho will define quackery ? Were I 
 sufficiently acquainted with your excellent Governor 
 Clinton, I would write to him on the subject. You 
 New Yorkers are half a century behind us in the- 
 ological science, but j'our Quack bill looks as if you 
 halted also in physic." 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add that the medical laws 
 were sot;ght to be enforced in the same spirit of hate 
 and cupidity which had inspired their enactment. 
 The sleuth-hounds were quick on the scent and eager 
 to harry the game and batten on their prey. 
 
 Dr. Elisha Smith became a prominent object of 
 attack. He was subjected to repeated prosecutions 
 that came not a line short of implacable and remorseless 
 persecution, unrelenting as that of the Huguenots 
 in the dragonnades, and of the Camisards in the 
 Cevennes. For a time he maintained his ground, 
 caring for his patients and doing what he was able to 
 ward off the attacks of his foes. Finally, however, 
 his sense of duty to his family, and weariness of con- 
 flict where justice was not attainable, led him to seek 
 a home in a less unfavored region. He removed, in 
 1825, to New Brunswick, in the state of New Jersey 
 and afterward to New York, in 1829, where he spent 
 the remaining years of his life. 
 
 He now addressed himself manfully to the work be- 
 fore him. The legislature of New York, at an extra- 
 ordinary session, in 1827, had passed a statute virtually 
 outlawing Botanic physicians. Every medical society 
 in the State was a Holy Office to receive information 
 
 * Recently a leaf has been taken from American legislation, and Herbal 
 physicians are hunted down in England, and fined with severity equivalent to 
 that sought to be inflicted in American states.
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 445 
 
 and set on foot prosecutions. The Botanic physicians, 
 having" no close affiliations, could be singled out, one 
 by one, and made an easy prey. Besides this, their 
 too common deficiency in general knowledge also ren- 
 dered them comparatively helpless. On the side of 
 their oppressors was the power, social and political. 
 
 Dr. Smith insisted upon the abandonment of their 
 Ishmaelitish attitude, and the establishing of closer 
 fraternal relations, as essential to existence. He de- 
 clared that by the forming of medical societies, "v^ith 
 a respectable and intelligent standard of admission," 
 the favor of the public would soon break their fetters 
 and procure the repeal of the obnoxious legislation. 
 The " New York Association of Botanic Physicians" 
 was accordingly formed and he became its president. 
 
 Other societies were organized in the western 
 counties. Dr. John Thomson, the son of the founder 
 of the Reform school known by his name, also took an 
 active part in the same direction. 
 
 Dr. Smith carried into effect his project of former 
 years, and in 1830 his treatise was published under 
 the title of The Botanic Physician. This work, in point 
 of merit and ability, compares favorably with the 
 medical works extant at that period, and in the judg- 
 ment of many, surpassed the publications of Dr. 
 Thomson and Dr. Beach, both in matter and in literary 
 style. Dr. Smith died a few months afterward, and 
 for a time the attempt to maintain the medical organ- 
 ization was neglected. 
 
 His son, Dr. Isaac S. Smith, took up the work. He 
 had been liberally educated, and was graduated in 
 inedicine at one of the colleges in New York. He 
 organized anew the Reform practitioners, as " The 
 Society of Botanic Physicians and Surgeons," and
 
 446 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 under its auspices a medical college was established, 
 with a full corps of regular instructors, he himself 
 lecturing upon anatomy, physiology and surgery. 
 The enterprise was conducted till 1846, with a fair 
 degree of success, but as appears to be a common 
 occurrence with medical colleges, it was affected 
 injuriously by dissensions. At length Dr. Smith 
 removed from New York to Michigan, and the school 
 was discontinued. 
 
 There has been some perplexity in regard to the 
 existence of two separate organizations at that time 
 in New York, having similar avowed principles and 
 purposes. The solution has been offered that Dr. 
 Beach and Elisha Smith were both alike ambitious to 
 be regarded as founders of the New School of Medi- 
 cine. Such a rivalship, however trivial its importance 
 may seem to others, is generally regarded as a very 
 serious affair by the actors themselves. The passion 
 for ruling and holding chief places has been a prolific 
 source of contention. Leaders in a movement seldom 
 give quarter, or even permit of common justice to any 
 one of their associates who questions their preroga- 
 tive, but are far more ready to join hands in amity 
 with open adversaries. 
 
 Dr. Smith was an older man than Doctor Beach, and 
 appears to have been better equipped for conducting 
 an enterprise. He was well educated, aggressive in 
 temper, and skilful as an organizer. His purposes 
 and endeavors were definite and well arranged. He 
 aimed to bring about a revolution in public sentiment, 
 in order to procure the repeal of the unjust and pro- 
 scriptive statutes against Reformers in the Healing 
 Art, and to place the New School of Medicine upon an 
 impregnable basis. This might have obviated many
 
 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN PRACTICE. 447 
 
 subsequent controversies, and assured that more per- 
 fect union which would have enabled successful re- 
 sistance to future assaults. New York would then 
 have remained the chief seat and nucleus of the 
 Reformed School, under conditions at once favorable 
 to its prosperity and permanency. 
 
 Doctor Smith did not live to behold the day of re- 
 demption, when Alabama taking the lead, Connecticut, 
 New York and the other commonwealths should enact 
 laws removing the obnoxious proscription of former 
 years, and give all physicians equal opportunities 
 under a free government, to exercise their art with- 
 out let or hindrance. His death, occurring a few 
 months after the publication of his work, seems to 
 have disconcerted whatever plans he had formed, and 
 to have largely changed the aspect of affairs. It was 
 reserved for others to fight the battle of freedom and 
 enjoy the glorious triumph. The conflict, however, 
 was carried out on the lines which he had laid down, 
 the deserving of success as essential to its achieve- 
 ment. Though he did not live to witness the consum- 
 mation, he had done well his part to prepare the way 
 and make straight the path leading to the glorious 
 result.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 
 
 It often seems necessary for us to learn old lessons 
 anew, or at least, that we did not learn them properly. 
 We do not always profit by the experience of those 
 who have preceded us. In the history of our country, 
 we are told that the early colonists of the English- 
 speaking states came to this continent in order to en- 
 ioy liberty of conscience and religious worship. Yet 
 it was very generally liberty for those only who be- 
 lieved the same doctrine and had similar views of life. 
 Even the American Revolution did not immediately 
 emancipate slaves or deliver from the thraldom of an 
 Established Church. Though the Federal Constitu- 
 tion with its Virginian amendments assured equal 
 rights to citizens and prohibited a National establish- 
 ment of religion, its framers forgot other professions, 
 and States kept iip their old ways. An ascendency 
 was established in the medical profession as arbitrary, 
 as pretentious, and as imperious as ever in any coun- 
 try was that of the Church. Even before the Revolu- 
 tion, the General Court of Massachusetts, for example, 
 not only prescribed the kind of dress and modes of en- 
 tertainment, but required stated attendance on relig- 
 ious worship, and forbade any one to administer a med- 
 icine which was not approved by the standard medical 
 authorities. New Jersey did something similar. The 
 history of the Nineteenth Century in the United 
 States was introduced by a narrative of usurpation and
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 449 
 
 persecution, authorized by statute and enforced by the 
 various appliances of law as merciless and vindictive 
 as the prosecutions of witches and dissenters from the 
 Established Religion, till we might well doubt whether 
 this was actually a free country, or had a Constitu- 
 tional Government. After this followed a period of 
 successful resistance, and a swinging round the circle 
 of legislation, which those who are curious and 
 inquisitive in such matters will contemplate with 
 surprise. 
 
 SAMUEL THOMSON.* 
 
 Of Samuel Thomson we would speak in terms of 
 respect and commendation. The friends of medical 
 freedom and medical reform owe him a debt of honor 
 and gratitude as a public benefactor. Great occasions 
 are met by individuals who almost seem to have come 
 into existence for the purpose. Such persons are 
 often set down as of inferior mould, or are overlooked 
 altogether by those more favored by wealth and social 
 condition, till the exigency calls them forth and 
 obliges them to take the responsible position. We 
 find then that their humbleness of origin, their pecul- 
 iarities of character which many are eager to point 
 out and blame, the trials which they have undergone, 
 were so many preliminary conditions to prepare them 
 for their work. 
 
 * The orthography of this name is a shibboleth by which are tested the candor 
 and intelligence of every writer attempting to treat of the individual himself, or 
 of the peculiar medical practice which he originated. Not only has the surname 
 been spelled persistently with the superfluous /, but several encyclopa;dias have 
 added the asinine blunder of describing him as " Dr. Benjamin Thompson, of 
 Concord," and also as a founder of the Eclectic School of Practice. For those 
 who care for the actual truth, it is proper to Slate that Dr. Benjamin Thompson 
 was an entirely different person, and that Dr. Samuel Thomson, as he always 
 wrote his name, never lived at Concord, and always heartily opposed and de- 
 nounced the /\eyor»iet^ pr^ciice oi medicine since known as Eclectic.
 
 450 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Indeed, it is a very general fact that the persons 
 who save us in the hour of mortal peril, are seldom of 
 our own selecting. Not many who are regarded as 
 scholarly, able, or of superior social rank, are at hand 
 for such occasions, but chiefly individuals of another 
 class. The records of the past abound with examples. 
 Mirkhond, the historian of Ancient Persia, tells us of 
 the blacksmith who upreared the standard of revolt 
 and expelled the murderous Zahak from the throne, 
 and that his leathern apron became the banner of the 
 liberated nation. Another record, somewhat more 
 familiar to us, treats of a youth of ignoble origin, 
 whom his family hesitated to acknowledge, but who 
 came from the tending of sheep to deliver his country- 
 men from their oppressors. In the last century a fa- 
 vorite play in the theatres of London burlesqued as 
 tailors and mechanics, the commanders who had, both 
 in council and in the field, achieved American inde- 
 pendence. In the later days of the Republic, it was 
 Lincoln from the prairie, untrained in statecraft and 
 diplomacy, who guided the ship of state through its 
 most critical period. 
 
 Samuel Thomson was one of this little number of 
 exceptional men. He possessed the qualities which 
 characterize the leader and reformer: deep conviction 
 and unflinching tenacity of purpose. His early disci- 
 pline and experience brought these qualities into 
 action. He was born at Alstead, then a frontier set- 
 tlement in the colony of New Hampshire, and passed 
 his youth in hardship and privation. The region had 
 hardly been reclaimed from the wilderness, and every 
 one's efforts were required to gain a simple livelihood. 
 Thomson early displayed a passion for learning 
 the names and medicinal virtues of plants, but his
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 45 1 
 
 opportunities for even simple elementary instruction 
 were limited. When it was proposed to let him be- 
 come a student of Dr. Fuller, a Botanic physician in 
 the neighboring town of Westmoreland, he was re- 
 jected because of his defective education. He was 
 considered as fit only to work on the land. He was in 
 a far worse case than Grant and Jules Faure, the tan- 
 ners, of Roger Sherman and Henry Wilson, the shoe- 
 makers, and Franklin, the chandler's son. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was not permitted that Samuel 
 Thomson should bury himself in obscurity. He mar- 
 ried and became the father of a family. The frequent 
 occurring of sickness with his wife and children oc- 
 casioned the employing of physicians, and he soon 
 began to observe that with the medical treatment the 
 sufferings of the patients were aggravated. Presently, 
 in sheer desperation, he ventured to undertake their 
 care himself, meanwhile paying the physician for the 
 professional visits. His efforts were rewarded by their 
 speedy recovery. He had already acquired much in- 
 formation in regard to the use of simples and in 
 nursing from an elderly woman, who was a Florence 
 Nightingale in the neighborhood. The fact now im- 
 pressed him forcibly that under the medical treatment 
 in vogue, the term of sickness was unnecessarily pro- 
 longed, and that it was very often followed by a 
 permanent condition of ill health. " I had found from 
 experience," he declared in his Narrative, " that doctors 
 made more diseases than they cured." He thus inad- 
 vertently reiterated the assertion of Dr. Rush, frankly 
 uttered about the same time. Thenceforward he dis- 
 pensed with the services of physicians, and took 
 charge of his family through a formidable array of 
 maladies ; among which were measles, scarlet fever,
 
 452 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 diphtheria and small-pox. In the last of these he was 
 his own patient ; and under his care they all recovered. 
 
 His neighbors soon observed his aptitude in treating 
 sickness, and did not hesitate to avail themselves of 
 his services. As, however, he was regarded only as a 
 farmer like themselves, they did not consider that 
 though they employed him, he was entitled to fee or 
 remuneration like a professional man. The demands 
 upon his time and efforts prevented him from working 
 steadily upon his farm, and threatened to keep him 
 from providing for his family. He finally resolved to 
 change his employment. 
 
 This was in the year 1805. He traveled about for 
 several years, afterward making his home at Beverly, 
 in Massachusetts, and later he opened his ofhce and 
 establishment in Salem street, in the city of Boston. 
 
 Thomson did not adopt the methods employed by 
 the Botanic physicians and Herbalists of the time, but 
 some of them were current with the aboriginal in- 
 habitants of the country.* He propounded a theory 
 and adopted the procedures which were distinctively 
 known by his name ; and discarded utterly the 
 methods in common use, — the lancet, leech, cupping- 
 glass and Spanish fly, together with the various 
 mineral drugs and poisonous vegetable productions 
 which constituted the fashionable physician's arma- 
 ment. The results were generally and often singularly 
 beneficial. 
 
 * Dr. Thomas Cooke, who was a student of Dr. Howell, a Botanic physician 
 from London, propounded this question in the Botanic Medical Re/oriner, of 
 May 20, 1841 : " We should like to know of Dr. Samuel Thomson whether he ever 
 perused a work entitled IVoodivard's State of Physic and o/ Diseases^ London, 
 1718 ; for it is so much like his system that we can only tell them apart by a little 
 difference in the Materia Medica."
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 453 
 
 To think is to theorize ; whether it be the specu- 
 lation of the philosopher, the deduction of the scien- 
 tist or the conjecture of the private individual. 
 Thomson's theories were very simple. He adopted 
 the dogma of the Ionian and Grecian sages, that heat, 
 the calorific force or excitative energy, is the sub- 
 stance of life, and following it to its logical conclu- 
 sion, he entertained as truth the sentiment pro- 
 pounded by Lord Bulwer-Lytton, in his favorite work, 
 that this primordial principle of life may also be its 
 renovator and the restorer of health. He expressed 
 the sentiment, however, in quainter terms : " That all 
 diseases are the effect of one general cause, and can be 
 removed by one general remedy." This he afifirmed 
 to be the foundation upon which he had erected his 
 fabric* 
 
 This one general remedy or principle may be ap- 
 plied in a great variety of forms. Thomson's com- 
 mon procedure, however, consisted in emesis pro- 
 duced by the administration of Lobelia inflata, in the 
 abundant use of the vapor-bath, and such vegetable 
 remedies as the case might seem to require. The 
 catalogue of medicinal plants employed by him and 
 his school of practitioners, consisted principally of 
 the following, to which we give the technical in 
 preference to the common names : 
 
 Achillea, Aletris, Althaea, Amygdalus Persica, 
 Angelica, Anthemis, Apium, Apocynum, Artemisia, 
 
 * " Let the unprejudiced man — " says Professor Waterhouse, " let him remem- 
 ber that Thomson, without knowing it, has adopted a theory of Galen ; and his 
 idea of the preserving power of Nature, the curer of disease and the preserver 
 of life, appears to be the same as that acknowledged by Hippokrates. He tells all 
 he knows in as plain a manner as he possibly can, and leaves you to form your 
 own judgment, provided you divert yourself of the fashion of this world in physic, 
 which, with priestcraft, is fast passing away."
 
 454 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Arum, Asarum, Aster, Berberis, Betula, Capsicum, 
 Cassia Marylandica, Ceanothus, Centaurea, Chelone, 
 Chimaphilla, Chrysanthemum parthenium, Cochleria, 
 Cornus, Cypripedium, Eugenia, Eupatorium perfolia- 
 tum. Ferula, Fragaria, Galium, Geranium, Geum, 
 Hamamelis, Hedeoma, Hydrastis, Ictodes, Inula, 
 Juglans, Lactuca virosa, Lappa, Laurus camphora et 
 cinnamomum, Leonorus, Ligusticum, Lobelia, Macro- 
 trys, Marrubium, Mentha viridis et piperita, Myrica 
 gale et cerifera, Myristica, Myrtus, Nepeta, Nymphaea 
 odorata, Osmunda, Panax, Pinus Canadensis, Piper 
 nigra et cubeba, Polygonum, Populus, Prunus Vir- 
 giniana, Quercus alba et rubra, Rhamnus catharticus, 
 Rhus glabra, Rubus strigosus, Rumex crispus. Salvia, 
 Sanguinaria, Sinapis, Solanum dulcamara, Solidago, 
 Statice, Symphytum, Tanacetum, Taraxacum, Tri- 
 folium pratense, Trillium, Ulmus fulva, Verbascum, 
 Verbena, Xanthoxylum, Zinziber. 
 
 It will be observed that many of these are enu- 
 merated by Rafinesque, and that they were in use 
 among the aboriginal tribes in the United States. As 
 the procedures which Thomson employed were also 
 familiar among them, and as the district in which his 
 earlier years were spent was not far from their terri- 
 tory, the charge has been made, or rather insinuated, 
 that he had gained his knowledge from them. Very 
 probably much of it was indirectly so derived, but there 
 is no sufficient evidence impugning his truthfulness 
 and sincerity in the matter. Many persons discover 
 what others already knew, and honestly suppose that 
 they were the first. Thomson was not strenuous to 
 declare himself original in what he laid down, but was 
 diligent to learn whenever he could, and he pos- 
 sessed the talent to elaborate it into a distinct method.
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 455 
 
 One man possessed the sagacity to peer beneath the 
 rough garb of the farmer-physician and find the 
 precious metal beneath. This was Dr. Benjamin 
 Waterhouse, for twenty-seven years the professor of 
 the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Harvard 
 Medical School. He spoke boldly in his behalf. "Had 
 John Hunter," said he — " had John Hunter, whom 
 I well knew, been born and bred where Samuel 
 Thomson was, he would have been just such another 
 man ; and had Samuel Thomson been thrown into the 
 same society and associations as John Hunter, he 
 would, in my opinion, have been his equal, with 
 probably a wider range of thought ; but both are 
 men of talent and originality of thought." 
 
 Dr. E. M. Hale, professor of Materia Medica and 
 Therapeutics in Hahnemann Medical College, in 
 Chicago, writing at a later period, pays him this 
 tribute : * 
 
 " This man, although uneducated, had in him the 
 elements of a great reformer ; and had he had the 
 literary advantage of some of his allopathic perse- 
 cutors, would have done more for the advance of med- 
 ical science than most any other man of his day. Dr. 
 Hollembaek declares that he was ' one of the greatest 
 and best of medical benefactors, whose crude system of 
 practice broke the mysterious chains which had bound 
 the people of America and Europe for about two cent- 
 uries.' Certain it is that Thomson was the first to 
 publicly attack Allopathy in America ; and his attack 
 may be said to be the first that shattered the 
 foundations of that school, and made way for such 
 scientific reforms as Homoeopathy. In every state 
 
 * Netv Remedies^ vol. 11, p. 432.
 
 4S6 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 of the Union, the ' Botanic ' practice of medicine pre- 
 ceded the Homoeopathic, and broke down those legal 
 barriers that Allopathy had placed around her. That 
 order of practice is now nearly extinct * or has been 
 merged into Eclecticism." 
 
 Such was the impression which Thomson made 
 upon men capable of measuring his character and 
 quality. Much stress has been laid upon his illiter- 
 acy, especially by individuals who forget that at that 
 time few physicians, even in the favored school, were 
 scholarly. Such criticisms have little weight with 
 men who are really intelligent. These are generally 
 willing to be just, and are desirous to find out merits 
 rather than faults. 
 
 " He who aspires to be a reformer of physic," said 
 William Harvey, three centuries ago, " must resolve 
 to run the hazard of the martyrdom of his reputation, 
 life, and estate." In the person of Samuel Thomson 
 this was fully verified. It is a disgraceful fact in the 
 history of medicine in America that he was not only 
 defamed and vilely calumniated, but also persecuted 
 with a malignity which no candid or honorable man 
 can extenuate. " The little dogs. Tray, Blanch and 
 Sweetheart," all barked at him. The ignorant ac- 
 cused him of witchcraft, while those of greater attain- 
 ments sought to prohibit him from practice as not 
 being of the favored school. Medical orthodoxy has 
 always been as intolerant and bigoted as religious or- 
 thodoxy, and about as ready to torture and destroy. 
 
 * This statement requires some qualification. There are yet several thousand 
 physicians in the United States, known as " Botanic," '"Reform," "Physiopathic," 
 or " Physio-Medical," who are essentially Thomsonians. They have a National 
 Association, meeting annually, with auxiliary societies in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, 
 Ohio and Washington, and medical colleges in Chicago and Indianapolis.
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 457 
 
 It was a literal copying of the examples recorded in 
 the Gospels, in which the Pharisees vilified Jesus as 
 casting out devils by the power of Baal-Zebul, and the 
 Apostles themselves forbade a man because he was not 
 of their company. [Ltike ix. 49 ; xi. 15.) 
 . Thomson was virtually outlawed. The professional 
 craft of physicians and lawyers were opposed to him, 
 and seem to have purposed that he should never re- 
 ceive just treatment, whatever the right of the case 
 or evidence in his behalf. This appeared conclusively 
 in 1809. Dr. Waterhouse attributed it partly to profes- 
 sional and partly to political spite. In a letter to 
 Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill,* he says: ''Dr. Samuel 
 Thomson will deliver you this. He has cured and 
 relieved many disorders which others could not — 
 without being a diplomatized physician, and dared to 
 be a Republican in a hot-bed of Federalism ; for which 
 he has been shamefully ill-treated, even to perse- 
 cution." 
 
 Dr. Waterhouse here referred to the indictment of 
 Dr. Thomson on frivolous testimony for wilful mur- 
 der. A Doctor French, in Massachusetts, had railed 
 against him, even threatening to assassinate him, and 
 had been placed under bonds for it to keep the peace. 
 His next device, with several fellow-conspirators, was 
 to compass Thomson's death behind the aegis of the 
 law. Accordingly, in the late autumn of 1 809, just as the 
 Court then in session at Salem had concluded its bus- 
 iness and was about to adjourn, an indictment was 
 procured, charging him with the murder of Ezra 
 
 * Doctor Mitchill was a resident of New York and a Republican [Jeffersonian] 
 in politics. He was a member of Assembly in New York in 1791, 1798, and 1810 ; 
 and also of both the Senate of the United States and of the House of Representa- 
 tives. He aided Doctor Thomson in procuring his patent.
 
 458 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Lovett, a patient for whom he had prescribed a year 
 previous. 
 
 Dr. Thomson was arrested and incarcerated in the 
 jail in Newburyport, in a cell without fire, abounding 
 with vermin and reeking with foul and deadly vapors. 
 Not a table, chair or stool was allowed him. Friends 
 who visited him were actually made sick by the 
 noisome atmosphere. Lest his death should ensue from 
 their inflictions, an application was made to the Chief 
 Justice, Mr. Theophilus Parsons, who accordingly 
 held a special term of the Court for his trial. The 
 prosecution failed utterly to make out a case. Dr. 
 Howe, on whom the main dependence had been 
 placed, produced a sample of the medicine which Dr. 
 Thomson had administered. He testified that it was 
 Lobelia, and a deadly poison ; but he was unable to 
 describe that plant or its actual properties. One of 
 the attorneys for the defense taking the sample, ate 
 it in the presence of the Court. It was shown to be 
 Statice, or marsh rosemary. Even Dr. French, who had 
 procured the indictment, acknowledged that Dr 
 Thomson had made cures, and that his medicines 
 were harmless. Justice Parsons interrupted the pro- 
 ceedings and sent the case to the jury for an 
 acquittal. 
 
 Indeed, it is plain that a trial of this indictment 
 was no part of the plan of Thomson's enemies. The 
 evident purpose was to imprison him for the winter, 
 in the hope that he would die of privation and prison- 
 distemper. Dr. Waterhouse tells the story of Thomson 
 and the Chief Justice in a way hardly creditable to 
 the latter. 
 
 " Samuel Thomson, like most reformers, has en- 
 dured in our county of Essex as much severe perse-
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 459 
 
 cution as ever was perpetrated in it ; which is saying- 
 a great deal, when we call in mind the days of the 
 delusion of witchcraft. Though capitally indicted 
 for murder by using Lobelia, he was discharged with- 
 out a trial, after something like a reprimand of the 
 Solicitor-General, by the Court. Yet it is remarkable 
 that Chief Justice Parsons deemed it worth while to 
 write the report of it in the Sixth Volume of Tyng's 
 Collections'' 
 
 Indeed, it does not appear that Justice Parsons was 
 at all impartial in the matter, or even that he dis- 
 missed the case willingly. The evidence against Dr. 
 Thomson — part of it — was virtually suborned, if not 
 absolutely perjured, and he affected to regard it as 
 true, in default of his own intelligence. When Thom- 
 son afterward brought a suit against his chief 
 adversary. Justice Parsons distinctly charged the jury 
 adversely, and even went so far as to recommend 
 application to the Legislature for a special enactment 
 to deprive Botanic physicians of their legal right to 
 remuneration for services. This would be a placing 
 of the Reform Practice under a stigma, like negotia- 
 tions for counterfeit money, or disreputable purposes. 
 
 This seems to have been the prelude to a legislative 
 onslaught. 
 
 THE THOMSON PATENTS. 
 
 Occasion has been taken to decry Dr. Thomson for 
 having procured patents for his medicines. " In 
 England," says Dr. Waterhouse, "Parliament would 
 probably have purchased the procedure by a liberal 
 grant. In France, at least under the old regime, the 
 King would have bought it. But we, wiser than any of 
 them, have only tried to pick it to pieces." It is of little
 
 460 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 use, to plead in one's behalf before a tribunal very cer- 
 tain to condemn him at any rate. Thomson was 
 driven by flagrant injustice and persecution to seek 
 the protection which the law afforded. He had 
 learned by bitter experience to despair of fair treat- 
 ment in the courts, and now he was further threat- 
 ened with unfriendly legislation. The Patent Laws, 
 there was hope, might give him adequate security. 
 Accordingly, he made a journey to Washington in. Feb- 
 ruary, 1813. Aided by Governor Martin Chittenden, 
 of Vermont, he prepared the required specifications, 
 but he had much difficulty from the caviling and 
 equivocation of Dr. Thornton, the clerk of the Patent 
 Office, in regard to the proper naming of his medi- 
 cines. Finally he succeeded in obtaining the instru- 
 ment from the Hon. James Monroe, then Secretary of 
 State. 
 
 He had, nevertheless, been in some way outwitted. 
 Having brought a suit for trespass before Justice Story 
 of the Supreme Court, the ruling was made that the 
 specifications had not been made sufficiently explicit 
 to found an action upon. A second patent was pro- 
 cured in 1823, in which Dr. Thomson had the aid of 
 Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill, of New York. At the request 
 and advice of the National Thomsonian Convention, 
 he applied for its renewal in 1836. 
 
 "In obtaining a patent," he declared, "it was my 
 principal object to get the protection of the Govern- 
 ment against the machinations of my enemies, more 
 than to take the advantage of a monopoly." He pro- 
 ceeds to justify his action as a recognized principle 
 in business. " In all cases where a person possesses 
 desirable information from his own experience or 
 ingenuity, there can be no reason why he should not
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 461 
 
 have a right to sell it to another, as well as any other 
 property." 
 
 A VISIT TO DOCTORS RUSH AND BARTON. 
 
 It was on his return from Washington, in 1813, with 
 his first patent, that Dr. Thomson visited Doctors 
 Rush and Barton, of the University of Pennsylvania. 
 His errand was to confer with them upon the subject 
 of introducing the Botanic Practice to the world. He 
 seems to have been by no means overawed by their 
 exalted professional standing, or to have expected 
 any contention or essential difference in relation to 
 his theories or procedures. He met with none. " I 
 have found," he says, " that those practicing physi- 
 cians who were really great in their profession, and 
 have had the most experience, condemn as much as 
 I do, the fashionable practice of the present day." 
 
 Doctor Rush received him with apparent courtesy, 
 but pleaded the want of necessary time for any 
 extended investigation, and referred him to Doctor 
 Barton, the professor of Medical Botany. The latter 
 was himself the author of a work upon the vegetable 
 Materia Medica. He took samples of Doctor Thomson's 
 medicines, and promised to make a fair trial of 
 them, giving them such credit as he might find them 
 to deserve. He freely acknowledged that no art or 
 science was in a state so uncultivated as that of 
 medicine. 
 
 Neither of these distinguished men seems to have 
 taken exception to his action in procuring a patent 
 for his medicines. His expectations from them, how- 
 ever, were never realized. Both Dr. Rush and 
 Dr. Barton died not many months after these 
 interviews.
 
 462 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Yet the endeavor was not without its fruit. Several 
 leading physicians and professors gave their testi- 
 mony in favor of his procedures ; among them Pro- 
 fessor Powell, of Vermont University ; Professor 
 William Tully, of Yale College ; Professor George 
 McClellan, of the Pennsylvania Medical College, and 
 Dr. William Robinson. The latter was a friend of 
 Dr. Rush. He became an earnest champion of the 
 new doctrines, and both wrote and lectured in their 
 favor. He declared positively that "Doctor Thomson 
 had very much of Dr. Rush's qualifications for a 
 physician — all, indeed, but his book-learning." 
 
 " FRIENDLY BOTANIC SOCIETIES." 
 
 Even before the war with Great Britain, and the 
 crusade of unfriendly medical legislation which suc- 
 ceeded, Dr. Thomson had found it by no means easy to 
 obtain a just remuneration for his services, either from 
 professed friends, or by a suit at law. He devised 
 the plan of organizing " Friendly Botanic Societies," 
 in which the members were to be instructed in his 
 procedures, and to pay him a stipulated amount, 
 pledging themselves at the same time not to give the 
 information to others except on certain conditions. 
 It was purely a question of honor, and he often found 
 them unwilling to keep their word. He prepared a 
 little treatise setting forth his modes of treatment 
 and the remedies, but with little better result. After 
 procuring his patent, he revised his plan by making 
 all who purchased a right members of the one and 
 sole Friendly Botanic Society, with full liberty to 
 communicate with one another. He was better satis- 
 fied with the later arrangement. 
 
 No exception was made on account of sex. Women
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 463 
 
 became members as well as men. When the further 
 organization of societies in counties, districts and 
 States took place, the same right of membership was 
 recognized without question. This was the first 
 acceptance of women in the United States as medical 
 practitioners. This grain of mustard-seed was indeed 
 a very humble affair, but it became the great tree for 
 the birds of heaven to lodge in its branches, 
 
 PROSCRIPTIVE MEDICAL LEGISLATION. 
 
 " Many laments thou 'It utter, and vain groans, 
 For unrelenting is the heart of Zeus, 
 And ever harsh is he whose rule is young." 
 
 — ^SCHYLUS : Prometheus. 
 
 Zeus or Jove, newly placed on the throne of Heaven, 
 we are told in mythologic story, sentenced Prome- 
 theus, the Titan, to crucifixion, because he gave fire 
 and skillful art to men, and " thus betrayed his glory " 
 to a hated race. 
 
 This was one of the former counts against Reform 
 physicians. Thomson, Beach, Smith, and their fol- 
 lowers were of and for the people, and sought to make 
 known to them the ways to preserve and restore 
 health. We may see the reason why the English lan- 
 guage is proscribed in medical formulas, and terms 
 elaborately coined are so much employed. 
 
 We are told again, that physicians " suspect every 
 theory that proposes to conduct the cure of disease 
 on a few general principles." However philosophic 
 and practical this would be, it is not accepted as 
 "professional." 
 
 John Wesley, commenting upon the ways of modern 
 medical men, remarked that those who did not know 
 their abstruse terminology, but " understand only
 
 464 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 how to restore the sick to health, they branded with 
 the name of Empirics^ Thus a term which was once 
 employed like the later one of quacks, to designate a 
 School of Medicine, was degraded into one of oppro- 
 brium. Such has been the case in England, and the 
 example has been imitated in the American states. 
 
 The next step was to invoke arbitrary legislation 
 An application was actually proposed in New Hamp- 
 shire for an enactment which should prohibit Samuel 
 Thomson by name from treating the sick. The notion 
 seems to have been entertained that a legislature had 
 ample power to do whatever the majority decreed, 
 however monstrous or unjust, even to changing wrong 
 into right, and making of the Right a crime and mis- 
 demeanor. 
 
 When the Federal Constitution was submitted to 
 the people of the several States for ratification, there 
 were amendments also proposed, on purpose to secure 
 its approval, one -'f which mnibited Congress from 
 making any law ' respecting the establishing of relig- 
 ion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It was 
 not imagined that any other than a religious body 
 would aspire to such a recognition, or that a safeguard 
 would be needed against other usurpations of a kin- 
 dred nature. Yet, the question of personal rights 
 and even of liberty of conscience, hardly appears to 
 have been well understood. Several States continued 
 to have their Established Church, which all were 
 required to support. 
 
 Legislation was also pushed further, and laws were 
 enacted ostensibly " to regulate the practice of med- 
 icine," but actually for the purpose of protecting the 
 dominant school from innovation, and to suppress 
 rival and competing practitioners. Physicians sought
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 465 
 
 to be elected to the legislatures on purpose to pro- 
 cure such measures, and their unwary associates read- 
 ily, and even obsequiously, yielded to their wishes. 
 After the conclusion of the war of 1812, this work was 
 undertaken with redoubled energy. Laws were passed 
 in the different States clearly resembling in spirit, as 
 well as in form, those providing for the discovery and 
 punishment of witches. From Maine to Georgia, 
 medical proscription was the order of the day, and 
 " Black Laws " were enacted in almost utter disregard 
 of the common rights of human beings. In the zeal 
 to imitate the arbitrary legislation of Europe, the 
 right and obligation of contracts with proscribed 
 physicians were set aside, as though heterodox views 
 in medicine were immoralities. Thus, a Medical 
 Hierarchy was established, aiid its ministers, the reg- 
 ular practitioners, so called, were invested with the 
 dignity, the authority, and all the paraphernalia, 
 except the gowns, of the repudiated priesthood. 
 
 This legislation, it need not be added, was enforced 
 in the same spirit of malice and cupidity which had 
 inspired the procuring of their enactment. The vet- 
 eran Doctor E. J. Mattocks, of Troy, forcibly depicts 
 the medical Inquisition and autos-de-fe : " Collect all 
 the facts you may," says he, " and still you will be 
 unable to give but a tithe of the malicious prosecu- 
 tions, and in some cases, the imprisonment, these 
 early pioneers had to suffer in consequence of their 
 faith and practice. Such men as Wooster Beach, 
 Elisha Smith, Samuel Thomson, Thomas Lapham, 
 Cyrus Thomson, Ira Wood, A. N. Burton, vS. W. 
 Frisbee, Abiel Gardner, H. M. Sweet, John Wesley 
 Johnson, and a host of others, could their voices be 
 heard, would confirm my statement."
 
 466 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Such has been Medical History through the centu- 
 ries, from Galen down to the present time — alike in 
 Imperial Rome, Modern Europe, and Republican 
 America. Like to it, as we see, is the history of 
 Reform Medicine in the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 " The doctors were enraged at me for no other 
 reason," said Samuel Thomson, " than because I had 
 cured persons whom they had given up to die ! " 
 
 THE LAST STRAW AND THE RESULT. 
 
 In 1827, the legislature of New York, at a snecial 
 session, enacted an amendment to the medical statute, 
 declaring that any person who shall practice physic 
 or surgery, not being duly authorized by law, " shall 
 be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by 
 fine or imprisonment, or both, in the discretion of 
 the Court by which he shall be convicted," 
 
 The full scope of the proscription of this section is 
 admirably set forth in the Reports of the Select Com- 
 mittee of the Assembly of 1830 : 
 
 "Your Committee have searched, with some indus- 
 try and care, and can find no statute of Great Britain, 
 or any other State or country, of equal severity, with 
 the last clause of the said twenty-second section of said 
 Title Seventh. The only law which they can find 
 bearing any resemblance to it is a statute of Virginia, 
 by which any slave, free negro or mulatto, Is forbidden to 
 administer medicine on pain of death. Provided, that if 
 such medicine is administered without any ill intent, 
 or is not attended with any bad consequences, such 
 slave is to be acquitted on trial, and not extending to 
 any slave administering such medicine with the con- 
 sent of the owner of the slave, and the consent of the 
 master or mistress of the family ; nor to any free 
 negro or mulatto administering such medicine in any 
 family, with the consent of the master or mistress
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 467 
 
 thereof. But oiir statute punishes the unlicensed 
 physician, where his intention was good ; where the 
 medicine was administered at the request, and with 
 the consent of the patient ; where it produced no bad 
 consequences, and afforded the intended and expected 
 cure. It not only punishes the unlettered Empiric, 
 and the Botanic phj'sician, but the man of learning 
 and science in his profession. He may have obtained 
 diplotnas from Leiden and Edinburgh, and from every 
 medical college and every legally-incorporated med- 
 ical society in the Old and New World, beyond the 
 limits of this State ; * he may stand first in the first 
 rank of his profession, and he becomes a practicing 
 physician in one of the counties of this State, and 
 neglects for sixty days to unite himself with the med- 
 ical society of the county, his license is forfeited, he 
 is in some respects deemed an outlaw, may be con- 
 victed of misdemeanor, fined, and sentenced to a 
 dungeon. 
 
 " So that our free white male citizens, learned and 
 unlearned, are treated with greater severity by our 
 statute than are the free negroes, or even the slaves, 
 of Virginia, by the laws of that State." 
 
 The same spirit and disposition which had inspired 
 the application for such a statute was fully exempli- 
 fied in its enforcement. The Medical Inquisition was 
 established, and the Reform physicians were out- 
 lawed and placed at its mercy. Every medical soci- 
 ety in the State became virtually a police station, 
 to which resorted spies and informers to communicate 
 evidence for prosecutions. Immediately began the 
 hunt and the havoc. Many practitioners were arrested 
 and fined, many were fined and imprisoned for two 
 months. In this latter number may be enumerated 
 several members of the famous family of Sweets, the 
 
 * Compare Federal Constitution, Article IV., sect, ii., subd. i : " The citizens 
 of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the 
 several Slates."
 
 468 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 " natural bone-setters." Their art and skill had been 
 eagerly sought by generals in the Revolutionary war 
 when the army surgeons failed ; but in this medical 
 war such considerations were of no account. 
 
 The sentence of outlawry thus passed by the legis- 
 lature upon Reformed physicians, and the atrocious 
 persecutions which followed, had the effect to deter- 
 mine them to concerted endeavors for a restoration to 
 the common rights of free-born citizens. Dr. Elisha 
 Smith, wary and far-seeing, counseled organization 
 and the adoption of a better standard of scholarship. 
 This would enable them to meet their enemies upon 
 common ground, as peers in learning as well as in 
 natural rights. It was no longer safe to indulge in 
 jealousy and prejudice, giving the assailants oppor- 
 tunity to attack them, one by one, and destroy them 
 utterly. He organized the New York Botanic Med 
 ical Association, and took measures to establish a 
 school for instruction in medicine. Dr. Wooster Beach 
 and his friends adopted a similar course, opening the 
 " New York Medical Academy," and forming the 
 Reformed Medical Society of the United States. 
 
 JOHN THOMSON. 
 
 The foremost and most energetic to raise the stand- 
 ard of opposition to the pernicious legislation was 
 Dr. John Thomson. He was a man of indefatigable 
 energy, and sagacious to perceive the true policy, to 
 attack the adversary at the point where he was the 
 most vulnerable. Coming to Albany in 1824, he came 
 in contact with the peculiar restrictions of physicians. 
 One was that a practitioner, duly legalized by the 
 State of Massachusetts, was not a lawful physician by 
 the law of New York, even when of the privileged
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 469 
 
 school. He was also told that his father's patent 
 could not be entailed on the children. When the 
 legislation of 1827 had placed the Botanic and other 
 practitioners outside of the protection of the law, 
 making statutory criminals of honorable and worthy 
 men, he determined upon appealing to the People to 
 right the wrong. From that time he spared neither 
 effort nor money to secure the repeal of the obnox- 
 ious measure. To him and his fellow-laborers is 
 chiefly due the reactionary legislation which began in 
 New York in 1830, and extended to the other States, 
 with the result of eliminating the prescriptive meas- 
 ures from all the statute-books. 
 
 It certainly appeared like a hazardous, unpropitious 
 undertaking. It seemed as chough the doctors had 
 cowed the members of legislatures till hardly a man 
 dared open his mouth or peep. "This barbarous law 
 we declared war against in 1828," said he, "and so 
 great was the public prejudice against us, that it was 
 with much difficulty that we could find a member 
 who had independence enough to present a petition 
 to the House for us." It was done, however, on the 
 17th of January, the name of John Thomson heading 
 the first one offered. Others followed from twenty 
 counties, showing that there was a constituency in 
 favor of repeal, and that the reaction had begun. The 
 next year the effort was renewed, and petitions 
 numerously signed, were presented from half the 
 counties of the State, asking the repeal of the medical 
 prohibitory law. 
 
 At this time a significant political movement was 
 agitating the State. The abduction of William Morgan, 
 and his myterious disappearance, had produced a great 
 excitement, and under the lead of Myron Holley, of
 
 470 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Rochester, an Anti-Masonic party had been formed,, 
 which carried the elections in the principal western 
 counties. Many of the members of the legislature of 
 1830 became afterward men of distinction in the 
 State and nation ; among them Millard Fillmore, 
 Francis Granger, Thurlow Weed, Nathaniel P. 
 Tallmadge, Luther Bradish, Abijah Mann, Jr.; 
 George H. Davis, Stephen Allen, Alonzo C. Paige, 
 Andrew B. Dickinson. The Speaker, General Erastus 
 Root, was warmly in favor of Liberal Medicine. It 
 has been the practice in the Assembly of New York 
 for the Speaker to constitute the Medical Standing 
 Committee entirely of physicians. It was so uniformly 
 done, as to be considered almost as an unwritten law. 
 Only Henry J. Raymond, in 1861, ever purposely set 
 it aside. A committee, thus virtually packed, is an 
 important factor in a legislative body. It gave the 
 Medical Society of the State the opportunity to influ- 
 ence materially, and even to control the action of the 
 Assembly upon medical questions. Nobody had ven- 
 tured to question its prerogative. Having a giant's 
 strength, it had used it like a giant. This accounts 
 for the severity of the medical proscription in the 
 State of New York. Similar influences had been 
 employed in other States, and with like result. 
 
 In 1830, the Assembly authorized the appointment 
 of a Select Committee on the Botanic Practice. Mr. 
 Dickinson, the Chairman, made an elaborate report set- 
 ting forth the injustice of the law, the right of every 
 man to select his own physician, and the impropriety 
 of arbitrary legislation. 
 
 "If the physician is distinguished," it says, "by his 
 superior intellect, his superior virtue and attainments 
 in medical science, a discerning people will discover it.
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 47 1 
 
 and he will receive the rewards of an extensive and 
 successful practice, which he would never obtain by 
 binding- and imprisoning his humble opponent. The 
 strife of the professional man, ennobled by genius 
 and talent, and exalted by virtue, is generous and 
 noble ; and he needs not, he asks tiot, the aid of severe 
 laws to insure it." 
 
 The committee, accordingly, reported a bill to 
 repeal the inhibition and penalties, which passed the 
 House by a vote of 74 to 27, and the Senate, 17 to 5. 
 It was promptly signed by Governor Throop. " That 
 law," says John Thomson, " cost me three sessions' 
 perplexity and hard labor, and upward of one thou- 
 sand dollars in cash, expended." 
 
 The victory, however, was by no means final. The 
 State and County Medical Societies were three thou- 
 sand strong, and now put forth prodigious efforts to 
 recover their lost supremacy. The staple pretext 
 was employed, which has since been reiterated, that 
 the physicians were not laboring selfishly for their 
 own emolument, but for the protection of the people 
 from quackery. Nevertheless, few except the mem- 
 bers of medical societies signed petitions for their 
 proscriptive measures, while the remonstrances bore 
 the names of tens of thousands. On the 28th of 
 March, 1832, the Hon. Francis Granger presented 
 the petitions of John Thomson and fifty thousand 
 others, inhabitants of the State, asking equal legisla- 
 tive protection for the Botanic practice. The popula- 
 tion of New York was then about two millions. 
 
 OTHER STATES. 
 
 Similar efforts for equal rights before the law were 
 made by Reform practitioners in other States, and with 
 encouraging results. The invasion of Asiatic Cholera,
 
 472 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 which was experienced for the first time in America, 
 had been a powerful agency in their favor. The leg- 
 islature of Ohio, in February, 1833, repealed her med- 
 ical act. Other States went even further. The 
 legislature of Alabama passed a bill expressly declar- 
 ing its purpose to be the upholding of the Botanic 
 practice. The next winter witnessed a similar meas- 
 ure in Mississippi. 
 
 The legislature of Indiana, having convened in 
 January, 1834,. a member of the House of Representa- 
 tives, himself a physician, presented a bill in the 
 usual form, to prohibit Botanic physicians from 
 receiving compensation for their services. It was 
 summarily rejected by a vote of forty-five to thirty. 
 The Western States, as they were then classified, were 
 unanimously on the side of equal rights before the 
 law for medical practitioners. They further showed 
 it by the appointing of several Reform physicians to 
 official positions. 
 
 CONFLICT RENEWED IN NEW YORK. 
 
 The medical leaders in New York chafed over the 
 liberal legislation of 1830. In 1832, when the cholera 
 first invaded the country, although the Reformed 
 practitioners were successful beyond others in its 
 treatment, panic as well as organization enabled their 
 adversaries to procure the election of fifteen physi- 
 cians to the legislature that autumn, and twice that 
 number the following year. They set about to regain 
 their lost ground. They employed the procedure now 
 almost universal, to make use of the forms of law 
 to destroy the substance of liberty. Dr. Barent P. 
 Staats, of Albany, took the lead, and introduced a 
 bill in the Assembly, early in the session, for the
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 473 
 
 repeal of the Act of 1830. The friends of impartial 
 liberty opposed this retrograde policy by every reason- 
 able argument, without avail. Mr. Mordecai Myers 
 declared the restricting of medical practice to be an 
 infringement of public rights, and that it curtailed 
 the right of every man to exercise his knowledge or 
 his skill for the benefit of his species ; while profes- 
 sional skill, licensed or unlicensed, always would and 
 ought to command a preference. The regular practi- 
 tioner, if really qualified to practice in his profession, 
 would never need the aid of legislative protection. 
 
 Mr. Haskell took the ground that a law that restricted 
 the practice of medicine to any particular class of 
 persons was unconstitutional ; and quoted the veto of 
 Governor Pope on a bill containing similar restrictions 
 as creating a sort of " intellectual aristocracy." 
 
 The bill passed the Assembly, and was favorably 
 reported in the Senate. The debate upon it was 
 characteristic. Among the advocates of restrictive 
 legislation were Messrs. Albert H. Tracy, William H. 
 Seward, and John W. Edmonds. 
 
 One Senator, a Mr. Macdonald, declared himself in 
 favor of prohibiting the use of vegetable remedies 
 entirely, and denounced the Botanic practitioners as 
 being very often destitute of even an elementary 
 education. Mr. W. H. Seward demanded a strict law 
 to protect the public. 
 
 The opposing Senators were equally forcible in 
 their rebuttals, and from being in the right of the 
 issue, were in consequence more eloquent. Mr. 
 Kemble declared that if a law was to pass forbidding 
 physicians to practice, who had no diploma, there 
 ought likewise another to be enacted to define which 
 physicians, among those who had diplomas, were
 
 474 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 capable practitioners ; for very many of the licensed 
 practitioners knew little of the business.* 
 
 The bill passed the Senate by a vote of sixteen to 
 fourteen, and was approved by Governor William L. 
 Marcy. 
 
 Thus, the long step backward was taken. The 
 medical societies had triumphed. The members of 
 legislature professing liberality beyond preceding 
 bodies, had yielded in a point vital to liberty itself. 
 
 Judge Haskell described the object of this legisla- 
 tion to be : " To proscribe all undiplomatized Botanic 
 practice, however scientific ; and to bolster up diplo- 
 matized practitioners, however ignorant of the science 
 of Medical Botany ; and also to facilitate the attain- 
 ment of the purpose of confining medical teaching to 
 incorporated medical schools and colleges, and to the 
 professional men connected with them." This, he 
 declared, was " a measure not so certainly calculated 
 to facilitate the attainment of medical science, as to 
 subserve the exclusive interest of those exclusively 
 privileged to practice physic and to become medical 
 teachers." He questioned the right or policy, "by 
 which a self-taught medical practitioner, professor or 
 teacher, is refused an examination, rejected as a 
 quack, and regardless of his qualifications, however 
 learned and competent he may be, prohibited from 
 
 * Judge Griffin, in liis argument, quoted a conversation of the Emperor o( 
 China, who, having heard that in England the physicians were paid for their visits, 
 besides the medicines, inquired : 
 
 " Did the patients ever get well ?" 
 
 Being answered that they did, he asked again : 
 
 "Are there not constantly great numbers who are permanently crippled and 
 diseased ? " 
 
 He was told in reply that this was indeed the case. He rejoined, that with that 
 system it would always be so. His physician was paid only for the time he was in 
 health.
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 475 
 
 exercising his profession, because, and only because he 
 chose not to study under a privileged teacher, or 
 happened to be too poor to encounter the cost of an 
 attendance at an expensive incorporated institution." 
 
 A few days after the passage of this act, Dr. John 
 Thomson was asked to go fourteen miles to visit a 
 patient. He was presented two dollars for this ser- 
 vice. Dr. Staats inquired the matter out, and made a 
 complaint, and Thomson was tried and fined. At the 
 instance of a few hundred professional men, desirous 
 of special privileges, there had thus been disregarded 
 the rights of as many more, and the prayer of more 
 than one hundred thousand petitioners. " To the 
 everlasting scandal of the learned Faculty," said the 
 intrepid Lapham of the Thomso)iian Recorder, "in any 
 State where any law has existed, or does now exist, 
 regulating medical practice, it has never originated 
 with the people, but with a class of men who subsist 
 on the miseries of the people. Fines, prisons, dun- 
 geons, chains and death are accounted better security 
 to their standing than all the combined skill and wis- 
 dom of all the ancient schools of Medicine." 
 
 To submit in silence would have been equivalent to 
 confessing the legislation and penalties just. A State 
 Convention was called at once. The note of warning 
 was sounded all over the country. The response was 
 prompt, the language resolute and determined. " Be 
 assured/' Charles Thompson once wrote to Dr. 
 Franklin, "we shall light torches." 
 
 ALABAMA AND HER WATCHWORD. 
 
 The Medical Botanic Society of Alabama at once 
 issued an Address to the People of that State declar- 
 ing the enactment in New York " the most infamous
 
 476 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 that ever disgraced a .statute-book." It added the 
 honest boast, that in Alabama the peo^ple were free- 
 men, and acted as such, having no legislative enact- 
 ments to enable a few lordly aristocrats to live in 
 luxury on honest industry. 
 
 " Let the example of New York be a warning and a 
 watchword," said the Address; " and if it be known to 
 any member of this Society that there is a candidate 
 for office who is in favor of establishing a privileged 
 order of physicians, let him speak. For it is in your 
 power, by dropping all minor considerations of party, 
 to ease him of the heavy burden of public employment. 
 
 " All other subjects sink into insignificance com- 
 pared with this. When the ministers of death apply 
 for exclusive privileges, sound the tocsin : ' New 
 York ! ' " 
 
 convention of medical protestants. 
 
 Nor were the Medical Reformers of New York 
 silent or quiet under the legislative decree of outlawry. 
 Immediately after the Statute of 1834 had been signed 
 by Governor Marcy, a State Convention was called to 
 take the matter into consideration. It met at Geddes, 
 on the first of September, and promptly resolved to 
 keep up agitation, and to continue to memorialize the 
 legislature for just treatment. A series of resolutions 
 was adopted pledging the members and their constit- 
 uents to use all laudable endeavors for such equaliz- 
 ing of legislation, so that every school of Medicine 
 should rest on its merits, instead of being bolstered 
 up by legislative favor. 
 
 " Better to have no laws regulating the practice of 
 medicine," one resolution expressively declared, " than 
 to place all power in the hands of a privileged few,
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 477 
 
 and those using the most dangerous poisons as med- 
 icines." 
 
 The following significant declaration was also sub- 
 joined : " That we consider a free people as compe- 
 tent to select their physicians as to elect their legis- 
 lators ; and every law preventing the same charges 
 the people with ignorance, and infringes on their 
 rights." 
 
 The policy thus announced met with an echo in 
 every part of the country. 
 
 Conventions were held at Jackson, in Louisiana, 
 and Indianapolis, in Indiana, at each of which a state 
 society of the Reformed School was organized. 
 
 TABLES TURNED AGAIN IN NEW YORK. 
 
 The election of 1834 placed a more liberal body of 
 men in the Assembly of New York. Mr. Seward had 
 been defeated for governor, and several other adver- 
 saries of Botanic Medicine had been replaced by 
 others who were friendly. The Reformed physicians 
 of the New York School had also petitioned the legis- 
 lature, and appeared in behalf of the repeal of the 
 obnoxious laws. This year Mr. Job Haskell was 
 elected to the Assembly. At the instance of Dr. 
 Wooster Beach and Dr. Isaac S. Smith, Dr. Thomson 
 concurring, he was selected as the champion of the 
 Reformers. That j^ear the petitions were presented 
 by scores, coming from all the principal counties of 
 the State, signed sometimes by hundreds, and several 
 exceeding a thousand. There were forty thousand 
 petitioners. Mr. Haskell asked that they be referred 
 to a Select Committee, and secured it by a majority 
 of two.
 
 478 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The report was presented on the i6th of February. 
 It boldly declared the law permitting a Botanic prac- 
 titioner to administer medicine, but prohibiting him 
 to receive compensation, an anomaly in legislation. 
 The Committee had not been informed of any ill 
 consequences resulting from the practice of any such 
 physician to justify this forfeiture, by legislative 
 enactment, of the immunities enjoyed by his fellow- 
 citizens. There is a provision in the Divine Code 
 that " the laborer is worthy of his hire," which has so 
 much sacredness, that it should stay every effort of 
 legislation to reduce it to a dead letter. 
 
 In short, the Committee reported that they had 
 found nothing to justify a continuance of the laws 
 " regulating the practice of physic," as they now 
 existed. The petitions before them, thus numerously 
 signed, showed that the public mind was excited on 
 the subject. All history shows that when the people 
 are stirred up it is not commonly the result of imagi- 
 nary causes. An instance of recent occurrence in 
 Western New York [the abduction of William 
 Morgan,] demonstrated that the people in their 
 strength are not to be disregarded with impunity. 
 
 The Committee criticised the extensive vending of 
 the Thomsonian patent without regard to the quali- 
 fications and character of the purchaser ; which had 
 resulted in the starting into notoriety of a " mush- 
 room phalanx consisting of the old and the young, 
 and of both sexes, till then only distinguished by 
 their ignorance and obscurity." But the fault did 
 not lie in the system itself, and the discreet and 
 experienced Botanic practitioner was among the 
 severest sufferers from this cause. 
 
 Finally, if the existing laws regulating the practice
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 479 
 
 of physic were necessary, as regards the encourage- 
 ment of science and the protection of the Faculty, the 
 Committee did not perceive any good reason why the 
 fair Botanic practitioner was not entitled to equal 
 protection, nor why this branch of medical knowledge 
 and improvement might not receive the same encour- 
 agement. 
 
 The alternatives between no law and the law in 
 force, constrained the Committee to prefer the former 
 as the lesser evil. In Pennsylvania, the Medical 
 Faculty had never enjoyed the monopoly of a privi- 
 leged order protected by law ; and in Ohio the med- 
 ical profession had been left to stand on its own 
 merits, without a legislative nurse or legal restriction. 
 The Committee were clear that it would be more dis- 
 creet, as well as more republican, to leave the whole 
 matter to be regulated by public opinion, and place 
 both orders of practice upon the same footing, leaving 
 the field of benevolent competition open to both. 
 They accordingly introduced a bill to repeal the stat- 
 ute of the previous year, and authorizing any one to 
 apply Botanic medicines for the benefit of a sick per- 
 son, and to collect or receive a reasonable compensa- 
 tion for medicines, attendance and services. 
 
 When the bill was considered in Committee of the 
 Whole, Mr. Haskell made a very forcible speech, 
 reviewing the medical legislation of New York from 
 1760, in the Colonial period, and declared that it dis- 
 franchised respectable physicians and established 
 legal quackery. He added, with peculiar significance, 
 that it showed that the Botanic practice was consid- 
 ered safe, and that the Mineral Doctors were not 
 afraid that the people would be injured by it ; but 
 that the only crime in their eyes, for which the
 
 480 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Botanic physician ought to suffer, was the receiving 
 of the fee. 
 
 Dr. Isaac S. Smith, of New York, described the 
 effort in glowing terms : " He made a stirring speech 
 on the subject of the unjustness of the existing med- 
 ical laws. I was present, and well remember him as 
 he stood upon the floor, with Dr. Wooster Beach's 
 book in one hand and my father's in the other. His 
 language was bold, defiant and eloquent, and at inter- 
 vals the hall fairly shook with applause." 
 
 The Assembly, however, struck out the section 
 recognizing the right of Botanic physicians to com- 
 pensation. The bill was then passed and became 
 a law. 
 
 Several of the friends of Dr. Thomson were cha- 
 grined at the prominence given to the works of Dr. 
 Beach, and his medals from the various sovereigns of 
 Europe, and the lower estimate placed by Mr. Haskell 
 upon their system. This, however, was probably a 
 parliamentary necessity. Literature is essential to 
 the existence and success of any movement, and illit- 
 eracy is a fearful drag-weight upon any enterprise. 
 It is due to Dr. John Thomson, however, to state that 
 he was awake to this fact. He set himself vigorously, 
 to the great discomfiture of his father, to remedying 
 this deficiency. It made a new departure for the 
 school of which he was one of the brightest lumi- 
 naries. 
 
 THANKS TO ASSEMBLYMAN HASKELL. 
 
 The passage of the Haskell bill was treated in 
 Reform circles everywhere, with warm delight. It 
 was nut only a long step in the way of justice, but it 
 showed that by organized effort and a waiving of pro-
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 481 
 
 fessional jealousies, the reformers could win. A victory 
 in New York was a victory for the whole country, and 
 it gave a new impetus to effort elsewhere. 
 
 The Botanic practitioners of the city of New York, 
 held a meeting on the 5th of May, 1835, at No. 95 
 Eldridge street, to acknowledge the services of their 
 champion in the legislature. Dr. Wooster Beach was 
 elected chairman. A series of resolutions were pre- 
 sented and unanimously adopted. We give a copy of 
 the first. 
 
 Resolved^ — That the Botanic physicians of New 
 York entertain a just sense of the important services 
 rendered by the Hon. Job Haskell, on the floor of the 
 legislature of this State, vindicating the rights of his 
 fellow-citizens from the unjust, arbitrary and uncon- 
 stitutional laws relating to the practice of physic and 
 surgery, that have so long disgraced the statutes of 
 this state 
 
 ORGANIZATION. 
 
 The necessity of organization was easy to perceive. 
 To divide the adversaries and conquer each division 
 in turn, often with the help of some of its rival 
 factions, has been a frequent strategic policy. The 
 fierce contentions between the various Reform forces 
 in medicine, were often more perilous than the iron 
 hand of the dominant school. A cordial union of the 
 Thomsonian with the Reformed school, and of the 
 Homoeopathists with the Eclectics, on a fair and lib- 
 eral basis of common justice and fraternity, would have 
 long since divested medical monopoly of its supreme 
 power in the legislation, jurisprudence and political 
 patronage in the United States. There were men 
 wise to apprehend what might be secured; there were 
 those too, who were ready on various pretexts to
 
 482 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 promote discord, as if preferring" dominion in hell to 
 service in heaven. 
 
 The Reformed physicians of western New York 
 appear to have taken the lead in endeavors to secure 
 united action. In that region, Botanic practitioners, 
 the disciples of Samuel Thomson and others, were 
 numerous. Every prescriptive act of legislation was 
 a signal for launching upon their heads the bolts of 
 remorseless persecution. They were thoughtful and 
 self-reliant men, and the law of 1827, conceived of the 
 spirit that outlawed the New England patriots of 
 1774, aroused them to vigorous action. 
 
 A meeting was held at Rochester, on the twenty- 
 third of January, 1828, at which was formed " The 
 Reformed Medical Society of the State of New York." 
 The constitution tersely set forth as its objects: "To 
 improve the practice of medicine, encourage the 
 employment of herbaceous remedies, undertake the 
 repeal of unjust laws restricting the practice of 
 medicine, which were passed at an extra session of 
 the legislature in 1827, and to diffuse knowledge 
 among the People for their enlightenment upon med- 
 ical subjects." 
 
 This was the first of the several Societies formed to 
 represent and combine the Reform physicians of the 
 State of New York. It set about its operations with 
 great energy. Concert of action was established, and 
 the sentiment of the community in western New York 
 soon began to favor the New School of Practice. The 
 president, Dr. Daniel J. Cobb, published a journal for 
 several years, entitled The Botanic Sentinel atid Enquirer, 
 Auxiliary societies were formed in many of the coun- 
 ties. In addition to these were several independent 
 organizations; among them the " Genesee Union
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 483 
 
 Botanic Society," formed at Port Byron, in 1832, the 
 "Reform Medical Society," at Conesus, in the same 
 year, and two others, each bearing the name of " The 
 Reformed Medical Association of Western New York," 
 one at Dansville and the other at Fredonia. 
 
 These Societies continued in active existence for 
 many years, co-operating with great cordiality in the 
 promulgating of their doctrines, petitioning the legis- 
 lature and in various ways upholding the cause. At 
 a later period they were merged into the Eclectic 
 organization. 
 
 THE FIRST NATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 
 
 In 1829 a national association was formed in the 
 city of New York, called the " Reformed Medical 
 Society of the United States." Dr. Wooster Beach 
 was the president of this organization. He was at 
 this time very enthusiastic of the immediate success 
 of the cause. There were enlisted with him several 
 young men, graduates in medicine and otherwise well 
 educated, who were in warm sympathy with his doc- 
 trines and ambitions. Of this number, two were con- 
 spicuous beyond others: Thomas Vaughan Morrow 
 and Ichabod Gibson Jones. With such auxiliaries as 
 these Dr. Beach aspired to extend his field of opera- 
 tions to the West and South, the outermost limits of 
 the twenty-four states of the American Union. A cir- 
 cular letter was prepared and copies sent to prominent 
 individuals living in the valleys of the Ohio and 
 Mississippi. It speedily resulted in a correspondence 
 with Colonel James Kilbourne, of Worthington, Ohio. 
 
 WORTHINGTON AND IIS COLLEGE. 
 
 The town of Worthington had been laid out in 1803, 
 by Colonel Kilbourne, of the Scioto company, and
 
 484 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 colonized from the state of Connecticut. Ohio 
 became a state at this time, and the purpose was 
 fondly cherished to procure its selection for the 
 capital. These hopes were disappointed, A little 
 while afterward, dissensions arose in Kenyon College, 
 and its retiring president, the Rev. Doctor Chase, 
 obtained a charter for a rival institution at Worth- 
 ington. It began its career with glowing expec- 
 tations, but the election of Dr. Chase as Bishop of 
 Illinois, and the adjustment of the controversy in the 
 Protestant Episcopal Church, was followed by the 
 closing of the new college. 
 
 In this condition of affairs, the proposition of Dr. 
 Beach to establish a Reformed medical school was 
 readily accepted, and an act was obtained from the 
 legislature to establish a medical department in the 
 institution at Worthington. 
 
 This was the first institution of the Reformed 
 School that was recognized by a legislative enact- 
 ment. Even the colleges of John Hunter, and other 
 distinguished instructors in England, were only pri- 
 vate ventures. Their terms of study lasted about 
 six weeks, and their diplomas conferred no legal 
 authority. 
 
 Doctor Morrow was selected by the Reformed Med- 
 ical Association, at its meeting in New York, to 
 organize the new institution at Worthington, and to 
 be its president. The college was opened in 1831, and 
 held two terms each year, covering a period of ten 
 months. This was somewhat longer than had been 
 usual in schools for medical instruction. Indeed, at 
 that time, the illiteracy of medical men in the United 
 States was but too common, and the proportion that 
 had never been students at a medical college was
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 485 
 
 exceedingly large. The professors at Worthington 
 were obliged to adopt a medium policy between the 
 condition of facts as it was, and the higher stand- 
 ard at which they aimed. They appear to have had 
 no specified requirement for attendance at lectures, 
 as a condition of graduating. Any student might 
 receive the degree of Doctor in Medicine, who could 
 satisfactorily undergo the examinations. 
 
 Worthington College had numerous foes and diffi- 
 culties to encounter. The physicians of the region 
 were, to a man, vindictive and unrelenting in their 
 hostility. The disciples of Dr. Thomson added their 
 criticisms, denouncing the doctrines as mongrelism, 
 and as having been in a large degree plagiarized from 
 their school. The warfare was characterized by all 
 the animosity so general between individuals largely 
 agreeing in principles, but at issue in details Lead- 
 ers of a party, and partisans of a point of doctrine, 
 are bitterly hostile, and sometimes even murder- 
 ously cruel, to those who do not subscribe unques- 
 tioningly to their opinions or authority. The fate of 
 Michael Servetus is significant in the history of mod- 
 ern Protestanism. When the prisons of London, in 
 the reign of Mary Tudor, were filled with Reformers 
 awaiting trial, and death by burning at the stake, 
 many among these were eager to proscribe others of 
 their own number as heretical and reprobate, for not 
 concurring with their belief on certain dogmas of 
 religion. 
 
 The early reformers in medicine appear often to 
 have been inspired by a similar disposition. Wooster 
 Beach and Elisha Smith had each a Medical Society 
 in New York, one assuming to be national, and the 
 other embracing the State. In 1832, Dr. Thomas
 
 486 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Hersey, a veteran physician of superior ability, who 
 had embraced the doctrines of Samuel Thomson, 
 established at Columbus, a monthly periodical, The 
 Thomsonian Recorder^ for their promulgation. He was 
 a bold and vigorous writer, resolute of purpose, and 
 zealous in controversy.* He seems not to have long 
 delayed in turning his weapons upon the physicians 
 of the college at Worthington. Dr. Alva Curtis 
 became a contributor to the Recorder, and subsequently 
 succeeded as editor. 
 
 About this time occurred an episode, perhaps the 
 first of the kind ever coming to light in the United 
 States. A charter for the " University of Indiana," 
 and the "Christian College," at New Albany, had been 
 conferred by the Legislature in i 833. The mover in 
 the matter, and the titular president, or chancellor of 
 the institution, was one John Cook Bennett, afterward 
 attaining notoriety from his relations with Joseph 
 Smith, the Mormon Apostle, in Nauvoo. The institu- 
 tion did not go into operation, but its degrees were 
 distributed wherever individuals could be induced to 
 accept and pay for them. Bennett visited Worth- 
 ington and attempted to vend his commodities among 
 the students. He boasted that he had conferred them 
 on the professors, naming Dr. Morrow, but this was 
 shown to be a slander. He next attempted to pro- 
 cure a charter from the legislature of Ohio, but the 
 fact that he had been engaged in the selling of 
 diplomas was set forth, and the application was 
 refused. Bennett afterward, for a brief period, held 
 a chair in the Willoughby University, and a few years 
 
 * Dr. Hersey afterward repudiated the exclusive notions of Dr. Thomson, and 
 became an advocate for the union of all the Reform Schools.
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 487 
 
 later in the Botanico-Medical College. This affair 
 served a purpose in giving enemies a cue for calum- 
 niating Reform institutions, thus to divert attention 
 from the fact that diploma-selling was a feature in 
 other medical colleges, both in the United States 
 and in Europe. 
 
 In 1836, Dr. Morrow and his colleagues established 
 the Western Medical Refor?}ier, to support their enter- 
 prise. In the prospectus, it significantly proclaimed 
 its adherence to Scientific Medical Reform as promul- 
 gated by Dr. Wooster Beach — " Not to cultivate the 
 idea of a fixed or routine system, but to relieve the 
 mind from the dogmas of creeds and systems, the 
 philosophy of medical schools, as these were then 
 taught, and to direct it into an unlimited field of 
 inquiry." Referring to the various limited schemes 
 proposed for the acceptance of mankind, it predicted 
 that they " must, as a matter of course, be ephemeral 
 in their existence and extremely circumscribed in 
 their operation." It further declared that, " there is 
 no effort making to reform the abuses of the Healing 
 Art by men of liberal scientific attainments as a body, 
 with the exception of the Reformed Medical Society, 
 and the advocates of a reform based on enlightened 
 and philosophic principles. It is worse than folly for 
 men, who are themselves ignorant of the very first 
 principles of Medicine, to talk about reforming and 
 revolutionizing the Science." 
 
 This language appears to have been a taking up of 
 the gauntlet which had been thrown down. The 
 point at issue was the allegation of Dr. Thomson and 
 his friends, that the Reformed physicians had plagi- 
 arized his methods and remedies ; while Dr. Morrow 
 strenuously asserted that there was no connection
 
 483 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 between the two schools, that the Reform System 
 originated even before that of Thomson was known, 
 and had been improved and developed without refer- 
 ence to it, and for the most part, without the knowl- 
 edge that Dr. Thomson and his system even existed. 
 The severity of language and vituperation on both 
 sides of this controversy reflect little credit upon 
 either party. They are closely related to the disposi- 
 tion that in previous centuries made the torture- 
 chamber, and the penal fire the final resort ; and 
 truth is not furthered by them. Our eyes should be 
 open to others' merits rather than to their faults. 
 
 THOMSONIAN NATIONAL CONVENTIONS. 
 
 The Thomsonian Recorder was begun by Dr. Thomas 
 Hersey, on the 15th of September, 1832. Its prospectus 
 declared its purpose in no equivocal language. It 
 arraigned the press of the United States for the 
 delinquency of its conductors in persistently publish- 
 ing notorious calumnies of Dr. Thomson and his 
 Botanic Practice, and at the same time excluding 
 every thing in defense. He charged this upon the 
 Medical Faculty, who vamly imagined themselves to 
 be the only rightful oracles of Medical Science, and 
 never failed to unite their influence for the destruc- 
 tion of any man or system that exposed the effects of 
 their practice. The different Medical laws then in 
 force. Dr. Hersey boldly declared, were disgraceful to 
 the legislatures that enacted them. But, he signifi- 
 cantly added, there was a point beyond which oppres 
 sion cannot be endured. 
 
 In the first number of the Recorder was published a 
 call b}' Dr. Samuel Thomson for a " United States
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 489 
 
 Thomsonian Convention " of delegates from the 
 " Friendly Botanic Societies," to meet at Columbus, 
 in Ohio, on the 17th of the ensuing December. Few 
 National Conventions of any kind had ever then been 
 held in the United States. They were a new depart- 
 ure in politics, and Dr. Thomson now began a new 
 movement in action among medical men. He simply 
 announced a desire to meet his numerous friends, and 
 to obtain from them their knowledge in regard to 
 medicinal plants, remedial procedures, and the gen- 
 eral progress of the cause of Botanic Medicine. 
 
 At a later period he stated likewise, that the purpose 
 was to communicate further with his friends in differ- 
 ent parts of the Union in reference to the Asiatic 
 Cholera, and its proper treatment. 
 
 Many physicians were present on this occasion who 
 afterward became prominent teachers of the new 
 doctrines. Dr. Alva Curtis, of Richmond, in Virginia, 
 sent a communication, setting forth his remarkable 
 success with the Thomsonian procedures. Of two 
 hundred patients, he had lost but one ; and several 
 were in the stage of collapse with cholera Others 
 present had like testimony. The treatment by the 
 physicians of the dominant school had been marked by 
 extraordinary fatality ; that of the Thomsonians by 
 almost unanimous recoveries. 
 
 This Convention gave great encouragement to the 
 Botanic practitioners. Resolutions were adopted in 
 respect to the prescriptive legislation in the several 
 States. Concerted action produced its results. The 
 legislature of Ohio met a few days afterward and 
 repealed its medical act ; and Alabama also extended 
 to Thomsonian practitioners the same rights as were 
 enjoyed by other physicians.
 
 490 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The second " United States Thomsonian Conven- 
 tion " was held in Pittsburg, in Pennsylvania, in Octo- 
 ber, 1833. Its action was as decided as the other. 
 " It gave an impetus to the cause, before unbeknown." 
 It was agreed to hold annual meetings thenceforward. 
 " So long as National Conventions are well attended 
 and properly conducted," said Dr. H. Wood, of Colum- 
 bus, "they will continue to be the most powerful 
 engine to advance our cause, and will enable us more 
 successfully to combat with our enemies. Much good 
 has already been accomplished by them, and much 
 more remains to be done. Upon them mainly depends 
 the success of our cause ; and it is by them only that 
 we can maintain that concert of action so necessary to 
 effect any object." At this meeting a permanent 
 organization was accomplished. 
 
 The enterprise was also attempted to establish a 
 " National Thomsonian Infirmary," at Baltimore. A 
 committee was appointed to procure an act of incor- 
 poration from the legislature of Maryland, a bill pre- 
 pared, and introduced into the House of Delegates. 
 It was favorably received by that body, but met in the 
 Senate the full force of the hostile medical profession 
 of Baltimore and the State. The controversy of Dr. 
 Curtis and Dr. Williams about the measure was one 
 of the chapters in the medical history of the time ; 
 and exhibited the implacable hostility and sordid 
 motives then rampant and supreme. 
 
 Infirmaries for the reception of the sick and clinical 
 instruction of medical students, were a characteristic 
 feature of the early Reform Practice. Dr. Wooster 
 Beach began his career in New York as an instructor 
 in medical knowledge, by opening an Infirmary at No. 
 95 Eldridge street. From this modest beginning was
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 49I 
 
 developed the Medical Academy and afterward the 
 Reformed Medical College, from which the institu- 
 tion at Worthington had its inception. Dr. Benjamin 
 Thompson* also established an infirmary in Boston, 
 where he barely lost one patient in more than one 
 thousand. When the Asiatic Cholera prevailed in 
 Boston, in 1834, he attended about half of those 
 attacked by it, every one of whom recovered. He 
 afterward removed to Concord, in New Hampshire, 
 where he had a large field of operations and even 
 greater success. The Hon. Isaac Hill, Governor and 
 United States Senator, became his warm friend. 
 
 Dr. Samuel Thomson afterward opened an infirmary 
 in Boston. Among other similar institutions were 
 those of Dr. Tatem at Norfolk, in Virginia ; Dr. 
 Gregory at Montreal, in Canada ; Dr. Alva Curtis at 
 Columbus ; Dr. Hiram Piatt at Hartford ; Dr. John 
 Thomson at Albany, Dr. Thomas Lapham at Pough- 
 keepsie ; Dr. Abiel Gardner at Hudson ; Dr. E. J. 
 Mattocks at Troy ; Dr. vSamuel Tuthill at Kingston ; 
 Dr. William Jones at Haverstraw. These were but a 
 small part of the whole number, and they had a 
 powerful influence to make the Reform practice 
 popular. f 
 
 The Third United States Thomsonian Convention 
 assembled at Baltimore on the 13th day of October, 
 
 ♦Dr. Thompson was a disciple of Dr. Samuel Thomson. He is represented by a 
 writer in Appleton' s Cyclopaedia and his copyist in the Encyclopiedia Americana, 
 as the founder of the Thomsonian practice in America, and one of the oldest 
 members of the Eclectic School ! Ecclesiasticism is seldom more untruthful or 
 more ridiculously absurd. The publishers seem disposed to perpetuate the error' 
 by persistently neglecting to correct it. 
 
 tAt the same period, the report of Dr. J. H. Miller, of the Baltimore Almshouse, 
 was published, in which was contained the astounding statement that institutions 
 of this character were '■ known as the Portals of Oblivion into which are thrown 
 many of the 'victims of malpractice.' "
 
 492 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 1834, and remained in session four days. In the 
 absence of the president, Dr. Samuel Thomson him- 
 self opened the meeting. The address for the session 
 was delivered by Dr. H. Wood of Columbus, Ohio. 
 The document known as the "Test Resolution," 
 adopted at the previous meeting,* was then presented 
 and signed by all who participated in the proceedings. 
 A code of By-laws was adopted and much important 
 business transacted. Reports were adopted asking 
 Dr. Thomson to renew his patent and the copyright 
 of his Guide to Health, " for the preservation of the 
 exclusive right of preparing and using the medicines 
 in said system, and also to prevent any trespass on the 
 same." An address to the People of the United States 
 was also issued, and a resolution adopted to present 
 copies of it, with Dr. Thomson's treatise, to the presi- 
 dent of the United States and to the Governors of the 
 several States of the American Union. 
 
 DIVISION OF THE THOMSONIAN SCHOOL. 
 
 Another resolution contained an acknowledgment 
 of the services of Dr. Samuel Thomson, with the sig- 
 nificant suggestion : " That he will warn his friends 
 against being jealous of each other, and not to indulge 
 in a mercenary or proscriptive spirit to the injury of 
 the great cause which they have espoused." 
 
 There were heart-burnings smouldering in the 
 bosoms of many in the ranks. There was a disposi- 
 tion to resent the claims of Dr, Thomson himself to 
 be the umpire of what was genuine and what was 
 heterodox in the views of others. He was dictatorial 
 
 ♦This resolution prescribed that no member should use as medicine any animal, 
 mineral or vegetable poisons, bleed or blister, or use or sell any compounds the 
 component parts of which are kept a secret, or any other article contrary to the 
 principles laid down by Dr. Samuel Thomson.
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 493 
 
 of temper, and jealous of every individual differing 
 from him or disposed to question his ascendency. 
 He was uneducated and distrusted educational insti- 
 tutions and educated men as certain to complicate 
 and transform his system. For a time he was in con- 
 troversy and estranged from his own sons on these 
 same grounds.* It was apparent that the Thomsonian 
 physicians could not be held together by any arbi- 
 trar)^ test, but must inevitably divide, and to a consid- 
 erable degree modify their procedures, to accord with 
 their change of views. 
 
 The annual conventions were held till 183S. That 
 year the meeting was at Philadelphia, and Dr. Thom- 
 son made the annual address. He was conscious of 
 the diverging sentiments that were springing up in 
 the ranks, and that many who were reckoned as his 
 followers, were transcending the boundaries till they 
 could hardly be regarded as his disciples. He gave a 
 history of the several conventions and the difficulties 
 which had been encountered, closing with the sen- 
 tence : 
 
 " With these considerations and with no other 
 object than the permanent good of us all, so far as 
 my System of Practice can contribute to that end, I 
 ask that this Convention may be forever dissolved." 
 
 The Convention, however, did not adopt the motion 
 and the formal division which he had forseen took 
 place. Dr. Alva Curtis, of Ohio, and his friends 
 formed a new organization, styling it the " Indcpend- 
 
 *The Botanic IVatchtnan, of January, 1834, published by Dr. John Thomson, 
 contained a card with ihis notice : 
 
 " This may certify that all matters in controversy between myself and my son. 
 Dr. John Thomson of the city of Albany, have been this day amicably settled, and 
 I have appointed him my agent. 
 
 " Sa.mukl Thomson. 
 "Albany, Dec. 24, 1833."
 
 494 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ent Thomsonian Botanic Society." Those who ad- 
 hered strictly to the doctrines and procedures laid 
 down by Dr. Thomson organized as the "United 
 States Thomsonian Society." 
 
 Both held their annual meetings the next year in 
 the city of New York. The Independents met on the 
 tenth of September, and in the absence of Dr. Curtis, 
 their president, made choice of Dr. Thomas Lapham, 
 the editor of the Poughkeepsie Thomsonian, with Dr. 
 John W. Johnson, of Waterbury, in Connecticut, for 
 secretary. The Botanic State Societies of Connecti- 
 cut, Maryland and Rhode Island announced their 
 adhesion to the new organization. The Society of 
 Maine, which had been formed the previous year, and 
 the State Society of New York, the members of which 
 had been prominent in the discussion, made no dem- 
 onstration, but left their members free to affiliate as 
 they chose. An address was issued setting forth the 
 position of the Society. The attempt to dictate was 
 distinctly repudiated and the reason given in these 
 terms : 
 
 " Circumstances, personal and local, which we have 
 long regretted and endeavored in vain to remedy, 
 have compelled those who desire the progress of 
 Reform upon true principles, to assume a name for 
 themselves, unshackled by any influence that would 
 prevent improvement." 
 
 Then, as though their opposition was not in any way 
 a departure from principle, the address alludes to 
 " the sacrifice of all moral rectitude by the persecutors 
 of the Founder of our System, and the prostitution 
 of justice to accomplish his downfall and that of 
 many of his adherents." The people, it declares, 
 *' are as much ridden by the doctors as the degraded
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 495 
 
 peasant of Portugal is by his priest. They surrender 
 their bodies to the doctors as implicitly as even the 
 devoted religionist submitted his soul to his con- 
 fessor." They have been excluded from all knowledge 
 of medicine. " Neither is the cause of the doctors in 
 opposing all innovation singular. It has always been 
 so and always will be so. No body of men every 
 voluntarily undertook a reform of themselves ; they 
 always have been, and always will be, — reformed. 
 The people have but to demand, and it is done." 
 
 The address spoke hopefully of additions to their 
 numbers by converts and men of influence and 
 talent, and appealed to the practitioners in behalf of 
 liberal culture and improvement. " If we are, as our 
 enemies declare, ignorant, let us strive to become 
 learned ; if in any other way we are behind the 
 times, let us strive to come up." 
 
 This sentiment was the key-note of the movement. 
 The next meeting was appointed at Baltimore, in 
 October of the ensuing year. 
 
 MORRIS MATTSON. 
 
 In the summer of 1837, Dr. Morris Mattson an- 
 nounced the contemplated publication of a treatise on 
 the Vegetable Materia Medica. Directly afterward a 
 proposal was made to him by Dr. Thomson to unite 
 with it an edition of the Guide to Health. Dr. Mattson 
 was averse to this proposition, but friends of Dr. 
 Thomson urged him to make a contract for that 
 purpose, pleading the necessity of a work on the 
 Reformed Practice which would meet with the appro- 
 bation of an intelligent community. He remained 
 two years with Dr. Thomson and prepared the book. 
 An altercation and angry controversy followed. Dr.
 
 496 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Thomson was unwilling that the book should be pub- 
 lished, broke the contract and endeavored to procure 
 possession of the manuscript. Failing in this, he 
 threatened to thwart the whole plan. Dr Mattson 
 then revised his manuscript and published the work 
 under the title of The American Vegetable Practice. It 
 was erudite, well written and adapted to the urgent 
 wants of those who believed in Botanic Medicine. 
 
 He prefaced the volume with an address to the 
 American public, setting forth his account of the mis- 
 understanding between himself and Dr. Thomson. 
 The veteran septuagenarian was praised and criticized. 
 He was described as illiterate, coarse in his manner 
 and extremely selfish ; that his great merit consisted 
 in having made himself acquainted with remedies in 
 popular use, and introducing them in a connected 
 form. His actual discoveries were extremely limited. 
 Lobelia w^as used in New England, particularly in 
 Maine, as an emetic before Thomson was born, and the 
 vapor bath was a familiar procedure of the American 
 Indians. " I have ascertained," says Dr. Mattson, 
 " that the medical practice of the Marshpee Indians, 
 the remnant of whom are now to be found at Martha's 
 Vineyard, in Massachusetts, is closely analogous to 
 that of Dr. Thomson." 
 
 While refusing to defer his judgment or to acknowl- 
 edge that Dr. Thomson had originated a perfect sys- 
 tem of practice, Dr. Mattson gives him this generous 
 testimony : 
 
 " There is no man in the country who has labored 
 more effectually in the cause of Medical Reform than 
 Dr. Thomson ; and notwithstanding his ignorance, he 
 has been a prominent instrument in accomplishing a 
 mighty revolution m the healing art. As a successful
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 497 
 
 medical reformer he is entitled to respect, whatever 
 may be the frailties and imperfections of his character; 
 and while I seek to imvail his errors. I shall ever 
 accord to him the meed of praise for his useful dis- 
 coveries." 
 
 He insisted, nevertheless, that the gigantic strides 
 made in the way of medical reform, and the great 
 perfection which it had attained, were chiefly due to 
 the zeal and philanthropy of intelligent persons who 
 had devoted themselves exclusively to the practice, 
 making new discoveries of vegetable remedies, or 
 who had entered the arena from a sense of duty alone 
 to save their fellow-beings. 
 
 It is not wonderful that the endeavor thus made to 
 place the new practice upon a basis of knowledge and 
 intelligence, with a wide scope for further expansion 
 and improvement, would soon command the field, and 
 perhaps in a brief period cast the memory of the great 
 Founder into the shade. Indeed, a decade of years 
 did not pass, before every Botanic society in the 
 United States has dropped the name of Thomson as a 
 designation. 
 
 THE UNITED STATES THOMSONIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 The first annual meeting of the United States 
 Thomsonian Society was also held in New York, on 
 the twenty-second of October, 1840. The number in 
 attendance W£S small. Only the State Society of 
 Delaware signified its adhesion to the old ways. The 
 evidences of disintegration were manifest. 
 
 Dr. Thomson presented an address setting forth the 
 causes of the recent dissension as being " a disposition 
 on the part of the mongrel Thomsonians to keep his 
 system in their own hands, and thereby make it a
 
 498 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 monopoly." He asserted that they were chiefly prac- 
 titioners endeavoring to keep every body but them- 
 selves Ignorant of the practice, and also, that they 
 made use of medicines of a deleterious character,* 
 and dealers in secret nostrums, thus bringing the 
 Thomsonian system into disrepute. 
 
 The Convention adopted his sentiments, and issued 
 an address in similar temper. The Thomsonian 
 practice, it declared, had been introduced into every 
 part of the United States, the Territories, the Canadas, 
 West India Islands and Europe. The seceding mem- 
 bers were described as "speculating upon the discov- 
 eries of Dr. Thomson, amalgamating his medicines 
 with deleterious articles, and using their efforts to 
 get the system into the hands of the practitioners, as 
 is the case with the Medical Faculty." 
 
 It was another form of the old conflict of the world 
 between the less cultured and the more intelligent. 
 The division was never healed. Dr. Thomson had 
 nearly run his career, and was not able to stem the 
 current. He could only protest, and see his warnings 
 little heeded. 
 
 LEGAL RESTRICTIONS ON MEDICINE REPEALED. 
 
 A sentiment favorable to the Reform treatment was 
 active in Old-School circles. " We must adopt the 
 Thomsonian medical agents, or lose our practice," 
 said Dr. George McClellan, of the Pennsylvania Med- 
 ical College, father of the late Union General. "I have 
 used steam, cayenne and Lobelia," he added, " and 
 found them iiseful to remove disease." 
 
 * Meaning mandrake, Iris, wild indigo and bitter root.
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. '499 
 
 With such testimony from the really learned mem- 
 bers of the medical profession, medical proscription 
 had a very frail platform to stand upon. It was little 
 else than forensic trickery of third-grade lawyers, tlie 
 greed of inferior physicians, and brute force. 
 
 The effort for the repeal of the laws in the several 
 States proscribing Botanic practice and Botanic 
 physicians, was pushed with increasing earnestness. 
 The legislatures of the several States were flooded 
 with petitions. The Reform physicians had taken the 
 people into their confidence, and the people warmly 
 responded. 
 
 The wars for religious liberty and freedom of con- 
 science were never more fiercely and stubbornly con- 
 tested. The leaders of the Reformers, John Thomson, 
 Nicholas Smith, Moses Griffith, D. F. Nardain, found 
 their exertions largely embarrassed by the compact 
 organization of their adversaries, who were also more 
 familiar than they with the applying of legislative 
 machinery. They found it necessary to employ sim- 
 ilar agencies. They could work to greater advantage 
 if they had effective medical societies in the States and 
 districts. They could thus bring the politicians into 
 closer quarters, and cause the legislatures to respond. 
 
 One by one the Medical Black Laws were repealed 
 or made innocuous. Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, 
 Indiana, and a few other commonwealths, had never 
 been disgraced by the exclusive legislation. Ohio had 
 repealed her medical statutes as early as 1833, Mary- 
 land in 1838, and Vermont in 1839. ( ther States now 
 did the same. 
 
 THE VICTORY IN MAINE. 
 
 Maine was also true to her position as the " Star in 
 the East." She fell early into line, holding a State
 
 500 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Convention in 1837, at which a Botanic Medical Soci- 
 ety was organized. A vigorous propagandism was 
 also set in operation. A journal was established by 
 Dr. Benjamin Colby, and lecturers employed to go 
 through the State to address the people upon the 
 subject of Reform Medicine. Everywhere they 
 received a cordial welcome, which became enthu- 
 siasm. The members of the State Society also 
 planned the establishing of an Infirmary, and with it 
 a Medical College. Dr. Nicholas Smith attended the 
 meeting of the legislature, and superintended the 
 circulating and presenting of petitions. These were 
 signed by upward of four thousand citizens. The 
 endeavor was made to overwhelm them by sneers and 
 calumny, and the usual finesse of legislation. 
 
 A champion was found in Mr. Smart of the Senate. 
 He laid stress emphatically upon the fact, which has 
 been true everywhere, that the medical statute had 
 never been demanded by the people, but that when 
 they expressed a wish it was invariably for repeal. 
 He charged that it shielded and protected a favored 
 class of men, while it debarred honest practitioners 
 from reaping the benefits of their industry. It was 
 opposed to the Constitution of the State ; and he 
 added the prediction, which has since been abun- 
 dantly realized, that its abolishment would raise the 
 standard of medical practice. The effort was success- 
 ful, and the statute was repealed. 
 
 GEORGIA AND THE REFORMERS. 
 
 The conflict for medical freedom in Georgia was 
 begun by Dr. Moses Griffith. Making his home at 
 Augusta, in 1832, he reared the standard of Botanic 
 Medicine, doing battle bravely till his death from
 
 THE GREAT CC N^LICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 50I 
 
 yellow fever in 1839. His success was commensu- 
 rate with his efforts. At the instance of Dr. Lanier 
 Bankston the Southern Botanico-Medical College was 
 incorporated in December of that year, and the med- 
 ical statutes were also repealed. 
 
 The legislature of Ohio, a few weeks before, had 
 incorporated the Botanico-Medical College of Colum- 
 bus, so that the two parent institutions began exist- 
 ence almost simultaneously. The Southern College 
 began its career at Forsyth immediately, removing 
 in 1846 to Macon. Its influence was widely extended 
 over the whole South, and it enjoyed the favor of 
 leading statesmen like Governor Brown, Alexander 
 H. Stephens and others. During the Civil War its 
 graduates were employed without reserve as Surgeons 
 in the Confederate armies. Indeed medical partisan- 
 ship did not rage so violently there as in the opposing 
 ranks. 
 
 In 1841, sixteen states had removed the obnoxious 
 medical laws from their statute-books. Of the 
 remaining ten, only some four or five had ever 
 enacted them, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts 
 and South Carolina remained last in the number. 
 
 HOW CONNECTICUT OBTAINED LIBERTY. 
 
 Connecticut had been the scene of a prolonged con- 
 flict for the equal rights of medical practitioners 
 before the law of the state. Its Constitution pre- 
 scribed explicitly that " no man, or set of men are 
 entitled to exclusive public emoluments or privileges 
 from the community." In the face of this solemn 
 declaration, the exclusive right 10 r^ractice medicine 
 had been conferred by the legislature in 1792 upon 
 members of the Connecticut Medical Society ; and in
 
 502 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 1810 another statute was enacted taking the right to 
 recover debts for medical service from all per- 
 sons except individuals licensed by a medical 
 society or college of physicians. No such society or 
 college, at that time, would license anybody, however 
 well qualified, who did not subscribe to their dogmas. 
 Constitutional safeguards are often very flexible in 
 the hands of courts and legislatures, seldom availing 
 to inhibit any measure which it is desired to promote. 
 The Thomsonians of Connecticut were able, reso- 
 lute and determined men. Led by the veteran B. W. 
 Sperry, and men like Kelsey, Johnson and Lyman, 
 they were certain not to flinch, or yield the conflict. 
 They must take action as well as counsel together, 
 understand fully their rights, as men and citizens, and 
 resolve to persevere in their claims till these should 
 be conceded. As to unite had been the motto of their 
 Revolutionary ancestors, so to organize was felt to be 
 necessary now. A Convention was held at Middletown 
 in 1836, and organized a State Society. A memorial 
 was prepared, signed by several thousand citizens, 
 and presented to the General Assembly. It was disre- 
 garded by the Legislature ; and the Society at its next 
 annual meeting, voted to continue its policy, adding 
 this significant resolution : 
 
 " That should our petition be again rejected and a 
 large number of our citizens continue to be branded as outlaws, 
 we will thenceforth demand at the ballot-box a 
 restoration of those rights which have been denied to 
 humble and respectable petitioners." 
 
 Dr. Isaac J. Sperry, of Hartford, was appointed a 
 year later to conduct the case before the Legislature. 
 He reported at the ensuing annual meeting that from 
 fifteen to seventeen thousand had petitioned in 1838
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 503 
 
 for the abrogation of the proscriptive laws, and that 
 the House of Representatives had reported a bill in 
 their favor. Nobody had appeared before the Com- 
 mittee to oppose it, but there were thirteen physi- 
 cians in the Legislature, who employed their influence 
 successfully to procure its rejection. 
 
 Four years more passed with no better success. In 
 1840 it was resolved to change the policy for one 
 more aggressive. Doctors I. J. wSperry, John W. 
 Johnson and M. Gordon were appointed a Committee 
 to apply in the name of the Society, for an act 
 of incorporation. There was no better result and 
 it was resolved to lay the matter before the people 
 of the State. Four medical periodicals were estab- 
 lished and widely circulated, several of them 
 gratuitously. The sagacity of this policy was speed- 
 ily proven. At the meeting of the Society in 1842, 
 all was ripe for more direct action. The Democratic 
 candidate for Governor, the Hon. Chauncey F. 
 Cleveland, had always been willing to accord impar- 
 tial justice to all parties. It was resolved to give 
 him the support of the Reformers. He was elected 
 and confirmed their expectations. The Society peti- 
 tioned for an act of incorporation. This would give 
 it power equal to that of the Connecticut Medical 
 Society, in the matter of licensing physicians. The 
 proposition filled the members of that body with dis- 
 may* and they were glad to be let off with the repeal 
 of the obnoxious eighth section of the Medical law. 
 
 MEDICAL CONFLICT AND BIGOTRY IN NEW YORK. 
 
 The great struggle for medical freedom in New York 
 was being characterized by uncertain results. The 
 
 "■The Connecticut Dotanico-Medical Society was finally incorporated in 1848, 
 with full power to establish a medical college.
 
 504 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 discussions which paralyzed the influence of the Na- 
 tional Conventions of Botanic physicians and divided 
 them into rival factions, had a detrimental influence 
 here. The Governor in office at this time had always 
 been unfriendly. A change, however, was taking 
 place in medical and political sentiment. Resolution, 
 courage, and conscious right were having their ac- 
 complishment. The House of Assembly of 1841, 
 referred the petition for equal justice, to a Select 
 Committee, of which the Hon. Erastus D Culver was 
 chairman. Judge Culver was a man of advanced 
 views and pronounced anti-slavery sentiments. He 
 made an extended report declaring the provisions of 
 the Revised Statutes in relation to the practice of 
 medicine to be at war with the rights and privileges 
 of individuals. The Committee could not disregard 
 the prayer of thirty to forty thousand petitioners 
 asking for even-handed justice. The legal enact- 
 ments had fretted the public mind, and increased the 
 advocates of the new system. Students believing in 
 the superiority of the Thomsonian practice could not, 
 though they passed the ordeal of examination, obtain 
 diplomas from the colleges, nor licenses from the med- 
 ical societies, and able physicians owning their belief 
 in the superiority of the new practice were expelled 
 from membership. The alternative was to sacrifice 
 honest conviction, or stand proscribed by an act of 
 legislature. Other states were repealing their med- 
 ical laws, and several had never had them. 
 
 The Committee, therefore, chose to rest the mat- 
 ter on the broad ground of justice and absolute 
 right to the petitioners, and as a measure of public 
 policy.
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 505 
 
 A bill was accordingly introduced, which passed 
 the House by a vote of forty-eight to thirty-nine. It 
 was then favorably received by the Senate, but the 
 rule forbade a bill to be read twice on the same 
 day. Dr. Laurens Hull objected, and the next day 
 the Legislature adjourned. 
 
 The political overturn of 1841 placed the Demo- 
 cratic party in the ascendency in the House of 
 Assembly. The Committee on Rules attempted to 
 dispense with the Standing Committee on Medical 
 Societies. As the practice had always been to pack 
 this Committee with physicians, who were thus 
 enabled to have their own way almost arbitrarily, the 
 purpose was evident to give all parties a fair oppor- 
 tunity. One man, however, was always the bitter foe 
 of the Reform practitioners. This was Michael 
 Hoffman, the leader of the radical wing»of the Demo- 
 cratic party. At his instance the Committee was 
 reinstated, and constituted in the usual way. 
 
 Another man, destined to become even more promi- 
 nent in the councils of his party, was bold and manly 
 in advocacy of equal rights and opportunity. The 
 Hon. Horatio Seymour, a few days later, presented a 
 petition, and moved its reference, together with others 
 of similar purport, t(^ a select Committee. In the 
 debate which ensued, he remarked that it was a very 
 serious question whether the Legislature should 
 sanction the morality of what was a subject of com- 
 plaint on the part of the petitioners, — the employing 
 of a physician and then refusing to pay for his 
 services. 
 
 The Hon. Charles Humphrey supported the motion, 
 protesting against referring petitions to a Committee 
 that from its organization was hostile to the object
 
 506 HISTORY OF MEDICINE 
 
 sought. The Speaker, Hon. Levi S. Chatfield, was 
 opposed to the proposition ; but the Assembly by a vote 
 of eighty-one to twenty-seven, adopted the measure. 
 This Committee set about its work promptly and 
 introduced a bill, ten days later, authorizing Botanic 
 physicians to collect remuneration for services. 
 
 The Chairman of the Medical Committee, Dr. 
 William Taylor, had been president of the State 
 Medical Society, and was in favor of the most arbi- 
 trary restrictive enactments. Having by the finesse 
 of the Speaker got possession of several petitions, he 
 procured delay till he should also make a report. 
 This is a common artifice for defeating legislation. It 
 was not till the last of March, an interval of two 
 months, that the bill from the Select Committee was 
 considered in Committee of the Whole. Hon. Sanford 
 E. Church then moved a substitute repealing all 
 restrictions, and providing that any person might 
 practice medicine and receive compensation. This 
 would extend the benefit to members of the Homoeo- 
 pathic School, which was then coming into favorable 
 notice. The substitute was adopted, but created 
 apprehension in regard to the possibility of its pas- 
 sage. Accordingly the whole matter was recommitted 
 for amendment, and reported in a form confirming its 
 provisions to Botanic practitioners, without the 
 restriction to indigenous remedies. It then passed 
 the Assembly. Before its reception in the Senate, 
 the Hon. A. B. Dickinson and General Erastus Root 
 moved to place it at once upon its final passage. It 
 was, however, referred to the Medical Committee, 
 and the Chairman, Dr. Sumner Ely, reported a new 
 bill instead. It was another legislative subterfuge. It 
 provided that no person should receive a license to
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 5^ 
 
 practice medicine till he had served as clerk to a 
 physician for seven years ; and no physician should 
 receive the medical degree till he had been three 
 years in practice or had spent six months in a hospi- 
 tal. That bill was laid upon the table. 
 
 This action was received with general indignation. 
 Leading men proposed the organization of an Anti- 
 Monopoly political party. The trend of public senti- 
 ment at that time was toward more direct participation 
 of the people in the management of affairs. Examples 
 were at hand to encourage the notion. Myron Holley 
 and his friends had organized the Anti-Masonic party 
 in 1828, with very encouraging results. Mr. Holley 
 had again brought into existence the Liberty party in 
 1840, and immediately the legislature had passed 
 laws abolisning negro slavery in New York, and free- 
 ing of the slaves brought into the vState from else- 
 where. It was believed that out of the hundred 
 thousand and more who were unqualifiedly opposed 
 to unjust discriminations between medical practi- 
 tioners, ten to fifteen thousand would act together 
 and hold the balance of political power. 
 
 The proposition met with much favor. Dr. Amos 
 N. Burton, however, was bold in opposing. He was 
 the associate of Dr. John Thomson, and had much of 
 the active work to perform. He deprecated the notion 
 of turning the Thomsonian cause into a political 
 machine. He counselled the deserving of success 
 before making any such attempt — " turning our atten- 
 tion to improving the qualifications of our practi- 
 tioners by establishing a more thorough system of 
 education, and inculcating a rigid system of honor, 
 integrity and ability to practice in our profession ; 
 and THEN to use our united political influence in favoi
 
 500 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 of electing, without respect to party, such men to tli^ 
 legislature as know our rights and dare to maintaiu 
 them." 
 
 He predicted confidently that the day was not far 
 distant when their merits would generally be con- 
 ceded by the people, and their wrongs redressed by 
 the legislature. 
 
 This counsel prevailed, and the prediction was real- 
 ized. The legislature of 1843 followed the example of 
 its predecessors. The political exigencies, however, 
 were favoiable. The two parties were about equally 
 divided through the country as well as in the State of 
 New York. The action of Connecticut was suggestive. 
 The several Reform parties perceived their oppor- 
 tunity, and joined in a strenuous appeal to the legis- 
 lature of 1844. The New York Tribune gave them 
 hearty support. Its illustrious founder, Horace 
 Greeley, was always a zealous friend to their cause. 
 
 There were able men in that legislature. Many of 
 them were afterward prominent in the State, and in 
 National politics. Michael Hoffman had been again 
 elected, but his influence was diminished. Among the 
 others were Horatio Seymour, Thomas G. Alvord, 
 Clark B. Cochrane, William F. Allen, Joseph S. 
 Bosworth, Calvin T. Hulburd, General Auguste 
 Davczac, Erastus Corning, Henry A. Foster, John 
 B. Scott. It was a body of men sure to give prestige 
 to their legislation. 
 
 THE MEDICAL PETITION. 
 
 The great Medical Petition was the feature of the 
 session. Memorials from all parts of the State hao 
 been collected, and attached together as a single docu- 
 ment. John Thomson placed it in a wheelbarrow
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 509 
 
 and in company with a party of friends, conveyed it 
 up State-street to the Capitol. It was carried into the 
 Assembly chamber, and there unrolled by Dr. E. J. 
 Mattocks, in presence of the members. It has been 
 described as thirty-one yards long, and closely signed. 
 Enthusiastic individuals declared that it contained 
 the names of a majority of the voters of the State. 
 This may be an exaggeration, but there were enough 
 to show that it would be no longer safe to trifle with 
 their patience. New York was to decide who should 
 be the next President. Mr. Carpenter, of the Assembly, 
 and Judge Scott, of the Senate, warmly advocated the 
 repeal of the obnoxious legislation. A bill for that 
 purpose was reported, and opposed with the usual 
 stock and stale babbling about ignorance and quack- 
 ery. Judge Scott boldly hurled the charges back to 
 those who made them. He challenged the evidence 
 that the physicians of the Medical societies were men 
 of superior education, and declared that " there are 
 more quacks wearing the dignified title of Doctor of 
 Medicine than are to be found anywhere else." 
 
 Opposition was in vain, and the bill became a law 
 on the sixth of May, 1844. It repealed the act of 1830, 
 the objectionable section in the Revised Statutes, and 
 all laws of the State from prohibiting any person from 
 recovering by suit or action due compensation for 
 medical service rendered to the sick. It further 
 exempted from liability to criminal prosecution or 
 indictment for practicing physic or surgery without 
 license, excenf for malcractice. gross ignorance or 
 immoral conduct ; and imposed ' severe penalties in 
 these cases. 
 
 The passage of this act was announced by the New 
 York Tribune in language of triumph. It was the
 
 5IO HISTORV OF MEDICINE. 
 
 first medical law ever passed in strict obedience to 
 the wishes of the people of the State of New York, — 
 and the last. The physicians of the several schools of 
 practice, Thomsonian, Reformed and Homoeopathic, 
 received the news with joyful exultation. The con- 
 flict was over, and they had wrested the prize of inde- 
 pendence from the hands of obdurate and desperate 
 men. The pa;an of gratitude was repeated from one 
 end of the Union to the other. Even South Carolina 
 made ready to shake off the hoodoo incubus, and 
 repealed her statute a year later. 
 
 The Thomsonian Medical Society of the State of 
 New York, held its ninth annual meeting at Albany 
 the ensuing June, and hastened to award the medal 
 of honor to the men who had conducted the contest 
 to its successful issue. The following resolution 
 was adopted : 
 
 Resolved, That the thanks of this Society be and 
 are hereby rendered to Doctors William B. Stanton, 
 Oliver Cook and Amos N. Burton for their active 
 exertions in procuring the repeal of an Unjust Law, 
 the intent of which was to create an odious monopoly 
 and to cut off a portion of the people of the State 
 from their Constitutional and unalienable rights." 
 
 REJOICING IN OHIO. 
 
 The Reformed Medical School at Worthington had 
 been closed in 1842, and Dr. Morrow and his associates 
 had transferred their operations to Cincinnati. He 
 visited the former place in the spring of 1845, to take 
 part in a presentation to Colonel James Kilbourne, at 
 the College building. He delivered an address upon 
 the occasion, recapitulating the early history of the 
 enterprise and the achievements of the physicians of
 
 THE GREAT CONFLICT FOR MEDICAL FREEDOM. 5 II 
 
 Reformed Practice. Referring to the time when he 
 began his labors at Worthington and the restrictive 
 medical laws then in force, he said : 
 
 " How changed the scene ! Since then, by the 
 aid and influence of the friends of this benev- 
 olent enterprise [the Worthington College] and the 
 assistance of others having kindred objects in view,, 
 the illiberal and intolerant spirit of Medical monopoly 
 has been most signally rebuked on every side. 
 
 " State after State has marched forward to the 
 noble work, and blotted out, // is hoped forever, from 
 the statute-books all laws granting exclusive privi- 
 leges to one class of medical practitioners to oppress 
 another ; thus placing each before the community on 
 its own proper basis." 
 
 A dark chapter in American history, both medical 
 and legislative, was thus brought to an end. The 
 Medical Inquisition was closed ; the occupation of the 
 informer and persecutor was gone. It was truly like 
 the scene of the pouring out of the Vial of the Fifth 
 Angel upon the seat of the Apocalyptic Beast. But 
 over the whole country the result was most salutary. 
 Skill in healing became more esteemed than a mere 
 factitious medical orthodoxy. Liberty, once estab- 
 lished through the land, produced its legitimate 
 fruits. Medical knowledge became more thorough, 
 medical skill more expert. The educational require- 
 ments of the medical colleges were steadily elevated 
 to an altitude which they had never before attained. 
 The ratio of mortality was actually lessened, and epi- 
 demics became less deadly. The medical world was, 
 for the time, in that part of its orbit nearest the sun, 
 and the dismal winter was made glorious summer.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 
 
 The leaders in the several movements for the 
 reform of Medical Practice were awake to the impor- 
 tance of technical instruction in the Art of Healing. 
 The action of Dr. Beach and Dr. Isaac S. Smith in 
 this matter has already been noticed. They believed 
 implicitly in native genius for the work, but they 
 insisted none the less for adequate knowledge of 
 scientific details and procedures. Few individuals 
 went from their schools ill-qualified for their vocation. 
 
 It has been sometimes affirmed that the medical 
 institutions of the dominant school, already estab- 
 lished, are ample for the purpose, and give a higher 
 quality of technical instruction. Yet it is notorious 
 that they have been exclusive in their ethics, not 
 only refusing to teach any thing outside their own 
 prescribed partisan curriculum, but withholding 
 from the student ready to graduate his justly-earned 
 degree, except he would swear to practice medicine 
 as he had been taught. No Roman seminary was 
 ever more arbitrary, exclusive, or exacting of a 
 pledge of absolute and perpetual orthodoxy, and one 
 requirement was an evident copy of the other. 
 
 Besides this, observation has failed to show the 
 superiority in quality of instruction, of which boast 
 has been made. It has been principally a bandying 
 of opprobrious epithets belonging in the category 
 with those of the fish-market, and little else. A large 
 majority of the physicians called scientific by the
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 513 
 
 authorized parlance were actually defective in pri- 
 mary instruction, and unable to write, pronounce, or 
 vven to spell technical words correctly. The very 
 Latin in which they wrote prescriptions was a bid- 
 ding of defiance to etymology and syntax. As late as 
 1884, the Commissioner of Education, at Washington, 
 added his testimony that in most of the medical col- 
 leges, "no examination for entrance, nor any evidence 
 of the possession of a respectable disciplinary educa- 
 tion is called for." * He added the sweeping assertion 
 that, " those who control such professional schools, 
 by their practice, advertise to the world that neither 
 Law, Medicine nor General Science demands any 
 more training than the common handicrafts, or 
 farming." 
 
 From men and institutions, of which this is true, 
 the vile and depreciating imputations which they 
 place on those of different sentiment, come with very 
 ill grace. It is rather the tirade of the politician of 
 the slums than the speech of scholarly men — the 
 abuse of the partisan, and not the candid criticism of 
 the lover of learning and science. 
 
 WORTHINGTON MEDICAL COLLEGE. 
 
 The "Reformed Medical Academy " had got fairly 
 into successful operation when Dr. Beach and his 
 associates began to conceive ambitious schemes of an 
 extensive propagandism. Circulars were sent to dif- 
 ferent individuals living in the Western and South- 
 ern States. A reply from a prominent citizen of the 
 State of Ohio served to turn effort in that direction. 
 
 * The United States Medical College of New York, from the first, made such 
 examinations an express condition for entrance.
 
 514 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Worthington had been laid out by Colonel James 
 Kilbourn, of the Scioto Land Company, in the year 
 1803, and speedily became a thrifty town. Its leading 
 inhabitants were ambitious that it should become the 
 capital of the State. Failing in this, they had accepted 
 the proposition of the Rev. Dr. Philander Chase, and 
 established a college. An acrimonious controversy 
 in the Protestant Episcopal Church of Ohio, respecting 
 the administration of Kenyon College, had led him to 
 resign the presidency and direct his energies to the 
 founding of a new educational institution. For a 
 time the enterprise prospered, till the unhappy breach 
 was reconciled, and Dr. Chase was elected Bishop of 
 Illinois. About this time the circular of Dr. Beach 
 was received with glad welcome, and the rooms of 
 the college were placed at his service. An act of the 
 General Assembly, in 1829, conferred the necessary 
 legal authority. 
 
 A meeting of the Reformed Medical Society of the 
 United States was held on the third day of May, in 
 that year, and a resolution adopted declaring it 
 " expedient to establish an additional medical school 
 in some town on the Ohio river, or some of its navi- 
 gable tributaries, in order that the people of the West 
 may avail themselves of the advantages resulting 
 from a scientific knowledge of Botanic Medicine." * 
 
 Dr. Thomas Vaughan Morrow was selected to be the 
 principal of the new institution. He was a native of 
 Kentucky, well educated, enthusiastic and persever- 
 ing, in the flower of his age, and liberally endowed 
 
 * At that time the Reforvied School was termed " Botanic." There were but 
 twenty-four States in the American Union, and all except Missouri and Louisiana 
 were east of the Mississippi river. The " West " comprised all the country beyond 
 New York and Pennsylvania. As there were no railroads, navigable waters had 
 an importance not easy to imagine.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 515 
 
 with energy and those qualities of heart and mind 
 that characterize the true leader. Dr. Ichabod G. 
 Jones, his fellow-laborer, aided him in the under- 
 taking. 
 
 Before the Legislature would permit the College at 
 Worthington to be opened with the medical depart- 
 ment, Dr. Morrow was required to submit to an exam- 
 ination by a leading medical teacher of Philadelphia 
 in regard to his proficiency and fitness. He passed 
 the ordeal successfully. 
 
 The new institution had two regular terms in each 
 year, covering a period of ten months. Every student 
 was required to possess a good English education, but 
 his medical attainment and not any particular length 
 of attendance, was made the condition for graduating. 
 The standard, nevertheless, was higher than that of 
 the great majority of medical colleges in the United 
 States. When we remember that even the school 
 that John Hunter established was purely a private 
 enterprise and had only a term of six weeks, we can 
 the better appreciate the state of affairs at Worthing- 
 ton. Whatever deficiency existed was general, and 
 by no means confined to institutions that were not of 
 the prescribed orthodox party. 
 
 The medical department at Worthington was con- 
 ducted with signal ability. It speedily became the 
 object of attacks, characterized by diabolic malignity, 
 as though to engulf it in the poisonous current of 
 spite and calumny. The institution, nevertheless, 
 weathered the storm, and its graduates became popu- 
 lar as physicians. 
 
 In 1836, the Faculty began the publication of the 
 Western Medical Refortner. In this they declared them- 
 selves to be Botanic physicians, but a distinct school
 
 5l6 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 entirely from the disciples of Samuel Thomson. They 
 positively affirmed that " the honor of attempting to 
 introduce a Scientific Botanical System of Medicine 
 and Surgical Practice seemed to be reserved for the 
 celebrated Doctor Wooster Beach, of New York." It 
 was originated, they added, without the least reference 
 to other Reform Systems, " and for the most part, 
 without even the knowledge that such a system as the 
 Thomsonian, or such a being as Samuel Thomson was 
 in existence." They even repudiated the Thomsonian 
 system as having the tendency and aim of a total 
 subversion of all science, and a substitution of a lim- 
 ited method, founded on the dogmas of a single 
 individual. 
 
 These utterances, bitter as they were, had been 
 anticipated, and were followed by others from the 
 Thomsonians, even more harsh and vituperative. It 
 seems to be a law in human nature, that bodies of 
 men that agree most closely in sentiment, are most 
 severe and vindicti^'e over points of difference. The 
 broadening of professional knowledge, and the neces- 
 sity which come to act together against their common 
 persecutors, tend afterward to assuage much of this 
 animosity. Dr. Morrow himself, in later years, sought 
 a union and cooperation with those whom he had so 
 warmly opposed. 
 
 The medical college at Worthington was compelled 
 to depend for support upon its receipts for tuition, 
 and contributions from its friends. With the spring 
 of 1837, there came a period of crushing financial 
 disaster, which for years arrested the business and 
 industries of the country. The instructors at the 
 College were compelled to close their infirmary, and 
 to suspend the publication of their journal. Personal
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 517 
 
 superadded to professional enmity, was also encoun- 
 tered. A professor, who had been superseded, became 
 the most rancorous and unscrupulous of adversaries. 
 Persecution was renewed in different form. Dr. 
 Morrow was himself prosecuted, but without success. 
 Both he and the institution were popular at Worth- 
 ington. Attack came next from distant places. 
 Exaggerated stories were told of disinterments of the 
 dead for dissection, till the less intelligent of the popu- 
 lation were excited into fury. It was the period of 
 mob law in^ America, and physicians in that region 
 were not unwilling to employ that agency. In the 
 spring of 1840, a body of several hundred lawless 
 individuals was conducted to Worthington, and 
 turned loose upon the town, to sack the College, rifle 
 buildings and perhaps to murder. The professors and 
 students, however, made good their escape, but the 
 college building was pillaged, and the town placed at 
 the mercy of the drunken rabble. 
 
 Dr. Morrow and his assistants remained bravely at 
 their posts after this occurrence, but foresaw that 
 their enterprise must be transferred to a larger field. 
 The college, however, was maintained two years 
 longer, before a final abandonment. 
 
 BOTANIC MEDICAL COLLEGES. 
 
 By no means did the professional disciples of Samuel 
 Thomson continue indifferent in the matter of pre- 
 liminary and more thorough instruction in Medicine. 
 Even the Conventions held annually under his imme- 
 diate direction, had a powerful influence to awaken 
 their consciousness of its necessity. To be sure there 
 were many, chiefly holders of the patent, who were, 
 like their veteran leader, sticklers for the contrary
 
 5l8 HISTORY OF MEDICIXF. 
 
 notion. It was felt in all quarters that the lack of 
 technical knowledge, as well as of literary accomplish- 
 ments, was certain to lower Botanic practitioners in 
 general estimation, and eventually to wreck the 
 school. It was acknowledged and believed that nat- 
 ural gift or intuitive faculty was essential to the 
 genuine physician, but even then liberal culture and 
 professional instruction would make him more useful 
 and acceptable. Hence, in the states where there 
 were Botanic Societies or any considerable number of 
 Botanic physicians, the project of a medical college 
 became a theme of anxious consideration. 
 
 Dr. Benjamin Colby, of the Thonisonian Recorder^ 
 called attention to the fact that the Thomsonians were 
 debarred from admission into the Medical College of 
 Maine, and likewise, that the ordinary physicians 
 would not even attend patients who had been in the 
 habit of employing Botanic practitioners. " The 
 importance of Thomsonians having a general knowl- 
 edge of anatomy, physiology, pathology, surgery and 
 midwifer)'," he declared " to be deeply felt by every 
 one who enters the practice ; he cannot obtain the 
 confidence of the community without this knowl- 
 edge." 
 
 At his instance, the Thomsonian Medical Society of 
 the State of Maine, at its meeting in 1839, appointed 
 a committee to consider the subject. A plan was 
 reported the nexc year and accepted. 
 
 Dr. John Thomson and his brothers were actually 
 at odds for years with their father upon this subject 
 of medical education. There was likewise a general 
 feeling that the literature of the Botanic School was 
 meagre and insufificient. When it was learned in 
 1837, that Dr. Morris Mattson contemplated the pre-
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 5 19 
 
 paring of a work on the Vegetable Materia Medica, there 
 was general gratification expressed. The hope was 
 entertained that he would unite it with Thomson's 
 Guide to Health, and thereby disguise and eventually 
 remove the deficiencies palpable in that work.* The 
 arrangement, however, failed. Dr. John Thomson 
 himself published a work, in 1841, purporting to be a 
 revised edition of the Thovisoniati Materia Mcdica, cred- 
 iting it to his father, except in certain feaiures from 
 which the latter dissented, and dedicating it to their 
 faithful friend and defender, Professor Benjamin 
 Waterhouse, of the Harvard Medical School. It was 
 a very complete work for the time, including a treat- 
 ise on Anatomy, and a very thorough exposition of 
 Medical Botany and Botanic Pharmacy. King Louis- 
 Philippe, of France, and several other European 
 rulers, presented him with medals in honor of the 
 publication. 
 
 The same year, the Thomsonian Medical Society of 
 New York, of which he was president, appointed a 
 committee to consider the expediency of establishing 
 a college in that State, and the propriety of petition- 
 ing the legislature to incorporate such an institution, 
 and also of inviting the Botanic physicians of New 
 Jersey and Pennsylvania to cooperate in the enterprise. 
 
 Dr. Samuel Thomson himself was present at this 
 meeting, but made no opposition. He was in declin- 
 ing health, and was made the recipient, on this occa- 
 sion, of many personal honors and attentions. 
 
 A Convention was also called in New England to 
 confer upon the proposition to establish a medical 
 
 * Dr. Mattson says : "His [Thomfon's] friends urged me to remain [in Boston] 
 and enter into a contract with him, if possible ; representing to me the necessity of 
 having a work on the Reformed or Vegetable Practice, which would meet the 
 
 apijfohation of an inlelligent community. '
 
 520 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 institution in the Eastern States. It failed to assem- 
 ble at the time appointed, but at the suggestion of 
 the Thomsonian Medical Society of Connecticut, a 
 meeting was held at Boston in the autumn of that 
 year. This Convention proposed a very definite 
 course of procedure, the founding of a college and 
 the establishing of a curriculum of medical study. 
 
 This excited alarm in the orthodox medical circles, 
 and Dr. J. V. C. Smith, then editor of the Boston 
 Medical and Surgical Journal, thus belabored the 
 projectors : 
 
 " They voted that the lectures embrace the follow- 
 ing branches of medical study, viz.: Thomsonian 
 Theory and Practice of Medicine, Anatomy, Surgery, 
 Physiology, Obstetrics and Chemistry. Query : How 
 long will it be before the Thomsonian Theory and 
 Practice of Medicine be lost sight of, and the new 
 school be a rational one, conducted on scientific prin- 
 ciples and under the control of a respectable learned 
 Faculty ?" 
 
 In addition to this scoff, Dr. Smith mentioned the 
 nomination of Dr. William Taylor as a candidate for 
 member of the House of Assembly of New York. He 
 desired physicians to support Dr. Taylor, without 
 regard to party, in the hope that " he will keep at bay 
 the petitioners of the Thomsonians, who claim equal 
 standing with the learned profession in the State by 
 leofislative enactment." * 
 
 * The tortuous action of Dr. Taylor, which the noble and manly course of the 
 Hon. Horatio Seymour largely circumvented, the favorable legislation in the 
 Assembly of 1842, and its defeat in the Senate by an artful parliamentary 
 obstruction, have been already described. Dr. Smith himself lived to see the 
 prescriptive medical laws repealed, to be himself disfellowshiped for having 
 become more generous and liberal, and even to be a lecturer in a Woman's 
 Homoeopathic Medical College.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 52I 
 
 Dr. Morris Mattson ungenerously added his criti- 
 cisms to those of the other adversaries. The Boston 
 True Thomsonian, which had been established by his 
 supporters in opposition to Dr. Thomson, actually 
 went so far as to advise young men who were desirous 
 of obtaining a thorough medical education, and quali- 
 fying themselves for medical practitioners, to enter 
 the " regular " schools at once. It even declared that 
 students graduating from such schools would be 
 more acceptable to New Englanders generally than 
 they would be if educated in Thomsonian schools or 
 colleges. 
 
 If this advice was sincere, it was short-sighted and 
 impracticable. Only young men of extraordinary 
 mental and moral stamina would graduate at an insti- 
 tution enjoying political favor and social distinction, 
 and then deliberately undertake for conscience' sake 
 to walk in the rugged path of the reformer. There 
 was, however, another obstacle even harder to sur- 
 mount. Students of Reform proclivities would not, 
 on any account, be permitted to graduate at such a 
 school. 
 
 Several attempts, however, were made to establish 
 private courses of lectures. Dr. Mattson himself 
 announced his purpose to open a medical school in 
 Boston. Dr. Colby also, having suspended the publi- 
 cation of the TJwiusonian Recorder, and removed to 
 Nashua, in New Hampshire, delivered a course of 
 lectures at his new home. Several of the Thomsonian 
 medical societies also employed lecturers. But there 
 were no permanent results. 
 
 In the State of New York there was little better 
 success. While the conflict for medical enfranchise- 
 ment was in progress, the energies of the Reform
 
 522 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 physicians were expended in the struggle. The pre- 
 scriptive statutes having been annulled in 1844, the 
 Thomsonian Medical Society, meeting in June, took 
 steps preliminary to the founding of a medical col- 
 lege. A Board of Trustees was appointed,* and an 
 invitation extended to the friends of Medical Reform 
 in New England and elsewhere, as well as at home, 
 to take an active part in the enterprise. 
 
 " There have been, and now are, m.any whom col- 
 leges did not make," pleaded the veteran Dr. Lapham ; 
 "yet such are the men who make colleges, and none 
 more highly appreciate the facilities which such 
 institutions are capable of affording to the student 
 than those who have thus reached the pinnacle of 
 fame alone and unaided." 
 
 Several meetings of the Board were held, money 
 was subscribed, and a site proposed at Saratoga 
 Springs, but with no satisfactory result. The leaders, 
 Samuel Thomson, his sons John and Jesse Thomson, 
 Abiel Gardner, were dead, and others superannuated. 
 The pressure of the former conflicts was removed, 
 and a feeling of security followed, which led to the 
 general waning of enthusiasm for aggressive activity. 
 
 THE BOTANICO-MEDICAL INSTITUTE OF OHIO. 
 
 Meanwhile, the endeavors in the South and West to 
 establish colleges for instruction in Botanic medicine, 
 had better results. Dr. Alva Curtis, while living in 
 New Hampshire, had witnessed in his own family the 
 life of a brother made miserable and cut short by mer- 
 curial treatment. He quickly discarded the whole 
 
 * This Board consisted of Doctors Thomas Lapham, William B. Stanton, E. J. 
 Mattocks, Ebenezer Ford, M. W. Hill, I. K. Averill, and Cyrus Thomson.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 523 
 
 practice and embraced the Botanic. It was the period 
 of compulsory statutes, when the whole country- 
 was falling into the slavery of class-legislation. 
 Curtis, fond of controversy, entered the field with 
 tongue and pen, and his address at the first National 
 Convention of Thomsonians in Baltimore, aroused 
 wide attention. The proprietors of the Thomsonian 
 Recorder at Columbus, the capital of Ohio, invited him 
 to become the editor. He was not content, however, 
 to beat his oppressors in controversy. He resolved to 
 establish a medical college which would make the 
 work permanent. 
 
 He began in 1835 to instruct medical students at 
 his own house, and followed this effort by an applica- 
 tion to the General Assembly for an act of incorpora- 
 tion. His adversaries opposed him by artifice and 
 calumny, but they found him able to meet them at 
 every point, to rebut every objection, and certain to 
 win friends and supporters in every conflict. At one 
 session the House of Representatives passed the 
 measure, and at the next, the Senate enacted it with 
 few negative votes, thus making it a law.* The 
 " Literary and Botanico-Medical Institute, of Ohio," 
 was iiicorporated on the ninth day of March, 1839, 
 with the powers of a university. Its medical depart- 
 ment was opened at Columbus the ensuing autumn, 
 under the imposing title of " The College of Physi- 
 cians and Surgeons," and has thus the distinction of 
 being the Parent School of Botanic Medicine. 
 
 Such a departure from his ways and methods. Dr. 
 Samuel Thomson had deprecated, as being a virtual 
 apostasy and a reverting back toward the Old School, 
 
 ♦In Ohio, a bill passing both Houses of Legislature is thereby enacted ; the 
 governor having no veto power.
 
 524 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Dr. Curtis, however, had broken with him and formed 
 a new National Convention of " Independent Thomso- 
 nians,"* of which he was the first president. 
 
 Dr. Curtis was as tenacious as Dr. Thomson of being 
 the chief authority and umpire, and often lectured 
 his associates magisterially for what he considered 
 their derelictions. He was strenuously opposed, 
 almost to open hostility, to the establishing of other 
 colleges of the same medical faith. He had, perhaps, 
 the discretion not to arouse their direct enmity, by 
 publicly attacking them ; but he took pains, from 
 time to time, to declare that there were too many such 
 institutions. He actually proposed in 1846, that 
 they should all sell their property and merge into the 
 institution of which he was the Chancellor. 
 
 The history of the Botanico-Medical College of 
 Ohio, was, as might be expected from such a disposition, 
 somewhat checkered. The institution was removed 
 in 1841, by legislative permission, from Columbus to 
 Cincinnati. A year later, an article in the Boston 
 True Thomsonian, announced the opening of the 
 " American Medical Institute," giving no locality, but 
 naming as the faculty, Doctors Alva Curtis, Joseph 
 Rodes Buchanan, Harvey W. Hill and Samuel Curtis. 
 In 185 1, the charter was again amended. The Scien- 
 tific and Literary department was erected into a 
 distinct corporation, of which Dr. Curtis was in 
 sole charge, and the medical department became the 
 Physiopathic College of Ohio. The Faculty of the 
 latter institution consisted of Doctor Joseph Brown, 
 
 *This name was speedily laid aside for that of " Physo-Medical," or "Physio- 
 Medical." The Eastern Botanic physicians for a time called themselves " Phy- 
 sopathists," but later the title of " Reform Physicians" was for a time adopted. 
 Most of them finally united with the Eclectic School, and those who remain are. 
 known, as they have been for forty years, by the designation of " Physio-Medical."
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 525 
 
 the dean, Doctor E. M. Parritt, late of the Worcester 
 Medical Institution, Doctors E. H. Stockwell, J. A. 
 Powers and R. C. Carter. 
 
 In 1859, the Physio-Medical Institute was organ- 
 ized. Dr. William H. Cook, formerly of the Syracuse 
 and Metropolitan Medical Colleges, in New York, was 
 at the head. Dean of the Faculty, editor of the 
 Physio- Medical Recorder^ and author of several medical 
 works of merit. Dr. Curtis, after various adventures, 
 attempting to establish a medical school at Boston to 
 cripple the College at Worcester, and again in Con- 
 necticut, and holding a chair in the Metropolitan 
 Medical College, finally returned to Cincinnati and 
 accepted a professorship in the Physio-Medical Insti- 
 tute. This College was finally suspended in 1885. 
 
 THE SOUTHERN BOTANICO-INIEDIC AL COLLEGE. 
 
 The history of the Southern Botanico-Medical Col- 
 lege, of Georgia, is in many respects a counterpart of 
 the sister institution in Ohio. Its founder, Dr. 
 Lanier Bankston, bore a very similar relation to 
 Reform Medicine in Georgia and the South, to that 
 sustained by Alva Curtis in Ohio and the Northwest. 
 He was amply qualified for the work, scholarly and 
 eloquent, tenacious of his authority, fluent with 
 speech and the pen and possessing the endowments of 
 a high-toned gentleman. He began practice as a 
 Botanic physician in 1832, and quickly became awake 
 to the importance of a suitable institution for the 
 instruction of medical students in the Reform prin- 
 ciples. He devoted his life and energies to this 
 end, laboring diligently, expending freely his private 
 fortune, and yielding up other projects and ambi- 
 tions.
 
 526 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 In order to fit himself more completely for a teacher, 
 he began at the lower steps and attended lectures at 
 the medical college in Augusta. He next obtained 
 the cooperation of others of like convictions. It was 
 his desire to establish the proposed institution at 
 Macon, then the capital of the State, but in this he 
 was overruled. The College was opened at Forsyth, 
 on the first day of December, 1839, with but two 
 students, and on the eighteenth. Governor McDonald 
 signed the bill creating it a legal corporation. 
 
 The new institution began with encouraging pros- 
 pects, and encountered its full share of dissensions 
 and reverses. Reformers, with all their great merits, 
 are not always the most amiable of humankind, or 
 the most richly endowed with charity. A division 
 arose in 1840, which resulted in the expulsion of Dr. 
 William H. Fonerden from the Faculty.* In 1841, 
 Dr. Bankston was elected Dean in place of Dr. 
 Hugh Quin. 
 
 In 1841, a Convention of Botanic physicians of 
 Georgia and Alabama assembled at Columbus, in the 
 former State, and organized the " Southern Botanico- 
 Medical Society." Its objects were specified to be, 
 the promotion of harmony and the furthering of the 
 interests of the Southern Botanico-Medical College. 
 
 The next year the legislature made a grant of five 
 thousand dollars to the institution. This generous 
 
 *He was charged with keeping up a constant disturbance with the students, 
 threatening that they should not graduate except they received private instruction 
 from him, and with abusive language of the other professors. Dr. Alfred N. 
 Worthy was elected in his place to the chair of the Theory and Practice of 
 Medicine, and Dr. Henry Lee, of Middletown, in Connecticut, as professor of 
 Anatomy and Surgery. The Trustees also established as their official organ, the 
 Southern Botanico-Medical Journal, making Dr. Lee its editor, in place of the 
 Southern Medical Recorder, which Dr. Fonerden had conducted. This last 
 arrangement seems not to have been of long duration.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 527 
 
 action was repeated some years afterward. The diffi- 
 culties with Dr. Fonerden were amicably adjusted. 
 
 In 1845, the college was removed to Macon. This 
 action was attended by a division of the Faculty, Dr. 
 Quin and others resigning. The building was 
 destroyed by fire, but by help from the legislature, 
 and the liberality of private individuals, was soon 
 replaced by a new structure. There was a disposition 
 among the Botanic societies to a frequent change of 
 name ; and finally, the simple designation of " Reform " 
 became very general. Accordingly in 1854, the col- 
 lege at Macon took the name of the " Reform Medical 
 College of Georgia." It was now a favorite institu- 
 tion among the leading men. The graduates were 
 generally popular and successful as physicians, and 
 the most prominent public men of the State of Georgia 
 were their patrons.* During the Civil War, physi- 
 cians of the Botanic and Eclectic schools were readily 
 accepted as surgeons in the Confederate Army, and 
 to their credit, as well as to the lasting honor of the 
 authorities employing them, they justified their 
 appointment by their professional skill and efficiency. 
 
 The college, like all the other institutions of learn- 
 ing in the Southern States, was compelled during 
 that period to close its doors. It was revived again 
 in 1867, under different conditions. The Botanic 
 physicians had generally dropped their former ani- 
 mosity toward the Eclectic school, and even become 
 partial to its remedial procedures. When the col- 
 lege was opened again, at Macon, it took the name of 
 " The College of American Medicine and Surgery." It, 
 however, maintained only a precarious existence till 
 
 ♦ Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, Governor Joseph Brown, Gen. Robert H. 
 Toombs, and others of that class, were patrons of the Reform practice.
 
 528 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 1 88 1, when it was removed to Atlanta, now the capi- 
 tal of Georgia. Here a new Board took it in charge. 
 A few years later it was united with the Georgia 
 Eclectic Medical College, now " The Georgia College 
 of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery ;" and the present 
 arrangement assures greater success and prosperity 
 than were enjoyed before. 
 
 Dr. Bankston, the veteran Medical Reformer of 
 Georgia, accepted the invitation, several years ago, to 
 visit the college, at Atlanta, and lecture to the 
 students ; forcibly illustrating the fact that in his 
 case, as well as in others, the partisan jealousy and 
 animosity which had impelled him to reject disdain- 
 fully the overture of Dr. Morrow for union of Botanic 
 physicians for the common good, had become now 
 only a thing of the past. 
 
 THE BOTANICO-MEDICAL COLLEGE OF MEMPHIS. 
 
 The Botanico-Medical College of Memphis, the 
 third in this category, had an analogous origin. Dr. 
 Michael Gabbert, a physician at Somerville, in Ten- 
 nessee, had early observed the terrible effects of the 
 agents employed as remedies, in shattering the health 
 and blighting the lives of patients. So thoroughly 
 was he convinced that the practice of medicine was a 
 curse, rather than otherwise, to the human race, that 
 he determined to abandon it, and even to leave his 
 own family, in the case of sickness, to get on as well 
 as possible without medication. He adopted the 
 profession of law, and became a skillful attorney and 
 counsellor. At this period his attention was directed 
 to the Botanic practice. Two physicians, both of 
 them his personal friends, had given up a patient to 
 die with pneumonia ; after which an unlettered
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 529 
 
 Thomsonian took the case and restored him to health. 
 Dr. Gabbert began at once an extended investigation 
 of the new practice, and witnessed results that seemed 
 miraculous. He resumed his former profession, but 
 as a Botanic physician, and soon became widely cele- 
 brated. His method was to inspire confidence in the 
 patient, and to employ his remedies as auxiliary. 
 
 He was deeply impressed with the necessity of more 
 thorough as well as more accurate medical instruc- 
 tion. Having removed to Memphis, and gained a 
 wide popularity as a physician, he resolved to estab- 
 lish a medical college in that city. He was aided in 
 the project by Dr. James Seaver, who was, like him- 
 self, a convert from the Old School. The bill to 
 incorporate the proposed institution was introduced 
 into the General Assembly early in the winter of 
 1846, and became a law on the second of February. 
 The Trustees were taken from the most prominent 
 citizens, and were in hearty accord with the founders.* 
 
 The new college began its career under the most 
 encouraging auspices. It had a Faculty of unusual 
 ability,! and the classes were large. Following the 
 example of other Reform medical colleges, an official 
 organ, the Southivcsteni Medical Reformer, was estab- 
 lished, with the late Dr. William Byrd Powell for 
 editor. It was the custom, perhaps more honored in 
 the breach than in the observance, to describe the 
 prospects of these institutions in language' more glow- 
 
 * Governor Frederick P. Stanton and the Rev. Samuel Watson, editor of the 
 Northiuestern Christian Achiocate, and a leading divine of the Methodist Epis- 
 copal Church, were of the number. 
 
 t Besides Doctors Gabbert and Seaver, the Faculty included Dr. G. W. 
 Morrow, afterward a professor at Worcester and Syracuse; Dr. Hugh Quin, of 
 the Southern Botanico-Medical College and Alabama Medical Institute.
 
 530 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ing than the facts would always warrant. Accord- 
 ingly, we find in the first numbers of this periodical 
 the extraordinary statement that the Botanico-Med- 
 ical Colleges of Wetumpka, in Alabama, and Forsyth, 
 in Georgia, had been united with the new college at 
 Memphis. The truth was that the institution in 
 Georgia had been removed from Forsyth to Macon, 
 and that several of the professors, not pleased with 
 the condition of affairs, had accepted chairs in the 
 " Alabama Medical Institute," which had been estab- 
 lished in the autumn of 1845. This enterprise had 
 been given up, and Dr. Hugh Quin and one or two 
 others had become members of the Faculty at 
 Memphis. 
 
 This college deserved and enjoyed its full share of 
 public favor and prosperity. It had able instructors, 
 and was well conducted. The graduates were gener- 
 ally worthy men and successful practitioners. 
 
 There were other Botanico-Medical Colleges estab- 
 lished in different parts of the country by enthusi- 
 astic and sanguine individuals, but after a brief 
 career, they passed out of existence. They did not 
 perish, however, from want of merit or because of 
 defective facilities for proper instruction. The trouble 
 lay in the lack of pecuniary means. The institutions 
 of the dominant schools had often liberal appropria- 
 tions from the treasury of the State where they were 
 located, but with the exception of the College in 
 Georgia, they had no resources beyond the fees for 
 instruction, and contributions from friends. Mean- 
 while, they were in the face of an opposition, upheld 
 by social and political favor, and though often hope- 
 ful beyond bounds, they were finally compelled to 
 succumb.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 531 
 
 EARLY ECLECTIC ORGANIZATIONS. 
 
 When the American Colonies had secured their 
 independence and footing as Commonwealths, they 
 were cast upon an ocean of new peril. There were 
 jealousies and even collisions between them, conflicts 
 of interest between state and state, and ill feeling 
 generally. Massachusetts was at loggerheads with 
 Rhode Island, New York almost in open conflict with 
 New Hampshire over the possession of Vermont, and 
 Pennsylvanians had actually expelled hundreds of 
 colonists from Connecticut out of their homes in the 
 valley of Wyoming. Other states were in like tur- 
 moils. The alliance which bound them together 
 seemed to be little stronger than a rope of sand. It 
 neither secured respect abroad, nor peace and order 
 at home. The southernmost states were beginning to 
 consider the policy of commercial arrangements with 
 Great Britain, in preference to friendly relations with 
 the trading communities of New England. The colo- 
 nists of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys actually 
 threatened to place themselves under British protec- 
 tion. In the seaboard towns of Massachusetts, was 
 talk of a separate Eastern Confederation. Abroad, 
 everything looked unhopeful and gloomy. American 
 citizens were made slaves in the Barbary states, and 
 had no government able to help or even to ransom 
 them. The British Ministry bullied us and refused 
 to execute the treaty of 1783 ; France and Spain 
 insulted us, and Holland, always our sincere friend, 
 distrusted us. Anarchy, if it did not exist already, 
 certainly threatened us ; dissolution and worse condi- 
 tions, perhaps a general return to British allegiance, 
 were all that the future appeared to have in store.
 
 532 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Even a Terentius Varro, who in the face of over- 
 whelming defeat, despaired not of the Roman 
 Republic, might have deemed ours a more hopeless 
 matter. 
 
 Certainly there was no help for the new Common- 
 wealths, no statesman or government beyond the 
 Atlantic to come to them in this hour of need. Their 
 own hand alone must bring them safety, their own 
 energy and patriotism afford the necessary deliverance. 
 
 It is always a few who do the real work for the 
 many. One man rose the emergency and a choice 
 company took part with him. Washington foresaw 
 that in order to establish a more perfect union, the 
 East and the West must be bound together by a com- 
 mon interest. He began the endeavor by the project 
 of a canal from the Ohio river to the Potomac, which 
 Maryland and Virginia should construct. Then it 
 was proposed, as though suggestively, that Delaware 
 and Pennsylvania should likewise participate in the 
 enterprise ; and finally, at the instance of James 
 Madison and John Tyler, all the states were invited 
 to counsel upon the subject. The invitation was 
 adroitly worded to include other matters of general 
 interest. In this way came the Convention of 1787, 
 and the Federal Union. 
 
 The various Schools and groups of Medical 
 Reformers, during the third decade of the nineteenth 
 century, were in analogous conditions of disorganiza- 
 tion, mutual jealousy, and in several instances, of 
 open hostility. Their respective medical journals 
 were actually at many times more unfriendly toward 
 members of the other parties than even the common 
 adversary, that was actively and persistently seeking 
 to crush and annihilate them all.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 533 
 
 A few awoke to this lamentable condition of affairs, 
 and set themselves at work for its removal. The first 
 effort was begun by several Botanic physicians of 
 Philadelphia and its vicinity. There was formed there 
 about the year 1833, or a little before, an organization 
 by the name of the " Pennsylvania Associate Medical 
 Society of Botanic Physicians." The leading man in 
 the movement was Dr. John B. Howell. He was a 
 native of England, and had pursued the study of med- 
 icine with Dr. Thornton, of London. He came to 
 America in 1793, and engaged at once in the pursuit 
 of his profession. He was zealous in the promulga- 
 tion of his peculiar sentiments, and did not rest till 
 he had established a society to uphold them. In his 
 address as president, in 1836, he then made the 
 enumeration of the true leaders of the movement. 
 
 "Another individual arose who was eminently fitted 
 to advance the cause. Possessing by nature an origi- 
 nal cast of mind, searching and inquisitive, fond of 
 the solitude of the forest, his favorite pursuit was in 
 searching among the roots and flowers of the field and 
 forest for remedies to arrest disease and ameliorate 
 the condition of the human race. This was Nicholas 
 CuLPEPER. With him may be classed the well known 
 Parkins, author of a work of great merit, though too 
 little known. The Holy Te»iple of Wisdom. Also, 
 Rafinesque, Richard Hill, James Morrison, Samuel 
 Thomson, Horton Howard, and others in our own 
 country particularly calculated for such pursuits." 
 
 Dr. Thomas Cooke had been a student of Dr. Howell, 
 and had been thoroughly indoctrinated by him in the 
 conviction, that for the promotion of the cause of 
 Reform in medicine, union among its supporters is 
 absolutely necessary ; because, besides popular preju- 
 dice, there was also the combined opposition to be
 
 534 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 encountered of a privileged medical aristocracy. Dr. 
 Howell died in 1839, leaving this sentiment as an 
 heir-loom to those who were to succeed him. Doctor 
 Cooke immediately took up the work. Associated 
 with him was a group of practitioners, several of 
 whom had been affiliated with the different schools, 
 but had become convinced that good sense and a true 
 loyal regard for the best interests of Reform in med- 
 icine imperatively required the laying aside of per- 
 sonal rivalship and animosity, for the purpose of 
 friendly professional relations. They began tenta- 
 tively by the establishing of a semi-monthly period- 
 ical at Philadelphia, The Botanic Medical Reformer and 
 Home Physician. Dr. Cooke was the editor, and 
 explained its purpose to be the uniting of the Botanic 
 physicians. He added that they would then be 
 unconquerable. "We shall do all in our power," 
 said he, " to cement the bonds of affection between 
 the Botanic brotherhood, who have so long been 
 estranged." 
 
 As though he had taken the mantle of Dr. Howell, 
 his preceptor, he thus began by reiterating his senti- 
 ments. In his first number he enumerated as "Bene- 
 factors of Mankind," Nicholas Culpeper, who lived in 
 the Seventeenth Century, and published a series of 
 works which set forth a very complete Botanic Prac- 
 tice ; Samuel Thomson, who had caused a revolution 
 in medicine ; Elisha Smith, Horton Howard, and 
 Wooster Beach, whom he distinguished as " the first 
 man that attempted by means of Reform medical 
 schools to elevate the standard of physicians." Doc- 
 tors Thomas Hersey, T. V. Morrow, Alva Curtis and 
 John J. Steele were also included. 
 
 The publishers of the Refonner further declared
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 535 
 
 that they were not the partisans of any school or par- 
 ticular set of men, neither for the ancients nor the 
 moderns, but of every age and nation. They were 
 not desirous to be particularly eminent in regard to 
 theoretical medicine, but aimed rather at the pursuit 
 of medicine practically. Hence it was that they 
 desired better instruction for practitioners, and 
 praised Dr. Beach as having advanced beyond Dr. 
 Thomson. " We highly appreciate the labors of Dr. 
 Samuel Thomson," said the veteran Thomas Hersey, 
 "and contend that much remains to be done, beyond 
 all that he has ever known ; the Healing Art is yet in 
 its cradle, and must not be strangled there." 
 
 THE NAME " ECLECTIC " CHOSEN. 
 
 The next step was the adopting of a new name. 
 One journal had denominated the Reformer a Thom- 
 sonian magazine, while the Southern Botanic Reformer 
 declared that its purpose was " to support the Ameri- 
 can Practice of Dr. Wooster Beach, and the doctrine 
 of the Reformed College at Worthington." 
 
 Dr. Cooke replied that he had never professed to be 
 a Thomsonian, or supported any one system of prac- 
 tice exclusively. "We have expressly stated," he 
 added, " that we were Eclectics It is true that we 
 have always expressed ourselves in favor of Dr. 
 Beach and his American Practice, as also the Worth- 
 ington College." He then followed this avowal with 
 a significant retort : 
 
 "We have also always expressed favorable senti- 
 ments in regard to the establishment of Reformed 
 Botanic Schools and Colleges ; but we cannot see 
 wherein the Thomsonian system requires a College to
 
 536 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 elucidate more particularly the ideas of Dr. Thomson 
 en Medicine. The Book has its all. Go beyond that, 
 and Dr. Thomson himself says : ' He knoweth 
 it not ! ' " 
 
 This is the first instance in which the term Eclectic 
 had been employed as a distinguishing appellation by 
 any one of the groups of Medical Reformers. It 
 seems, however, to have always been an attractive 
 designation. We often observe the apparent annoy- 
 ance of physicians of the orthodox school, and their 
 eager protest that they also were Eclectic. The term 
 was first used to distinguish a school of practitioners 
 in the reign of the Roman Emperor Vespasian, eigh- 
 teen centuries ago. It was then applied to a branch 
 of the Pneumatists, who were distinguished for 
 their philosophic character and superior professional 
 acumen.* 
 
 There also appeared a group in Germany in the 
 Sixteenth Century that endeavored to establish a sys- 
 tem derived from the Dogmatic teachings of the 
 School of Hippokrates, the psychic doctrines of 
 Paracelsus, and other notions then extant. Professor 
 Waterhouse applied the designation to Dr. Thomson 
 himself, and a little while afterward Dr. Isaac J. 
 Sperry, of Connecticut, and a writer in the Western 
 Medical Reformer^ simultaneously gave it to Dr. Beach. 
 Its adoption by Dr. Cooke and his associates seems to 
 have been suggested by Professor Rafinesque, with 
 
 ♦ Page 89. The Eclectics were characterized for their extensive learning, and 
 their remarkable lack of medical bigotry. Galen himself professed to be of their 
 number, and he derived from them many of his procedures and doctrines. The 
 Eclectic school flourished for sever 1 centuries, till the religious and political 
 changes had transformed the constitution of the Roman Empire, and obscured all 
 scientific learning.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 537 
 
 whom Dr. Cooke was familiar, and who was then 
 living- in Philadelphia.* 
 
 The next step was the organization of the ^^ Eclectic 
 Botanic Medical Association of Pennsylvania," in 
 place of the society over which Dr. Howell had pre- 
 sided. This was effected on the tenth day of Octo- 
 ber, 1840. f The preamble and constitution set forth 
 the objects to be organized activity, and the devising 
 of means for the practical and theoretical instructions 
 of medical students. The organization was afterward 
 .expanded into a broader field, and continued about 
 thirty years, under the name of the Eclectic Medical 
 Association of Pennsylvania. 
 
 DR. morrow's overture FOR ORGANIZATION. 
 
 The action and course of policy indicated by the 
 organization at Philadelphia, soon met with a very 
 wide approval. Dr. Beach early signified his gratifi- 
 cation. Dr. Morrow went further, and welcomed it as 
 opening the way for a general union of all the 
 Botanic Schools. 
 
 Dr.Morrow had enlisted in the cause of Reformed 
 Medicine from conviction. He had devoted his ener- 
 gies and private fortune to the upbuilding of the institu- 
 
 * They had purchased the plates of Professor Rafinesque's treatise on the 
 Medical Flora 0/ North America, and reprinted a part of the work in the 
 Re/ortner. It will be remembered that in this work Rafinesque had described the 
 various classes of physicians, naming Eclectics among them. " The Eclectics," 
 said he, " are those who select and adopt in practice whatever is beneficial, and 
 who change their prescriptions according to emergencies, circumstances, and 
 acquired knowledge." Writing to Dr. Beach, in 1840, he gave his adhesion to the 
 American Reformed Practice, in contradistinction to the "Mineral" and 
 Thomsonian. 
 
 t Among the members were Doctors Thomas Cooke, Persius F. Sweet, W. 
 Brooks, O. K. Sammis. Dr. Sweet was elected president, and Dr. Henry 
 Hollembaek, secretary.
 
 538 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 tion at Worthington. He was not easily disheartened. 
 When financial disaster in the country and furious 
 persecution had made it unwise to continue longer in 
 that place, he perceived in this experience a call to 
 a wider field of activity. It was a political war-cry at 
 that period, " The union of the Whigs for the sake of 
 the Union." As if taking a suggestion, the Eclectic 
 Medical Association of Pennsylvania was preparing 
 for an analogous union of Botanic and Reformed 
 physicians, for the sake of reform in the Practice of 
 Medicine. 
 
 Dr. Morrow now assented cordially to this proposi- 
 tion. He desired earnestly an abatement of the 
 animosities, and a final terminating of the angry con- 
 troversies between Medical Reformers. Because of 
 the want of union, he wrote to Dr. Cooke, all efforts 
 for the accomplishment of the great ends so much 
 desired, must of necessity be only partially successful. 
 " I hope the period is not far distant," added he, "when 
 the friends of Medical Reform will take such meas- 
 ures as will lead to the most perfect union, prepara- 
 tory to the inaking of a great concentrated effort in 
 the cause in which they are engaged ; and I believe 
 that the present would be a most favorable moment 
 to set on foot some plan which would lead to the con- 
 summation of that object." 
 
 Dr. Morrow accordingly proposed that a Conven- 
 tion of the friends of Medical Reform in the United 
 States, should be held at Harrisburg, Pittsburg or 
 Baltimore. It was to be composed of all who were in 
 sympathy with the purpose, who might choose 
 to attend, " whether professional or not, or whether 
 belonging to one division of the Botanic Fraternity or 
 another."
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 539 
 
 The object of the Convention was explained to 
 be to adopt measures to result in the common good 
 of all. 
 
 Writing- again in December, Dr. Morrow gave a 
 more complete synopsis of the matter. He proposed 
 that the Convention should appoint a National Exec- 
 utive Committee with power to superintend the 
 interests of Medical Reform. That Committee was 
 also in its turn to appoint sub-committees in every 
 Congressional district in the Union, for the purpose 
 of obtaining subscriptions to a fund not to exceed one 
 hundred and fifty thousand dollars. 
 
 The purpose of this fund was to establish a 
 National Reformed Medical Institution for instruction, 
 which should be capable of accommodating five 
 hundred to one thousand students. In connection 
 with the Institution, he further proposed to have an 
 Infirmary or Hospital for the reception and treatment 
 of patients. This would afford an opportunity for 
 preliminary training in clinical practice, which at 
 that time, was seldom to be obtained. 
 
 The site for this National Medical University was 
 to be at a central point in the Union, which should 
 combine the greatest number of advantages, and 
 where the citizens would be willing to make liberal 
 contributions, and the Legislature would grant a 
 charter with suitable privileges. 
 
 Dr. Morrow submitted a further plan for the organ- 
 izing and maintenance of the proposed institution. 
 He made it an imperative condition, however, that 
 the professors should be men thoroughly versed in 
 every department of medical knowledge, and devo- 
 tedly attached to the cause of Reformed and Botanic 
 Medicine.
 
 540 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 In a third letter to Dr. Cooke, from Worthington, 
 Dr. Morrow stated that the proposed measure 
 was meeting general favor. Even Dr. Alva Curtis 
 seems to have intimated an approval. At Philadel- 
 phia every voice was raised in favor of the proposi- 
 tion. The Eclectic Botanic Medical Association 
 adopted the following resolution : 
 
 Resolved, That this Association do cordially agree 
 with Professor T. V. Morrow in regard to the expedi- 
 ency of calling a National Convention of the Reformed 
 Brotherhood, for the purpose of bringing about a full, 
 complete union of sentiment and action ; also, in the 
 plan of founding a Medical College as a means of 
 elevating the Botanic Systems of Medical Practice to 
 the basis of equality with the other sciences of the 
 age, which it so richly deserves." 
 
 REASONS FOR A NATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 
 
 In another letter. Dr. Morrow considered the 
 obstacles in the way of a National Association. The 
 principal impediment was the jealousies existing, and 
 the embittered feeling which practitioners belonging 
 to the several divisions of the Botanic school enter- 
 tained toward one another. 
 
 As a means to obviate this unfortunate condition, 
 he suggested that a single journal should be estab- 
 lished which should combine and concentrate the 
 benefits to be derived from the talents and experience 
 of Medical Reformers of every sect. This, he believed, 
 would tend to assuage the animosities so widely pre- 
 vailing. 
 
 He also pleaded that common interest required the 
 proposed combination. The improvements and dis- 
 coveries made by Reformed and Botanic physicians
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 541 
 
 were constantly filched from them, and made public 
 as having originated with others. At the same time, 
 the men who had the right to the credit and advan- 
 tage were " proscribed, persecuted, slandered and 
 abused by the merciless parricides of human weal, in 
 a spirit of execrable vengeance and unwarrantable 
 malignity, which invoke unsuccessfully the history of 
 the Darkest Ages of Gothic Barbarism to afford paral- 
 lel instances." 
 
 OVERTURE FOR A NATIONAL ASSOCIATION REJECTED. 
 
 When Dr. Morrow stipulated in his plan for union 
 that the professors in the proposed National Medical 
 University should be intelligent in every department 
 of medical knowledge, it must be acknowledged that 
 he, perhaps unwittingly, had wounded many ambi- 
 tious individuals in a sensitive place. The apprehen- 
 sion of being relegated to some position of minor 
 significance was enough to rouse their hostility. 
 Some other pretext would, of course, be put forward, 
 but this would be the secret motive. 
 
 There was, likewise, somewhat of the sectional 
 animosity existing which afterward had so unfortu- 
 nate a culmination. The rejection of the proposed 
 union of Botanic physicians m a National Association 
 came from Dr, Bankston, of the Botanico-Medical 
 College at Forsyth. It was the partisan pitting 
 himself against the statesman. Dr. Bankston pub- 
 lished a letter to Dr. Curtis, in which he scorned the 
 proposition, and endeavored to screen his malevolence 
 by assailing the motives of others. He made an angry 
 reference to former controversies, and taunted Dr. 
 Morrow with a desire to waft a " falling fraternity "
 
 542 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Upon the tide of a rising system. He knew of none, 
 he averred, who used the lancet and calomel with 
 more freedom than some of the graduates of the 
 Worthington School, and concluded with this ulti- 
 matum: 
 
 " We have nothing to do with Doctor Morrow, and 
 I am sure that the Thomsonian Fraternity in general 
 wants nothing to do with him until he shall adopt 
 their leading Principles of Medicine." 
 
 Dr. Morrow in reply denied the imputations made 
 against him. He likewise questioned the authority 
 of Dr. Bankston to speak for the general body of 
 Botanic physicians. It was worse than useless, he 
 added, to propose any one of the systems of Medical 
 Reform for the indiscriminate adoption of all Reform- 
 ers. Those who really desired to promote the leading 
 interests of the great common cause, must be willing 
 to adopt all valuable improvements, whatever the 
 source from which they might come. He had himself, 
 for the important purposes indicated, earnestly advo- 
 cated the union of all Medical Reformers on these 
 principles of reciprocal justice and liberality, and he 
 would never consent to a union on any other grounds. 
 
 '* THE REFORMED MEDICAL SCHOOL OF CINCINNATI." 
 
 Dr. Morrow's overture for a common alliance of 
 Botanic physicians to establish a National Association 
 and Medical University, was thus contumeliously 
 rejected. He was, nevertheless, by no means disheart- 
 ened. The time was not ripe for a movement of such 
 significance. He was, perhaps, not patient under 
 upbraiding and misrepresentation, but he was coura- 
 geous and resolute. If those who esteemed them-
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 543 
 
 selves his peers and superiors contradicted and reviled 
 him, it was to him a voice commanding him to employ 
 his energies in another field.* 
 
 He was compelled by the stress of the times to 
 suspend his work at Worthington. Doctors A. H. 
 Baldridge, L. E. Jones, and others of his associates, 
 pointed out the advantages of Cincinnati. He was 
 also led to suppose that the law admitted students of 
 the several medical schools or colleges on equal 
 terms to the Commercial Hospital to witness the 
 treatment of diseases and such surgical operations as 
 might be performed. f On the other hand. Dr. Watson, 
 a former professor at Worthington, who had turned 
 back to the old practice, pleaded hard to dissuade 
 him, declaring that if he attempted to introduce the 
 Reformed school there he would meet with utter 
 defeat. Dr. Morrow, however, was not deterred, but 
 promptly removed to Cincinnati. He soon established 
 a foothold, and others coming, the difficulties actually 
 existing soon began to disappear. 
 
 The next season, the " Reformed Medical School 
 of Cincinnati," was opened. J It was by no means 
 encouraging ; there was but a solitary student. Dr. 
 Morrow was not long, however, in enlisting sup- 
 porters. Two terms were held in each year, as at 
 Worthington, and in 1844, the Western Medical Reformer 
 was revived. The prospectus announced as its aim 
 and purpose : "To effect a permanent and salutary 
 reform of the Healing Art in the most enlarged and 
 
 * Compare Acts of the Apostles, xiii., 44, 45, 46. 
 
 + i3y some hocus-pocus the physicians having control of the institution evaded 
 this provision of law for several years. 
 
 X The professors were Drs. T. V. Morrow, Lorenzo E. Jones, A. H. Baldridge 
 and James Kilbourne, Jr. Dr. Kilbourne died a year later.
 
 544 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 liberal spirit of Medical Eclecticism." It defined 
 this to be — to discountenance all remedial agents 
 which tended directly or indirectly to injure the 
 stamina of the human constitution, and to maintain 
 the proposition that " successful treatment does not, 
 in any case, require the use of medicines that are 
 attended with any risk to the present or future health 
 of the patient." 
 
 THE ECLECTIC MEDICAL INSTITUTE INCORPORATED. 
 
 Another course of lectures for the spring and sum- 
 mer of 1845, had been duly announced. The Reformed 
 Medical School of Cincinnati was in its third year ; 
 and although it had no legal authority to confer the 
 degree of Doctor of Medicine, its classes numbered 
 about thirty genuine students of medicine. The 
 success warranted the asking for an act of incorpora- 
 tion. An application was accordingly made to the 
 General Assembly, signed by ttie Mayor of Cincinnati, 
 by members of the City Council and by eleven hun- 
 dred citizens, many of them of the highest respecta- 
 bility. 
 
 Colonel James Kilbourne, so long the mainstay of 
 the College at Worthington, was now the untiring 
 champion of the desired legislation. He attended the 
 meetings of the legislative committees, and labored 
 with members individually in its behalf. It passed 
 the House of Representatives with little objection, 
 but met a strenuous opposition in the Senate. Its 
 friends in that body procured an order to refer it to 
 the Committee on Corporations, that it might not be 
 smothered or defeated by intentional misdirection. 
 
 Meanwhile, the professors of the Medical College 
 of Ohio employed every art at their command and put
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 545 
 
 forth their entire energy, social and political, to 
 secure its defeat. They attempted to obtain remon- 
 strances, but these had less than sixty signatureis, 
 many of them of physicians of their own party. The 
 bill was reported with the recommendation that it 
 should become a law.* 
 
 Dr. O'Ferrall, the chairman of the Committee on 
 Medical Colleges and Medical Societies, was frantic 
 in his opposition to the proposed legislation. He 
 attacked the motives and reputation of those inter-' 
 ested in it, making the grotesque and extraordinary 
 assertion that " Medical science does not need, nor is 
 it susceptible of further improvement, or reform." 
 
 He finally moved to postpone the subject till the 
 ensuing December. This was lost by a vote of ten to 
 seventeen, and upon the final reading the bill became 
 a law. 
 
 The Reformed Medical School was now " The 
 Eclectic Medical Institute of Cincinnati." 
 
 Dr. Morrow promptly announced the triumphant 
 event in the Western Medical Reformer. " The passage 
 of this bill for the establishment of a Reformed Med- 
 ical College by the great State of Ohio," said he, "is 
 but another of the long list of evidences showing the 
 rapid progress of light among the People, on the sub- 
 ject of Medicine, and the growing prospects of the 
 Reformed Practice. Our College will be in successful 
 operation in a few days, with a Faculty of six pro- 
 
 * Governor E. E. Eckley, the chairman, made the following- emphatic 
 statement, itself worthy to be the supreme law : 
 
 '■ It is a ri^ht guaranteed to every corporation that has given themselves a 
 name and made application to the Legislature to receive ' letters of incorpora- 
 tion;' and your committee believe that when an application is so m\i&c, it is the 
 obligatory duty of the Legishiture to give them their rights under the constitution 
 SO guaranteed.^''
 
 546 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 fessors, fully competent to give instruction in all the 
 departments of Medical Science. The charter is per- 
 petual, and confers all the powers and privileges 
 possessed by any Medical College in the United 
 States." 
 
 " Our College will be strictly what its name indi- 
 cates — Eclectic — excluding all such medicines and 
 such remedies as ' under the ordinary circumstances 
 of their judicious use, are liable to produce evil conse- 
 quences, or endanger the future health of the 
 patient,' while we draw from any and every source all 
 such medicine and modes of treating disease, as are 
 found to be valuable, and at the same time, not 
 necessarily attended with bad consequences." 
 
 The new Board of Trustees began promptly the 
 work of organizing and establishing the Eclectic 
 Medical Institute. The Hon. Henry Morse, a promi- 
 nent citizen was elected president, and Doctors 
 Thomas V. Morrow, Benjamin L. Hill, Hiram Cox, 
 Lorenzo E. Jones, James H. Oliver and Alexander 
 H. Baldridge, appointed professors. The act of incor- 
 poration authorized a capital of twenty thousand 
 dollars, and required that before the College could 
 do business, it should possess half this amount. 
 Promissory notes payable in five and ten years were 
 issued with a view of meeting these conditions. 
 
 testimonial to colonel kilbourne. 
 
 It remained for the friends of the new corporation 
 to make soine appropriate acknowledgment to Colonel 
 Kilbourne. A meeting was held at the College 
 Building, at Worthington, at which Dr. Morrow, in 
 the presence of a large assemblage, presented to him 
 in their name a silver pitcher, duly ornamented and
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 547 
 
 inscribed. Then, addressing the worthy recipient, 
 he recounted the operations of the Reformed School 
 of Medicine, beginning with the endeavors of Doctor 
 Beach, and the achievements at Worthington. "We 
 were assailed on every side by the mass of the medical 
 profession," said he, " and were regarded with an eye 
 of suspicion by the people. But by the kind and effi- 
 cient aid of yourself and worthy colleagues of the 
 Board, and by our untiring exertions, we were enabled 
 to accomplish much with the aid of such others as 
 joined us during the ten years of its existence here. 
 
 " Since then, by the aid and influence of the friends 
 of this benevolent enterprise, and the assistance of 
 others having kindred objects in view, the illiberal 
 and intolerant spirit of Medical Monopoly has been 
 rebuked on every side. 
 
 " State after State has marched forward to the 
 noble work, and blotted out — // is hoped for ever — from 
 their statute-books, all laws granting exclusive privi- 
 leges to one class of medical practitioners to oppress 
 another ; thus placing each class before the commu- 
 nity on its proper merits." 
 
 Dr. Morrow alluded to the prospects in terms indic- 
 ative of his sanguine temper and resolute fidelity to 
 conviction. He had gone to Cincinnati, he said, with 
 the avowed purpose of laying the foundation of an 
 institution similar to the former college at Worthing- 
 ton. Cautious friends and others had endeavored to 
 dissuade him. It was unequivocally hinted to him 
 that if he had the temerity to oppose the popular 
 practice at Cincinnati, as he had done before, his 
 prospects as a physician would soon be hopelessly 
 crushed beneath the overwhelming power of the med- 
 ical profession of that city. Not being accustomed to
 
 548 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 that species of restraint, which would impose upon 
 him the obligation to refrain from the performing of 
 what he conceived to be the highest and most impera- 
 tive of duties, he could not pause to calculate conse- 
 quences. " I forthwith announced myself in the most 
 public way," said he, " as a candidate for the practice 
 of medicine according to the Reformed system. In 
 addition to this, I also proposed delivering a course 
 of public lectures the ensuing fall and winter. I soon 
 succeeded in getting an extensive practice, and gath- 
 ering around me a small but respectable class of 
 students. Shortly afterward I was joined by other 
 members of the Reformed school, who unhesitatingly 
 hoisted the same colors and gallantly aided in plant- 
 ing the standard of that cause, which it was our pride 
 and pleasure to maintain." 
 
 Colonel Kilbourne replied with an eloquent tribute 
 to Dr. Morrow and his associates. Years before he 
 had heard of Dr. Wooster Beach, the great Apostle of 
 Medical Science, he had become convinced of the 
 indispensable necessity of a change in this important 
 concern.. His convictions were as strong at forty-five 
 years of age as they were now at seventy-five. " In 
 my own person, during the years 181 5- 16, and since,'' 
 said he, " I suffered more from a constitution then 
 ruined by calomel, than I would have consented to 
 endure, anticipating the results, for all the wealth 
 ever possessed by men, and the honors that were ever 
 in their gift." 
 
 These opinions, thus early and crtidely formed of 
 the need and practicability of a great and radical 
 change in the practice of medicine, he had found sus- 
 tained, and much more exhibited than he had antici- 
 pated, in this great system of Reform. Colonel
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 549 
 
 Kilbourne then reviewed the promise of progress in 
 medical matters over Europe, and concluded with 
 declaring his confident anticipations that the institu- 
 tion now established in the Queen City of the West 
 would succeed and prove a lasting benefit to the 
 country and to the great family of man. 
 
 EFFORTS TO ADVANCE THE CAUSE. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Institute was now launched 
 upon its career as the exponent of the American 
 Reformed Practice of Medicine. Dr. Morrow ad- 
 dressed himself with new energy to the effort to 
 assure its permanent prosperity. In 1845, Dr. Wooster 
 Beach was appointed to the Chair of Clinical Surgery 
 and Medicine. This added to the prestige of the 
 College by identifying with it the veteran founder of 
 the new School of Medical Practice. Dr. Joseph 
 Rodes Buchanan was also chosen Professor of Physi- 
 ology, Institutes of Medicine and Medical Jurispru- 
 dence. He was also associated with Dr. Morrow in 
 the conducting of the Western Medical Reformer. 
 
 In his letter of acceptance. Dr. Buchanan gave a 
 synopsis of his peculiar concepts of Neurology and 
 cerebral physiology, of which he claimed the dis- 
 covery. He believed that the Eclectic Medical Insti- 
 tute had made decided progress in this department, 
 and he proposed to carry on his experimental inquir- 
 ies to practical results. To acquiesce, even partially, 
 in the medical science of the day, with its blank and 
 profitless department of Neurology, and its confused 
 and defective Materia Medica, he declared, "would 
 be a gross neglect of duty to the medical profession." 
 He would endeavor to render the Institutes of Med-
 
 55° HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 icine an exact and valuable department of medical 
 science. 
 
 By no means, however, did Dr. Alorrow contemplate 
 to limit his future efforts to the establishment of a 
 single institution. He cherished still the hope of a 
 union of IMedical Reformers of various shades ot 
 sentiment in a fraternal alliance. He continued 
 accordingly a friendly correspondence with them, 
 wherever his overtures were not repelled. 
 
 He now began to make use of the term Eclectic as a 
 designation of those who accepted his views. In 
 1849, the Faculty of the Eclectic Medical Institute 
 put forth a Circular Address to the Medical Profession oj 
 the United States, in which they declared explictly their 
 position : 
 
 " The leading doctrine of the Eclectic Medical Pro- 
 fession, to sustain which this Institute has been 
 established, is : That the investigation and the prac- 
 tice of Medicine should be entirely free and untram- 
 melled ; that no Central Body — no association, com- 
 bination or conspiracy — should have the power to 
 prescribe a certain standard of faith or Medical Creed 
 which shall be received and forced upon every mem- 
 ber of the profession by threats of professional dis- 
 grace and ruin. We recognize every enlightened, 
 educated and honest physician as standing upon the 
 same platform of professional respectability, and 
 enjoying the same rights ; no matter what doctrines 
 he may advocate in medicine, or what system of 
 practice he may deem it his duty to adopt." 
 
 Doubtless this manifesto was proinpted to a great 
 degree by the position which had been taken by the 
 dominant persecuting branch of the medical profession. 
 It was a sore fact for them, which they took little 
 pains to conceal, that the repeal of the restrictive 
 laws in the several states had left them as was ex-
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 55I 
 
 pressed, " unable to compel their brethren to practice 
 in accordance with the views and wishes of the 
 majority." They resolved therefore to institute a 
 boycott by means of which to proscribe and punish 
 these who would not yield. "The most effective 
 blow would be given to the new-born heresy," said 
 Dr. Henry G. Piffard, " if the profession as a whole 
 combined against it." Accordingly a conference was 
 held in New York, in 1846, by which the American 
 Medical Association was brought into existence for 
 this purpose. It had two principal objects : to grasp 
 and hold all lucrative offices in the army and navy, 
 the civil service and hospitals ; and to unite against 
 the Reform and independent practitioners to deprive 
 them of reputable social standing and to drive them 
 from the field. In order to accomplish this more cer- 
 tainly, a Code of Ethics was adopted excluding from 
 fraternal courtesy and just recognition as professional 
 persons * all who were not in harmony with its condi- 
 tions, and requiring absolute adherence to these condi- 
 tions, even when human life was at stake. 
 
 The ablest jurists have not hesitated to declare this 
 code " a combination against common law and a con- 
 spiracy against the public health." Conscientious 
 practitioners refused to be bound by it. Mr. Lawson 
 Tait declared that he considered it his duty to lend 
 his services in friendly consultation to a qualified 
 young practitioner, regardless of his views of theory 
 and practice. " We must educate the medical pro- 
 
 * Several lawsuits grew out of this conduct here prescribed, one of which, a 
 marlted example, resulted in a verdict of exemplary damages. 
 
 Two clergymen of different communions once met at a public place. " I can 
 acknowledge you as a gentleman," said tlie Bishop to the Presbyterian, "but not as 
 a Christian." The other replied : " And I can acknowledge you as a Christian, but 
 not as a gentleman."
 
 552 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 fession up to the recogriition of the higher law," said 
 the late J. Marion Sims, " the unwritten code that 
 regulates the intercourse between gentlemen." 
 
 Against such conscienceless proscription, Dr Morrow 
 sought to combine the several schools of Reformed 
 and Botanic Medicine. He believed that they would 
 become more harmonious if they but knew one 
 another more familiarly. Perhaps, if he had lived a 
 few years longer, he would have witnessed somewhat 
 of the realization of the hopes which he had so 
 ardently cherished. The other Reformers, who were 
 like the " other sheep " of the Gospel,* who were also 
 proscribed, would have been led by the same catholic 
 spirit of fraternal charity to similar conclusions, and 
 have united cordially in one common alliance, upon a 
 common platform, of all rights for all, special privi- 
 leges for none, but emulation to know and realize what 
 would be best for all alike. 
 
 With such purposes and convictions, with no design 
 or desire to place himself and associates as umpires 
 and leaders, did Thomas V. Morrow adopt for the 
 college which he had founded, and for himself and 
 fellow-laborers to the same end, the designation of 
 Eclectic. 
 
 scientific and eclectic medical institute. 
 
 The first chapter of the history of the " Scientific 
 and Eclectic Medical Institute of Virginia," are apt 
 illustrations of " the best-laid plans of mice and men." 
 The bill to incorporate the proposed institution was 
 introduced in the House of Delegates, and passed that 
 body in January, 1846. It is a not unfrequent error of 
 
 * Gospel according to Johtty x. i6.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 553 
 
 individuals to suppose that the action of a single 
 body is that of the entire legislature. Dr. Henry M, 
 Price, the editor of the Southern Medical Reformer, and 
 originator of the proposed measure, actually made 
 such a mistake. He wrote exultingly to Dr. Morrow, 
 and to Dr. Thomas Lapham, of the Poughkeepsie 
 Thomsonian, declaring his success in procuring a most 
 liberal charter, and giving a glowing account of his 
 plans. A building was to be erected in Richmond. 
 and abundantly supplied with apparatus in every 
 department. Especial attention would be given to 
 Medical Botany, and to rendering the student a prac- 
 tical botanist. The practice inculcated was to be 
 "strictly upon Eclectic principles." The friends of 
 the Reform practice, it was remarked, had confined 
 themselves too much to the principles and practice of 
 one — (jr at farthest, a few individuals ; disregarding 
 in their abstract ultra views, many safe and valuable 
 remedies, simply because they are opposed to the 
 many deleterious remedies with which they are 
 conjoined." He proceeded to delineate in glowing 
 terms, the purposes in contemplation. There would 
 be an extensive building and suitable apparatus for 
 every department. Medical Botany, now so generally 
 neglected by Medical Colleges of every School, was to 
 receive special attention, and pains taken to render 
 every student a thorough, practical botanist. " The 
 practice inculcated will be strictly upon Eclectic 
 principles," he wi^ote to Dr. Morrow. " The only 
 means to arrive at perfection in any branch of science," 
 he significantly added, " is not by following the ipse 
 dixit of any man or set of men, but by applying the 
 ' Eclectic Torch ' to all, rejecting their errors and 
 gleaning their truths."
 
 554 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The bill, nevertheless, was reported favorably in 
 the Senate, and passed that body on the fifth day of 
 February, by a vote of seventeen to eleven. All thus 
 far seemed fair, as well as fortunate. It was in the 
 latter part of the week, and several Senators, sup- 
 porters of the measure, had as usual left Richmond 
 for home. The adversaries, prompted by the pro- 
 fessors of the Medical College in the city, seized the 
 opportunity to procure a reconsideration of the vote 
 of the previous day, several who had voted for the bill 
 now acting with them. Dr. Baptist, though of the 
 Old School, was earnest in opposition to the artifice, 
 and made a strong effort to postpone the vote till the 
 supporters had returned. This was refused and the 
 measure was lost by a vote of seventeen to six in the 
 affirmative. It was not a second thought, but an 
 artful trick worthy of an unjust cause. Dr. Price was 
 deeply chagrined, but determined to renew the mat- 
 ter in 1S47. This time he was successful. 
 
 The new college, however, was established at 
 Petersburg instead of the capital. No time was lost 
 in securing an effective organization. Dr. Price him- 
 self took the chair of Materia Medica and Dr. Charles 
 J. Kenworthy, his former student, was professor of 
 surgery. Dr. Isaac N. Comings, a professor at 
 Forsyth, a man of somewhat pragmatic temper, and 
 afterward a writer of ability and reputation, accepted 
 the chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine. All 
 these were educated men and able instructors. Dr. 
 John Thomas became professor of Chemistry. He 
 was a native of London and the son of a Congregational 
 minister. He had enjoyed the instruction of the 
 ablest teachers of surgery and medicine ; among them 
 Abernethy, W. W. Sleight, Sir Astley Cooper, and Sir
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 555 
 
 Charles Bell. He possessed a restless temper, and 
 was an enthusiast in politics and religion. Hopeless 
 of any reform in medical procedures at home, he had 
 come to America, only to find matters worse. He 
 would have returned but for his strong republican 
 proclivities. For a time he made his home in Rich- 
 mond, where he maintained a theological controversy 
 with the Rev. Alexander Campbell. He removed to 
 Illinois, and was elected president and professor in 
 the Franklin Medical College. Resigning these 
 appointments, he returned to the East. Fond of the 
 study of Medicine, he had become disgusted with the 
 practice, and with the routinism of the men who 
 made of it a mere trade by which to gain a livelihood. 
 In all his opinions, medical and philosophic, he was 
 eclectic. He insisted upon a radical reform in the 
 organization, theories and practice of the medical 
 profession. He strenuously denounced the general 
 practice of the Medical Colleges* all over the United 
 
 *J. B. G;»LLOUi'E, in Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, " It is not unusual 
 for one to pass with one stride, ex /abrica, to a physician's office, where he tarries 
 just long enough to leave-his name. Then returning to his occupation, he pursues 
 that, while he is nominally a pupil in medicine. When the Lecture-term com- 
 mences, he bids a hasty farewell to his workshop, and soon enrolls himself as a 
 member of a Medical Class. He matriculates, pays the fees, hears the Introduc- 
 tory lecture, and then returns to his laudable and appropriate employment. In 
 this way the three years of probation are spent ; at the end of which he is sum- 
 moned before the Faculty for examination and approval. With a consciousness of 
 his deficiencies and with fearful forebodings as to the results, he seats himself in 
 their presence. After stating the medical properties oi oleuiu J\ici»i, missing a. 
 few questions in chemistry, telling how many extremities lheye»i!{r has, and giv- 
 ing a practical demonstration oi paralysis agitans, he is declared competent, and 
 sent out into the world to take charge of the lives and health of the community. 
 Such is the history of the tutelage of not a few of those who bear the title of 
 ' M. D.' The requisites for graduation are merely nominal. No attendance upon 
 the Lectures is required ; and the final examination is a mere pretense. The fact 
 is well known and taken advantage of by scores, who creep into our ranks with no 
 more knowledge than could be acquired by a three month's study." 
 
 At the time when tliis was written, no medical school stigmatized as " irregu- 
 lar," had been thus guilty or derelict ; and the writer was not treating of such.
 
 556 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 States, in graduating- men as physicians whose 
 attendance at lectures was merely nominal, who had 
 pursued the study of medicine for an insufficient 
 time, and were shamefully illiterate in their general 
 scholarship. He was appointed a professor with 
 permission to select his own department, and made 
 choice of Chemistry as being the pursuit most 
 neglected. He also, at request of the Trustees, 
 delivered the lectures upon anatomy, but only till a 
 professor should be appointed. Dr. Paul W. Allen, of 
 Massachusetts, a ripe scholar in medicine and classic 
 literature, having graduated at the institution was 
 chosen for the place. 
 
 Despite the original purpose of Dr. Price that the 
 teaching should be Eclectic, like that of the Reformed 
 Medical School at Cincinnati, the expectation was 
 not realized. A spirit of hostility had arisen between 
 the prominent instructors of the two institutions. 
 Dr. Comings, like Dr. Bankston, was strenuously 
 opposed to any affiliation. 
 
 The students at Petersburg, he boasted, were "no 
 mongrels — none that advocate the peculiar notions of 
 the Beachites." He further declared, assuming the 
 authority of the institute : 
 
 " We wish it fully undersiood that our Institute is 
 not the advocate of the peculiar notions of those 
 termed Eclectics in the West, but that w^e are Eclectics 
 in the broad sense of the word — which leads us to 
 select from the accumulated wisdom of the past all 
 that is truly valuable in Medical Science, and to 
 reject that which is not found in accordance with 
 those true principles which are founded on the natural 
 laws of life." 
 
 That Dr. Morrow had been likewise provoked to
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 557 
 
 unfriendly feeling in his turn, is not improbable. He 
 had been snubbed by Dr. Bankston, and again his 
 overtures were repelled where he had expected 
 friendly sympathy. His associate professor and editor, 
 Dr. Buchanan, had had a disagreeable experience with 
 Dr. Curtis and entertained no fraternal regard for 
 that school of physicians. He took no pains to conceal 
 his aversion and disdain ; and thenceforward opposed 
 every attempt at union of the several parties of 
 reformers, except upon the condition of subordination 
 to the Eclectic Medical Institute. 
 
 The institution at Petersburg was short-lived. It 
 had able teachers, but in several of them the love of 
 ruling was too strong to permit of harmony and 
 successful achievement. Dr. Comings was not long on 
 good terms with his associates, and others were 
 speedily discouraged. The auspicious beginning had 
 an unfortunate ending, and the Scientific and Eclectic 
 Medical Institute of Virginia passed out of existence 
 and even out of memory. It was like the collapsing of 
 a bubble. 
 
 CALVIN NEWTON. 
 
 A new advocate and champion had arisen in New 
 England. Calvin Newton came into the field well 
 equipped for the work.* He possessed not only 
 ambition and superior mental training, but also tlie 
 constructive talent of a statesman, and that fidelity 
 to conviction which consecrated every other quality. 
 
 *Dr. Newton was a Baptist preacher and theologian. He had graduated at 
 Union College ; after which he was live j-ears the jirofessor of Hebrew and Rhet- 
 oric at the institution at VVatervillc in Maine, and then president and professor in 
 a Theological Seminary, and after that for five years the pastor of a congregation. 
 He then engaged in the study of Medicine.
 
 558 HISTORY OF IMEniCINE. 
 
 Finding his professional duties incompatible with 
 his health he engaged in the study of medicine, and 
 attended lectures at the Berkshire ]\Iedical College, of 
 which Dr. Henry H. Childs was president. He often 
 heard Governor Childs denounce what he called "the 
 want of principle displayed by the Regular profession," 
 and charge the physician with " often thwarting the 
 recuperative efforts of nature, and seeking a cloak for 
 his ignorance in the formidable technicalities of his 
 craft." 
 
 Governor Childs also opposed strenuously the pro- 
 scriptive medical legislation, so much sought for and 
 often obtained by the sciolists and sophomores of the 
 medical profession. There should be no persecution 
 of the followers of other systems, he declared — no 
 compulsory measures. "Vain are legal enactments," 
 said he, "to supply the deficiency of a Scientific 
 Faculty." 
 
 The physician, he insisted, " should be essentially 
 Eclectic," explaining this as meaning, "not only to cull, 
 to select, to adopt from all that is known, but to ex- 
 periment, and to experiment on principle too, and to 
 add to his armory new weapons for his daily warfare 
 with disease." 
 
 Entertaining such sentiments Calvin Newton gradu- 
 ated in 1845, and began the practice of medicine. He 
 styled himself an Eclectic and acted consistently with 
 that profession. He had given the new remedies and 
 procedures of the Botanic schools a careful attention 
 and was convinced of their superior efficiency. He 
 was, however, no blind adherent of medical leaders of 
 any school. He was quick to perceive what he re- 
 garded as the shortcomings of Samuel Thomson and 
 Alva Curtis, as well as what he considered the stiper-
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 559 
 
 ficial teachings of Wooster Beach. He was careful 
 however to withhold from them no credit for the 
 much which they had done, nor was he desirous to 
 break off relations with their followers. He aimed 
 instead, to enlist them with him in the purpose and 
 effort to place the New School upon an immovable 
 basis as a healing" art and a learned profession. 
 
 " THE NEW ENGLAND MEDICAL ECLECTIC." 
 
 On the first day of January, 1846, he began, as the 
 first necessary step, the publication, semi-monthly, at 
 Worcester, of the New England Medical Eclectic and 
 Guide to Health. In the first article he explained his 
 position. He was pledged to sustain no class of 
 physicians or mode of practice ; he belonged to the 
 Massachusetts Medical Society, and was in fellowship 
 with his medical brethren, but he did not believe 
 medicine incapable of improvement. " The time has 
 come," said he, " in which to gain the confidence of 
 the people. The medical practitioner must place 
 himself on the platform of sound professional prin- 
 ciples." 
 
 Such was the foundation of Eclectic Medicine in the 
 Eastern States, and such the master-builder by whom 
 it was laid. Calvin Newton stood upon an eminence 
 to which few have attained. He was emphatically a 
 man who "reverenced conscience as his king." Broad 
 in his knowledge, pure of speech and contact, un- 
 selfish in his aims and lofty in his aspirations, he 
 would never resort to unworthy means to accomplish 
 an object, nor be an instrument to elevate unworthy 
 men or to promote unworthy schemes ; but he freely 
 consented to give up personal honors, and to labor in 
 an unpopular cause for the sake of doing good.
 
 560 HISTORV OF MEDICINE. 
 
 He aimed to unite the Botanic physicians, at that 
 time discordant and even hostile to one another, and 
 to lead them to higher ground, morally as well as 
 professionally. He was to a degree successful, and 
 Eastern Reformers rallied to his support ; but he 
 encountered fierce antagonism from _ Dr. Curtis and 
 many of the other Botanic physicians. He persevered, 
 however, and though often baffled and even deceived, 
 he successfully accomplished what had been attempted 
 before in vain, the establishment of a medical col- 
 lege in New England for the higher instruction of 
 students. 
 
 THE MEDICAL SCHOOL AT WORCESTER. 
 
 In 1845, the sentiment had become general m the 
 East that the standard of medical attainments must 
 be raised higher. There had been repeated attempts 
 to establish a medical college, but jealousies and 
 diversities of judgment had led to their failure. Dr. 
 Newton now took the matter in hand. He began by 
 giving instruction to students in the several branches 
 of medical knowledge at his own office in Worcester. 
 The Uxbridge Botanic Medical Society also employed 
 a lecturer, in the latter months of that j-ear, to deliver 
 a course. This was followed by a medical Convention 
 in January, at which resolutions were adopted asking 
 the two instructors to unite their labors, and agreeing 
 to establish " the Worcester Medical School," with 
 four chairs and a Board of fifteen Trustees ; the 
 Society assuming responsibility for the necessary 
 expenses. The School was opened at Worcester in 
 March, 1846, and the success was most gratifying to
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 561 
 
 all.* An application was made to the Trustees of 
 the Southern Botanico-Medical College, of Georgia, 
 to adopt this school as a branch of that institution. 
 The Board of Trustees acceded to the proposition, and 
 adopted resolutions recognizing " the Worcester 
 Botanico-Medical College," and giving to its Faculty 
 the full authority to confer medical degrees. The 
 condition was prescribed, likewise, that all the profes- 
 sors of the Branch should be elected by the Trustees 
 of the Mother College, with the qualifying proviso 
 that all nominations and removals should originate 
 with the Directors of the Branch Institution. Dr. 
 Newton was then elected a professor, together with 
 Doctors Isaac N. Comings, William H. Fonerden, and 
 Lanier Bankston, who held similar positions in the 
 College at Macon. Under this arrangement, a second 
 term of lectures was held, and a class graduated. 
 
 This arrangement was then abrogated, and the 
 students of the institution, for two subsequent 
 seasons, received their degrees at the college in 
 Petersburg. 
 
 Dr. Newton found his independent attitude as a 
 physician and medical teacher was regarded by many 
 with distrust and apprehension. Dr. Alva Curtis 
 announced his purpose to establish a rival college in 
 Boston. He addressed a letter to Dr. Newton couched 
 in terms at once uncourteous, magisterial and over- 
 bearing. He belabored him for having taken the 
 name of Eclectic for his school and journal, charging 
 that he did this with a purpose to attract to him the 
 
 * A student, who had already attended a course at the Harvard Medical 
 School, at Boston, declared positively, ' that the lecturers here, upon the various 
 branches of medical study, were superior to those who lectured upon the same 
 branches in the Boston School."
 
 562 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 followers of Dr. Beach. He demanded that the col- 
 lege at Worcester should be united in less than thirty- 
 days with the one that he was about to establish in 
 Boston.* 
 
 Dr. Newton replied to these assaults firmly, and 
 with dignity. The term Eclectic, he explained, had 
 been adopted by him in 1845, when he was not aware 
 that it was about to become characteristic of Beach- 
 ism. He had changed it after discovering that fact.f 
 He prefaced the explanation by a stern rebuke to Dr. 
 Curtis for his ill breeding and vulgarity, adding the 
 remark, significant alike in regard to him and to Dr. 
 Beach : " Each of these gentlemen has had the 
 means of knowing our position, and each seems 
 equally offended that we do not call him master^ 
 
 An arrogant man generally quails before a resolute 
 opponent. Dr. Curtis was no exception to this rule. 
 The time, nevertheless, was som.ewhat precarious for 
 the College. The Thomsonian Society of Connecticut 
 had just received a charter from the legislature as the 
 " Botanico-Medical Society," with power to establish 
 a school for the education of students for the Botanic 
 practice. It had adopted a rigid Thomsonian plat- 
 form, and many of its members regarded Dr. Newton 
 with jealous apprehension. There was a passion 
 likewise entertained by several of the number for the 
 
 * Dr. Curtis was not delicate in his choice of terms. He denominated the 
 physicians of the Reformed School, " the poisoning, blistering, cupping, bleeding, 
 mongrelizing Beachites or Eclectics." It will be remembered that Dr. Morrow, in 
 his response to the allegations of Dr. Bankston, in 1842, had utterly disavowed the 
 procedures here imputed. 
 
 + The New England Medical Eclectic had been discontinued, and the Netu 
 England Botanic Medical and Surgical Jotirnal published in its place. After 
 this the Massachusetts i/iiy described the school at Worcester as " Eclectic," and 
 Dr. Newton took the occasion to explain that the term was used " by those in New 
 England who belong to no medical clique, and have no party end to answer."
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 563 
 
 •distinction implied by the collegiate title of Professor. 
 Resolutions were adopted at the first meeting for the 
 establishment of a full course of medical lectures, and 
 for a conference with the Faculty of the Botanico- 
 Medical College of Ohio to effect that result. 
 
 The friends of the enterprise at Worcester rallied 
 to its support. The Bay State Medical Reform Asso- 
 ciation, of which Dr. Walter Burnham was president, 
 was the first. The New Hampshire Botanic Medical 
 Society, then just incorporated by the legislature, also 
 signified its adhesion. The Thomsonian Society of the 
 State of New York passed a vote of commendation. 
 Dr. Curtis was abashed, and endeavored to restore 
 amicable relations. The Connecticut Botanico-Med- 
 ical Society held an adjourned meeting, and adopted 
 resolutions nominating Doctors John W. Johnson and 
 Isaac J. Sperry for Trustees of the College, demand- 
 ing as a condition that Dr. Curtis and another candi- 
 date be appointed professors, and appointing a Com- 
 mittee to arrange terms of union between the Society 
 and College. 
 
 The School at Worcester was organized anew, with 
 the title of " the New England Botanico-Medical 
 College." New members were elected to the Faculty. 
 Dr. J. M. Buzzell, of Maine, became Professor of 
 Surgery, and Doctors John Kost and E. Morgan 
 Parritt, of the Cleveland Botanico-Medical College, 
 were elected to other chairs. Dr. Alva Curtis was 
 appointed Professor of the Theory and Practice of 
 Medicine, but did not accept. Thus, the efforts to 
 establish a rival school were discontinued, and for a 
 season all seemed to be at peace. 
 
 Applications had been made to the Legislature of 
 Massachusetts every winter, for an act of incorpora-
 
 564 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 tion. The Chancellors of the Massachusetts Medical 
 Society, Dr. Jacob Bigelow, Dr. John Ware and Dr. 
 Henry Clarke of the Harvard Medical School, had 
 vigorously and even fiercely opposed the measure. 
 Four thousand petitioners, in 1848, had been granted 
 leave to withdraw their application. This, however, 
 was the last time. One of the opponents confessed, 
 that so far as his knowledge extended, a majority of 
 the community favored the Reform practice. That 
 year for Dr. Newton and his associates, had been one 
 of conflict ; in which, however, they were always vic- 
 torious. In 1849, they renewed their application and 
 pressed it personally. On the tenth day of March, 
 the bill to incorporate the " Worcester Medical Insti- 
 tution," had passed both Houses of Legislature, and 
 received the approval of Governor Briggs. 
 
 This last name to the College was adopted because 
 there was a disposition among Botanic Societies and 
 physicians to change the name of their school of 
 practice. The Thomsonian Medical Society of New 
 York had obtained a certificate of incorporation by 
 the name of Physo-Medical. The Bay State Medical 
 Reformed Association, likewise organized anew as 
 the "Massachusetts Physo-Medical Society," and 
 adopted a constitution which Dr. Newton had prepared. 
 The College of Cincinnati was also known thence- 
 forward as the " Physio-Medical Institute," and Dr. 
 Curtis, himself, formally disclaimed the title of 
 Thomsonian. The purpose was universally apparent to 
 lay aside all names that perpetuated the memory of 
 Samuel Thomson and his exclusive procedures. 
 
 The act of incorporation granted to the Worcester 
 Medical Institution did not authorize the conferring 
 of degrees. They were now obtained from the Eclec-
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 565 
 
 tic Medical Institute of Petersburg. An amendment, 
 however, was obtained for that purpose in 1851. 
 
 METROPOLITAN MEDICAL COLLEGE. 
 
 More than once had the position of Dr. Newton and 
 the Worcester Medical Institution been exposed to 
 severe criticism. Nevertheless, he went forward, 
 working- incessantly, and disregarding fatigue and 
 hostility alike. Presently an unhappy controversy 
 took place in 1850, between him and Dr. I, M. 
 Comings. The project had been entertained to erect 
 a building for the College, and Dr. Comings opposed 
 it as certain to involve hopeless indebtedness. His 
 language was harsh and often inexcusable. Tale- 
 bearers aggravated the matter till finally Dr. Newton 
 laid the matter before the Board of Trustees. He 
 had been accused, he said, of irregularity in manag- 
 ing the affairs of the College, with embezzling money, 
 and with granting diplomas without proper authority. 
 The Board promptly exonerated him from all these 
 imputations, and demanded of Dr. Comings to resign 
 his professorship. Upon his refusing, they declared 
 the place vacant.* Dr. Alva Curtis was again appointed 
 to the chair of the Theory and Practice of Medicine, 
 but curtly declined. 
 
 The occasion thus afforded, was eagerly seized for 
 
 * Dr. Comings was a native of Maine, and had been for four years a student 
 at the Waterville College when Dr. Newton was professor there. After Dr. 
 Newton's death, Dr. Comings published an article in the New York Journal of 
 Medical Ke/orvi for January, 1855, in which he declared that a warm personal 
 friendship had existed between them, and intimidated that "the unfortunate 
 variance," had been caused by falsehoods, fabricated by another person, probably 
 meaning Dr. E. M. Parritt. He also affirmed that Dr. Newton " began to see the 
 error of his ways," in affiliating with the Eclectic SchooL This, however, can 
 hardly be credited.
 
 566 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 a rupture. Several prominent practitioners in Connec- 
 ticut had felt aggrieved at not receiving appoint- 
 ments as professors. Dr. Comings lost no time in 
 communicating with them, and almost immediately a 
 special meeting of the Botanico-Medical Society was 
 called for the twelfth of September. The purpose 
 was specified distinctly to be for the establishing of 
 a new college. Dr. Curtis was present at the meet- 
 ing, and likewise a delegation from New York by 
 special invitation. The discussions were marked 
 by bitter and coarse vituperation.* A resolution was. 
 adopted declaring " that this Society considers it 
 indispensably necessary that a course of Medical Lect- 
 ures be given in New York the coming winter or 
 spring, as it has no confidence in the Institution at 
 Worcester as now conducted." 
 
 The Physo-Medical Society of New York had made 
 repeated efforts of aforetime to establish a Medical 
 College in that state. It eagerly accepted the over- 
 ture from the Society in Connecticut. Doctors Curtis 
 and Comings were assiduous in fanning the excited 
 feeling. A committee was appointed to cooperate 
 in carrying the proposition into effect. f 
 
 The institution was incorporated under the laws of 
 1848, and began operations with a faculty consisting 
 of Doctors Alva Curtis, Isaac M. Comings, Theodore 
 S. Sperry, I. N. Loomis, Joseph D. Friend and Silas 
 
 * The terms of the call for this meeting were gross and offensive. Dr. Newton 
 retorted in his Journal in language at once audacious and sweeping. He 
 acknowledged the services of Samuel Thomson to Medical Reform, but arraigned 
 him for "his ignorance and his disgusting immorality, "and challenged his supporters 
 lo t^W^'' wtiere is \.\\c yirsi Jundatizental sysieniatic trulh which owes its birth to 
 any originality of his." 
 
 t This committee consisted of Doctors Joseph D. Friend, William Jones, 
 Hermes M. Sweet, J. B. Vail and Hosea Winchester.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 567 
 
 Wilcox.* For years the prevailing sentiment was 
 unequivocally brutal toward the Eclectic School of 
 practice. Nevertheless, there was a decided soften- 
 ing of feeling on the part of Botanic practitioners, and 
 partisan sentiment steadily diminished. In 1852, the 
 National Convention of Physio-Medical or Phys- 
 opathic physicians at Baltimore adopted a platform 
 which, while vigorously denouncing the use of min- 
 eral and vegetable poisons as remedies, nevertheless, 
 allowed a wide latitude in other respects. 
 
 In 1857, Dr. Friend, who was somewhat of a poli- 
 tician, succeeded in obtaining from the Legislature of 
 New York a special act of incorporation for the 
 Metropolitan Medical College. Measures were imme- 
 diately set on foot to assure it an endowment. 
 
 The Physo-Medical Society had all along fostered 
 the College as its own offspring. It now took steps 
 in accordance with the liberalizing tendencies, then 
 active, to broaden the scope of its operations. 
 Liberal physicians of every shade of sentiment, were 
 invited in cordial terms, to attend the annual meeting 
 of 1858. The Constitution was amended, f and the 
 name changed to that of the " New York State Asso- 
 ciation of Reform Physicians." Many practitioners 
 who had been identified with the Eclectic School, now 
 signed the roll of members, and prominent physicians 
 
 * In subsequent years, Dr. Lanier Bankston, of the College at Macon, and 
 Dr. William H. Cook, who had been a professor in the Syracuse Medical College, 
 and afterwards was dean of the Physio-Medical College, at Cincinnati, became 
 professors. Dr. Cook for a season conducted \.\it. Journal of Medical Reform. 
 
 + Article III, which was then adopted, prescribed the standard of membership. 
 " Any Doctor of Medicine who believes in sanative medication, and accords to 
 each member of the profession the privilege of selecting his remedial agents from 
 any and all sources, according to the dictates of an enlightened judgment, based 
 upon the general principles of physiology, pathology and therapeutics, may 
 become a member of this Association."
 
 568 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 of the New York State Eclectic Medical Society, from 
 the western counties of the state, dropping their 
 organization, affiliated with the Association.* 
 
 Letters were presented from Drs. Walter Burnham, 
 J. W. Johnson and Ellsworth Burr, of the Worcester 
 Medical Institution, proposing a union of the two 
 Medical Colleges. It was received with favor and the 
 Board of Trustees of the Metropolitan College named 
 a Committee of Conference to arrange the terms. 
 
 The administration of the College, at this period, 
 was in harmony with the prevailing sentiment. The 
 Faculty was evenly divided ; Doctors Levi Reuben, 
 William W. Hadley and J. T. Burdick, holding chairs 
 with Doctors Friend, Sweet, and H. A. Archer. 
 
 Everything seemed propitious for the future. A 
 proposition to procure an endowment of ten thousand 
 dollars for the institution was now entertained, and 
 an appeal was made to the friends of Medical Reform 
 to contribute generously. All parties were repre- 
 sented in the appeal ; which was signed by Dr. 
 Wooster Beach, Elijah Whitney, A. P. Hale ; also 
 Dijctors Walter Burnham, J. W. Johnson, F. H. Kelley, 
 and Ellsworth Burr, and eight or nine original 
 Thomsonians. The apparent union and harmony 
 were unexampled. 
 
 Eras of good feeling, however, are often succeeded 
 by periods of angry strife. This was painfully illus- 
 trated in the subsequent history of the Metropolitan 
 Medical College. Jealousy and rivalry came in to 
 
 * Among them were Doctors J. T. Burdick, Levi Reuben, D. E. Smitn, Lyman 
 Stanton, V. A. Baker, A. P. Hale, W. W. Hadley Dr. Wooster Beach addressed 
 the meeting, declaring himself gratified with the proceedings and in cordial sym- 
 pathy with the Association. Doctors William Paine and Henry Hollembaek, of 
 the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania, were also present, and expressed 
 their general sympathy.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 569 
 
 mar the work which had been begun. The Reform 
 journals of the Southern States gave the alarm that 
 the Eclectics would gain control, as they had of the 
 Worcester Medical Institution. The infection soon 
 revealed itself in a struggle to maintain the Phys- 
 opathic ascendency. 
 
 At the next annual meeting of the Trustees of the 
 Metropolitan Medical College, summary measures 
 were taken to assure the matter. The Committee of 
 Conference was discharged without making a report, 
 thus putting an end to all negotiations for union with 
 the Worcester Medical Institution. Resolutions also 
 were adopted establishing a platform and requiring 
 the professors absolutely to teach in conformity with 
 its terms. All subscribers to the endowment fund 
 were formally released if they did not approve of this 
 action, but no notice was given them of the matter. 
 The recriminations followed, as are usual in such 
 quarrels, and the schism extended from the College 
 to the State Societ3^ Doctors Hadley and Reuben 
 retired from the Faculty, and Doctors W. Durrant and 
 V. A. Baker took their places. 
 
 An attempt was made in the Reform Medical State 
 Society to restore the ascendency of liberal senti- 
 ment, but in vain. The feeling was very strong, and 
 the result was unfortunate, if not discreditable. In 
 the Legislature of 1862, a bill was introduced into the 
 Legislature of New York and passed, to repeal the act 
 of incorporation. The Metropolitan Medical College 
 thus ceased to exist, wounded to death by the animos- 
 ities of its friends.
 
 570 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 THE FIRST MEDICAL COLLEGES FOR WOMEN. 
 
 The movement for the instruction of women in 
 medicine was set on foot in 1845 by Dr. Samuel 
 Gregory, of Boston. He and his brother, Mr. George 
 Gregory, prepared and published several pamphlets 
 upon the subject ; and in 1847, he delivered a series 
 of public lectures, and announced his intention to 
 begin a school for that purpose. He employed Dr. 
 Enoch C. Rolfe for lecturer, and the school was 
 opened on the first day of November, 1848, with 
 twelve pupils. 
 
 The Female Medical Education Society was formed 
 in the same month, with six members. This num- 
 ber was increased in the year following to a thou- 
 sand. Its object was the sustaining of the new 
 enterprise. The School continued in this way for 
 three years, holding two terms annually, of three 
 months each. It was incorporated by the legislature 
 in 1850, and in 1852 took the name of the " New 
 England Female Medical College." Its operations 
 were now expanded, a complete Faculty provided, 
 and a course of instruction established similar to that 
 in other medical colleges.* Most of the professors 
 employed were from the Woman's Medical College of 
 Philadelphia. The General Court of Massachusetts 
 granted it small appropriations for several years ; 
 and it was thus enabled to keep in operation with a 
 fair degree of prosperity. After the Civil War, how- 
 ever, there was a marked abatement of zeal among 
 its supporters, and a different tone of medical senti- 
 ment was developed. In 1874, the institution merged 
 
 * But few of the students, however, pursued a full course of study. As late as 
 1855, out of more than one hundred students, only six had graduated.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 57X 
 
 into the Boston University School of Medicine, with, 
 a Homoeopathic organization. 
 
 The Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania was 
 founded in 1849, through the effort and influence of 
 Mr. William J. Mullen. The General Assembly 
 promptly gave it an act of incorporation the follow- 
 ing year, and it went quickly into active operation. 
 One of its first acts after this period was the granting 
 of an Honorary degree to the veteran physician of 
 Boston, Dr. Harriott K, Hunt, who had formally 
 applied, year after year, to be admitted into the 
 Harvard Medical School, only to be refused.* 
 
 After two years the management of the institution 
 was changed, and its medical orthodoxy made more 
 rigid and exclusive. The requirements for gradua- 
 tion were also more stringent, reducing the number. 
 The new physicians, however, were excluded for many 
 years from the medical societies and from profes- 
 sional recognition by their masculine peers. 
 
 * As late as 1859, the graduating of a woman by the Starling Medical College 
 in Ohio, was furiously reprehended in the Lancet and Observer, of Cincinnati. 
 "Why not grant the degree to sucking babes," it demanded. " There never was 
 a woman fitted to practice medicine, surgery and obstetrics, no matter how long 
 she may have studied. The duties of the profession are contrary and opposed to 
 her moral, intellectual and physical nature." Then referring to the fact that the 
 Eclectic College and Eclectic Medical Institute had refused admission to women, 
 it asks : " Is it then left for a respectable school to so far insult all gentlemen in 
 the profession as t;p admit to the Temple of Esculapius those who have no right 
 in it? "
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. CONTINUED. 
 
 We have seen that there were repeated endeavors 
 to establish a permanent national organization of 
 the physicians of the American Reformed School. 
 As soon as Dr. Beach had fairly established his Med- 
 ical Academy and Infirmary, he hastened to supple- 
 ment it, and extend its field by the founding of the 
 " Reformed Medical Society of the United States." 
 Under the sanction of this body, the medical depart- 
 ment had been opened at Worthington ; and in 1836, 
 a meeting of the graduates of the two institutions 
 organized the " Reformed Medical Society," to embrace 
 the Southern and Western States. 
 
 Medical societies and colleges in those days were 
 closely allied, each depending vitally on the other. 
 Dr. Morrow, in 1841, opened a correspondence with 
 Dr. Thomas Cooke, with the avowed purpose, both of 
 effecting a union of the several bodies of Botanic 
 physicians and of founding a National Medical 
 University, which should win the favor of all classes 
 of the people. Unfortunately, his plans were frus- 
 trated by the jealousy and rancorous feeling which at 
 that time was very active. Obliged accordingly to 
 confine his efforts to a smaller field, he succeeded in 
 the establishing of the Reformed Medical School of
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 573 
 
 Cincinnati, and in its incorporation a few years later 
 as " the Eclectic Medical Institute." * 
 
 Medical legislation had been employed to keep the 
 dominant School of Medicine in power and in the 
 entire possession of official and political emoluments, 
 and sanctioned the outlawry and merciless persecu- 
 tion of all physicians who dissented in creed or in 
 remedial procedures. It had now been set aside. It 
 was quickly manifest that this deprivation of arbitrary 
 power, and perhaps of prestige, though perfectly in 
 harmony with common justice and republican prin- 
 ciple, would not be cheerfully accepted by the privi- 
 leged class. The purpose was soon avowed, to use 
 every effort at command to undo the work, to procure 
 the restoring of the arbitrary conditions by which 
 they had been supreme. f Accordingly, certain phy- 
 sicians of New York and Pennsylvania held a meeting 
 in 1845 to organize the American Medical Association. 
 
 Dr. Morrow, like a true sentinel of freedom, was 
 awake to the rising exigency. He proceeded immedi- 
 
 * At this period the graduates and disciples of the Schools o Xew York and 
 Worthington were variously designated by themselves and others as' Botanic," 
 " Reformed," " American," and sometimes " Beachite." Dr. Thomas Cuoke, 
 who had been a student of Dr. John B. Howell, a Botanic physician from England, 
 had taken the title of Eclectic, apparently at the instance of Professor Rafinesque, 
 whodescribcd a class of physicians by that name ; and Dr. Calvin Ne.\ton also 
 adopted it in 184;, for his independent movement in the Eastern States. The 
 desigi aiion was given lo the College at Cincinnati at the suggestion of one of the 
 Trustees, but with no purpose to apply it to the Re'ormeJ School of Practice. Dr. 
 Morrow began to employ it tentatively, however, in the Western Medicnl 
 Reforme-r, in 1846, to designate the Reformed Physicians, and finding it meet with 
 favor, ventured presently to use it in preference to other appellations. 
 
 t Dr. Purdy in an address to t'.ic Medical Society of the City and County of 
 Ne>v York, declared the ol)jcc'.s tj be: " F.rst ami primarily, t< regulate ilie 
 practice of physic and surgery ; and second, lo contribute to the difTusioa c f t ue 
 science and to the knowledge of ihc 1 ealing .Art" It wai required of cvcy 
 ind vidual about to graduate at the princijial medic 1 co le;.'cs, as the condition ( f 
 receiving the degree of Do tor of Medicine, th.it he shijulj swear to adhere to the 
 old procedures, or forfeit his diploma.
 
 574 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ately to open a correspondence with the leading Med- 
 ical Reformers of different shades of sentiment, but 
 of common liberality of purpose. He met favorable 
 answers from a goodly number, warranting him to go 
 forward. Accordingly, in the winter of 1848, the fol- 
 lowing call was issued : 
 
 CALL FOR A CONVENTION OF REFORMED PRACTITIONERS OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Believing that the time has come when the friends 
 of Medical Reform should establish an organization 
 in order to promote that cause, in the prosperity of 
 which they are vitally interested, the undersigned, in 
 accordance with the wishes and inclinations, signified 
 to them by letter and otherwise, of a large number of 
 practitioners of the Eclectic Reform School, have 
 designated Thursday, the twenty-fifth day of May, 
 1848, for the holding of the Convention of such prac- 
 titioners of Medicine, in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, 
 to take such action as may be proper. The Hall of 
 the Eclectic Medical Institute is offered for the Session 
 of the Convention. The demands for the service of 
 enlightened Reformed physicians everywhere, the 
 interests involved in the enterprise, the efforts of the 
 enemies of Medical Progress to crush the advocates 
 of Reform, and the necessity for union and concert of 
 action among our own members, constitute reasons 
 for the proposed action at the present time. 
 
 It is hoped that the liberal and independent mem- 
 bers of the Medical profession will cooperate with us, 
 especially all who sincerely desire a reform in the 
 condition and practice of the Healing Art. We 
 anticipate much pleasure in meeting with those who 
 have been faithful sentinels on the watch-towers, who 
 have both led in common with ourselves for the 
 establishment of great and important principles. Let 
 our professional friends, from every quarter of the 
 country, make it convenient to assemble with us on 
 this occasion, prepared to contribute to its success by 
 communicating the improvements and discoveries 
 which they have made, and by reading or discussing
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 575 
 
 such original papers as they may choose to preseni in 
 reference to any of the departments of their profes- 
 sion. They will also aid ns by the wisdom of their 
 counsels in regard to measures that will assure the 
 achievem.ent of important results, and contribute to 
 the elevating of the practice of medicine from its 
 present low, unscientific and otherwise objectionable 
 state, to a condition higher, nobler and more worthy 
 of a learned and beneficial profession. 
 
 WoosTER Beach, M. D., N. Y. City. 
 
 T. V. Morrow, M. D., Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 L. E. Jones, M. D., 
 
 A. H. Baldkidge, M. D., " " 
 Jos. R. Buchanan, M. D., " " 
 
 B. L. Hill. M. D., 
 J. H. Oliver, M. D., 
 
 P. K. WOMBAUGH, M. D,, " " 
 
 J. Wilson, M. D., 
 
 I. J. Avery, M. D., Reading, " 
 
 David Jordan, M. D., Dayton, " 
 
 J. Davis, M. D., Greenfield, 
 
 I. G. Jones, M. D. .Columbus, " 
 
 J. S. Ormsby, M. D., Westmoreland Co. , Penn. 
 
 A. Kendall, M. D., New Orleans, La. 
 
 Orin Davis, M. D., Mount Morris. N. Y. 
 
 H. J. Hulse, M. D., Louisville, Ky. 
 
 J. Sappington, M. D., Arrow Rock, Mo. 
 
 L. Oldshue, M. D.. Pittsburg, Penn. 
 
 A. Brown, M. D., Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 J. HORTON, M. D., 
 
 Robert S. Newton, M. D., " 
 John King, M. D., Owingsville, Ky. 
 J. R. Paddock, M. D. , Maysville, " 
 Drs. Davis & Tebbs, " '♦ 
 
 J. O. Bannon, Elizabeth, Ky. 
 Drs. Chase & Snyder, Dublin, Ind. 
 
 B. F. Judd, M. D., Greenville, Penn. 
 Thomas Cooke, M. D. , Philadelphia, Penn. 
 Johnson H. Jordan, M. D., Indianapolis, Ind. 
 A. Teegarden, M. D., Laporte, Ind. 
 
 Drs. Beeman & Parker, Birmingham, Ohio. 
 E. BuRLEY, M. D., Minerva, Ky. 
 Dr. Teerbell, Iowa. 
 Y. L. McNeill, M. D., Vicksburg, Miss. 
 A. Essex, M. D., Bethel. Ohio. 
 A. Stanton, M. D., Chicago, 111. 
 Drs. Taylor & Loomis, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 Cincinnati, March, 1848.
 
 576 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The Convention assembled pursuant to notice and 
 remained in session three days. Dr. Morrow pre- 
 sided, and Doctors John King- and L. E. Jones were 
 appointed secretaries. A very full comparing of 
 views took place, and a resolution adopted to organ- 
 ize permanently under the name of the " American 
 Eclectic Medical Association." The forming of state 
 and county societies was also recommended. 
 
 The second meeting took place on the fifteenth 
 of May, 1849, at the period of the second visita- 
 tion of Asiatic Cholera. A Constitution and 
 By-laws were adopted, ai.d the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association was duly constituted. Dr 
 Morrow was elected president, and a series of res- 
 olutions adopted denouncing combinations to pro- 
 scribe members of the Medical profession, and 
 declaring it incumbent upon Medical Reformers to 
 be liberal, to abstain from disparaging remarks in 
 respect to differences of doctrine, and to cultivate 
 amicable relations. The issue between the Old and 
 New School was defined in the following terms : 
 
 "The great struggle of the day in the Medical 
 Profession is between the spirit of freedom, on the 
 one hand, which is seeking for truth in science, and 
 the spirit of conservative despotism on the other, 
 which aims to perpetuate its power and doctrines by 
 organized combinations, and by discountenancing or 
 suppressing every attempt at Reform, whatever may 
 be Its merit or its source." * 
 
 * The American Medical Association here described, had estabhshed a code 
 utterly proscribing and practically outlawing all physicians who did not conform 
 to its doctrines and routine of practice. Its members were very foul-mouthed and 
 bitter in denouncing them. The courtesy of we'.l-bred gentlemen was laid 
 entirely aside. The Medical Colleges were required to receive no medical student, 
 however scholarly, who had received preliminary instruction from any of the 
 oroscribed physicians, and not to gra 'uate a student who did not pledge himself 
 to adhere to the procedures approved by the Association.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORG AMZATIONS. 577 
 
 At the annual meeting of the Association at Cin- 
 cinnati, in 1850, Dr. Joseph R. Buchanan was elected 
 its president. Dr. Morrow was more zealous, there- 
 fore, in behalf of organization and general coopera- 
 tion, not merely of disciples of his own School and 
 doctrines, but as he had declared ten years before, of 
 all intelligent physicians devoted to Reform in the 
 practice of Medicine. He offered the following reso- 
 lution, which was adopted without dissent : 
 
 ^'■Resolved, That as the sense of this Association, it 
 is the imperative duty of the Medical Reformers of 
 the several States of the American Union to continue 
 to protest against the existence of any unequal and 
 oppressive laws, whatever, touching the practice of 
 medicine and surgery, or the admission of the Facul- 
 ties and students of the different Medical Schools to 
 participation in the privileges of the several hospitals 
 in the different states ;* and that it is their duty to 
 continue to petition the legislative authorities of 
 their states for the repeal of all such arbitrary, unjust 
 and oppressive enactments." 
 
 This was the song of the dying swan. It was the 
 last action of Dr. Morrow in the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association. It was in keeping with his 
 entire career, and with every avowed principle of 
 Eclectic Medicine. He placed himself thus unequiv- 
 ocally and honorably upon record, and left an 
 always-living testimony behind him that only a 
 recreant will desire to controvert. He had given 
 himself to the effort of his life, his private fortune to 
 
 Some years after, two students of the Berkshire Medical Institution cured a 
 man of white swelling, when the Faculty had arranged to amputate the limb. It 
 was ascertained that they had learned this at Worcester, and they were promptly 
 excluded from the class. 
 
 * In disregard of the law, the professors and students of the Eclectic Medical 
 Institute were debarred from the Hospital in Cincinnati, and a similar exclusive- 
 nc^s was carried out elsewhere.
 
 578 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 his work. In the coming July he passed from life. 
 It was a premature ending, for he was still in the 
 flower of his years. To the National Eclectic Med- 
 ical Association, of which he was the founder and 
 controlling spirit, it was a disaster that was never 
 remedied. The Institution which he had been suc- 
 cessful in establishing at Cincinnati entered upon a 
 stormy career which was unfortunate to the cause, 
 and by no means creditable to the individuals con- 
 cerned. 
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES IN NEW YORK. 
 
 There was an impulse now extending over the 
 country to establish seminaries for instruction in 
 medical knowledge upon the Eclectic basis, and to 
 organize Eclectic Medical Societies. The Reformed 
 physicians of Pennsylvania had begun such action, 
 many years before ; and now with the successful 
 establishment of the Eclectic Medical Institute and 
 the National Eclectic Medical Association, a like 
 enthusiasm was aroused in New York. 
 
 The people of the state had adopted a new con- 
 stitution in 1846, of a very democratic and decentraliz- 
 ing character. An article prepared by the late 
 Samuel J. Tiklen provided that corporations might be 
 formed by general laws. The Legislature of 1848 
 accordingly passed "an act for the incorporation of 
 benevolent, charitable, scientific and religious so- 
 cieties."* This permission was eagerly embraced as 
 
 * This general act was amended repeatedly in order to include other organiza- 
 tions. The last amendment was made in 1S70, in order to facilitate the incorpora- 
 tion and establishment of a university at Syracuse. A section indicates the scope : 
 ''^ Every college or university incor/>orated under said act [of 1848] or under this 
 act." The Central New York College at McGrawville, the Central, Syracuse and 
 Metropolitan Medical Colleges, had been incorporated ; and afterward the Syra- 
 cuse University with its medical department, and the United States Medical 
 College were incorporated in pursuance of the amendment of 1870 here mentioned.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 579 
 
 affording the opportunity so long withheld, for 
 Eclectic and other Reform physicians to establish 
 incorporated institutions of their own. This view of 
 the law, so plain and apparently unequivocal was sus- 
 tained at that time by the ablest jurists and justices 
 of the principal courts of the state. 
 
 Two societies, each bearing the name of the " Re- 
 formed Medical Association of Western New York," 
 united in 1847, to establish a medical school at Fredo- 
 nia in order to prepare students to enter the Eclectic 
 Medical Institute at Cincinnati, Doctors Zoheth 
 Freeman, Lorenzo E. Jones, John R. Bush and B. S. 
 Heath were the instructors. The next year a college 
 organization was effected under the new law, taking 
 the name of " The Eclectic Medical Institute of New 
 York." It held a term during the months of August 
 and September, with Doctors Freeman, Jones, B. L. 
 Hill and Orin Davis, as professors.* 
 
 Doctors Bush and Heath meanwhile opened another 
 school of similar character at the village of Randolph, 
 Doctors S. H. Potter, Charles J. Kenworthy and A. S. 
 Davis were associated with them. The result con- 
 vinced them that in order to assure permanent suc- 
 cess for a medical institution, it must be at a more 
 central location. 
 
 Dr. Potter had been a graduate of the college at 
 Worthington. He was a man of sanguine temper, 
 ambitious of superiority, and fond of notoriety. He 
 quickly conceived the project of uniting the two 
 enterprises. Making his residence at Syracuse, he 
 began the publication of the Eclectic Medical and 
 
 * Among the students were several who afterward became distinguished in 
 medical circles ; as Doctors William W, Hadley, William H. Hawley, Jonathan 
 Flattery and A. D. Skellenger.
 
 580 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Surgical Journal, and procured a certificate of in- 
 corporation for the " Central Medical College of New 
 York." In order to give countenance to the enter- 
 prise and to assure to it future support, a convention 
 was called at Syracuse, in 1849, which organized the 
 " New York State Eclectic Medical Society."* 
 
 The new enterprise was greeted by the Reform 
 physicians of Western New York with hearty enthu- 
 siasm. A faculty was created, composed of Doctors 
 S. H. Potter, Orin Davis, John R. Bush, William W. 
 Hadley, B. S. Heath and S. M. Davis.f Besides them, 
 Dr. Wooster Beach delivered a course of lectures upon 
 the Theory and Practice of Medicine, and Dr. 
 S. O. Gleason upon the Water Cure, then a novelty 
 in remedial procedures. There were ninety-four 
 matriculants and an average of about fifty in 
 steady attendance for a term of four months. Many 
 of them were physicians in regular practice. 
 
 This college took the initiative in the admitting of 
 women as students in medicine on equal terms with 
 men. Elizabeth Blackwell had run the gauntlet 
 before this, of applying and meeting refusal at the 
 medical colleges of the dominant school. When, 
 however, the Eclectic Medical Institute, at the in- 
 stance of Dr. Joseph Rodes Buchanan, had accepted 
 her application, the college at Geneva, in New York, 
 consented to receive her ; voting directly not to 
 admit any other woman as a student. The Central 
 Medical College at Syracuse now gave a hospitable 
 
 * There were county societies in Oneida, Chenango, Orange, Oswego, Genesee, 
 Livingston, Niagara and Chautauqua counties. 
 
 t After the death of Dr. Abiel Gardner, the Poughkeepsie Thomsonian was 
 removed to Saratoga, and Dr. Davis became the editor. Very soon afterward 
 its publication was suspended.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 581 
 
 welcome to Mrs. Rebecca B. Gleason, Mrs. Lydia F. 
 Fowler, Mrs. Charlotte Montgomery, Miss Fidelia 
 Warren and Miss Taylor. 
 
 From this time onward the Eclectic colleges gen- 
 erally have cordially accepted women as students, 
 and the Eclectic Medical Societies welcomed them as 
 members.* The Homoeopathic colleges and societies 
 presently followed this example, and finding it 
 popular, have begun to boast of having been first in 
 the matter. The dominant school for many years 
 permitted them to get on by themselves in " women's 
 colleges," like Jews in the Ghettoes, separate and 
 apart. 
 
 Western New York has always been foremost in 
 enterprises conducing to human advancement, whether 
 moral, social or religious. It was the birthplace of 
 the Anti-masonic and Liberty parties, and it now 
 abounds with liberal physicians. 
 
 It has been unfortunately the case that the 
 administration and especially the financial manage- 
 ment of medical colleges have been fruitful in jeal- 
 ousies. The Central Medical College was speedily 
 an example of heartburnings and controversy. The 
 trustees, at the end of the first session, in order to 
 end the quarrel without scandal, determined to 
 remove the institution to Rochester and there hold a 
 spring term. The professors most blamed gave place 
 to successors. Dr. Potter was succeeded by Dr. 
 
 * The Eclectic Medical Institute excluded women in 1853, but consented to 
 receive them a few years 'afierward ; it again excluded them, but accepted them 
 in 1877. The Eclectic College of Medicine at Cincinnati admitted them for a year 
 or two and then shut the door. The Worcester Medical Institution received them 
 till after the death of Dr. Calvin Newton, but at the instance of a Reform 
 Medical Convention, excluded them in 1856. The later colleges, most of them, 
 admit women.
 
 582 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Charles J. Kenworthy, late of the Eclectic Medical 
 Institute at Petersburg, Dr. S. M. Davis by Dr. L. C. 
 Dolley, and Dr. Link by A. K. Eaton. Besides these, 
 Dr. Levi Retiben was made professor of physiology 
 and Mrs. Lydia F. Fowler of obstetrics. 
 
 At that time the notion was entertained that a state 
 medical society was part of the machinery of the 
 medical college. Accordingly a meeting was called at 
 Rochester, and resulted in a distinct organization. 
 
 Dr. Potter was prompt to resent the imputation 
 conveyed by this action. He began a new medical 
 journal and filed a certificate of incorporation for the 
 Syracuse Medical College. He was president of the 
 New York State Eclectic Medical Society, and had no 
 difficulty in obtaining its sanction for the new insti- 
 tution. The Eclectics of Western New York were 
 now in two parties and their controversy was con- 
 ducted with rancor. 
 
 This state of conflict continued till the summer of 
 1852. Dr. Calvin Newton then became identified 
 with the Eclectics and was elected president of the 
 National Eclectic Medical Association. He proposed 
 a union of the three colleges ; a spring term to be 
 held at Worcester and a winter term at Syracuse. 
 This was accepted ; the Central Medical College was 
 dissolved, and the two Eclectic Medical Societies 
 again united. 
 
 The new arrangement began with fair promise. 
 Dr. Reuben became editor of the Union Medical Jourtial; 
 and the Faculty was constituted at Syracuse of Doctors 
 Reuben, Hadley and Eaton, from the Central Medical 
 College, Doctors C. Newton and G. W. Morrow, from 
 Worcester, and Doctors S. H. Potter, Joseph Brown 
 and Dwight Russell, of Syracuse. The next summer,
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 583 
 
 however, the professors from Worcester and Rochester 
 had resigned. Dr. Newton vouchsafed the simple 
 ligurative explanation : "When the walls of a build- 
 ing" are constructed of such materials as to be liable to 
 fall at any moment, it is wise for the inmates to guard 
 themselves against being involved in the ruins." 
 
 Dr. Potter was able, nevertheless, to gather a new 
 Faculty. Many of his colleagues were not only 
 superior physicians and teachers, but afterward won 
 distinction in other institutions. Among them were 
 Doctors David Calkins, and William H. Burnham, Dr. 
 William Paine, afterward dean and general manager 
 of the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania and 
 the Philadelphia Medical University ; Dr. A. R. 
 Thomas, professor in the Eclectic Medical College 
 and the dean of Hahnemann Medical College of 
 Philadelphia ; Dr. E. H. Stockwell, of the American 
 Medical College of Ohio, and Vincent A. Baker, of 
 the Eclectic Medical College of New York and the 
 University of Florida. 
 
 The failure of the experiment of 1852, however, 
 inflicted a shock from which the institution never 
 recovered. There was no basis of support for the 
 enterprise except from the fees for tuition. If the 
 men engaged in teaching had been led by plausible 
 and flattering utterances to hope for adequate 
 remvmeration for their services, they had been dis- 
 appointed. Promises not verified by the results were 
 certain to be followed by coolness and disgust. Hence 
 there were frequent changes in the instructors, and 
 many v^'ho felt that their confidence and enthusiasm 
 had been abused, became unfriendly. 
 
 At this period Dr. Potter found an opportunity to 
 enter a new field of labor. The American Medical
 
 584 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 College had been established in Cincinnati, by Doctors . 
 Baldridge and L. E. Jones, and he was invited to 
 become one of the new Faculty. By this time he had 
 few attractions to detain him in the east, and accord- 
 ingly in the autumn of 1855, removed to his new 
 home. The Syracuse Medical College which he had 
 called into existence passed immediately from the 
 stage. 
 
 The New York State Eclectic Medical Society con- 
 tinued a few years longer. Many of its members 
 sustained an excellent reputation as physicians and 
 citizens ; and its officers, such as Lyman Stanton, 
 Vincent A. Baker, A. P. Hale, George D. Kughler, 
 Henry C. Gazlay, James N. Betts, were an honor to 
 the medical profession. There was, however, no 
 longer a focus or nucleus for Eclectic medicine in 
 Western New York, where it had been most flourish- 
 ing, and the members formed other relations. 
 
 SOCIETIES IN NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN, 
 
 After the Botanic Association of the State of New 
 York had taken the new name of Physo-Medical, it 
 adopted the usual somewhat trite resolutions asking 
 the practitioners subscribing to its principles to form 
 local societies. The old Thomsonian organizations 
 had gone out of existence, and there was a desire to 
 get rid of that designation. Several societies were 
 thus established. 
 
 One of these was formed at the office of Dr. Hermes 
 M. Sweet, in the city of New York, in 1849, by the 
 name of the " New York Eclectic Medical Societ^r." 
 Dr. Sweet himself was the Secretary, and remained in 
 office as long as meetings were held.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 585 
 
 The " American j\Iedical Association " was also 
 organized on the western side of the city of New 
 York, in 1849. The late Dr. Elijah Whitney was 
 prominent in the meetings ; also, Dr. Van Doren, Dr. 
 Atkinson, and afterward, Dr. Wooster Beach himself. 
 The Society was incorporated under the law of 1848. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Society of Brooklyn was also 
 formed in 1849, t)y Doctors Dennis E. Smith, P. S. 
 Lapham, Grover Coe, and others. Five years later it 
 filed a certificate of incorporation under the title of 
 " the Eclectic Medical Society of the County of 
 Kings," and in 1861 it took the name by which it has 
 since been known, of " the Brooklyn Academy of 
 Medicine." For many years, till the death of its 
 principal members, it was one of the most effective 
 medical societies in the State. 
 
 The " New York Medical and Pathological Society " 
 began its operations in 1856. It was hardly a partisan 
 body, but included physicians of the various schools 
 of practice who were willing to forego the rancor of 
 party and meet with their peers on a common footing 
 as friends and gentlemen. After a while the New 
 York Eclectic Medical Society and the American 
 Medical Association dropped their organizations, and 
 the members generally affiliated with this Society. 
 The Joui-nal of Aledical Reforvi, published to sustain 
 the interests of the Metropolitan College, being sus- 
 pended in 1858, a Committee was appointed by the 
 Society to publish the New York Medical and Patholog- 
 ical Journal in its place, with Dr. W. W. Hadley for 
 Editor. The arrangement continued till midsum- 
 mer, when dissensions arose in the College, and the 
 Faculty established a rival publication, the Journal of 
 Health. The virulent controversies which ensued
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Speedily terminated the existence both of journal and 
 Society. 
 
 NATIONAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS. 
 
 After the failure to effect a satisfactory combina- 
 tion of the friends of the two colleges, at Syracuse 
 and Rochester, the attempt was made to establish an 
 Eclectic School in the city of New York. The law of 
 1848, under which they had been incorporated, it was 
 apprehended, was not sufficiently comprehensive to 
 confer the full rights and powers of an institution 
 for the instructing and graduating of medical students. 
 Accordingly, a bill was prepared and introduced, with 
 petitions, into the House of Assembly, in 1853, to 
 incorporate the " National College of Physicians and 
 Surgeons." The Committee to which it was referred, 
 having been constituted of persons hostile to the new 
 school of practice, made an adverse report. 
 
 As in the days of stalwart Thomsonianism, a vigorous 
 debate followed. Gen. Silas M. Burroughs, of Orleans, 
 sternly reprehended the partisan action of the Com- 
 mittee. He had yet to learn, he declared, that a new 
 system was not to be permitted in the profession of 
 Medicine as well as in the profession of law. The 
 petitioners for this bill were worthy citizens, he 
 affirmed, and as such had a perfect right to an act of 
 incorporation. If the Committee sincerely desired to 
 do away with quacks, the true way was to permit the 
 forming of institutions at which to educate prac- 
 titioners. 
 
 These views, in their general tone, were in perfect 
 accord with the prevailing sentiment of that period, 
 in favor of large liberty to private enterprise. The 
 Assembly promptly laid the report of the Committee
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 587 
 
 upon the table. Its purpose, however, was afterward 
 secured by indirection. A General Law was enacted 
 at the same session of the legislature, which conferred 
 on the Board of Regents of the University full powers 
 to incorporate educational institutions, but made it 
 the imperative condition, in the case of a medical or 
 surgical college, that the sum of Fifty Thousand 
 Dollars should be subscribed for its endowment, and 
 at least two-thirds of this amount paid in and invested 
 "to the satisfaction of the Board." The law in this 
 case was apparently mandatory, declaring that in such 
 case a charter must be granted. Subsequent experi- 
 ence has abundantly shown that the law had been 
 adroitly worded, as if to meet the convenience of a 
 Circumlocution Office. It has actually served ever 
 since as a pretext for refusing charters to all medical 
 institutions that are not approved by the American 
 Medical Association.* 
 
 THE " REFORM " MOVEMENT. 
 
 In 1851, the various National organizations of Med- 
 ical Reformers showed signs of weakness, it they had 
 not passed out of existence outright. The United 
 States Thomsonian Society and the " Independent " 
 had both ceased to meet. The National Eclectic 
 
 * Dr. Levi Reuben, a man of charming probity and simplicity, smarting at this 
 time from his unfortunate experience with the Syracuse Medical College, was 
 among those who were misled by the artful verbiage of this law. " It promised," 
 he declared, "to be beneficial in the way of putting a quietus on 'fungous organi- 
 zations,' and through a chartered college of the first grade, of raising the Reformed 
 profession to a deserved rank among its competitors." He supposed the law to be 
 mandatory, and confidently predicted the successful founding of the proposed 
 College upon the basis required. The hope, it is unnecessary to add, was never 
 realized. It was intended by the individuals who drew the bill to exclude all 
 colleges except those of the favored school. In i88.j, the friends of the United 
 States Medical College having obtained $55,000, applied to the Regents for a 
 charter, and it was refused upon the pretext here afforded.
 
 588 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Medical Association showed signs of precarious 
 condition. It seemed as if the field was now open to 
 a new enterprise. 
 
 Accordingly, under the auspices of the New York 
 Eclectic Medical Society, a Convention of Phys- 
 opathic, Eclectic and other Reform physicians, 
 willing to unite and act together, was invited to 
 assemble in the city of New York, on the twenty- 
 third day of September. In response to the invita- 
 tion, a large number of practitioners of the several 
 Schools attended from the Eastern, Middle and 
 Southern States.* Dr. H. F. Gardner, of Connecticut, 
 was elected president, and Dr. Joseph D. Friend, 
 secretary. 
 
 The Convention remained in session two days. It 
 adopted a platform declaring it a leading principle 
 in Medicine to reject all methods tending to impair 
 the vital powers, in which category " the mercurial, 
 antimonial and blood letting system of treatment" was 
 included and pronounced "unscientific and obsolete." 
 
 The Convention further voted to be " known and 
 recognized by the name of Reform Medical Physi- 
 cians, renouncing all former distinctive appellations, 
 to unite on the foregoing platform of principles, and 
 to extend the hand of professional fellowship to 
 all Medical Reformers whose principles accord there- 
 with " 
 
 * Among others were Dr. J. Myers, a Botanic physician from Louisiana 
 Doctors W. F. Smith and A. R. Doren, of the Middle States Reformed Medical 
 Society; Doctors Isaac J. Sperry and B. F. Sperry of the Connecticut Botanico- 
 Medical Society ; Doctors Samuel Tuthill, William Jones, A. W. Russell, Isaac M. 
 Comings, John Law of the Physo-Medical Society of New York ; Wilham 
 Elmer, D. E. Smith, H. C. Firth, B. J. Stow and George Newby, Eclectics ; 
 Doctors John Kent, of Ohio, Charles Green, of Philadelphia, Henry Hollembaek, 
 of New Jersey, and others sent letters expressing their concurrence with the 
 purpose of the meeting.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 589 
 
 From this time onward, the adjective designation 
 of " Reform " began to supersede the other titles 
 which had been adopted at different periods by the 
 societies of the Independent Thomsonian School. In 
 Ohio and several other states the older name of 
 Physio-Medical was retained, but in the South and 
 East, the new title was adopted. 
 
 A Committee had been appointed* which issued an 
 invitation for a United States Convention to meet at 
 Philadelphia, in January, 1852, " for the purpose of 
 adopting measures to secure the united and harmo- 
 nious cooperation of all the friends of Medical 
 Reform." 
 
 The Convention at Baltimore, following in the 
 same direction, formulated a platform adopting the 
 tenet of sanative medication, and the rejection of all 
 depleting agents and procedures, and proclaiming the 
 theory of disease in these terms. 
 
 " Disease is not vital action deranged or obstructed, 
 increased or diminished, but any condition of the 
 organs in which they are not able to perform their 
 natural functions; a condition that permanently 
 deranges, obstructs or diminishes vital action — and in 
 this sense disease is a unit." 
 
 " Reform " Medical Societies were formed in many 
 of the states — in Maine, Kentucky, Tennessee and 
 several others. The Physo-Medical Society of New 
 York, and the Eclectic Medical Association of Con- 
 necticut, adopted the designation ; and in 1856, the 
 Southern Botanico-Medical College of Macon, changed 
 its name to that of " Reform Medical College." A 
 Southern Reform Medical Association was also 
 organized, embracing in its jurisdiction the Southern 
 
 * Doctors Isaac J. Sperry, William Elmer and Joseph D. Friend.
 
 590 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 and Southwestern states. The prevailing temper of 
 Eastern, and to a great degree of Southern Re- 
 formers, was now in favor of a general union of the 
 different parties. The National Eclectic Medical 
 Association came into harmony with the same senti- 
 ment. Unfortunately, the Botanic and Eclectic 
 Schools of the Northwest were divided, and every 
 faction was intensely hostile to all the others, and 
 unwilling to harmonize on any terms short of a 
 total yielding of every matter of distinction. 
 
 Under these untow^ard conditions, it is not wonder- 
 ful that the United States Reform Convention ceased 
 to be held, and that the National Eclectic Medical 
 Association also ceased to exist. 
 
 The Southern Reform Medical Association, how- 
 ever, held regularly its annual meetings. When 
 in session at Atlanta, in May, 1856, it adopted the 
 Baltimore platform provisionally as its exposition of 
 principles. Present at this session was Dr. Jerome 
 Cochrane, a graduate of the Botanico-Medical College 
 at Memphis, and then a practitioner at Grenada, in 
 Mississippi. He took violent exceptions to the defi- 
 nition of diseases set forth, using language so dis- 
 courteous that Dr. Bankston, the president, took 
 notice of the matter, and a vote of disapproval was 
 passed. Dr. Cochrane, unwilling to yield peaceably, 
 attacked the platform in the Memphis Journal of Med- 
 icine, making a very conspicuous exhibition of sci- 
 olism.* 
 
 * To the proposition defining disease, Dr. Cochrane offered the following a;; a 
 rebuttal : 
 
 " Vital action, it is true, cannot under any conceivable circumstances, be iden- 
 tified with disease. It is also true, therefore, that vital action deranged, or vital 
 action obstructed, or vital action increased, is not disease. But any derangement 
 of vital action, whether it be of obstruction, or of augmentation, or of diminution, 
 is disease, and nothing but disease." 
 
 Dr. W. H. Cook, of the Physio-Medical Recorder^ thus remarked upon this
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 59I 
 
 The Association held its next meeting at Memphis, 
 in March, 1857. The members in attendance were 
 from Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkan- 
 sas, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Dr. Bankston was 
 again elected president and Dr. I. N. Wilson secretary.* 
 The proceedings were unusually important, and in 
 the light of subsequent history, very significant. 
 
 One resolution declared the project of a National 
 Reform Medical Association impracticable at the 
 present time, but urged that there should be " a 
 thorough and efficient organization and maintenance 
 of State Associations, and that each send delegates to 
 the Southern Association — thus constituting a great 
 centre around which, in harmony and in order, its 
 subordinate organizations shall long continue to 
 revolve." 
 
 A system of delegation was accordingly devised, 
 and a representation prescribed of two to five from 
 each State, and two from each medical college in the 
 Association. 
 
 The platform was again referred to a Committee. 
 Under the expectation that it could be materially 
 changed in terms, a resolution was adopted that any 
 person dissenting from any of the minor points might 
 be considered a candidate for membership. The 
 
 article of Dr. Cochrane : " Every proposition of the platform is contorted from 
 its real meaning, and this contortion then treated as a reality. All the arguments 
 he uses are mere assertions, unfounded in fact, and not upheld by one single truth 
 or principle in nature." 
 
 Certainly as a literary production, the criticism was vulgar, ill-bred and 
 ungrammatical in expression, and like the emanation of an irritated, unschooled 
 fault-finder. 
 
 * Among them were Doctors L. D. Skelton, W. Slaughter, J. R. Thornton, S. J. 
 Austin ; also, Drs. I. M. Comings, R. C. Bryan, I. N. Wilson and L. Bankston, of 
 the Reform Medical College of Georgia; and Doctors Hugh Quin, R. H. Harrison, 
 T. C. Gayle, W. B. Morrow, G. W. Morrow and L. P. Cutler, of the Botanico- 
 Medical College of Memphis.
 
 592 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 name of Dr. Jerome Cochrane was accordingly pro- 
 posed, and he became a member.* 
 
 The Southern Reform Medical Association con- 
 tinued in operation till hostilities broke out between 
 the South and North. An effect of the war was to 
 extinguish the rivalship and animosity between the 
 several schools. After the restoration of peace, the 
 trend of sentiment was distinctly toward affiliation 
 with the Eclectic School of Practice.- The College of 
 Macon was organized anew on that foundation, but 
 the Botanico-Medical College of Memphis was not 
 again opened. Eclectic Medical Societies, in which 
 the Botanic and Reform physicians took active part, 
 were formed in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Ken- 
 tucky, Arkansas and Texas, to represent and carry on 
 the American Reformed School of Medical Practice 
 in the South. 
 
 THE MEDICAL COLLEGE OF PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 There had been no abandonment of purpose by the 
 Eclectics of Philadelphia and that vicinity, because of 
 the failure of the project of Dr. Morrow for a National 
 Organization and a Medical Institution under its 
 charge. They adopted the plan in vogue at the time, 
 and organized the " Middle States Reformed Medical 
 
 * Dr. Cochrane soon afterward left the Reform ranks. He procured the 
 degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1861 from the Me'dical Department of the Univer- 
 sity of Nashville, and ever since that he has been a relentless and implacable 
 adversary of physicians of the school which he had abandoned. The changes of 
 the times have made him a resident and Health Officer of Alabama. A medical 
 law having been enacted in that State, and curiously modified to give virtually 
 almost absolute power to the Health Officer over medical practitioners, he was 
 prompt and active to employ the opportunity which it afforded him against 
 Eclectic and other non-orthodox physicians. The Supreme Court of Alabama, 
 however, proved more just in their behalf than the Medical Board.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 593 
 
 Society." Its members were resident in New Jersey, 
 Delaware, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. 
 Many of them belonged in the higher social circles.* 
 The purpose of the organization was the establish- 
 ing of a Medical College. The Society held its 
 meetings in Philadelphia, and was a powerful factor 
 for the maintaining of the Eclectic cause. 
 
 In 1850, Doctors Thomas Cooke, Joseph Sites, and 
 P. F. Sweet, acting under its authority, repaired to 
 Harrisburg, at the meeting of the General Assembly 
 of the State, and obtained from that body an act 
 incorporating the Eclectic Medical College of Penn- 
 sylvania, with full power to instruct students in 
 Medicine, and to confer the degree of " Doctor of 
 Eclectic Medicine." The Trustees of the new institu- 
 tion proceeded directly to appoint and install a 
 Faculty.f The first term was held in the spring of 
 185 1, after which the institution was carried on for 
 years with moderate encouragement, and making 
 little of the usual boasting about financial prosperity. 
 
 An angry controversy arose with Dr. W. F. Smith, 
 and the Middle States Reformed Medical Society 
 took part with him. The matter was carried to the 
 National Eclectic Medical Association, whiclf met 
 that year at Pittsburg. It was laid over to the next 
 
 * Of the number were the Hon. John S. Prettyman, afterward Consul to 
 Glasgow ; Dr. John Rose, of Baltimore, the president ; Dr. A. C. Haines, Dr. 
 Persius F. Sweet, Dr. William F. Smith, Dr. J. M. Ross, Dr. Palemon John and 
 in later years, Doctors Marshall Calkins, William Paine, Henry Hollembaek, 
 Joseph Sites, L. H. Borden. The regulations were very rigid. Attendance at 
 meetings was required and a member advocating any other system of Medical 
 practice as superior to the Eclectic, or employing any other practitioner in his 
 family than an Eclectic, was liable to expulsion. 
 
 + The professors consisted of Dr. Stephen H. Potter, late of the Central 
 Medical College of New York, Doctors Thomas Cooke, Henry Hollembaek, 
 Thomas J. Chase, Joseph Sites, and St. John H. Mintzer.
 
 594 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 meeting at Rochester. Doctors Cooke and Sites were 
 there present to defend their action, and the com- 
 plaint was dismissed. 
 
 The Medical Society, however, did not concur in 
 this disposition of the matter. In 1853, Mr. J. S. 
 Fisher and the other members procured from the 
 General Assembly a charter for the "American 
 College of Medicine." The National Association 
 held its annual meeting that year at Philadelphia, 
 and took action in favor of a representative system in 
 its future membership, a more thorough system of 
 medical instruction, and against the establishing of 
 medical colleges with insufficient means of support. 
 
 Soon afterward, the misunderstanding between the 
 College and the Middle States Reformed Medical 
 Society was satisfactorily adjusted, and the new 
 institution did not go into operation. 
 
 The death of Dr. Thomas Cooke took place in 1855. 
 He had begun the Eclectic movement in Philadelphia 
 and enlisted the Botanic physicians in its support. 
 Awake to the importance of more thorough educa- 
 tion, he had labored with untiring assiduity for that 
 purpose, and the Eclectic College of Pennsylvania 
 was tlfe result of his persevering endeavor. In his 
 efforts for its success he had been diligent and faith- 
 ful. His death following upon that of Calvin 
 Newton, left the Eclectic cause in the East deprived 
 of its two most efficient supporters. 
 
 It was necessary to appoint new professors to the 
 vacant chairs in the College, Dr. John Fondey 
 succeeded Dr. Cooke as dean of the Faculty, and Dr. 
 James M. Buzzell, of Maine, was elected professor of 
 surgery. Dr. Marshall Calkins, late of the Worcester 
 Medical Institution, was appointed to the chair of
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 595 
 
 Anatomy and Physiology, He was at that time a 
 zealous Eclectic and had won honorable distinction 
 for scholarship and for his share in the work of Dr. 
 Calvin Newton, on Thoracic Diseases. 
 
 Dr. William Paine also received the appointment of 
 Demonstrator of Anatomy. He was a graduate of 
 the Berkshire Medical College, and had few superiors 
 as a physician or as an instructor. He was plausible 
 and attractive in manner, ambitious, and endowed 
 in a liberal degree with the qualities that persuade 
 and control. His executive ability was seldom 
 surpassed. He was not long in obtaining an appoint- 
 ment to the professorship of Theory and Practice of 
 Medicine, and a leading influence in the manage- 
 ment of the College. 
 
 Under the new arrangement, the institution entered 
 upon a more prosperous career, and bid fair to win 
 and hold a high place in public favor. There was 
 not, at that time, any of the Reform Colleges superior 
 to it in efflcient administration, or in the quality of 
 its instruction,* 
 
 The relations between the College and the Middle 
 States Reformed Medical Society had grown closer 
 and for the time more cordial. The professors of the 
 College became members of the Society, and Dr, 
 Calkins was elected secretary. Doctors Palemon 
 John and J. S. Pretty man published the Middle States 
 Medical Reformer iox four years. In 1855 they merged 
 
 • The graduates that year outnumbered those of any other Medical College 
 in Philadelphia. Among them were several who became conspicuous in later 
 years as teachers and contributors to medical literature. Doctors I. J. M. Goss, 
 James M. Hole, Robert Hamilton, John G. Rich, Horatio G. Newton, M. D,, 
 nephew of Dr. Calvin Newton, and John Buchanan, were of the number. Dr. 
 George W. Brown, of Kansas fame, now of Rockford, Illinois, was also from this 
 institution.
 
 596 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 the publication into the Eclectic Medical Journal, which 
 Doctors Paine and Calkins had just begun. The 
 Society also adopted a new constitution, taking the 
 name of the " American Eclectic Medical Association 
 of Philadelphia." It continued as before to hold 
 stated monthly meetings for many years. 
 
 The College was removed, in 1858, to more com- 
 modious headquarters at the " Friends' Literary 
 Institute," at the corner of Sixth and Callowhill 
 streets. Every thing now appeared auspicious for the 
 enterprise. The graduates generally became excellent 
 practitioners, whose professional services were charac- 
 terized by less mortality than had been the rule in 
 the old procedures, and by the more perfect recovery 
 of their patients. The career of the College was 
 generally esteemed to be honorable alike to the 
 teachers, the students, and to the Eclectic vSchool of 
 Medicine. The standard of instruction, and what 
 was more significant, the actual requirements for 
 graduating, were higher than in other medical 
 colleges. Philadelphia bade fair at this period to 
 become a centre for Eclectic medicine, as it had been 
 for the dominant orthodox school. 
 
 The Penn Medical College was established by Dr. 
 Joseph S. Longshore and his associates, in 1853. 
 They had been connected with the Woman's Medical 
 College, but had withdrawn on account of the 
 stringent medical partisanship which had been 
 established and enforced in that institution. Dr. 
 Longshore was an able physician, scholarly, sincere 
 in his convictions, liberal in sentiment and strictly 
 conscientious. He was the author of a work on 
 Obstetrics of great merit. It is not superfluous to 
 add that the new institution was organized on a
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND ORGANIZATIONS. 597 
 
 liberal basis, without proscription or partisan require- 
 ments, and was open to students without distinction 
 of ethics, color, etc.* 
 
 * This matter of educating young men and women in the same classes and 
 institutions has been the theme of much absurd questioning and vulgar expression. 
 Some years ago a professor in the St. Lawrence University was asked by an 
 English woman as to what form of discipline the school adopted when men and 
 women were allowed to study together : " The college has no rules, madam," he 
 replied, " the young women don't require any, and they discipline the young men 
 with their very presence. We really have nothing to do about it."
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 
 
 It is neither an easy task nor a desirable one 
 to recapitulate the history of altercations. The 
 acrimony displayed, the misrepresentations, the 
 aspersion of motives, and often the coarse, not to say 
 indecent vituperation, exhibit the parties in a most 
 unfavorable light, besides making the actual facts 
 very difficult to distinguish. Such quarrels are most 
 frequent and implacable in families, sparsely-settled 
 neighborhoods, and circumscribed groups of individ- 
 uals, whether in a religious, benevolent or medical 
 society not having many members. In the cases 
 where there is the closest similarity in opinions or 
 doctrine, but coming a little short of entire agree- 
 ment, the discord is usually the fiercest. The early 
 Thomsonians and Reformed physicians, we have 
 already observed, entertained an unappeasable dis- 
 like for one another, and in subsequent years there 
 were analogous spites and mean jealousies, often very 
 absurd and ridiculous, between individuals of the 
 Eclectic School. " The earth cannot bear two suns," 
 replied Alexander to Dareios, " nor Asia two kings." 
 So in the humbler world, the love of ruling which is 
 the root of every form of evil, and with it a vicious 
 disposition to neglect the requirements of fraternal 
 courtesy, and even of common justice, doubtless 
 underlay the whole. Tlie cause of Reformed Med- 
 icine has suffered worse from causes of this character,
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 599 
 
 at certain periods of its history, than from the perse- 
 cutions of its open adversaries. 
 
 MEMPHIS INSTITUTE. 
 
 At the session of the Legislature in Tennessee, in 
 1847, an act was passed to incorporate a university by 
 the title of " The Memphis Institute." The late Dr. 
 William Byrd Powell had the chief agency in pro- 
 curing the enactment. Dr. Powell was a graduate 
 of Transylvania University of Kentucky, and had 
 become deeply interested in promulgating certain 
 novel doctrines in regard to Cerebral Physiology and 
 the Human Temperaments.* Not having the oppor- 
 tunities which he desired at the Botanico-Medical 
 College of Memphis, he sought to establish an institu- 
 tion with a broader foundation which would afford 
 him the coveted opportunity. He was engaged for 
 two years with the necessary arrangements for the 
 literary and scientific departments, after which he 
 proceeded to the organizing of an Eclectic Medical 
 College. The Faculty consisted of Dr. Powell, him- 
 self, Dr. Robert S. Newton, Dr. Zoheth Freeman, and 
 Dr. J. Milton Sanders. There was a partial endow- 
 ment of the Institution and it was enabled thereby 
 to continue in active operation for two years. 
 
 * Dr. Powell maintained that the temperaments commonly designated "san- 
 guine " and "bilious" are vital, and those denominated "nervous'" and 
 " lymphatic," are twn-vital. He assumed further that the latter two were not 
 primitive, but developed by conditions of civilized life. From these premises he 
 deduced the theory that connubial unions between individuals of like temperament, 
 or with a predominance of " non-vital " temperaments, are physiologically incest- 
 uous, and certain to be either unprolific, or productive of a degenerate offspring, 
 that will be scrofulous, imbecile, mal-formed, or short-lived. The theory has 
 been embraced by many in this country, so far as it relates to conjugal relations 
 between persons of kindred blood, but it has received little ountenance other- 
 wise, except among specialists upon the subject of heredity.
 
 6oO HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 TROUBLES AT CINCINNATI. 
 
 At this period the Eclectic Medical Institute at 
 Cincinnati had become involved in a chaos of 
 troubles. A Chair of Homoeopathy had been estab- 
 lished in 1849, and Doctors Baldridge and Oliver 
 resigned from the Faculty. Their places were sup- 
 plied by Doctors H. F. Gatchell and Storm Rosa, both 
 of them Homoeopathists, giving a color of probability 
 to the apprehension that the trend was toward a divert- 
 ing of the enterprise from its original purpose as an 
 Eclectic school. It was actually asserted afterward 
 that the purpose existed to displace Dr. Morrow 
 himself. On his own part, Dr. Buchanan himself 
 declared that the utmost harmony existed between 
 them, and that Doctors Morrow and B. L. Hill, acting 
 against his judgment, were the persons that were 
 most forward to establish the Chair of Homoeopathy. 
 
 He also stated that in becoming a member of the 
 Faculty, he had, for the time, abandoned his favorite 
 investigations in anthropologic science, and that he 
 had been placed in a false light by thus appearing as 
 a representative of practical Medicine, instead of as 
 the teacher of a New Philosophy. Whatever were 
 the actual facts in this matter, it was inevitable that 
 he and his associates should come into direct antago- 
 nism. 
 
 At this juncture, unfortunately for the College as 
 well as for the Eclectic cause. Dr. Morrow died. The 
 Trustees lost no time in abolishing the Chair of 
 Homoeopathy, and appointed Dr. I. G. Jones professor 
 of the Theory and Practice of Medicine. The Insti- 
 tute was found to be involved in most perplexing 
 financial embarrassment. None of the professors
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 6oi 
 
 possessed aptitude for business except Dr. L. E. 
 Jones, and for him, Dr. Buchanan, now dean of the 
 Faculty, entertained an inveterate dislike. A union 
 with the Memphis Institute was proposed as a 
 remedy. Dr. B. L. Hill, Dr. I. G. Jones and Mrs. 
 Morrow, whose means of support were largely 
 imperilled by the woful condition of things, wrote 
 letters to Dr. R. S. Newton, in January, 185 1, entreat- 
 ing him to come to Cincinnati, and help rescue the 
 School. He consented, and the Memphis Institute 
 was abandoned. Dr. Hill, having become a Homoe- 
 opathist, retired, and also Dr. Gatchell. Doctors 
 Freeman, Sanders and King became members of the 
 new Faculty ; Dr. Powell absolutely refusing an 
 appointment. 
 
 THE AMERICAN REFORM MEDICAL INSTITUTE. 
 
 In 1849, the Legislature of Kentucky enacted the 
 bill to incorporate the "American Reform Medical 
 Institute." Dr. A. H. Baldridge, late of the Eclectic 
 Medical Institute at Cincinnati, was active in its 
 organization. The enterprise appeared for a time to 
 be in the way of receiving a generous support. 
 There was considerable dissatisfaction existing in 
 regard to matters at the school in Cincinnati. This 
 operated in favor of the college at Louisville, and 
 sanguine hopes were entertained that it would become 
 the principal medical school of the Southwestern 
 States. Great diligence had been employed in the 
 selecting of instructors. The Faculty comprised 
 several of the most prominent Eclectic and Botanic 
 physicians. Dr. Baldridge was the dean during the 
 first term, in 1850, but was succeeded the next year by
 
 6o2 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Johnson H. Jordan.* Their associate professors were 
 Doctors E. Morgan Parritt and George W. Churchill, 
 from the Worcester Medical Institution ; Dr. Charles- 
 J. Childs and Dr. James Milot. Several terms were 
 held with excellent promise, when unfortunate occur- 
 rences brought the career of the institution to a 
 sudden close. 
 
 FREE LECTURES AT CINCINNATI. 
 
 Dr. I. G. Jones had succeeded to the professorship 
 held by Dr. Morrow. He employed the opportunity 
 to complete the work on the Eclectic Practice of 
 Medicine which Dr. Morrow had left unfinished, and 
 to add to it a volume entirely of his own preparing. 
 His health giving way, he was obliged to stop lectur- 
 ing, and his death took place a few years afterward. 
 
 Dr. Wooster Beach was unacceptable to the new 
 management, and his name was removed from the 
 Faculty. 
 
 The project had been conceived of making the 
 stated lectures free. It was in accordance with the 
 Free-School movement, then at its height, the dean 
 argued. It was also the practice at the Ecole de Me'decine 
 of Paris, and attracted students thither from all 
 
 * Dr. Jordan graduated at the Eclectic Medical Institute in 1848. While he was 
 at Cincinnati the next spring, contemplating a removal to New York, to take part 
 in the Central Medical College, the cholera broke out. Most who were stricken 
 died. The common treatment was ineffectual, not to say fatal outright. At the 
 popular demand the Board of Health placed Dr. Jordan in charge of the cholera 
 hospital, where he remained from the sixth of June till the twenty-eighth of 
 August. His success had not been equalled in any but the Eclectic, Thomsonian 
 or Homoeopathic practice. He had 210 patients with cholera, of whom 49 died. 
 Of these last, 39 were moribund when they were brought to the hospital. Dr. 
 Jordan then accepted the invitation to take part in the enterprise at Louisville. He 
 was dean for one year, and editor of the Medical Era. He spent the last years of 
 his life at Chicago, dying in 1885.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 603 
 
 directions. He was confident that a like result would 
 follow at Cincinnati. The purpose and expectation were 
 also cherished that it might compel the other Reform 
 Colleges to suspend, and so leave the Eclectic Medical 
 Institute in exclusive possession of the field, thus 
 virtually constituting it the umpire of the entire 
 Eclectic School of Medicine in the United States. 
 The professors were assured that by this policy the 
 number of students would exceed five hundred, and 
 that they would thus obtain a larger income from the 
 other fees sufficient to recoup them for the loss of 
 receipts for lectures. There would also be a larger 
 sale of the books which the professors had published. 
 Besides, they had the resource of private classes apart 
 from their regular duties. This has been a common 
 matter in medical colleges of every school of practice. 
 Students anxious to make sure of graduating with 
 facility are naturally awake to the importance of 
 making friends in the Faculty, and so will consent to 
 pay for such tuition, as though it did not properly 
 pertain to the regular course of study. The professors 
 were thus induced to believe that the larger number 
 of students thus obtained by the attraction of free 
 education in medicine, would in this way be induced 
 to contribute enough to make it a profitable operation. 
 Doctors Freeman and Sanders, however, did not 
 approve of the arrangement, and resigned their Pro- 
 fessorships. The vacant chairs were filled by Doctors 
 G. W. L. Bickley, J. W. Hoyt and W. Sherwood. 
 
 In the latter weeks of 1852, the ill feeling which had 
 long existed between Dr. Buchanan and Dr. L. E. 
 Jones had reached its crisis. There had been much 
 dissatisfaction in the class with several of the new 
 professors, and Dr. Jones had imprudently taken sides
 
 6o4 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 in the matter. He also expressed his sentiments 
 about Dr. Buchanan with great indiscretion. The 
 latter brought the matter before the Board of Trustees, 
 and upon his representations a resolution was unani- 
 mously adopted expelling Dr. Jones from the Faculty.* 
 Dr. Newton was elected his successor, and Dr. Freeman 
 accepted the post of Professor of Surgery. 
 
 The plan of free lectures met with indifferent 
 success.f It failed to induce students to attend in any 
 considerable number from the Eastern States, while 
 at the same time it was regarded by the managers of 
 the other Reform Colleges as an unfriendly action, 
 and several medical journals expressed their disap- 
 proval in no equivocal terms. After two or three 
 years, the former mode of procedure was restored. 
 
 Among the graduates of this period maybe enumer- 
 
 * This controversy was characterized by a vast deal of scandal. Dr. Bickley, 
 who afterviard changed his attitude in the later dissensions, declared that "the 
 basis of this matter was of a private character," and that Dr. Buchanan made 
 various charges with such apparent sincerity that the Faculty were deceived, and 
 refused Dr. Jones an opportunity to exculpate himself or to impeach the testimony. 
 Dr. Buchanan, on his part, accused Dr. Jones of moral depravity and unfitness, 
 and described his accusations as " the stupid mendacity of a selfish and animal 
 nature impelled by ungovernable passion." He affirmed that Dr. Jones was too 
 illiterate and ignorant to write a paper suitable for the public eye, and that 
 another member of the Faculty actually wrote the greater part of the treatise on 
 Materia Medica, to which Dr. Jones prefi.xed his own name as author. Dr. Jones 
 made a reply containing the severest allegations of all ; that Dr. Buchanan had 
 never been an Eclectic ; that he had traduced Dr. Morrow, saying that the pros- 
 perity of the college required his removal, and his place to be filled by a more 
 competent teacher ; and that Dr. Morrow himself, in a letter written a few months 
 before his death, had declared Dr. Buchanan to be unstable and visionary, and 
 that " his vagaries and hypothetical doctrines tend to mystify and blind the minds 
 of students, and make them anything but practical men." 
 
 t A similar experiment was made at the medical department of the State 
 University of Michigan. It was confidently supposed that free tuition would 
 attract students from all parts of the country, and enable the school to cast into the 
 shade the other schools, even those of Philadelphia. Enthusiastic persons even 
 predicted that there would be an annual revenue of $:)oo,ooo to the Treasury of the 
 State from this source. The expectation, however, was not realized.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 605 
 
 ated many who were afterward well known. We can 
 name in the number, James Anton, James M. Youatt, 
 John F. Judge, Henry Wohlgemuth, W. C. E. Martin, 
 Robert W. Geddes, Andrew Yeagley, Lemon T. Beam, 
 Edwin Freeman. 
 
 THE AMERICAN MEDICAL COLLEGE OF OHIO. 
 
 The summary action taken in the case of Dr. L. E. 
 Jones was followed, as in analogous instances, by the 
 founding of the " American Medical College." Doctors 
 Jones and Baldridge were foremost in the under- 
 taking, and their former friendly relations with Dr. 
 Morrow enabled them to enlist many of his friends 
 in its behalf. Dr. Jones made a journey to New York 
 in quest of lecturers, but with little success. A 
 Faculty, however, was finally obtained, and the 
 institution went into operation with much energy. 
 Following the example of the other Eclectic Colleges, 
 there were two terms held every year, and the attend- 
 ance was encouraging. The professors were men of 
 ability, and most of them had already served else- 
 where as instructors* In the autumn of 1855, Dr. 
 S. H. Potter gave up the Syracuse Medical College, 
 and removed to Cincinnati with his journal, making 
 it the mouthpiece of the Faculty. 
 
 Thus early, however, the apple of discord was 
 hurled into the midst. It had often been accused and 
 denied, that Eclectic practitioners adhered to the use 
 of mercury and other discarded remedies. It was 
 said that while as a school they professed to entertain 
 radical and advanced sentiments upon this subject, 
 
 * The Faculty comprised in its corps of instructors Dr. T. J. Wright, the 
 dean. Doctors L. E. Jones and A. H. Baldridge, late of the Eclectic Medical 
 Institute ; Doctors S. H. Potter alid E. H. Stockwcll, from the Syracuse Medical 
 College, and Doctors W. B. Witt, J. L. Galloway and K. D. Hill.
 
 6o6 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 many of their teachers and others were hypocrites in 
 this matter, and adhered to the old methods. Dr. 
 L. E. Jones was earnest in his hostility to these pro- 
 cedures. He found his colleagues to be less sincere. 
 The announcement of the College had been carefully 
 worded in order to evade the entire proposition, and 
 several of the professors had distinctly asserted that 
 the institution represented no sentiments other than 
 those of the Old School. 
 
 Dr. Jones felt that he could consistently remain no 
 longer a professor. He and Dr. Baldridge, he declared, 
 had virtually founded the American Medical College, 
 and had been mistreated and defrauded by the dean.* 
 The personal reflections were very severe and, of 
 course, resulted in the vacating of their places in the 
 Faculty. Dr. John Kost, formerly of the Cleveland 
 Botanico-Medical College and of the Worcester Med- 
 ical Institution, succeeded to the Chair of Botany, 
 and Dr. John A. Corey to that of the Theory and 
 Practice of Medicine. 
 
 The American Medical College continued in active 
 operation till 1857. The Eclectic College of Medicine 
 having come into existence, it then suspended and 
 its good will and scientific apparatus were transferred 
 to the new institution. 
 
 NATIONAL ECLECTIC MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, CONTINUED. 
 
 The annual meeting of the National Eclectic Med- 
 ical Association for 185 1, had been appointed at 
 
 * Dr. Child had commanded the janitor to e.xclude them both from the build- 
 ing where lectures were delivered. Dr. Jones further alleged that the dean had 
 divided the money received from the students, not paying him or Dr. Baldridge 
 a cent ; and he also instanced Doctors Potter and Stockwell as hav^ing participated 
 in similar operations.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 607 
 
 Pittsburg on the thirteenth day of May. Dr. Buchanan 
 was the president, but did not attend. The absence 
 ■of the several officers and other circumstances 
 created serious misgiving- in regard to the validity of 
 the proceedings. An organization was effected, how- 
 ever, with Dr. Robert S. Newton, of Ohio, as presi- 
 dent, and Dr. S. Kyle, of Pittsburg, as secretary. 
 The number present was not large, and was chiefly 
 composed of physicians from Ohio, Western New 
 York and Pennsylvania. Dr. William Paine, of 
 Warren, in Ohio, and Dr. L. Oldshue, the pioneer 
 Eclectic of Western Pennsylvania, were among the 
 number that enrolled themselves as members. 
 
 At this time the controversies between Dr. W. F. 
 Smith and the Eclectic Medical College of Penn- 
 sylvania, and between the Central Medical College of 
 New York and the Syracuse Medical College were at 
 their height. The respondents in both cases were 
 absent, and, as frequently happens, the accusers took 
 advantage of that fact to bring the matters before 
 the Association for its action. This, however, was 
 prudently deferred till the next meeting. 
 
 It sometimes occurs in republican governments, 
 that a new administration devotes much of its 
 energies to undoing the work of its predecessor. It 
 is not a wise procedure, nor often creditable, but 
 personal ill will or partisan feeling makes it seem 
 just to superficial observers. Dr. Morrow had made 
 it his aim for years to effect a union and alliance of 
 the Reform physicians of every change of sentiment.* 
 
 * A letter purporting to be written by him bearing the date of February 8, 
 1850, has this sentence : " I intend to try to compromise with our ' Physopathic ' 
 friends, as you suggest, for the good of the cause." See also his letter to Dr. 
 Thomas Cooke.
 
 6o8 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 With this purpose, Dr. Buchanan had little sympathy- 
 He sent a letter to the meeting at Pittsburg, recom- 
 mending that the attempt at a National organization 
 be abandoned, and that local conventions be held 
 instead. This proposition, however, was voted down, 
 and the next meeting of the Association was appointed 
 at the city of Rochester, in New York. The threatened 
 dissolution was thus obviated. 
 
 The Third Annual Meeting of the Association was 
 held pursuant to appointment on the eleventh and 
 twelfth days of May, 1852. The members in attend- 
 ance were principally from Canada, and the Eastern 
 and Middle States. An increasing approximation of 
 sentiment and fraternal feeling was apparent. It 
 comprised, among others, the men who had been 
 the first to adopt the designation of Eclectic. Dr. 
 Calvin Newton,* of Massachusetts, was elected presi- 
 dent ; Doctors John Simms, of Delaware, and A. 
 D. Skellenger, of Ohio, vice-presidents ; Doctors S. 
 H. Potter and L. C. Dolley, both of New York, secre- 
 taries. 
 
 The session was devoted to legitimate business. 
 The complaint of Dr. W. F. Smith against the College 
 in Philadelphia was dismissed, and the proceedings 
 in regard to the Syracuse Medical College expunged 
 from the record. 
 
 The endeavor was made at this meeting to give the 
 Eclectic Theory of Medicine a definite scientific, as 
 
 * " We went to the meeting," said Dr. Newton, " prepared to act the part of 
 lookers on ; * * but on the other hand we were prepared to lay aside all over- 
 strenuous regard to names, and enter heartily into a cooperation, if we should find 
 a disposition to union, together with sufficiently elevated and correct views of the 
 Science of Medicine. We did find a controlling and an overwhelming majority 
 thoroughly indoctrinated in the leading medical truths which we in New England 
 entertain."
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 609 
 
 well as practical basis. Before this, most of the 
 teachers and others who were prominent in the 
 School, were men little versed in classic and general 
 literature, and many were hardly redeemed from 
 actual illiteracy. T.he new president was liberally 
 educated and had been for several years an instructor 
 in colleges. When he engaged in the profession of 
 Medicine, he likewise began the effort to place it and the 
 School which he had adopted, upon a basis of equality 
 with other professions in point of general and other 
 scholarship. As has been already set forth, he had 
 never been specifically a disciple of Samuel Thomson 
 or Wooster Beach, but at the very outset had declared 
 himself independent, and an Eclectic, as he defined 
 that term. 
 
 A platform of principles was reported by Dr. L. C. 
 Dolley, a man of somewhat similar mould. It 
 declared as the first proposition " to maintain the 
 utmost freedom of thought and investigation, in oppo- 
 sition to the restrictive system heretofore in vogue. 
 The other theses were explanatory of Eclecticism in 
 Medicine, its scope and aims. 
 
 2. To encourage the cultivation of Medical Science 
 in a liberal spirit, especially in the development of 
 the resources of the vegetable Materia Medica, and 
 the safest, speediest and most efficient methods of 
 treating disease. 
 
 3. To adopt in investigations the Baconian or 
 inductive philosophy, instead of the synthetic methods. 
 
 4. That a departure from the healthy condition 
 interrupts the bodily functions, and only the recuper- 
 ative efforts of Nature can effect their restoration. 
 The object, therefore, of medication accordingly is 
 to afford to Nature the means of doing this work 
 more advantageously, and under circumstances in 
 which she would otherwise fail.
 
 6lO HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 5. " To receive and teach Eclecticism — not as an 
 indiscriminate selection of means supposed to be 
 remedial, but a selection based upon the recognized 
 nature of the disease to be treated, and the character 
 of the agent or agents employed to remove that 
 disease, thus presupposing a knowledge on the part 
 of the physician, at once of the pathology of the 
 disease and the adaptedness of the remedy ; and to 
 encourage and urge the highest scientific attain- 
 ments." 
 
 6. The excluding of all permanently depressing and 
 disorganizing agencies — such as depletion by the 
 lancet, and medication of a dangerous tendency ; also 
 a preferring of vegetable remedies, but no exclusive 
 system of Herbalism — and no rejection of a mineral 
 agent, except from the conviction of its injurious 
 effect. 
 
 7. " To dismiss from the catalogue of remedial 
 agents all those which under the ordinary circum- 
 stances of their administration are liable to injure 
 the stamina of the human constitution ; more partic- 
 ularly the mineral poisons, such as mercury, arsenic 
 and antimony, and all of their various preparations, 
 and to substitute in their place articles derived from 
 the vegetable kingdom, which are not only as power- 
 ful in their operation, but far more safe and salutary 
 in their immediate effects upon the human system." 
 
 The system of Free Lectures' adopted at Cincinnati 
 was discussed and a resolution of disapproval adopted 
 on the ground that its operation was injurious to 
 other colleges. This, however, was rescinded as 
 embracing a matter beyond the province of the 
 National Association. 
 
 The Fourth Annual Meeting was held at the Hall 
 of the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania, in 
 the city of Philadelphia, on the tenth and eleventh 
 days of May, 1853. Dr. John Simms, of Delaware, 
 was elected president, Doctors Levi Reuben and
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 6ll 
 
 Henry Hollembaek, secretaries, and Dr. Thomas 
 Cooke, treasurer. 
 
 Dr. Calvin Nev^ton submitted an address in which 
 he set forth elaborately a plan for the advancing and 
 future triumph of Eclecticism. He considered the 
 necessary step to be by means of Medical Societies, 
 and a more perfect organizing of the National 
 Association. He proposed that that body should be 
 constituted in part of Delegates from States and 
 minor organizations. State Societies were now largely 
 attended as annual jubilees, he remarked ; but they 
 should be employed, he insisted, to establish and 
 develop professional knowledge. There should also 
 be District Societies meeting quarterly. In these 
 organizations — National, State and local — profes- 
 sional improvement should be the object sought. 
 
 Dr. Newton was also strenuous in behalf of proper 
 means and a proper standard of medical instruction. 
 Medical colleges he regarded as constituting the 
 principal wheels for rolling on the car of Scientific 
 Reform in Medicine. The requirements of students 
 in order to be candidates for graduation should be as 
 high, or even higher, than elsewhere. Those whose 
 province it is to be teachers in our schools, must be 
 men well trained — not only in matters of medical 
 practice, but of Medical Science, and even in general 
 literature. " Their ambition should be to avail them- 
 selves of all the professional advantages afforded 
 here and in Europe. They should have a fair pecuni- 
 ary compensation ; and to meet this, the price of 
 tuition should be higher." That which costs nothing 
 is generally valued at nothing, he declared ; and that 
 which costs little is valued at little. What is paid for 
 will be appreciated.
 
 6l2 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Upon " petty and unchartered Schools," Dr. Newton 
 was sternly severe. They were endeavoring, he 
 asserted, to allure to themselves unsuspicious students 
 by the inducement of graduation after a few weeks, 
 or at most after a few months employed in profes- 
 sional study. They were a curse to Eclecticism and 
 ought to be repudiated. Several such, he stated, had 
 sprung up in the last year and had already passed 
 out of existence. " Bodies to create ashes they never 
 had." 
 
 The Association adopted resolutions of the same 
 tenor, which 'reprehended the attempt to sustain 
 Medical Colleges without an adequate charge for 
 tuition, deprecated the establishing of rival Schools 
 where well-conducted j\Iedical Colleges already 
 existed, and disapproved of the endeavor to establish 
 unchartered Schools without the strongest reasons. 
 
 The persons who offered to graduate medical 
 students without examination, and without the time 
 usually required to be spent in professional study, 
 were declared to be " practicing the grossest imposi- 
 tion, encouraging quackery, and unworthy of 
 confidence." 
 
 The support of Eclectic Colleges was distinctly 
 demanded. It was declared to be "the duty of 
 Eclectic practitioners to encourage their students to 
 resort for their professional education to well-regu- 
 lated and established Eclectic Colleges, as affording 
 advantages superior to what can be gained at 
 institutions of a different faith, and thereby quali- 
 fying them to be more successful practitioners." 
 
 A report by Dr. Walter Burnham was also adopted 
 recommending the formation of State Eclectic Med- 
 ical Societies in all the States, the further establishing
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 613 
 
 of auxiliary district societies, and the appointing- of 
 delegates from them all to the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association.* 
 
 The Fifth Annual Meeting of the Association was 
 held at Worcester, Massachusetts, on the ninth and 
 tenth of May, 1854. There was a large attendance, 
 chiefly from New England and New York.f There 
 was a disposition in other regions to discountenance 
 further friendly relations. Dr. Walter Burnham was 
 elected president ; Doctors Cyrus Johns, of New 
 York, and M. Gabbert, of Tennessee, vice-presidents ; 
 Doctors R. O. Williams, of New Hampshire, and 
 H. I. Fisk, of Connecticut, secretaries ; Doctors G. W. 
 Morrow and John W. Johnson, corresponding secre- 
 taries. The sessions were devoted to matters impor- 
 tant to medical men. The new prei,ident was earnest 
 in this, urgent to advance consensus of professional 
 interest, and severely deprecated the dissensions and 
 jealousies which were cultivated to the point of 
 personal hostility. 
 
 The death of Calvin Newton cast a deep gloom 
 over the proceedings. Dr. Levi Reuben delivered an 
 eloquent oration, giving a brief summary of his aims 
 and what he had accomplished. 
 
 "He did not aim to be a discoverer," said the 
 speaker. " His object was to give the Reformed 
 Practice of Medicine a sure foundation. He found it 
 made up of very sensible and successful empiricisms ; 
 
 * The present National Eclectic Medical Association adopted this plan in 1877, 
 and required that all candidates to become members must be nominated in future 
 from such State and local societies, instead of personal application or the recom- 
 mendation of individuals. 
 
 + Among the new members this year were many who became noted in future 
 seasons; among them. Doctors F. H. Kelley, Levi Reuben, Marshall Calkins, A. 
 Jackson Howe, H. D. West. J. M. Graves, G. N. Langdon, J. M. Bishop, F. A. 
 Bosworth, H. W. Buxton and Ellsworth Burr.
 
 6l4 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 he left it based on the broad foundation of a sound 
 pathological and therapeutical philosophy." 
 
 The resolutions adopted at this meeting deprecated 
 the multiplying of medical colleges, and urged the 
 support of those institutions which were duly supplied 
 with proper means and facilities for instruction in the 
 various departments. The fellowship of the Associa- 
 tion was assured to all genuine Medical Reformers, 
 whatever the name, but refused to those whose leading 
 remedies consisted of "the mercurials, arsenicals, 
 antimonials and general bloodletting, together with 
 other means and methods equally destructive to life 
 and health." 
 
 The Sixth Annual Meeting was held in the city of 
 New York on the fifth and sixth days of June, 1855. 
 The Call had been made in terms according with a 
 resolution adopted at the previous meeting, and many 
 of those in attendance were physicians who had been 
 affiliated with the Reform movement set on foot in 
 185 1. This was significant of the disposition which 
 was fast gaining ground to obliterate as far as possible 
 the landmarks and controversies which had divided 
 the Eclectic and Botanic schools.* 
 
 * With this purpose, Dr. J. R. Buchanan and Dr. I. M. Comings, neither of 
 them, were in sympathy. They were at opposite ends of the magnetic pole, and 
 alike hostile to whatever did not accept their authority. One railed at the meeting 
 because of the Botanic and Reform physicians in it ; the other derided because the 
 dean of the Eclectic Medical Institute, as if speaking ej: cathedra, had formally 
 repudiated it. In both instances the words recoiled upon the men who uttered 
 them. Among the Eclectics at the meeting were Dr. R S. Newton of the Eclectic 
 Medical Institute ; Dr. H. Hollembaek of the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsyl- 
 vania ; Drs. Levi Reuben, Elijah Whitney, Grover Coe, H. E. Firth, B. J. Stow, 
 ex-president John Simms. Of the Physopathists and Reform physicians, many of 
 whom were afterward known as Eclectics, were Doctors G. W. Morrow, John W. 
 Johnson and Ellsworth Burr, of the Worcester Medical Institution ; Isaac J. 
 Sperry, Joseph D. Friend, H. A. Archer, of the Metropolitan Medical College; 
 E. J. Mattocks, John Law, Herbert Fearn.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 615 
 
 Jr. Wooster Beach wan elected president, and 
 .itroduced by Dr. Walter Burnham as the Father of 
 Eclectic Medicine. The other officers were Doctors 
 J. W. Johnson and Silas Wilcox, vice-presidents ; 
 Cyrus Johns and H. I. Fisk, recording secretaries ; 
 Hermes M. Sweet and Frank H. Kelley, corresponding 
 secretaries ; W. H. H. Crandall, of Pennsylvania, 
 treasurer. 
 
 The practice of reporting upon the status of Eclectic 
 Medicine in the several States was instituted at this 
 meeting. A discussion resulted which exhibited the 
 predominant sentiment to be in favor of harmonizing 
 minor differences and cooperating for the common 
 good. 
 
 Dr. Burnham remarked that the platform of the 
 Allopathic School was to fight every body else. He 
 insisted that Reformers ought now to join in one 
 solid phalanx to fight the Allopathic School. 
 
 Dr. I. M. Comings proposed that a platform of 
 principles ought to be set forth upon which all might 
 stand. 
 
 The " Baltimore Platform," adopted by the Reform 
 National Convention, was accordingly adopted ; " i. 
 That in the administration of remedial agents we 
 should employ only those, the therapeutical action of 
 which is physiological and not pathological. 2. That 
 disease is not vital action, but that condition of a 
 part which disqualifies it for the performance of its 
 functions in a normal manner." 
 
 Dr. Beach asked attention to the new procedure of 
 obtaining the active principles of the medicinal plants 
 in a concentrated form. He laid down the necessary 
 conditions : that they should be reliable, and that they 
 should be brought into as small a compass as possible,
 
 6l6 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 and the most elegant form for exhibition, without 
 injury to their medicinal qualities. 
 
 The subject of Medical Colleges was also considered. 
 Dr. Burnham submitted a report in favor of encour- 
 aging the institutions in favor of medical reform, 
 " and those only which are based on these principles, 
 and such as are well supplied with the means and facili- 
 ties for a complete and thorough course of instruction 
 in all the departments of medical science." 
 
 Dr. Burnham also reported a resolution recommend- 
 ing the Trustees of the several medical colleges to 
 admit to the general course of lectures such women 
 as might desire to avail themselves of the advantages 
 of a thorough medical education, or else to provide 
 them with such private instruction as was best 
 adapted to this end. 
 
 This was the first act of a general body of physicians 
 to sanction the instruction of women in Medicine. 
 
 Dr. Reuben presented a series of resolutions in 
 regard to the preparation of vegetable remedies in the 
 form of educts and active principles. The discovery 
 and isolation of these, he insisted, were original with 
 the Reformed School, but members of the Old School 
 and editors of their journals, now claimed them as 
 their own in a dishonest and dishonorable manner 
 knowing all the while that the credit did not of right 
 belong to them.* The resolutions were adopted. 
 
 The Seventh Annual Meeting was likewise held in 
 New York on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of 
 June, 1856. The members in attendance were princi- 
 pally from the Eastern and Middle States. The 
 constitution and platform, the same as had been 
 
 * Even the late Dr. J. Marion Sims proposed to " introduce Pinus Canadensis 
 to the profession ;" and also, the Stillingia Compound, or " McDade's formula."
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 617 
 
 reported by Dr. T. V. Morrow, in 1849, and adopted, 
 were now subscribed and adopted anew.* Dr. Samuel 
 Tuthill was elected president for the ensuing- year ; 
 Doctors R. S. Newton and M. Van Buren, vice- 
 presidents ; Doctors Joseph D. Friend and Grover 
 Coe, recording- secretaries, and Doctors Hermes M. 
 Sweet and Zoheth Freeman, corresponding secretaries. 
 
 The new methods of manufacture of medicines, 
 the obtaining and employing of the educts and 
 active principles of the vegetable remedies, constituted 
 an important feature of the discussions. 
 
 Dr. H. E. Firth called the attention of the Associa- 
 tion to the action of Dr. Joseph R. Buchanan and his 
 associate editors of the College Journal of Medical 
 Science, misrepresenting the members of the National 
 Association and denouncing it as having no valid 
 existence. The matter was referred to a Committee 
 consisting of Doctors H. E. Firth, J. D. Friend and 
 Grover Coe, who reported a preamble and resolution 
 declaring that Dr. Buchanan had not been a member 
 of the Association for five years past, and that the 
 claims of the others to speak for Eclectics were as 
 untenable as his, and cautioning the public against 
 receiving their statements. 
 
 The other proceedings were devoid of interest. Dr. 
 Friend spoke of the importance of a retrospect of 
 the progress of Medical Reform, and the value which 
 would be attached to a history of its rise and progress 
 in this country. Other speakers described the con- 
 dition of the Reformed practice as never more 
 
 * The medical colleges appear to have been largely represented. Doctors 
 Walter Burnham, Frank H. Kelley and John W. Johnson were professors in the 
 Worcester Medical Institution ; Dr. Henry HoUembaek represented the Eclectic 
 Medical College of Pennsylvania, and Doctors R. S. Newton, Z. Freeman and 
 J. M. San<iers wiere from the Eclectic Medical Institute, then in litigation.
 
 6l8 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 prosperous,* and cited the fact that the legislatures of 
 the several states had repealed the oppressive medical 
 statutes. They deplored the indifference of practi- 
 tioners in regard to the meetings of their State and 
 National Associations, as suicidal, and exposing them 
 to a renewal of the old legislation. 
 
 The Eighth Annual Meeting was held at the hall of 
 the Eclectic Medical Institute in the city of Cincinnati, 
 on the seventeenth and eighteenth days of June, 1857. 
 Dr. Robert S. Newton, of Ohio, was elected president 
 for the coming year ; Doctors John Kost and Henry 
 Hollembaek, vice-presidents ; Doctors Grover Coe and 
 John M. Scudder, recording secretaries, and Doctors 
 L. E. Jones and I. N. Comings, corresponding secre- 
 taries. There was little interest exhibited and the 
 meetings occupied but a brief period each day. Few 
 of the members who had been appointed to read 
 papers had attended, but transmitted their essays. 
 The next annual meeting was appointed at Cincinnati, 
 in June, 1858, but it was not held, nor was even a 
 notification issued. 
 
 The National Eclectic Medical Association had been 
 brought into active existence by ihe masterly energy 
 of Dr. Thomas V. Morrow and his helpers, and was 
 sustained after his death by the cooperation of the 
 public-spirited Reformers of New England and the 
 Middle States, Calvin Newton, Thomas Cooke and 
 their associates. When these men likewise passed 
 from life there were none left strong and disinterested 
 to continue the organization in efficient activity. 
 There was a lack of esprit de corps which was sure to be 
 fatal. The medical colleges were disorganized by 
 
 * The number of Eclectic and Botanic physicians in the United States at tliis 
 time was estimated at eight thousand.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 619 
 
 jangling and jealousies, and could no longer con- 
 tribute their efforts ; and the practitioners who had 
 attended the meetings had been made to feel them- 
 selves regarded as an unimportant and insignificant 
 element. Hence, after the meeting at Worcester 
 there was a general decadence, till at the last, its vital 
 energy exhausted, the Association passed away un- 
 noticed and hardly remembered. 
 
 WORCESTER MEDICAL INSTITUTION. CONTINUED. 
 
 After the changes in the Faculty, the condition of 
 affairs in the Worcester Medical Institution had 
 seemed to be greatly improved. Dr. Walter Burnham, 
 the professor of surgery, was at the zenith of his 
 career as an operating surgeon, and he had no 
 superior in America. Dr. G. W. Morrow and Michael 
 Gabbert, of Botanico-Medical College of Memphis, 
 Dr. E. M. Parrit and Dr. E. S. McClellan were the 
 others. The classes were larger than they had been 
 before,* and the College was in its own building, 
 encumbered, however, with a mortgage. The medical 
 societies of New England, including the new Physo- 
 Medical Society of Connecticut and excluding the 
 other, were enlisted in its support. 
 
 In 1852, Dr. Newton attended the annual meeting 
 of the National Eclectic Medical Association at 
 Rochester, in company with Dr. Burnham. He soon 
 signified his appproval of the sentimentsf avowed by 
 
 * Of the graduates of 1852 were Doctors George W. King, of New York ; 
 Noah R. Martin and O. H. Jewell, of Maine, and Frank H. Kelley, of New 
 Hampshire, afterward professor and editor of the Worcester /c/urna/ 0/ Medicine. 
 
 + At this period the Botanic physicians of New England had very generally 
 adopted the designation of " Physopathists."
 
 620 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 the principal members, and decided to unite with 
 them. He was elected president of the Association. 
 This was apparently most fortunate, for he possessed 
 in an eminent degree the superior constructive ability 
 joined with unselfish devotion which had characterized 
 Thomas V. Morrow. 
 
 The prospects of a permanent National body were 
 brighter than ever. 
 
 Dr. Newton was also successful in another matter. 
 The rival Colleges of Syracuse and Rochester agreed 
 to harmonize their differences and unite their Facul- 
 ties. Accordingly, the corporation of the Central 
 Medical College was relinquished ; Doctors Reuben 
 and Dolley were added to the Faculty at Syracuse, and 
 by another agreement Doctors Newton and G. W. 
 Morrow, of the Worcester Medical Institution, also 
 became professors.* 
 
 The arrangement, however, lasted but a solitary 
 term. The next season, Doctors Newton, Morrow, 
 Dolley and Reuben resigned all connection with the 
 institution, and Dr. Reuben became a professor at 
 Worcester. 
 
 The ensuing autumn. Dr. Newton died. This was 
 a calamity alike for the college of which he was the 
 founder and master spirit, and to the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, of which he had become the 
 most prominent member. It was necessary to take 
 steps to assure the future of the institution. 
 
 A Convention of the friends of the College was 
 summoned, and met at Worcester on the twenty-sixth 
 
 * Only three of the Faculty of Syracuse remained in office, Doctors S. H. 
 Potter, Dwight Russell and Dr. Joseph Brown, now dean. Dr. Joseph Flattery was 
 elected teacher, but did not lecture. He made a sensation by procuring a fac- 
 simile of the diploma of the College with signatures of the officers, and hawking it 
 to unwary individuals over New York and Canada.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 62 1 
 
 day of October, 1853. About sixty were in attendance.* 
 Dr. Walter Burnham was chosen to preside. After a 
 full survey of the field, resolutions were adopted in 
 regard to future management and provision for the 
 indebtedness. Aid was pledged to the Institution till 
 it should be placed upon a permanent basis. The 
 members of the Convention evinced great resolution, 
 and it was confidently believed that a new era had 
 begun for Young Physic. 
 
 The Board of Trustees accordingly made the 
 changes as advised, and adopted an order immediately 
 afterward that women should no more attend the 
 lectures as medical students. The prosperity of the 
 College, however, was by no means assured by this 
 action, and it was rescinded at a later term. The 
 effort to continue the operations of the College 
 received great encouragement. The terms, as usual, 
 were held in the spring, enabling the students, in the 
 true Yankee style of those days, to gain the money 
 for tuition by teaching school of winters. f The 
 Faculty consisted of able and resolute men, who stood 
 at the head of their profession. Two of themj held 
 
 * Many of these were representative men. Of the number were Doctors 
 Ellsworth Burr, Job T. Dickens, John Stowe, Walter Burnham, Marshall Calkins, 
 Horatio G. Newton. Frank H. Kelley, G. W. Skinner, B. S. Warren, Nathaniel 
 Brooks and Isaiah Hutchins. 
 
 t In the class of 1854, Dr. Andrew J. Howe graduated and delivered the Vale- 
 dictory Address, advocating the strict Botanic and Eclectic doctrine. Among the 
 graduates of 1855, were Doctors John Stowe, H. H. Brigham. H. M. Hodgins, 
 Lysander Chandler and James M. Bishop ; and Dr. Stowe delivered the Valedic- 
 tory Address. In 18^6, Doctors John G. Johnson, William Jackson and R. M. Ayres 
 were graduates, and the Honorary Degree was bestowed upon Doctors George 
 Beard Isaac Smith, and several others. 
 
 t Doctors Michael Gabbert and G. W. Morrow. The other professors were 
 Doctors Walter Burnham, Levi Reuben, John W. Johnson and James Bushee, 
 with Dr. F. A. Bosworth as Demonstrator of Anatomy. Dr Reuben left in 1855, 
 and Dr. A. J. Howe became demonstrator. In 1856, Dr. Howe was appointed 
 Professor of Anatomy, and Dr. John Stowe demonstrator.
 
 622 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 chairs also in the Botanico-Medical College of Mem- 
 phis, showing that no rancorous partisan feeling 
 existed. Dr. Gabbert died in 1856, and his place was 
 taken by Dr. Ellsworth Burr, of Connecticut. Dr. 
 John King, of the Eclectic College of Medicine of 
 Cincinnati, was appointed to the Chair of Obstetrics. 
 The same year the Worcester Journal of Medicine^ then 
 conducted by Doctors F. H. Kelley, R. O. Williams 
 and Andrew J. Howe, was discontinued. The arrange- 
 ments to defray the indebtedness had not been 
 successful, and an application to the General Court 
 for an appropriation was defeated. The Trustees 
 were compelled to sell the building, which had been 
 built with such glowing expectations ; and in 1857, 
 the lecture-term of the institution was held at Chap- 
 man Hall, in the city of Boston. The resolution 
 inhibiting women from attending was now rescinded, 
 and two received the degree of Doctor of Medicine at 
 the next Commencement.* Dr. Burnham now resigned 
 from the Faculty, and Dr. John W. Johnson succeeded 
 him as dean. Another term was held in the autumn 
 of 1858 and the early months of winter. 
 
 Meanwhile a proposition was submitted for a union 
 with the Metropolitan Medical College. The trustees 
 of the latter institution appointed a Committee for 
 negotiation, and an Appeal was put forth by friends 
 of both institutions for an endowment. Suddenly a 
 jealous spirit arose among the supporters of the 
 Metropolitan Medical College, and the affair was 
 abruptly terminated. The sessions of the Worcester 
 Institution were suspended. Care had been taken to 
 preserve the validity of the charter, and members of 
 
 • The class was small, and only nine graduated. Honorary degrees were 
 bestowed upon Doctors B. J. Stow and J. A. Dodge.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 623 
 
 the Massachusetts Eclectic Medical Society have 
 several times proposed a resuming of active operations. 
 Whether, however, this will ever take place is a 
 problem of the future. 
 
 TROUBLES AT CINCINNATI. CONTINUED. 
 
 In 1854, the Trustees of the Eclectic Medical 
 Institute appointed Dr. Charles H. Cleaveland, of 
 Vermont, professor of Materia Medica, to succeed 
 Dr. Bickley. The new professor had been educated 
 in the orthodox school, but for some occult reason 
 had declared himself in sympathy with the Eclectics. 
 He knew little of the new remedies. At this time 
 great interest was taken by Eclectic and Reform 
 physicians in the new discovery of " Concentrated 
 Remedies." These consisted of educts from the 
 various medicinal plants used in Botanic practice, 
 and were prized as containing the principal active 
 virtues, while obviating the disagreeable necessity 
 of administering remedies in bulk.* Dr. Newton 
 was a zealous advocate of the new medicines, while 
 Dr. Cleaveland distrusted them and seemed even to 
 hold them in contempt. He had not even outgrown 
 the old-fashioned dosing with mercury. His utterances 
 furnished the Physopathic physicians with a weapon 
 against the Eclectics which they did not hesitate to 
 wield. Naturally and almost unavoidably the different 
 teachings with Faculty resulted in personal disputes. 
 
 * Dr. Isaac Jacobs, of Maine, early engaged in these investigations, and was 
 followed by B. Keith, of New Hampshire, afterward of New York city. Dr. 
 John King made the discovery of the podophyllin resin and several other 
 resinoids, and Dr. Wilffam S. Merrell, of Cincinnati, going beyond them all, 
 established the Eclectic pharmacal products on a firm foundation, largely assuring 
 the permanency of the new practice.
 
 624 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The one made the medicines manufactured by Dr. 
 Keith his target, and the other as pertinaciously 
 insisted upon their purity and value as remedies. 
 Other issues were presently injected into the con- 
 troversy, and the Faculty divided into two parties. 
 All but Dr. Zoheth Freeman took sides with Dr. 
 Cleaveland.* 
 
 At this time Dr. Newton owned and published the 
 Eclectic Medical Journal, which had succeeded the 
 Wcsterji Medical Reformer. He also published the 
 Aewion's Express, as a separate venture — a practice 
 not uncommon with the Faculty of the Eclectic 
 Medical Institute. f His manner of lauding Keith's 
 medicines in those periodicals, as well as setting forth 
 the operations of the Clinical Institute, was distaste- 
 ful to his fellow-professors. They proposed that Dr. 
 Cleaveland, being a scholarly man and accomplished 
 writer, should conduct the Journal. Dr. Newton 
 would not consent, and they established the College 
 Journal of Medical Science, with Dr. I. G. Jones and all 
 the Faculty except two as editors. The Eclectic Medical 
 Journal was thus virtually repudiated as representing 
 the Institute. 
 
 The Faculty had also taken a position of disloyalty 
 and open hostility to the National Eclectic Medical 
 Association. Dr. Buchanan had projects of his own 
 that he was eager to carry out. He had not been in 
 sympathy from the first with the views and ambitions 
 
 * The Daily Freettian (Cincinnati) of May i, 1856, explained the matter in this 
 way: " A difficulty in relation to a female student made the Newtons and 
 Freeman allies, and a great variety of circumstances arrayed Drs. Cleaveland, 
 Sherwood, Buchanan, Hoyt and King in opposition." 
 
 + Dr. Buchanan published ihe Journal 0/ Man, to set^orth his peculiar views 
 of Neurology, and Dr. Cleaveland \.\\^ Journal 0/ Rational Medicine^ and there are 
 other instances.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 625 
 
 of Dr. Thomas V. Morrow in relation to an organiza- 
 tion of the several bodies of Botanic and Reformed 
 physicians. He employed his influence steadily against 
 the National Association, and presently his associates 
 concurred with him. 
 
 He took the occasion of the Annual Meeting at 
 New York, in 1855, to proclaim his unfriendly senti- 
 ments. The fact that it was presided over by such 
 men as Walter Burnham and Wooster Beach passed 
 for nothing. He put forth his disclaimer in the 
 secular journals in no modest or gentle terms. The 
 Association, he affirmed, was in no sense a national 
 affair, and did not represent the views or sentiments 
 of American Eclectics. 'It was a conglomerate, 
 made up of individuals from the different schools. 
 He, himself, as an individual, as a medical professor, 
 and as dean in behalf of the Faculty, entered his 
 protest, adding ex cathedra this declaration : 
 
 " The Eclectic Medical Institute of Cincinnati is 
 the parent school in which the name Eclectic was first 
 adopted as a designation of liberal American princi- 
 ples in medicine, anterior to which the title American 
 Eclectic was unknown." 
 
 This assumption of exclusive superiority and ortho- 
 doxy was nowhere met with a semblance of obsequious 
 deference. Several editors of Reform journals re- 
 sponded with derision. The Worcester Journal of 
 Medicine made a reply as sharp as the attack. " He 
 labors under the impression," said Dr. F. H. Kelley, 
 " that. Eclecticism comes only from the Cincinnati 
 Eclectic Medical College, and radiates from that 
 institution solely because he is connected with it. 
 He speaks as if he were the founder and living 
 embodiment of the whole system. And especially 
 
 40
 
 626 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 does he 'protest ' against its use by a medical associa- 
 tion in New York so far off from what appears to him 
 the centre of the world, of the name ' National Eclectic 
 Medical Association.' He appears unwilling to allow 
 that there is much Eclecticism east of the Alleghanies." 
 
 Such was the general response from Reform circles 
 in every quarter. He was regarded as fond of dis- 
 turbance, a disorganizer and a visionary, and his 
 sympathy with the Eclectic school generally doubted. 
 Of course, he never abated in his opposition, but 
 repeated his disclaimers, and finally induced the 
 Faculty of the Institute to unite in a declaration of 
 hostility to the Association,* and to Keith's new 
 remedies. 
 
 Dr. John King had also his controversy with Dr. 
 Newton, which had extended over many months. It 
 was a darling ambition of Dr. Newton to figure as an 
 author, and the two had been engaged together in 
 the compiling of the American Eclectic Dispensatory. 
 Dr. King declared Dr. Newton guilty of ill faith in 
 the matter and of gross plagiarism in his contribu- 
 tions to the work, and finally gave him notice in the 
 summer of 1854, that his name should no longer 
 appear on the titlepage. Dr. Newton immediately 
 entered into an agreement with B. Keith & Company 
 for the publication of a book which should supersede 
 the Dispensatory, \ and bring their preparations into 
 
 * The following resolution was adopted on March 5, 1836 : " Resolved, That 
 the Faculty of this Institute do not recognize any existing organization in the 
 United States as ' The National Eclectic Medical Association,' and will not 
 authorize any person or persons to represent us in any body so styled, as at 
 present constituted." 
 
 t Legal proceedings were instituted against Dr. King for the taking of copy- 
 righted matter from another work. He supposed that Dr. Newton instigated the 
 suit.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 627 
 
 general favor among Eclectic physicians. Having 
 two medical journals under his control, he vi^as able 
 to do this effectually. 
 
 Dr. Newton had sagacity to perceive that it was 
 unwise as well as inconsistent for the Eclectic Med- 
 ical Institute to maintain an attitude of hostility 
 toward the National Eclectic Medical Association. 
 The Journal reflected his sentiments and so consti- 
 tuted another ground for angry dispute. These 
 matters were presently all included in the personal 
 controversy with Dr. King. An agreement was 
 finally made which was peculiarly significant in its 
 terms, but which was divulged and disregarded 
 almost as soon as it was made.* 
 
 In the month of March, 1856, upon the very heel of 
 this negotiation, the controversies passed beyond 
 the stage of amicable adjustment, to be decided in 
 another way. The Eclectic Medical Institute was a 
 joint-stock corporation with an authorized capital of 
 twenty thousand dollars and power to increase it to 
 sixty thousand. Only nineteen thousand, however, 
 had been issued ; part of it to defray pecuniary obliga- 
 tions. About a third of the whole amount was the 
 property of Dr. L. E. Jones, and a somewhat smaller 
 portion belonged to Dr. Newton. The Trustees, 
 willing to get off with as little work as possible, had 
 
 * It was stipulated that Dr. Newton should abstain from publishing in his Express 
 or in the Eclectic Medical Journal anything reflecting upon other professors or upon 
 the College itself ; that he, in neither publication, should "advocate and uphold the 
 so-called National Eclectic Medical Convention [Association], which is to meet in 
 New York next June, and which has been repudiated by the Faculty of the 
 Institute;" and that Dr. Newton is not to keep before the public, as Associate 
 Bditor, any gentleman known to be connected with the manufacture and sale of 
 nostrums." This last clause related to Dr. Grover Coe, and perhaps to Dr. J. M. 
 Sanders, as being employed by B. Keith & Company. The "Concentrated 
 Medicines," which were prepared by that house, were included under the name 
 •of " nostrums."
 
 628 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 authorized the Faculty of the Institute, several years 
 before to receive donations and subscriptions. Dr. 
 Newton held the office of Treasurer, both of the 
 Faculty and Board of Trustees. The time had come 
 to pay the usual dividend to the stockholders, and it 
 should be paid from the receipts. This contingency 
 produced the rupture. Dr. Newton accused Dr. 
 Buchanan of having, in his capacity of dean, collected 
 the money from the students, and made default in 
 the payment. He threatened to report the matter to 
 the Trustees. On the other hand it was asserted that 
 Dr. Newton himself, had collected between seven and 
 eight hundred dollars from the students in the 
 graduating class, and suppressed the fact. 
 
 There were, of course, several other issues and 
 complaints that were more or less discussed. Dr. 
 Newton was represented by his colleagues as 
 ignorant and illiterate, incompetent to lecture, and 
 as having a disposition to deal with individuals and 
 engage in enterprises of doubtful character, and 
 not consistent with his position as professor in a 
 Medical College. In short, the controversy included 
 both parties, and could only be decided by the 
 Board of Trustees to be elected on the first Monday 
 [7th] of April. 
 
 An active struggle began to make sure of a major- 
 ity of the votes. Dr. L. E. Jones held the decision in 
 his own hands, and both overtures and threats were 
 made to persuade him to transfer his stock and votes 
 to the friends of the five professors. He refused, and 
 they resorted to another expedient. They took their 
 precedent from the transaction with Doctors 
 Baldridge and Jones, when the original stock was 
 issued. They, not unnaturally, supposed that the
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 629 
 
 power given the Faculty by the Trustees, to receive 
 donations and subscriptions, and transact other 
 important business, was sufficient to warrant the 
 issue of additional shares of stock. A meeting of the 
 Faculty was held accordingly, on the evening of the 
 fifth of April, which voted to remove Dr. Newton 
 from the office of Treasurer, and to issue new stock to 
 the amount of seven thousand dollars. These were 
 transferred at once to purchasers for promissory 
 notes, payable in five years, as the equivalent.* This 
 assured the professors and their party a majority of 
 the shares of the stock. 
 
 Nevertheless, the law did not confer powers of 
 cumulative voting, without restriction, upon stock- 
 holders. The expedient was employed by both parties 
 to multiply their votes by transferring shares to 
 others, and obtaining from them the power of attorney 
 to vote in their name. Each party, professing to act 
 for the Corporation, held an election, and two sets of 
 Trustees were chosen. f Dr. William Sherwood was 
 elected Treasurer by one Board, and Dr. R. S. Newton 
 by the other. The former Board after organizing 
 adjourned till the next Saturday evening, when they 
 were estopped by an injunction from proceeding 
 further. Meanwhile, the lectures of the spring term 
 
 * The certificates were already prepared by Dr. Kinp, who wrote an elegant 
 hand, like fine copperplate engraving; so that there was no delay. Indeed, Dr. 
 I. G. Jones had given his note for shares of this stock several days before this 
 meeting was held. 
 
 + The Board elected at the College Building consisted of the Rev. D. W. Clark, 
 D. D.; Rev. I. D. Williamson, D. D.; Rev. C. L. Loos, S. B Keys, General James 
 Birney, C. H. Gould, George S. Jenkins, J. Reeves, Dr. J. Wilson, Dr. J. R. 
 Buchanan, Dr. John King, Dr. William Sherwood, Dr. C. H. Cleaveland. The 
 Board elected at Dr. Newton's house was composed of Messrs. W. B. Pierce, J. P. 
 Mayer, A. Death, J. C. C. Holenshade, W. F. Hurlburt, H. Leonard, J. P. 
 Cunningham, C. S. G. Wright, H. M. Ritter, J. G. Henshall. Dr. R. S. Newton, 
 Dr. L. E. Jones, Dr. Z. Freeman, Dr. A. H. Baldridge, Dr. Orin E. Newton.
 
 630 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 were continued at the College building, then in Dr. 
 Sherwood's custody ; but Dr. Newton declined to take 
 part. The injunction was removed on the twenty- 
 ninth day of April, and active measures began. The 
 Board of Trustees having possession of the College 
 met the same evening, and voted to remove Doctors 
 Newton and Freeman from the Faculty, appointing 
 Doctors Sherwood and King to their places. 
 
 The other Board also assembled the same evening, 
 and in turn voted to remove the five professors from 
 their chairs. Dr. Newton was authorized and directed 
 to take possession of the Institute building. 
 
 The attack was made the same evening with many 
 indications of premeditation, even to minute particu- 
 lars. A door in the building was broken open, and 
 Doctors Newton and Freeman entering, took formal 
 possession of the upper floors. They were accom- 
 panied by a party numbering about thirty, obtained 
 from the streets of a large city, and indifferent in 
 regard to what they did. They were armed with 
 pistols, knives and bludgeons. Doctors Cleaveland, 
 Sherwood and Buchanan attempting to go up, were 
 forcibly resisted and their lives threatened. They 
 remained with the students of the College in the 
 rooms below. A little before daybreak a party of 
 individuals sallied from the upper part of the building, 
 went away and presently returned, dragging with 
 them a six-pound cannon. It was afterward learned 
 that the garrison above had already brought powder 
 and slugs, with provisions for a prolonged siege. The 
 cannon was seized by the police, but no attempt was 
 made to dislodge the men from the building. 
 
 The five Professors declined any further physical 
 conflict, but left the College in possession of its
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 631 
 
 garrison. A respectful application was made for 
 permission to conclude the course of Lectures, and 
 refused. Rooms were immediately engaged at 
 Gordon's Hall, to which the majority of the students 
 followed them. Party spirit was very warm, and 
 every endeavor by promise and alarm was employed 
 to deter them. It was even represented that the 
 organization was illegal, and that the degrees which 
 might be conferred would be invalid in law. It must 
 be acknowledged, nevertheless, whatever the merits 
 of the controversy, that the ablest and most scholarly 
 members of the Faculty were of this party. At 
 the close of the term, twenty-one students received 
 diplomas in the name of the Eclectic Medical Insti- 
 tute of Cincinnati ; and a winter session was duly 
 announced. In order to complete the number 
 required in the Faculty, Doctors Walter Burnham 
 and Andrew J. Howe, of the Worcester Medical Insti- 
 tution, were elected Professors of Surgery* and 
 Anatomy, and Dr. Sherwood was transferred to the 
 Chair of the Theory and Practice of Medicine. 
 
 Meanwhile the Board of Trustees, now in possession 
 of the College building, also organized a Faculty to 
 complete the spring term, appointing Doctors William 
 Byrd Powell, L. E. Jones and J. M. Sanders in place 
 of Doctors Buchanan, Cleaveland and Hoyt. The 
 term did not last many days, closing on the thirteenth 
 day of May. Fifteen students were graduated.* 
 Arrangements were made shortly afterward for the 
 
 * Dr. Burnham pleading the condition of his health, did not lecture, and 
 Dr. Howe delivered the course in his place. After this Dr. Howe made liis home 
 permanently in Cincinnati. Dr. King was at this time a professor in the 
 Worcester Medical Institution. 
 
 t Of this number were Doctors John M. Scudder and Edwin Freeman ; Dr. 
 Scudder delivermg the Valedictory Address.
 
 632 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ensuing winter term. Drs. Bickley and Baldridge were 
 appointed to the places which they had filled several 
 years before; Dr. John M. Scudder was made Professor, 
 and Dr. Edwin Freeman Demonstrator of Anatomy. 
 
 The National Eclectic Medical Association met in 
 June, in the city of New York. Both Dr. Newton 
 and Dr. Freeman attended, and took an active part in 
 the proceedings. Dr. Newton read the Constitution 
 of the Association and the resolutions as adopted in 
 1849 when Dr. Morrow was president, and they were 
 immediately adopted and signed by those in attend- 
 ance. Resolutions were also adopted disapproving of 
 the inimical action of the five professors of the Eclectic 
 Medical Institute toward the national organization. 
 
 The summer was devoted by both parties to angry 
 controversy and legal maneuvering. The journals 
 published by the respective parties teemed with 
 special pleading, accusations, recriminations,* and 
 personal reviling, saturated often with flagrant inde- 
 cency, as is the emanation of the swine-pen or 
 
 * It was a favorite taunt for each to accuse the other of a predilection for 
 calomel. An article of Dr. Cleaveland in the Anterican Lancet^ made use of a 
 sentiment for which he was severely criticised, both by the Physopathists and his 
 Eclectic adversaries. 
 
 " I am of the opinion," said he, " that, as a glandular stimulant, podophyllin 
 alone or combined with bloodrooi, will be found equal to calomel, and that as a 
 cholagogue cathartic, it is superior, more certain, and more safe than the mercurials; 
 but that it is not a solvent, and therefore cannot be relied on to supply the place of 
 the mercurials in those cases where the solvent property is demanded as in 
 inflammatory adhesions of the tissues of the eye, or in pleural or in other adhesions 
 of serous surfaces Neither do I think it w;ll remove deposits of inflammatory 
 exudations following syphilitic infections, as calomel will." 
 
 Dr. Cleaveland tried lamely to explain away this language so as to divert atten- 
 tion. Perhaps its counterpart can be found in this paragraph of Dr. J. Milton 
 Sanders, which, in its way is equally incapable of ready deglutition, especially in 
 view of actual fact. 
 
 " We are happy to think that the great majority of the Allopathic profession 
 are men of liberal minds and of accomplished education. The Allopathy of 
 Europe, ivhich is really modern Eclecticism, is now presenting to the world the 
 singular fact of the medical profession marching forward in the van of 
 scientific progress. This is the case, likewise, with a large portion of American 
 Allopaths." — Eclectic Medical Journal, April, 1856.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 633 
 
 some filthier domain. We look in vain for that quiet 
 dignity and self-possession indicative of a serene 
 consciousness of being in the right, and beyond the 
 vile atmosphere in which reptilian creatures abound. 
 Perhaps they were displayed by those who performed 
 their duties in quietness, meeting reproach with 
 silence, and biding the issues with patience, conscious 
 that even with defeat, the cause of right is neverthe- 
 less not lost. 
 
 An action of quo warranto, by which to determine 
 which was the lawful Board of Trustees of the 
 Eclectic Medical Institute was pending through the 
 summer. The decision was finall)' made on the 
 twenty-fifth day of October. As is too often the case 
 in lawsuits, the intrinsic merits of the controversy 
 did not enter into consideration. It was admitted 
 that the Board of Trustees had constituted the 
 Faculty a Committee of Finance, having power to 
 receive subscriptions to the capital stock. The sale 
 of stock for promissory notes, however, had not been 
 authorized in that resolution. The stock, therefore, 
 which the Faculty had issued on the fifth of April 
 was ordered to be cancelled, and the Board of Trustees 
 elected at the house of Dr. Newton declared to be 
 the lawful Board. 
 
 The terms of this decision exhibited ample proba- 
 bility that it might he reversed by the Supreme 
 Court. The wiser second thought led the defeated 
 men to refrain from carrying on the legal contest 
 further. While the decision of the Court required the 
 cancelling of the new stock which had been issued, it 
 fully exonerated them from any imputation of inten- 
 tional niisconduct. They had no more to gain by an 
 ayipcal and ultimate victory than a title stained by
 
 634 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 dishonor and contention,* and a franchise accom- 
 panied by an indebtedness which was liable to wreck 
 the Eclectic Medical Institute. 
 
 Accordingly, upon the twenty-second day of Decem- 
 ber, 1856, articles of associationf were duly filed in 
 the office of the Auditor of Hamilton county, Ohio, 
 creating a corporation under the name and style of 
 " The Eclectic College of Medicine." 
 
 The new institution, despite its drawbacks, was not 
 long in gaining countenance from the leading Eclectic 
 physicians of the United States. Its teachers were 
 superior, and they had the discreetness to terminate 
 the controversy, so far as related to offensive per- 
 sonalities, in the pages of the College Journal.\ 
 
 The winter term was successful, both in regard to 
 patronage, and the character of the class. Twenty- 
 nine students graduated, many of whom are yet in 
 active and creditable practice. § 
 
 * College Jourjial, December, 1856, "The Charter [of the Eclectic Medical 
 Institute] has never been regularly obeyed by the corporation, and the legal 
 existence has, therefore, no substantial basis upon which an institution can be 
 sustained." 
 
 + The "corporators" applying for this charter were Joseph R. Buchanan, 
 William Sherwood, A. Jackson Howe, C. H Cleaveland, James C. C. Holenshade, 
 John King, William A. Ashton, A. H. Wells, William B. Sheppard, William S. 
 Sampson. 
 
 X College Journal, November, 1856, " Knowing, however, that ' a controversy 
 with such men * * who have no regard for truth, nor sense of strict honor, is 
 endless in its nature, and becomes lower and lower as it proceeds,' it was finally 
 determined to embody all the leading facts together, with an exposition of the 
 character of our opponents, in the form of a pamphlet, which might be sent to all 
 who desire to know the truth, and thus leave the pages of the College Journal to 
 be occupied by matter of scientific interest and practical importance. * * * 
 Our war with such individuals shall hereafter be confined, as far as possible, to 
 one of non-intercourse." 
 
 Writing upon the topic at a later day, the editors remark that in regard to the 
 slanders which some kind friends thought ought to be contradicted, they could 
 only say that the individuals propagating them were unworthy to be believed, and 
 it was not well to occupy space with matters of a personal character. 
 
 § Among the graduates were Doctors Isaiah Brothers, Meredith W. Henry, 
 R. Winans, H. A. Pelerman, Sarah C. Brigham, Eliza A. Brown, Honorary 
 degrees were also conferred upon Doctors Horace G. Barrows and Samuel S. Judd.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 635 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Institute also followed the 
 career which was before it. Spurred on by rivalship, 
 renewed endeavors were put forth to extend its influ- 
 ence and keep unbroken the number of its students 
 and patrons. In this it seems to have been very 
 successful, graduating forty-two at the close of the 
 winter term and twenty-three at the spring term.* 
 
 The annual meeting of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association was held this summer at the 
 Eclectic Medical Institute. Dr. Newton was elected 
 president, and Doctors Grover Coe and J. M. Scudder, 
 secretaries. The proceedings were significantly tame 
 and uninteresting. The medical colleges were suffer- 
 ing from intestinal discord and financial depression, 
 and the controversy at Cincinnati added its malign 
 influence. The meeting was ill attended, and, although 
 the succeeding one was again appointed at Cincinnati, 
 it was only a perfunctory matter. It was never held, 
 nor even any attempt made to call it together. 
 
 For the next two years the history of the two rival 
 colleges was uneventful. The strife ceased to be of 
 interest beyond the contending parties. The Faculties 
 continued each year with incidental changes, some 
 of which, however, were significant. Dr. Buchanan 
 withdrew from the Eclectic College, and Dr. King 
 became the Dean. He continued to write articles for 
 the College Journal.] The classes, however, were 
 
 * In these enumerations we recognize Doctors Isaac Spangler, .■Austin B. 
 Westcott, Francis H. F"isk, Daniel W. McCarthy and Herod D. Garrison. The 
 honorary degree was conferred upon Dr. I. J. M. Goss, a graduate of the Eclectic 
 Medical College of Pennsylvania, and eleven others. 
 
 t This publication, barring its hostility to Eastern Eclectics and to the National 
 organization, was superior in ability to all the other Reform periodicals. It 
 appears to have been so recognized by the leading Eclectics of that [)eriod Among 
 these we enumerate Paul W. Allen, L. C. Dollev, I. J. M. Goss, Abraham Livezy, 
 Dr. E. Smith, R. O. Williams, H. G. Barrows. M. W. Henry, J. A Hcnning, W. 
 S. Merrell; also, W. Byrd Powell and John Buchanan. Lr Powell had become 
 estranged from the Eclectic Medical Institute, and Dr. Buchanan was a favorite 
 contributor to both the journals at Cincinnati.
 
 636 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 not quite so numerous as in the rival institu- 
 tion, but they were declared to be more thoroughly- 
 instructed.* 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Institute made a somewhat 
 greater display of success. There were more changes 
 in the Faculty, but the principal instructors continued 
 the same. In 1858, Dr. Herod D. Garrison succeeded 
 to the Chair of Chemistry, Dr. J. Cam Massie became 
 professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine, 
 and Dr. John M. Scudder was transferred to the 
 department of Obstetrics. Doctors W. Byrd Powell 
 and A. H. Baldridge were assigned to the equivocal 
 honor of emeriti, and not long afterward dropped off 
 the announcements. The graduates that year num- 
 bered fifty-seven. f The next 5^ear Dr. Charles T. Hart 
 became professor of Physiology, and Doctors Bickley 
 and Massie vacated their respective chairs. The 
 number of graduates was but twenty-six,J a significant 
 indication of a waning of the fortunes of the Institute. 
 
 It was now becoming manifest that it was ill-advised 
 to continue the existence of the two colleges in this 
 attitude of competition. One or the other, and perhaps 
 both, would succumb. A conference was held between 
 several of the Trustees of both institutions, and an 
 agreement made to drop the organization of the 
 
 * There were eighteen graduates in the winter term of 1857-58, sixteen in the 
 spring term, nineteen in the next winter session, and twenty-four in the spring 
 term. Among them we find the names of Uriah N. Mellette, Constantine Markt, 
 Rebecca V. Anton, J. K. Hoyt, making one hundred and twenty-six graduates and 
 thirty-tour Honorary. 
 
 t Among these were Doctors W. T. Branstrup, C. T. Hart, Richard Marsh, O. 
 S. Templeton and Elisha S. Warner. 
 
 % In this enumeration appear the familiar names of F. P. Antle, R. G. Barham, 
 A. P. Colter, Joseph R. Duncan, W. W. Houser and Milton Jay, most of them still 
 in active life.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 637 
 
 younger college.* Dr. C. H. Cleaveland gives a further 
 account in the Journal of Rational Medicine for January, 
 i860. After declaring the prosperity of the Eclectic 
 College of Medicine firmly established, he adds that 
 " Dr. King, Dr. Sherwood and Dr. Howe — to whom, in 
 connection with seven others, the Corporators had 
 placed the College and its property /;/ trust — without 
 consultation with their associate Trustees, sold that 
 which was never theirs to sell," and that it was "done 
 secretly ; " also, that they resigned their professor- 
 ships on the fifth of October on promises of professor- 
 ships in the Institute, and "late in the evening, 
 without the slightest intimation to the [seven] other 
 Trustees, they produced the writings already prepared 
 in secret, and went through the farce of concluding 
 the bargain and transfer." 
 
 Nevertheless, the other Trustees do not seem to 
 have objected to begin the next session at the old 
 College building as in former times.f The declaration 
 was made of adherence to "the principles of practice 
 obtained in the old Eclectic Medical Institute." 
 
 COLLEGES OF PHILADELPHIA. CONTINUED. 
 
 The history of medicine in Philadelphia does by no 
 means derive its principal significance and impressive- 
 ness from the petty conflicts and misconducts of the 
 
 * This proceeding appears to have been brought about chiefly by Dr. John M. 
 Scudder. The College Journal made no mention of the transaction, but the 
 Eclectic Medical Journal^ in a double number for November-December, stated 
 that the union had been effected "some months ago." 
 
 t The Faculty was constituted from the professors of the two colleges, and 
 continued so, more or less, for several terms. It consisted of Doctors H. D. 
 Garrison, L. E. Jones, C. T. Hart, Z. Freeman, R. Freeman and J. M. Scudder, of 
 the Eclectic Medical Institute ; and Doctors J. F. Judge, John King and A.J. 
 Howe, of the Eclectic College of Medicine. Dr. W. Sherwood was relegated to 
 the distinction of Emeritus, and Drs. Bickley and Cleaveland left out altogether.
 
 638 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 minor medical colleges. These, certainl}', were to be 
 deprecated and rebuked for their influence upon the 
 cause which they represented. Beyond them, how- 
 ever, was the corporation with its multitude of 
 adherents, magisterially assuming to dictate to the 
 entire medical profession, and aspiring to be the 
 umpires with full authority to prescribe the standard 
 orthodoxy, professional respectability, and what should 
 be the legal rights of physicians. For the first 
 quarter of the century the University of Pennsylvania 
 held the field and was able to procure the arbitrary 
 exclusion of all rivals. It had been nourished from 
 the Treasury of the State ; its graduates and none 
 others were permitted to hold municipal positions in 
 the city of Philadelphia ; and it maintained a lobby at 
 the capital to oppose and prevent all legislation that 
 might be distasteful, or possibly take away part of its 
 exclusive privileges. It was to a degree the counter- 
 part of the British aristocracy, not averse to thriving 
 at the expense of the other classes, while at the same 
 time it was itself fenced about with privileges which 
 were strenuously held fast against encroachment by 
 the people. 
 
 In 1825, however, despite the bitter and most 
 vehement hostility of the Faculty and lobby agents 
 of the University, the General Assembly passed an 
 act authorizing the Jefferson Medical College of 
 Cannonsburg to establish a branch at Philadelphia. 
 Dr. John Eberle, Dr. George McClellan, and others, 
 were active in this enterprise. They found it no easy 
 matter, however, to place the new institution upon a 
 permanent basis. There was almost constant quarrel- 
 ling among the professors, and the college itself failed 
 to secure due recognition as "respectable." Finally,
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 639 
 
 in 1838, the Legislature separated it from the parent 
 school and gave it a distinct charter by itself. The 
 bitter dissensions, hov^ever, now raged more fiercely 
 than ever, and the new Board of Trustees, in 1839, 
 dissolved the Faculty. In the subsequent organiza- 
 tion, Doctors McClellan and Colhoun gave place to Dr. 
 Joseph Pancoast. Thus for fifteen years it was a very 
 difficult matter to maintain this school in healthy 
 existence. Its intestinal feuds, and the unceasing 
 opposition of the supporters of the older college, at 
 times almost destroyed its vitality. A young man 
 graduating at that time at the Jefferson Medical 
 College was regarded as having marred his prospects 
 forever, and as having virtually disgraced himself 
 for life. 
 
 Meanwhile, the professors who left the Faculty m 
 1839, lost no time in the establishing of another 
 similar institution. They negotiated with the Trustees 
 of the Pennsylvania Medical College at Gettysburg 
 to open a medical department at Philadelphia. The 
 two brothers. Doctors George and Samuel McClellan, 
 Dr. Colhoun, Dr. Samuel George Morton* and Dr. 
 William Rush composed the staff of instructors. 
 They soon found that their powers as an institution 
 of learning were limited, and applied to the General 
 Assembly for a separate charter. The Jefferson 
 Medical College joined the University in the usual 
 opposition, but without avail, and the new college 
 obtained an act of incorporation. 
 
 * Dr. Morton was the author of a text-book on anatomy, and was widely dis- 
 tingpuished as a craniologist. He also contributed largely to the celebrated work 
 of Dr. J. C. Nott and the Hon. George R. Gliddon, The TyJ>ts of Mankind. Dr. 
 George McClellan was also noted for his proficiency as a surgeon. The late 
 General George B. McClellan was his son.
 
 640 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 In 1844, application was made to the Legislature 
 for a law to incorporate the Franklin Medical College. 
 At this period the hold of the privileged order of 
 physicians had lost its tenacity every where, and the 
 charter was granted with little opposition. 
 
 Another application was made by Dr. James Mc- 
 Clintock, in 1847, for the incorporation of the 
 Philadelphia College of Medicine, with the unique 
 condition of holding its lecturing terms only in the 
 summer. Dr. McClintock had been a student of Dr. 
 Eberle and of the McClellan brothers, and was an 
 early graduate of the Jefferson Medical College. He 
 was a ripe scholar in medicine and a skilful practi- 
 tioner. After graduating he often assisted the pro- 
 fessors in their instructions and delivered lectures 
 independently to classes of his own. Though de- 
 famed at home as " irregular," he acquired an 
 excellent professional reputation elsewhere. In 1841, 
 he became professor of Anatomy and Physiology at 
 Castleton Medical College in Vermont, and was 
 elected its president. The next year he accepted a 
 similar chair in the Berksliire Medical Institution. 
 Returning to Philadelphia, he declined several other 
 appointments and opened a School of Anatomy on 
 his own account. 
 
 His attempt to procure a charter was artfully 
 resisted. Physicians professing to be his friends, 
 did not scruple to malign him, and wrote letters in 
 profusion to members of the Legislature remonstrat- 
 ing against the granting of his application. All, 
 however, was of little avail. Liberal sentiments 
 upon the subject of medicine and medical instruction 
 were now very generally entertained. The people 
 and their representatives in the General Assembly
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 641 
 
 had become averse to the existence of monopolies, 
 and the granting of privileges exclusively to favored 
 individuals and corporations. The journey of Dr. 
 McClintock to the capital of Pennsylvania met with 
 exceptional success. Within forty-eight hours from 
 the time that he left Philadelphia, to procure the 
 charter for his proposed college, he was on his way 
 home with the instrument in his pocket, enacted by 
 unanimous vote in both Houses and signed by Gov- 
 ernor Shunk. 
 
 The other medical colleges, however, refused to 
 accept students ad eiindem from the new institution. 
 Dr. McClintock accordingly made his way back to 
 Harrisburg with a supplementary bill to place the 
 Philadelphia College of Medicine upon a like basis 
 with the others. All opposition to this proved futile 
 and the bill was passed without serious difficulty. 
 
 A few years afterward, under the stress of circum- 
 stances, the institution and franchise became the 
 property of its founder, who disposed of it in 1854 to 
 a syndicate of individuals connected with the Penn- 
 sylvania Medical College. It was finally closed in 1859. 
 
 Medical intolerance in Philadelphia at this period 
 was carried to the extreme of persecution. No 
 religious person or corporation claiming infallibility 
 for the Church ever went farther. Whatever the 
 extent of learning, professional merit or moral excel- 
 lence, it weighed nothing in the balance. Even the 
 Woman's College, although endeavors were put forth 
 almost to abject servility in order to win favorable 
 consideration, was included, nevertheless, under the 
 same ban of medical proscription. In i860, the 
 Pennsylvania Medical Association adopted resolutions 
 disapproving of the admission of women to the study
 
 642 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 and practice of medicine, and declared those physi- 
 cians who gave them professional recognition to be 
 virtually quacks. 
 
 The case of the Eclectic Medical College of Penn- 
 sylvania was, therefore, by no means exceptional. It 
 received the like supercilious treatment which had 
 been meted out to its contemporaries. The tendency 
 of such action is often to direct the attention of calm 
 and thoughtful persons to the motives instigating it, 
 and to the sentiments of those who are impugned. It 
 was perfectly natural, therefore, that a man like Dr. 
 McClintock, himself proscribed and compelled to 
 encounter persecution and obloquy, should be disposed 
 to consider favorably the doctrines and procedures of 
 the Eclectic School. The result of his investigation 
 was conviction. He at once gave up the use of mer- 
 cury, arsenic, antimony, and other objectionable 
 drugs, and adopted the agents employed by Reformed 
 practitioners. Having resigned the office of resident 
 physician in the Blockley Hospital, he accepted the 
 professorship of Surgery in the Eclectic Medical 
 College of Pennsylvania. 
 
 In his Introductory Address, he declared that he 
 had maintained Eclectic doctrines as early as 1842, 
 while president of the medical college at Castleton. 
 There had been classes among the Allopathists, he 
 affirmed, equivalent to sects in medicine ; and it must 
 be acknowledged of the Homoeopathists that great 
 benefit had resulted from their labors. Each of these 
 parties claimed to be right and superior to the other, 
 but they were alike exclusive, tyrannical and pro- 
 scriptive. He now chose to array himself with the 
 Eclectics. They were not bound to the dogma of 
 any school, and their teachers insisted upon an inti-
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 643 
 
 mate acquaintance with all the subjects which consti- 
 tute medical knowledge — taking the good from all 
 sources and casting the bad away. 
 
 The winter term of 1859-60 began as usual at the 
 College building, at the corner of Sixth and Callow- 
 hill streets. The Faculty was now composed of Dr. 
 Paine, the dean, and Doctors Calkins, McClintock, 
 Bohannan, Sites and Hollembaek. A spring term 
 was also arranged and duly advertised in the Eclectic 
 Medical Journal of Philadelphia, to begin on the 
 fourth day of March, 1868, with the same instructors. 
 So far as was announced to the public, the relations 
 between the several members of the Faculty were 
 cordial. " With the present organization and enlarged 
 facilities for instruction," Dr. Paine declared in an 
 editorial article, "there is no Medical College in 
 America with a stronger corps of teachers." 
 
 These arrangements, however, were little more 
 than a prelude to another departure. Dr. Bohannan 
 resigned, went home to Virginia, and became after- 
 ward a general in the Confederate army. Dr. Calkins, 
 in turn, was also dissatisfied with his environments, 
 and accepted a chair in the Penn Medical College. 
 He presently renounced all connection with the 
 Eclectic and Reformed Schools of Medicine, and was 
 for some years a professor in the medical department 
 of the University of Vermont at Burlington. Dr. 
 McClintock, however, was most aggressive of them 
 all. He was a man of liberal attainments, a classical 
 scholar, with a superior social and professional 
 standing, and did not find himself in harmony with 
 several of his colleagues. A rupture of some kind 
 was inevitable. 
 
 Doctors Paine and McClintock began negotiations
 
 644 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 in December with Mr. Joseph S. Fisher, the president 
 of the American College of Medicine in Philadelphia. 
 The institution had been incorporated in 1853, on the 
 application of several individuals who were not in 
 accord with the Eclectic Medical College. They had 
 strenuously discarded Eclectic affiliations, professing 
 only to be " American Medical Reformers." Several 
 of them, indeed, had affiliated with the Reform move- 
 ment, which had been set on foot in New York in 
 185 1 and proposed the abrogating of denomina- 
 tional distinctions.* The American College had held 
 but a single term of lectures in 1853, and then sus- 
 pended for want of financial support. It was agreed 
 to appoint a Faculty and revive the enterprise. A 
 special act was procured from the General Assembly 
 on the fifteenth of February, to change the name of 
 the institution by adding the title of " The Eclectic 
 Medical College of Philadelphia." The building on 
 Race-street, known as the Friends' Literary Institute, 
 was engaged for the new enterprise, and the students 
 who adhered to the two seceding professors received 
 their degrees on the i8th day of the same month. f 
 The controversy threatened for a time to wreck 
 the institution at the corner of Callowhill street 
 Its supporters, however, determined resolutely to 
 maintain their ground. Dr. W. C. Davidson was 
 appointed to succeed Dr. Paine, and upon his with- 
 drawal, a few weeks later, to accept a chair in the 
 new College, Dr. John Fondey took the place. Dr. 
 
 • See page 586. 
 
 + The number thus graduated was twenty-one. Among them were Doctors 
 Harvey E. Bowles, now of Hammonton, New Jersey : the late James P. Cowles 
 of Hartford, Connecticut ; J. T. Dickerson, now of Brighton, Illinois ; B. S. 
 Manly, J. L. Thomas, O. D. Paine. Dr. Bowles is remembered by the author as 
 having been his instructor in the art of setting type.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 645 
 
 Joseph Sites became dean of the Faculty, He was a 
 man of influence, having been repeatedly elected to 
 the City Council of Philadelphia, and serving after- 
 ward as a Trustee and President of Girard College. 
 Dr. William F. Smith, a Trustee of the American 
 College, and claiming to own its charter, now became 
 a member of the Faculty, and, also, Dr. Joseph P. 
 Fitler, also of some note in political circles, Doctors 
 John Buchanan, J. C. Everson and Hamilton McDowell. 
 
 The next few years were characterized by sharp 
 conflict between the two colleges. Dr. Hollembaek 
 established the Eclectic Medical Journal of Pennsyl- 
 vania, and vigorously assailed his former associates 
 for lack of faith, unprofessional advertising, and with 
 carrying on a medical school for which they had no 
 valid charter. Dr. Buchanan succeeding to the edit- 
 orial chair, showed himself a master of coarse and 
 vituperative language as well as of the art of ex- 
 aggeration. Dr. Paine refrained from often replying 
 publicly ; probably from the consciousness that the 
 general public seldom takes interest in the private 
 griefs or personal wrongs of individuals. 
 
 At this time the other educational institutions of 
 the Reformed School in the Northern States had 
 generally closed their doors, while those of the South 
 were suspended from the conditions produced by the 
 Civil War. The Eclectic Medical College of Penn- 
 sylvania had thus become the chief occupant of the 
 field. The Eclectic Medical Association of Penn- 
 sylvania first organized in 1841, met steadily under 
 its auspices at Philadelphia, and the Eclectic Medical 
 Institute at Cincinnati maintained relations with it 
 for years of an amicable character. The Eclectic 
 Medical Societies of the United States and Canada
 
 646 HISTORY Oit MEDICINE. 
 
 generally published their proceedings in its official 
 journal, and by contributing of papers and other 
 testimonials of regard, gave it their countenance and 
 support. The infant Eclectic Medical Society of the 
 State of New York invited its professors to participate 
 in the proceedings, and admitted five of them to 
 membership.* They took advantage of the opportunity 
 to set forth their version of the controversy in Phila- 
 delphia, denying the legality of the action of Dr. 
 Paine and his associates, and obtained a vote of 
 censure against the rival college. f 
 
 The most vigorous efforts were put forth to sustain, 
 the enterprise. A chair of military surgery was 
 established, and ably filled. It was then the practice 
 to hold two terms each year, and students beginning 
 attendance in autumn often received their degree the 
 next summer.^ This practice was very general in 
 
 * Doctors Hollembaek, Sites, Smith, Clark and John Buchanan. 
 
 + Dr. W. F. Smith offered the following preamble and resolution, which were 
 adopted by a unanimous vote : 
 
 " Whereas, The Eclectic Medical Society of the State of New York has taken 
 a high stand in Medical Reform, which may lead to a National organization, 
 
 " 'J here/ore Resolved, That this Society will not recognize or countenance any 
 institution or college unless it is legally chartered by the State in which it is 
 located. ' — Adopted June%, 1864. 
 
 % The number of graduates from session to session, indicated a moderate 
 degree of prosperity. Eight received degrees in 1863 ; nineteen at the winter 
 term, and twenty-nine at the spring term in 1864 ; thirty-one at the winter term 
 and nineteen at the spring term in 1865 ; thirty-six at the winter term and 
 eighteen at the spring term in 1866 ; thirty-three at the winter term and twenty- 
 four at the spring term in 1867. Among the graduates thus enumerated 
 were Doctors George W. Brown, Maurice N. Miller, Judah Isaacs, Henry Eitten- 
 house, Luke D. Broughton, Thomas Airey of England, John W. Thrailkill, A. G. 
 Stillman, George A. Bagley, J Watson King, George S. Everts, J. A. Burt, David 
 Paul, Joseph Fisher, Roscoe G. Milliken, A. E. Colerick, Marshall H. Holmes, 
 W. W. Watson, George H. Day, Isaac Shoemaker, William Bell, Stephen Clark, 
 J. P. Worrell, C. F. Dumas, William Titus, B. P Backus, Henry James, Geo. C. 
 Washburn, William Wiard, Lewis P. Grover, Francis L. Gerald, G. W. Keith, A. 
 Shattuck, Edgar Cole, C. Howard Moore, Eli. G. Jones, M. B. Kenney, Francis 
 L. Simmons, B. N. Bedortha, Dr. W. Harshberger, J. B. McKilveen, J. J. Siggins,
 
 MKDICAL COLLEGES ANi^ CONTROVERSIES. 647 
 
 medical colleges till 1880. The advantages were 
 supplemented by an Alumni Association which held 
 stated sessions in Philadelphia, and was instructed by 
 the professors of the college. 
 
 The institution had been compelled from the first 
 to depend upon the personal efforts and enthusiasm 
 of its friends and Faculty, unaided by donations 
 from the public treasury or liberal endowments from 
 wealthy sympathizers. Often the instructors received 
 no remuneration, or merely a nominal one, and 
 several of them after a brief term of service, found 
 it necessary to resign their professorship in order to 
 find lucrative employment elsewhere. This was no 
 matter of reproach, but rather of commendation. 
 Among the professors in this category were several 
 of superior merit. We name Dr. J. P. Fitler, John 
 Watson, Emil Querner, Robert Hamilton, J. V. Lewis, 
 George H. Da}-, Judah Isaacs, George H. Hutchings, 
 as men of worth and honorable distinction. 
 
 By this time, however, the management of the 
 College exhibited irrefragable evidence of disreputa- 
 ble procedures, and a disposition to impose without 
 scruple upon the confidence of the public. In the 
 summer of 1864, a misleading statement was published 
 in the name of the Board of Trustees, announcing in 
 fulsome and inflated terms, the extraordinary success 
 of the institution and the prosperous career now to 
 be expected. 
 
 H. N. Rogers, A. J. Haile, J. B. Gallup, W. M. Silvernail, Frank L. Burr, George 
 Garland, Ozias Ellerson, Thomas Butlerfield of England. 
 
 In the list of Honorary Graduates were reported the names of B. Keith, 
 W. T. Branstrup, A. W. Sidney, J. T. Hurdick, H. A. Sweet, Horatio E. Firth, 
 Dennis E. Smith, Thomas Simmons, James Day, W. H. Bowlsby, Matthew Hale 
 Smith, James L. Proper, James Wilson. 
 
 Yet, in 1864, the Board of Trustees published tlie extraordinary statement that 
 since 1850, the number of matriculants had been 1464, and graduates, 873.
 
 648 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 " The friends of the Eclectic cause," the Report 
 declares, " have nobly responded to our endeavors to 
 push the Reform System of Practice, so much that 
 we have been enabled to endow the College. We have 
 received in all one hundred thousand dollars, and 
 invested it in United States bonds. This sum will 
 realize the respective professors a thousand a year. 
 In consequence of this endowment, the Faculty will 
 give free tickets to attend each course of lectures, to 
 fifty students only, on payment of the matriculation fee 
 [twenty dollars] each session. It is also an intention, 
 at an early date, to secure an eligible site, and build a 
 most magnificent college. The funds for this pur- 
 pose are already in the hands of the Treasurer." 
 
 The later publications of the College make no 
 mention of the endowment or resources of the institu- 
 tion. It was doubtless a subterfuge to attract students. 
 It Served the purpose of obtaining the formal sanction 
 of the Eclectic Medical Society of New York, and 
 was the prelude to a new policy which led inevitably 
 to dishonor. The fees for tuition were reduced to 
 an inconsiderable sum, and the degrees were con- 
 ferred thenceforward on individuals at home and in 
 Europe, without any attendance at lectures, or pro- 
 ficiency in medical scholarship. In 1867, the General 
 Assembly of Pennsylvania incorporated the American 
 University of Philadelphia, which existed as an 
 associate institution, conferring literary and scientific 
 degrees.* 
 
 At the annual meeting of the Eclectic Medical 
 Society of New York, in 1868, the maLter was con- 
 
 * The conferring of medical and academic degrees had been a common 
 practice in Great Britain and Europe, as well as in America. A president of the 
 New York County Medical Society, some sixty years ago, declared in his annual 
 address that it had become a trade to manufacture diplomas, and that they were 
 sold about the country like the merchandise of an itinerant pedler. This was 
 before a Homoeopathic or Eclectic College existed to take pan in the business. It 
 is hardly probable that many institutions can be screened from the imputation.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 649 
 
 sidered, and the following resolution, offered by Dr. 
 Robert Hamilton, adopted without dissent : 
 
 Resolved, That the Eclectic Medical Society of the 
 State of New York protest most emphatically against 
 the practice of certain so-called medical colleges of 
 this country of conferring the Degree of Doctor of 
 Medicine upon persons who have neither attended 
 full courses of lectures, nor otherwise acquired a 
 suitable knowledge of medical science ; and that we 
 utterly condemn this wicked bartering of medical 
 diplomas, and that this Society will refuse to acknowl- 
 edge the validity of said diplomas. 
 
 The next year the Society reiterated these declara- 
 tions, and a Committee was appointed to investigate 
 the matter. A full report was made setting forth the 
 facts, and resolutions were adopted denouncing the 
 traffic in medical degrees, refusing to recognize the 
 Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania as a medical 
 college at all, and expelling from membership the 
 four professors enrolled. 
 
 The General Assembly also passed a law inhibiting 
 the granting of academic degrees for pecuniary 
 consideration, and making it a misdemeanor to sign 
 a spurious diploma From this time the Eclectic 
 Medical College of Pennsylvania was no more recog- 
 nized by the American Eclectic School of Practice. 
 
 Meanwhile, the new College on Race street entered 
 upon a career which promised to realize the warmest 
 hopes of its friends. Dr. Paine, the dean, was a man 
 of great energy and ability as a financier, and was 
 awake to the importance of a high professional 
 standard. His new associates ranked among the 
 ablest teachers in the United States, and several of 
 them sustained a high reputation for scholarly attain- 
 ments. The Announcements declared the purpose of
 
 650 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 the Board of Trustees,* " to raise up a National 
 College, open to every member of the profession, 
 without distinction of sect or party." Adhering for 
 the time to the name of Eclectic, they deprecated the 
 want of thorough instruction at medical colleges, and 
 especially the existence of teachers lacking in general 
 knowledge and ignorant of every principle of Eclectic 
 Medicine and Surgery. 
 
 The Faculty in i860 comprised Doctors Paine, 
 McClintock, Gauntt and Charles H. Cleaveland, 
 formerly of the Eclectic Medical Institute and 
 Eclectic College of Medicine in Cincinnati. Dr. 
 Elbridge G. Dalton, a professor of the Greek and 
 Hebrew languages, accepted the chair of Physiology, 
 and proved a most desirable acquisition. The practice 
 had not then become general to advertise a group of 
 professors who were instructors in little other respect 
 than the title, holding the places nominally for the 
 sake of thereby gaining public attention. 
 
 The Civil War was the occasion of important 
 changes in the institutions of learning at Philadelphia. 
 The students were largely from the Southern States, 
 and repaired home to take part in the great struggle, 
 The class-rooms of the Pennsylvania Medical College 
 were almost entirely deserted. Its building on Ninth 
 street was considered the most complete and elegant 
 structure of the kind in America. It had been erected 
 at a cost of about fifty thousand dollars. The Trustees 
 had purchased the franchises of the Philadephia 
 Medical College and united it with their institution, 
 and now the professors were lecturing to empty seats, 
 
 * Among the members of this Board were the Hon. John S. Prettyman, M. D., 
 of Milford, Delaware ; WilHam S. Merrell, the Eclectic Druggist of Cincinnati ; 
 the Rev. Dr. McClintock, Dr. T S. Perkins. Only two members of the Faculty 
 were Trustees.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 65 1 
 
 with little hope of soon beholding them again filled. 
 Early in 1862, Dr. Paine and his associates began 
 negotiations for the purchase of the property, and 
 after long delay the transfer was effected in October 
 of the next year.* The next session of the Eclectic 
 Medical College of Philadelphia commenced at the 
 new homestead with great enthusiasm. Perhaps the 
 expectations of its friends had never been raised to 
 so high a pitch ; and to outward seeming, they were 
 abundantly warranted. 
 
 The Faculty was enlarged to nine Professors. Dr. 
 A. R. Thomas, formerly of the Syracuse Medical College 
 and Penn Medical University, and since that dean of 
 the Hahnemann Medical College, was appointed to the 
 Chair of Obstetrics. Dr. Homer J. Doucet, a graduate 
 of Union College and an accomplished teacher. Dr. J. 
 Milton Sanders, formerly of the Eclectic Medical 
 Institute, Dr._ Abraham Livezey, and Dr. Lincoln 
 Oldshue, of Pittsburg, were also made professors. 
 
 The reputation of the institution was admirably 
 sustained by its graduates. Many of these achieved 
 a high rank as physicians, f and several received 
 
 * Dr. John Buchanan asserted in the journal, of which he was then editor, 
 that the three charters, which Dr. Paine professed to have purchased, were still 
 the property of other persons ; that of the American College belonging to Dr. 
 William F. Smith, that of the Philadelphia College to Dr. Rand, and that of the 
 Gettysburg branch of the Pennsylvania College to Dr. F. G. Smith — all of Phila- 
 delphia. As none of them attempted to estop his proceedings, it is hardly probable 
 that he was acting without due authority. 
 
 t We will name in this number several who became prominent in the Eclectic 
 school — some as teachers, and others as active practitioners. In the class of 1860- 
 61, were Doctors E. G. Dalton, William B. Jones, T. S. Perkins and N B. Wolff ; 
 in 1861-62, Doctors William S. Merrell, honoris causa ; Solomon F. Wehr, Jacob 
 Van Valkenberg, P. A. Allen, M. F. Price, J. A. Hawley and W. B. Steere ; in 
 1862-63, Doctors William Hargreaves, H. J. Doucet, Edgar A. Bassett, R. Van 
 Naten ; in 1863-64, Doctors Henry A. BoUes, Francis M. Reasner, George H. Day, 
 D. A. Loomis, Cicero M. Ewing, Corydon C. Johnson ; in 1864-65, Doctors Henry 
 K. Stratford, John D. Young, J. L. Kilgore, John R. Borland, R. B. Weaver
 
 652 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 appointments in the military and naval service of the 
 United States. Their training under Dr. McClintock 
 had admirably fitted them for these positions, and 
 the public authorities several times rendered them 
 honorable acknowledgment. 
 
 In 1864 Dr. Paine perfected negotiations with the 
 Penn Medical University for a union of the two 
 institutions. Each retained its own corporate exist- 
 ence, and the announcement of lectures was made in 
 the joint name of both. The Faculties were united. 
 Doctors L. W. Buffington, Charles A. Leech and 
 Joseph Longshore being appointed adjunct profes- 
 sors of the Eclectic College.* The ensuing winter, how- 
 ever, an act was procured from the General Assembly 
 changing the corporate name of the college to the 
 title of the '■'■ Philadelphia University of Medicine and 
 Surgery." 
 
 The new designation was significant in several 
 ways. It was no less than the laying aside of the 
 former name of Eclectic, and the attempt was made 
 to substitute for it the appellation of " The New School 
 of Medicine." Several of the professors had not 
 graduated in Eclectic Colleges, and to them the change 
 was by no means objectionable. The others saw 
 a possibility of gaining professional recognition in 
 the medical circles from which they had been excluded. 
 Dr. Paine himself was facile in the matter, and 
 readily set himself to work to find arguments for the 
 
 Harrison A. Tucker, J. Stolz, J. D. Wheeler, A. C. Taylor ; in 1865, Doctors 
 Henry Beam Piper, James M. Louther, Charles E. Heaton, J. C. Michener, Ray 
 V. Pierce. W. C. Coburn. 
 
 • In 1874, lectures were resumed by Dr. Edwin D. Buckman and associate 
 professors, in the name of the Penn Medical University, and were continued till 
 1881. The Institution at this time was described as non-partisan, and its 
 graduates affiliated with different schools of practice.
 
 MEDICAL COLLEGES AND CONTROVERSIES. 653 
 
 step. He declared that the peculiar significance of 
 the name had passed away. Most of the improve- 
 ments and essential changes introduced by Medical 
 Reformers had been adopted by the Old-School 
 profession, carefully withholding from them due 
 credit, and thus leaving them in the attitude of 
 outsiders. Many Eclectic and Homoeopathic practi- 
 tioners had observed this, and avoided the use of 
 a distinctive appellation in announcing themselves, 
 passing simply as physicians. 
 
 Besides this, the Medical Colleges, both of the 
 Eclectics and Homoeopathists, Dr. Paine affirmed, had 
 been unsuccessful enterprises. The Eclectic Medical 
 Institute, at Cincinnati, had once numbered three 
 hundred matriculants at each session ; but for the 
 last few years, the number of actual students attend- 
 ing each course of lectures hardly exceeded a dozen. 
 All the other Eclectic Schools — in New York, Boston, 
 Worcester, Memphis, St. Louis, and other places — 
 had failed altogether for want of patronage. Even 
 the Eclectic Medical College of Philadelphia hardly 
 exceeded a hundred students each session.* 
 
 A reason, however, which was more likely to add 
 force to the argument, was the preference given by 
 graduates to the diploma of the Penn Medical 
 University to that of the Eclectic College. After the 
 two institutions were united, they were allowed their 
 choice, and only ten accepted the Eclectic degree. 
 The others pleaded that if they received a diploma 
 without a party name, they could practice medicine 
 
 • "^Yit. Eclectic Medical Journal of Cincinnati, alluding to this matter, said: 
 "This is rather a sorry showing and is to be regretted. Still it maybe readily 
 accounted for ; as Paine has forsaken Eclecticism, considering it discreditable, and 
 the other school is not organized on a basis to siirrcf-d "
 
 654 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 as they thought proper, and at the same time escape the 
 opprobrium medicorum, the odium of being classed as 
 irregular. Graduates of Homoeopathic preferences 
 pleaded the same thing. Yet while urging this as 
 justifying the new departure, he declared medicine an 
 Eclectic science ; and that unless we have the 
 independence to discard false teachings, and to 
 gather up those principles which are true, we cannot 
 expect to keep pace with the various sciences of the 
 day. 
 
 " Parting with the venerable name of Eclectic,'' Dr. Paine 
 added, "we feel some sentiments of a sorrowful 
 nature moving our hearts. But these feelings are 
 mitigated by the reflection that if we are necessitated 
 to part from the name Eclectic, we still retain its spirit 
 in our school. We feel that no change of circum- 
 stances could induce us to forsake the glorious 
 principles of true Eclecticism ; for we believe that 
 they have derived their foundation from the ever- 
 living laws of truth."
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 
 
 Seventy years ago, Rafinesque described Eclectic 
 physicians as those who select and adopt in practice 
 whatever is beneficial, and who change their pre- 
 scriptions according to emergencies and acquired 
 knowledge. Such, therefore, were not to be held to any 
 exclusive dogmas, however plausible and imposing. 
 Their principles would be fixed and unchanging, but 
 their methods and procedures must always be modifi- 
 able as new discoveries might require. Our percep- 
 tions of truth are always relative, and it becomes us 
 accordingly to give a hospitable reception to every 
 new opinion which may be likely to bring some 
 better procedure to our notice. It was an apostolic 
 direction to prove every thing, and keep fast hold of 
 the good ; and this is the aim and scope of the 
 American Reformed School of Medicine. 
 
 the new departure IN PHARMACY. 
 
 Nevertheless, with all the advantages enjoyed by 
 Botanic and Eclectic physicians in the department of 
 Medical practice, from the manifest superiority of 
 their remedial procedures, their existence as a distinct 
 school was its permanency to their achievement in 
 the field of pharmacy. For a long time the vegetable
 
 656 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 medicines which they had introduced and employed 
 with salutary results, such as other practitioners had 
 been unable to accomplish, were prepared after the 
 most primitive methods. In these forms, the reme- 
 dies, thus simple in the mode of application, were 
 probably more efficacious for cure. This, it will be 
 remembered, was the judgment of Rafinesque. Expe- 
 rience, however, demonstrated the necessity, or at 
 least, the advisability of a more thorough manipula- 
 tion. It could not be denied that the agents 
 employed from the vegetable kingdom, while superior 
 to the others in use, were crude and bulky, as well as 
 often distasteful and repulsive beyond the power of 
 sensitive patients to endure. 
 
 Under this condition of facts, it was morally 
 certain that the New Practice of Medicine, notwith- 
 standing its many merits, would hardly become 
 general or popular. It was likely to be circumscribed 
 to the rural and humbler population, to the " plain 
 people," and to be virtually precluded from a standing 
 with the cultured, the wealthy and fashionable. 
 Indeed, Homoeopathy coming from Europe with 
 practitioners liberally educated, with a milder dosage 
 and ready flexibility in remedial procedures, was in 
 better plight to earn favor in those circles, debarring 
 its American competitor from that opportunity so 
 essential to its prosperity. 
 
 This necessity for an improved pharmacy had long 
 been perceived by the more intelligent practitioners 
 of the Botanic schools. As early as 1835, Dr. Isaac 
 Jacobs, of Bangor, in Maine, had become distinguished 
 for his skillfulness in expressing the juices from 
 medicinal plants. Rademacher, the great German 
 Reformer, employed a similar method with great
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 657 
 
 advantage. In this way it was practicable to admin- 
 ister medicine in smaller doses, and yet with greater 
 efficacy. Dr. Jacobs was very enthusiastic over his 
 success, declaring his confidence that the Botanic 
 practice would soon supersede that of the Old School, 
 as well as Homoeopathy and the Eclectics. 
 
 Some years later, Mr. B. Keith, of New Hampshire, 
 engaged in the manufacture of what he denominated 
 " concentrated remedies." His preparations met with 
 much favor among Botanic physicians in the Eastern 
 States. He afterward removed to the city of New 
 York, in order to extend his business. He encoun- 
 tered violent opposition, both from practitioners and 
 apothecaries of the dominant school, and from many 
 of the Reformed practitioners. Wri^-ers in the College 
 Journal^ at Cincinnati, decried his preparations as a 
 secret manufacture, inert, impure and adulterated. 
 Dr. Grover Coe, ex-president of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, being employed in his laboratory, 
 received also a share of the adverse criticism. Never- 
 theless, the business became very prosperous and 
 lucrative ; and presently the proprietor dropped all 
 relations with the Reformed and Eclectic schools. 
 
 WILLIAM S. MERRELL. 
 
 The honor and distinction of creating and estab- 
 lishing the new pharmacy, which has assumed its 
 present permanency to the American Eclectic School 
 of Medicine, belong by indisputable right to the late 
 William S. Merrell, of Cincinnati. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Institute had just been organ- 
 ized, and its two prominent founders, Doctors Beach 
 and Morrow, were awake to the urgent need for a
 
 658 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 better mode of manipulating the new remedies. 
 Their medicines were from the vegetable kingdom 
 and had been proved superior, but the inconvenient 
 forms in which they were administered operated as 
 an obstacle almost invincible to their adoption. It 
 was resolved to find a man able and willing to under- 
 take the work of improving them, in order to rejider 
 them more acceptable. Their choice was William S. 
 Merrell. He was an apothecary of signal ability, 
 well educated, fond of research, unselfish and deeply 
 interested in various enterprises of public benefit. 
 He was in every way fitted by personal character and 
 early experience to undertake this as a life-work. 
 
 William Stanley Merrell was a native of Oneida 
 county, in New York, and after passing through a 
 singular variety of trying adventures, became a 
 student at Hamilton College, receiving his degree in 
 the year 1823. He then made his way westward, and 
 became principal of the Tuscumbia Female Academy 
 in Alabama. Here he remained three years, in which 
 time the school flourished and attained a high degree 
 of popularity. Returning to Cincinnati, he agreed to 
 accept the position of professor of chemistry in a 
 medical college then in contemplation. The plan did 
 not succeed, and he began the study of medicine, 
 engaging at the same time in the business of apothe- 
 cary. He won a superior reputation in this enterprise 
 and formed a partnership with a brother, which 
 proved very advantageous. He engaged, however, in 
 another venturous undertaking which proved unfor- 
 tunate, and finally, some years later, he resumed the 
 business of apothecary. 
 
 At this period, the proposition of Dr. Morrow to 
 engage in the preparation of Eclectic medicines was
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 659 
 
 received. He v^^as to remove his business to the 
 College building, and was assured that all the Botanic 
 practitioners, so far as represented by the school at 
 Cincinnati, would become his patrons. The work 
 suited his taste, and he accepted the proposition. 
 Thus he became identified with the Eclectic School, 
 and the Father of the American Pharmacy. 
 
 He directly, as by accident, made the discovery of 
 resins and resinoid principles in medicinal plants, in 
 which were contained the principal active properties. 
 In 1847, he found the gum or resin of the mandrake, 
 and, after experimenting with it himself, submitted it 
 to the professors of the Eclectic Medical Institute.* 
 Dr. Morrow was enthusiastic over the new medicine. 
 It met a necessity which he had long felt to exist, an 
 efficacious drug in minute dose. From the first however 
 it was decried by writers of the dominant school as 
 being utterly unfit for medicinal purposes. This, 
 however, was soon disproved, and " podophyllin " came 
 into general use. Then the common makeshift was 
 employed, to affirm that it had been already discov- 
 ered and was introduced from them. 
 
 Merrell pushed his experiments with renewed zeal, 
 and in 1848, obtained in quick succession the resinoid 
 principles of the Macrotrys or Cimicifuga, the Lep- 
 tandra or Culver's physic, the Iris versicolor, and 
 others. Adopting an etymology which had already 
 been suggested, he named his new medicines podo- 
 phylline, macrotine, leptandrin, iridin. Afterward, 
 when manipulating the blood-root and yellow pucoon, 
 he obtained alkaloid principles analogous to morphia 
 
 • He learned afterward, and promptly acknowledged, that several others had 
 made the same discovery ; nevertheless, he was the first who brought it into use 
 as a medicinal agent.
 
 66o HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 and quinia. These he named accordingly, sanguin- 
 aria and hydrastia. He continued his efforts in this 
 direction, and succeeded in obtaining educts from the 
 principal medicinal plants of the vegetable Materia 
 Medica. 
 
 These discoveries were received by the Botanic and 
 Reformed physicians with a joyful welcome. They 
 imparted new energy to the Eclectic cause. The 
 practitioners now felt confident that the trite desig- 
 nation of "unscientific " could no longer be applied. 
 They could have a pharmacopoeia equal in merit and 
 erudition to that of their adversaries. The new 
 remedies were eagerly procured, and others engaged 
 in their manufacture.* The results were duly reported 
 to the medical journals. New zeal was enkindled to 
 organize medical societies in which to compare obser- 
 vations and discuss the new advances in the Reformed 
 Practice. Since the repeal of the obnoxious medical 
 legislation that had made them all culprits, liable to 
 fine and imprisonment, there had nothing occurred to 
 fire the heart of Eclectic physicians with such glowing 
 hope, 
 
 ESSENTIAL TINCTURES. 
 
 Mr. Merrell made copious notes of his observations 
 and discoveries, many of which he explained in com- 
 munication to the various medical and pharmaceutic 
 journals. A complete outline of them, however, was 
 given by him in King's America^i Eclectic Dispensatory, 
 in 1858, He there propounded as a law of organic 
 
 * The term " positive medicine " was invented at this time to describe the 
 quality of these remedies. The mania for discovering "concentrated remedies" 
 raged for some years with great violence, but many of the preparations were of 
 little value, and soon fell into disuse.
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 66l 
 
 chemistry, having few exceptions, that pure alcohol 
 in its solvent powers, discriminates between those 
 elements in vegetable and animal bodies, which are 
 medicinal or poisonous, and those which are nutritive 
 or inert. Thus albumen, gluten, gum, non-medicinal 
 oils, fat and other analogous substances are insoluble ; 
 while the alkaloids, resinoids, resins, acids, oils which 
 are medicinal, musk, castor, the various poisons of 
 serpents and insects, the pus of ulcers, and other 
 secretions, readily dissolve in that fluid. 
 
 Following out this hypothesis, he proposed a new 
 series of fluid medicines, very concentrated, definite 
 and durable, which he believed would be superior in 
 most cases to other pharmaceutic preparations. These 
 solutions or tinctures are certain to retain fully all the 
 volatile elements of the plants or materials from which 
 which they are prepared ; the resinoids and oleo- 
 resinous principles are all retained and held in per- 
 manent solution ; the tinctures will not only be clear 
 and elegant, but not liable to fermentation or 
 decomposition, and thus unaffected by tiine or tem- 
 perature. They may be made of definite and uniform 
 strength, or nearly so, although the materials used 
 may not be uniformly of prime quality. 
 
 " These tinctures, containing as they do all the 
 virtues of the plant separated from extraneous 
 matter, and being of definite and known strength, 
 may readily be diluted by alcohol into officinal tinctures, 
 or be added to simple syrup to form beautiful and 
 efficient medicinal syrups, or be evaporated to the fibular 
 consistence, and thus form luost permanent and 
 reliable alcoholic extracts." 
 
 In order that the new preparations might be dis- 
 tinguished from others of different quality, Mr,
 
 662 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Merrell gave them the designation of " Essential 
 Tinctures." * 
 
 Though William S. Merrell was in no sense ambi- 
 tious for honor except that of doing well and 
 thoroughly the work at which he was engaged, he was 
 by no means unnoticed. He was elected to the City 
 Council of Cincinnati and held places of distinction in 
 the church of which he was a member. In 1861, he 
 was chosen a Trustee in the American College of 
 Medicine in Philadelphia, and at the next annual 
 commencement received from it the honorary degree 
 of Doctor of Medicine. One or two other medical 
 colleges conferred similar testimonials. He was also 
 for many years a trustee and president of the Eclectic 
 Medical Institute at Cincinnati. 
 
 Few of the present generation realize how the 
 genius of William S. IMerrell stamped itself upon the 
 theory and practice of pharmacy. Though his work 
 may not be generally known, or even acknowledged 
 when known, by many teachers and practitioners, it is 
 nevertheless interwoven with the web and woof of 
 modern pharmacy ; for when he began it, the pharmacy 
 of our American Materia Medica was a new and 
 unexplored field. He was diligent and conscientious ; 
 he risked his private fortune to make sure of his 
 operations, and his success enured not merely to his 
 
 * In 1870, the National Eclectic Medical Association directed the appointment 
 of a committee to prepare and report a National Eclectic Pharmacopoeia The 
 secretary, Dr. Robert A. Gunn, was further authorized to copyright the titl^age 
 The matter, however, remained in desuetude till 1878, when a committee was 
 appointed, consisting of Doctors Albert Merrell, S. B. Munn, C. E. Miles, F. J. 
 Lock and A. L. Clark to prepare a plan for the work. Dr. Merrell reported the 
 plan two years later, and was authorized to take the copyright in his own name. 
 The work was accordingly completed and published in i&8(, and duly accepted by 
 resolution as being under the direction and approval of the Association. In this 
 work Dr. Merrell adopts the designation of "Normal Tinctures," indicating bjr 
 it a standard strength in the preparations.
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 663 
 
 own emolument, but to the general benefit. He always 
 held fast his integrity. 
 
 Dr. Merrell died at Cincinnati, September 4, 1880, 
 in his eighty-third year. 
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL INSTITUTE — ITS CHANGES. 
 
 The two rival college enterprises at Cincinnati had 
 united, and the Eclectic Medical Instituie began 
 its new career with a loud note of exultation. The 
 two journals had also been consolidated, with Doctors 
 Newton and Hart as editors. It was announced that 
 the class numbered " more than is now attending 
 all the other schools in the city." There were forty- 
 four graduates at the close of the winter term, and 
 thirty-one in the month of May following.* 
 
 The war of 1861, momentous in the history of the 
 American Republic, was by no means a prosperous 
 period for Medical Colleges. The class in the 
 Eclectic Medical Institute diminished to smaller 
 numbers, only twenty-nine graduating at the winter 
 session,! and eight in the spring. Nevertheless, the 
 editorial articles of the Eclectic Aiedical Journal betrayed 
 no sign of despondency, yet they contained the 
 significant admission that a jealous feeling existed 
 among many, that the men connected with the 
 Institute wished to set themselves up for leaders. 
 
 * The following well known physicians were among the number, namely : 
 Doctors John W. Pruitt, of Arkansas ; Edward E. Spencer, of Massachusetts ; 
 John B. Shuilz, of Indiana; Milton M. Fenner, and John G. Fross, of Michigan. 
 Dr. Pruitt was appointed a surgeon in the Confederate army, sustaining a rigid 
 examination, and was the pioneer in establishing the Eclectic School of Medicine 
 in Arkansas. 
 
 t Doctors Anson L. Clark and Henry K. Whitford, founders of the Bennett 
 College, at Chicago, George H. Field, the founder of the St. Louis Eclectic 
 Medical College, and Abner Thorp, of Cmcinnati, were of the number.
 
 664 HISTORY OF MEDICINE, 
 
 Dr. Newton disavowed emphatically the existence of 
 such a spirit. " We are certain," said he, " that no 
 such object is an incentive to action with those who 
 have been or are now connected with the Eclectic 
 Medical Institute." Nevertheless, there was a cloud 
 overhead. The Civil War had begun and impeded 
 all business in the country. At the end of six months 
 the Eclectic Medical Jourjial was suspended for want of 
 support. 
 
 A radical change was made in the management of 
 the affairs of the College. It had been a joint-stock 
 company and subjected to the various contingencies 
 and embarrassments incident to such enterprises. 
 This arrangement was terminated, and the Eclectic 
 Medical Institute became the property of Doctor 
 Scudder. He was a man of excellent financial 
 ability, resolute of purpose, and energetic in his 
 efforts for success in undertakings. Doctors King, 
 Howe, Garrison, Judge and Freeman were retained 
 as professors, forming a coterie of instructors certain 
 to assure the reputation of the institution for 
 thorough instruction and careful training in the 
 varied duties of the practitioner. Dr. vScudder had 
 been a partner of Dr. Newton, but now dissolved that 
 relation,* and gave his attention more exclusively to 
 the management of the College. The Eclectic Medical 
 Journal was now revived, and has been published 
 regularly till the present time as the official organ of 
 the Institute and the exponent of the sentiments of 
 its proprietor. 
 
 There was a strong attempt at this period to put 
 an end to the existence of the College as well as of 
 
 * Dr. R. S. Newton removed to New York, and Dr. L. E. Jo.ies was no 
 longer retained in the Faculty.
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 665 
 
 the Eclectic School. The Examining Boards, acting 
 as umpires, refused to accept any Eclectic for the 
 public service. The classes were small. In 1863, the 
 graduates received their degrees at the rooms of the 
 Institute without any public display. They were 
 conferred by William S. Merrell, the vice-president of 
 the corporation, upon thirteen students at the close 
 of the winter session,* and nine at the spring term. 
 The next year, however, exhibited a greater degree 
 of prosperity, and the College has since continued in 
 a successful career. Two sessions have been held 
 every year to the present time ; the classes have been 
 large, and the graduates have generally become 
 physicians of superior merit and ability.f 
 
 * Doctor George Covert, of Wisconsin, late president of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, W. M. Johnson, of Illinois, and John M. Powell, of Ohio, 
 were among this number. In his address to the class. Dr. Merrell made this 
 noteworthy utterance : 
 
 " There is another, perhaps a higher qualification that must be brought into 
 use. It is an intuition— a. reception of truth not derived from outward 
 teachings. This is experienced by men in every vocation, but by none in a 
 higher degree than by the physician when exercising his profession in the Uwe of 
 it. I hold it to be an intlu.x from the inner and higher life. Explain it as you 
 will, suggestions or impressions come into the mind when anxiously desiring the 
 truth, and placing themselves in a passive or recipient condition, which it cannot 
 trace to any instructions previously received. It is owing to this that there have 
 always been many doctors, so called, who acquire no little noionety in curing 
 diseases and often in their success shame the educated M. Ds. around them, who 
 yet are entirely uneducated and know not the first rudiments of medical 
 science."' 
 
 t We will name several of those who have been more or less prominent in 
 effort to maintain organized action, and to advance the Eclectic cause. Of 
 graduates in 1864, John W. Thraillcill, Frederick J. Lock ; in 1865, Wilson H. Davis, 
 Noah Simmons, Ray V. Pierce, B. T. Gadd, Edwin H. Carter, David Surber, 
 Phineas Sage, M. R. Teegarden, W. Hope Davis ; in 1866, George C. Pitzer, 
 Edwin Younkin, George W. Pickerill, J. H. Woodward, E. Blackman. W. B. 
 Church, W. Molesworth, L. R. Brigham, William L. Tuttle ; in 1867, C. Edwin 
 Miles, Frank H. Kelley, Ira Van Camp, J. L. Hensley, John T. McLaughlin ; in 
 1868, Philo B. Wright, Permetus D. Yost, Ellis J. Kirk, Joseph D. Peters, Josiah 
 Arnold, B. H. Aylsworth ; in 1869, Hiram C. Miller, Joseph A. Munk, Ansel 
 M. Eidson, Nelson G. Smith, Samuel J. Smith.
 
 666 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ECLECTIC PHYSICIANS AND PUBLIC SERVICE. 
 
 At the beginning of the Civil War, in 1861, it was the 
 invariable practice in many of the Northern States for 
 the Examining Boards to reject all applications of 
 Reform physicians for appointment as surgeons in the 
 Federal Army. A Committee of the Medical Society 
 in the District of Columbia, some years after, 
 explained the reason for such exclusion. " In Epis- 
 copal religions, the Bishop gives the formula, and 
 the minister who disputes or practically differs is 
 disrobed ; so the only governing body in medicine in 
 this country is the American Medical Association, the 
 representative organ of the whole regular profession." 
 This was confidently regarded as the opportunity to 
 put this prelatic authority in force. Compared to 
 that consideration, the health and welfare of the 
 soldiers made but a subordinate matter, and were so 
 treated.* It was confidently declared that " exclusion 
 from positions in the Army would kill off Eclecti- 
 cism, and every species of quackery." 
 
 Nevertheless, they were unable to justify this 
 procedure by plausible pretexts of unfitness or other 
 disqualification. They rejected experienced phy- 
 sicians from the motive of pure partisanship. As a 
 sequence, the places, very many of them, were con- 
 ferred upon physicians who had been unable to make 
 a livelihood by their profession, and upon men fresh 
 from College, often where the terms had been 
 
 * In the Confederate service such discrimination was not always made. Eclectic 
 and Botanic physicians were often accepted, and by their superior skill and 
 professional talent, reflected honor upon themselves, and upon the School of 
 Medicine to which they belonged.
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 667 
 
 shortened in order to enable them to obtain appoint- 
 ment.* 
 
 As might be expected, flagrant inefficiency as well 
 as insufficiency characterized this branch of the 
 military service. In 1862, when the war was prose- 
 cuted more actively, incompetency and neglect of 
 duty became notorious. The wounded in battle were 
 left uncared for sometimes for two and even three 
 days. There was often more danger incurred from 
 the surgeon than from the bullets of the foe. 
 
 The attention of Congress was directed to the 
 exigency, and the Medical Department of the Army 
 reorganized. A new Surgeon-General, Dr. William 
 A. Hammond, was appointed, at the desire of General 
 McClellan, and the number of surgeons increased. 
 Besides this, the Governors of the States also provided 
 volunteer surgeons for emergencies, who agreed to 
 bestow their services without remuneration. 
 
 Medical partisanship was to some extent disre- 
 garded. In Pennsylvania, for example, physicians 
 from the two Eclectic Medical Colleges were employed 
 whenever found competent. Governor Oliver P. 
 Morton, always prompt and in the advance, sent 
 more than a hundred surgeons to the regiments from 
 Indiana, selecting them impartially from the differ- 
 ent Schools of Medicine. Governor Yates, of Illinois, 
 was likewise active and diligent. Governor Tod, of 
 Ohio, from the first acted solely in behalf of the 
 dominant School. The Board for examination of 
 applicants rejected unqualifiedly every candidate for 
 
 * In Connecticut, several Eclectic physicians offered their services to the 
 Governor and were accepted by him. The Examining Board rejected them, and 
 a special term was held of the Medical Department of Yale College, at which a 
 class was hastily graduated to fill the positions.
 
 668 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 appointment who was not in accord with Old Physic. 
 The General Assembly attempted to check this by a 
 law forbidding any distinction to be made by the 
 appointing power between graduates of the different 
 Medical Colleges of Ohio The Examining Board 
 was also abolished. The Governor, however, ap- 
 pointed another. He had been authorized by the 
 Legislature to secure the gratuitous services of 
 surgeons and physicians, as in the other States, for 
 the proper care of the volunteers from Ohio, their 
 expenses to be defrayed from the Treasury. He, 
 however, demanded instead that he should have 
 authority to appoint sixty surgeons at a fixed salary. 
 Thirty were granted, and he made choice of inexperi- 
 enced men. Meanwhile, he appointed none of those 
 who had offered their services, the Eclectics being 
 rejected and others not willing to serve gratuitously 
 for any considerable time. 
 
 Nevertheless, several hundred Eclectic and other 
 heterodox physicians, did pass Examining Boards 
 and receive appointments. They generally found it 
 politic, however, to conceal their sentiments in regard 
 to Therapeutics. 
 
 FAMOUS ORDER BY SURGEON-GENERAL HAMMOND. 
 
 A prodigious excitement was created throughout 
 medical circles by an order of the Surgeon-General, 
 issued on the fourth of May, in 1863. Dr. Hammond, 
 observing from the reports of his subordinates that 
 the use of mercury had, in innumerable cases, been 
 attended by most baleful results, and remarking that 
 the diseases prevalent in the Army might as well 
 be treated without antimony as therewith, directed 
 that those drugs should in future be struck from the
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 669 
 
 supply table and that no further requisitions for them 
 should be approved. 
 
 The order was regarded by his professional asso- 
 ciates as a virtual apostasy from medical orthodoxy, 
 and a veritable scvittling of the ship in which they had 
 sailed for three centuries following the days of Carpi 
 and Basil Valentine. Their indignation was not 
 concealed. They did not, however, depend simply 
 upon a defense of their favorite drugs, but resorted, 
 like the masters of the exorcised Pythonic maiden,* 
 to a more insidious mode of attack. It had been an 
 established usage, they pleaded, that all promotions 
 in the medical service of the Government should take 
 place in the order of rank. Doctor Hammond, how- 
 ever, had been appointed over colleagues who ranked 
 above him. They demanded accordingly that he 
 should be removed, and that the old order of promo- 
 tion restored. 
 
 Dr. Hammond had exhibited a remarkable fitness 
 for his position. He possessed superior administra- 
 tive ability and capacity for organizing and executing 
 his plans for the required improvement of the medical 
 service. At his suggestion many of the colleges of 
 the several schools established professorships of 
 military surgery in order to fit their students to 
 respond to the pressing exigencies of the time. All 
 this, however, counted for little with his adversaries, 
 so long as he had ventured to pass beyond the cordon 
 that circumscribed the medical arena. Medical 
 Societies adopted resolutions denouncing him, and 
 an abortive attempt was made to procure his condem- 
 nation at the annual meeting of the American 
 Medical Association. Finally, however, charges were 
 
 * Acts 0/ the Apos tes, xvi., 19-21.
 
 670 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 instituted against him of malfeasance and dishonest 
 practices. A court-martial was held and he was 
 dismissed from office in May, 1864. 
 
 The belief, nevertheless, was very generally enter- 
 tained, that this entire proceeding was corrupt and 
 directed by personal malice, and with no adequate 
 ground for the accusations. Several years later, the 
 sentence was reversed, and Dr. Hammond indemni- 
 fied. Under the new Surgeon-General, the famous 
 "Order No. VI," was speedily revoked, and the 
 interdicted drugs again included in the medical 
 supplies for the Army. It was also directed that 
 henceforth only graduated physicians from the 
 "regular medical colleges," should be accepted as sur- 
 geons in the military service. It seems to have been 
 supposed that this would be effectual in putting the 
 Reform and Eclectic Schools of Medicine out of 
 existence. At the time some nine-tenths of the 
 practitioners of the United States had never gradu- 
 ated in Medicine in any institution, and in later 
 years, of those who had come from the approved 
 colleges, four-fifths were rejected at their official 
 examination for deficient scholarship. Repeated 
 endeavors have been made to procure the abrogation 
 of this partisan distinction. 
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL ORGANIZATION. 
 
 Upon the cessation of persecution, incident upon 
 the abrogation of the medical statutes in the several 
 States of the American Union, there ensued among 
 the Reform and Physio-Medical practitioners a very 
 general feeling of indifference in regard to the 
 maintaining of further concert of action. Their
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 671 
 
 Societies generally passed out of existence, and many 
 of them abandoning their former exclusiveness, 
 adopted the Eclectic procedures. Such was the case 
 all the way from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico. Even 
 the National Eclectic Medical Association, first 
 organized in 1848, with which many physicians had 
 affiliated who had belonged to opposing schools, 
 held no meetings after 1857. 
 
 This indifference, however, did not prevail among 
 all practitioners of the Reformed School. They had 
 the brunt of conflict to sustain, and many of them 
 were awake, more or less visibly to the vital impor- 
 tance of association, both for their own improvement 
 as physicians, and for the common defense in case of 
 attempts, such as were already in operation, for 
 invasion of their rights. 
 
 The Ohio Eclectic Medical Society had been formed 
 in 1853, and held its meetings regularly till the Civil 
 War. The Missouri Valley Eclectic Medical Society 
 organized in 1855, and the Union Society of Clermont 
 county were also in successful operation at the same 
 period. The Cincinnati Eclectic Medical Society was 
 organized by members of the Faculty of the Institute 
 and other physicians, in 1856, with Dr. William S. 
 Latta as president, and Dr. Edwin Freeman as 
 secretary. In i860 its constitution was amended, a 
 code of ethics adopted, and the name changed to that 
 of the "Cincinnati Academy of Eclectic Medicine." 
 
 There was also in existence the Pennsylvania 
 Eclectic Medical Association, organized in 1843, but 
 its scope of activity extended little beyond that of 
 the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania. There 
 was also the American Eclectic Medical Association, 
 purporting to be a continuation of the Middle States
 
 672 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Reformed Medical Society, which was allied in an 
 analogous manner to the rival institution. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Association of Indiana, was 
 organized at Indianapolis in 1857. The late Dr. 
 William H. Kendrick was its president for several 
 years. A Society was also begun the same season at 
 Marshall, in Illinois, with Dr. Thomas A. Bland as 
 secretary, but it was short-lived. The States in the 
 valley of the Ohio and upper Mississippi were as yet 
 sparsely populated, and it was difficult to form and 
 sustain organizations. An attempt was made in 
 Iowa, and proved futile. 
 
 The Connecticut Eclectic Medical Association had 
 already been incorporated by the General Assembly 
 with full authority to provide for the instruction of 
 students in Medicine, and to license practitioners. 
 The Massachusetts Eclectic Medical Society was 
 organized in i860, and duly incorporated by the 
 Legislature. Both Societies were largely composed 
 of members who had belonged to the Reform or 
 Physopathic organizations that existed previously. 
 An Eclectic medical society was also formed in the 
 city of Boston. All these societies are still in vigor- 
 ous operation. 
 
 The most systematic plan of organization was 
 established in New York. There had been several 
 state and local societies which continued in active 
 existence for years,* some of them still in operation, 
 but others of them had fallen to pieces. In 1863, the 
 present Eclectic Medical Society of the State of New 
 
 * Page 482. The Genesee Reformed Medical Society had exfsted from an 
 early period. In 1854 the Eclectic Medical Society of the County of Kings was 
 organized and incorporated. In i86i the name was changed to the " Brooklyn 
 Academy of Eclectic Medicine," and in 1866 it became auxiliary to the State 
 Society.
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 673 
 
 York was organized at Albany, and a union was 
 effected soon afterward with the Reform Medical 
 Society, in which there were already many Eclectic 
 physicians, as well as Physio-Medical practitioners. 
 In 1865 the new Society was incorporated by special 
 act of the Legislature with power to establish auxil- 
 iary Societies which also should be corporate bodies. 
 The Eclectic Medical College of the City of New 
 York, was also incorporated at the same session.* 
 Auxiliary Societies, sixteen in number, embracing the 
 entire State except the northern counties, were 
 quickly constituted. This example was followed with 
 manifest advantage in subsequent years in other 
 States where the physicians possessed the requisite 
 esprit de corps and were sufficiently numerous. 
 
 Renewed zeal for cooperative action became widely 
 diffused. The Societies of the Western States had 
 been suffered to go out of existence, but new move- 
 ments were set on foot for forming new ones in their 
 place. f The Eclectic Medical Association of Indiana 
 was thus organized at Indianapolis, in 1865. The 
 Central Indiana Eclectic Medical Society was formed 
 at Anderson, in December of the same year, with Dr. 
 Milton Jay as president. 
 
 The Ohio State Eclectic Medical Association was 
 organized at Cincinnati in May, and made choice of 
 Dr. John King for president. The new State of West 
 Virginia, joining with the northern counties of Ohio, 
 
 * These enactments were procurer! by the author, who was then the legislative 
 correspondent of The Evening- Post at Albany. He encountered the resolute 
 opposition of the Committee on Medical Colleges and Medical Societies, which 
 consisted, as usual, of physicians hostile to the new practice. 
 
 t Doctors R. S. Newton, S. H. Potter, Joseph Adolphus, W. Molesworth, J. M. 
 Templeton, James Anton, J. R. Duncan, E. M. Morehouse, were among the most 
 active in these enterprises. 
 
 43
 
 074 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 also formed a "Union Eclectic Medical Society."* 
 Meanwhile a meeting was held at Anderson, in Ohio, 
 and organized the " People's Western Reserve Med- 
 ical Reform Society," electing Doctors J. M. Fry and 
 James M. Hole as secretaries. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Society of the State of Maine 
 was organized the same year. There had been an 
 active and very effective Botanic association in 
 earlier years, which had been able to procure the 
 repeal of the medical law, but almost directly after- 
 ward fell to pieces. Its practitioners presently 
 adopted the procedures and affiliated with the Eclec- 
 tic School. There were many energetic men in the 
 new Society, f and it continued prosperous for many 
 years. 
 
 The Vermont State .Eclectic Medical Societ)'- was 
 organized at Montpelier, in June, 1866. Its leading 
 members were the late Doctors Templeton, G. H. 
 Plumley, G. A. Bagley, Matthew McClearn, G. A. 
 Gray. It still takes rank among the most active and 
 effective societies. 
 
 The Iowa State Eclectic Medical Association was 
 organized at DesMoines, in June, 1868. The late Dr. 
 W. Molesworth was its president for several years ; 
 and among the principal members were Doctors 
 Joseph R. Duncan, James A. Reid, E. H. Carter, J. Gadd. 
 This Society has passed through many severe con- 
 flicts, but still holds its place among the most vigor- 
 ous of the Eclectic Medical bodies. 
 
 • This organization was not successful, and the West Virginia State Eclectic 
 Medical Society was organized in 1870. 
 
 t The president was Dr. Horatio G. Newton, a nephew of the founder of the 
 Worcester Medical Institution. Doctors George H. Day, Marshall H. Holmes, 
 W. R. Wright, Noah R. Martin, Algernon Fossett, and T. G. Batchelder were 
 prominent members.
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 675 
 
 The Nebraska State Eclectic Medical Association 
 was formed at Lincoln, in October of 1868, and is still 
 in active operation. 
 
 The Illinois State Eclectic Medical Society was 
 organized in direct connection with Bennett College. 
 A preliminary meeting was held at Elgin, in May, 
 1868, at which Dr. Anson L. Clark was elected presi- 
 dent, and arrangements were made to procure the 
 cooperation of the Eclectic practitioners of the State. 
 The effort was successful, and a complete organiza- 
 tion accomplished the next year. Thirty-eight 
 members were enrolled, among whom were Doctors 
 Henry Wohlgemuth, its president, R. F. Bennett, 
 Robert A. Gunn, Thomas D. Worrall, W. Hope 
 Davis, Henry Buecking, William W. Houser, George 
 Kirkpatrick, H. D. Garrison, Henry Olin, David 
 Bates, S. F. Wehr, W. F. Bayne, Zera Waters, John 
 M. Scudder. The Society now numbers its members 
 by the score. 
 
 The Minnesota State Eclectic Medical Society was 
 formed and incorporated at Owatonna, in May, 1869. 
 and continued for many years a very efficient organi- 
 zation. 
 
 The same year the Eclectic Medical Association of 
 the new State of Kansas, was organized at Topeka. 
 Its officers were men prominent in the Eclectic 
 ranks.* It has met various fortunes. The first 
 attempt to procure a medical law in the state, resulted 
 in a statute which upon strict construction, gave to 
 this Society the sole power to license physicians. 
 There was accordingly a large increase of its 
 members. The law, however, was repealed at a 
 
 * Dr. S. E. Martin, president; George H. Field, vice-president; Noah 
 Simmons, secretary ; David Surber, treasurer.
 
 676 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 subsequent meeting of the Legislature, and most of 
 them, not having sympathy with Eclectic principles, 
 dropped connection with the Society. 
 
 The zeal for organization extended further. The 
 Eclectics of Missouri met at Chillicothe, in June, 1870, 
 and formed a State Eclectic Medical Society, with 
 Dr. J. S. Calloway for president. The outlook was en- 
 couraging and the Society prospered for many years. 
 
 State Societies were also formed the same year in 
 Michigan and Wisconsin. A call for a meeting to 
 organize a society in Rhode Island, however, met 
 with but a feeble response. 
 
 Reformed Medicine at this period was not circum- 
 scribed to the United States. An Eclectic Medical 
 Society was also organized in Canada West, now the 
 Province of Ontario, which was very effective in 
 securing for its practitioners equal rights and 
 immunities to those enjoyed by other physicians. 
 
 The Eclectics of Great Britain formed a Society in 
 1867, by the title of the British Eclectic Medical 
 Reform Association, and continued to hold meetings 
 for many years. Among its members were Doctors 
 J. H. Blunt, J. F. Payne, James Skelton, William 
 Hitchman. Unfortunately, however, there was great 
 indifference to thoroughness of medical study, and 
 an indisposition to great exertion for the promotion 
 of the cause. The medical laws of England are very 
 severe toward the minor Schools, and the Reformed 
 practitioners exist under disabilities hard to sur- 
 mount. 
 
 NEW MEDICAL COLLEGES. 
 
 With the fresh impulse to establish Eclectic Medical 
 Societies was developed a kindred ambition to found 
 medical colleges to instruct students in Reformed
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 677 
 
 Medicine. It was generally felt by practitioners that 
 the possession of a medical degree would impart 
 greater confidence, and in some measure assure them 
 against unreasonable discrimination and further en- 
 croachment upon their rights. 
 
 The Society in the State of New York was the first to 
 make the attempt. There seemed to be an appropriate- 
 ness in this undertaking. The city of New York was 
 the commercial metropolis of the American Republic, 
 and the establishing of a medical college equal in 
 character and scientific merit to the other institutions 
 there would be an important factor in the way of 
 divesting Eclectic Medicine of a provincial and 
 sectarian character, and giving it a national impor- 
 tance. The American Reformed Practice had orig- 
 inated there, and its re-instatement after so many 
 vicissitudes would be a new triumph for the cause. 
 
 At the annual meeting of the Eclectic Medical 
 Society of the State of New York, the proposition was 
 thoroughly discussed. There were prominent physi- 
 cians in attendance from Massachusetts and Pennsyl- 
 vania,* who were experienced in the management of 
 medical institutions, and participated in the proceed- 
 ings. Resolutions were reported and adopted, in- 
 structing the Board of Directors to procure from the 
 Legislature of New York an act of incorporation for 
 the Society and a charter for the proposed college. f 
 The desired legislation was accomplished in 1865, and 
 the new college began its first term in October of the 
 
 * Doctors C. Edwin Miles, William Paine, Henry Hollembaek, Joseph Sites 
 and John Buchanan. 
 
 t Dr. Robert S. Newton was president of the Society. When he severed his 
 connection with the Eclectic Medical Institute and removed from Cincinnati, he 
 had stipulated with Dr. J M. Scudder that he would not attempt to establish another 
 medical college. After he took up his residence in the city of New York, he 
 declined accordingly a proposition for such an enterprise, but in this case he 
 evidently regarded the action of the society as n paramount oblication.
 
 678 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ensuing year. The president was the Honorable 
 William F. Havemeyer, late Mayor, who was suc- 
 ceeded by Alexander Wilder, in 1868. The Faculty 
 consisted of Doctors Robert S. Newton, Edwin 
 Freeman and J. Milton Sanders, formerly of the 
 Eclectic Medical Institute ; William W. Hadley, late 
 of the Central and Metropolitan Medical Colleges ; 
 Paul W. Allen, of the Eclectic Institute of Virginia ; 
 John M. Youart and Thomas D. Worrall. In its 
 announcements and reports the authorities of this in- 
 stitution announced their adherence to the principles 
 of Eclectic Medicine as set forth by its first teachers. 
 
 The Reform Medical College of Georgia resumed 
 lectures at Macon in the autumn of 1867. The 
 Georgia Eclectic Medical College which had been 
 incorporated by the Legislature, in 1865, began 
 lectures in 1866. Doctors I. J. M. Goss, T. A. Warren 
 and S. W. Thompson were the principal instructors. 
 These institutions, neither of them, were affiliated or 
 identified with any Eclectic organization. 
 
 The Bennett College of Eclectic Medicine and 
 Surgery was organized in 1868, and incorporated by 
 the General Assembly of Illinois, the ensuing winter. 
 The principal founders were Doctors John Forman, 
 Anson L. Clark, H. K. Whitford, Robert A. Gunn and 
 Herod D. Garrison. The name was chosen in honor 
 of Dr. John Hughes Bennett, of Edinburgh, whom its 
 journal declared to be "the celebrated leader of the 
 Eclectic School, and considered throughout the world 
 as the most eminent medical reformer living." * 
 
 * The announcement declared this explicitly : 
 
 " The scientific principle of conservative Eclectic Medicine, first enunciated 
 and so ably defended by Professor Bennett, of the University of Edinburgh, 
 some \ ears ago, has established true Eclecticism upon a basis which cannot be 
 controverted." 
 
 Dr. Bennett certainly was more closely identified with characteristic Eclectic 
 procedures than many who now bear the designation of Eclectic.
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 679 
 
 vSonie exception was taken by the Eclectic. Medical 
 Journal, to this position as not being that of American 
 Eclecticism, and as differing from the Eclecticism 
 taught at the Eclectic Medical Institute. A con- 
 troversy afterward followed, which was maintained 
 for several years with considerable acrimony of 
 feeling.* 
 
 SPECIFIC MEDICATION. 
 
 In the meantime. Dr. Scudder himself acknowl- 
 edged a departure from the earlier teachers of the 
 American Reformed Medical Practice. He justified 
 this by the fact that the inception of the Eclectic 
 movement was a revolt against medical despotism, 
 and its first expressions were for unlimited research 
 and entire freedom to choose from all sources which 
 
 * It was apprehended in different places at that time that Dr. Scudder was 
 •pposed to every attempt to establish new colleges of the Eclectic School. This 
 was deduced from expressions implying that they were short-lived and unworthy 
 ©f support. " Our profession has been cursed with mushroom colleges aad 
 juvenile and inefficient professors," he declared. " Select such institutions as 
 have lecturers proven to be competent by the long occupancy of their positions a»d 
 the intrinsic value of their publications." The Eclectic Medical Institute he 
 described as amply secured from such failure by the money invested in it, and was 
 superior to other Eclectic schools. Referring, in i86g. to a want of students to 
 sustain more than one or two medical colleges, he estimated the number of Eclectic 
 students at 250 yearly, and that of these the Eclectic Medical Institute would have 
 175 ; Rush and Ann Arbor Colleges, being near, and cheap, and good, would get a 
 portion, "leaving a small driblet for any new Eclectic College that may be started. 
 This has been the case in the past," he adds, '" and it will very certainly be the case 
 in the future, for the same causes e.xist. A student, therefore, who attends and 
 takes his diploma from such a school takes the risk of an imperfect and feeble 
 course of lectures from men not properly trained and experienced, and the certainty 
 that he will hold a defunct diploma in a few years." 
 
 On the other hand, however, Dr. Scudder declared in 1866, that he woi4d gladly 
 welcome one or more reputable medical colleges. The same year, when recording 
 the establishment of the Eclectic Medical Colleges at Atlanta and New York, he 
 described them as " favorably located, and certain with sufficient perseverance, to 
 succeed," and he wished them every success. Even when criticizing the manifesto 
 of the Bennett College, in 1868, he begged its managers to "come out plainly for 
 American Eclecticism," thus allowing him "to give them the hand of fellowship, 
 and wish them God-speed."
 
 68o HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 seemed best. "Dr. Beach's shoes do not fit me," said 
 he, '' and I do not know why I should wear Dr. 
 Morrow's coat if I can get a better one." 
 
 Again, referring to the fact that the opponents of 
 the Eclectic School had approximated to the Eclectics 
 in practice and taken up some of their remedies, 
 having been forced to discard mercury, antimonials, 
 and the lancet, or to use these agents secretly, with- 
 out the knowledge of the patients, he demanded 
 whether the mission of the Eclectics was thereby 
 fulfilled, " as some faint-hearted Eclectics would say," 
 and whether they were willing to be absorbed by 
 their opponents. " For me," said he, " I do not 
 intend to be '■gobbled up,' and I could not, if I would, 
 forget the insulting treatment and disregard of our 
 rights manifested by Old-School physicians. They 
 may make up their minds to continued war until they 
 learn that this country is as free in Medicine as it is 
 in religion or politics." 
 
 These considerations possibly had some influence 
 in regard to the diverging from the views entertained 
 by the founders of the Eclectic School of Medicine, 
 As early as 1864, Dr. Scudder declared that he believed 
 to some extent in specific remedies and specific modes 
 of treatment. He protested, however, that he did 
 not desire to adopt the Homoeopathic doctrine or 
 infinitesimal dosage, but stated that he was making 
 an examination of their therapeutic procedures. He 
 gave much attention to the peculiar views promul- 
 gated by Hale, Hempel, Rau, Rademacher and 
 Honigberger. It was practicable from a comparing of 
 the doctrines of these various teachers to digest a 
 theory which should be sufficiently recondite and plaus- 
 ible, while differing materially in certain points from
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 68l 
 
 the formulated notionsof the other schools. This would 
 give a doctrinal focus distinct from theirs, and afford 
 a reason for the permanent maintaining of a School 
 of practice apart from them. 
 
 The new dogma was denominated '■'' Specific Medication" 
 and was defined as follows : " We use the term specific 
 with relation to definite pathological conditions, and 
 propose to say that certain well-determined deviations 
 from the healthy state will always be corrected by 
 specific medicines."* 
 
 The originality of the doctrine has been repeatedly 
 controverted. Dr. William H. Cook ascribed it to a 
 Thomsonian origin. '' It is an old Physio-Medical 
 doctrine," he declared, "that remedies should be 
 adapted to the work in hand ; and the more exactly 
 they are thus adapted, the better. The Eclectics 
 ' borrow' this comely suit of Physio-Medical clothing, 
 and would make the world believe it is a brand- 
 new suit of their own."f 
 
 Dr. Scudder cautiously refrained from any argu- 
 ment upon this point. He published a series of 
 papers in W\q Eclectic Medical Journal oi 1869, setting 
 forth the new doctrine — not making it a test, however, 
 of Eclectic orthodoxy, and it became the distinctive 
 feature of the teachings in the Medical Eclectic 
 Institute. 
 
 * The American Honiiropathic Observer^ of 1869, virtually accepted the 
 hypothesis upon which this proposition is based. " For the present and in the 
 majority of instances," it remarked, " we must take the pathological condition 
 as being practically the ultimatum in all cases, regarding this condition as being 
 practically the ultimatum of the morbific forces operating behind." 
 
 t Dr. Cook objected to this use of the \.^xm. specific vicdicatioii. He insisted 
 that the Homceopathists first gave origin to it, and gave it its definition which the 
 professional world has adopted ; and therefore, if the Eclectics do not mean the 
 same thing when they use the term, they should find another phrase to convey 
 their meaning.
 
 682 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 THE MEDICAL CONFLICT RENEWED. 
 
 In 1845, Dr. Thomas V. Morrow declared his hope 
 that medical monopoly had met its overthrow, and 
 that all laws granting to one class of physicians 
 exclusive privileges had been blotted out forever. 
 Human progress, however, whether moral or scientific, 
 is never in a straight line forward, but always in 
 circles — for a season apparently advancing, and then 
 for a season retrograding. The sound of Dr. Morrow's 
 utterance had hardly died away on the air when the 
 initiative steps were taken to organize the American 
 Medical Association on purpose to check further 
 movement toward medical enfranchisment. Its sup- 
 porters speedily assumed it to be " the only govern- 
 ing body in medicine." Its influence was chiefly 
 employed to prevent any but members of its own 
 order from receiving appointments to places of public 
 trust. "Regular medicine only," it was set forth, 
 " should be called in to serve the government ; and 
 Homoeopathy and other irregular sects in medicine, 
 no matter how numerous or influential, politically or 
 otherwise, should not be represented." 
 
 There was for the time little other partisan 
 legislation. The General Assembly of the State of 
 North Carolina, however, in 1859, passed an act in- 
 corporating the Medical Society of the State, and em- 
 powering it to appoint a Board of Medical Examiners ; 
 and all practitioners not licensed by that Board were 
 debarred from the right to receive compensation for 
 service. 
 
 The Civil War afforded opportunity for aggressive 
 work. The Federal Government, willing to divest 
 itself of some of its responsibilities, had yielded the
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 68^ 
 
 control of the medical department of the army, and 
 for a time the exclusive policy was rigidly in opera- 
 tion. The hope was confidently expressed that such 
 proscription would effect the entire uprooting of the 
 other schools of practice. Their general disorganiza- 
 tion seemed to give ground for such a hope. In 
 many of the states the medical boards refused to 
 accept every application of an Eclectic or Homoeo- 
 pathist for the post of regimental surgeon. A few, 
 however, passed the cordon ; and such governors as 
 Oliver P. Morton, of Indiana, and examiners like 
 those at the city of Philadelphia, accepted competent 
 physicians without regard to their views of thera- 
 peutics. 
 
 Too generally, however, the character and efficiency 
 of the surgeons were held as of less importance than 
 the school of practice. New graduates and unsuccess- 
 ful physicians were over-numerous. That the soldiers 
 suffered by this seemed to be regarded as a secondary 
 if not unimportant matter.* The Government soon 
 found it necessary to remodel the medical service, but 
 the war upon the non-conformist physicians was con- 
 tinued to the last. 
 
 The smoke of the civil conflict was beginning to 
 disappear from the hills when the lobbies of the 
 legislatures were thronged by eager applicants for 
 special medical legislation. The disbanding of the 
 Federal and Confederate armies had left several 
 thousand army surgeons without occupation, and their 
 professional brethren were now employing various 
 devices to provide for them. Numerous pretexts, more 
 
 * A letter from an Eclectic physician holding an appointment, gave this state- 
 ment: "The records of two U. S. General Hospitals, comprising six thousand 
 cases, show I hat one-third of all the patients admitted die! * * Of my own 
 cases [included in the enumeration] exactly one in fifteen died."
 
 684 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 or less specious, were put forth. The third invasion 
 of Asiatic cholera afforded occasion to procure the 
 sanction of numerous commissions and boards of 
 health, with extraordinary and almost unconstitutional 
 powers, on which a large number of the unemployed 
 physicians were supplied with salaried positions. All 
 Eclectics and Homoeopathists were treated as in- 
 eligible. 
 
 Another step was to obtain legislation which could 
 be interpreted and carried out against physicians of 
 the heterodox schools desirous to begin or continue 
 in practice. It was hoped that this would make room 
 for the others. The pretexts for such legislation were 
 the same as had been put forth in the earlier years of 
 the Nineteenth Century. The people were to be pro- 
 tected in spite of their wishes to manage their own 
 medical concerns. Protection is a significant word in 
 American politics. 
 
 So far there had been no general protest. Many of 
 the former obstacles were out of the way. The excit- 
 ing events had virtually relegated all the older 
 American history to the oblivion which eventually 
 enshrouds all past achievements. The generation 
 that had demanded and secured equal rights for all 
 schools of physicians had passed from active life. 
 It had been succeeded by new men, who very gen- 
 erally possessed feebler stamina, less earnestness of 
 purpose, less profoundness of conviction. Then, 
 likewise, the stringent and arbitrary measures incident 
 in military administration, had operated to accustom 
 the people to passive endurance, and had, to a very 
 large extent, quelled the instinct of liberty in Ameri- 
 can bosoms. Measures that would have been strenu- 
 ously resisted a few years before, might be now
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 685 
 
 attempted with a fair prospect of success. A people 
 has often parted with freedom many years before 
 finding it out. 
 
 Under all the pretexts set forth for the new legisla- 
 tion cupidity is manifest, as well as the lust of 
 dominion. There were five to six thousand Eclectic 
 physicians in the country, a like ntimber of Homoeo- 
 pathists, and many Physio-Medical and unclassified 
 practitioners. The excluding of a sujfficient number 
 of these from their lawful right to follow their call- 
 ing would create vacant places for their competitors 
 out of employment. The machinery of a Trade- 
 union was set in motion ; the American Medical 
 Association, which had been organized originally for 
 such purposes, abetted the movement ; and the auxil- 
 iary societies in the several states and others seeking 
 for favor, acted together in the matter like disci- 
 plined soldiers. It was made in this way to seem like 
 a common demand everywhere. 
 
 In 1859, a bill was introduced into the legislature of 
 Pennsylvania, requiring that every practitioner should 
 be a graduate of a medical school. Dr. John Buchanan, 
 then dean of the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsyl- 
 vania, at once declared his hearty approval of the 
 measure. " It is an act," said he, "that will do much 
 in elevating the standard of our profession — in afford- 
 ing protection to our citizens from those unqualified 
 to practice. It is entirely free from sectarianism." 
 
 The General Assembly of Ohio, had already in 
 1868, enacted a statute more severe and stringent than 
 any of the others. It required the physician to be a 
 graduate of some medical school, or to hold the 
 certificate of a medical society, except he had already 
 been engaged ten years in the practice of medicine.
 
 686 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The penalty was one hundred dollars for the first 
 offense and imprisonment for the second. 
 
 Dr. Scudder, remarking on this bill, referred to 
 the fact that only one school of physicians had been 
 active in procuring medical legislation, and intimated 
 that the power would be used against the others. "A 
 Board of Examiners drawn from the regular ranks 
 would be like some courts ; organized to convict all 
 irregulars." In regard to quacking, he declared : "If 
 quackeries are not injurious to life and health no one 
 has a right to complain." This was not a plea in 
 favor of quackery as many would insinuate, but a 
 consideration of its relations and its tenure with its 
 purchasers. 
 
 The next proposition was to establish a censorship 
 over practitioners of medicine. The Surgeon-General 
 who had been diligent to remove Eclectic and Homoeo- 
 pathic physicians from the military service, com- 
 plained bitterly of the utter unfitness of the others. 
 "None but graduates of the regular medical schools 
 were admitted to examinations, and yet over eighty 
 per cent, of these were rejected for incompetency. 
 The ignorance betrayed by many of the candidates 
 was deplorable, proving that the diploma of a medical 
 college had ceased to be of any value as evidence of 
 capacity." 
 
 Thus, was need urged of legislation, not because the 
 heterodox institutions had been found at fault, except 
 for being " irregular," but because of the deplorable 
 illiteracy and unfitness of those denominated " scien- 
 tific." Boards of Medical Examiners were suggested. 
 The jealousies of the colleges was sufficient, however, 
 for years, to hold back such legislation, the ulterior 
 effect of which must be to weaken their importance.
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 687 
 
 The example of Canada, likewise had a deterrent 
 influence. Examiners had existed there for many 
 years ; when in 1861 an act was passed by the Legis- 
 lative Council and Assembly to create a new Board to 
 examine all persons desiring to obtain a license to 
 practice medicine in the Province " according to the 
 doctrines and teachings of Eclectics." 
 
 This legislation was followed, a few years later, by 
 other measures, placing the three schools of medicine 
 on an equal footing. Nothing like this was desired. 
 The dominant school in Canada set itself in 1869 to 
 the work of procuring the annulling of all liberal 
 legislation, thus taking the lead of the " regular pro- 
 fession " of the United States. 
 
 The first enactments were sufficiently mild to 
 allay apprehension, except from the far-seeing. 
 Some of the heterodox physicians themselves re- 
 garded them with favor. Curious as it may seem, 
 many men having been established in exclusive 
 privileges, are willing to help impose disabilities to 
 prevent others from obtaining them. The medical 
 statutes of Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois at that period 
 simply reqiiired physicians to possess diplomas from 
 reputable medical colleges, on penalty of being 
 disqualified from recovering fees in a court of law. 
 In 1869, an enactment of similar tenor was passed in 
 Minnesota. More stringent legislation followed 
 afterward. 
 
 In regard to enactments to regulate the practice of 
 medicine, Dr. Scudder acknowledged that his mind 
 was not fully made up as to what was really best for 
 the profession and the people. He seemed to hesitate 
 between his convictions of natural right and govern- 
 mental supervision. " Entire freedom to choose a
 
 688 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 medical practice and physician is in the spirit of our 
 institutions," he frankly declared, " and entire free- 
 dom of medical practice, governed only by those 
 common laws which protect against injury to life or 
 limb, would seem to be also the right of freemen. 
 Laws never increase the real value of anything ; and 
 it is as great nonsense to talk of elevating the medical 
 profession by law, as to raise the price of cows, calico 
 and other commodities, and improve their quality by 
 legislative enactment. If there is a demand for 
 skilled labor, individuals are trained to meet it ; if 
 there is a demand for higher attainments in educa- 
 tion the supply naturally follows. So if there is a 
 real demand by the people for a greater degree of 
 skill, and a more intelligent use of remedial means 
 and appliances, it will be supplied as certainly as 
 effects follow causes." 
 
 On the other hand, " when medical colleges are 
 sufficiently numerous," Dr. Scudder approved of a law 
 requiring every practitioner to present evidences of 
 a sufficient course of study. This he thought that 
 the State might justly demand. It being admitted, 
 however, that the diploma of a medical college is by 
 no means sufficient evidence of a good medical educa- 
 tion, a plea is made for the State to provide for 
 examinations to test the capacity of each practitioner 
 This of course relates to the physicians created by 
 the schools and not endowed by native fitness. Dr. 
 Scudder compared medical examining boards to 
 boards for examinations as to the proficiency of the 
 ministry of religion. When one religious sect ob- 
 tained control of such a Board, candidates from the 
 other sects would receive no mercy. So in medicine ; 
 only with a Board of each school, or equal representa-
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 689 
 
 tion of each school upon a common Board, would there 
 be any hope of fairness.* 
 
 In Michigan the legislation took a shape most 
 unacceptable to those who had set it in operation. A 
 medical department had been established in the State 
 University at Ann Arbor, and maintained from the 
 public treasury. Presently the Legislature directed 
 that a professorship of Homoeopathic Medicine should 
 be added. For years, however, the Board of Regents, 
 on one or another frivolous pretext, evaded any com- 
 plying with the law. In 1868, the Legislature again 
 took the matter in hand, and made all appropriations 
 for the department conditioned upon the establishing 
 of the chair. Much protesting was made, and threat- 
 ening to resign, but eventually the law was carried 
 into effect, and the elements subsided into calm. 
 
 The American Medical Association took another 
 aggressive step. The Committee on Education 
 recommended that " an appeal be addressed to the 
 various state authorities advocating that no more 
 charters be granted to medical colleges which do not 
 agree to adopt the plan of teaching which the Associ- 
 ation shall hereafter demand." This was followed by 
 a renewal of efforts for restrictive legislation, under 
 the pretext of elevating the standard of medical 
 attainment, regulating the practice of medicine, and 
 protecting the people from quackery and empiricism. 
 At that period the trend of American legislation was 
 unequivocally toward the creating of monopolies and 
 
 * No arrangement of this character had ever been regarded as a final disposi- 
 tion of the matter. Those who conceived the purpose of the medical laws regard 
 such boards only as temporary makeshifts and make effort unceasingly to 
 procure a change. The examinations are often little else than schoolmasterlike 
 exhibitions, of small consequence in determining the fitness of the candidates. 
 But with Medical Boards most of the Medical colleges are of little account.
 
 690 HISTORY OF MEDICINE, 
 
 privileged bodies, the multiplying of offices and 
 general irresponsibility. Bills were introduced simul- 
 taneously into the legislatures similar in purport 
 and language, showing their common origin. As 
 the tendency of such measures is to increase litiga- 
 tion to the farthest pitch of endurance, lawyers 
 often constituted their advocates in the legislative 
 lobbies. It was a strife between cunning wrong and 
 passive truth. 
 
 NEW NATIONAL ECLECTIC MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
 
 The awakened impulse of Eclectic physicians to 
 form societies, tended directly to open the way for 
 combining once more in one general organization. 
 Their exclusion from the volunteer military medical 
 service in many of the states, as in Massachusetts, 
 New York and Ohio, operated as a stimulus to union 
 for future exigencies. The Massachusetts Eclectic 
 Medical Society took the preliminary steps, in 1864, 
 by appointing a committee to correspond with the 
 secretaries of the societies in regard to the feasibility 
 of a national organization. 
 
 Dr. Robert S. Newton was the first promoter of the 
 movement. He had been identified with the National 
 Eclectic Medical Association, in concert with Dr. 
 Morrow and his colleagues in 1848 ; had been zealous 
 to maintain it when his colleagues at Cincinnati had 
 deserted it, and was its president at its last meeting, 
 in 1857. He was a man of marked individuality, 
 fertile in expedients, plausible in address, with a rich 
 endowment of statesmanlike qualities and powers of 
 persuasion. He had now became a resident of the 
 city of New York, and had actively employed him-
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 69I 
 
 self to establish closer relations among the Reformed 
 practitioners. He had attended the meeting in Mas- 
 sachusetts in 1864, and the action taken at that session 
 was largely due to his influence. The president, Dr. 
 Paul W. Allen, engaged heartily in the proposed 
 measure. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Society of the State of New 
 York, held its second annual meeting a week later, 
 and adopted resolutions concurring in the proposition. 
 Dr. Jacob Van Valkenburg, the secretary, was directed 
 to correspond with the proper officers of other 
 societies with a view to effecting a national organiza- 
 tion of Eclectic physicians. Present at this meeting 
 were Doctors Joseph Sites, Henry Hollembaek and 
 John Buchanan, of the Eclectic Medical Society of 
 Pennsylvania. They promised to unite in the move- 
 ment and were received as members. 
 
 At its meetings for the next five years this action 
 was repeated; committees of correspondence appointed 
 and delegates selected. 
 
 The State Society in Ohio having ceased to exist 
 and a new Association having been duly organized, 
 the question was introduced at its annual meeting, in 
 1867. A resolution was presented by Dr. J. M. 
 Scudder, and adopted, declaring that the time had 
 come for the organization of a National Society, and 
 asking the cooperation of the several Eclectic Medical 
 societies.* 
 
 * He defined his views in an editorial article. " We want associated action 
 for the regulation of our own affairs and for the further advancement of Eclecti- 
 cism. I hold that no one man or half-dozen men, self-appointed, have the right to 
 control the faith, standing and practice of six to eight thousand. * * * If the 
 Eclectic physicians would unite as one man, they would obtain all they could 
 possibly desire. Instead of being a personal fight, it is the campaign of a well 
 org^anixed and resistless army."
 
 692 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The matter continued under discussion for several 
 years. Several endeavors were made to fix a time for 
 the beginning of active operation. The Eclectic 
 Medical Society of Pennsylvania adopted a resolu- 
 tion in 1866, contemplating a National Convention at 
 Philadelphia in 1867. The apprehension, however, 
 that the Eclectic College there was not properly con- 
 ducted had developed into conviction. The contro- 
 versy with Dr. Paine, which had finally induced him 
 to withdraw from the Eclectic body, increased this 
 feeling. Nevertheless, there had been no open divis- 
 ion, and many of the societies were on friendly terms 
 with the institution. It was plain, however, that the 
 time for more complete organization had not come. 
 
 The proposition was also made to hold the pre- 
 liminary convention at Cincinnati. The National 
 Eclectic Medical Association at its last session, in 
 1857, had appointed that place for the next meeting 
 there, and it seemed appropriate to act upon that 
 suggestion. The Association of Indiana, as if to 
 direct the action, appointed two delegates, in 1867, 
 " to the National Association which meets at Cincin- 
 nati in June, 1868." The matter, however, went no 
 further, and at its next meeting, at Indianapolis, in 
 1868, Dr. Joseph Adolphus offered a resolution calling 
 upon the other societies and upon the medical journals 
 to imite their endeavors, " that a National Eclectic 
 Medical Association be formed at as early a day as 
 possible." 
 
 There was much reason for such a demand. Many 
 were becom.ing averse or indifferent to a general 
 organization, through distrust of the persons most 
 active, and from grave doubts of its feasibility. The 
 ruling spirits of the Eclectic Medical Society and
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 693 
 
 College of Pennsylvania, finding themselves losing 
 the confidence of the physicians of the New School, 
 determined to forestall the movement. The line of 
 division, however, had not been definitely laid down, 
 except by the Eclectic Medical Society of New York, 
 and several societies exhibited a disposition to act 
 with the organization at Philadelphia. It was an- 
 nounced in 1869, that the National Eclectic Medical 
 Association had been formed, and would hold its 
 annual meeting on the twenty-eighth of January, 
 1870. This was to be an organization for the benefit 
 of practitioners solely, and no professor of a medical 
 college would be suffered to have a controlling in- 
 fluence, to make it subsidiary to private ends. 
 
 The meeting in January was imposing in descrip- 
 tion. Delegates were reported from every state in the 
 Union, and from Canada, eighty in all ; * and a 
 constitution adopted. A committee of correspondence 
 was appointed to communicate with the executive 
 officers of medical societies, and another to prepare a 
 National Eclectic Pharmacopoeia. The Rev. Matthew 
 Hale Smith was elected president, and the next annual 
 meeting was appointed at the city of Washington, in 
 January, 187 i.f The subsequent meetings, however, 
 
 * Among these were Doctors J. B. Gallup, John Sims, of Delaware; J. R. 
 Simmons and William M. Durham, of Georgia ; Benjamin Thompson, of Iowa ; 
 Dr. James C. Harrell, of Kentucky ; W. Young and E. G. Jones, of Maine ; G. H. 
 Hutchings, of Massachusetts ; M. H. Smith, W. H. Bowlsby, E. P. Huyler and 
 L. D. Bro'ighton, of New York ; \V. II. Blake, of Pennsylvania. 
 
 t Doctors Daniel Mayer, of West Va. ; W. M. Durham, of Georgia; E. P. 
 Huyler, of New York ; G. Hutchings, of Massachusetts, and Philip Rowden, were 
 vice-presidents. The Board of Censors was announced, and comprising among 
 others, Doctors J. W. Johnson, of Connecticut; Duncan McLeod, of Canada; 
 John Sims, of Delaware; W. M. Durham, of Georgia ; A. Abbett, of Indiana; 
 George W. Brown (formerly of Kansas), of Illinois ; Joseph Adolphus, of Iowa ; 
 Samuel York, of Maine : Horatio G. Barrows, of Massachusetts; A. R. Brown, of 
 Michigan ; J. M. Roberts, of New Hampshire; James L. Watson, of New York; 
 J. Monroe Templeton, of Vermont ; J. S. Eastland, of Wisconsin.
 
 694 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 were held in Philadelphia, but the proceedings were 
 of no historic consequence. The Eclectic Medical 
 Societies generally disowned the whole affair, and 
 with the legal proceedings which were instituted in 
 1878, the Association, Eclectic Medical College, and 
 the Eclectic Medical Society, of Pennsylvania ceased 
 to exist. 
 
 In 1869 the movement for national organization 
 acquired new strength. Dr. Newton was unremitting 
 and indefatigable in his endeavors, corresponding 
 with leading physicians and attending the meetings 
 of the Eclectic Medical Societies in the several States. 
 To his efforts and energies must be ascribed the 
 ultimate success. 
 
 In the summer of 1869, the Eclectic Medical Asso- 
 ciation of Iowa, on the motion of Dr. Joseph R. 
 Duncan, its president, adopted a resolution urging 
 immediate measures, and appointed Doctors Duncan 
 and Molesworth a Committee of Correspondence. The 
 Society of New York went further and designated 
 Doctors R. S. Newton, J. M. F. Browne and Prince A. 
 Morrow, a Committee of Conference with a view to 
 early action. There was now no further delay. 
 
 The suggestion to hold the preliminary meetings in 
 the city of New York did not meet with general 
 favor. The proposition to convene at Cincinnati was 
 made and promptly declined. Chicago was then 
 selected. The call was prepared and signed by the 
 executive officers of eight Eclectic Medical Societies 
 and the two Colleges at New York and Chicago.* 
 
 * The Societies of New York, Maine. Connecticut, Indiana, Minnesota, Iowa, 
 New Hampshire and IlHnois were thus included. The name of the author, as 
 president of the Eclectic Medical Society of the State of New York, headed the 
 list. The signers were generally representative men of the Eclectic School.
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 695 
 
 Twelve delegates were allotted to each State Society, 
 and eleven of these were represented. The convention 
 assembled on the twenty-seventh of September, 1870. 
 It was a very enthusiastic session. The Eclectic phy- 
 sicians of Chicago put forth every effort to make the 
 occasion enjoyable and memorable. Dr. Robert S. 
 Newton presided with Doctors George W. Pickerill 
 and John W. Johnson as secretaries. It was decided 
 to organize the Association anew under the former 
 name adopted in 1848.* Ninety delegates were 
 accepted as members. Several of these were women, 
 although many members had not been ready to adopt 
 this new policy so sternly repudiated by the other 
 Schools of Medicine. 
 
 A Constitution, with By-Laws and a Code of Ethics, 
 was adopted. The latter was in some respects broad, 
 authorizing special as well as general practice ; the 
 use of cards, lectures, printed publications and certifi- 
 cates of cures ; the presence of laymen at surgical 
 operations; the holding of patents for inventions, and 
 free consultation. But except a person had qualified 
 himself practically by attendance at college or 
 otherwise with the various departments of medical 
 knowledge, he might not be considered as a physician ; 
 and thenceforward, a young man was imperatively 
 required to attend two full courses of lectures and 
 graduate from a medical college, regularly chartered. f 
 
 * There was some difference of judgment, and the author pleaded for omitting 
 the denominational appellation. Probably the enthusiasm evoked by the success 
 of the convention decided the matter. Some, too, were mindful of the history of 
 the Physio-Medical School which had changed its name so often as to effect 
 seriously its prestige. Besides, it may have been deemed politic to afford no 
 apparent opportunity for the leaders at Philadelphia to vaunt theirs as the genuine 
 representative body. 
 
 + These provisions were adopted in 1872.
 
 696 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 A permanent organization was effected by the 
 election of officers, namely : Dr. John W. Johnson, of 
 Connecticut, President ; Doctors Stephen H. Potter, of 
 Ohio, James S. Cowdrey, of Indiana, and William 
 Molesworth, of Iowa, Vice-Presidents ; Robert A. 
 Gunn, of Illinois, Secretary ; James M. Comins, of 
 New York, Corresponding Secretary, and Benjamin 
 J. Stow, of New York, Treasurer.* Dr. Johnson was a 
 man of superior energy and decision of character, 
 familiar with public business, and popular in the 
 Eastern States. He had belonged to the Botanic 
 School and acted as trustee and professor in the 
 Worcester Medical Institution. The Secretary, Dr. 
 Gunn, was a graduate of the Medical University at 
 Buffalo, of sanguine temper, enthusiastic, ready with 
 pen and effort, and in earnest with whatever he 
 undertook. He had been a founder of the Eclectic 
 Medical Society of Illinois, of the Bennett College, 
 and the Chicago Medical Times ; and the successful 
 organization of the National Association was largely 
 duetto his activity and persistent efforts. He excelled 
 as a writer and lecturer, and was among the most 
 accomplished surgeons in the Eclectic School. 
 
 Among the first measures adopted was the appoint- 
 ing of a committee to prepare a National Eclectic 
 Medical Pharmacopoeia, and directing the Secretary to 
 procure a copyright for the titlepage. 
 
 The second meeting after the reorganization was 
 held in the hall of the Young Men's Christian Associ- 
 ation, in the city of New York, beginning on the 
 fourth day of October, 187 1. Twelve Societies and 
 
 * There was an implied understanding that no professor or representative of 
 a medical college should be chosen president. The rule was enforced till the 
 election of Dr. John King in 1879.
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 697 
 
 nineteen States were represented by delegates. Dr. 
 Alexander Wilder presented the act of the Legislature 
 of New York, incorporating the Association, and a 
 resolution was adopted making it a part of the con- 
 stitution. Dr. Joseph R. Duncan, of Iowa, was elected 
 President ; Doctors C. Edwin Miles, of Massachusetts, 
 Alexander Thompson, of Pennsylvania, and Vincent 
 A. Baker, of Michigan, Vice-Presidents ; Dr. R. A. 
 Gunn, Secretary ; Dr. J. M. Comins, Corresponding 
 Secretary and Dr. B. J. Stow, Treasurer. 
 
 Resolutions were adopted denouncing unqualifiedly 
 the selling of medical diplomas, and all persons and 
 colleges engaged in the traffic ; also condemning 
 physicians of all Schools engaged in " the growing 
 evil of the practice of abortion," and " the vending by 
 physicians of patent or proprietary medicines, or 
 boastful advertisements." 
 
 A resolution of greeting to the Eclectic Medical 
 Association of Great Britain was also adopted.* 
 
 The Association held its third meeting at Indian- 
 apolis, beginning on the eighteenth of September, 
 1872. Governor Baker delivered the address of 
 welcome. A significant occurrence was the accession 
 of new members from Ohio, who had remained apart 
 and adverse to the movement. At their instance the 
 provisions of the Code of Ethics were expunged, 
 which related to specialties in practice, advertising, 
 the holding of patents for inventions, and the requir- 
 ing of future practitioners to graduate from medical 
 colleges after two full terms of attendance. The 
 subject of an Eclectic Pharmacopoeia was discussed, 
 
 * " Its influence and power are such," Dr. Newion declared, " tliat at the last 
 ParHament they came within three votes of repealing the entire Medical Laws of 
 England."
 
 690 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 and a committee appointed with directions to prepare 
 and publish the work at once.* Dr. Scudder pre- 
 sented a syllabus on Positive Medication, which was 
 discussed in connection with the subject. The 
 following officers were chosen for the ensuing year, 
 namely : C. Edwin Miles, of Massachusetts, Presi- 
 dent ; Doctors Lewis Frazee, of Indiana, Dennis E. 
 Smith, of New York, and M. B. McKinney, of 
 Michigan, Vice-Presidents ; Dr. Robert A. Gunn, 
 Secretary; Dr. Austin B. Westcott, Corresponding 
 Secretary ; Dr. B. J. Stow, Treasurer. 
 
 The fourth meeting was held at Columbus, in 
 Ohio, beginning on the twenty-fifth day of June, 
 1873. Governor Noyes made the address of welcome.f 
 The discussions embraced a variety of professional 
 topics, among which Specific Medication was promi- 
 nent. Dr. H. D. Garrison presented a preamble and 
 resolution, setting forth that the people are almost 
 wholly incapable of estimating the scientific attain- 
 ments of medical practitioners, and that diplomas 
 had been granted by medical colleges of all schools to 
 persons grossly incompetent, so that they have ceased 
 to be sufficient evidence of qualifications, and therefore 
 recommending the passage of laws in the various 
 states, making a rigid examination necessary of can- 
 didates for medical practice. J 
 
 * Doctors John King, of Ohio, H. D. Garrison, of IlHnois, T. L. A. Greve, of 
 Ohio, E. S. McClellan, of New York, and John M. Scudder constituted this 
 committee. 
 
 + He remarked that the Association had four colleges in successful operation, 
 and a constituency of six thousand practitioners. The American Medical College, 
 at St. Louis, had been established during the past years. 
 
 t The following officers vvere elected, namely: C. E. Miles, M. D., President ; 
 Doctors W. M. Ingalls, of Ohio, John R. Borland, of Pennsylvania, R. A. Beach, 
 of New York, Vice-Presidents ; Dr. R. A. Gunn, Secretary ; Dr. B. J. Stow, 
 Treasurer, and Dr. O. H. P. Shoemaker, Corresponding Secretary.
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 699 
 
 The fifth meeting was held at Wesleyan Hall, in 
 the city of Boston, beginning on the sixteenth day 
 of June, 1874. The president delivered an address 
 urging the importance of Sanitary and Preventive 
 Medicine. A resolution was adopted requesting the 
 instructors in Eclectic medical colleges to adopt, as 
 near as practicable, a uniform standard of qualifica- 
 tions, and to require proficiency in Medical Botany 
 and Chemistry, or in Materia Medica and the prin- 
 ciples of Medicine. The following officers were 
 elected : W. M. Ingalls, of Ohio, President ; Doctors 
 Luke F. Stoddard, of Illinois, S. B. Munn, of 
 Connecticut, and H. D. Jillson, of Massachusetts, 
 Vice-Presidents ; Dr. B. J. Stow, Treasurer ; Dr. 
 Robert A. Gunn, Secretary ; Dr. J. R. Borland, 
 Corresponding Secretary. 
 
 The sixth meeting of the Association took place 
 at Springfield, in Illinois, in the Hall of the House 
 of Representatives, beginning on the fifteenth of 
 June, 1875. Governor Beveridge delivered the 
 address of welcome. The session was occupied by 
 medical and surgical topics, and a visit was paid to 
 the mausoleum of the late President Lincoln. The 
 following officers were elected : Benjamin J. Stow, 
 M. D., of New York, President ; Doctors Robert W. 
 Geddes, of Massachusetts, O. H. P. Shoemaker, of 
 Iowa, A. B. Woodward, of Pennsylvania, Vice-Presi- 
 dents ; Dr. Anson L. Clark, of Illinois, Secretary ; Dr. 
 George C. Pitzer, of Missouri, Corresponding Secretary; 
 Dr. James Anton, of Ohio, Treasurer. 
 
 The next annual meeting, the sixth, was held at 
 Willard's Hotel, in the city of Washington, D. C, and 
 commenced on the twenty-seventh day of June, 1876. 
 Thirteen states were represented, but the attendance
 
 700 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 was significantly less than in previous years, and many 
 were apprehensive that this would be the final 
 session. The proceedings were spirited, and measures 
 adopted to assure the future prosperity of the Asso- 
 ciation. The principal discussion related to the 
 contemplated Eclectic Pharmacopoeia, which had 
 received little attention from the several committees. 
 A resolution was adopted to appoint a Bureau of 
 Correspondence to prepare and circulate memorials, 
 and to present them, asking Congress for legislation 
 to provide equal favor for each distinctive school of 
 medicine, in medical appointments in the Army, 
 Navy and Pension Bureau,* and equal representation 
 on all Boards of administration and examination, 
 without liability to proscription or rejection on any 
 pretext based on a code of ethics. A committee was 
 also appointed to revise the Constitution and By-Laws, 
 with a view to secure greater ef^ciency and prosperity 
 to the Association. The secretary was also directed 
 to prepare for publication a list of the remedial agents 
 and compounds discovered and introduced by Eclectic 
 physicians and druggists, which have since been 
 adopted as official by the Old School, carefully with- 
 holding the credit of their introduction and original 
 discovery from those to whom it rightfully belongs, f 
 
 * Dr. Barnes, the Surgeon-General, rigorously excluded all Eclectics and 
 HomcEopathists from appointment in the Army, and Dr. Henry Van Aernam, the 
 Commissioner of Pensions, removed them from ofifice as e.xaminers. The Eclectic 
 Medical Society of New York, and several Homoeopathic Medical Societies, 
 presented the matter and their complaints to the President, who removed the 
 Commissioner. 
 
 t See Transactions of the National Eclectic Medical Association for \'i^^-^% 
 (Vol. VI.), page 209. When a speaker of an CEcumenical Council of Rome 
 attempted to mention favorably an utterance of a distinguished Protestant writer, 
 he was called to order at once, on the ground that it was not permitted to name a 
 Protestant with approval. It is also said that Omar, the Khalif , commanded the 
 Alexandrian library to be burned, declaring that if the books contained doctrines to
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 701 
 
 The following officers were elected : O. H. P. 
 Shoemaker, M. D., President ; Doctors Stephen B. 
 Munn, of Connecticut, Lefaver H. Borden, of New 
 Jersey, Joseph A. Munk, of Missouri, Vice-Presidents; 
 Alexander Wilder, of New Jersey, Secretary ; W. 
 Hope Davis, of Illinois, Corresponding Secretary ; 
 James Anton, Treasurer. 
 
 The seventh annual meeting convened at Pittsburg, 
 in Pennsylvania, on the thirteenth day of June, 1877. 
 The committee on revision of the Constitution sub- 
 mitted a report which was discussed, amended and 
 adopted. It made radical changes, providing that 
 henceforth the National Association should be a 
 representative body, receiving new members only 
 upon the nomination of auxiliary organizations, and 
 holding distinct and defined relations to the State 
 societies, and such as were essential to their mutual 
 efficiency. The qualifications for the medical degree 
 were strictly laid down, and two full terms of lectures 
 required, with three years of medical study ; and all 
 officers and instructors in colleges voting or cooperat- 
 ing in a disregard of this requirement, were made 
 liable to censure and expulsion from the Association. 
 Disreputable modes of practice or advertising, which 
 tended to reflect discredit, were declared unpro- 
 fessional. 
 
 The preamble was a Bill of Rights, and asserted 
 unequivocally that the profession of medicine 
 may be exercised by any and every perscn duly 
 qualified by natural endowment and acquired skill 
 
 be found in the Kurdn, they were superfluous ; if not, then they were false. By an 
 analogous rule all Eclectic and Homceopalhic literature liad been vifjorously 
 forbidden to be accepted, or their treatment and medicines employed till " intro- 
 duced " or pirated by some authority denominated re^ul ir.
 
 702 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 and knowledge ; that it should no more be hedged in 
 by penal laws, ethical codes or other instruments of 
 barbarism and oppression, having become the lawful 
 vocation of citizens like other callings ; that all 
 legislation, political favor, or other discrimination 
 tending to restrict or contravene this right, especially 
 for the purpose of fostering any school of practice, 
 under the pretext of regularity or superior scientific 
 knowledge, is a violation of the spirit of the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States, and ought to be opposed 
 and resisted as a departure from the principles of 
 republican government as well as of natural right ; 
 and that Reformed practitioners have the same and 
 every claim to the encouragement of the govern- 
 ment as physicans of the other schools and all good 
 citizens. 
 
 From this period the Association became a more 
 prosperous as well as influential organization. 
 
 The following officers were elected : Stephen B. 
 Munn, M. D., President ; Doctors C. D. Thompson, of 
 Pennsylvania, Edward M. Shaw, of Michigan, R. 
 Elton Warner, of Pennsylvania, Vice-Presidents ; Dr. 
 Alexander Wilder, Secretary ; Dr. Stephen H. Potter, 
 Corresponding Secretary ; Dr. James Anton, Treas- 
 urer. 
 
 The eighth annual session was held in Michigan, 
 beginning on the nineteenth of June, 1878. The 
 attendance was larger than at former meetings. A 
 report was received from the Bureau of Corre- 
 spondence, setting forth, that the Commissioner of 
 Education of the United States had omitted in his 
 reports of the Centennial Exhibition, all mention of the 
 American Eclectic and Reformed Practice. At his 
 suggestion a sketch of the Eclectic School had been
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 703 
 
 prepared. This had been delivered to Dr. N. S. Davis, 
 to include in the Medical Reports, who had suppressed 
 it, together with documents relating to the Homoeo- 
 pathic practice. For this delinquency Commissioner 
 Eaton was technically, if not morally, responsible. 
 The following officers were elected : John King, 
 M. D., President ; Doctors J. H. Bundy, of California, 
 Anson L. Clark, of Illinois, John W. Kermott, of 
 Michigan, Vice-Presidents ; Alexander Wilder, Secre- 
 tary ; James Anton, Treasurer. 
 
 The ninth annal meeting was held at Cleveland, in 
 Ohio, commencing on the nineteenth of June, 1879. 
 The president, in his address, advised the lengthening 
 of the collegiate terms, and a higher standard of 
 general education. He called attention to the efforts 
 annually made in the Legislatures for arbitrary laws, 
 with the hope and intention of effecting the annihila- 
 tion of all medical systems except the favored one, 
 and advised the forming of committees in every state 
 to watch over the interests of Reformed physicians. 
 He denounced the laws already made as a disgrace to 
 the intelligence of the age and to the people where 
 they had been enacted. 
 
 A special committee had been appointed on the man- 
 ufacture of medicines. A report was made recom- 
 mending the annual appointment of a" Committee on 
 Pharmacopaeia," to correspond with manufacturers 
 and others, to conduct experiments, till the work was 
 completed, and to present at the next annual meeting 
 a plan for an American Pharmacopoeia. The report 
 was accepted and the Committee appointed.* A 
 resolution was also adopted declaring the American 
 
 * Doctors Albert Merrell, S. B. Munn, C. E. Miles, F. J. Lock, and A. L, 
 Clark, constituted this committee.
 
 704 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Dispensatory the standard authority of the National 
 Eclectic Medical Association. Resolutions were also 
 presented by Dr. Scudder and adopted, naming several 
 medical colleges as in good standing, and approving 
 of their courses of study,* with the further recom- 
 mendation of a graded course, or attendance of three 
 years at lectures. Several noteworthy amendments 
 were made to the By-Laws. One by Dr. McMaster 
 required the two terms for a student at college to 
 have an interval of five months instead of being 
 consecutive. Another prohibited advertising by hand- 
 bills, circulars or certificates of cure, or announcing 
 as member of any Eclectic medical society or college 
 A third required specific charges to be made against 
 an accused member, and a month of time allowed for 
 reply, instead of suffering him to be accused, tried 
 and punished all at one time. The election of officers 
 was fixed on the third day of the session of the 
 Association. The following officers were elected : 
 Milbrey Green, of Massachusetts, President ; Doctors 
 John B. Shultz, of Indiana, Albert G. Springsteen, of 
 Ohio, Henry. B. Piper, of Pennsylvania, Vice-Presi- 
 dents ; Alexander Wilder, Secretary ; James Anton, 
 Treasurer. 
 
 The next meeting was held at Chicago, beginning on 
 the sixteenth of June, 1880. It being the tenth anniver- 
 sary of the reorganization, special attempts had been 
 made for display and entertainment. All the surviv- 
 ing ex-presidents, except Dr. Stow, were in attendance. 
 Dr. Merrell, from the Committee on Pharmacopoeia, 
 
 * There were the Eclectic Medical Institute, the American Medical College of 
 St. Louis ; the Eclectic Medical College, of New York ; the Bennett College and 
 the United States Medical College. Dr. H. B. Piper's motion to include the 
 Georgia Eclectic Medical College was lost. The resolutions covered another 
 question that was otherwise likely to excite controversy.
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 705 
 
 presented a plan for the work, to be a reliable standard, 
 to dispense with a large number of forms for a drug, 
 and having but one liquid and one in powder, to have 
 processes for the standard forms simple, to omit 
 compound formulas. He proposed four forms, a 
 tincture, an alcoholic extract, a powdered alcoholic 
 extract, and a saccharated extract. The plan thus 
 submitted was adopted, and a proposition was ac- 
 cepted from Dr. Merrell to prepare and publish the 
 work at his own expense, he having the copyright. 
 
 A resolution by Dr. A. J. Howe was adopted, de- 
 claring the members in favor of State Boards having 
 their chief object the suppression of traffic in medical 
 diplomas, and to expel unqualified persons from 
 practice, provided such Boards shall not be under the 
 majority rule of any one School of Medicine. 
 
 An order was also made to establish sections for 
 the various departments of medical science, at the 
 annual meetings. The California Medical College 
 was accepted as auxiliary. 
 
 The following officers were elected : Anson L. 
 Clark, M. D., President ; Doctors V. A. Baker, of 
 Michigan, H. B. Piper, of Pennsylvania, and A. G. 
 Springsteen, of Ohio, Vice-Presidents ; Alexander 
 Wilder, Secretary ; James Anton, Treasurer. 
 
 The eleventh annual meeting was held at the 
 Lindell Hotel, in St. Louis, beginning on the fifteenth 
 day of June, 1881. The papers contributed and the 
 discussions were highly creditable. A new auxiliary 
 society in Arkansas was announced. The Eclectic 
 colleges of Indiana and Georgia having made appli- 
 cation to be recognized like the six other institutions, 
 the matter was referred to a select committee, and a 
 report made, proposing to defer action till a future
 
 7o6 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 time. Finally, a resolution was offered by Dr. R. A. 
 Gunn, and adopted admitting the two colleges to the 
 privileges and recognition of the National Association 
 for one year. 
 
 A resolution was also adopted asking the publishers 
 of Appleton's Cyclopcedia to correct their description of 
 the Eclectic Practice of Medicine, which was calumni- 
 ous and erroneous. 
 
 A paper upon Vaccination was read by Dr. J. A. Reid, 
 and gave rise to a warm discussion. 
 
 The officers elected were as follows : William S. 
 Latta, M. D., of Nebraska, President ; Doctor Robert 
 W. Geddes, of Massachusetts, Samuel S. Judd, of 
 Wisconsin, Hamilton S. McMaster, of Michigan, Vice- 
 Presidents ; Alexander Wilder, Secretary ; James 
 Anton, Treasurer. 
 
 The twelfth meeting took place in the city of New 
 Haven, the session beginning on the twenty-first day 
 June, 1882. The two medical colleges of Indiana and 
 Georgia were accepted without opposition. Dr. 
 Merrell sent a communication announcing the early 
 completing of the Pharmacopoeia. This year for the 
 first time was introduced the mode of holding 
 sections for the different branches, and, although a 
 new matter, was successful. The officers for the 
 ensuing year were as follows : Andrew J. Howe, M. D., 
 of Ohio, President ; Doctors A. B. Woodward, of 
 Pennsylvania, Henry K. Stratford, of Illinois, Maurice 
 F. Linquist, of Connecticut, Vice-Presidents ; Alex- 
 ander Wilder, Secretary ; James Anton, Treasurer. 
 
 The thirteenth annual meeting was held at Topeka, 
 Kansas, commencing on the twentieth day of June, 
 1882. The invocation was offered by Bishop Vail, of 
 the diocese of Kansas, and the address of welcome
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 707 
 
 was delivered by Governor G. W. Glick. Fifteen 
 state societies, besides local organizations, and six 
 medical colleges were represented. A standing 
 committee on medical institutions was ordered. The 
 committee on Pharmacopoeia* reported that they had 
 examined the manuscript completed by Dr. Albert 
 Merrell, and that it would more fully meet the 
 requirements of the Eclectic medical profession than 
 any publication now extant. A resolution was 
 adopted accepting the report. 
 
 The officers for the ensuing year were as follows : 
 Edwin Younkin, M. D., President ; Doctors J. Milton 
 Welch, of Kansas., George Covert, of Wisconsin, 
 Lemon T. Beam, of Pennsylvania. Vice-Presidents ; 
 Alexander Wilder, Secretary ; James Anton, Treas- 
 urer. 
 
 The fourteenth annual meeting was at Cincinnati 
 and began on the eighteenth day of June, 1884. The 
 address of reception was made by Dr. John King, and 
 answered by the secretary. Twenty societies of 
 states and five medical colleges were represented at 
 this session. The professional work of the sections 
 was successfully conducted. Dr. King delivered an 
 address on Medical Legislation, criticizing the statutes 
 requiring registration, and the State Examining Boards 
 as invasions and infractions of civil liberty and per- 
 sonal rights. A resolution was adopted declaring the 
 National Eclectic Medical Association in favor of 
 elevating the standard of medical education, but as 
 opposed to all class medical legislation. Dr. A. L. 
 Clark, by invitation, delivered an address in support 
 of medical examining laws. The two medical col- 
 
 ♦Doctors J. Milton Welch, S. B. Munn, H. K. Stratford, B. L. Veagley, 
 V. A. Baker.
 
 7o8 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 leges in Iowa, the King Medical College, and medical 
 department of Drake University, were accepted as on 
 probation for a year. The officers for the ensuing 
 year were as follows : Henry K. Stratford, M. D.^ 
 President ; Doctors J. Milton Welch, of Kansas, 
 William M. Durham, of Georgia, William F. Curryer, 
 of Indiana, Vice-Presidents ; Dr. Alexander Wilder, 
 Secretary, Dr. James Anton, Treasurer. 
 
 The fifteenth meeting was held at the city of 
 Altoona, in Pennsylvania, beginning on the seven- 
 teenth day of June, 1885. The auxiliary societies and 
 medical colleges were fully represented, and the 
 professional work of the sections was transacted with 
 gratifying success. A resolution was adopted recom- 
 mending as a manual and text book, the Digest of 
 Materia Medica and Pharmacy, which had been 
 prepared by Dr. Albert Merrell, under the direction 
 and with the approval of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association. The officers elected for the 
 ensuing year were as follows : Henry Beam Piper, 
 M. D., of Pennsylvania, President ; Doctors John W, 
 R. Williams, of Alabama, George Covert, of Wiscon- 
 sin, Elizabeth G. Smith, of Connecticut, Vice-Presi- 
 dents ; Dr. Alexander Wilder, Secretary, Dr. James 
 Anton, Treasurer. 
 
 The next meeting took place at Atlanta, in Georgia, 
 and was convened on the sixteenth day of June, 1886, 
 The address of welcome was delivered by the Mayor, 
 Hon. George Hillyer, and answered by the Secretary. 
 This was the first meeting of the Association in the 
 Southern States, and all the proceedings were marked 
 by a rare courtesy and cordiality. It was successful 
 in a professional sense, and an unusual number of 
 new members were received. It having been sup-
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 709 
 
 posed from the terms of invitation and former usage, 
 that physicians of all schools were admitted as mem- 
 bers at the meetings of the International Medical 
 Congress, the Association elected twenty-six delegates 
 with alternates for its session at Washington, in 1887. 
 The officers elected were as follows : Lorenzo E. 
 Russell, M. D., of Ohio, President ; Doctors Theophilus 
 J. Batchelder, of Maine, Joseph N. Adkins, of Texas, 
 Henrietta K. Morris, of Illinois, Vice-Presidents ; 
 Dr. Alexander Wilder, Secretary ; Dr. James Anton, 
 Treasurer. 
 
 The seventeenth meeting was convened at Wauke- 
 sha, in Wisconsin, on the fifteenth of June, 1887. 
 Dr. Batchelder called it to order, and Mr. D. J. 
 Hemlock delivered the address of welcome. A large 
 attendance characterized this session. The president 
 had changed the order, substituting an " Arena of 
 Debate " for the sections, and it proved a successful 
 arrangement. On motion of Dr. Wilder, the action 
 of the last year in relation to delegates to the Inter- 
 national Congress was reviewed, and recommenda- 
 tions afterward adopted to invest all who desired it 
 with the proper credentials.* 
 
 The officers for 1887-8 were as follows : Samuel S. 
 Judd, M. D., of Wisconsin, President ; f Doctors 
 William M. Durham, of Georgia, Robert A. Hicks, of 
 Tennessee, G. Hermann Merkel, of Massachusetts 
 Alexander Wilder, Secretary; James Anton, Treasurer. 
 
 The annual meeting for 1888, at Detroit, in Michi- 
 
 * The Congress was held at Washington in September, 1887. The American 
 Medical Association, overriding the action of the previous session at Kopenhagen, 
 adopted the policy of excluding all but those of its own kind. Though the 
 attendance was large, the results were little regarded, and its proceedings were 
 not published and distributed. 
 
 * Dr. Judd died August 30, 1887, and Dr. Durham became president in his 
 ■place.
 
 7IO HISTORV OF MEDICINE. 
 
 gan, was among the most significant in its action.. 
 The Iowa Eclectic Medical College was accepted 
 by the Association. The time was principally em- 
 ployed in a " Medical Symposiac " in the discussion of 
 the following topics : Asiatic Cholera, Liberal Educa- 
 tion of Physicians, Specific Medication, Eclectics in 
 Surgery, Relative Merits of Medication and Nursing, 
 Possibilities of Uniting the Several Schools of Medi- 
 cine. On motion of Dr. Albert Merrell, a Standing 
 Committee was created on Medical Legislation, to 
 consider all matters relative to the enactment or 
 enforcement of the laws in the several states for the 
 regulation of the practice of medicine, so far as 
 they influence unfavorably the status of Eclectic or 
 Eclectic physicians. A resolution was adopted recom- 
 mending the several Eclectic Medical Societies to 
 establish Vigilance Committees or Committees on 
 Legislation to procure the defeat or amendment of 
 all bills and statutes tending to abridge the rights of 
 honorable practitioners or establish discrimination 
 between the different schools of medicine. 
 
 The following officers were elected, namely : Milton 
 Jay, M. D., of Illinois, President ; Doctors Vincent 
 A. Baker, of Michigan, John W. Migrath, of Georgia, 
 William A. Montgomery, of Tennessee, Vice-Presi- 
 dents ; Dr. Alexander Wilder, Secretary ; Dr. James 
 Anton, Treasurer. 
 
 The nineteenth annual meeting was held at Nash- 
 ville, in Tennessee, beginning on the seventeenth of 
 June, 1882. The Association was received by the 
 Hon. A. S. Colyer, and the Hon. T. P. McCarver, 
 mayor of the city. Both assured the members ofthe 
 kindest fraternal sentiment ; and the secretary, in 
 reply, declared that they knew no distinctions of state
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. "JXl 
 
 and district, except as accidents of place, and in no 
 sense a division of purpose or interests.* The attend- 
 ance was large, twenty states being represented. 
 Resolutions were received from the Eclectic Medical 
 Association of Pennsylvania, declaring the recent 
 conflict in the House of Representatives of that state 
 a high-handed attempt to trample upon and overturn 
 the natural and personal rights of all not belonging 
 to the ranks of the dominant school, and part of a 
 general conspiracy to impose a medical yoke upon 
 the people of the United States, a general plot of the 
 American Medical Association and the professional 
 mediocrity which it represented, to get arbitrary 
 power, and do other acts unworthy of men, or of 
 loyal and patriotic citizens. Dr. Williams, of Ala- 
 bama, explained at length the position of the Medical 
 Law of Alabama, which was virtually an incorporat- 
 ing of the Code of Ethics into the enactment, and 
 enabled one individual f to dominate in the State 
 Medical Board and transact its entire business. The 
 "Arena of Debate " had been continued, and discus- 
 sions were held upon Specific Medication and Con- 
 servative Surgery. 
 
 Resolutions were adopted in relation to the disaster 
 at Johnstown, in Pennsylvania, and in honor of 
 Doctors Lemon T. Beam and William C. Beam, who 
 had perished in the flood. An eloquent letter of 
 acknowledgment was received from Dr. B. L. Yeagley. 
 
 The following officers were elected : William T. 
 
 * " I remember,'' said he, " when in 18,14, the vote of New York made your 
 own townsman, James K. Polk, president, although the vote of his own slate was 
 cast against him. Again, it is a report, that in our own North, with its schools, 
 progress and intelligent citizens, many of them are voting for Jackson still." 
 
 t Dr. Jerome Cochran, a former Botanic physician and graduate of the 
 Botanical-Medical College of Memphis, but now an active prosecutor of his 
 former associates.
 
 712 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Gemmill, of Ohio, President ; Doctors John W. 
 Pruitt, of Arkansas, Francis H. Fisk, of Tennessee, 
 Thomas Garth, of Iowa, Vice-Presidents ; Alexander 
 Wilder, Secretary ; Dr. James Anton, Treasurer. 
 
 The Association convened the next year at the 
 International Hotel, in Niagara Falls, NewYork, on the 
 seventeenth day of June. Dr. Robert A. Gunn, Presi- 
 dent of the Eclectic Medical Society of New York, 
 delivered the address of welcome. The regular 
 order of sections had been resumed, and employed 
 the session with the general approval of the result. 
 The meeting was regarded as the most successful of 
 all yet held. On motion of Dr. H. C. Gazlay, of New 
 York, the Association adopted the following resolu- 
 tion : 
 
 Resolved, That Dr. Alexander Wilder be and is here- 
 by requested to prepare a History of Medical Reform 
 during the earlier periods, under the authority and 
 sanction of the National Eclectic Medical Association. 
 
 Dr. Gunn proposed that the publishers of the 
 Medical Tribune be authorized to print the work in 
 their series, and thus relieve the Association from 
 the expense. The Executive Committee was autho- 
 rized to make the necessary agreements. 
 
 The following officers were elected for the next 
 year : George Covert, M. D., Wisconsin, President ; 
 Doctors Benjamin L. Yeagley, of Pennsylvania, 
 William F. Curryer, of Indiana, Marquis E. Daniel, 
 of Texas, Vice-Presidents ; Dr. Alexander Wilder, 
 Secretary; Finley Ellingwood, of Illinois, Correspond- 
 ing Secretary ; Dr. James Anton, Treasurer. 
 
 The twenty-first annual meeting took place at Hot 
 Springs, in Arkansas, beginning on the sixteenth of 
 June, 1891. The societies of seventeen states were
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 713 
 
 represented out of a total number of twenty-five. A 
 letter was received from Dr. Anton, resigning the 
 office of Treasurer, and Dr. William T. Gemmill, of 
 Ohio, was elected. The session was devoted to pro- 
 fessional subjects in the sections, and was marked by 
 an extraordinary addition of new members. The 
 Eclectic College of Physicians and Surgeons of 
 Indiana, was admitted to the number recognized by 
 the Association. 
 
 Protests were received from the Societies of Wis- 
 consin, Missouri, Arkansas and Connecticut, against 
 the proposition of the American Medical Association 
 for Congress to create a Cabinet Officer to have charge 
 of all matters relating to the public health. It was 
 pleaded that the measure was not demanded by the 
 people, or by any public necessity ; that it would be 
 no less than the establishing of a useless executive 
 department, with a swarm of subordinate officers " to 
 prey upon the people, and eat out their substance ; " 
 that it was to be in the interest of an exclusive class 
 in order to assure their own position in the nation, 
 to employ the strong arm of the Federal government 
 for selfish and partisan ends, to establish a medical 
 corporation after the model of a national religion, 
 which the Federal constitution inhibits ; to create a 
 privileged class in the government, and to secure 
 offices of emolument for favored members of that 
 class, incompetent to practice the Healing Art 
 successfully, or to compete with the more liberal 
 members of the medical profession. The Association 
 adopted a resolution pledging cooperation with this 
 purpose. 
 
 Another imporant subject received attention. In 
 commemoration of the discovery of America, by
 
 714 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Christopher Columbus in 1492, the Congress of the United 
 States had provided for a " World's Fair " to be held at the 
 city of Chicago in 1893, at which the various departments of 
 Science, Industry and Human Progress generally, should be 
 represented. A Committee was accordingly authorized to 
 confer with the World's Fair Commission, with a view to 
 the establishing of a Department of Eclectic Medicine, Sur- 
 gery and Pharmacy, at the proposed Columbian Exposition ; 
 and to ascertain what concessions would be made and privi- 
 leges given to this Association to encourage it to establish 
 such a department. 
 
 The officers were elected for the next year as follows: 
 William F. Curryer, M. D., of Indiana, president ; Doctors 
 James M. Park, of Arkansas, Marquis E. Daniel, of Texas, 
 and N. L. Van Sandt, of Iowa, vice-presidents ; Dr. Alexan- 
 der Wilder, Secretary; Dr. John V. Stevens, of Wisconsin, 
 corresponding secretary ; Dr. William T. Gemmill, of Forest, 
 Ohio, treasurer. 
 
 Doctors Finley EUingwood, George Covert, and John V. 
 Stevens, with the president and secretary, were appointed 
 the Committee to confer with the World's Fair Commission 
 with a view to the establishing of a Department of Eclectic 
 Medicine, Surgery and Pharmacy at the Columbian Exposi- 
 tion. 
 
 The twenty-second annual meeting took place at the 
 Olympic Theatre, in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, begin- 
 ning on the fifteenth day of June, 1892. Nineteen states 
 were represented by delegates, who afterward became mem- 
 bers. The Mayor, Hon. E. A. Noonan, delivered an address 
 of welcome, to which the secretary replied. Dr. Albert Mer- 
 rell also welcomed the Association in behalf of the Eclectic 
 Medical Societies of the City and State of Missouri. An 
 important amendment to the By-Laws was adopted in rela-
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 715 
 
 tion to the term of study to be required at medical colleges. 
 It prescribed that every candidate for the degree of Doctor 
 of Medicine shall be twenty-one years of age, that he shall 
 have pursued the study of medicine four years under the 
 supervision of a reputable physician or in a reputable medical 
 college, . and shall have attended at least three full terms of 
 instruction of at least five months' duration, the last of them 
 in the college conferring the degree.* 
 
 The question of obtaining a department in the Columbian 
 Exposition was the topic of debate. The Committee did 
 not report except verbally, and the matter was difficult to 
 comprehend. There was a " World's Congress Auxiliary " 
 organized with a president and secretary, and provision 
 made for three departments. General Medicine, Homoeopathy 
 and Eclectic Medicine. The opportunity to hold the session 
 would come in the month of May.f The Association on 
 motion of Dr. S. B. Munn of Connecticut, adopted a reso- 
 lution to take part in the holding of a Department in the 
 World's Congress Auxiliary and a committee was appointed 
 consisting of three ladies and three men to confer with the 
 Auxiliary Committee at Chicago in relation to the arrange- 
 ments. 
 
 Another resolution was adopted in relation to Life Insur- 
 ance Companies, protesting against their practice to refuse 
 to employ Eclectic physicians for examiners, and proposing 
 to withhold support from such companies. 
 
 The following were the officers elected : Benjamin Lin- 
 coln Yeagley, M.D., of Pennsylvania, president ; Doctors 
 Albert Merrell of Missouri, John C. Butcher of Ohio, and 
 
 * The Association from its re-organization, had devoted attention to the prolonging 
 of the term of medical study, amidst much evasion and opposition, and nowr fixed its 
 attitude beyond dispute. 
 
 tOnly the Eclectic and Homoeopathic Auxiliary Congresses were held. The other, 
 on some pretext, drew out of the arrangement, and would have no more to do with the 
 matter.
 
 7l6 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Laura L. Randolph of Illinois, vice-presidents; Alexander 
 Wilder, secretary ; Dr. John V. Stevens of Illinois, corres- 
 ponding secretary ; Dr. William T. Gemmill of Ohio, treas- 
 urer. 
 
 World's Eclectic Medical Congress. 
 After several attempts at effecting an arrangement of 
 preliminary matters, a conference was held at Chicago, on 
 the twenty-ninth of November, 1892, There were in 
 attendance members of the Executive Committee of the 
 National Association, and of the several Committees of the 
 World's Congress Auxiliary of the Congress of Eclectic 
 Physicians and Surgeons. It was agreed that the two bodies 
 should act together in the holding of the Congress upon the 
 condition of equal interests in the enterprise and the main- 
 taining of the dignity and integrity of each. The twenty- 
 third Annual Meeting of the National Eclectic Medical 
 Association was held accordingly in Chicago in the Memorial 
 Art Building, beginning on the thirtieth day of May, 1893. 
 Sessions were held daily for business during the week, but 
 no election of ofificers took place. 
 
 Journal of the Congress. 
 
 The World's Medical Congress Auxiliary of Eclectic 
 Physicians and Surgeons commenced at the Memorial Art 
 Building in Chicago, on the twenty-ninth day of May, 1893.* 
 
 The session was formally opened by the Hon. Charles C. 
 Bonney, president of the World's Congress Auxiliary. He 
 tnen announced the Eight General Divisions of the Depart- 
 ment of Medicine and Surgery. 
 
 *The World's Medical Congress Auxiliary of Homceopathic Physicians and Surgeons 
 and the National Institute of Homoeopathy , also held sessions in the same building, 
 simultaneously. Both were thus admitted to the great platform of the hall, and duly 
 recognized as liaving by full title, a place among learned and scientific bodies.
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. flf 
 
 It was the first time in Medical History, he remarked, that 
 separate Medical Congresses had met in the same building 
 in fraternal relations, with sincere respect for each other, and 
 extending to each other the courtesies demanded by the 
 Golden Rule of Conduct. This meeting of these several 
 medical bodies, he trusted, was an indication of the coming 
 unity of the whole Profession of Medicine. The coming 
 physician will not confine his attention to the routine of a 
 single School of Practice, but intelligently and fraternally 
 comprehend all. The physician who is entitled to the 
 highest honors of his calling will be the one that can, with 
 justice, make it his boast that he has suffered nothing to 
 escape his attention in which experience has taught any use- 
 ful lesson for the cure or prevention of illness. 
 
 In these Congresses of Medicine and Surgery, Woman, 
 he was glad to say, had at last her conspicuous and appro- 
 priate part. The Committee of Organization had been made 
 up, one of men, and another of women, acting both 
 separately and in co-operation, and they had prepared the 
 program, aided by the advice of an Advisory Council. 
 
 Mr. Bonney then welcomed the members and introduced 
 as president of the Congress, Dr. Milton Jay. 
 
 After the formalities of replying had been concluded, in 
 which the members of the several Committees participated 
 the General Order of Business was announced. Dr. Wilder 
 the Secretary of the National Association delivered an 
 address setting forth the History and Principles of the 
 American Eclectic School of Medicine. Dr. Yeagley, the 
 president, also delivered his Annual Address. The Rev. 
 Jesse H. Jones of Mississippi, pronounced an eulogy upon 
 the late Doctor William Byrd Powell. 
 
 The work of the Congress had been classified in six 
 Divisions, namely :
 
 -718 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Division A. — Practical Medicine. John M. Scudder, 
 President ; Harvey B. Laflin, Vice-president ; Edwin M. 
 Ripley, Secretary, 
 
 Division B. — Gyncecology and Obstetrics. Elizabeth G. 
 Smith, President ; George W. Boskowitz, Vice-president, 
 Lorenzo E. Russell, Secretary. 
 
 Division C. — Materia Medica and Therapeutics . Albert 
 Merrell, President ; John Fearn, Vice-president ; Annette 
 J. Shaw, Secretary. 
 
 Division D. — General Pathology. William F. Currver, 
 president ; Lyman Watkins, Vice-president ; Vincent A. 
 Baker, Secretary. 
 
 Division E. — Diseases of the Nervous System. Herbert 
 T. Webster, President ; Elam H. Stevenson, Vice-presi- 
 dent; Hannah S. Turner, Secretary. 
 
 Division F. — General Surgery. Robert A. Gunn, Pres- 
 ident ; William M. Durham, Vice-president ; Henr)' Long, 
 Secretary. 
 
 The sessions of the Congress were continued through the 
 week with an increase of interest, and made ample demon- 
 strations of the merits of the Eclectic School of Medicine. 
 The leading members, both in America and the other hemi- 
 sphere, contributed papers, and in those Divisions in which 
 discussions were permitted, these were among the most 
 valuable features of the proceedings. The Journal and 
 papers of the Congress were afterward published by joint 
 authority of the Committees, as the '■'■Columbian Volume'''' oi the 
 Transactions of the National Eclectic Medical Association. 
 
 Later Meetings of the National Association. 
 The Twenty-fourth Annual Meeting of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association was held in the International Hotel at 
 Niagara Falls, New York, and began the sessions on the
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 719 
 
 nineteenth day of June, 1894. Dr. Yeagley the president 
 was unable to attend * and Dr. William E, Bloyer was 
 elected to preside till the arrival of Doctor Butcher, the Vice- 
 president, A memorial from the Eclectic Medical Society 
 of Utah, asked help to aid against persecution under the 
 medical statutes of the state. The Iowa Eclectic Medical 
 College was removed from the list of recognized medical 
 institutions, and the Medical Department of Cotner Univer^ 
 sity at Lincoln, Nebraska, was admitted to such recognition 
 for a year. 
 
 An Eclectic Medical College Association was authorized, 
 to be composed of two delegates from each of the recognized 
 colleges ; and the Standing Committee on Affairs of Medical 
 Colleges was empowered to sanction any action which the 
 College Association might take. 
 
 The following officers were elected, namely : Vincent A. 
 Baker, M.D., President ; Doctors Cicero M. Ewing of 
 Pennsylvania, George W. Johnson of Texas, and Malachi A. 
 Carriker of Nebraska, Vice-presidents ; Dr. Alexander 
 Wilder, Secretary ; Dr. John V. Stevens of Illinois, Corre- 
 sponding Secretary ; Dr. William T. Gemmill of Ohio, 
 Treasurer. 
 
 The Twenty-fifth Annual meeting was held at the Foun- 
 tain Spring House in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and began its 
 session on the nineteenth day of June, 1895. Less than the 
 usual amount of professional work was transacted ; many of 
 the Sections failing to be organized. Resolutions were dis- 
 
 * Dr. Yeagley transmitted his Annual Address to the Association and it was read by 
 the Secretary. It was his last official act. He continued to fail in healtli and died at 
 Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on the fourteenth day of January, 1895. It was justly said of 
 him that " he strengthened the Eclectic organization while he ornamented it ; he acted 
 from principle and not from personal motive or selfish advantage." He read men like 
 open books. In his character he greatly resembled liis kinsman, the late President 
 Lincoln; and for fidelity, probity and sincerity, he was not excelled. He was certain 
 to do the right thing, to make the right decision , and all with admirable tact and gentle- 
 ness. To the writer he was a true and warm friend, such as is seldom found.
 
 720 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 cussed relating to the propriety of legislation to prohibit the 
 sale of cigars and cigarettes ; also, declaring that the present 
 method of Medical Examining Boards is not in accord 
 with the spirit of American freedom and progress, and 
 should be reformed in its procedures or abolished outright. 
 Dr. Edward B. Foote of New York, sustained the latter 
 resolution, which evoked strong discussion. A vote was 
 finally taken, which resulted in eleven voices in favor and 
 twenty-eight against. 
 
 The officers elected for the ensuing year were as follows : 
 William E. Bloyer, M.D., of Ohio, President; Doctors 
 George W. Johnson of Texas, Herschel E. Curry of Oregon, 
 and Harriet C. Hinds of New Jersey, Vice-presidents ; Dr. 
 William E. Kinnett of Illinois, Secretary * ; Edwin H. Car- 
 ter of Iowa, Corresponding Secretary ; Dr. William T. Gem- 
 mill of Ohio, Treasurer. 
 
 The Twenty-sixth Annual Meeting was held at the rooms 
 of the Chamber of Commerce at Portland, Oregon, begin- 
 ning on the sixteenth day of June, 1896. The address of 
 welcome was made by Dr. W. S. Mott of Salem. 
 Members were in attendance from thirteen states. The 
 officers elected for the next year were as follows, namely : 
 Daniel Maclean, M.D., of California, President ; T. Willis 
 Miles of Colorado, and Harriet C. Hinds of Illinois, Vice- 
 presidents ; William E. Kinnett of Illinois, Recording Secre- 
 tary ; Pitts E. Howes of Massachusetts, Corresponding 
 Secretary ; William T. Gemmill of Ohio, Treasurer. 
 
 The Twenty-seventh Annual meeting was held at the 
 Hotel St. Louis at Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota, and began 
 its sessions on the fifteen day of June, 1897. The members 
 were welcomed by the governor, the Hon. R. M. Clough, 
 
 * Before a ballot was taken Dr. Wilder declined an election to the office.
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 72 1 
 
 and by Mayor Pratt of Minneapolis. A poem was also read 
 by Lucy Sherman Mitchell welcoming the Association in 
 behalf of the Authors' Club of the city. Members were in 
 attendance from eleven states, and the session was princi- 
 pally devoted to the reading and discussion of papers read 
 in the several Sections. Officers for the next year were 
 elected, namely : Edward J. Farnum, M.D., of Illinois, 
 President; Doctors David WiUiams of Ohio, J. T. McClan- 
 ahan of Missouri, and Warren L. Marks of Michigan, Vice- 
 presidents ; Dr. William E. Kinnett of IlUnois, Recording 
 Secretary ; Dr. Pitts Edwin Howes of Massachusetts, Corre- 
 sponding Secretary ; William T. Gemmill of Forest, Ohio, 
 Treasurer. 
 
 The Twenty-eighth Annual Meeting was held at Creighton 
 Hall in Omaha, Nebraska, the session beginning on the 
 twenty-first day of June, 1898. The address of welcome 
 was made by the Mayor, the Hon. Frank E. Moores. 
 Members were present from seventeen states, and the session 
 was devoted to the reading and discussion of professional 
 papers by the Sections. Among them was one by Dr. John 
 K. Scudder of Ohio, on the "Attitude of Life Insurance 
 Companies toward Eclectic Physicians." It appeared that 
 no general discrimination against Eclectic Physicians existed; 
 thirty-two not discriminating at all, seven evading inquiry, 
 but giving every preference to Examiners belonging to the 
 Old School; four openly declaring that only Old- School 
 physicians were employed, and twelve making no reply to 
 questions. At the same time. Dr. David A. Strickler of 
 Denver, Colorado, Chairman of the Bureau of Life Insur- 
 ance Examination for the American Institute of Homoeopathy 
 had sought to show in 1897, that there was unusual discrim- 
 ination against Homoeopathic physicians by most of the 
 large companies in twenty of the largest cities in the United
 
 722 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 States. A digest of the Medical Statutes of several states 
 and territories was also presented by Dr. David Williams of 
 Ohio. 
 
 The following officers were elected for 1898-99, namely; 
 David Williams, M.D., of Ohio, President ; Doctors War- 
 ren L. Marks of Michigan, John T. Clanahan of Missouri, 
 and J. A. McKlveen of Iowa, for Vice-presidents ; Dr. Pitts 
 Edwin Howes of Boston, Massachusetts, Recording Secre- 
 tary ; Dr. E. Lee Standlee of Missouri, Corresponding Secre- 
 tary ; Dr. William T. Gemmill of Ohio, Treasurer. 
 
 The Twenty ninth Annual Meeting held its sessions at the 
 Hotel Cadillac in District of Michigan, beginning on the 
 twentieth day of June, 1899. The address of welcome was 
 made by the Hon. William C. Maybury, Mayor of the city. 
 It was eloquently delivered and treated upon the " Lost 
 Arts " in medicine, hygiene and anaesthesia. These the 
 ancients possessed, he remarked ; but they were lost because 
 men in that archaic periods did not come together as now. 
 He extolled the change in practice. "A spavined horse and 
 a few ounces of calomel, more or less, are not now consid- 
 ered the equipment of the best physician." The mayor also 
 paid a tribute to the advance in surgery and to the high 
 merits of the trained nurse. 
 
 The address was answered in fitting terms by Dr. Alexander 
 Wilder of New Jersey. After that the Association proceded 
 to the order of business. The following officers were chosen 
 for 1899-1900, namely: George W. Boskowitz, M.D., 
 of New York, President ; Doctors Milburn H. Logan of 
 California, Nathaniel A. Graves of Illinois, Philander B. 
 Wright of Michigan, Vice-presidents ; Dr. Pitts Edwin 
 Howes of Boston, Massachusetts, Recording Secretary ; Dr. 
 E. Lee Standlee of Missouri, Corresponding Secretary ; Dr. 
 William T. Gemmill of Forest, Ohio, Treasurer. The annual
 
 IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE ECLECTIC SCHOOL. 72$ 
 
 meeting for 1900 was appointed to be held at Atlantic City, 
 New Jersey, on the nineteenth day of June. 
 
 The Thirtieth Annual Meeting was held at the Hotel 
 Dennis in Atlantic City, New Jersey, beginning on the nine- 
 teenth day of June, 1900. The address of welcome was 
 delivered by the Mayor, Hon. F. P. Stoy, and answered by 
 Dr. C. Edwin Miles of Boston, on the part of the Association. 
 The professional business of the Association was very thor- 
 oughly transacted, and the Sections were successfully 
 handled. Courtesies were exchanged with the National 
 Institute of Homoeopathy then also in session at the City of 
 Washington, and the Association was cordially invited to 
 attend at the unveiling of the statue of Samuel Hahnemann 
 at the National Capitol. Dr. John Uri Lloyd of Cincinnati, 
 also announced that from the sale of a work of his, the pro- 
 ceeds which he had dedicated for the purpose, had been suf- 
 ficient in amount to enable the erecting of a monument to the 
 memory of John King, the friend of Dr. Wooster Beach, and 
 a pioneer of Eclecticism in Medicine. The Association was 
 also out of debt, and with about six hundred dollars in the 
 Treasury.* The following officers were chosen for the com- 
 ing year : President, E. Lee Standlee, M. D., of Missouri ; 
 Vice-Presidents, Doctors Joseph D. McCann, of Indiana, 
 A. B, Young, of Tennessee, J. R. Duval, of Georgia; Secre- 
 tary, Dr. Pitts Edwin Howes, of Boston, Massachusetts; 
 Corresponding Secretary, Dr. Nathaniel A. Graves of 111. ; 
 Treasurer, Dr. William T. Gemmill, of Forest, Ohio. The 
 next annual meeting was appointed to be held at Chattanooga, 
 Tennessee, beginning on the third Tuesday in June in the 
 year 1901. 
 
 •Justice requires the matter to be correctly stated. The National Association was 
 entirely free from debt in 1892. But the holding of the World's Congress in 1893, 
 entailed a heavy expenditure for printing the Columbian Volume and incidental matters. 
 An appeal was made to members to contribute a dollar and a half each to meet the out- 
 lay, but only a small number responded. President Yeagley and others advanced a sura 
 amounting to several hundred dollars, but it was insufficient. Since that time, on the 
 motion of Dr. S. B. Munn, the annual dues were increased from three to five dollars, 
 which has enabled the Association to cancel the indebtedness. But no just imputation 
 of mismanagement or unwise extravagance can rest against any one in the matter.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Eclectic Medical Colleges and Medical Societies. 
 
 The movement in 1868 and 1869, to effect the rehabil- 
 itating of the National Eclectic Medical Association, was 
 attended by a rival attempt in the city of Philadelphia; 
 and so, about the time of the meeting in Chicago for that 
 purpose in 1870, the Eclectic Medical Journal, published by 
 Dr. John Buchanan, gave the account of an organization by 
 that name, in that city, with its proceedings. It indicated 
 the support of auxiliary societies in many of the states, 
 leading Eclectic physicians and all the accompaniments of a 
 large and prosperous society. It is foreign to our purpose 
 to deny or dispute the existence of all these things ; but 
 letters addressed to individuals named in connection with 
 the movement, have been answered by disavowals of any 
 connection with the matter. It is not easy now to find a 
 reliable trace of these societies, except in the periodical 
 published in Philadelphia. The late Rev. Matthew Hale 
 Smith was announced as president, with a formidable array 
 of associate officers. The Eclectic Medical College of 
 Philadelphia, was the nucleus of the affair, and its certificates 
 of membership were scattered abundantly, both in America 
 and Great Britain. As the fortunes of the College and its 
 manager waned, the Association and even its memory faded 
 away.
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 725 
 
 Another rival organization likewise existed for several 
 years, which for a time bade fair to prove formidable. The 
 preliminary steps were taken in 1879. The National Eclec- 
 tic Medical Association met that year at Cleveland, Ohio, 
 and its proceedings created considerable disaffection. 
 Two members had been summarily expelled in a manner 
 that was considered too hasty, and the Eclectic Medical 
 College of St. Louis, was disowned. It was intimated 
 that the management of this procedure was arbitrary and un- 
 parliamentary, that usages were followed that were adopted 
 from the Old School, and the rights of individuals were not 
 properly regarded. Several amendments were accordingly 
 made to the Constitution to afford greater protection. The 
 new organization elected the late Dr. Morgan L. Filkins of 
 New York, president, and adopted a constitution and course 
 of procedure. Its second meeting was not significant. In 
 1 88 1 it met at St. Louis simultaneously with the National 
 Eclectic Association, and elected Dr. Orin Davis of New 
 York, president. This meeting was well attended, but after 
 this the Association speedily fell to pieces. The Board of 
 Health of Missouri rejected the physicians graduating from 
 the Eclectic Medical College, and the futility of the attempt 
 to maintain a rival society was manifest. 
 
 Survey of the Field. 
 The rehabilitating of the National Eclectic Medical Asso- 
 ciation at Chicago, seemed to impart new energy to 
 physicians of the American School of Practice, both in 
 regard to local organization, and in the extending of facilities 
 for medical instruction. At that time there were but five 
 medical colleges professing to teach the Eclectic Practice of 
 Medicine. Of these, only two participated in the new organ- 
 zation, while a third, as has been noticed, being in unpleas-
 
 726 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ant circumstances, was intimately connected with a project 
 to found a rival society under the same name, in or der tc 
 anticipate and circumvent the action at Chicago. 
 
 There were also Eclectic Societies in fourteen states* most 
 of them in active sympathy with the National Associati£)n. 
 The number has since increased till there are now thirty-two 
 Societies and Associations representing the Eclectic physi- 
 cians in the several states, t with local and district 
 organizations in twelve, and seven medical colleges that are 
 admitted to representation at the meetings of the National 
 Eclectic Medical Association. There is also the New Eng- 
 land Eclectic Medical Association, comprising the six North- 
 eastern States ; and it has been proposed at different times 
 to form another society of States on the Pacific Slope, a 
 Southern Eclectic Medical Association and another for 
 Northern States. This increase is largely due to professional 
 enthusiasm, the esprit de corps of individual practitioners, 
 incited by the influence of a central organization, and 
 further stimulated, when not checked and neutralized by 
 partisan legislation. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Colleges. 
 There has always been an earnest purpose among Eclectic 
 physicians to provide for thorough instruction in the 
 principles and procedures of the new Practice. Personal 
 ambition may have been an incitement on the part of those 
 participating in these enterprises, but it has been allied to 
 conviction of the necessity of medical institutions to enable 
 
 *These were in Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, 
 Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Vermont and Wisconsin. 
 The officers of the Bennett College of Eclectic Medicine and the Eclectic Medical 
 College of the City of New York were also active in the undertaking and probably 
 deserve the highest meed of credit for its success. 
 
 t The Medical and Surgical Register from the edition of i8q6 omits mention of 
 the Eclectic Medical Associations of Alabama, the District of Columbia, Minnesota, 
 New Hampshire and South Dakota.
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 727 
 
 the holding of the ground, and to make further advance- 
 ment. In face of the fact that they have all been under- 
 taken and carried on without aid from the public Treasury, 
 endowment from private munificence, or any sources of 
 income other than those incident to an academy or private 
 school, they have succeeded in equipping a body of prac- 
 titioners not surpassed in skill, professional merit and 
 success by those who have graduated from more popular and 
 favored institutions.* 
 
 The American Medical College of St. Louis was the first 
 of the number coming into existence after the Eclectic re- 
 organization at Chicago. It was incorporated in 1873, and 
 included in its Faculty, Doctors George C. Pitzer, Edwin 
 Younkin, Albert Merrell, John W. Thrailkill, W. V. Rutledge 
 and George H. Field. Dissension unfortunately arising, a 
 division ensued and Dr. Field procured a charter next year 
 for " The American Medical University." This name was 
 soon changed to the less equivocal title of the " St. Louis 
 Medical College," and sessions were begun in 1875. The 
 two institutions continued to exist in an unfriendly rivalship 
 for several years. The matter was presented before the 
 National Eclectic Medical Association at its meeting in 
 Detroit in 1878, and its decision was made in behalf of the 
 American Medical College. The other enterprise continued 
 in operation till 1883, when it was rejected by the Board of 
 Health of the State of Missouri. The American Medical 
 College has since maintained its place in public confidence, 
 and it is in a thriving condition. 
 
 The United States Medical College was incorporated by 
 the Supreme Court of the First District of the State of New 
 
 * The late Professor Joseph R. Buchanan proposed as a test of this question, the 
 enacting of a law which should require every physician signing a death-certificate, to add 
 the designation of the School of Medical Practice to which he belonged. This, he 
 insisted, would be more effective than all the medical legislation to weed out quacks 
 and incompetent practitioners, and would afford to the people the means of intelligent 
 judgment in selecting their physicians.
 
 728 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 York in 1878. Dr. Benjamin J. Stow was president, and 
 Doctors Robert A. Gunn, Paul W. Allen, Alexander Wilder, 
 A. B. Woodward, P. H. Van der Weyde, David Wark and 
 Mark Nivison, constituted the Faculty. The College was 
 recognized by the National Eclectic Medical Association in 
 1879, on motion of Dr. John M. Scudder, and held six 
 terms of lectures. It was the first Eclectic institution that 
 attempted the holding of a graded course of instruction, and 
 it received its students by a preliminary examination. This 
 college was incorporated under the same General Statute as 
 the Central New York College at McGrawville, the Syracuse 
 University, the Central and Syracuse Medical Colleges. 
 The statute having been amended by the Legislature in 
 1870 on purpose to include colleges and universities of 
 whatever character, and to be unequivocal, it named such in- 
 stitutions. At the instance, however, of the Medical Society 
 of the County of New York, a writ of quo warranto was 
 obtained to test the validity of the charter. The Superior 
 Court of the County hesitatingly decided the general statute 
 with its amendments insufficient, the Judge intimating his 
 expectation that the decision would be overruled. The 
 Supreme Court, however, at the General term, made the new 
 point that the law did not contemplate the incorporation of 
 medical colleges, and the Court of Appeals finally declared 
 that "a medical college is neither a scientific nor a literary 
 but simply an eleemosynary institution" and therefore not 
 entitled to the powers conferred by the general act for the 
 incorporation of benevolent, charitable, religious, scientific, 
 etc., societies, the statute under which it had been incorpor- 
 ated. 
 
 The degrees which had been conferred were legalized, 
 however, by a special act of the Legislature. A bill was 
 also passed to incorporate the college, but the Governor
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 729 
 
 David B. Hill, withheld his signature, and the institution 
 passed from existence. 
 
 The California Eclectic Medical College was organized at 
 Oakland in 1879, and was admitted in 1880 by special reso- 
 lution to representation in the National Eclectic Medical 
 Association. The Faculty included the late Dr. Joseph H. 
 Bundy, the chief pioneer Eclectic physician of California,* 
 Dr. J. W. Webb, Dr. A. McRae, Dr. John Fearn, Dr. George 
 G. Gere, Dr. Herbert T. Webster and Dr. Daniel Maclean. 
 Several of these are still in active service. The college 
 encountered a severe shock in the death of Dr. Bundy, but 
 recovered and began a prosperous career. In 1888 it was 
 removed to San Francisco. It has the distinction of being 
 the only Eclectic Medical College on the " Pacific Slope." 
 
 The Georgia Eclectic Medical College at Atlanta was in- 
 corporated in 1866. The devastation of the war between 
 the States had fallen with the severest weight upon Georgia 
 and particularly upon the capital city. In this period of 
 general impoverishment the college began its existence. Its 
 projectors had energy and enthusiasm to sustain them rather 
 than financial resources. The attempt was made to begin a 
 course of medical instruction in the autumn of 1866, but 
 Professor I. J. M. Goss f demurred on account of the ineffi- 
 ciency of the provision for its support. The organization. 
 
 * Josepli Horatio Bundy was born in Hardwick, Vermont in 1839. After receiving a 
 literary Education in Wisconsin, he graduated in Medicine in Philadelphia in 1861. 
 He removed to Colusa in California in itiyo, where he soon became conspicuous for his 
 advanced studies in Herbalism and his vigorous efforts to disseminate the knowledge of 
 Eclectic Medicine. In 1878 he transferred his residence at Oakland in order to take 
 part in the organization of tlie Eclectic Medical College. He was for ten years a Pro- 
 lessor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine, and likewise of Medical Botany, a 
 department sadly neglected in medical colleges. He was elected First Vice-President 
 of the National Eclectic Medical Association at its meeting in Detroit in 1879. His 
 health began to fail and he was compelled to give up active effort. He died at Seattle, 
 Washington, on the 6th of October, 1881. 
 
 t Dr. Isham J. M. Goss died at Marietta, Georgia, his place of residence, February 
 25, iSq6. He was born in 1819 and graduated in Medicine, first at Augusta in 184.1, and 
 afterward at the Eclectic Medical ("ollege of Philadelphia, and the Eclectic Medical 
 Institute. He was the author of a treatise on Materia Medica and contributor to 
 medical journals.
 
 730 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 however, was maintained, and finally in 1877 a Faculty 
 was duly formed and stated courses of lectures were begun.* 
 The indications were more encouraging. In 1881, a formal 
 application was presented by Dr. Borland in behalf of the 
 Faculty and Trustees, at the annual meeting of the National 
 Eclectic Medical Association at St. Louis, to be recognized 
 among the colleges in good standing. It was referred to a 
 Special Committee,! and a recommendation reported to defer 
 the matter. The Association, however, adopted a resolution 
 offered by Dr. R. A. Gunn of New York, to give the college 
 together with the Eclectic Medical College of Indiana, a 
 recognition for one year, as in good standing, and to leave 
 the ultimate decision till the next annual meeting. The 
 application was renewed by Dr. William M. Durham of Atlanta, 
 in 1882 at the annual meeting in New Haven, and met the 
 desired approval. Dr. Durham remained in the Faculty as 
 Professor of Surgery, and the College became steadily more 
 prosperous. 
 
 In 1874, the " Reform College " at Macon which had been 
 suspended during the war, was revived with the new title 
 of " The College of American Medicine and Surgery." It 
 was removed to Atlanta in 1881, and merged in i884 into 
 the other institution, which in 1886 adopted its present 
 name of " The Georgia College of Eclectic Medicine and 
 Surgery. $ It is the only medical college of the Eclectic 
 School in the Southern States. 
 
 The Indiana Eclectic Medical College was established at 
 Indianapolis in 1880, under the auspices of the Eclectic 
 
 * Among the Professors were Doctors W. H. P. Fishburn, the Dean; John R. 
 Borland of Pennsylvania, Joseph Adolphus,the former president in turn of Indiana and 
 Iowa Eclectic Medical Associations, John F. Hammond, I. J. M. Goss, H. R. Jewett. 
 
 t Doctors John M. Scudder, H. Wohlgemuth, George C. Pitzer, J. Beswick Schultz 
 and L. E. Russell composed the Committee. 
 
 J Several of the Annual Amendments of this institution adopted accordingly the 
 date of the original incorporation of the Botanico Medical College at Forsyth in 1830, 
 and claim the distinction of being the oldest Eclectic Medical College. To Dr. W. M. 
 Durham must be accorded great credit for the success enjoyed.
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 73 1 
 
 Medical Association of the State.* It sustained a course 
 of lectures the same year. Its application for recognition 
 among the Eclectic medical colleges as being in good stand- 
 ing was presented to the National Eclectic Medical Associa- 
 tion, at its session in St. Louis in 1881, and strenuously 
 opposed. It was, however, before mentioned, accepted con- 
 ditionally for one year, together with the Eclectic Medical 
 College of Georgia. This precedent which was devised in 
 order to evade a difficulty, was afterward regarded by several 
 as a rule and practice ; but there never had been a regula- 
 tion of the sort, even by implication. The resolution adopted 
 in 1879, relating to medical colleges, had a far different end 
 in contemplation, which many did not contemplate. 
 
 There was, however, much dissension among the Eclectic 
 physicians of Indiana and rival institutions came into exist- 
 ence. The Beach Medical College was organized in 1883, 
 taking the name of " The Beach Medical University " the 
 following year, but soon afterward merged into the older 
 institution. The Indiana College of Medicine and Midwifery 
 united with the Eclectic Medical College, retaining its own 
 distinct corporate existence, but becoming the department 
 of midwifery in that institution.! The management of the 
 College, however, became unsatisfactory to the Indiana 
 Eclectic Medical Association, and it finally adopted resolu- 
 tions disowning the whole concern. At its instance, like- 
 wise, the National Eclectic Medical Association took similar 
 action at the annual meeting at Niagara Falls in 1890. 
 
 * The officers of the College were selected from the oldest and staunchest Eclectic 
 physicians of Indiana. The late Dr. William H. Kendrick, a former Baptist clergyman, 
 and a man of experience and scholarly attainments, was president; Dr. Samuel S. 
 Boots, Recording Secretary, and Doctors Elias Hubbard, Lyman Frazee and Daniel 
 Lesh, Trustees. Among the members of the Faculty were Doctors John A. Henning, 
 S. S. Boots and William F. Curryer. 
 
 tDiplomas purporting to be from the Medical College of Midwifery were issued as 
 genuine, on which the most of the official signatures were engrossed together with 
 the text of the documents.
 
 732 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 There was, however, another course of lectures held, after 
 which the managers suspended further operations. 
 
 It was revived again in 1895 under the name of "The 
 American Medical College of Indianapolis," with a full staff 
 of professors belonging to the different schools of medicine. 
 It represented the " American Association of Physicians 
 and Surgeons," a non-partisan medical organization, which 
 had been formed about this time, and has held annual 
 meetings since in different states of the Union. 
 
 Meanwhile a committee of members of the Indiana 
 Eclectic Medical Association called a meeting of physicians in 
 September, 1890, and took measures to procure a charter 
 and begin a course of instruction under the title of " The 
 Indiana College of Eclectic Physicians and Surgeons." 
 The Association promptly approved the action and accepted 
 the proposition to name three of the trustees each year. Its 
 faculty was constituted from the leading Eclectic practition- 
 ers of the States* and the College received due recognition 
 this time without question at the meeting of the National 
 Eclectic Medical Association, at Hot Springs, in 1891. 
 
 The lines of the new College, however, fell by no means 
 in pleasant places. Dissensions broke out, and after fruitless 
 attempts to compose them, the sessions were suspended in 
 1895. 
 
 In Iowa, likewise, the attempts to establish a medical 
 college have been numerous and the results by no means 
 encouraging. In 1881 the executive officers of the Drake 
 University authorized the establishing of a medical depart- 
 ment in that Institution. Doctors Hiram A, Reid, H. Oliver 
 Conway and other members of the Iowa State Eclectic 
 Medical Association accordingly organized such a depart- 
 
 *Among the number were Doctors William F. Curryer, Henry Long, Augustus 
 P. Hauss and Philander B. Wright.
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 733 
 
 ment under the covenant and title of "The Iowa Eclectic 
 Medical College," and began a course of instruction.* 
 The National Eclectic Medical Association, at its annual 
 meeting at Topeka, Kansas, in 1883, adopting the policy 
 followed with the colleges in 1881, gave a conditional 
 approval for a year. 
 
 A rival institution, the "King Medical College," was then 
 incorporated, and its president, Dr. Oliver H. P. Shoemaker, 
 made application at the annual meeting of the National 
 Eclectic Medical Association at Cincinnati, in 1884, for a 
 similar recognition. Both colleges were finally accepted for 
 a year in the same relation, but their petitions for full 
 recognition at the meeting in Altoona the next year were 
 refused, and they were left in their former attitude. The 
 matter was taken up again at the annual meeting in Atlanta, 
 in 1886, and resulted in the accepting of the medical depart- 
 ment of Drake University, which then bore the title of the 
 "Iowa Medical College." 
 
 This discrimination, however, had no effect towards a 
 termination of the controversy; new complications now 
 arose. At the meeting of the National Eclectic Medical 
 Association at Waukesha, in 1887. Dr. Shoemaker 
 renewed his application without success. Meanwhile, a 
 communication was received from Dr. John Cooper of Des 
 Moines, Iowa, stating that the Drake University had for just 
 reasons, severed all connection with the Iowa Medical 
 College, and that the State Board of Health had rejected 
 its graduates. The Association adopted a resolution with- 
 drawing its official recognition, and declaring further that 
 no medical college in Iowa shall be recognized except one 
 
 •The next year the "Iowa College of Physicians and Surgeons" was established 
 on a similar footing, and the Eclectic School having been brought to a hasty termination, 
 it has continued to retain the relation solely.
 
 734 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 that shall be fully sanctioned by the Iowa State Eclectic 
 Medical Association. 
 
 The same year the " Iowa Eclectic Medical College " was 
 organized, and its president, Dr. John Cooper presented an 
 application for recognition, with the certificate of approval 
 as required. It was referred to the Committee on Affairs of 
 Medical Colleges.* A favorable report was made and the 
 new corporation accepted. It was no more fortunate than 
 its predecessors. It soon incurred the hostility of the 
 unfriendly Eclectic practitioners, and a vote was obtained, it 
 was affirmed, by a snap judgment, to reject its diplomas. 
 The College was compelled, accordingly, to close its doors, 
 after having held six terms of instruction. A resolution was 
 adopted at the meeting of the National Eclectic Medical 
 Association at Niagara Falls in 1894, withdrawing its 
 recognition from the College till such time as the State 
 Board of Health of Iowa shall accept its degrees. 
 
 In 1883 the Legislature of Nebraska authorized the 
 establishment of three medical departments in the University 
 at Lincoln for instruction in the doctrines and procedures of 
 the leading Schools of Medicine. Three professorships were 
 alloted to the Eclectic Department, to which Doctors William 
 S. Latta, Ira Van Camp and Richard S. Grimes were appointed. 
 The arrangement continued till 1887, when the departments 
 were all closed. Dr. Latta and his colleagues immediately 
 negotiated with the Nebraska Christian University, since 
 changed in name to " Cotner University," for the organization 
 of a medical department in that institution, and the sessions 
 began in 1889 with a stafl^ of fourteen professors. It bears 
 the title of "Lincoln Medical College of Cotner University." 
 
 *This Committee consisted of Doctors B. L. Yeagley, W. T. Gemmill, S. B. Munn, 
 J. W. Migrath and Henry Wohlgemuth. Thus far it was the policy and purpose that 
 this committee should represent the Association, and accordingly include no person 
 as member who was connected with a medical college.
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 735 
 
 The Michigan Eclectic Medical College was incorporated 
 in 1880, but was never acknowledged by the National 
 Eclectic Medical Association, nor by the Eclectic Medical 
 and Surgical Society of the State. It did not go into 
 operation. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical College of Maine was incorporated 
 by the Legislature of the State on the 28th day of February, 
 1 88 1. The enterprise had been contemplated by the principal 
 members of the State Eclectic organization for many years. 
 After the later years of the war between the Northern and 
 Southern States, there was a new impulse in the ranks of 
 Eclectic physicians, to form societies for the advancing of 
 their views, and protection against encroachments upon 
 their professional rights. Accordingly the Eclectic Medical 
 Society of Maine was formed in June, 1865, and incorporated 
 three years afterward. There was at the time no medical 
 college, nearer than Philadelphia, the exponent of their prin- 
 ciples. The institutions in New York and Massachusetts 
 had closed their doors, and the Philadelphia University had 
 repudiated all connection with the Eclectic school. The new 
 Society was active and took effective means to oppose the 
 attempts in Legislature to foist restrictive legislation anew 
 upon the State. 
 
 The want of a medical college to teach Eclectic practice 
 was vividly experienced and anxiously discussed at the 
 meetings of the Society, but its energies were employed in 
 the efforts to prevent unfriendly legislation. Finally in the 
 winter of 1880-81 Dr. James M. Buzzell, of Portland, took 
 the laboring oar to bring the result. He was a graduate of 
 Dartmouth, and was a surgeon of superior skill. He had 
 been professor of surgery in the Worcester Medical Institu- 
 tion, the Eclectic Medical College of Philadelphia and the 
 Medical University. A petition was prepared and signed by
 
 736 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 the leading citizens of the State* asking for the incorporation 
 of the Eclectic Medical College of Maine, at Lewiston. The 
 charter was granted and an organization effected immediately. 
 The faculty consisted of Dr. James M. Buzzell, Professor of 
 Surgery; Dr. Wilbur F. Wadworth, Professor of Principles 
 and Practice of Medicine ; Dr. John Swan, Professor of 
 Obstetrics; Dr. John J. Siggins, Professor of Materia 
 Medica and Gynecology ; Dr. Albert J. Marston, Professor 
 of Anatomy ; also, a Professor of Chemistry and a Lecturer 
 on Medical Jurisprudence. 
 
 The first session began in October, 1881, with twenty- 
 three students. The second term was marked by changes 
 of instructors. Dr. Seth B. Sprague succeeding to the chair 
 of practice, Dr. Benjamin H. Burrill, to the chair of Materia 
 Medica, Dr. Stephen E. Root, to the chair of Physiology. 
 While the Medical School of Maine was fostered by the 
 Legislature, receiving an annual stipend from the treasury for 
 its support, the modest institution at Lewiston depended, 
 like other schools of the Reformed Practice, entirely upon 
 its income and the aid of its friends. The attempt was 
 made that year to procure a medical statute and swoop the 
 College into the hands of the dominant school. It was 
 happily foiled and the College came out of the conflict with 
 more friends than before. The Eclectic Medical Society at its 
 next meeting declared its warm approval of the institution and 
 asked support from every loyal friend of the Eclectic cause. 
 
 The College now enlarged its operations, engaging a 
 better building, and adding to its faculty Dr. James Davies, 
 A. M., to the chair of Chemistry and Urinology, Dr. James 
 A. Tabor, General and Microscopic Anatomy, Dr. Francis 
 
 *The Hon. James G. Blaine was a friend and sympathizer with the Eclectic 
 movement, as were other citizens of note. Perhaps in no other state, except Georgia, 
 were so many leading public men in rapport with the Eclectic School of Practice.
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 737 
 
 W. Lockwood, Operative Dentistry, and Dr. Darius L. Powe, 
 Demonstrator of Anatomy. The institution now exhibited 
 gratifying indications of greater prosperity than ever.* 
 
 The scientific character of the instruction at the College 
 is best illustrated by an address of Dr. John M. Boothby, a 
 graduate and afterward a member of the Faculty : " This 
 College has sent out graduates," said he, " who have defeated 
 graduates from Harvard, Yale and the University of the 
 City of New York in rigid examinations for prominent 
 positions ; and we are recognized by the physicians of New 
 York, as all physicians should be, not for our 'pathy, but for 
 our medical knowledge." 
 
 The number of annual sessions held by the College was 
 six. Its curriculum was as extensive as other medical 
 schools, and the graduates were held rigidly to the line. 
 Nominal attendance and superficial attainments were not 
 accepted. But the changes in the faculty were unfortunately 
 numerous. The College being without endowment, few 
 teachers could long afford to render their services. Doctors 
 Lindsey, A. K. P. Harvey, A, D. Muchmore, John M. 
 Boothby and Messrs. Atwood and A. S. Lambert succeeded 
 to places in the Faculty at the fifth term, and Doctors A. L. 
 French and A. G. French to the sixth. Dr. Henry Reny 
 was Demonstrator of Anatomy. 
 
 All was going on as usual, when an article appeared in 
 the Boston Herald in January, 1887, which was based upon 
 false representations, insinuating that the College was in 
 close relations with the " Druidic University " at Lewiston. 
 
 *It was at this period that Dr. Samuel York, ne Carhon, was a member of the 
 Board of Trustees. He was not an educated man, but adventurous, and after several 
 voyages, had finally established himself as head of an "Electric Infirmary" at 
 Lewiston. He now offered himself as a candidate for graduation. The result was a 
 difference of sentiment in the faculty and several professors vacated their chairs. 
 Dr. York himself afterward resigned the office of Trustee. He became afterward 
 hostile and his influence and reputation were factors in wrecking the College.
 
 738 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The Legislature appointed a committee to investigate the 
 matter, and the Faculty and Trustees were summoned to the 
 sessions. They neglected to attend, and the Legislature 
 naturally supposing the imputations correct, repealed the act 
 of incorporation. 
 
 In 1883 the University of Florida was established at 
 Tallahassee. Dr. John Kost, a veteran of the Botanic 
 School and former professor in the Reform Medical College 
 at Cleveland, Ohio, as well as editor of a medical journal, 
 was active in this matter. At his instance a medical depart- 
 ment was connected with a full staff of instructors. Dr. 
 Kost himself and Dr. Vincent A. Baker, both experienced 
 teachers of the earlier time, were prominent members of the 
 Faculty. The encouragement to the enterprise was in- 
 sufficient and the institution was removed to Jacksonville 
 two years later to no advantage, and was closed the next 
 season. 
 
 The project of an Eclectic medical college at Topeka was 
 confidently entertained in 1883 by the leading members of 
 the Eclectic Medical Association of Kansas. At that time 
 the organization was very prosperous, sustaining a medical 
 journal and rapidly growing in numbers. A cloud, how- 
 ever, fell on the movement and it was abandoned. 
 
 The proposition to revive the Worcester Medical Institu- 
 tion has been several times discussed at the meetings of the 
 Eclectic Medical Society of Massachusetts. The charter 
 has been carefully maintained in full force, but the Trustees 
 have never been confident of the expediency of the measure. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical College of New Jersey was incor- 
 porated by the Legislature in 187 1. The late Dr. Luke D. 
 Broughton was principal mover in the undertaking. A 
 Faculty was created in 1888, and several terms of instruc- 
 tions were held with success. Misunderstandings arose
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 739 
 
 t)etween the Trustees and Professors, and the Institution 
 being established in the midst of an unfriendly community, 
 the Legislature repealed the act of incorporation. 
 
 There have been several medical colleges set in operation 
 at Cincinnati, that had more or less claim upon attention. 
 Such has been the case since 1849. The merging of the 
 College of Eclectic Medicine into the Eclectic Medical Insti- 
 tute, at the outbreak of war between the States, resulted for 
 a time in the cessation of such movements. The maintaining 
 of a college and medical journal had become too hard to sus- 
 tain, and most of the colleges of the several Reform Schools 
 were closed. In 1875, however, the Physio-Eclectic Medi- 
 cal College was organized. It held terms of instruction for 
 three years and was then united with the "American Eclectic 
 Medical College of Cincinnati." The National Eclectic 
 Medical Association at this time revised its Constitution, and 
 required certain conditions of study and qualifications from 
 the colleges within its premises.* The Eclectic Medical 
 Institute obtained recognition from that body. A suit was 
 instituted against the new college upon the ground that it 
 had no legal existence, and the charge was made against it 
 of selling medical degrees. The case, however, was dis- 
 missed. The institution was again set in operation a few 
 years afterward at half the regular terms of instruction, but 
 encountered new embarrassments, and was again suspended. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania remained 
 in operation till 1880. Such of the medical societies as had 
 affiliated with it quietly severed the alliance or silently went 
 out of existence. The Iowa Eclectic Medical Association 
 
 *This action contemplating longer terms, more thorougli study, and a higlier standard 
 of attainments, as a condition of securing the degree of Doctor of Medicine was taken 
 at the annual meeting in 1S77 at the instance and insistence of the author, then the Sec- 
 retary. It was evaded at first in several of the colleges, and even defied, but finally 
 carried. A resolution of amnesty was adopted in 1879, under which five colleges were 
 formally recognized.
 
 740 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 openly denounced its course. The Eclectic Medical Society 
 of the State of New York, at the annual meeting in 1869, 
 renewed the prior action, and voted to refuse acknowledg- 
 ment of the validity of its degrees. A committee was also 
 appointed to enquire into the facts, and the Legislature 
 of Pennsylvania passed a bill to repeal the charter, but this 
 was found to be in violation of the Constitution of the State, 
 and therefore of no effect. 
 
 Dr. John Buchanan had procured an Act from the General 
 Assembly of the State in 1867, incorporating " The American 
 University of Medicine and Surgery at Philadelphia." A 
 diploma of graduation was prepared for it, closely resem- 
 bling in form and general appearance that of the Philadel- 
 phia University of Medicine, of which Dr. William Paine 
 was dean. The story was then put into circulation that 
 both institutions were engaged alike in the practice of 
 hawking their diplomas. 
 
 About this time Doctor Paine was involved in some polit- 
 ical complications, and his enemies, in order to bring him 
 into disrepute, had procured the appointment of a Committee 
 of the General Assembly, to investigate allegations against 
 the Philadelphia University in regard to the corrupt dispos- 
 ing of medical degrees.* It had been affirmed that individ- 
 uals in the confidence of officials of the said medical colleges, 
 aided the Committee in these endeavors. They failed utterly 
 however, in obtaining evidence of any irregular procedure of 
 the kind. In spite of this, nevertheless, an Act was passed 
 to annul the charter of the institution, but it was set aside by 
 Justice Agnew of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, as 
 being without legislative force and void. 
 
 *Several official personages had engaged in a scandalous transaction in regard to a sum 
 of money, which had been paid by the Federal Government to the State of Pennsylvania, 
 in the adjusting of claims pertaining to the war between the States. Doctor Paine had 
 possession of documentary evidence in regard to the matter, and having refused to give 
 tt up, this measure was employed on purpose to embarrass and discredit him.
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 74I 
 
 In 1879 the Hon, Andrew D. White, the Ameriean Am- 
 bassador to Germany, addressed a communication to the 
 Hon. William M. Evarts, Secretary of State, directing his 
 attention to the fact that diplomas of spurious character, pur- 
 porting to confer degrees from certain medical colleges of 
 the United States, were in possession of individuals in that 
 country, who had not been pupils. The letter was referred 
 to General Carl Schurz, the Secretary of the Interior, and 
 by him placed in the hands of General John Eaton, the 
 Commissioner of Education. General Eaton immediately 
 addressed a circular letter to educators and others, asking 
 their aid to expose and correct the evil. The result was, that 
 the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania and its associ- 
 ate, "American University," were shown to have been en- 
 gaged in the issuing of the spurious degrees. The attempt 
 was made by several public journals and others, to implicate 
 the Pennsylvania Medical University, and the Philadelphia 
 University of Medicine, but nothing of the kind was brought 
 to light against either. 
 
 Nevertheless, here the investigation came to an end. 
 Other medical colleges had been engaged in the traffic, but 
 they found means to turn attention in other directions. Yet 
 the fact is notorious, that degrees have been granted in 
 Europe in such a way for centuries, ever since the first 
 Doctor of Medicine was made, eight hundred years ago ; and 
 likewise, that colleges in the United States had disposed of 
 their degrees for many years before the Eclectic Medical 
 College of Pennsylvania had even an existence.* 
 
 *The author was at the time Secretary of theJCational Eclectic Medical Association. 
 He had been the President of the State Society of New York in i86g, when tliat body 
 took action against the diploma traffic. On rtceivine: tlie circular from General Eaton, 
 he at once offered his assistance, only stipulating that the investigation should be thorough 
 and impartial, and in no sense a simple attack upon a particular School of Medicine. 
 This, General Eaton distinctly assured him would be the case. He tlien suggested as a 
 means of putting an end to the traffic, that the practice of granting degrees in absence 
 should be terminated. The Commission replied that this was impossible, as it liad been
 
 742 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The adversaries of the several liberal colleges in Philadel- 
 phia, conceived this to be their opportunity, and the purpose 
 was formed to force them out of existence. A writ of quo 
 warranto was issued against the Philadelphia University. 
 The Board of Trustees received the information that the 
 charges which had been made against the institution could 
 not be sustained, and that the sole desire of the Common- 
 wealth in this proceeding was that the charter should be 
 surrendered without prejudice or the imputation of any 
 blamable act. The Trustees, naturally desirous to escape 
 a costly and profitless lawsuit, assented to this proposition 
 and gave up the charter accordingly. The Hon. F. Carroll 
 Brewster described this event as not a victory upon the merits 
 of the case, and declared further that the corporation " Sur- 
 rendered nothing but the vain and empty right to manage a 
 literary institution."* Mr. Brewster meant by this term a 
 medical college, an institution such as the Court of Appeals of 
 New York afterward affirmed to be neither literary or scien- 
 tific, but eleemosynary. 
 
 A prosecution was also begun against the corporations, the 
 Eclectic Medical College and the American University. It 
 has been affirmed and with apparent truth, that these 
 two enterprises had been kept in operation by counsel and 
 contribution from members of the other School of Practice. 
 
 a practice of long standing in European institutions. In fact, the actual grievance was 
 simply that American institutions were participating in the profits of a time-honored 
 Old-School practice. Hence, as soon as the slight had been fixed upon the Eclectic 
 colleges in Philadelphia, which had been discredited over ten years by tlie Eclectic Med- 
 ical Societies themselves, and the implication of their misdoing could be imputed to 
 other Eclectic medical colleges the investigation ceased altogether. The medical colleges 
 of the other schools were passed over, althougli common report had indicated several, 
 as thus culpable; some of them of acknowledged superior standing. In one instance. 
 Dr. St. John B. Roosa of New York, was said to have declared that a certain medical 
 college, which he specified, had sold more diplomas than the managers of the Eclectic 
 Medical College of Pennsylvania. Statements like this have been repeatedly made and 
 never disputed. 
 
 *Dr. Paine, the chief founder of the University, -Iways insisted till the day of his 
 death that this surrender had no validity, and that the University with all its powers had 
 still a legal existence.
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 743 
 
 If such was the case, the ends were never accomplished. 
 The two institutions passed out of existence, Thus ended 
 the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania, after a career 
 of thirty years. 
 
 The Pennsylvania Medical University survived a year 
 longer, but finally closed its doors in 1881. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Association of Pennsylvania, at its 
 annual meeting in Philadelphia in 1886, took the prelimin- 
 ary measures toward the establishing of a new college, and a 
 charter was accordingly procured for the " Burton Medical 
 College." The endeavor to obtain subscriptions to guar- 
 antee the success of the enterprise, did not meet sufficient 
 encouragement ; and the death of several of the most active 
 and prominent of the Eclectic physicians of the State, and 
 likewise the stress of the times, resulted in the abandoning 
 of the project. 
 
 The Connecticut Eclectic Medical Association also re- 
 solved, at its annual meeting in 1892, to take the necessary 
 action for the establishing of a college. The causes, how- 
 ever, which have impeded activity elsewhere, have also been 
 operative there, and the matter is still in abeyance. 
 
 The Medical and Surgical Register, published in 1896, 
 gives the name of the " Wisconsin Eclectic Medical College " 
 at Milwaukee. It was organized in 1894 with a full staff of 
 professors, and graduated a class in 1896. It is not recog- 
 nized, however, by the Wisconsin Eclectic Medical Society, 
 and appears to be in affiliation with the Health College of 
 Chicago. 
 
 The National Eclectic Medical Association, at the annual 
 meeting at Niagara Falls in 1894, adopted resolutions for 
 the forming of an " Eclectic Medical College Association," 
 and empowering the Standing Committee on Affairs of 
 Medical Colleges to ratify any action that should be taken
 
 744 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 by the proposed organization. This will operate very 
 effectively in future to determine the prospects and oppor- 
 tunities of future projects for the founding of institutions for 
 instruction of students in the Eclectic School of Medicine. 
 
 NEW AUXILIARY SOCIETIES. 
 
 The stimulus which was imparted by the success of the 
 movement for the reviving of the National Eclectic Associa- 
 tion at Chicago in 1870 soon led those who had before held 
 aloof and been indifferent, to perceive the importance of 
 allying themselves with the movement. The more im- 
 mediate result, accordingly, was the forming of new auxiliary 
 organizations, and greater zeal in promoting the further 
 advancement of the American School of Medical Practice. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Association of Kansas was organized 
 in February 1 8 7 1 . Doctors Ansel M . Eidson, George H . Field, 
 Noah Simmons and Daniel Surber were among the active 
 organizers. The Society was steadily moving forward, and 
 gaining in membership, when, in 1879, ^ statute was enacted 
 by the Legislature authorizing the creation of a Board of 
 Medical Examiners, the members of which were to be named 
 by an incorporated medical society. It had been contem- 
 plated by the framers and advocates of the measure to place 
 the whole power of licensing physicians in the hands of the 
 practitioners who had been efficient and active in procuring 
 such legislation. But it was decided by the Attorney- 
 General of the State that the Eclectic Medical Association 
 was the only society that met the conditions of the enact- 
 ment, and possessed the required authority. The Associa- 
 tion proceeded, accordingly, to put the powers into exercise, 
 and gained thereby a large increase in the number of its 
 members. A decision, however, was procured from the 
 Supreme Court of the State declaring the enactment uncon- 
 stitutional. Since that time endeavors have been repeatedly
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 745 
 
 made to procure legislation which shall provide for a com- 
 posite Board of Medical Examiners, arranged to give 
 numerical preponderance to the School of Physicians asking 
 for this enactment. So far, however, they have failed. 
 
 The late Dr. J. H. Bandy is entitled to the chief credit 
 for bringing the Eclectic School of Medicine into notice in 
 California. Emigrating thither from Wisconsin in 1870, 
 he speedily became interested in the indigenous Flora, 
 their scientific character and classification, and their medic- 
 inal uses. Like Rafinesque and other true lovers of know- 
 ledge, he sought information everywhere, of the Spanish 
 population, and any who could tell anything worth the learn- 
 ing. He began at once to contribute papers to the Eclectic 
 Medical Journals, and soon attracted wide attention to the 
 new remedies which he described. Among them were the 
 Yerba Santa, Grindelia, Berberis, the Rhamnus or Cascara 
 Sagrada and Yerba Reuma. Of course, they were imme- 
 diately decried for having been introduced by a physician 
 who was not of the " regular " profession. This common, 
 but whimsical, objection was soon overborne by their mani- 
 fest utility, and they became " official." 
 
 Other Eclectic physicians came into the State and the 
 importance of organization was soon perceived. Accord- 
 ingly, the Eclectic Medical Society of California was formed 
 in December, 1874, by Doctors M. F. Clayton, O. P. Warren, 
 F. C. Cook, J. P. Backesto, M. R. Tewksbury, L. B. Hoag 
 and Samuel Clark. It soon gained a large membership, and 
 constituted the bone and sinew of Eclectic Medicine on the 
 Pacific Coast. The attempt was made at the next session 
 of the Legislature to procure an enactment for the avowed 
 purpose that every trace of " irregular medicine " might be 
 swept from the State. The members of the new organiza- 
 tion were awake to the inevitable complaint, and took ener-
 
 746 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 getic action. As the result of their effort the statute, when 
 it came from the hands of the Governor, provided for a 
 Board of Examiners for each State Medical Society that had 
 a legal organization, to investigate and certify to the quali- 
 fications of the practitioners identified with its School of 
 Practice. During the many years that have elapsed since 
 this measure has been in operation there has been an 
 attempt at every session of the Legislature to procure the 
 abolition of the several Boards and the substitution of a 
 single Board in which the Eclectic and Homoeopathic 
 physicians would have only a minority of the members. 
 This result was to be averted because it could not be de- 
 pended upon for impartial action. But the Eclectic physi- 
 cians have been on the alert to check the endeavor. 
 
 In Michigan the easy-going ways of the Eclectic Medical 
 Society were unsatisfactory to many of the leading 
 physicians. They desired more careful attention to the 
 character and qualifications of members. A new organiza- 
 tion was formed accordingly in 1876, which was incor- 
 porated by the Legislature by the name and title of " The 
 Michigan State Eclectic Medical and Surgical Society." It 
 was recognized the same year by the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association at its annual meeting at Washington, 
 and has been ever since the representative body ; the other 
 ceasing to maintain an organization. It has been aggressive, 
 and made repeated, though unsuccessful, efforts to obtain 
 from the Legislature a department of Eclectic Medicine in 
 the University at Ann Arbor on equal terms with the 
 department for the teaching of Homoeopathy. These have 
 been, however, of later years, greatly relaxed, if not aban- 
 doned outright. 
 
 The history of the Eclectic movement in Missouri presents 
 some analysis to submit on occurrences in other States.
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 747 
 
 The pioneer Eclectic physician of the State was Dr. William 
 M. Gates, a self-taught man who graduated in medicine and 
 began practice in Adair County in 1854. When the 
 Missouri Eclectic Medical Association was formed in 1870, 
 he became its Secretary. The bitter professional jealousy 
 that characterized the relations of the several Schools of 
 Medicine in the different States, as for example in Ohio, 
 Michigan, Pennsylvania and other Commonwealths, was less 
 virulent in Missouri, making it easier to obtain a permanent 
 foothold. The establishment of two rival medical colleges 
 at St. Louis, which has already been described, had the 
 effect, however, to divide the Eclectic practitioners into two 
 parties, and " the Eclectic Medical Society of Missouri " was 
 formed and incorporated under the influence of the Ameri- 
 can Medical College. An application to be accepted as the 
 true auxiliary organization representing the Eclectic physi- 
 cians of Missouri, was presented to the National Eclectia 
 Medical Association at its meeting in Detroit in 1878^ 
 and it was duly received the ensuing year at the meeting in 
 Cleveland. It is still in vigorous operation, and has been 
 one of the most efficient of the State societies in the work of 
 establishing district organizations in the State and otherwise 
 promoting the cause of Eclectic Medicine. Both the Society 
 and the American College adhere closely to the views and 
 doctrines promulgated by the founders and earlier exponents 
 of the American School of Practice. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Association of Nebraska sent its 
 first delegation to the National Association at its annual 
 meeting in Detroit in 1878. Its representatives on that 
 occasion were Doctors William S. Latta, James H. Wood- 
 ward and Charles Band.* It had been several years in ex- 
 
 *Dr. Latta was elected president of the Association at its annual meeting in St. Louis 
 in 1S81. Doctor Band was for many years a generous contributor, giving a hundred
 
 748 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 istence, and demonstrated its effectiveness by defeating the 
 endeavors to procure a partisan medical statute from the 
 Legislature, and likewise by securing a department of 
 Eclectic Medicine, first in the Nebraska University, and 
 afterward in the Christian University of New Bethany. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Society of New Jersey was organ- 
 ized in Newark in 1873. ^^ began with about thirty-five 
 members, and has held semi-annual meetings regularly since 
 that time. The geographic situation of the State, and the 
 jealousies remaining from the former relationship of medical 
 colleges, operated prejudicially toward the organization. The 
 physicians favoring the institutions at Philadelphia and 
 those having preferences for the institutions in New York, 
 were distrustful of one another, and soon abandoned the 
 Society to the members who held no exclusive allegiance in 
 either direction. The meetings have been characterized by 
 the reading of instructive papers and discussions of pro- 
 fessional topics. This Society took measures at an early 
 day for the exposing of the traffic in medical degrees, both 
 in the Old and New Schools, and its committee on Legis- 
 lation for many years opposed successfully the concerted 
 efforts to foist a medical enactment upon the statutes, 
 till at length political and sinister influences united and be- 
 came too powerful. 
 
 The history of Eclectic Medicine in Pennsylvania has 
 been greatly diversified. The introduction of the Botanic 
 m idical practice from England, the early organizations 
 centering at Philadelphia, and the story of the medical 
 colleges with their various vicissitudes have been already 
 noticed. They seem, however, to have had comparatively 
 
 dollars yearly to the National Association, besides generous donations to the American, 
 United States and other Eclectic Medical colleges. He was a resident of Crete, but 
 removed afterward to Eugene, in Oregon. His address, however, is still given as Crete.
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 749 
 
 little influence upon the Reformed physicians of the counties 
 of the State. Many of these, indeed, were graduates of the 
 Colleges in Philadelphia, and loyally took warm interest in 
 their prosperity while they continued in operation. But 
 they exemplified the fact, which many are slow to learn, that 
 the general public will seldom be partisan, or care much 
 even as spectators, in the quarrels of individuals. They 
 preserved a reasonable affection for the places and 
 teachers, but they were diligent in local organization and 
 activities. 
 
 The Eclectic medical practice was introduced into West- 
 ern Pennsylvania by Doctors Oldshue and Henry Yeagley, 
 and in the Valley of the Susquehanna by Dr. A. B. Wood- 
 ward. Local societies were organized at Pittsburg and in 
 the Susquehanna district as early as 1845, ^^^ continued in 
 full vigor for many years. After the revival of the National 
 Eclectic Medical Association at Chicago the movement to 
 form an Auxiliary Society for the State was begun at Oil 
 City. Among those active in the matter were Doctors Alex- 
 ander Thompson, John R. Borland, of Franklin, and James 
 L. Proper, of Titusville. The Eclectic Medical Association 
 of Pennsylvania was duly organized, and afterward incor- 
 porated at Franklin in 1875. ^^ ^^*^ ^o^ auxiliaries the 
 Central, North Western, Susquehanna district and Phila- 
 delphia. It had the influence for years to defeat the efforts 
 which the Pennsylvania Medical Association and the Faculty 
 of the University employed, under the trite pretext of pro- 
 tecting the people, with the aid of political chicane to procure 
 an enactment by which to control absolutely the Practice of 
 Medicine in the State.* A statute was finally obtained 
 
 •Among the active members of the Eclectic Medical Association at this time were 
 the Thompsons, the IJeanis, the Yeagley brothers, G. D. Kughler, Henry B. Piper, 
 C. M. Ewing and the veteran A. B. Woodward.
 
 75° 
 
 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 which gave the several medical colleges the exclusive right 
 to determine the validity of degrees conferred by institutions 
 outside of Pennsylvania. This power was exercised to the 
 extreme of professional partisanship, and even to the re- 
 jection of diplomas of institutions of the same medical faith. 
 This peculiar form of State Rights was maintained till 1892, 
 when the Legislature enacted a new statute authorizing the 
 appointment of three Boards of Medical Examiners, to be 
 nominated by the respective State Medical Societies. 
 
 The Georgia Eclectic Medical Association was organized 
 in March I874, and incorporated by a special act of the 
 Legislature the same year.* 
 
 At that period the principal Reformed physicians of 
 Georgia were graduates from the medical college at Macon, 
 and supporters of the Botanic School of Medicine. Never- 
 theless, they generally affiliated with the new organization ; 
 Dr. Lanier Bankston, the pioneer in Reform and college 
 enterprise in the State, himself, exemplifying his approval. 
 The two medical colleges also united, and so became a 
 powerful auxiliary to aid the Eclectic School of Practice in 
 securing and maintaining a firmer foothold in Georgia and 
 the neighboring States. It now enjoys a large share of the 
 favor of the public men of the State, and in some respects 
 there appears to be less animosity between the different 
 parties in medicine. The influence of the Eclectic physicians 
 has been effectual in the way of checking effort for partisan 
 legislation ; and at the same time they have been far in 
 advance of the other medical organizations in demanding 
 longer terms of study and thorough instruction at the medi- 
 cal colleges. 
 
 *The first officers were representative men of the Eclectic School. Dr. Isham J. 
 M. Goss was president, S. T. Biggers, vice-president, and Hiram J. Hampton, secre- 
 tary. The later officers have been men of equal note ; the Hon. Fielding T. Powell 
 having been president for several terms, and William M. Durham, secretary.
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 75 1 
 
 In Alabama the history of Eclectic Medicine has been 
 marked by conflict and other incidents full of signifi- 
 cance. The war between the States and the unfortunate 
 conditions which ensued, had gone far toward annihilating 
 the animosities between physicians of the different Schools 
 of Practice. Indeed, in several of the counties all the 
 practitioners had declared themselves Eclectics, and modi- 
 fied their treatment accordingly. As, however, there was no 
 medical college convenient of access that gave instructions 
 in the doctrines and procedures of Reformed Medicine, 
 students continued to attend the institutions of the other 
 School. Besides these, there were many physicians who 
 had graduated before the war from the Botanic Medical 
 and Reform colleges, who, nevertheless, were affiliated with 
 the dominant party. One of this number was Dr. Jerome 
 Cochrane, who had been active at that period in the con- 
 ventions and controversies of the Thomsonians. He had 
 now become Health Officer of the State. A medical enact- 
 ment was procured from the General Assembly in 1877 
 which classified physicians as Regular and Irregular, and 
 gave the entire power of licensing practitioners to the 
 Board of Censors of the County Medical Societies. At that 
 time there were no societies of this character in many of the 
 counties, but the effect of the enactment led to their forma- 
 tion, and the income derived from the fees exacted for 
 examination of candidates supported them in existence. It 
 was soon found, however, that many of these examiners 
 were grossly illiterate and unable to examine a candidate 
 intelligently, or even to prepare his certificate. In order to 
 obviate this difficulty changes were artfully made in the 
 statute by which supreme and almost absolute power was 
 given to a State Board, and of this the Health Officer was 
 virtually the umpire. It issued its regulations to the local
 
 752 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Boards and set up an assumption of authority which was 
 esteemed as arrogant and imperious.* 
 
 The first resistance was encountered from the Eclectic 
 Medical Association of Alabama. This Society had been 
 formed in 1884 by the late Doctor J. W. Raleigh Williams, 
 of Opelika; R. J. Thornton, William H. Lamar and others 
 of like sentiment. It at once proclaimed its hostility to 
 " State Religion, State Medicine and a State Medical 
 Priestcraft." A Central Protective Committee was ap- 
 pointed which proceeded to test the validity of the obnoxious 
 provisions of the medical enactment. As an immediate 
 result two indictments were quashed which had been found 
 against members of the Committee in order to be made 
 a judicial decision including the constitutionality of the 
 measure. Afterward, however, in 1889, a suit was brought 
 against a Homoeopathic physician who had refused to 
 undergo an examination, and the Supreme Court at Mobile 
 ruled unequivocally that he had violated no statute that would 
 subject him to criminal prosecution. This decision put an 
 end to further prosecutions of recusant physicians, and to the 
 enforcing of examinations by Boards of Censors in Alabama. 
 
 The statute as modified prescribes that " no person shall 
 be permitted to practice any irregular system of medicine 
 without a certificate of qualification in Anatomy, Physiology, 
 Chemistry and the Mechanics of Labor, from some one of 
 the Boards of Censors " of the medical societies of the 
 dominant School. It has not been undertaken, unless the 
 Courts have ventured upon it, to define what may constitute 
 an " irregular system of Medicine." 
 
 The endeavor was made in 1892 by the Eclectic and 
 Homoeopathic physicians acting in concert, to procure from 
 
 *It was said that Dr. Cochrane declared the diplomas of medical colleges to be merely 
 " door-mats."
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 753 
 
 the General Assembly a radical change in the statute itself. 
 Their purpose was to secure protection from invidious perse- 
 cution. It failed, however, in the House of Representatives, 
 lacking two votes of the necessary majority.* 
 
 The Medical Association of Alabama proceeded in haste 
 to modify its position. A resolution was adopted at its 
 next session to hold the inhibitions of the Code of Ethics 
 as set forth by the American Medical Association to be no 
 longer obligatory, and the offer was made to accept as regu- 
 lar physicians all who were legal practitioners of medicine. 
 This is the condition of membership in the various Inter- 
 national Medical Congresses which have been held in 
 Europe, for many years past. 
 
 To these propositions the Secretary of the Eclectic Medi- 
 cal Association of Alabama made the following reply : 
 
 " Eclecticism demands to be her own umpire, to con- 
 stitute the sufficient authority for her own licentiates, to 
 exercise unquestioned the right to pursue her own path, 
 equal before the law. She places her claims by the side of 
 all other scientific pursuits ; and every blow that she strikes 
 for herself, every demand that she makes, is a blow for the 
 
 FREEDOM OF EVERY CITIZEN, AND IN BEHALF OF THE SISTER- 
 HOOD OF LABOR." 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Association of Arkansas was organ- 
 ized in 1879. ^^' John W. Pruitt of Russellville took the 
 lead in the undertaking, f Another organization of similar 
 character was also formed through the efforts of the late Dr. 
 
 *Dr. Williams declared to the author that it was a mistake to apply for any enact- 
 ment. If they had made the effort for the unconditional repeal of the medical statute 
 he was certain that it would have been accomplished. "There will be no backward 
 »tep," he added. But the brave man's career was arrested at the opportune moment. 
 Dr. Williams died on the third day of January, 1874. 
 
 tDoctor Pruitt was a graduate of the Eclectic Medical Institute in 1858, and be- 
 came afterward a surgeon in the Confederate Army. He was a man of superior energy, 
 and with the stalwart character of the pioneer to do and to endure.
 
 754 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 M. F. Dumas. The two united and soon acquired the 
 dimensions of a strong and effective society. The medical 
 conflict in the State had been a severe one, and it was in- 
 trepidly fought. The advocates of medical legislation dis- 
 tinctly avowed their purpose, that their " chief aim was to 
 organize so as to successfully control Eclectics and Homceo- 
 pathics." The active members of the Eclectic organization, 
 Doctors E. H. Stevenson, A. J. Widener and others were on 
 the alert to meet every attempt. The bill providing for a 
 Board of Medical Examiners, exclusively of the favored 
 School, was repeatedly introduced and defeated. Senator 
 Fishback, afterward Governor, opposed it with all his 
 energy. It was the purpose, without concealment, to drive 
 the Eclectic physicians from the State. Finally, in 1881, an 
 enactment was procured creating a State Board of Medical 
 Examiners, but it was expressly forbidden to discriminate 
 between the Schools of Medicine. This deprived them of 
 the power for which they had looked. In 1895 the Legis- 
 lature passed another act, placing the whole business of 
 examining physicians in the hands of the County Courts. 
 Governor Fishback refused his approval, but it was again 
 passed by the Legislature. The Courts of each county 
 were authorized to appoint a Board of three Examiners, 
 two of whom must be graduates in medicine. No School 
 of Practice is indicated in the statute. 
 
 In other respects the Eclectic physicians of Arkansas 
 have been very fortunate. They maintain their numbers, 
 and many of them possess superior literary merit. They 
 publish the Transactions of their Society in pamphlet, and 
 sustain the Southwestern Medical Jourjial. 
 
 In Texas it has required persistent effort to establish and 
 maintain an organization of the new School. The dimen- 
 sions of the State are too large, the population too diversified,
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 755 
 
 and other conditions are so complicated as to be deterrent 
 to the undertaking. Hence, with veterans like Meredith W. 
 Henry, David Bath's and E. W. Aldrich, years passed with- 
 out an attempt at organizing. The Constitution of the 
 State had been framed with a provision to assure equality 
 of rights to physicians, declaring in express terms, that 
 " no laws shall be made giving any School of Medicine the 
 advantage over another." A bill was enacted by the 
 Legislature in 1879 authorizing the appointment in every 
 judicial district of a Board of Medical Examiners, who 
 should be graduates of a college approved by the American 
 Medical Association, but they were prohibited from any 
 partisan discrimination. The feeling among the physicians 
 desiring legislation is very warm against those of the 
 Eclectic and Homoeopathic Schools, and this enactment 
 was not sufficient for their purpose. An attempt was made 
 in 1884 to procure a statute for the creation of a State 
 Board of Censors, composed of members of the Texas 
 Medical Association. It was proposed to invest this Board 
 with full powers to decide upon the qualifications of candi- 
 dates, and to license practitioners of Medicine. It did not 
 pass, but it served to warn physicians of the weaker Schools 
 that they must act together to enable eflectual resistance to 
 encroachments upon their professional rights. A meeting 
 was held at Dallas the ensuing winter, at which was formed 
 " the Eclectic Medical Association of Texas." For several 
 years it did not seem to prosper, and barely maintained its 
 existence. Presently, however, a new impulse was im- 
 parted, and it began to exhibit abundant evidence of vital 
 energy. The attendance at the meetings, the papers there 
 read and discussed, and afterward published, afford gratify- 
 ing testimony of steady advancement in professional skill 
 and scholarship.
 
 756 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 The professional animosities, however, still exist in all 
 acerbity. The members of the Texas Medical Association, 
 unable to disfranchise and drive away the Eclectic physi- 
 cians, but compelled by law to regard them as equals, have 
 concerted together to withhold those courtesies which 
 characterize the manners and relations of good breeding. 
 Such things, however, are only for a season, and will ulti- 
 mately be superseded by good sense. 
 
 In Tennessee, as in many other States, the cause of 
 Reformed Medicine has displayed the kaleidoscopic phases 
 incident to an organization that has been subject at different 
 periods to varying influences. The Botanico-Medical 
 College and the Memphis Medical Institute had already, 
 before the breaking out of war in 1861, supplied physicians 
 to every part of the State, whose skill and success as 
 practitioners won favor and popularity for the New School. 
 The tendencies of military conditions, however, made it 
 possible in Tennessee, as in the other States, to procure 
 aggressive legislation, that was before impractable where 
 the instinct of liberty was keener and predominant. The 
 feeling became active in various quarters " that the Eclectics 
 and Homoeopathists ought to be suppressed by law." 
 Accordingly, the attempt was made year by year in the 
 General Assembly to procure the enactment of a bill to 
 regulate the practice of medicine by placing it under the 
 control of the Tennessee Medical Association. Then the 
 pretext, so frivolous and substantially untrue, was put in 
 circulation that the medical enactments of other States were 
 inducing unqualified practitioners to migrate into Tennessee. 
 The Eclectic physicians were long able to exercise influence 
 to defeat the various attempts.* They were slow, however, 
 
 * " A few of us," says Dr. W. H. Halbert in 1885, " a few made a fight against medi- 
 cal legislation in this State, and will continue to do so. I had a copy of Professor
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 757 
 
 to perceive the importance of organization. The Tennessee 
 Eclectic Medical Society was formed in 1877, but for 
 several years sustained only a precarious existence. It 
 seems to have imposed as a test the acceptance of the 
 doctrine of Specific Medication, and many Reformed 
 physicians held aloof. The c.ifficulties were finally obviated, 
 and the necessity for organized action was more generally 
 recognized. The Society was incorporated in 1887, and 
 afterward exhibited greater activity. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Association of Kentucky was 
 organized in 1882, and for several years displayed much 
 energy. There was also a City Society at Louisville, but 't 
 has long since ceased to hold meetings. In 1890 action 
 was begun which resulted in the formation of the West 
 Kentucky Eclectic Medical Society, and since that time a 
 State organization has been brought into existence. It was 
 formed at Paducah in 1897, and has an increasing member- 
 ship, chiefly in the western counties of the State. 
 
 There have been several organizations in West Virginia, 
 which existed for a time, and then disappeared. A Society 
 was formed at Brownstown in October, 1870, of which Dr. 
 Daniel Mayer of Charlestown was president. It promptly 
 affiliated with the National Eclectic Medical Association 
 which had been set on foot at Philadelphia by Dr. John 
 Buchanan, and shared its fate. In 1893 the Eclectic Medical 
 Association of West Virginia was organized, and immediate- 
 ly began to rally to action the practitioners of the State. It 
 bids fair to become an important factor in future years. 
 
 The Oregon Eclectic Medical Society was organized at 
 Salem on the fourth day of September, 1890. It has not a 
 numerous membership, but the physicians are in the prime 
 
 King's address (of 1884) placed in the hands of every member of the Legislature, and 
 also sent a copy to each of our Supreme Judges."
 
 758 HISTORY OF MEDICINE 
 
 of life, active and resolute. It is growing steadily in numbers 
 and influence, and the future prospects are encouraging. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Association of the State of Wash- 
 ington was also formed in 1890. Its efforts were greatly 
 impeded by the financial depression of subsequent years, 
 which fell with special severity upon the inhabitants of that 
 State, and led many physicians to remove elsewhere. The 
 distance, likewise, between their residences operated to deter 
 from attendance at the meetings, and the Association 
 languished. A new impulse, however, has arisen, and there 
 is now abundant evidence of renewed activity. 
 
 The Eclectic Medical Association of Colorado was also 
 organized in 1890, and duly represented at the annual 
 meeting of the National Eclectic Medical Association, at 
 Hot Springs in Arkansas. For two years it appeared to be 
 in a flourishing condition, but it succumbed to the financial 
 depression of 1893. A flourishing City Society of Denver 
 yielded likewise before the same storm. 
 
 The Eclectic physicians of Utah organized in 1892, be- 
 fore Utah had become a member of the American Union. 
 The Eclectic Medical Society was duly incorporated on the 
 fourteenth day of March, and immediately encountered the 
 hostility of the other School. A statute was enacted by the 
 Legislature creating a Board of Examiners. Prosecutions 
 were immediately begun against the Eclectic physicians, 
 while others were passed over unnoticed. The diplomas of 
 the Eclectic .Medical Institute and other Eclectic Medical 
 Colleges were rejected by the Board as fraudulent and of no 
 value. The conflict was carried on in the Courts for some 
 time, and finally the Society closed its career. 
 
 A State Eclectic Medical Society was also organized 
 in South Dakota, and incorporated, in June, 1891, It 
 continued in active operation several years, but under 
 adverse conditions, and finally ceased to hold meetings.
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 759 
 
 There has also been an Eclectic Medical Society for 
 several years at the National capitol. Doctors Thomas A. 
 Bland and Magnus L. Julihn were its first officers. When 
 the National Eclectic Medical Association met at Washing- 
 ton in 1876, there was but a single physician in affiliation 
 with it in the city ; but a change was effected, and through 
 the great energy of Dr. Bland, an effective organization was 
 brought about. It made full sway of its influence by an 
 effectual resistance to proposed Congressional legislation to 
 regulate the practice of medicine by placing the Eclectic 
 and Homobopathic practitioners under the supervision of 
 their adversaries. The present statute gives an equal 
 opportunity to all Schools. The partisan lines are closely 
 drawn in the District of Columbia, as was shown at the 
 International Medical Congress in 1887, and it will require 
 fortitude, persistence and profound conviction to sustain 
 a movement beside an establishment rooted in political as 
 well as social conditions. What has been done was bravely 
 done. 
 
 There are as yet no organization of Eclectic physicians in 
 the other States and Territories, of the American Republic, 
 namely : Al iska, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, 
 Idaho, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, 
 New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, 
 Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia, Wyoming. In 
 several of these, the organizing of Societies may be a matter 
 of time only, but in others it is very improbable. 
 
 The project of forming Medical Societies for districts 
 including several of the States of the Union, has been 
 several times entertained. The early Botanic physicians 
 had a New England Association, in which the late Calvin 
 Newton and others in affiliation with him, were active 
 members. There was also a Southern Association, embrac-
 
 760 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ing the States south of Pennsylvania. There are now a 
 Mississippi Valley Medical Association, and also several 
 Homoeopathic Medical Societies of this character. It has 
 been proposed several times to form Eclectic Medical Or- 
 ganizations in the same style, for the States of the Pacific 
 Slope, those of the Southwest, and in the North. 
 
 The New England Eclectic Medical Association, how- 
 ever, is the only project of the kind that has come into 
 actual operation. It was formed at the State House in 
 Montpelier on the sixth day of June, 1895. Dr. Wilbur F. 
 Templeton of New Hampshire, was elected president, and 
 H.N. Waite, secretary. The Association was incorporated 
 by the Legislature of Vermont in November, 1896, naming 
 as charter members. Doctors Herschel N. Waite of John- 
 son, and Henry J. Potter of Bennington, Vermont; William 
 E. Fleet of Cambridge and Frederick Wallace Abbott of 
 Taunton, Massachusetts ; Darius L. Powe of Providence, 
 Rhode Island ; Stephen B. Munn of Waterbury and Jona- 
 than D. S. Smith of Bridgeport, Connecticut ; William C. 
 Hatch and Theophilus J. Batchelder of Machias, Maine. 
 The Association has met regularly in the different States, 
 and is an important factor in Eclectic Medicine in the East. 
 It has now under consideration the establishing of a Medical 
 College. 
 
 The number of Eclectic physicians in the United States 
 can hardly be estimated with more than proximate accu- 
 racy. Many who profess to belong to the Eclectic School 
 make use of the medicines and procedures employed by 
 practitioners of other Schools, ignoring more or less those 
 which are set forth in Eclectic publications ; and many who 
 are identified with the rival Schools have adopted more 
 or less the Eclectic procedures and medicines, often after 
 classing these as having been originally introduced by their
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGES AND MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 76 1 
 
 own associates. These facts make it less easy to distinguish. 
 Many, besides, who have been instructed in Eclectic medical 
 colleges are reckoned and recorded as belonging to other 
 Schools of Practice ; some from having changed their senti- 
 ments, and others for reasons of a different character, It 
 has been quite common to enumerate Eclectic physicians at 
 as high a rate as fourteen thousand ; but a critical compu- 
 tation by Dr. John K. Scudder gives the following numbers 
 of the respective Schools, namely: Old-School, 73,028; 
 Eclectic, 9,703; Homoeopathic, 8,640; Physio-Medical, 
 1,553. O^ course, as few comparatively have the esprit de 
 corps, or professional enthusiasm requisite for the purpose, 
 only a limited number is enrolled in the various organiza- 
 tions, or taking interest in any form of associate action.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 BOTANIC AND ECLECTIC MEDICINE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 To Nicholas Culpepper must be accorded the distinction 
 of having been among the first to propound a system of 
 Herbal Medication in England. His treatise, " The Eriglish 
 Physician,^'' contained a full description of the medicinal 
 plants common and indigenous in the British Islands, with 
 their specific virtues. It is really a treatise upon " Simples" 
 or domestic remedies, as it has been common to designate 
 vegetable medicines. Many of these are well known also in 
 the United States, having been brought over by emigrants 
 and traders. 
 
 One feature in this book presents a curious appearance in 
 these our later days. The planet and the astral " house " 
 to which the plant belonged were given as an essential 
 fact. This was an important matter at that time. It should 
 be remembered that from the earliest ages of which we have 
 any trace or record, astrology had been considered as an 
 indispensable adjunct to medical learning, and that it was 
 taught accordingly to students of Medicine at all the univer- 
 sities of Europe. " Medicine is in t!ie power of the stars, 
 and is ruled and protected by them," says Hohenheim. 
 From Hippokrates to Kircher, Huyghens, Bacon, Tycho 
 Brahe and Keppler, this belief was entertained. The 
 prevalence of such notions is exhibited in many of our com- 
 mon words, like aspect, ascendent, consider, conteynplate, dis- 
 aster, jovial, venereal, mercurial, martial, saturnine. Cul-
 
 BOTANIC AND ECLECTIC MEDICINE IN ENGLAND. 763 
 
 pepper was skilled in Alchemy, and in occult as well as medi- 
 cal learning. 
 
 The first edition of his work was published in London in 
 1650, and it has been several times reprinted. It met with 
 very general favor among all classes, and had a great in- 
 fluence not only in enabling the " plain people " to care for 
 those about them with remedies that were both safe and 
 effective, but also toward the forming of a School of Practi- 
 tioners who employed Herbal remedies exclusively. 
 
 Culpepper by no means confined his labor to the exposition 
 of a vegetable Materia Medica. He likewise published 
 books on the Anatomy of the Body of Man, with illustrations, 
 a translation of The Netv Dispensatory* a Directory for Medi- 
 cines, and Galen's Art of Physic, with comments. He was, 
 as will be perceived, a liberal scholar as well as a broad 
 thinker. 
 
 Doctor Woodward, a physician of London, also published 
 a treatise in 1718, entitled; The State of Physic and of 
 Diseases, which embraced a field similar to that of Samuel 
 Thomson's Guide of a century later. It was widely circu- 
 lated, and was highly esteemed. Botanic Gardens came 
 into favor, and we find one mentioned in the ninth edition 
 of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was maintained and 
 cultivated by a lady named Elizabeth Blackwell. 
 
 Indeed, Botanic physicians were sufficiently numerous in 
 England in the Eighteenth Century to attract respectful at- 
 tention. Doctor Thornton gained a wide popularity in and 
 around London. A student of his. Dr. John B. Howell, 
 emigrated to America in 1793 and introduced the Botanic 
 
 *iMedical books, as well as the lectures in the universities, were in Latin. One of 
 the leading accusations against Paracelsus was, that he, by teaching medicine iii the 
 common speech of the people, profaned its mysteries. At this period messes were 
 administered containing as many as four hundred ingredients; remedies that only the 
 imagination would suggest, things odious, abominable, unmentionable, flesh of vipers, 
 powder of dead men's bones, excrement of men and animals, and other abhorrent things 
 that we cannot easily believe.
 
 764 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 practice at Philadelphia. He was active in the dissemina- 
 ting of his views, and under his influence the " Pennsyl- 
 vania Society of Botanic Physicians " was organized. He 
 was several times its president, and Doctor Thomas Cooke, 
 the founder of the Eclectic Botanic Society of Pennsylvania, 
 and of the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania, was 
 his student. 
 
 The foothold which had been thus gained in England 
 was never lost, and the medical conflict was " bequeathed 
 from sire to son," and never abandoned. Early in the 
 Nineteenth Century the " Medico-Botanical Society " was 
 formed in London, of which Earl Stanhope and other 
 noblemen and men of rank were ofhcers and patrons. 
 Members of the Royal Family shared in the partiality for 
 innocuous medication. Queen Victoria, herself, made Sir 
 James Clark, a medical recusant, her chief physician, per- 
 sistently resisting the endeavors of the others to relegate 
 him to a subordinate place ; and Sir John Forbes, likewise a 
 professed disbeliever in the Old Practice, was appointed 
 physician to the Royal Household. The dominant Medical 
 School, however, was too strongly united to prevent any 
 radical reform in dogma or procedures, as later parliament- 
 ary legislation has shown ; but the more thoughtful and 
 intelligent among all classes of the population are strongly 
 prepossessed in favor of the simpler and safer methods. A 
 policy of prosecutions and persecutions had been adopted, 
 together with the medical boycott, in order to crush the 
 Reform practitioners by penalties and spoliation of goods ; 
 but such measures savor too strongly of the old barbarism 
 to be long tolerable in any civilized community. 
 
 The late Dr. A. J. Coffin has the credit of having first 
 introduced the American Botanic Practice of Medicine into 
 England. He graduated as a physician in London, and
 
 BOTANIC AND ECLECTIC MEDICINE IN ENGLAND. 7^5 
 
 emigrated to the United States about the year 1830. He 
 made his residence at Troy, in the State of New York, for 
 seven years. During this period he made hims3lf famiUar 
 with the doctrines and procedures of Dr. Samuel Thomson, 
 and was on cordial terms with his son. Dr. John Thomson, 
 and with the late Amos Dean and Dr. James Hall, the dis- 
 tinguished naturalist of Albany. 
 
 Returning to England he began to promulgate the 
 Botanic Medical Practice, as though it had been discovered 
 and originated by himself. He published several books to 
 sustain his views, assuming for himself the title and dis- 
 tinction of " Founder of Medical Botany in England." His 
 works passed through many editions, some of them as many 
 as twenty, and were translated into other languages for 
 general circulation in Europe. He made use of the Thom- 
 sonian medicines, and explained their virtues, but refrained 
 from giving the name of any physician or writer belonging 
 to the Botanic School.* He cited the affirmation of 
 Hippokrates, that the primitive type of all diseases is one 
 and the same ; and reiterated the sharp utterance of William 
 Cobbett respecting Dr. Benjamin Rush, that he " by bleed- 
 ing, cured his patients for there were none left to tell." 
 He likewise affirmed his own conviction that contagion is 
 entirely innocuous. Dr. Coffin was very successful in the 
 disseminating of his views, in the raising of public attention 
 to them and in gaining numerous disciples in all the prin- 
 cipal towns. 
 
 Dr. John Skelton was another champion of Botanic 
 Practice. He was a man of greater scholarship, energetic, 
 outspoken and resolute. After some years of contention, he 
 
 •Dr Coffin denounced the drugs calomel and antimony with a warmth characteristic 
 of the American Botanic practitioners, and enumerated as proper remedies Cayenne 
 pepper, ginger, yarrow, vervain, pennyroyal, Lobelia, " composition powder," 
 agrimony, ground ivy, red raspberry, bog b^an, horehound, centaury, barberry, etc.
 
 766 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 graduated at the age of forty from the College of Sur- 
 geons, retaining at the same time inflexibly his devotion 
 to the new doctrines. He inculcated them by voice and 
 pen, publishing them in book form in a treatise upon " The 
 Science and Art of Medicine.'''' His contributions to medi- 
 cal literature, his superior learning and professional skill, 
 served a valuable purpose in exalting the New School to 
 higher favor and social position. Dr. Coffin, however, re- 
 garded him as a rival and competitor ; and their contribu- 
 tions led, unfortunately, to the dividing of their adherents 
 into two antagonistic parties. 
 
 The American Reformed Practice of Medicine was intro- 
 duced into England by Dr. Wooster Beach himself in 1848. 
 Dr. Beach paid several visits to that country, journeying to 
 the principal towns and delivering public lectures. His 
 works were extensively sold in the United Kingdom. 
 
 At Litchfield, in Staffordshire, he met with an enthusi- 
 astic admirer, Thomas Simmons, the son of a Scotch sur- 
 geon, a young man of rare courage and ardent zeal. Young 
 Simmons immediately devoted his money to the promulga- 
 tion of the new doctrines, actually compiling and publishing 
 at his own expense a compend of Dr. Beach's works which 
 should be acceptable to English readers.* 
 
 From this time the sale of American Eclectic publications 
 became more extensive, and the works of Dr. Beach, John 
 Buchanan, William Paine, John M. Scudder, John King and 
 
 * The British and Atnerica?! Reformed Practice of Afedicine , embracing a treatise 
 on the Causes, Symptoms and Treatment of Diseases Generally, on Eclectic Principles, 
 and including a Synopsis of Physiolog\' and Midwifery. Illustrated with Colored 
 Plates. By W. Beach, M. D., Birmingham, iSsg. 
 
 Dr. Simmons came to America in i^/i\, and received the Degree of Doctor of Medi- 
 cine from the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania. He enlisted in the U. 
 S. Navy, and afterward made his home in Canada, finally removing to Hartford, in 
 Connecticut, in 1S76.. He was a zealous Radical, and was personally familiar with 
 John Stuart ?>[ill, Harriet Martineau, Eliza Cook, William Cobbett and others in 
 England, and with the late Dr. Edward McGlynn in America. He opposed privilege 
 in politics, and restrictive legislation in Medicine. Dr. Simmons died at Hartford in
 
 BOTANIC AND ECLECTIC MEDICINE IN ENGLAND. 767 
 
 the Physio-Medical authors were supplied to Eclectic and 
 Reform practitioners of every shade of sentiment. The 
 seed bore fruit, and in 1862 the British Medical Reform 
 Association was organized. Its presidents, Doctors Skel- 
 ton, Trumbull, Hitchman,* Blunt and others were dis- 
 tinguished by their literary and scientific attainments. The 
 meetings w^re held annually at the principal towns of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 The endeavor was made, likewise, to diffuse the knowl- 
 edge of the New School among the people of the United 
 Kingdom by means of tracts, monographs and other pub- 
 lications. T\\& Eclectic Medical Journal vi^L^ begun in 1864 
 by Dr. F. White, and after its discontinuance The New Era 
 of Eclecticism was issued in 1869, Doctor Trumbull and 
 Dr. George Sexton serving in turn as editors. The views 
 of this Association were radical ; mineral remedies being 
 generally eschewed, the use of anaesthetics deprecated as 
 destructive to life, and vaccination denounced as not only 
 itself useless to prevent disease, but as being itself a dis- 
 seminating of morbid conditions. 
 
 The endeavor was made in 1873 ^^ establish an Eclectic 
 Medical College in London, including both Homoeopathy 
 
 * Dr. William Hitchman was a graduate of Erlangen University in Bavaria, the 
 alma mater of Samuel Hahnemann. He was a native of North Leach, in Gloucester- 
 shire, and received the usual instruction, beginning as an apprentice to a physician, 
 then becoming a student at the Fairfield Asylum for the Insane, a pupil at Guy's 
 Hospital, and licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons. He then became i^clectic, 
 advocating Homoeopathy, Water Cure and Botanic remedies. Finally going to the 
 Continent, and visiting several universities, he graduated in 1851. He was a member 
 of several learned bodies in England, and on the Continent, and also an incessant 
 writer for the Radical press. In his Address in 1873, when president of the British 
 Medical Reform Association, he declared his views as follows : 
 
 " Tlie cultured society of an intelligent nation shall yet seek and find the Faculty of 
 Universal Medicine by and through a wise legislature, equal laws, equal rights, equal 
 privileges, equal liberties, and last but not least, equal duties. Great men have been 
 glorious exceptions to the rules of bigotry, custom and prejudice, even in orthodox 
 Physic. Robert Lister, the greatest surgeon of modern times, told me himself that he 
 was an Homoeopathist ; Sir John Forbes, I can personally testify, was an Eclectic ; Sir 
 James Clark, like Herbert Mayo, was an Hydropathist, and Sir Benjamin Brodie advo- 
 cated Medical Freedom." 
 
 Dr. Hitchman died in 1883. He and the author were regular correspondents on 
 ethical and philosophic subjects.
 
 768 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 and Hydropathy in its curriculum, as well as Eclectic 
 Medicine. A staff of instructors was appointed, but for 
 want of support the enterprise went no further. 
 
 A few years later the Herbalists gained control of the 
 Association. Many of them were holders of purchased 
 degrees.* Dr. Hitchman and others withdrew from further 
 participation. The name of the organization was changed, 
 and it became " The National Assocaition of Medical 
 Herbalists," a name which it has retained. 
 
 Later, however, the Eclectic practitioners renewed their 
 endeavors, and formed a new association by the name of 
 " The Eclectic School of Medicine." Mr. John Simmons, of 
 Hyde, the general secretary of the organization, began the 
 publication of a monthly periodical, " The Eclectic Practi- 
 tioner." The Association sent one of its founders. Dr. 
 Joseph R. Hughes, of Oakham, as its representative to the 
 World's Congress Auxiliary of Eclectic Physicians and 
 Surgeons at Chicago in 1893. He received a fraternal 
 welcome and took an active part in the proceedings. 
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICINE IN THE BRITISH POSSESSIONS. 
 
 During the earlier years of the Eclectic propaganda there 
 was an Eclectic Medical organization in Canada, and it 
 gave gratifying evidence of a prosperous career. The 
 Dominion had not then been established. There was a 
 Medical Board in the upper province, now Ontario, and a 
 Medical Society respectable both in numbers and in- 
 fluence. The practitioners were chiefly graduates from 
 the colleges in Philadelphia and New York, and several 
 
 * Dr. Prince A. Morrow, while a trustee of the Eclectic Medical College in New 
 York, visited England and the Continent. He told the author that a prominent 
 Herbalist proposed a negotiation with him for the degrees of that institution. The same 
 year, 1872, the British Medical Journal gavt an account of some diploma-selling other 
 than the usual traffic in degrees in absence. A diploma from a New York College, 
 duly attested by the examiners and official seal, was exhibited in the College of Surgeons 
 in Loadon. On careful examination it was found that the names were all forgeries and 
 lithographic fac-similes.
 
 ECLECTIC MEDICINE IN THE BRITISH POSSESSIONS. 769 
 
 of them were men of superior worth. Matters went on well 
 with them till after the close of the war in the United 
 States. Then, as if by concert, legislation became more 
 stringent and the administration oppressive, finally result- 
 ing in the entire suppression of the Eclectic School of 
 Practice in the Dominion. 
 
 Attempts have been made to introduce the Reform 
 Practice in several of the British Colonies in the East. Dr. 
 John Broadbent of Melbourne, in Australia, carried on the 
 work for years, encountering hostility, and even persecution. 
 He published a monthly periodical. The Botanic Practitiojier, 
 to defend and disseminate his views. It was a publication 
 of merit and ability. 
 
 In 1868 a medical class of women was established at 
 Nynce Tal, in India, by the Rev. Doctor Humphrey of 
 the American Mission. The Pundit Nanda Kiswara de- 
 frayed the expenses for two years. The Government also 
 extended its favor to the enterprise, placing the female ward 
 of the hospital under the supervision of Dr. Humphrey 
 
 PROSCRIPTION. 
 
 It cannot be truthfully affirmed that American Reform or 
 Eclectic Medicine, or even the British auxiliary movements, 
 find hospitality, fair opportunity, or even common toleration 
 in the British Empire. Numerous have been the bills for 
 medical legislation which have been pressed upon the at- 
 tention of the Imperial Parliament, having sections in them 
 and clauses proscribing Herbal and Eclectic practitioners. 
 Again and again have delegations from the practitioners who 
 were thus assailed, waited upon the presidents of the Privy 
 Council, from the days of Lord Palmerston till the present 
 time, to secure the rejection of the proposed measures. 
 
 The leading publicists and the foremost men of science 
 
 49
 
 770 HISTORY OF MEDICINE 
 
 have, as with one voice, added their testimony in behalf of 
 Freedom in Medicine. The late Professor Thomas H. 
 Haxley wrote as follows : " A large number of people seem 
 to be of the opinion that the State is bound to take care of 
 the general public and see that it is protected against in- 
 competent persons and quacks. I do not take this view. I 
 think it is much more wholesome for the public to take care 
 of itself in this, as in other matters." 
 
 Professor Francis W, Newman, of Oxford, standing at the 
 head of English scholarship, made this declaration, which 
 involves the whole morality of the question : " To enact a 
 Medical Creed or commend a medical process is usurpation 
 — not legitimate legislation." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone also expressed himself with equal dis- 
 tinctness : " A man ought to be as free to select his 
 physician as his blacksmith, for he alone is to profit or suffer 
 by his choice. The responsibility is his." 
 
 Nevertheless Parliamentary legislation has become more 
 arbitrary and inquisitiorial, and the power to harry and 
 prosecute has been granted and exercised, as in the old 
 days of religious bigotry, to the sharp point of persecution. 
 Statutes frequently create offenses, as well as restrain from 
 actual wrong doing, and it is often apparent that only 
 lawyers and privileged individuals derive much advantage 
 from legislation. In England, where there had been no 
 complaint of gross ignorance or malpractice, there have 
 been numerous arrests and imprisonments, for the evident 
 purpose of gratifying spite and rivalry. 
 
 The medical authorities appear to excel the political in 
 their intolerance and professional malignity. The Golden 
 Rule, the law of charity, which is often cited as the essential 
 of Christian civilization, seems to have been absolutely
 
 MEDICAL LEGISLATION IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 771 
 
 abrogated.* It is not easy for men of limited pecuniary 
 resources to support medical schools while they are thus 
 constantly exposed to legal persecution and spoliation. 
 
 All the while the New Remedies, the product of discovery 
 by Eclectic and Reform physicians, and of manufactories of 
 Eclectic medicines, are imported and extensively used in 
 medical practice, while the persons who discovered and first 
 introduced them are superciliously ignored by British pub- 
 lications, and honorable mention of them carefully withheld.! 
 
 MEDICAL LEGISLATION IJST ENGLAND AND AMERICA, 
 
 In 1 41 6 the physicians of London petitioned King Henry 
 V. to this effect : " That no man of no maner, estate, de- 
 gree, or condicion, practyse in Fisik, from this time forward, 
 bot he have long time yused the Scoles of Fisyk withynne 
 som Universitee, and be graduated in the same ; that is to 
 say, bot he be Bacheler or Doctour of Fisyk, having Letters 
 testimonialx suffientz of on of those degrees of the 
 Universite in the whiche he take his degree yn ; under 
 payne of long imprisonment and paynge xi. //. to the 
 Kynge ; and that no Woman use the practyse of Fisyk 
 undre the same payne." 
 
 At the time when this petition was made to the King, the 
 learned class of England was entirely, or almost entirely, 
 composed of priests. Lawyers were chiefly robed priests, 
 and medical men were monks or in orders. King Henry 
 himself, had a doubtful title to the throne of England, and 
 he belonged to a branch of the Royal Family of Plan- 
 
 * An English practitioner, a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, as well as an 
 alumnus of several universities of the United Kingdom, was once asked by the author 
 for an account of the condition of medical affairs. He declined, making this explana- 
 tion: " Were I to write a paper on the medical status of England, I should be sum- 
 moned before the Medical Council and my diploma taken from me, and 1 should be 
 quite ruined. In matters medical England is much worse than your country." 
 
 tWhile the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was in preparation a 
 description of the American Eclectic School of Practice was offered to the publishers 
 and refused.
 
 772 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 tagenets who had been noted for the favor which they had 
 shown to John Wicklifife and the Lollards. He, like his 
 father before him, sought to obtain the support of the 
 governing classes of England for the usurpation, and ac- 
 cordingly endeavored to propitiate the clergy and univer- 
 sities by declaring himself the champion of religious 
 orthodoxy. He permitted the Parliament to supervise the 
 expenditures of the Government, and introduced the 
 atrocious practice of burning heretics alive.* Such a prince 
 was a man who would be ready to confirm privileges and 
 perogatives to churchmen and religious corporations. He 
 was at war with France and required money, which could be 
 procured in large amounts from churches and monasteries. 
 
 The peasantry of England at this period were beggared 
 by the rapacious exactions of the nobility and the devasta- 
 tions incident to the strifes of rival candidates for the 
 Crown, now become a shuttlecock between the Houses of 
 York and Lancaster. They were barely able to subsist in 
 hovels that were not fit to Iiarbor beasts. They could con- 
 tribute nothing to the exigencies of the King, and were 
 held by him in little account. 
 
 The expedient of a permanent National Debt had not 
 been devised, and money for wars was obtained by " benevo- 
 lences " or contributions from the wealthy and commercial 
 classes. It was no wonder, therefore, that this time and 
 occasion were employed to wrest from Henry this enactment 
 granting a privileged monopoly. 
 
 Accordingly, during the reigns of the Kings of the House 
 of Lancaster! the legal physicians were monks and priests, 
 and the authority to license them was exercised by the 
 bishops. When, however, Henry VHL assumed the Chief 
 
 • The penalty of burning alive was statute law in England for years after the Ameii- 
 can Revolution.
 
 MEDICAL LEGISLATION IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 773 
 
 Office in the Church of England, an act of Parliament 
 inhibited the clergy thenceforth from engaging in secular 
 pursuits. The medical art was included in this classifica- 
 tion. Lynaker himself, after a brief term as a practitioner 
 and physician to the King, finished his career as a priest. 
 The right to was now vested in the College of Physicians, 
 and the exclusion of other persons from the calling was 
 rigidly maintained. 
 
 At this period there were but thirteen legal practitioners 
 of medicine in London, and Surgery was a department of 
 the barber's craft. The men who shaved and cut hair also 
 dressed wounds and extracted teeth. 
 
 There does not seem, however, to have been much active 
 persecution of unlicensed practitioners for many years. 
 Many persons usually included among the laity prescribed 
 and ministered to the poor, and women of superior kindness 
 and ability rendered offices of mercy to those within the 
 circle of their activity. But after the introduction of the 
 American Botanic and Eclectic systems, there has been a 
 new departure. More stringent regulations have been en- 
 acted, and prosecutions are ever common. The boycott 
 had been already appUed to Sir John Forbes, Dickson and 
 other men of originality, but now the humble dispensers of 
 Herbal remedies, experience the harsh rigor of professional 
 proscription. 
 
 In several of the American colonies this kind of legisla- 
 tion was adopted ; the principal ones being Massachusetts, 
 New Jersey and New York. After the Revolution it was 
 extended to other States. The penalties, however, were not 
 enforced with extraordinary severity till Samuel Thomson 
 began his innovations. At this period heterodox practi- 
 tioners became numerous, and were in greater favor with 
 the people. Directly the prohibiting statutes were made
 
 774 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 more arbitrary and prosecutions were characterized by 
 greater virulence. Oppression engendered dissatisfaction, 
 and the sons of the men who had acliieved independence for 
 their country were unwilling to brook the domination of a 
 privileged class, whatever might be the pretensions. The 
 matter was brought to the attention of the " plain people " 
 in different States, with the likelihood of becoming a political 
 issue, and as a result the objectionable statutes were 
 abrogated. " Let us hope forever," said Professor Morrow 
 at Worthington. 
 
 Nevertheless, this had hardly been accomplished when a 
 movement was devised for the restoration of the former 
 order of things. The American Medical Association was 
 organized with that avowed end in view. For a quarter of 
 a century little progress, apparently, was made. But the 
 war between the States produced an indifference to matters 
 about which there had before been great sensitiveness. 
 There was a cessation of the jealousy which had existed in 
 regard to encroachment upon civil and personal rights. 
 This was observed by Mr. Herbert Spencer at his last visit 
 to this country, and it was described by him as a losing of 
 the instinct of liberty. In fact, mankind never progress in 
 straight lines of advancement. Like the starry worlds, 
 they move in circles, spiral or vortical, retrograding as well 
 as moving forward. The principles avowed in the Declara- 
 tion of Independence are hardly recognized. For example, 
 the complaint was made in that instrument of the creation 
 of unnecessary offices and the multiplying of swarms of 
 officers to devour the substance of the people. But now the 
 disposition is predominant in the Halls of Legislation to 
 multiply offices and officers beyond utility or reason. They 
 are manifest in medical matters like a shower of meteors or 
 as the frogs of Egypt in the Book of Exodus.
 
 MEDICAL LEGISLATION IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 775 
 
 In 1873 the proposition was advanced that no more 
 medical colleges should be organized except by the approval 
 of the American Medical Association. Bills were introduced 
 in concert in the Legislatures of the States, alike in their 
 language, to restrict the practice of medicine to physicians 
 holding licenses from Examiners appointed from the School 
 of Medicine represented by that body. A medical 
 bureaucracy was evidently the purpose, and medical lobbies 
 beleagured the Legislatures to procure such enactments. 
 There was, however, sufficient resistance to make the pro- 
 posed measures more modest and moderate than had been 
 contemplated. Accordingly, in many of the States enact- 
 ments have been accepted with broader conditions, as hav- 
 ing the tendency to educate the community to submit at a 
 future time to measures more exclusive and severe. 
 
 In the Homoeopathic School there is evidence that such a 
 process is taking place. Yet there are significant utterances 
 from representative men, reiterating the declarations of 
 eminent jurists that the enactments are unconstitutional, 
 and likely to be set aside when a judicial decision is made 
 in the Supreme Court of the United States. But the great 
 number find it easier to acquiesce when a matter can be en- 
 dured than to suffer inconvenience, even in contending for 
 actual rights. 
 
 In the Eclectic School a " new departure " is apparent. 
 As the men who suffered persecution and resisted it man- 
 fully, pass from the sphere of action, the sentiment seems lo 
 have become diffused that such legislation, provided that it 
 is not directed against members of the New School, but only 
 against practitioners who follow methods and procedures 
 that are not embraced in their catagory, is not objectionable.
 
 776 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 
 
 The medical enactments have not been uniform, and the 
 conditions in the different States are often unlike. Few if 
 any of them are yet in the form in which it is contemplated 
 that they shall remain, and they are liable to change at 
 every legislative session. 
 
 A synopsis of the medical enactments in the several 
 States and Territories of the Union is here given, with the 
 date when they were made. Some of the changes may have 
 been omitted, but diligence has been employed to assure 
 accuracy. 
 
 A/aba?na, 1891. The Board of Censors of the Medical 
 Association of the State (Old School), and the Boards of 
 Censors of the County Medical Societies which are in 
 affiliation with the State Association, constitute the Boards 
 of Medical Examiners of the State. " No person shall be 
 permitted to practice any irregular system of Medicine* 
 without a certificate of qualification in Anatomy, Physiology, 
 Chemistry and the Mechanism of Labor, from one of the 
 Boards." The penalty for violation is a fine of $25 to $ioc. 
 No provision is made for the revoking of a certificate, or for 
 appeal from the action of a Board. 
 
 Arizona. The Territorial Act, Chapters 617-621, declares 
 that the diplomas of physicians miKt be regularly issued 
 from medical colleges lawfully organized, and recorded with 
 the Recorder of the county where they are practicing. But 
 diplomas which have been purchased, or revoked by the 
 colleges issuing them, or by act of Legislature, constitute no 
 authority to practice. These conditions do not apply to 
 persons who were commissioned in the medical service of 
 
 * By this description the Eclectic and Homoeopathic modes of practice are probably 
 meant, but the propriety of using an opprobrious designation in a statute is question- 
 able.
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 777 
 
 the " Great Rebellion " or to persons living fifteen miles or 
 more from the residence or office of any regular physician.* 
 But any person may practice medicine or surgery gratuit- 
 ously. The violation of the statute is declared to be a mis- 
 demeanor. 
 
 Arka?isas, 1895. The Courts of each county are author- 
 ized to appoint three Medical Examiners, two of w'lom 
 must be graduates in Medicine. No reference may be had 
 to the School of Practice. There exists no provision for the 
 revoking of a certificate, or for an appeal. The penalty is a 
 fine of $25 to ^100, Each day of practice constitutes a 
 separate offense. This statute was enacted by the Legisla- 
 ture after its disapproval by Governor Fishback. 
 
 California, 1875 and 1878. This State has three separate 
 Boards of Examiners, which are appointed annually by the 
 three State Medical Societies, and consist of seven members 
 respectively. Their duties are to verify diplomas of gradu- 
 ation, and to issue certificates to persons whose diplomas 
 are found to be genuine and from institutions in good 
 standing. These certificates maybe revoked for ••unpro- 
 fessional conduct." The statute defines that " any person 
 shall be regarded as practicing medicine within the meaning 
 of this act, who shall profess publicly to be a physician, 
 and shall habitually prescribe for the sick, or shall append 
 to his name the letters ' M. D.' " The act does not apply 
 to students in medicine under a preceptor, nor to those who 
 render gratuitous service in an emergency. Itinerant venders 
 of drugs, and those who profess to cure disease, injury or 
 deformity by drug, nostrum, manipulation or other expedi- 
 ent, are required to pay a license of $100 a month. The 
 
 * The term " regular physician " is evidently used here in its legitimate sens*, as de- 
 noting a physician as described in the statute, without any invidious reference to a 
 School of Medical Practice.
 
 778 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 penalty for violation is a fine of $50 to $100, or imprison- 
 ment from thirty to three hundred and sixty-five days. 
 
 Colorado^ 1881. A State Board of Medical Examiners is 
 authorized, to be appointed by the Governor, and consisting 
 of " six physicians of the regular, two of the Homoeopathic 
 and one of the Eclectic School or System of Medicine." 
 Certificates are issued without examination to persons hold- 
 ing diplomas from medical colleges. Graduates of the 
 Electropathic School are included in this provision, and the 
 certificates must be given " without prejudice, partiality or 
 discrimination as to Schools or Systems of Medicine." All 
 other candidates must be examined by the Board. The 
 examination includes Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry, 
 Pathology, Surgery, Obstetrics and the Practice of Medicine 
 (exclusive of Materia Medica and Therapeutics.) Certifi- 
 cates may be refused to persons convicted of conduct of a 
 " criminal nature," and revoked for the same. The penalty 
 consists of a fine not less than $50 or more than $300, or 
 imprisonment from ten to thirty days for each and every 
 offense. False evidence of any kind in reference to a 
 diploma subjects the offender to the punishment decreed 
 for forgery. The Courts of Record only have power to en- 
 force the provisions of this statute.* 
 
 Co?tfiecticut, 1893. Three separate Examining Commit- 
 tees, five in number, are nominated by the three medical 
 organizations, the Connecticut Medical Society, the Con- 
 necticut Homoeopathic Medical Society and the Connecticut 
 Eclectic Medical Association,! and appointed by the State 
 
 *A bill more stringent in its terms, which was said to have been prepared with the 
 concurrence of these three principal Schools of Practice, was introduced into the Legis- 
 lature in 1899 and passed both Houses. It was, however, returned by Governor 
 Thomas without his approval, accompanied by a forceful message setting forth the 
 objectionable character of its provisions. 
 
 t The statute contains the provision that " nothing herein shall be construed to repeal 
 or affect any private charter." This exception was introduced with the intention to
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 779 
 
 Board of Health. The examinations embrace Anatomy, 
 Physiology, Medical Chemistry, Obstetrics, Hygiene, Sur- 
 gery, Pathology, Diagnosis, Therapeutics, Practice and 
 Materia Medica. The provisions of the act do not apply to 
 licensed pharmacists, nor to dentists, nor to any person in 
 the employ of the United States while acdng in the scope of 
 his employment ; nor to any person furnishing medical or 
 surgical assistance in cases of sudden emergency ; nor to 
 any person residing out of the State coming to assist or con- 
 sult with some practitioner in the State ; nor to any physi- 
 cian or surgeon then actually non-resident who shall be em- 
 ployed to come into the State to treat, operate or prescribe 
 for any injury, deformity or ailment ; nor to any actual resi- 
 dent recommending the use of proprietary remedies sold 
 under trade-marks issued by the United States Government ; 
 nor to any chiropodist or clairvoyant who uses no drugs in 
 practice ; nor to any person practicing massage, the Swedish 
 movement cure, sun cure, mind cure, magnetic healing, or 
 Christian Science ; nor to any other person who does not 
 prescribe medicines of any kind, poisons or nostrums in 
 treatment. No provision is made for revoking of license ; 
 and the penalty for violation of the statute is a fine of ^loo 
 to $500, or imprisonment from thirty to ninety days, or both 
 fine and imprisonment. 
 
 Delaware, i^QS- This State has two Boards of Medical 
 Examiners, appointed by the Governor, one composed of 
 five members representing " The President and Fellows of 
 the Medical Society of Delaware," and the other " The 
 
 except the Connecticut Eclectic Medical Association from the requirements of the 
 enactment ; as that Society has a special act of incorporation empowering it to license 
 physicians and provide medical instruction for students. Nevertheless, the Board of 
 Censors has been recognized by the State Board of Health as the Examining Com- 
 mittee, and has acted as such ; but some of the members of the Association have re- 
 garded this as contravening the purpose of the clause exempting the Association from 
 the operation of the enactment.
 
 780 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Homoeopathic Medical Society of Delaware State and 
 Peninsula." The Chief Justice of the State and the Presi- 
 dents of the two Boards, constitute the Medical Council of 
 Delaware. Each Board of Medical Examiners is required 
 to submit to the Council a week prior to its meetings for 
 examination of candidates, questions for thorough examina- 
 tions in Anatomy, Physiology, Hygiene, Chemistry, Surgery, 
 Obstetrics, Pathology, Diagnosis, Therapeutics, Practice of 
 Medicine and Materia Medica, The Council shall select 
 from the list thus furnished, the questions for the examina- 
 tions. These are conducted in writing, the candidates 
 selecting the Boards by which they shall be examined. If 
 there are candidates belonging to some other School of 
 Practice, they are examined by the Council and some repu- 
 table practitioner of that School from standard text-books. 
 All certificates are issued by the Medical Council. Diplomas 
 from medical colleges confer no right to practice medicine, 
 but are required in order to entitle the applicant to an ex- 
 amination. There is no clause in the statute for revocation 
 of the certificate or for appeal. The penalty is a fine of $100 
 to $500, or imprisonment for not more than one year. 
 Physicians coming into the State for consultations are ex- 
 empt from the conditions of this statute. 
 
 District of Columbia, 1896. Three Boards of Medical 
 Examiners are authorized by Act of Congress, one to be 
 known as the Board of Medical Examiners of the District of 
 Columbia, to be composed of five physicians, " adherents of 
 the regular School of Practice ; one to be known as the 
 Board of Homoeopathic Medical Examiners, and one to be 
 known as the Board of Eclectic Medical Examiners. The 
 latter Boards are made up of five physicians each selected 
 from lists proposed by the respective Societies. The ap- 
 pointments are made by the District Commissioners. The
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 78 1 
 
 presidents of the three Boards, and two others who are not 
 physicians, but one of them a lawyer, constitute a Board of 
 Medical Supervisors. Applicants for examination must be 
 graduates in Medicine, and must apply to the Board of 
 Supervisors for a license. The Supervisors may refuse or 
 revoke a license, and an appeal may be taken from their 
 decision to the Court of Appeals of the District. Midwives 
 are examined by the Board of Supervisors. 
 
 Florida^ 1890. The Governor is authorized to appoint a 
 Board of Medical Examiners, graduated physicians three in 
 number, for each Judicial District of the State ; also one 
 Board of Homceopathic Medical Examiners, consisting of 
 three graduated Homceopathic physicians, for the State at 
 large. Each Board meets semi-annually at some central 
 point in the district, the Homoeopathic Board holding its 
 meetings in the city of Jacksonville. Applicants must pro- 
 duce a diploma from a recognized college, after whicii it is 
 the duty of the Board to whom they have applied to examine 
 them thoroughly upon Anatomy, Physiology, Surgery, 
 Gynsecology, Therapeutics, Obstetrics and Chemistry, to 
 which Materia Medica is added in the Homoeopathic Board. 
 " But," the statute prescribes positively, " no preference 
 shall be given to any School of Medicine." " Females " 
 also, " v.'ho follow the practice of Midwifery strictly as such," 
 are exempted from examination. A Board of Eclectic Ex- 
 aminers has since been authorized with powers and require- 
 ments similar to those possessed by the Homoeopathic Board. 
 
 The statute contains no provision for the revoking of a 
 certificate or for appeal. 
 
 Georgia^ 1894. This State has three separate Boards of 
 Medical Examiners, of five members each, appointed by the 
 Governor, belonging respectively to the Old School, the 
 Eclectic and the Homoeopathic Schools of Medicine.
 
 782 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Diplomas from medical colleges confer no right to practice 
 medicine, but each applicant for a certificate must be the 
 graduate of an incorporated medical college, school or 
 university that requires not less than three full courses of 
 study of six months each. If the applicant desires to 
 practice a different system from that recognized in his 
 diploma, he must appear before the Board which represents 
 that system. If; however, he desires to practice a system 
 not represented by any of the Boards, he may choose the 
 Board for himself by which to be examined. Certificates 
 entitling the holder to the right to practice medicine are 
 granted only after passing a satisfactory examination, and 
 no applicant who has been rejected may be licensed by 
 either of the other Boards. Th^re is no provision requiring 
 the examinations of midwives, or for the revoking of a 
 certificate, or for appeal. The penalties are fixed by Sec- 
 tion 4,310 of the Code of the State, and a practitioner who 
 has not been licensed has no power to recover compensa- 
 tion for services. 
 
 Idaho, 1889. The State Board of Medical Examiners con- 
 sists of six members, three of the Old School, two Eclectics and 
 one Homoeopathist, appointed by the Governor. A diploma 
 from a respectable and reputable medical college or univer- 
 sity in good standing, admits the holder to examination. An 
 appeal in case of rejection, or an application for revocation, 
 may be made to the Courts of the State. The grounds for 
 rejection or revocation are unprofessional, dishonorable, 
 immoral or criminal conduct. Applicants who have passed 
 examinations in other State Boards having substantially the 
 same requirements in regard to proficiency, may be licensed 
 without examination. The penalty is a fine of $50 to $100, 
 and imprisonment from ten days to six months. 
 
 Illinois, 1899. There have been many changes in the
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 783 
 
 medical enactments of this State since the General Assem- 
 bly began the work of legislating to regulate the Practice of 
 Medicine. The last statute upon the subject was enacted 
 in 1899. The State Board of Health is vested with the 
 authority to examine and license candidates for medical 
 practice. It consists of seven members, five from the Old 
 School, one Homoeopathist and one Eclectic. No person 
 may begin the practice of medicine, or any department of 
 medicine, or midwifery, except after having procured a 
 license from this Board. Candidates must be graduates 
 from a medical college or institution in good standing, as 
 may be determined by the Board, and undergo an examina- 
 tion which shall be of a character sufficiently strict to test 
 their qualifications. Those who desire to practice any other 
 system or science of treating human ailments, who do not 
 use medicines internally or externally, and who do not 
 practice operative surgery, shall be examined sufficiently to 
 test their qualifications as practitioners. Those who pass 
 examinations successfully shall be licensed accordingly ; but 
 only those who are licensed to practice medicine and sur- 
 gery in all their branches may use any drug or medicine or 
 perform surgical operations, or announce themselves as 
 physicians or doctors. The certificate must be recorded 
 within three months after its date in the office of the clerk 
 of the county in which the holder resides or practices. It 
 is also provided that " Graduates of legally chartered medi- 
 cal colleges in Illinois in good standing, as may be deter- 
 mined by the Board, may be granted certificates without 
 examination." 
 
 Certificates may be refused or revoked in the case of 
 individuals who have been convicted of the practice of 
 criminal abortion, or have by false or fraudulent represen- 
 tation obtained or sought to obtain practice in their pro-
 
 784 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 fession, or have thus obtained or sought to obtain money or 
 anything of value, or who advertise under names other than 
 their own, or for any other unprofessional or dishonorable 
 conduct. But this shall not be done until the person is per- 
 mitted to have a hearing before the Board. Itinerant 
 venders of any drug, nostrum, ointment or appliance of any 
 kmd for the treatment of diseases or injury, or who adver- 
 tise treatment, are required to pay a license of $100 a month 
 to be collected by the Board in the name of the People. 
 The penalty for violation of the provisions of this enactment 
 is a fine of $100 for the first offense and ^200 for each sub- 
 sequent offense. Fraud in filing a diploma or certificate, or 
 a forged affidavit of identification, is subject to the punish- 
 ment imposed for forgery. In case of conviction of any of 
 the offenses mentioned, the Court shall order the person 
 convicted to be committed to the common jail of the county 
 till the fine and costs are paid, and in case of failure to pay 
 them immediately he shall be imprisoned for the first 
 offense not more than thirty days, and for each subsequent 
 offense not more than ninety days. 
 
 Indiana^ 1895. A Board of Registration and Examina- 
 tion is appointed by the Governor, consisting of physicians 
 in good repute, who are not teachers or professors in any 
 medical college. Each of the four Schools having the 
 largest numerical representation is entitled to have at least 
 one representative on the Board,* but no School of Practice 
 may have a majority of the members. Certificates are 
 issued upon diplomas from medical colleges in good stand- 
 ing, as determined by the Board. When the colleges are 
 below the required standard, a supplemental examination 
 
 * These are the Old School, the Eclectic, Homoeopathic and Physio-Medical Schools. 
 Dr. William F. Curryer, former President of the National Eclectic Medical Association, 
 is the Eclectic member.
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 785 
 
 may be made in order to determine the fitness of the candi- 
 date. Midwives are likewise required to undergo an ex- 
 amination. The Board has a schedule of requirements for 
 applicants, and for the medical colleges of the State. Cer- 
 tificates may be refused or revoked for inebriety from liquor 
 or drugs. An appeal can be taken from the action of the 
 Board to the Circuit Court of the county in which the 
 applicant or licensed person lives. The penalty for viola- 
 tion of the statute is a fine not less than $25, nor more than 
 $200. 
 
 Indian Territory, Cherokee Nation, 1878. The Principal 
 Chief is authorized and required to appoint a Board of 
 Physicians, three in number, residents of the Nation and 
 graduates of some well-authenticated medical school. Their 
 duty is to examine all who desire to live in the Territory 
 and to practice medicine. If the examination is satisfactory, 
 they give the candidate a certificate to that effect. Upon 
 the presentation of this certificate to the United States 
 Indian Agent, he is requested to grant the holder a permit 
 to reside in the Cherokee Nation one year for the purpose 
 only of practicing medicine, and to renew the permit 
 annually during good behavior. The Principal Chief is 
 likewise authorized to grant the holders of such a certificate 
 a permit to remain in the Cherokee Nation, under the same 
 terms and conditions. Any person not a citizen, but claim- 
 ing to be a physician, and failing to comply with the pro- 
 visions of the statute, is to be deemed an intruder and dealt 
 with accordingly. 
 
 Indian lerritory, Choctaw Nation. The Principal Chief 
 is authorized and required to appoint a Board of Physicians, 
 to consist of three persons, citizens of the Choctaw Nation, 
 who are regular graduates of some well-known medical 
 college and residents of the Nation. Their duty is to ex- 
 
 60
 
 786 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 amine all persons who are not residents who have come or 
 may come into the territory of the Nation for the purpose 
 of practicing medicine. If the candidate stands a satisfac- 
 tory examination, or has a diploma which is satisfactory to 
 the Board, they grant him a certificate, upon which the 
 Principal Chief authorizes the Judges of the County Courts 
 to give him a permit to practice medicine. But without 
 this action of the Chief, the Court is prohibited from grant- 
 ing the permit. Any person who is not a citizen who 
 practices medicine in the Nation in violation of the statute 
 is to be held as an intruder and dealt with accordingly. 
 
 Iowa, 1886. The State Board of Medical Examiners 
 consists of seven members appointed by the Governor — 
 four of the Old School, two Homoeopathists and one Eclectic 
 physician. No member may be in any way connected with 
 a medical college. There are two forms of certificate, and 
 also one of a license issued, namely : 
 
 1. A certificate upon a diploma from a medical college in 
 good standing. 
 
 2. A certificate upon a successful examination before the 
 Board. 
 
 3. A license for itinerant practitioners. 
 
 Applicants holding diplomas are licensed after a scrutiny 
 into the genuiness of the instrument. Candidates who are 
 not graduates are examined as to their knowledge of 
 Anatomy, Chemistry, Materia Medica and Therapeutics, 
 Obstetrics, Pathology, Physiology, Practice, Surgery, 
 Bacteriology and Medical Jurisprudence. Itinerant physi- 
 cians, whether living in the State or not, are required, in 
 addition to either of these certificates, to procure a license 
 annually from the Board, paying for it $250. The fee for a 
 certificate on the diploma is $5; for examination, $10. 
 None are exempt ; all who " publicly profess to cure or
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 787 
 
 heal " must comply with the requirements. All who hence- 
 forth begin to practice medicine in Iowa must be examined, 
 and must present evidence of having graduated from a 
 medical college in good standing after having attended four 
 courses of lectures in four separate years. The penalty for 
 violations, is a fine not less than $50 nor more than $100, or 
 imprisonment from ten to thirty days. This act went into 
 eifect without the approval of the Governor, who had not 
 been cognizant of it till the time had passed for his consid- 
 eration. 
 
 Kansas, 1879. There is no Board of Medical Examiners 
 in Kansas, nor requirement for the registration of physi- 
 cians. It is unlawful, however, for any person to engage in 
 the practice of medicine, or in any of its departments within 
 the State, for reward or compensation, who has not at- 
 tended two full courses of instruction and graduated in 
 some respectable school of medicine, or who can not pro- 
 duce a certificate of qualification from some State or county 
 medical society, and is not of good moral character. The 
 penalty for violation is a fine of not less than $50 nor more 
 than $100, and in addition for each subsequent offense, 
 thirty days of imprisonment, and there can be no compen- 
 sation recovered for services performed. 
 
 Kentucky, 1893. The State Board of Health is directed 
 to issue a certificate to any physician who desires to begin 
 the practice of medicine in the State, who possesses any of 
 these qualifications, namely : i. A diploma from a repu- 
 table medical college legally chartered under the laws of the 
 State. 2. A diploma from a reputable and legally chart- 
 ered medical college of some other State or country en- 
 dorsed as such by the State Board of Health. 3. Satis- 
 factory evidence from the person claiming the same that 
 such person was reputably and honorably engaged in the
 
 788 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 practice of medicine in Kentucky prior to February 23d, 
 1864. It is unlawful for any person to practice medicine 
 in any of its branches, unless he has registered in the office 
 of the County Clerk of the county in which he resides, his 
 authority for so practicing medicine, together with his age, 
 address, place of birth, and the School or system of medi- 
 cine to which he proposes to belong. No itinerant physi- 
 cian, however, is allowed to register. The State Board of 
 Health may refuse to issue a certificate to a person guilty of 
 grossly unprofessional conduct likely to deceive or defraud 
 the public, and may revoke a certificate for a like cause. 
 The applicant in such case may appeal to the Governor, 
 who may affirm or overrule the decision of the Board, and 
 this decision is final. Nothing in the statute may be so 
 construed as to discriminate against any particular School 
 or System of Medicine, or to prohibit women from practicing 
 midwifery, or to prohibit gratuitous services in case of 
 emergency. Surgeons in the service of the United States, 
 and legally qualified physicians from other States called to 
 see a particular case or family, are also exempt from the 
 conditions of the statute. The penalty for violation is a 
 fine of $50; and for each subsequent offense a fine of 5 100 
 and imprisonment for thirty days, either or both, in the dis- 
 cretion of the jury ; and the person offending is not entitled 
 to compensation for services performed. The opening of 
 an office, or announcing in any other way of a readiness to 
 practice medicine in any county brings the individual within 
 the scope of the enactment. 
 
 Louisiana, 1894. This State has two Boards of Medical 
 Examiners appointed by the Governor — one of five physi- 
 cians recommended by the Louisiana State Medical Society, 
 and one of five physicians recommended by the Hahnemann 
 State Medical Society. They must be graduates in medi-
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 789 
 
 cine, and three of them are sufficient to conduct an exam- 
 ination. Only holders of a diploma from a medical college 
 in good standing as determined by the Board, are entitled 
 to be examined. They must also possess a good primary 
 education, and be of good moral character. The examina- 
 tions include Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry, Principles of 
 Medicine, Obstetrics, Physical Diagnosis, Surgery, Materia 
 Medica and Hygiene. Midwives are required to undergo a 
 special examination. Itinerant venders of drugs, remedies 
 or applications of any kind intended for the treatment of 
 disease or injury, or who by advertising or other method 
 profess to cure or treat disease or deformity, by any drug, 
 nostrum, manipulation or other expedient in the State, are 
 punished by a fine of $20 to ^100 for each offense, or by 
 imprisonment from ten to thirty days, or by both fine and 
 imprisonment. The Boards may revoke any permit or cer- 
 tificate issued by them, when the holder has been convicted 
 of immoral conduct before a competent Court. The penalty 
 for practicing medicine without a certificate is a fine of $50 
 to $100, or imprisonment for ten to ninety days, or both fine 
 and imprisonment. Any^practitioner of medicine in any of 
 its departments, failing to comply with the requirements of 
 the statute has no exemption from jury or military duty, and 
 is not permitted to collect compensation for services, nor to 
 testify as an expert, nor to execute any certificate as a 
 physician or surgeon, nor to hold any medical office, nor to 
 be recognized by the State or parish or municipal corpora- 
 tion as a physician or surgeon, nor entitled to enjoy any of 
 the privileges, rights or exemptions granted to physicians and 
 surgeons by the laws of the State. But it is not lawful for 
 the State Boards of Medical Examiners, or for any member 
 of them, to charge or obligate the State except in relation to 
 the publication of registered physicians, etc., but the Boards
 
 79© HISTORY OF MEDICINE 
 
 must look alone for compensation to the revenue derived 
 from the operation of the medical statute, 
 
 Maine, 1895. The enactment of 1895 provides for the 
 appointment by the Governor and Council of a Board of 
 Registration of Medicine, six in number. The members 
 must be graduates of a legally-chartered medical college or 
 university having the power to confer degrees in Medicine, 
 and have been engaged in practice five years ; but none of 
 them may belong to the Faculty of any medical college or 
 university. The compensation and expenses of the Board 
 are paid from the Treasury of the State. All physicians in 
 practice on payment of %2 are entitled to registration, and 
 to receive a certificate accordingly, which must be publicly 
 displayed in their office while they are engaged in the 
 practice of medicine. Any person not entitled to registra- 
 tion, may be examined, upon the payment of %\o, and if 
 found qualified, will also receive a certificate. The Board 
 has power, after a physician has been convicted of crime in 
 the course of professional business, to revoke his certificate 
 and to cancel his registration. All applicants for registra- 
 tion must be of good moral character and possessed of a 
 reasonable amount of knowledge in the " branches of 
 science " in which he desires to practice. No official atten- 
 tion is given to the possession of a medical degree. The 
 examinations must be, in whole or in part, in writing, and 
 '• of an elementary and practical character." They embrace 
 " the general subjects of Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, 
 Materia Medica, Therapeutics, Surgery, the Principles and 
 Practice of Medicine, Obstetrics, or such branches thereof 
 as the Board may deem necessary for the applicant to 
 possess." The penalty for practicing medicine for gain or 
 hire without being registered, or holding out as physician or 
 surgeon, or using the title of " M. D.," or using the title of
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES 79 1 
 
 " doctor " or " physician " meaning by it a Doctor of Medi- 
 cine, is a fine of $ioo to $500, or imprisonment for three 
 months, or both fine and imprisonment. 
 
 Commissioned officers of the United States, physicians or 
 surgeons called from other States to treat a particular case, 
 persons rendering gratuitous service or assistance in 
 emergency, medical students prescribing or operating under 
 the direction of a registered physician, and midwives who 
 lay no claim to the title of physician or doctor, are exempt 
 from the requirements of the enactment. " Neither shall 
 th's act apply to clairvoyants or to persons practicing hyp- 
 notism, magnetic healing, mind-cure, massage, Christian 
 science, so called, or any other method of healing, if no 
 poisonous or dangerous drugs are employed nor surgical 
 operations performed ; provided, such persons do not violate 
 any of the provisions of Section Nine of this act in relation 
 to the use of ' M. D.' or the title of doctor or physician." 
 
 Maryland, 1892, 1894. The act of 1892 provides for two 
 separate Boards of Medical Examiners, of seven members 
 each, one to represent the Medical and Chirurgical Society 
 of the State, and the other the Maryland State Homoeo- 
 pathic Medical Society. They examine all applicants who 
 desire to engage in the practice of Medicine. These must 
 be of good moral character, and possess a competent com- 
 mon school education, as well as the degree of Doctor or 
 Medicine, or a diploma or license conferring the full right to 
 practice all the branches of medicine in some foreign 
 country. But they must have studied medicine three years, 
 and attended three courses of medicine in different years, in 
 some legally incorporated medical college or colleges. If 
 fraud has been used in procuring a license, it may be re- 
 voked. The penalty for practicing medicine in violation of 
 the statutes is a fine of $50 to $200 for each offense, or im-
 
 792 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 prisonment till the fines and costs are paid, and also to be 
 debarred from recovering compensation for services. The 
 attempt to practice medicine or surgery without having been 
 registered is punishable by a fine of $io to $200 for each 
 offense. Any person who sliall unlawfully procure registra- 
 tion as a physician or surgeon, whether by false statement 
 or the presentation of a spurious license, or a license 
 obtained by false statements, from the Medical Examiners, 
 is liible to a fine of $50 to ^500, and forfeits all rights and 
 immunities conferred from such registration. 
 
 Afassaciiusetis, 1894. The statute provides for a Board of 
 Registration in Medicine, to be appointed by the Governor, 
 with the advice and consent of the Council. The Board 
 consists of seven persons, residents of the Commonwealth, 
 and graduates of a legally-chartered medical college or 
 university having the power to confer degrees in Medicine, 
 who have been actively employed in the practice of their 
 profession for ten years. No more than three of them may 
 be at the same time members of any one chartered State 
 Medical Society, and none of them may belong to the 
 Faculty of any medical college or university. Their com- 
 pensation and expenses are paid from the Treasury of the 
 State. They issue certificates to graduates, also to non- 
 graduates after examination, and to physicians who are over 
 sixty years of age and who have been in practice for ten 
 years prior to 1894. Applicants must give satisfactory 
 proof of being twenty-one years of age and of good moral 
 character ; and every one who is a graduate and has re- 
 ceived a degree of Doctor of Medicine from a college or 
 university having power to confer degrees in the Common- 
 wealth is entitled to be registered at once. Examinations 
 must be, in whole or in part, in writing, and " of an element- 
 ary and practical character." They embrace the general
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 793 
 
 subjects of Surgery, Physiology, Pathology, Obstetrics and 
 Practice of Medicine, and must be sufficiently strict to test 
 the qualifications of the candidate. The penalty is a fine of 
 ;^ioo to 5500, or imprisonment for three months, Oi both. 
 The statute does not apply to commissioned officers of the 
 United States, or to physicians or surgeons called from 
 another State to treat a particular case, or to prohibit 
 gratuitous servicas ; nor to clairvoyants, or to persons 
 practicing hypnotism, Christian science, cosmopathic or any 
 other method of Jiealing ; provided, such persons do not 
 violate any of the provisions of Section ten of this act."* 
 
 M/c/iigan, 1899. The " Chandler Medical Act " author- 
 izes the Governor to appoint ten resident electors a Board 
 of Registration in Medicine. Not more than five shall be 
 from the School known as Regular, two from the School 
 known as Homoeopathic, two from the School known as 
 Eclectic, and one from the School known as Physio-Medical. 
 The selection must be made from lists submitted by the 
 respective legally incorporated state medical societies, 
 which lists must contain at least three times as many names 
 as the Society has representatives on the Board. If a 
 Society fails to make out a list, the Governor must fill the 
 vacancy from members of the School. All must be learned 
 in the profession, graduates, and of six years' practice. All 
 men and women engaged in practice must apply for regis- 
 tration, and have complied with one of the following con- 
 ditions : I. That he or she has been already registered 
 with a County Clerk under the law of 1883. 2. That he 
 or she shall present a certificate of registration, or a copy of 
 such certificate which has been issued in some foreign 
 
 ♦This section imposes the penalties as already stated, specifying the offender as 
 " whoever not being registered as aforesaid, shall advertise or hold himself out to the 
 public as a yhysician or surgeon in this Commonwealtli, or appends to his name the 
 letters ' M. D.' or uses the title of Doctor, meaning thereby a Doctor of Medicine."
 
 794 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 country where the requirements are the same as in Michi- 
 gan. 3. Or that he or she shall satisfactorily pass an 
 examination in Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry, Pathology, 
 Therapeutics, Toxicology, Histology, Hygiene, Public 
 Health Laws of Michigan, Practice of Medicine, Surgery, 
 Obstetrics, Gynaecology, Diseases of the Eye and Ear, 
 Bacteriology and Medical Jurisprudence. The examination 
 must be in writing and preceded by a fee of ten dollars. 
 The questions, except in therapeutics and practice of 
 medicine, shall be such as all may answer alike, and there 
 must be an average of seventy-five per cent, of correct 
 answers. 4. A license from another State of this Union 
 where the requirements are similar, and where reciprocal 
 favors are shown, shall be equivalent to a license from the 
 Board. 5, If an applicant helds a diploma from a reputa- 
 ble college having a three years' course of eight months, or 
 a four years' course of six months in each year, in Michigan 
 or any of the United States, he is entitled to registration. 
 But a diploma from a diploma-selling college, or other than 
 a regularly-established and reputable college, may not be 
 registered. The certificate must be dulv filed with the 
 County Clerk of the county where the candidate resides. 
 All moneys received must be paid to the State Treasurer, 
 and the expenses of the Board are paid only from the fund 
 so provided. The Secretary only receives a salary. The 
 other members receive only traveling and hotel expenses — 
 and no more than has been actually expended. The penalty 
 for practicing medicine or surgery without having complied 
 with this act is a fine of $100, or imprisonment for ninety 
 days, or both fine and imprisonment. The appending o^ 
 the letters " M. B." or •' M. D." to the name, or prefixing 
 the title " Dr." or any sign or appellation in a medical sense 
 is prima facie evidence of practicing medicine within the
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 795 
 
 meaning of the acts. Exemptions as usual are made for 
 surgeons of the army and navy, and for dentists, temporary 
 assistance, and the domestic administration of family medi- 
 cines, — also for " any legally-qualified osteopath engaged in 
 the practice of osteopathy " under the permission of the law 
 of 1897 regulating that practice. 
 
 Minnesota, 1895. This State has a State Board of Medi- 
 cal Examiners, nine in number, appointed by the Governor. 
 No member of this Board may serve for more than two 
 terms in succession, nor be a member of any college or 
 university having a medical department, and three of the 
 members must be Homoeopathic physicians. Applicants for 
 a license to practice medicine and surgery in any of the 
 branches must submit to an examination at a regular meet- 
 ing of the Board, in Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry, 
 Histology, Materia Medica, Therapeutics, Preventive 
 Medicine, Practice of Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics, 
 Diseases of Women and Children, Diseases of the Nervous 
 System, Diseases of the Eye and Ear, Medical Juris- 
 prudence, and such other branches as the Board shall deem 
 advisable. They must also present evidence of having 
 attended three full courses of lectures at a medical college 
 recognized by the State Board of Medical Examiners, of at 
 least twenty-six weeks, no two courses being within the 
 same year. The examinations are required by the Board to 
 be in writing, and in the English language. They last two 
 and a half days, two hours being given to each subject. 
 The Board may refuse or revoke a license " for unprofes- 
 sional, dishonorable or immoral conduct," in which case the 
 applicant may appeal to the Governor. The penalty for 
 practicing without having first obtained the license is a fine 
 of $5 to $100, or imprisonment for ten to ninety days, or 
 both fine and imprisonment. The practice of medicine is
 
 796 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 set forth to include the appending of the letters " M. D." or 
 " M. B." to the name of the individual, or prescribing or 
 recommending for the use of any person " any drugs or 
 medicine, or other agency for the treatment, care or relief of 
 any wound, fracture or bodily injury, infirmity or disease." 
 The act, however, does not apply to dentists. 
 
 Mississippi, 1892. Chapter 104 of the Annotated Code 
 requires every person who desires to practice medicine to 
 obtain a license from the State Board of Health. His ap- 
 plication must state his name in full, his place of residence 
 and post office address, his nativity and age, the time spent 
 in medical study,, the name and address of the preceptor, 
 the courses of medical lectures attended, the name of the 
 medical schools attended, if a graduate the name of the 
 medical college, the time spent in a hospital, the time if any, 
 spent in the practice of medicine, the School or System of 
 Practice chosen, and references as to personal character. 
 The examination relates to " his learning in the following 
 branches of learning only, viz. : Anatomy. Chemistry, 
 Obstetrics, Materia Medica, Physiology, Pathology, Surgery 
 and Hygiene." All examinations as to learning are upon 
 written questions and answers, " and distinctions shall not 
 be made between applicants because of the different sys- 
 tems or Schools of Practice that may be chosen." The 
 license must be signed by each of the members of the Board 
 who approves of its issuance. It names the place of resi- 
 dence and post office address of the recipient, and qualifica- 
 tions as to learning and moral character. Every person 
 receiving a license must file it within sixty days from its 
 date, in the office of the Clerk of the Circuit Court of the 
 county in which he resides, or otherwise it will be void. 
 Females engaged in the practice of midwifery are not re- 
 quired to procure a license.
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 797 
 
 Missouri, 1883. The Revised Statutes of Missouri place 
 medical matters in the hands of the State Board of Health. 
 This Board consists of seven members, four of the Old 
 School, two Homoeopathists and one Eclectic physician. It 
 gives certificates to graduates of medical colleges in good 
 standing (having a graded course of instruction) signed by 
 at least four members, which are conclusive of the holders' 
 rights to practice medicine in the State. If an applicant is 
 not a graduate, he must submit to such examination as the 
 Board may require. The examinations may be in whole or 
 in part in writing, and must be of an elementary and 
 practical character, but sufficiently strict to test the qualifi- 
 cations of the candidate as a practitioner. If the examina- 
 tion is satisfactory the Board issues a certificate to that 
 effect signed by at least four of the members, which is a 
 license to practice medicine in the State. The Board may 
 refuse certificates to individuals guilty of unprofessioiial or 
 dishonorable conduct, and revoke them for like causes, 
 after giving the person inculpated an opportunity to be 
 heard in his defense before the Board. Any itinerant ven- 
 der of any drug, nostrum, ointment or appliance of any 
 kind, intended for the treatment of disease or injury, or who 
 shall in any way " publicly profess to cure or treat diseases, 
 injuries or deformities by any drug, nostrum, manipulation 
 or other expedient," must pay to the State a license of $100 
 a month, and in case of violation of this condition, is 
 punished by a fine not exceeding $500, or by imprisonment 
 not to exceed six months, or by both fine and imprisonment. 
 Any person practicing medicine or surgery without comply- 
 ing with the provisions of the statute may be punished by a 
 fine of $50 to $500, or imprisonment for thirty days to a 
 year, or by both fine and imprisonment for each and every 
 offense.
 
 798 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 There has not always been harmony between the 
 Board of Health and the Courts, Legislature and Governor. 
 Judge Noonan of St. Louis declared certain sections of the 
 statute to be unconstitutional, and the Legislature has once 
 or twice omitted to make appropriation for the Board. The 
 diplomas of a college in Kansas City having been rejected 
 by the Board, an order was secured from the Supreme Court 
 requiring it to accept them. The Osteopathic College also 
 had a controversy, and won its case. In 1896 a graduate 
 of the Physio-Medical College of Indiana was refused, on 
 the ground that the institution was not in good standing. 
 The Supreme Court, however, declared that " good stand- 
 ing " in the statutes simply meant good reputation, and 
 granted him a peremptory writ to obtain the certificate.* 
 
 Montana, 1895. A Board of Medical Examiners is ap- 
 pointed by the Governor, with the advice and consent of 
 the Senate. It is composed of " seven learned, skilled and 
 capable physicians " who have attended three courses of 
 lectures, and are " graduates of accredited colleges of medi- 
 
 * Dr. Edwin Younkin suggests that the true remedy for these difficulties lies with 
 the medical colleges themselves. " Let their charters be granted upon certain articles 
 of agreement," he proposes ; "and let those articles of agreement define the kind of 
 material that the colleges are to accept as students, the amount of preliminary educa- 
 tion, the branches to be taught, and the length and number of sessions. Then, when a 
 college violates the stipulations of its charter, the Court can take away the charter and 
 shut the doors of the institution. A charter thus granted, a diploma would be sufficient 
 evidence of qualification." 
 
 " As long," Dr. Younkin adds, " as long as an institution is operating under the 
 provisions of its charter, it is a question in my mind whether a State Board of Exam- 
 iners can have the Constitution and authority to dictate to the graduates of that in- 
 stitution as to whether they practice medicine or not." 
 
 Declarations of eminent jurists are of the same tenor. " I hold," says Justice 
 Bradley of the United States Supreme Court, " I hold that the liberty of pursuit — the 
 right to follow any of the ordinary callings of life — is one of the privileges of a citizen 
 of the United States. But if it does not abridge the privileges and immunities of a 
 citizen of the United States to prohibit him from pursuing his chosen calling and 
 giving to others the exclusive right of pursuing it, it certainly does deprive him (to a 
 certain extent) of his liberty ; for it takes from him the freedom of adopting and follow- 
 ing the pursuit which he prefers ; which, as already intimated, is a material part of the 
 liberty of the citizen." 
 
 Justice R. W. Peckham quotes a decision of the Supreme Court, that " the word 
 ' liberty ' as used in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, compre- 
 hends not merely the right to freedom from physical restraint, but also the right to 
 ' pursue any livelihood or calling ; and for that purpose to enter into all contracts 
 which may be proper.' "
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 799 
 
 cine," The term of office is fixed at seven years. Appli- 
 cants wishing to practice medicine or surgery, or any of 
 their departments in the State, must present the Board with 
 his or her diploma to be verified as to its genuineness. " If 
 the diploma is found genuine, and is issued by a medical 
 school legally organized and in good standing, whose 
 teachers are graduates of a legally-organized school, which 
 facts the said Board of Examiners shall determine, and if 
 the person presenting and claiming said diploma be the 
 person to whom the same was originally granted, at a time 
 and place designated by said Board, or at a regular meeting 
 of said Board, said applicant shall submit to an examination 
 in the following branches, to wit : Anatomy, Physiology, 
 Chemistry, Histology, Materia Medica, Therapeutics, Pre- 
 ventive Medicine, Practice of Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics, 
 Diseases of Women and Children, Diseases of the Nervous 
 System, Diseases of the Eye and Ear, Medical Jurisprudence 
 and such other branches as the Board shall deem advisa- 
 ble." He must also present evidence of having attended 
 four courses of lectures of at least six months each. " Said 
 Board shall cause such examination to be both scientific and 
 practical, but of sufficient thoroughness and severity to test 
 the candidate's fitness to practice medicine and surgery ; 
 when desired, such examination may be conducted in the 
 presence of the dean of any medical school, or the president 
 of any medical society of the State." A majority of the 
 members of the Board may decide whether the examination 
 is satisfactory, and decide upon the granting of a certificate 
 accordingly. 
 
 The Board may refuse to grant a certificate for " unpro- 
 fessional, dishonorable or immoral conduct." But before 
 this can be done the Board must serve in writing upon the 
 applicant a copy of the charges against him and appoint a
 
 8oO HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 day for the hearing. Upon a like hearing the Board may 
 refuse a certificate to any one who may publicly profess to 
 cure or treat disease, injury or deformity in such a manner 
 as to deceive the public. The Board may also with the 
 concurrence of four members, revoke a certificate for unpro- 
 fessional, dishonorable or immoral conduct, giving the in- 
 culpated physician like opportunity to oppose and refute the 
 charges. In case of such refusal or revocation of a certifi- 
 ;ate the person aggrieved may take an appeal to the Dis- 
 trict Court of the County in which the action was taken, 
 and the Court must affirm or reverse the decision of the 
 Board. An appeal may also be taken from the judgment of 
 the District Court to the Supreme Court. 
 
 The certificate when awarded must be recorded within 
 sixty days in the office of the County Clerk in the county in 
 which the holder resides, and till it is so recorded the 
 physician practicing under it is liable to all the penalties 
 prescribed. A person practicing medicine or surgery with- 
 out a certificate is liable on conviction to a fine of $ioo to 
 $400, or imprisonment for thirty to ninety days, or to both 
 fine and imprisonment. Any person is regarded as 
 practicing medicine who uses the letters " M, D." or pro- 
 fesses to be a physician or surgeon, or " who shall recom- 
 mend, prescribe or direct for the use of any person any 
 drug, medicine, appliance, apparatus or other agency, 
 whether material or immaterial, for the cure, relief or 
 palliation of any ailment or disease of the mind or body, or 
 for the cure or relief of any wound, fracture or bodily injury, 
 or other deformity, after having received or with the intent 
 of receiving therefor, either directly or indirectly, any bonus, 
 gift or compensation." 
 
 Nebraska, 1891. The State Board of Health has charge 
 of medical matters in Nebraska. This Board consists of the
 
 SYNOPSIS OE MEDICAL STATUTES. 8oi 
 
 Governor, Attorney-General and Superintendent of Public 
 Instruction. It has four secretaries, graduated physicians 
 who have practiced medicine consecutively for seven years, 
 and are actually so engaged in Nebraska. " Two shall be 
 physicians of the so-called Regular Sohool, one of the so- 
 called Eclectic School, and one of the so-called Homoeo- 
 pathic School." The Secretaries advise aid assist the 
 Board in the performing of its duties. Candidates for the 
 practice of medicine must present their diplomas to the 
 Board with an affidavit that they are lawful possessors of the 
 same, and have attended the full course of study required 
 for the degree, and are the persons there named. A medi- 
 cal college, in order to be considered in good standing, 
 must require a preliminary examination for admission to its 
 courses of study, and from the candidate for the degree of 
 Doctor of Medicine an attendance on at least three courses 
 of lectures of six months each, no two of them in the same 
 year, and have a full Faculty of Professors in all the different 
 branches of medical education, namely : Anatomy, Physi- 
 ology, Chemistry, Toxicology, Pathology, Hygiene, Materia 
 Medica, Therapeutics, Obstetrics, Gynaecology, Principles 
 and Practice of Medicine and Surgery, and clinical instruc- 
 tion in the last two named. If upon investigation of the 
 diploma and affidavit the applicant shall be found entitled to 
 practice, there shall be issued to him the certificate of the 
 Board. The certificate, however, may be refused or revoked 
 for unprofessional or dishonorable conduct, after opportunity 
 for a hearing has been given. No person can recover for 
 professional services who has not complied with the pro- 
 visions of the statute, and is authorized to be registered as a 
 physician. Any person not possessing the qualifications for 
 the practice of medicine, surgery or obstetrics as required, 
 or who has engaged in such practice in disregard of the
 
 8o2 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 provisions of the statute, is liable to a fine of $50 to ^300 
 and costs for each offense, and stand committed till the 
 fines and costs are paid. Itinerant venders of any drug, 
 nostrum, ointment or appliance of any kind intended for the 
 treatment of any disease or injury, or who shall by any 
 method publicly profess to cure or treat a disease or injury 
 or deformity, by any drug, nostrum, manipulation or oth^r 
 expedient, will be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon 
 conviction will be fined $50 to $100 and imprisoned for 
 thirty days to three months, or both, in the discretion of the 
 Court, for each offense. Any person is to be regarded as 
 coming within the scope of this enactment " who shall 
 operate on, profess to heal, or prescribe for, or otherwise 
 treat any physical or mental ailment of another." But the 
 enactment does not apply to commissioned surgeons of the 
 United States service, nor to nurses in th^ir legitimate 
 occupations, or to gratuitous services in case of an emer- 
 gency, nor to the administration of household remedies. 
 
 Nevada, 1875. ^° person may practice medicine or 
 surgery in Nevada who has not received a medical educa- 
 tion and a diploma from a regularly-chartered medical school 
 which had a bofia Jide existence at the time when the 
 diploma was granted. A copy of it must be filed with the 
 Clerk of the County, or a certificate from the dean of the 
 school, certifying to his graduation. The penalty for prac- 
 ticing medicine in violation of the statute, is a fine of $50 
 to $500, or imprisonment for thirty days to six months for 
 each offense, or both fine and imprisonment. 
 
 Several States have required from physicians who are not 
 graduates in medicine, a certani defined number of years of 
 practice, next preceding the passage of the medical act. 
 The Supreme Court of Nevada has declared this to be un- 
 constitutional, because in violation of the Fourteenth
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES, 803 
 
 Amendment to the Federal Constitution. It is not difficult 
 to perceive that the amendment in question, properly inter- 
 preted and applied, is more sweeping still. 
 
 Netv Hampshire, 1897. The statute provides for three 
 separate Boards of Medical Examiners, of five members 
 each, to be appointed b}' the Governor, from each of the 
 three State Medical Societies. The Superintendent of 
 Public Instruction is their Regent, and all examinations of 
 candidates are conducted through him. Only persons hold- 
 ing diplomas from reputable medical colleges are admitted 
 to examination. Licentiates from other States, with a 
 standard equal to that of New Hampshire, are licensed 
 without examination. A discrimination is made in favor of 
 applicants who graduate at the medical colleges of New 
 Hampshire prior to 1903- 
 
 A medical statute had been enacted several years before, 
 but was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of 
 the State. 
 
 New Jersey, 1894. The enactment of 1894 provides for a 
 State Board of Medical Examiners appointed by the Gover- 
 nor, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to " consist 
 of five Old-School physicians, three Homoeopathic and one 
 Eclectic." All persons beginning the practice of medicine 
 in any of its branches in the State must submit an applica- 
 tion to the Board, with satisfactory proof of good moral 
 character, and a competent common-school education, and 
 must also have received a diploma conferring the degree of 
 Doctor of Medicine from some legally-incorporated medical 
 college in good standing when it was issued, or a diploma 
 or license conferring full right to practice medicine in a 
 foreign country, having studied medicine four years, includ- 
 ing three full courses of lectures in different years in some 
 American or foreign medical college or colleges legally in-
 
 Sod. HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 corporated prior to the granting of the diploma or license. 
 They must then submit to examinations in writing in the 
 English language; and the questions, except in Materia 
 Medica and Therapeutics, must be such as can be answered 
 in common in all Schools of Practice. If an applicant in- 
 tends to practice as an Homoeopathist or Eclectic the mem- 
 bers of the Board belonging to these Schools respectively 
 will examine him in Materia Medica and Therapeutics. 
 The examinations are upon the following subjects, namely : 
 Materia Medica and Therapeutics ; Obstetrics and Gynae- 
 cology ; Practice of Medicine, including Diseases of the 
 Skin, Nose and Throat ; Surgery, including Surgical 
 Anatomy and Diseases of the Eye, Ear and Genito-Urinary 
 Organs ; Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry, Histology, 
 Pathology, Bacteriology, Hygiene, Medical Jurisprudence, 
 and in such other subjects as the Board may decide. All 
 examinations must be scientific and practical, and of 
 sufficient severity to test the fitness of the candidate. If 
 they are satisfactory the Board issues a license entitling the 
 recipient to practice medicine in the State. In case that 
 an adverse conclusion is reached, the candidate may appeal 
 to the Governor, who will appoint three competent persons, 
 one of each School, to review the questions and answers 
 submitted. A temporary license is also given to a physician 
 from another State who takes the place of a physician in 
 New Jersey. Licentiates from New York and Pennsylvania, 
 and members and ex-members of the State Examining 
 Boards of other States are accepted without examination. 
 A license may be refused or revoked for chronic inebriety, the 
 practice of criminal abortion, conviction of crime which 
 involves moral turpitude, public advertising of special 
 ability to treat or cure chronic and incurable cases, or fraud 
 in procuring the license.
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 805 
 
 Any person is regarded as practicing medicine or surgery, 
 who makes use of the words or letters " Dr.", " Doctor," 
 "Professor," " M. D.", " M. B.", in connection with his or 
 her name intending to be understood by it as a practitioner 
 of Medicine or Surgery in any of its branches, and who in 
 connection with any of these titles or without them " shall 
 prescribe, direct, recommend, advise, apply, give or sell, for 
 the use of any person or persons, any drug or medicine or 
 other agency or application for the treatment, cure or relief 
 of any bodily injury, infirmity or disease." The provisions 
 of the act " apply to all persons professing and attempting 
 to cure diseases by means of the so-called systems of ' failh- 
 curism,' ' mind-reading,' ' laying-on-of-hands,' and other 
 similar systems." The penalty for violation is a fine of not 
 less than $ioo or imprisonment for not less than thirty days, 
 or both fine and imprisonment ; and double the penalty for 
 each subsequent offense. 
 
 The Examiners are paid solely from the license fees 
 which they receive. 
 
 New York, 1893, 1895. There are three separate Staie 
 Boards of Medical Examiners in New York, of seven mem- 
 bers each, one representing the Medical Society of the 
 State, one representing the Homoeopathic Medical Society, 
 and one representing the Eclectic Medical Society. They 
 are appointed by the Board of Regents of the University of 
 the State of New York from lists of candidates furnished by 
 the respective Societies. Each of these candidates must 
 have received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from some 
 registered medical school, and practiced medicine legally in 
 the State for five years. Each Board must submit to the 
 Regents as required, lists of suitable questions in Anatomy, 
 Physiology and Hygiene, Chemistry, Surgery, Obstetrics, 
 Pathology and Diagnosis, and Therapeutics, including
 
 8o6 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Practice and Materia Medica. From these lists the Regents 
 prepare question papers for all these subjects, which are the 
 same for all candidates at any examination, except that in 
 Therapeutics and Materia Medica all the questions sub- 
 mitted to any candidate are those from the Board 
 selected by him, and must be in harmony with the tenets of 
 that School as determined by its State Board of Medical 
 Examiners. 
 
 Candidates are admitted to examination by the Regents 
 upon paying a fee of $25 and presenting satisfactory evi- 
 dence, (i) that they are more than twenty-one years of age, 
 (2) that they are of good moral character, (3) that they 
 have the general education required by law preliminary to 
 receiving the degree of Bachelor or Doctor of Medicine in 
 the State, (4) that they have studied medicine not less than 
 three full years, including three satisfactory courses in three 
 different academic years in a medical school registered as 
 maintaining at the time a satisfactory standard, and (5) that 
 they have either received the degree of Bachelor or Doctor 
 of Medicine from some registered medical school, or a 
 diploma or license conferring full right to practice medicine 
 in some foreign country. 
 
 The degree of Bachelor or Doctor of Medicine can not 
 be conferred in New York before the candidate has filed 
 with the institution conferring it the certificate of the 
 Regents of the University, that three years before the date 
 of the degree he has either graduated from a registered 
 college or satisfactorily completed a full course in a regis- 
 tered academy or high school ; or that he has had a pre- 
 liminary education considered and accepted by the Regents 
 as fully equivalent. The Regents may, however, in their 
 discretion accept five years of reputable practice of medicine 
 as equivalent for any part of the requirements in regard to
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES 807 
 
 general education and attendance at a medical school for 
 three years. 
 
 Upon receiving from a State Board an official report that 
 an applicant has successfully passed the examinations and 
 is recommended for license, the Regents, if they deem him 
 qualified, issue a license accordingly to practice medicine. 
 Applicants who have been examined and licensed by other 
 State Examining Boards which have been registered by the 
 Regents as maintaining standards not lower than provided 
 in this State, and applicants matriculating in a medical 
 school in New York before June 5th, 1890 and graduating 
 before August 1895, may receive from them an endorsement 
 of their licenses or diplomas conferring all rights of a license 
 from the Regents issued after examination. 
 
 Every license to practice medicine must be registered in 
 the office of the County Clerk of the county in which the 
 holder intends to begin practice, before he so engages. He 
 must make affidavit that he is the person to whom it was 
 issued, that he had complied with all requisites of study, 
 attendance and examinations, that he had paid no money 
 for the license except the regular fees, and that no fraud, 
 misrepresentation or material mistake had been employed or 
 occurred in order that the license should be conferred. In 
 case of removal to another county the certificate of registra- 
 tion must be shown to the County Clerk, and endorsed by 
 him. 
 
 No registration is valid unless the authority registered to 
 practice medicine has been issued or endorsed as a license 
 by the Regents. " No diploma or license conferred on a 
 person not actually in attendance at the lectures, instruction 
 and examination of the school conferring the same, or not 
 possessed at the time of its conferment, of the requirements, 
 then demanded of medical students in this State as a con-
 
 8o8 HISTORY OF MEDICINE 
 
 dition of their being licensed so as to practice, and no regis- 
 tration not in accordance with this article shall be lawful 
 authority to practice medicine, nor shall the degree of 
 Doctor of Medicine be conferred honoris causa or ad eundem, 
 nor if previously conferred shall it be a qualification for 
 such practice." All previous legislation making degrees of 
 these descriptions heretofore conferred a condition of 
 license are repealed. 
 
 The penalty for violation of the medical statute is a fine 
 not exceeding $250 for the first offense, or imprisonment for 
 six months, and for subsequent offenses a fine of not more 
 than $500 or imprisonment for one year, or both fine and 
 imprisonment. The offending is enumerated as practicing 
 medicine without lawful registration ; buying, selling or 
 fradulently obtaining any medical diploma, license, record 
 or registration, or aiding or abetting in such a matter, or 
 practicing medicine under cover of such an illicit procedure, 
 or after having been convicted of a felony, or appending the 
 letters " M. D." to his or her name, or any title conveying 
 the impression of being a practitioner of medicine when not 
 having legally received the medical degree or license to 
 practice medicine. Any person who shall practice medicine 
 under a false or assumed name, or who shall falsely per- 
 sonate another practitioner of a like or different name is de- 
 clared guilty of a felony. 
 
 North Carolina, 1889. There is established for the 
 proper regulation of the practice of medicine a Board 
 entitled " The Board of Medical Examiners of the State of 
 North Carolina," consisting of seven regularly graduated 
 physicians appointed by the Medical Society of the State. 
 No person may engage in the practice of medicine except 
 he has been licensed by this Board. All applicants must be 
 examined by the Board on Anatomy, Physiolog}^ Surgery,
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES 809 
 
 Pathology, Medical Hygiene, Chemistry, Pharmacy, Materia 
 Medica, Therapeutics, Obstetrics and the Practice of Medi- 
 cine. If found competent the applicant will receive a 
 license or diploma conferring the desired authority. Five 
 members of the Board constitute a quorum, and four must 
 be agreed in regard to the qualifications of the applicant. 
 Two of the Examiners can grant a temporary license which 
 will be valid till the next meeting of the Board. Any 
 license granted by the Board may be rescinded, when the 
 holder has been guilty of grossly immoral conduct. Any 
 person who practices medicine without a license can not sue 
 for and recover any bill for services ; and upon conviction 
 for so doing, may be fined $25 to $100 or imprisonment, at 
 the discretion of the Court, for each and every offense. 
 Midvvives are not included in this statute, and physicians 
 from other States coming into the State for consultation are 
 likewise exempt. 
 
 North Dakota, 1891. The State Board of Medical Exam- 
 iners is appointed by the Governor, and is composed of nine 
 persons, eight of them practicing physicians in good stand- 
 ing, and one a lawyer. Two of the physicians are to be 
 Homoeopathists. No member may serve more than two 
 terms in succession, or be member of any college or uni- 
 versity having a medical department. All persons com- 
 mencing the practice of Medicine, Surgery and Obstetrics 
 in any of their branches in the State, must apply for a 
 license and submit to an examination in Anatomy, Physi- 
 ology, Chemistry, Histology, Materia Medica, Therapeutics. 
 Preventive Medicine, Practice of Medicine, Surgery, 
 Obstetrics, Diseases of Women and Children, Diseases of 
 the Nervous System, Diseases of the Eye and Ear, Medical 
 Jurisprudence, and such other branches as the Board shall 
 deem desirable, and present evidence of having attended
 
 8lO HISTORY OF MEDICINE 
 
 three courses of lectures of six months each ; the examina- 
 tion to be both practical and scientific, but of sufficient 
 severity to test the candidate's fitness to practice Medicine, 
 Surgery and Obstetrics. When desired, it may be con- 
 ducted in the presence of the Dean of any medical school 
 or the president of medical society of the State. After 
 examination the Board may grant a license to practice, but 
 only by consent of seven members, and the person receiving 
 it must file it, or a copy of it, with the Register of Deeds 
 where he or she may reside. A license may be revoked or 
 refused for unprofessional, dishonorable or immoral conduct, 
 or for chronic or persistent inebriety, or for the practice of 
 criminal abortion, or for publicly advertising to treat or cure 
 diseases which, in the opinion of the Board, it impossible to 
 cure. The person inculpated is entitled to a hearing in 
 person, or by attorney, in his own behalf, and to an appeal 
 to the appointing power. The penalty for practicing medi- 
 cine without a license is a fine of $50 to ^200, or imprison- 
 ment for ten to sixty days, or both fine and imprisonment. 
 Any person is regarded as practicing medicine who appends 
 the letters " M. D." or " M. B." to his or her name, or for a 
 fee prescribes, directs or recommends for the use of any 
 person any drug or medicine, or other agency for the treat- 
 ment, cure or relief of any wound, fracture or bodily injury, 
 infirmity or disease. But this enactment does not apply to 
 dentists, or to surgeons commissioned in the service of the 
 United States, or to physicians or surgeons in consultation 
 from other States or Territories, or to medical students prac- 
 ticing medicine under tlie supervision of a preceptor. 
 
 Ohio, 1896. The Governor of Ohio is authorized to ap>- 
 appoint, with the advice and consent of the Senate, a State 
 Board of Medical Registration and Examination consisting 
 of seven members, who are physicians of good standing in
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 8ll 
 
 their profession. Representation is given to Schools of 
 Practice in the State in proportion to their numerical 
 strength, but no one School is to have a majority in the 
 Board. No person may practice medicine, surgery or mid- 
 wifery except he shall first have complied with the require- 
 ments of the statute. If a graduate, he must present his 
 diploma either personally or by letter or proxy, with an 
 affidavit that he is the person named, and is the lawful 
 possessor, and stating his age and time spent in the study of 
 medicine. If the Board finds the diploma to be genuine, 
 and from a legally-chartered medical institution in good 
 standing, as determined by the Board, and that the person 
 named in it is the holder and possessor, it shall issue its 
 certificate to that efifect, which, when delivered to the Pro- 
 bate Judge for record is conclusive evidence that the owner 
 is entitled to practice medicine or surgery in the State. 
 
 The Board may refuse or revoke a certificate in case that 
 the person is guilty of felony or gross immorality, or addicted 
 to the liquor or drug habit to such a degree as to render him 
 unfit to practice medicine or surgery. An appeal may be 
 taken to the Governor and Attorney-General, and their 
 decision, either affirming or overruling this action, is final. 
 
 All persons desiring to enter upon the practice of mid- 
 wifery must also appear before the Board for examination. 
 If this is satisfactory a certificate to that effect is issued, 
 which entitles the holder, when filed with the Probate Judge, 
 to practice midwifery in the State. It may be refused or 
 revoked as in the case of physicians. The certificate, how- 
 ever gives no authority to perform version, or treat breech 
 or face presentation, or do any obstetric operation requiring 
 instruments, except in emergencies. 
 
 The penalty for practicing medicine or surgery in viola- 
 tion of the statute is a fine of ^20 to $500, or imprisonment
 
 8l2 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 from thirty days to one year, or both fine and imprisonment. 
 A person practicing midwifery in violation of the statute is 
 liable to a fine of $25 to $100. A person who files or 
 attempts to file as his own, the diploma or certificate be- 
 longing to another, or a false, forged certificate of his 
 identity, or who wilfully swears falsely to any question pro- 
 pounded at his examination, or to any affidavit required to 
 be made or filed by him with the Board, is guilty of felony 
 and liable to imprisonment in the penitentiary for one to five 
 years. 
 
 A person is regarded as practicing medicine or surgery 
 who appends the letters M. D. or M. B. to his name, or 
 for a fee prescribes, directs or recommends for the use of 
 any person, any drug or medicine or other agency for the 
 treatment, cure or relief of any wound, fracture or bodily 
 injury, infirmity or disease ; but this does not prohibit ser- 
 vice in the case of emergency, or the domestic administra- 
 tion of family remedies. None of these requirements or 
 penalties apply to commissioned officers in the service cf the 
 United States, nor to legally qualified dentists when engaged 
 exclusively in dentistry, nor to legal practitioners of medi- 
 cine or surgery from another State or Territory when in 
 actual consultation with a legal practitioner of Ohio, nor to a 
 legal practitioner living within the border of a neighboring 
 State whose practice extends over the boundary. 
 
 Ok/ahofua. No person is permitted to practice medi- 
 cine in any of its departments in Oklahoma unless he is a 
 graduate of a medical college, or unless, upon examination 
 before a Board composed of the County Superintendent of 
 Public Health and two other physicians selected by the 
 Territorial Board of Health, he is found proficient in the 
 practice of Medicine and Surgery, and to have been actually 
 engaged in practice of medicine for a term of five years.
 
 SYNOPSIS OE MEDICAL STATUTES. 813 
 
 No person may practice medicine unless he is of good moral 
 character, and not an habitual drunkard. Any person 
 possessing the qualifications required, will, upon the pres- 
 entation of it, or proof by affidavit that it is lost or destroyed, 
 and upon the affidavit of two reputable citizens from the 
 county in which he resides that he possesses the qualifica- 
 tions of a physician as here set forth, receive from the 
 Superintendent of Public Health a license certifying him to 
 be a practicing physician and having the requisite qualifica- 
 tions. This license must be recorded in the office of 
 Register of Deeds of the county. Any person who practices 
 medicine, or attempts to do so, without complying with the 
 provisions of the statute is to be deemed guilty of a misde- 
 meanor. Any person who professes publicly to be a physi- 
 cian, or appends the title of " M. D." to his name, comes 
 within the requisitions. But the statute does not prohibit 
 students from prescribing under the supervision of pre- 
 ceptors, or gratuitous services in case of emergency, nor 
 apply to commissioned surgeons in the Army and Navy of 
 the United States. 
 
 Oregon, 1895. The Board of Medical Examiners for the 
 State of Oregon consists of five physicians appointed by the 
 Governor. They must have been residents of the State for 
 seven years and of five years of practical experience in their 
 profession. " Three of the Board shall be regulars, one 
 Eclectic and one Homceopathist." Every person desiring 
 to practice Medicine or Surgery, or either of them, in any 
 of their or its branches, must make a written application to 
 the Board for a license. He must accompany it by an 
 affidavit setting forth the actual time spent in the study of 
 Medicine and Surgery, and when ; whether such study was 
 in an institution of learning, and if so, give its name and 
 location ; and if not, then where and under whose tutorship
 
 8l4 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 the study was prosecuted ; the time that the apphcant has 
 been engaged in actual practice, if at all, of medicine and 
 surgery, or either of them, and where he was located ; and 
 his age at the time of making application. He must then, 
 at the time and place designated by the Board, or at a 
 regular meeting, undergo an examination in Anatomy, 
 Physiology, Chemistry, Materia Medica, Therapeutics, 
 Practice of Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics, Diseases of 
 Women, Medical Jurisprudence, and such other branches as 
 the Board shall deem advisable. The examination is to be 
 both scientific and practical, and of sufficient severity to 
 test the fitness of the candidate for the profession. It must 
 be by questions and answers, written or printed, or partly 
 written. After examination, if the result is satisfactory, the 
 Board grants a license to practice in the State. The Board, 
 however, may refuse or revoke a license for " unprofessiona- 
 ble or dishonorable conduct," by which is signified : i. the 
 procuring, or aiding or abetting in procuring, a criminal 
 abortion; 2. the employing of "cappers" or " steerers " ; 
 3. the obtaining of a fee on the assurance that a manifestly 
 incurable disease can be permanently cured ; 4. the wilfu^ 
 betraying of a professional secret; 5. the advertising of 
 medical business in which untruthful or improbable state- 
 ments are made ; 6. all advertising of any medicines whereby 
 the monthly periods of women are regulated or menses re- 
 established if suppressed; 7. conviction of any offense in- 
 volving moral turpitude ; 8. habitual intemperance. 
 
 Before a license can be revoked a complaint must be filed 
 with the Secretary of the Board, and a notice served upon 
 the person inculpated, in order that he may appear and 
 defend himself. In case of refusal or revocation of a 
 license, there may be an appeal to the Circuit Court of the 
 county in which the Board sat when the action was taken,
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 815 
 
 and a second appeal to the Supreme Court. The person 
 receiving the Ucense must file it, or a copy, with the 
 County Clerk of the county in which he resides, and in case 
 of removal to another county a certified copy must be filed 
 with the County Clerk there, as in the former instance. 
 
 Any person practicing medicine or surgery without a 
 license, or contrary to the statute, is subject on conviction, 
 to a fine of $50 to $100, or to imprisonment for ten to ninety 
 days, or by both such fine and imprisonment. Any person 
 will be regarded as practicing medicine who appends the 
 letters " M. D." or " M. B." to his or her name, or who 
 shall for a fee, prescribe, direct or recommend any drug or 
 medicine or agency for the treatment, cure or relief of any 
 wound, fracture or bodily injury, infirmity or disease. 
 Justices of the peace and municipal courts have jurisdiction 
 of the provisions of the enactment. Dentists are not in- 
 cluded in the prohibition. 
 
 Pennsylvania, 1893. The Statute creates the Medical 
 Council of Pennsylvania consisting of the Lieutenant- 
 Governor, the Attorney-General, the Secretary of Internal 
 Affairs, the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the 
 president of the State Board of Health and Vital Statistics, 
 including with them the Presidents of the three State Boards 
 of Medical Examiners, for which the enactment specially 
 provides. This Medical Council holds two stated meetings 
 at Harrisburg in each year, and may hold special meetings 
 at such times and places as it may deem proper. It super- 
 vises the examinations conducted by the Medical Examiners 
 of all applicants for license to practice Medicine in the 
 Commonwealth, and issues licenses to applicants presenting 
 satisfactory and properly certified copies of licenses from 
 State Boards of Medical Examiners or State Boards of 
 Health of other States, or who have successfully passed
 
 8l6 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 examinations made by the State Boards of Examiners of 
 Pennsylvania. This Medical Council, however, has no 
 powers, duties or functions, except such as pertain to the 
 supervision of examinations and the issuing of licenses to 
 applicants. 
 
 There are three separate Boards of Medical Examiners 
 for the State, of seven members each ; one representing the 
 Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania, one repre- 
 senting the Homoeopathic Aledical Society of the State and 
 and one representing the Eclectic Medical Society. The 
 members of the Boards are appointed by the Governor from 
 names furnished by the respective societies, and in case of 
 neglect to furnish such lists, then from members in good 
 standing, belonging to the society entitled to nominate. 
 Each person appointed must be a registered physician in 
 good standing who has practiced medicine or surgery for a 
 period of not less than ten years. Each Board has power to 
 take testimony concerning matters within its jurisdiction, 
 and the presiding officer may issue subpoenas and admin- 
 ister oaths to witnesses. 
 
 The several Boards are required, not less than a week 
 prior to each examination of candidates, to submit to the 
 Medical Council questions for thorough examinations in 
 Anatomy, Physiology, Hygiene, Chemistry, Surgery, 
 Obstetrics, Pathology, Diagnosis, Therapeutics, Practice of 
 Medicine and Materia Medica. The Council selects from 
 the questions so submitted the questions for each examina- 
 tion. These are the same for all candidates, except that in 
 the departments of Therapeutics, Practice of Medicine and 
 Materia Medica the questions must be in harmony with the 
 teachings of the School selected by the candidate. The 
 examinations are in writing, and when concluded the Board 
 is required to act upon them without unnecessary delay.
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 817 
 
 An official report signed by the officers and each acting 
 member is transmitted to the Medical Council, in which are 
 given the examination, average of each candidate in each 
 branch, the general average, and the result, with the Exam- 
 ination papers, the questions and answers, to be kept for 
 information and reference. The Medical Council is required 
 to issue to each candidate who has successfully passed the 
 examination and is adjudged by the Council to be duly 
 qualified for the Practice of Medicine, a license to practice 
 medicine and surgery in the State. The Medical Council 
 must require the same standard of qualifications from all 
 candidates, except in the departments in which each Board 
 specifically determines the standard for its own applicants. 
 
 Every applicant is required to present a written applica- 
 tion for license to the Medical Council, with satisfactory 
 proof that he is of good moral character, and more than 
 twenty-one years of age, that he has obtained a competent 
 common-school education and has received a diploma from 
 a legally-incorporated medical college, or a diploma or 
 license conferring the full right to practice medicine and 
 surgery in some foreign country, having pursued the study 
 of medicine for at least four years, including three regular 
 courses of lectures in a legally-incorporated medical college 
 prior to the granting of the diploma or foreign license. 
 Upon receiving the application the Council, if satisfied with 
 it, issue an order for an examination before the Board of 
 Medical Examiners which the candidate may select. In 
 case of failure to pass the examination the candidate may 
 have a second examination after six months and within two 
 years, without paying an additional fee. Applicants who 
 have been licensed by the State Boards of Medical Exam- 
 iners or State Boards of Health of other States, on payment 
 of a fee of $15 and filing a copy of the license certified by
 
 8l8 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 the affidavit of the president or secretary of the Board by 
 which it was granted, showing that the standard of the 
 Board is the same substantially as the one required in 
 Pennsylvania, receive a license conferring the rights and 
 privileges provided by the fourteenth and fifteenth sections 
 of the medical statute. 
 
 No person may enter upon the practice of medicine or 
 surgery in the State unless he or she has complied with the 
 provisions of the medical statute and has exhibited to the 
 prothonotary of the Court of Common Pleas of the county 
 in which he or she intends to engage in practice a license 
 duly obtained, and is duly registered. The penalty is a fine 
 not exceeding $500. 
 
 The statute exempts from its conditions medical officers 
 of the United States, medical examiners of relief depart- 
 ments of railroad companies while so employed, members of 
 the resident medical staff of any legally-incorporated 
 hospital, dentists, legally-qualified physicians from other 
 States or countries coming to meet registered physicians in 
 consultation, physicians or surgeons residing on the border 
 of another State whose practice extends into Pennsylvania, 
 but who do not open an office or have a place in the State to 
 receive calls, and practitioners duly registered before March, 
 1894. Nor does the statute interfere with or prevent the 
 dispensing and sales of medicines or medical appliances by 
 apothecaries and pharmacists, or with the manufacture of 
 artificial eyes, limbs or orthopedic instruments or trusses of 
 any kind for fitting such instruments on persons needing 
 them. 
 
 Rhode Island, 1895. The State Board of Health issues 
 upon application a certificate to any reputable physician who 
 is practicing, or who desires to begin the the practice of 
 Medicine or Surgery in the State, who possesses a diploma
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 8ig 
 
 from a reputable and legally-chartered medical college en- 
 dorsed as such by the Board, or who gives satisfactory 
 evidence of having been reputably and honorably engaged 
 in the practice of medicine or surgery before 1892. Appli- 
 cants desiring to engage in practice must present themselves 
 before the State Board of Health and submit to such exam- 
 ination as the Board may require. If the examination is 
 satisfactory a certificate is issued accordingly. The statute 
 permits no discrimination against any particular School or 
 System of Medicine, and neither prohibits women from 
 practicing midwifery nor the rendering of gratuitous services 
 in case of emergency. Nor does it apply to surgeons in the 
 service of the United States, or to legally-qualified physicians 
 from another State who are called to see a particular case, 
 but do not open an office or appoint a place to receive calls. 
 Any medical or surgical service performed or attempted for 
 reward or compensation in violation of the statute, is pun- 
 ishable for the first offense, by a fine of ^50, and for each 
 and for every subsequent conviction by a fine of $100, or im- 
 prisonment for thirty days, or by both, in the discretion of 
 the Court ; and the offender is not entitled to receive com- 
 pensation for services so rendered. The opening of an 
 office, or announcing of readiness to practice medicine or 
 surgery in the State, is declared to be to engage in the 
 practice of medicine within the meaning of the enactment. 
 
 South Carolina^ 1894. A State Board of Medical Exam- 
 iners, seven in number, one from each Congressional Dis- 
 trict of the State, is appointed by the Governor. The Board 
 examines all applicants who hold diplomas from any medical 
 colleges or schools, and give to each one successfully pass- 
 ing the examination a certificate to that effect. A record is 
 kept of the proceedings, and a register of all applicants for a 
 license, together with the age of each, the time spent in the
 
 820 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Study of medicine, and the name and locations of the 
 institutions granting the degrees or certificates of lectures in 
 medicine or surgsry. The certificate of qualification entitles 
 the holder to be registered as a lawful practicing physician 
 by the Clerk of the Court of the county in which he or she 
 may reside. Upon the refusal of any license, the applicant 
 may appeal to the Governor, who may order a re-examina- 
 tion to be held in the presence of the Dean of any medical 
 college in the State and a committee composed of six prac- 
 ticing physicians. Medical officers in the. service of the 
 United States, and physicians or surgeons from other States 
 called in consultation are not included in the conditions of 
 the statute. Midwives also are not subject. Persons 
 practicing medicine in the State without complying with 
 these conditions, or in violation of them, are punished upon 
 conviction by a fine not exceeding $300, or by imprisonment 
 for not more than three months, or both fine and imprison- 
 ment at the discretion of the Court. The compensation of 
 the Board of Medical Examiners is derived solely from 
 receipts from applicants. 
 
 South Dakota, 1893. The Board of Health is constituted 
 a Board of Public Examiners ex officio, for the purpose of 
 examining and licensing physicians to practice medicine in 
 the State. Any person who is a graduate of a lawful medi- 
 cal college and has attended three full courses of medical 
 lectures of six months each, no two of them in the same 
 year, who is of good moral character and not an habitual 
 drunkard, upon the proof of such facts to the Superin- 
 tendent of the State Board of Health as the Board shall 
 require, and upon the payment of a license-fee of $5, 
 receives from the Superintendent a license certifying that he 
 is a practicing physician and qualified. The license must 
 be recorded in the office of the Register of Deeds in the
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 82 1 
 
 county where the physician resides. The State Board of 
 Health may cancel any such license, if it was fraudulently 
 obtained, or if the physician is an habitual drunkard, or is 
 guilty of immoral practices or gross unprofessional conduct. 
 But the person implicated must first have a hearing before 
 the Board, at which a majority must be present, after at 
 least ten days' notice, and there must be due proof of the 
 matter charged. An appeal may be taken to the Circuit 
 Court of the county in which he lives by any person 
 aggrieved by the action. It is unlawful for any physician or 
 other person to practice medicine, surgery or obstetrics in 
 any of their departments, except he holds a license from the 
 State Board of Health ; except such as have been so engaged 
 before the passing of the enactment, students prescribing 
 under the supervision of preceptors, persons rendering 
 gratuitous services in case of emergency, and surgeons com- 
 missioned in the army or navy of the United States. The 
 penalty for violation of the statute, or for practicing medi- 
 cine without a license is a fine of $25 to $100, or imprison- 
 ment for a term not exceeding thirty days, or both fine and 
 imprisonment in the discretion of the Court. 
 
 Tennessee, 1889. The State Board of Medical Examiners 
 consists of six graduate physicians, two from each section of 
 the State. " The three Schools of Medicine, viz : Allopath, 
 Homceopath and Eclectic shall be represented on said Board 
 of Examiners." Any person wishing to enter upon the 
 practice of medicine in any of its branches, except dentistry, 
 must present to the Board of Medical Examiners a diploma 
 from some medical college in good standing. " The Board 
 shall recognize any college that is recognized by the 
 National Medical Association." He must otherwise present 
 himself before the Board for examination upon Anatomy, 
 Physiology, Chemistry, Pathology, Surgery, Obstetrics and
 
 822 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Therapeutics. If the diploma is found genuine, or if the 
 applicant is found worthy and competent, then the Board 
 issues a certificate in accordance with the facts, signed by 
 all the members, which is conclusive as to the right of the 
 holder to practice medicine in the State. During the recess 
 of the Board two of its members may grant temporary 
 Hcenses, which continue in force till the next regular meet- 
 ing of the Board. But no such license may be granted 
 where an applicant has been rejected by the Board till six 
 months have intervened. 
 
 Five members of the Board constitute a quorum, and a 
 majority of those in attendance is necessary for the rejecting 
 of any application. The rejection does not bar the applicant 
 against another examination three months afterwards. The 
 statute further provides " that the members of the Board 
 representing each School of Medicine shall have the right to 
 examine all applicants of that School, and the Board shall 
 issue the certificate of qualification to applicants who are 
 recommended by the members who belong to said School 
 after such examination." 
 
 Every person holding a certificate must present it to be 
 recorded in the office of the Clerk of the Court of the 
 county in which he resides, and the date of record endorsed 
 upon it. Till this is done he may not exercise any of the 
 rights or privileges conferred to practice medicine. In case 
 of removing to another county the certificate must be again 
 recorded there as before, but practitioners in one county 
 who go into another on professional service are not re- 
 quired to register there. The penalty for practicing medi- 
 cine in violation of the statute is the sum of JS25 for the first 
 offense and $200 for each subsequent offense. But women 
 who follow the avocation of midwife are exempt. A person 
 filing or attempting to file as his own the diploma or certi-
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 823 
 
 ficate of another, or a forged affidavit of identification, will 
 be guilty of felony. Itinerant venders of any drug, nostrum, 
 ointment or application of any kind, intended for the treat- 
 ment of disease or injury, or who may in any way profess to 
 cure or treat diseases or deformity by any drug, nostrum, 
 manipulation or other expedient, in the State, incurs the 
 penalty of a fine of $ioo to ^500. 
 
 The Board of Medical Examiners derive their compensa- 
 tion solely from fees, and can not obligate the State for the 
 payment of any money. 
 
 Texas, 1879. A Board of Medical Examiners is appointed 
 in every Judicial District of the State by the Presiding 
 Judge, composed of no less than three practicing physicians, 
 who are residents of the District and graduates of some 
 medical college recognized by the American Medical Asso- 
 ciation. They are required to examine thoroughly all 
 applicants for certificates of qualification to practice medi- 
 cine in any of its departments, whether they are furnished 
 with medical diplomas or not, upon Anatomy, Physiology, 
 Pathological Anatomy and Pathology, Surgery, Obstetrics 
 and Chemistry ; " but no preference shall be given to any 
 School of Medicine."* When the Board shall be satisfied 
 as to the qualifications of an applicant they grant him a 
 certificate of qualification. This entitles the holder to prac- 
 tice in any county of the State, when it has been recorded 
 in the office of the Clerk of the District Court of the County 
 in which the practitioner may reside or sojourn. Other 
 persons who practice medicine, except those who had been 
 duly authorized before 1875, will be punished as provided 
 in the penal code. But women practicing midwifery strictly 
 as such are not liable to the penalty. 
 
 *The Constitution of Texas specifically inhibits all legislation unfavorable to any 
 School of Medicine.
 
 824 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Utah, 1894. The Governor of Utah appoints biennially 
 a Board of Medical Examiners, seven in number, " from the 
 various recognized Schools of Medicine." They hold office 
 two years and till their successors are appointed. In order 
 to be eligible they must be graduates of legally-chartered 
 medical colleges in good standing in the States in which they 
 exist. The Board has power to issue certificates to all who 
 furnish satisfactory proofs of having received degrees or 
 diplomas from chartered medical colleges in good standing, 
 and pass a satisfactory examination before the Board. Ex- 
 aminations are to be made wholly or partially in writing, 
 and the Board may refuse to issue certificates to individuals 
 guilty of immoral or dishonorable conduct, the nature of 
 which must be stated in writing, and it may revoke them for 
 like causes. The persons, however, may appeal to the 
 Chief Justice of the State, and he may affirm or overrule 
 the decision of the Board. Any person practicing medicine 
 or surgery in the State, without a certificate or contrary to 
 the provisions of the statute, is to be deemed guilty of a 
 misdemeanor. Any person is regarded as practicing medi- 
 cine within the meaning of the act, who shall treat, operate 
 or prescribe for any physical ailment of another for a fee, or 
 hold himself or herself by any means as a physician or 
 surgeon ; but serving in case of emergency, and the admin- 
 istration of family medicines are not prohibited. Commis- 
 sioned surgeons of the Army of the United States, in ths 
 discharge of their special duties, and visiting physicians in 
 the act of consultation, are also exempted. 
 
 Persons desiring to practice Obstetrics must apply to the 
 Board of Examiners for a certificate, and pass a proper ex- 
 amination. Any person practicing Obstetrics without a 
 license or certificate from the Board will be deemed guilty of 
 a misdemeanor. But the exception is added : " Nothing in
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES 825 
 
 this section shall be construed to apply to physicians hold- 
 ing certificates in accordance with this act, or to prohibit 
 service in case of emergency, or to persons practicing 
 Obstetrics where there are no licensed practitioners, or pro- 
 hibiting a fee therefor." 
 
 Vermont, 1876. Physicians are licensed in Vermont by 
 the Censors of the several medical societies holding a 
 charter from the General Assembly of the State. Every 
 society elects a Board of Censors of three members, who 
 hold office for a year and till others are chosen, and are 
 authorized to examine and license practitioners of Medicme, 
 Surgery or Midwifery. They are empowered, in their dis- 
 cretion, to notify practitioners of the terms of the statute, 
 and to require them to comply with these within thirty days, 
 but may extend the time to ninety days. They give a cer- 
 tificate after the examination, setting forth the branches of 
 the medical profession in which they have found the 
 recipient qualified, and licensing him accordingly to practice 
 those branches within the State. The recipient must pro- 
 cure this certificate to be recorded in the Clerk's office of 
 the county in which he resides, or if he is not a resident of 
 the State, it must be so recorded in the county in which it 
 was obtained. The certificate, after it has been recorded, 
 is valid through the State. The Censors may revoke or 
 annul it, if in their judgment the person has obtained it 
 fraudulently, or has forfeited his right to public confidence 
 by conviction of crime. 
 
 A practitioner who by sign or advertisement offers his 
 services to the public, or assumes the title of " Doctor " 
 must obtain a certificate from one of these societies, either 
 from a county, district or State society. A person not a 
 resident of Vermont who has not received a diploma from a 
 medical college, must obtain a certificate from a Board of
 
 826 HISTORY OF MEDICINE 
 
 Censors before he is permitted to practice the Medical Art 
 in the State. Each Board issues certificates without fee to 
 physicians and surgeons who furnish evidence by diploma 
 from a medical college or university, or by certificate of 
 qualification by an authorized Board, which satisfies the 
 Censors that the person presenting such credentials has 
 been, after due examination, deemed to be qualified to 
 practice the branches mentioned in the diploma or cer- 
 tificate. No person practicing in either of the branches of 
 medicine, surgery or midwifery in the State is permitted to 
 enforce in the Courts the collection of a fee or compensa- 
 tion for services rendered, or for medicine or material fur- 
 nished, in the practice of any of the branches for which he 
 has not a certificate. But this provision, and other penalties 
 do not apply to the practice of dentistry, nor to the practice 
 of midwifery by women, nor to physicians who were in prac- 
 tice five years before November 28, 1876. 
 
 A person who practices medicine, surgery or midwifery in 
 the State, or signs a certificate of death for purposes of burial 
 or removal, unless he is authorized to do so by a certificate 
 duly recorded, is liable to a fine of ^50 to ^200 for the first 
 offense and $200 to $500 for each subsequent offense; 
 which fine may be recovered by an action of debt for the 
 use of any person who sues for it, or by indictment. 
 
 Virginia, 1894. There is in Virginia a Board of Medical 
 Examiners appointed by the Governor for a term of four 
 years. It consists of one member, a physician, from each 
 Congressional district, and two from the State at large who 
 are selected from names recommended by the Medical 
 Society of the State of Virginia, and two in addition, 
 Homoeopathic physicians nominated in like manner by the 
 Hahnemann Medical Society of the Old Dominion. The 
 Board examines all persons who make application, who de-
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 827 
 
 sire to commence the practice of medicine in the State ; and 
 when an applicant passes an examination satisfactory as to 
 efficiency before the Board in session, the president of the 
 Board grants him a certificate to that effect. An applicant 
 who fails to pass an examination may not be examined till 
 six months afterward, or till the next meeting of the Board. 
 " No applicant shall be rejected upon his examination on 
 account of his adherence to any particular School of Medi- 
 cine or System of Practice, nor on account of his views as to 
 the method of treatment and cure of diseases." 
 
 When in the opinion of the President of the Board any 
 applicant has been prevented by good cause from appearing 
 at the meeting of the Board, he may appoint a committee of 
 three members who shall examine the applicant, and if they 
 see fit, grant him a certificate which shall be of full force 
 and effect till he can appear at a meeting of the Board. If 
 he does not appear the president may revoke the certificate 
 or extend the permit to another opportunity, in his discre- 
 tion. 
 
 The certificate when granted, must be recorded in the 
 Clerk's office of the county or corporation in which the 
 holder resides, before he may lawfully engage in practice. 
 If he resides in Richmond it must be recorded in the Clerk's 
 office of the Chancery Court of that city ; but if he does not 
 reside in the State, he must cause it to be recorded where he 
 offers to practice, in the Clerk's office of the county or cor- 
 poration, or in the clerk's office of the Chancery Court of 
 Richmond. The penalty for practicing medicine or surgery 
 in the State in violation of the statute is a fine of $50 to 
 $500 for each offense, and forfeiture of all right to compen- 
 sation for the service rendered. 
 
 Washingtoti, 1890. There is a State Medical Examining 
 Board appointed by the Governor. It consists of nine
 
 525 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 members, who are sworn " to well and- faithfully and without 
 partiality perform the duties of such office according to the 
 best of their knowledge and ability." Every person desir- 
 ing to commence the practice of Medicine and Surgery, or 
 either of them, must make application to the Board for a 
 license. This must be supported and accompanied by an 
 affidavit of the applicant setting forth the actual time spent 
 by him in the study of Medicine, and when ; whether it was 
 in an institution of learning, and if so, the name and loca- 
 tion of the institution ; and if not, then where and under 
 whose tutorship it was prosecuted ; the time engaged, if at 
 all, in the actual practice of Medicine and Surgery, and 
 where located at the time ; and the age of the applicant at 
 the time of making the application. He must then at the 
 time and place designated by the Board, or at a regular 
 meeting, submit to an examination in Anatomy, Physiology, 
 Chemistr}^, Histology, Materia Medica, Therapeutics, Pre- 
 ventive Medicines, Practice of Medicine, Surger)', Obstetrics, 
 Diseases of Women and Children, Diseases of the Nervous 
 System, Diseases of the Eye and Ear, Medical Jurisprudence, 
 and such other branches as the Board deem advisable. The 
 examination is directed to be both scientific and practical, 
 and of sufficient severity to test the fitness of the candidate 
 to practice medicine and surgery. It shall be written or 
 printed, or partly written and partly printed, questions and 
 answers, and filed to be preserved. If the examination is 
 satisfactory the Board grants a license to practice. This 
 requires the consent of five members. 
 
 The Board may refuse or revoke a license for " unpro- 
 fessional or dishonorable conduct," by which is defined : 
 I. The procuring, or aiding or abetting in the procuring of 
 a criminal abortion. 2. The employing of what is popularly 
 known as "cappers '' or "steerers," 3, The obtaining of
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 829 
 
 any fee on the assurance that a manifestly incurable disease 
 can be permanently cured 4. The wilful betraying of a 
 professional secret. 5. All advertising of medical business 
 in which untruthful and improbable statements are made. 
 6. All advertising of any medicines or of any means by 
 which the monthly periods of women can be regulated, or 
 the menses re-established if suppressed. 7. Conviction of 
 any offense involving moral turpitude. 8. Habitual in- 
 temperance. A brief and concise statement of the grounds 
 and reasons of the procedure and the decision of the Board 
 in writing is to be filed in the office of the Secretary. But 
 before a license can be revoked a complaint of some person 
 under oath, stating the acts of unprofessional and dishonora- 
 ble conduct, must be filed with the Secretary of the Board ; 
 and a written notice and copy served upon the person 
 accused, with an appointment of time and place of hearing, 
 which must be at least ten days afterward. He may appear 
 with counsel and witnesses for defense, and present other 
 in his own behalf. 
 
 In the case of refusal or revocation of a license, the 
 applicate or the licentiate has the right to appeal within 
 thirty days to the Superior Court in and for the county in 
 which the meeting of the Board was held prior to such 
 action. In case of such appeal the cause will be tried 
 de novo. After it is decided, either party may appeal to the 
 Supreme Court within sixty days thereafter. But no license 
 shall be granted to the applicant, or revocation made, while 
 the controversy is pending. In case the final decision of 
 the Supreme Court be against the Board, then the Court 
 shall make such order as may be necessary, and the Board 
 shall act accordingly. 
 
 After receiving the license the holder must file it with the 
 County Clerk in and for the county in which he resides, and
 
 830 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 if he removes into another county he or she must procure a 
 certified copy and file it in the office of the County Clerk of 
 that county. In case the license is revoked the County 
 Clerk must make a memorandum of that fact. Any person 
 practicing medicine or surgery in the State without having 
 obtained a license, or contrary to the provisions of the 
 statute, incurs a penalty of a fine of $50 to $100, or im- 
 prisonment for ten to ninety days, or both fine and im- 
 prisonment. A person comes within the scope of the en- 
 actment who appends the letters " M. D." or "M. B." to his 
 or her name, or for a fee prescribes, directs or recommends 
 for the use of any person, any drug or medicine or agency 
 for the treatment, cure or relief of any wound, fracture or 
 bodily injury, infirmity or disease : dentists, however, are ex- 
 cepted. 
 
 IVesf Virgifiia, 1895. The Board of Health of West 
 Virginia consists of two persons from each Congressional 
 District of the State, appointed by the Governor. They 
 must be graduates of reputable medical colleges, who have 
 practiced medicine for not less than twelve years continu- 
 ously. A majority constitutes a quorum. The Board, at 
 such times as a majority deems proper, holds examinations 
 for the licensing of practitioners of medicine. There must 
 be not less than three of these in each year, and they are to 
 be held at such places as are convenient to candidates and 
 to the Board. At these examinations written and oral 
 questions are submitted to the applicants for license, which 
 must be of an elementary and practical character, embrac- 
 ing the general subjects of Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry, 
 Materia Medica, Pathological Anatomy, Surgery and 
 Obstetrics, but sufficiently strict to test the qualifications of 
 the candidate as a practitioner of Medicine, Surgery and 
 Obstetrics. But females practicing midwifery are not re-
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 83 1 
 
 quired to undergo such examination. Phiysicians from 
 other States who are duly qualified to practice medicine 
 therein, and are called into consultation in this State by a 
 physician legally qualified, are also exempt from these re- 
 quirements. Every person holding a certificate must procure 
 it to be recorded in the office of the Secretary of the State 
 Board of Health. 
 
 " No applicant for license to practice medicine in this 
 State shall be rejected because of his or her adherence to 
 any particular School or Theory of Medicine. The State 
 Board of Health shall call to their assistance in the exam- 
 ination of any applicant who professes the Homoeopathic or 
 Eclectic School of Medicine, a Homoeopathic or Eclectic 
 physician duly licensed to practice medicine in the State, 
 and such Homoeopathic or Eclectic physician so called to 
 the assistance of the State Board of Health shall be allowed 
 the same per diem and actual expenses incurred hereafter 
 allowed to regular members of the State Board of Health." 
 
 Any person practicing or attempting to practice Medicine 
 Surgery or Obstetrics in the State without having complied 
 with the provisions of the statute, incurs the penalty of a 
 fine from ^50 to $500 for every such offense, or imprison- 
 ment for one to twelve months, or both, at the discretion of 
 the Court. Any person will be regarded as practicing 
 medicine who shall publicly profess to be a physician, and 
 to prescribe for the sick, or who shall append to his name 
 the letters " M. D." This provision applies also to apothe- 
 caries and pharmacists who prescribe for the sick, but not to 
 commissioned officers in the service of the United States, 
 
 Wisconsin, 1897. The Wisconsin Board of Medical Ex- 
 aminers is appointed by the Governor. The appointments 
 are made from three separate lists of ten names each, which 
 are presented to him every second year, one by the
 
 832 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Wisconsin State Medical Society, one by the Homoeopathic 
 Medical Society and one by the Wisconsin State Eclectic 
 Medical Society. They must be graduates of a recognized 
 medical college, and representatives of the different Schools 
 of Medicine. No person may be appointed for more than 
 two terms in succession. The statute provides that "three 
 of the appointees shall be Regulars, and two of them shall 
 be Homoeopathic physicians, and two of them shall be 
 Eclectic physicians, and vacancies in said Board may be 
 filled as they occur by appointment from said list, preserving 
 the same proportion of the different Schools of Medicine." 
 No member of any medical college, or university having a 
 medical department, may be appointed. The Board holds 
 regular meetings each year on the second Tuesday in 
 January, April, July and October — one in Madison, one in 
 Oshkosh and two in Milwaukee ; also other meetings at such 
 times and places as the Board may from time to time deter- 
 mine. It registers applicants for license, the institutions 
 granting degrees and the facts connected with each case. 
 
 All persons commencing the practice of Medicine or 
 Surgery in any of their branches in the State, must apply to 
 the Board for license so to do at the time and place desig- 
 nated by the Board, or at the regular meeting, and submit 
 to an examination in the various branches of Medicine and 
 Surgery ; or they must present a diploma from a medical 
 college that requires at least three courses of not less than six 
 months each before graduation, no two of the courses to be 
 taken in the same twelve months. The examination in 
 Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Practice of Medicine is 
 conducted by the members of the Board representing the 
 School of Medicine that the applicant claims to follow. 
 The proceedings of the Board are to be open at all reasona- 
 ble times to pubUg inspection. After examination, or the
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 833 
 
 presentation of a satisfactory diploma, the Board, if it finds 
 the candidate quaUfied, will grant a license to the applicant 
 to practice medicine in the State. But a license can be 
 granted only upon the concurrence of five of the members. 
 The Board, after due notice and a hearing, may by 
 unanimous vote, revoke the certificate of any registered per- 
 son who has been convicted before the proper courts of 
 crime committed in course of his professional business. 
 The license must be recorded with the County Clerk in the 
 county in which the holder resides, with a memorandum of 
 the date, name and time when recorded. In case of remov- 
 ing to another county the license must be recorded there in 
 like manner. 
 
 A practitioner from another State, holding a certificate 
 from a State Board that imposes similar requirements, may, 
 on the presentation of a diploma, and the payment of the 
 regular fee, be admitted to practice in the State, at the dis- 
 cretion of the Board, without an examination. 
 
 Every person who begins the practice of Medicine or 
 Surgery without having obtained a license, or contrary to the 
 provisions of the enactment, or who not having the license 
 shall advertise or hold himself out to the public as a physi- 
 cian or surgeon or specialist in medicine or surgery in the 
 State, or who shall use the title of " Doctor," or append to 
 his or her name the letters " M. D." or " M. B." meaning 
 thereby Doctor of Medicine, may be deemed guilty of mis- 
 demeanor, and be punished upon conviction by a fine of $50 
 to $100 for each offense, or by imprisonment for three 
 months, or by both fine and imprisonment. Every person is 
 regarded as practicing medicine who appends the letters 
 " M. D." or " M. B." to his or her name, with intent to 
 represent himself or herself as a physician or surgeon, or 
 who for a fee prescribes drugs or other medical or surgical
 
 834 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 treatment for the cure or relief of any wound, fracture, 
 bodily injury, infirmity or disease. Dentists in the practice 
 of their profession are not amenable to these require- 
 ments. 
 
 Wyoming. No person may practice Medicine, Surgery 
 or Obstetrics in Wyoming who has not received a 
 medical education and a diploma from some regularly- 
 chartered medical school having a genuine existence when 
 the diploma was granted. Every physician, surgeon or 
 obstetrician must file a copy of his or her diploma or 
 certificate of graduation with the Register of Deeds of the 
 county in which he or she is engaged in practice, also ex- 
 hibiting a copy of the original, or a certificate from the dean 
 of the medical school attesting the graduation. It is re- 
 quired also that the person shall be identified by the 
 affidavit of two citizens of the county, or by his or her own 
 affidavit, as to identity. The penalty for not complying 
 with the statute is a fine of $50 to $500, or imprisonment 
 for thirty days to six months, or by both fine and imprison- 
 ment for each and every offense. The filing or attempting 
 to file a diploma or certificate as belonging to oneself 
 which belongs to another, or a forged affidavit of identifica- 
 tion, is made a felony. The enactment only requires the 
 prosecution to show that the defendant has practiced medi- 
 cine since it went into effect ; and the defendant is not en- 
 titled to acquittal except he or she shall prove having re- 
 ceived a medical education and holding a genuine diploma 
 from a regularly-chartered medical school. 
 
 The exemptions are made in behalf of a person who in an 
 emergency shall prescribe or give advice in Medicine, 
 Surgery or Obstetrics in a section of country where no 
 physician, surgeon or obstetrician resides within convenient 
 distance, also of persons prescribing in their own families,
 
 SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STATUTES. 835 
 
 and persons claiming to practice Medicine, Surgery or 
 Obstetrics in any section wliere no one having a diploma or 
 certificate of graduation resides. 
 
 There have been two reasons offered for this legislation 
 of the later period : one to elevate the standard of practice, 
 and the other to exclude clairvoyants, magnetic physicians 
 and others from being identified as physicians.* The trend 
 of the period is to make all higher education so costly and 
 difficult to procure that only the wealthy may acquire it. In 
 England university education is coasidered the privilege of 
 the sons of gentlemen, and a yeoman's son who ventures to 
 enter a college or university is made to feel himself classed 
 as an interloper. These medical statutes read as if devised 
 in a like spirit and purpose. They have been enacted, not 
 as constitutional measures, but as warranted by the police 
 power. 
 
 * During the winter sessions of igoi, bills have been introduced in the Legislatures 
 of twenty States to place all these in the category of physicians, and subject them to the 
 official examinations.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 PUBLICATIONS OF AMERICAN REFORMERS IN MEDICINE. 
 
 The immortality of a cause is assured by the vitality of its 
 principles, the fidelity of its supporters and the quality of its 
 literature. Generations pass, each in its turn departing 
 from the ways and opinions of those that preceded it, but 
 the Good and True are permanent and without change. 
 The energy which inspires and gives law to Nature is not 
 the dominion of the worse. Evil can not perpetuate itself. 
 Every new doctrine bases its pretensions upon some ap- 
 parent approximation to the Right. It holds its ground till 
 it is superseded by another of better aims, and while its 
 advocates are earnest and unselfish in its support, not de- 
 grading it to the place of a stepping-stone for personal 
 ambitions, or employing it as a means of pecuniary ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 The importance of literature as an auxiliary to an enter- 
 prise can hardly be estimated too highly. It is a record of 
 what has been thought and done, and perpetuates its re- 
 membrance to later times. Every faith that has dominated 
 a people has established itself by its books ; and even when 
 succeeded by some newer system it has often appeared in 
 another aspect in the bosom of its successors. Plato, 
 Aristotle and Zeno have given shape and aim to all later 
 opinions ; India, China and Egypt of the archaic and pre- 
 historic periods are inspiring the Orient and Occident of the 
 present time, and we are thinking the thoughts of their 
 sages in our own effusions.
 
 PUBLICATIONS OF AMERICAN REFORMERS IN MEDICINE. 837 
 
 Our medical knowledge comes within the same category. 
 The notions which prevailed at a remote antiquity, accounts 
 of which have been unearthed and handed down Ukewise by 
 tradition and written records, are still current, some as new 
 discoveries and others as time-honored maxims. Yet it is 
 no obligation of ours to adhere more closely to former 
 opinion and usage, than our own intuition and experience 
 will justify. We have our own work to do, and our own 
 record to make. We are obligated by duty as physicians, as 
 well as by our common humanity, to carry forward our art 
 to greater accuracy and perfection, and to make known by 
 every laudable means what we think and know. Our future 
 depends vitally upon the character and sufficiency of our 
 literature. 
 
 Right here it behooves us to pay a deserved tribute to 
 those who have faithfully endeavored to render us this ser- 
 vice. In Medicine, as elsewhere, he only is great who serves, 
 and the greatest is the one who best serves all. Francis 
 Bacon made a just as well as severe criticism : " Medicine 
 is a science more professed than labored, and yet more 
 labored than advanced — the labor having been more in a 
 circle than in progression." If he had been more a phil- 
 osopher, he would have known that all progress is in a 
 circle, ascending by a spiral or going downward vertically. 
 It should be regarded as our mission to redeem our art 
 from his imputation. " I hope and believe," said Thomas 
 Jefferson, " that it is from this side of the Atlantic that 
 Europe, which has taught us so many other things, will be 
 led into sound principles in this branch of science, the most 
 important of all, being that to which we commit the care of 
 health and life." 
 
 Our pioneers and teachers during the Nineteenth Century 
 have by no means been remiss in their efforts to provide a
 
 838 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 literature for the use of their fellows and those who were to 
 come after them. They have, as a general rule, copied 
 little from others, but given simply their own observations, 
 and the results of actual experience. They vary in style 
 from the plain speech of the " plain people " to the more 
 cultured utterances of schoolmen ; very generally, however, 
 without effort at display. They were in keeping, however, 
 with the general attainments of the times, and equal, if not 
 superior to, analogous productions from writers in the other 
 Schools of Medicine. They ignored the arts of the 
 charlatan, and the characteristic vaunting of the pretender 
 to superior knowledge. 
 
 A very complete collection of the publications of the 
 Reformers in Medicine of the several Schools, has been 
 made by John Uri Lloyd of Cincinnati. Probably an as- 
 sortment so perfect can not elsewhere be found, even in the 
 Library of the Surgeon-General at Washington. The 
 diligence which Professor Lloyd has displayed in this under- 
 taking can not be too highly commended and admired. It 
 was a work necessary as a memorial of our bibliography, 
 and is certain to be invaluable to the future student of our 
 medical history. By his generous courtesy in making up a 
 list of the books, pamphlets and periodicals in his collection, 
 we are enabled to present a more perfect catalogue of publi- 
 cations the production of writers on reform in Medicine, 
 than could otherwise have been obtained. We accordingly 
 begin with the Lloyd Library. The names marked with an 
 asterisk belong in the category of Botanic and Thomsonian 
 Physicians, who have never affiliated with the Eclectic 
 School of Practice. 
 
 MEDICAL PERIODICALS. 
 
 I. American Eclectic Medical Review.. R. S. Newton, P. 
 A. Morrow. New York. See also LXVII.
 
 MEDICAL PERIODICALS. 839 
 
 II. American Journal of the Indigenous Materia Medica. 
 Incomplete. B. Keith. New York. i860. 
 
 III. American Journal of Medicine. S. H. Potter. (Vol. 
 II, No. 7.) Syracuse, N. Y. 1852. 
 
 *IV. American Journal of Medical Reform. Jos. D. 
 Friend and Hermes M. Sweet. 1851, 1852. See also L. 
 
 V. American Medical Journal. Vol. I, 1856-7. By the 
 Faculty of the American Medical College. Cincinnati. 
 
 VI. American Medical Journal. George C. Pitzer, Edwin 
 Younkin, Mont. M. Hamlin. Complete from 1875 ^^ 
 1898, except No. 10 of Vol. VIII, October, 1898, which 
 is wanted. St. Louis. 
 
 VII. American Medical and Surgical Journal. S. H. 
 Potter, Dwight Russell. Vol. I, 1851; Vol. II, 1852, 
 Nos. 4, 6, 8 on hand. For title of Vol. II see No. Ill 
 above. Consolidated with No. XXVI II and merged into 
 No. LXXXVII. Syracuse, New York. 
 
 VII. a. American Medical and Surgical Journal. S. H. 
 Potter, E. R. Stockwell, J. Kent. Vol. VII, Nos. 8, 
 10, II, 12; Vol. VIII, 1856, Nos. I, 2. For previous 
 volumes see LXXXIII. Syracuse and Cincinnati. 
 
 VIII. Annual of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery. Finley 
 Ellingwood, John V. Stevens. Vols. I-VIII, 1890-1897. 
 Chicago. 
 
 IX. Annual of the Eclectic and Liberal Association of 
 Eastern Indiana. N. G. Smith. Begun 1879. Incom- 
 plete. Lewisville, Indiana. 
 
 X. Arkansas Eclectic Medical Journal. W. L. Leister. 
 Vols. I, II. Complete. Continued as No. LXXXIIIa. 
 Little Rock, Arkansas. 
 
 *XI. Australian Botanic Practitioner. John Broadbent. 
 1891-92. Incomplete. Melbourne, Australia.
 
 840 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 *XII. Bostonian Thomsonian Medical Journal. Vol. I, 
 
 1845-46. Complete. Boston. 
 *XIII. Boston True Thomsonian. Vol. I, 1840 to Vol. II, 
 
 1842. Complete. Boston. 
 *XIV. Botanic-Eclectic Review and Medical Tribune. D. 
 
 TurnbuU. 1885-89. Incomplete. London, England. 
 *XV. Botanic Medical Reformer and Home Physician. 
 
 Thomas Cooke. Vol. I, 1841 and Vol. II, 1842. Later 
 
 volumes wanted. Philadelphia. 
 *XVI. Botanic Practitioner. Thomas Butterfield. 1892. 
 
 London, England. 
 *XVII. Botanic Practitioner. John Simmons. Quarterly. 
 
 Incomplete. Hyde, England. 
 *XVIII. Botanic Medical Recorder. Alva Curtis, William 
 
 H. Cook Vol. XI, 1843 to Vol. XIV, 1847, and Vol. 
 
 XVII, 1851 to Vol. XIX, 1853, on hand. Wanted, 1839 
 
 to 1842, Vols. VIII to X ; 1848 to 1850, Vols. XV, XVI, 
 
 and all after 1853, Vol. XIX. For previous numbers see 
 
 No. LXXXVI. Cincinnati. 
 
 XIX Buchanan's Journal of Man. Joseph Rodes 
 Buchanan. Vols. I, II, III. Complete. Boston. 
 
 XX California Medical Journal. Complete from 1880 
 except index missing in Vol. Ill, 1883. San Francisco, 
 
 XXI. Chicago Medical Times. Robert A. Gunn ; later, 
 H. D. Garrison, W. H. Davis, A. L. Clark, Finley EUing- 
 wood. Complete from 1869 to 1898, except Nos. 9 and 
 12, and Index of Vol. Ill, (1871-73), No. 6 of Vol. VII, 
 (1875-76), and Index of Vol. IX, 1877-78. Chicago. 
 
 *XXII. Cincinnati Medical Recorder. William H. Cook. 
 Vol. LI, Nos. I, 2, 6 on hand. Cincinnati. 
 
 XXIII. Eastern Medical Journal. A. J. Marston. We 
 have Vols. Ill, 1884, and VI, 1886, complete. Missing, 
 Vol. IV, Nos. 2, 6; Vol. VII, 1887, No. 10; and following
 
 MEDICAL PERIODICALS. 64 1 
 
 numbers. Continuation of No. LVII. Worcester, Massa- 
 chusetts. 
 XIV. Eclectic Medical Journal, [last series]. John M. 
 Scudder. Vols. I, II, III, (1870-71), on hand. Complete. 
 Cincinnati. 
 
 XXV. Eclectic Health Journal. Richard A. Hasbrouck. 
 Vol. I, 1892, Nos. 1-4, 6-12; Vol. II, 1893, complete; 
 Vol. Ill, 1894, 1-4, 6-8. Salt Lake City, Utah. 
 
 XXVI. Eclectic Journal and Family Adviser. W. W. 
 Johnston and W. H. Price. Vol. I, 1894, Nos. 1-8. 
 Carthage, Missouri. 
 
 *XXVII. Eclectic Journal of Medicine. John Bell. Four 
 volumes, 1836-40. Philadelphia. 
 
 XXVIII. Eclectic Journal of Medicine. Levi Reuben and 
 L. C. Dolley. Vols. Ill, IV, July 185 1 to December 
 1852. Complete. For previous issue see No. LXVIII. 
 Consolidated with No. VII, and merged into No. 
 LXXXVII. Rochester, New York. 
 
 XXVIII. a. Eclectic Journal of Science. Vol. II, 1835. 
 Previously No. XXX. 
 
 XXIX. Eclectic Medical Advocate. S. House and A. Wilder. 
 Vol. VI, old series, or Vol. I, new series, 1884, complete 
 without index ; Vol. II, 1885, complete with ind3x; Vol. 
 Ill, 1886, complete without index ; Vol. IV, 1887, incom- 
 plete. New York. 
 
 *XXX. Eclectic and Medical Botanist. William Hance. 
 
 Vol. I, 1835. Probably continued as No. XXXVI, [which 
 
 is not named.] Columbus, Ohio. 
 XXXI. Eclectic Medical Journal. Thomas V. Morrow, Jos. 
 
 R. Buchanan, R. S. Newton. No. I, 1849, ^^^^ date. 
 
 Preceded by No. XCI. Cincinnati.
 
 842 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 XXXII. Eclectic Medical Journal of Pennsylvania.* John 
 Buchanan. Vol. VI, 1868, No. 11 ; Vol. VII, 1869 ; Vol. 
 XI, 1873, No. 3 ; Vol. XII, 1874, No. i ; Vol. XV, 1877, 
 Nos. 7, 8, 9; Vol. XVI, 1878, Nos. 1-4, 7, 8, 11. 12 ; Vol. 
 XVII, 1879, Nos. 5-12 ; Vol. XVIII, 1880, Nos. 1-6 are on 
 hand. Others are wanted. Continued later as No. LI. 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 XXXIII. Eclectic Medical Journal of Philadelphia. Wm. 
 Paine. Vol. I, 1858 to Vol, IV, 1861, complete; Vol. V, 
 1862, Nos. 5 and 8 wanted; Vol. VI, 1863, Nos. 3-6 and 
 8-12 wanted; Vol. VII, complete ; the title having been 
 changed to No. XXXV.t Philadelphia. 
 
 XXXIV. Eclectic Medical Record and Psychological Re- 
 view. J. C. Lewis. Begun 1869. Incomplete. Indian- 
 apolis. 
 
 XXXV. Eclectic and University Journal of Philadelphia. 
 William Paine. Vols. VII and VIII. Complete. Con- 
 tinued as No. LXXXIX, Previously No. XXXIII. 
 
 XXXVI. Wanting. 
 
 XXXVII. Eclectic Review. G. W. Boskowitz. Vols. I, II, 
 1890, 1 89 1. Complete. New York. 
 
 XXXVIII. English Eclectic Medical Practitioner and 
 Journal of Medical Dissent. J. Simmons. Vol. I, 1894. 
 Is incomplete. Hyde, England. 
 
 XXXIX. Family Journal of Health. J. M. Scudder. i860. 
 Incomplete. Cincinnati. 
 
 *The Eclectic Medical Journal of Pennsylvania was conducted originally by Doctors 
 Thomas Coolce and Hollenibaek of the Eclectic Medical College, and afterward by Dr. 
 William Paine. After several years Dr. Paine separated abruptly from the Faculty, 
 and set up a rival institution, and began the publication of No. XXXIII. Dr. 
 HoUembaek began The Quarterly Eclectic Medical Journal of Pennsylvania, July, 
 1862, Vol. I, No. 1, which a year or two later passed into the hands of Dr. John 
 Buchanan. 
 
 t Dr. Paine having established a second medical college in Philadelphia, endeavored 
 to procure the approval of the neighboring medical societies. Not succeeding in this, 
 he announced himself in the May number of this volume (1865) as " parting with the 
 venerable name of Eclectic " and afterward declared himself " no longer an Eclectic " 
 but " a new-school practitioner of Medicine. As, however, he did not form a party, 
 nor change his mode of practice, his publications are still enumerated as before.
 
 MEDICAL PERIODICALS. 843 
 
 XL. Georgia Eclectic Medical Journal. Vol. IV, and all 
 from Vol. VII, 1884-5 ^^ 1898 are complete. Other 
 volumes incomplete. Atlanta, Georgia. 
 
 XLI. Independent Medical Investigator. S. S. Boots and 
 J. L. Marsh. Vol. I, 1879-80, and Vol. II, 1880 to May 
 1 88 1, are complete. Combined with the June number, 
 1881, of No. XLIII. In August 1883 Dr. Boots revived 
 the Investigator. Vol. II, 1883-84, Nos. 1-9 is on hand. 
 Probably complete. Greenfield, Indiana. 
 
 XLII. Indiana Eclectic Medical Journal. G. W. Pickerill. 
 Vol. Ill, 1885, tu Vol. VI, 1888. Complete. Other 
 volumes incomplete. Continued later as No. LIX. In- 
 dianapolis. 
 
 XLIII. Indiana Medical Journal. Daniel Lesh. Pub- 
 lished by the Trustees of the Indiana Eclectic Medical 
 College. Vol. I, 1881-82. Complete. Other volumes 
 wanted. Indianapolis. 
 
 XLIV. Journal of Eclectic Medicine. Begun in 1891. In- 
 complete. Morristown, Tennessee. 
 
 XLV to XLIX. Omitted. 
 
 *L. Journal of Medical Reform. Friend and Sweet. 1854. 
 See No. IV. New York. 
 
 LI. Journal of Progressive Medicine. John Buchanan. 
 Preceded by No. XXXII. Incomplete. Philadelphia. 
 
 LII. Journal of Rational Medicine. C. H. Cleaveland. 
 Vol. I, 1868 to Vol. Ill, Complete. Subsequent volumes 
 wanted. Cincinnati. 
 
 LIII. Iowa Medical Journal. John G. Hill and H. O. 
 Conoway. Begun in 1884. Incomplete. Des Moines. 
 
 LIV. Iowa Eclectic Medical Journal. O. H. P. Shoemaker. 
 Begun in 1884. Incomplete. Des Moines. 
 
 LV. Kansas Medical Journal. J. Milton Welch. Begun 
 in 1883. Incomplete. Topeka and La Cygne.
 
 844 HISTORY OF MEDICINE 
 
 LVI. a. Keystone Medical Journal. H. B. Piper, A. B. 
 Woodward. Vols. I, II, III. Complete. Tunkhannock 
 and Tyrone, Pennsylvania. 
 
 *LVI. b. Lobelia Advocate and Medical Recorder. John 
 Rose. Vol. I, 1839. Baltimore. 
 
 LVII. Maine Medical Journal. A. J. Marston. Vol. I, 
 1882, complete ; Vol. II, 1S83, 1-7. Continued as No. 
 XXIII. Lewiston. 
 
 LVIII. a. Massachusetts Medical Journal. H. G. Barrows 
 and Robert A. Reid. Vols. Ill to VIII, 1883-88, also 
 1896-98, complete. Others incomplete. Boston. 
 
 LVIII. b. Medical Eclectic. Alexander Wilder and R. S. 
 Newton. Vol. Ill, 1876, and Vol. V, 1878, complete ; 
 A^ols. I, 1873-74, II and IV, incomplete. Continued as 
 No. LXIX. Preceded by Nos. I and LXVIL New York. 
 
 LIX. Medical Free Press. G. W. Pickerill. Vols. VIII, 
 1890, and X, 1892-93, complete. Others incomplete. 
 Discontinued in 1895. Preceded by No. XLII. Indian- 
 apolis. 
 
 LX. Medical Gleaner. W. C. Cooper and W. E. Bloyer. 
 Begun in 1889. Complete. Cleves and Cincinnati. 
 
 *LXL a. Medical Independent. H. Goadby, E. Kane, L. 
 G. Robinson. Vols. I, II, 1846, on hand. Detroit. 
 
 LXI. b. Medical Independent. William Paine. Vol. XIV. 
 Incomplete. (Probably supplementary to No. XXXV.) 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 LXII. Omitted. 
 
 LXIII. Medical Tribune. Robert A. Gunn and Alexander 
 Wilder. Vols. I, 1878, to VIII, 1892, complete except 
 No. II of Vol. II, September, 1881. Vol. VI was inter- 
 rupted in 1884 and resumed as Vol. VI in 1890. Of 
 Vol. VI in 1884 we have Nos. 1-6 ; of Vol. VI, 1890, No.
 
 MEDICAL PERIODICALS 845 
 
 2 (May) is missing. Volumes subsequent to Vol. VIII 
 are incomplete. New York. 
 
 *LXIV, Middle States Medical Reformer, Palemon 
 John and John S. Prettyman. Vols. I to III, 1854-5, and 
 Vol. IV, 1857, Nos. 1-5, on hand, except Index to Vol. 
 III. Millville, Pennsylvania. 
 
 LXV. Monthly Mirror. Robert A. Gunn. Vol. I, 1873- 
 74,. Followed by No. LXIII. New York. 
 
 LXVI. a. Nebraska Medical Journal. W. S. Latta. Begun 
 1884. Incomplete. Lincoln. 
 
 *LXVI. b. New England Botanic and Surgical Journal. 
 Calvin Newton. We have Vol. I, 1847. ^o^- ^^> 185 1 ; 
 Vol. VII, 1852; Vol. VIII, 1853; Vol. X, 1855. All 
 others wanted. In Vol. VI it became No. XCIV. [It 
 was preceded by the New England Medical Eclectic] 
 Worcester, Massachusetts. 
 
 LXVII. New York Eclectic Medical Review. R. S. New- 
 ton, Edwin Freeman, P. Albert Morrow. Vols. I to V, 
 1866-1870. Complete. Also Vol. VII, 1871-72. Com- 
 plete. Vol. VI is missing. In Vols. Ill to VII the title 
 is changed to No. I. New York. 
 
 LXVIII. New York Eclectic Medical and Surgical Journal. 
 William W. Hadley* (and S. H. Potter). Complete set, 
 Vols. I, II, 1849 to June, 185 1. Continued as No. 
 XXVIII. Syracuse. N. Y. 
 
 LXIX. New York Medical Eclectic. R. S. Newton. Vol. 
 VI, 1879, complete; Vols. YII and VIH, incomplete. 
 Preceded by No. LVIII b. New York. 
 
 LXX. Paine's Journal of Domestic Medicine. William 
 Paine. Vol. I, 1873. Incomplete. Philadelphia. 
 
 LXXI. Omitted. 
 
 * Dr. Hadley afterward conducted the New York Pathological Journal at New York, 
 
 and died in 1870.
 
 846 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 LXXII. People's Medical Monthly. Edwin F. Rush. Be- 
 gun 1886. Incomplete. Chicago. 
 *LXXIII. Philadelphia Botanic Sentinel and Thomsonian 
 
 Medical Revolutionist. Vol. Ill, 1838 and Vol. IV, 1839. 
 
 All others wanted. Philadelphia. 
 LXXIV. Philadelphia University Journal of Medicine and 
 
 Surgery. Joseph Longshore and E. D. Buckman. 1871. 
 
 Odd numbers. See No. LXXXIX. Philadelphia. 
 *LXXV. Physio-Medical Journal. George Hasty. Vols. 
 
 Ill, 1886, and XIII. Complete. All others incomplete. 
 
 Indianapolis. 
 *LXXVI. Physio-Medical Recorder and Surgical Journal, 
 
 Vols. XVII, 1849, ai^d XVIII, 1850. Complete. All 
 
 other volumes wanted. Continued as No. LXXVII. 
 
 Cincinnati. 
 *LXXVII. Physio-Medical Recorder and Surgical Journal. 
 
 Vol. XIX, 1 85 1. Other volumes wanted. Preceded by 
 
 No. LXXVI. 
 *LXVIII. Physio-Medical Era and Journal of Health. N. 
 
 K. Hard and D. W. Bloom. Vol. I, 1849-50. No. 10 
 
 missing. All other volumes wanted. Mount Vernon, 
 
 Ohio. 
 LXIX. St. Louis Medical Journal. George H. Field. 
 
 Vols. II. 1875, and XIII, 1888. Complete. All others 
 
 incomplete. St. Louis. 
 *LXXX. Sanative Medicine. G. H. Mayhugh and after- 
 ward T. J. Lyle. Begun 189 1 and complete to date. 
 
 Westerville and Salem, Ohio. 
 LXXXI. Omitted. 
 *LXXXII. Southern Botanic Journal. D. F. Naudain. 
 
 Vol. I, 1836. Subsequent volumes wanted. Charleston, 
 
 South Carolina.
 
 MEDICAL PERIODICALS. 847 
 
 LXXXIII. a. Southwestern Progressive Medical Journal. 
 
 W. L. Leister. See No. X. Rogers, Arkansas. 
 LXXXIII. b. Syracuse Medical and Surgical Journal. S. 
 
 H. Potter. Vol. VI, 1854, or Fourth Series, Vol. I, Nos. 
 
 i-ii, February to December. Complete. Preceded by 
 
 No. LXXXVII and succeeded by No. VII. c. Syracuse, 
 
 N. Y. 
 *LXXXIV. Thomsonian Medical Revolutionist. See No. 
 
 LXXIII. Philadelphia. 
 *LXXXV. Thomsonian Messenger. 0. B. Lyman. Vols. 
 
 I, II, 1842-3. Norwich, Connecticut. 
 ♦LXXXVI. Thomsonian Recorder. Vol. I, 1883 to Vol. 
 
 VII, 1838, on hand. Continued later as No. XVIII. 
 
 Columbus, Ohio. 
 LXXXVII. Union Journal of Medicine. Levi Reuben and 
 
 S. H. Potter. Vol. V, 1853, Nos. 1-7. Wanted, 8-12. 
 
 Preceded by Nos. VII and XXXVIII. Continued by Dr. 
 
 Reuben in New York, and followed by Dr. Potter as No. 
 
 LXXXIII. b. Syracuse and New York. 
 LXXXVIII. United States Medical Investigator. Duncan 
 
 Brothers, Begun 1865. Incomplete. Chicago. 
 LXXXIX. University Journal of Medicine and Surgery. 
 
 Odd numbers of 1857-70 on hand. Continued in 187 1 as 
 
 No. LXXIV. Preceded by No. XXXV. Philadelphia. 
 XC. West-American Review. G. W. L. Bickley. Begun 
 
 1853. Vol. I. Complete. Cincinnati. 
 XCI. Western Medical Reformer. Thomas Vaughan 
 
 Morrow, I. G. Jones and associates in Worthington Medi- 
 cal College. 1836 to 1843. Complete set. Continued 
 
 as No. XXXI. 
 XCII, XCIII. Omitted. 
 XCIV. Worcester Journal of Medicine. F. H. Kelley. 
 
 Preceded by LXVI. b. Worcester, Mass.
 
 848 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 [Those marked with an asterisk are works of the Botanic 
 
 Schools.] 
 
 Abbott, F. W, The Education of Youth in Matters Sexual. 
 Taunton, Mass. 1895. 
 
 Abbott, F. W. Limitation of the Family. Taunton. 1891. 
 
 Allen, Paul W. The Eclectic System of Medicine, its 
 Origin, Remedies, Success. New York. 1869. 
 
 Beach, Wooster. An Improved System of Midwifery. New 
 York. 1847. 
 
 Beach, Wooster. Medical and Botanic Dictionary. New 
 York. 1847. 
 
 Beach, Wooster. The American Practice of Medicine. 
 Three volumes. New York. 1833. 
 
 Beach, Wooster, Dr. Vol. III. New York. 1836. 
 
 Beach, Wooster. The Family Physician* (condensed into 
 one volume.) Cincinnati. 1889. 
 
 Bickley, G. W. L. Introductory Address Delivered at the 
 Eclectic Medical Institute, November 10, 1S53. Cincin- 
 nati. 1853. 
 
 Bickley, G. W. L. Lecture before the Class of E. M. 
 Institute, November 6, 1853. Cincinnati. 1853. 
 
 Bickley, G. W. L. The West-American Review. A 
 Critical Encyclopaedia. Vol. I. Cincinnati. 1853. 
 
 Bickley, G. W. L. Principles of Scientific Botany. Cincin- 
 nati. 1853. 
 
 *Biggs, A. The Botanic Medical Reference Book. Mem- 
 phis, Tennessee. 1847. 
 
 Buchanan, John. A Practical Treatise of Midwifery. With 
 
 * Another edition of Dr. Beach's work, condensed into a single volume, was published 
 in England by the late Dr. Thomas Simmons. Dr. Beach, himself, also issued a 
 revised work in three volumes at a later period — Vol.1, Practice of Medicine ; Vol 
 II, Surgery : Vol. Ill, Materia Medica.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 849 
 
 an Appendix containing the Eclectic Pharmacopoeia. 
 
 Philadelphia. 1866. 
 Buchanan, John. A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of 
 
 Children. Philadelphia. 1866. 
 Buchanan, John, and J. F. Siggins. Dispensatory and 
 
 Pharmacopoeia of North America and Great Britain. 
 
 Philadelphia. 1878. 
 Buchanan, Joseph Rodes. Introductory Lecture at the 
 
 Eclectic Medical Institute, Cincinnati, 1850. 
 Buchanan, Joseph Rodes. Manual of Psychometry — The 
 
 Dawn of the New Civilization. Boston. 1885. 
 Buchanan, Joseph Rodes. Outlines of Lectures on the 
 
 Neurological System of Anthropology. Four parts in one 
 
 volume. Cincinnati. 1854. 
 Buchanan, Joseph Rodes. Eclecticism and Exclusivism. 
 
 Introductory Lecture. Cincinnati, 1854. 
 Buchanan, Joseph Rodes. Primitive Christianity. Volume 
 
 I. San Jose, California. [Not medical.] 1897. [Vol- 
 ume II of this book was published in 1899.] 
 Buchanan, Joseph Rodes. A Grand Reception — The 
 
 Spirited Anniversary of Eighty-Four Years. Voices from 
 
 the Higher Realms. (In The Light of Truth.) Vol. 
 
 XXIV, No. I. Columbus, Ohio. 189 1. 
 Buchanan, Joseph Rodes. Wonders of the Infinite. (From 
 
 the Progressive Thinker, Chicago, May, 1898.) 
 Buchanan, Joseph Rodes. Primitive Christianity — The 
 
 Rise and Fall of Pseudo-Christianity. (In Progressive 
 
 Thinker, September 17, 1898.) 
 Coe, Grover. Positive Medical Agents. New York. 1855. 
 Coe, Grover. Concentrated Organic Medicines. New 
 
 York. 1858. 
 Coe, Grover. Concentrated Organic Medicines. Ninth 
 
 Edition, twelve new pages. New York. 1867.
 
 850 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Collins, A. J. What is Eclecticism ? 
 
 Cooper, James. From Allopathy to Eclecticism. (Manu- 
 script in lead pencil.) Bellefontaine, Ohio, June 4; 1892. 
 
 Cooper, W. C. Autobiographical Sketch and Poem 
 (^" Irene" in Moody's Magazine of Medicine, Vol, I.) 1896. 
 
 Cooper, W. C. Occult Manifestations (in Areno^ Boston. 
 1895. 
 
 Cooper, W. C. The Dream City. Cleves, Ohio. 
 
 Downing, B. P. Reformed Practice and Family Physician. 
 Utica, New York. 185 1. 
 
 Downs, L. S. The Three Schools of Medicine, Their Rela- 
 tive Differences and Practical Advantages. Galveston, 
 Texas. 
 
 Eastman, Buell. Practical Treatise on Diseases Peculiar to 
 Women and Girls : to which is appended an Eclectic 
 System of Midwifery. Second Edition. Connersville, 
 Indiana. 1845. 
 
 EUingwood, Finley. A Systematic Treatise on Materia 
 Medica and Therapeutics, with Pharmacy, etc., by J. Uri 
 Lloyd. Chicago, 1898. 
 
 Fearn, John. Obituary of Dr. John M. Scudder. Oakland, 
 California. 1894. 
 
 Fearn, John. Shall the Eclectic Practice of Medicine be 
 Perpetuated ? 
 
 Fclter, H. W The Genus Rhus in Medicine. 1895. 
 
 Felter, H. W. The Therapeutics of the Respiratory Organs, 
 Reprinted from Eclectic Medical Journal. 
 
 Foltz, Kent O. See Webster, H. T. 
 
 Freeman, Edwin. Biography of Dr. J. M. Scudder. 
 
 Freeman, Zoheth. See Sherwood, William. 
 
 Giles, Alfred E. Free Physicians' and Patients" Rights — 
 Civil and Medical Liberty in the Healing Art. With
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 85 1 
 
 Corroborative Letters from E. Crowell and Joseph R. 
 
 Buchanan. Boston. 1880. 
 Giles, Alfred E. The War of the Doctors on the Rights of 
 
 the People. Second Edition. Boston. 1881. 
 Good, Peter P. The Family Flora and Materia Medica 
 
 Botanica. Two volumes. Elizabethtown, New Jersey. 
 
 1845. 
 
 Goss, I. J. M. The New Materia Medica and Therapeutics. 
 St. Louis. 1877. 
 
 Goss, L J. M. The American Practice of Medicine. Phila- 
 delphia. 1882. 
 
 Gunn, Robert A. See Medical Tribune. 
 
 Hadley, William W. See New York Eclectic Medical and 
 Surgical Journal, Vol. II. Rochester, N. Y. 1850. 
 
 Hance, William. See Eclectic and Medical Botanist. 
 
 Hance, William. See Eclectic and Medical Journal of 
 Science, Vol. II. Columbus, Ohio. 1855. 
 
 Hartley, W. H. Tribute to Professor Scudder. (Reprinted 
 from the Eclectic Medical Journal.) 
 
 Hollembaek, Henry. The American Eclectic Materia 
 Medica. Containing 125 Illustrations of Trees and Plants 
 of the American Continent. Philadelphia. 1885. 
 
 Howe, A. J. Biography by J. Uri Lloyd. (Reprinted from 
 Eclectic Medical Journal.) Cincinnati. 1894. 
 
 Howe, A. J. Miscellaneous Papers. By Mrs. G. L. Howe. 
 Cincinnati. 1894. 
 
 Howe, A. J. Latin as a Compulsory Qualification in the 
 Medical Student's Preparatory Education. Cincinnati. 
 
 Howes, Pitts Edwin. Preventive Medicine. Address be- 
 fore the Massachusetts Eclectic Society, June, 1895. 
 
 Jones, I, G. The American Eclectic Practice of Medicine 
 V. Posthumous Writings of T. V. Morrow. Two volumes. 
 Cincinnati. 1854.
 
 852 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Jones, I. G. and Wm. Sherwood. American Eclectic Prac- 
 tice of Medicine. Cincinnati. 1857. 
 
 Jones, Lorenzo E. Introductory Lecture at the Eclectic 
 Medical Institute, Cincinnati. 1850. 
 
 Jones, Lorenzo E. Exposition : Scudder's School — Is it 
 Eclectic? Cincinnati. 1872. 
 
 Jones, Lorenzo E. and A. H. Baldridge. An Exposition of 
 the Character of J. R. Buchanan, in Reply to his Defama- 
 tory Attack upon L. E. Jones and others. 
 
 King, John. Life, by J. U. Lloyd. 
 
 King, John. Introductory Lecture at the Eclectic Medical 
 Institute, Cincinnati. 1852. 
 
 King, John. Special Medical Legislation. An Address 
 Delivered before the National Eclectic Medical Associa- 
 tion at its Annual Meeting in Cincinnati in June, 1884, 
 and published by order of the Association. 
 
 King, John. The Coming Freeman. [Non-medical.] Cin- 
 cinnati. 1890. 
 
 King, John. The Cause of Chronic Diseases. Cincinnati. 
 1867. 
 
 King, John. American Eclectic Obstetrics. Cincinnati. 
 1866. 
 
 King, John. Woman and Her Diseases. First Edition. 
 Cincinnati. 1859. 
 
 King, John. Woman and Her Diseases. Second Edition. 
 Cincinnati, i860. 
 
 King, John. The American Family Physician, or Domestic 
 Guide to Health. Cincinnati. 1857. 
 
 King, John. The Eclectic Dispensatory of the United 
 States of America. Cincinnati. 1854. Supplement by 
 J. U. Lloyd. Cincinnati. 1880. 
 
 *Kost, John. The Practice of Medicine, Embracing a
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 853 
 
 Treatise on Materia Medica and Pharmacy. Mount 
 Vernon, Ohio. 1847. 
 
 *Kost, John. Elements of Materia Medica and Thera- 
 peutics. Cincinnati. 1849. 
 
 *Kost, John. Domestic Medicine. Cincinnati. 1849. 
 
 *Kost, John. Text-Book of Medical Jurisprudence. Cin- 
 cinnati. 1885. 
 
 Lindorme, C. A. F. Scientific Basis of Eclecticism in 
 Medicine. An Address before the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association at Topeka in 1883. 
 
 Lloyd, J. U. American Pharmacopoeias and Dispensatories. 
 Reprinted from the American Joiirual of P/iar?>iacy., De- 
 cember 1896. 
 
 Lloyd, J. U. Supplement to the American Dispensatory. 
 Cincinnati. 1880. 
 
 Lloyd, J. U. Life of John King, M. D., and the Discovery 
 of Podophyllin. Cincinnati. 1894. 
 
 Lloyd, J. U. Life of A. J. Howe, M. D. Cincinnati. 1894. 
 
 Lloyd, J. U. Drugs and Medicines in North America. Cin- 
 cinnati. 1874-5. 
 
 McClanahan, J. T. Rhus Aromatica. A Paper Read at the 
 Meeting of the National Eclectic Medical Association at 
 St. Louis in 1881. 
 
 McPheron, E. Melvin. Eclecticism versus Allopathy. Re- 
 printed from the Eclectic Health Journal. Salt Lake City, 
 Utah. 1882. 
 
 Massie, J. C. A Treatise on the Eclectic Southern Practice 
 of Medicme. Philadelphia. 1854. 
 
 Mayer, Edward R. Specific Medication. Hints Toward a 
 Better Knowledge of Methods and Substances Used. 
 Pittston, Penn. 1876. 
 
 Meader, L. P. The People's Medical Companion and 
 Family Guide. Cincinnati. 1861.
 
 854 HISTORY OF MEDICINE 
 
 Meader, L. P. The People's Physicians. Cincinnati, i860. 
 
 Miller, Charles N. Should There Be a Law to Regulate the 
 Practice of Medicine ? (Negative argument.) (From 
 California Medical Journal, January, 1899. San Francisco. 
 
 Miller, Charles N. The Corset : Thereby Hangs a String. 
 (From California ^'I/<?/'//r<?/ /(9///7/^?/, November, 1898. San 
 Francisco. 
 
 *Monill, G. A. and Brown D. P. Trial of Doctor Frost. 
 Philadelphia. 1838. 
 
 Morrow, P. Albert. See American Medical Review. 
 
 Morrow, Thomas V. See Jones, I. G. 
 
 Newton, Calvin, and Marshall Calkins. Thoracic Diseases ; 
 with a Biographic Sketch of Doctor Newton. Worcester, 
 Mass. 1854. 
 
 Newton, Robert S. An Eclectic Treatise on the Practice of 
 Medicine. Cincinnati. 1861. 
 
 Newton, Robert S. See also Sherwood Wm., Powell Wm. 
 Byrd, The American Eclectic Medical Review, The Ameri- 
 can Medical Register, The Medical Eclectic. New York. 
 
 Niederkorn, J. S. A Ready Guide to Specific Medication. 
 Bradford, Ohio. 1893. 
 
 Olsen, Charles. (Of Olsen in Utah.) Herbs as Medicine. 
 Thesis at the Eclectic Medical Institute, Cincinnati, 1898. 
 
 Paine, William. Principles and Practice of Medicine. 
 Second Edition. Philadelphia. 1868. 
 
 Paine, William. Medical Properties, and Users of Concen- 
 trated Medicines. Philadelphia. 1865. 
 
 Paine, William. An Epitome of the American Eclectic 
 Practice of Medicine. Philadelphia. 1857. 
 
 Paine, William. History of the Rise, Progress and Prin- 
 ciples of the American Eclectic Practice of Medicine 
 (taken from Journal of the Franklin Institute.) Phila- 
 delphia. 1849.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 855 
 
 Piper, Henry B. Inaugural Address as President of the 
 Pennsylvania Eclectic Medical Association, at Altoona, 
 October, 1878. (Published in N. Y. Medical Eclectic.) 
 
 Piper, Henry B. Address before the Pennsylvania Eclectic 
 Medical Association at Bellefonte, 1879. 
 
 Pitzer, George C. Eclectricity in Medicine and Surgery. St. 
 Louis. 1893. 
 
 Potter, Stephen H. Compendium of Principles and Prac- 
 tice of Medicine, Second Edition. Hamilton, Ohio. 
 1897. 
 
 Potter, Stephen H. Notes of Lectures on the American 
 Practice of Medicine. Syracuse, N. Y. 1855. 
 
 Potter. Stephen H. See the American Medical and Surgical 
 Journal. Syracuse Medical and Surgical Journal. 
 
 Powell, William Byrd. The Natural History of the Human 
 Temperaments. Second Edition. Cincinnati. 1869. 
 
 Powell, William Byrd, and R. S. Newton. The Eclectic 
 Practice of Medicine. Cincinnati. 1854. 
 
 Prettyman, John S. See Middle States Medical Reformer. 
 
 Priest, N. L. Medical Companion. Exeter, New Hamp- 
 shire. 1838. 
 
 Rafinesque, Constantin S. Manual of the Medical Botany 
 of the United States of America. Two volumes. Phila- 
 delphia. 1828, 1830. 
 
 Rafinesque, Constantin S. The Pleasures and Duties of 
 Wealth. Philadelphia. 1830. 
 
 Rafinesque, Constantin S. American Manual of the Grape 
 Vine and the Art of Making Wine. Philadelphia. 1830. 
 
 Reeve, J. C. The Latest System in Medicine. Columbus, 
 
 Ohio. '- ■; / 
 
 Reuben, Levi. See Union Journal of Medicine. 
 Rogers, H. N. See Transactions of Wisconsin Eclectic 
 Medical Society.
 
 856 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Scudder, John K. Table of Specific Indications and Doses 
 of Eclectic Remedies. Revised to May 1893. Cincinnati. 
 
 Scudder, John K. Eclectics and Life Insurance. Eclectic 
 Medical Journal, May, 1898. 
 
 Scudder, John K. Fair Medical Legislation, in Transac- 
 tions of National Eclectic Medical Association for 1897. 
 
 Scudder, John M, Biographic Sketch by J. U. Lloyd, in 
 Eclectic Medical Journal, January, 1895. 
 
 Scudder, John M. Obituary by John Fearn. Oakland, 
 California. 
 
 Scudder, John M. Tribute, by W. H. Hartley. Sydney, 
 Australia. From Eclectic Medical Journal. Cincinnati. 
 
 Scudder, John M. Specific Medication — What is It? 
 
 Scudder, John M. A Brief History of Eclectic Medicine. 
 1879. 
 
 Scudder, John M.. The Essential Differences Between the 
 Three Schools of Medicine. 
 
 Scudder, John M. On the Use of Medicated Inhalations. 
 Cincinnati. 1866. 
 
 Scudder, John M. On the Use of Medicated Inhalations. 
 Fourth Edition. 
 
 Scudder. John M. Specific Medication and Specific Medi- 
 cines. Seventh Edition. Cincinnati. 1876. 
 
 Scudder, John M. Specific Medication and Specific Medi- 
 cines. Tenth Edition. t88i. 
 
 Scudder, John M. See Materia Medica. 
 
 Scudder, John M. The Family Journal of Health. Febru- 
 ary to July. Cincinnati, i860. 
 
 Scudder, John M. The Eclectic. Three volumes. Cin- 
 cinnati. 1870-71. 
 
 Scudder, John M. Domestic Medicine, or Home-Book of 
 Health. Vol. I. Complete. Cincinnati. 1865.
 
 BIRLIOORAPHY. 857 
 
 Scudder, John M. Specific Diagnosis, Fourth Edition. 
 Cincinnati. 1878. 
 
 Scudder, John M. The American Eclectic Materia Medica 
 and Therapeutics. Eleventh Edition. Revised and Re- 
 written. Cincinnati. 1891. 
 
 Scudder, John M. Practical Treatise on Diseases of 
 Women. Fourth Edition. Cincinnati. 1866. Fifth Edi- 
 tion. 1877. 
 
 Scudder, John M. Some Miscellaneous Writings of the 
 late Dr. Scudder — " Some Reminiscences." 
 
 Scudder, John M. Official Announcement of the Death of 
 Dr. Scudder by Officers of National Eclectic Medical 
 Association, with Obituary by G. W. Pickerill, in Medical 
 Free Press. 
 
 Scudder, John M. and Sons. Catalogue headed : " Of 
 Interest to Every Eclectic Physician." 
 
 Sherwood, William. Introductory Lecture on Medical Edu- 
 cation, at Eclectic Medical Institute, 1852. 
 
 Sherwood, William. History of the Expulsion of Doctors 
 Robert S. Newton and Zoheth Freeman from the Eclectic 
 Medical Institute. 1854. 
 
 Simmons, N. See Journal of Kansas Eclectic Medical 
 Association. 
 
 Thomas, Rolla L. Eclecticism, The American System of 
 Medicine. Read before the Wisconsin Eclectic Medical 
 Society, 1867. 
 
 Watkins, Lyman. An Eclectic Compendium of th ' Prac- 
 tice of Medicine. Cincinnati. 1895. 
 
 Webster, Herbert T. Principles of Medicine. Oakland, 
 California. 1891. 
 
 Webster, Herbert T. Dynamical Therapeutics. Assisted 
 by J. Uri Lloyd and Kent O. Foltz. Oakland. 1893. 
 
 Webster, Herbert T, Dynamical Therapeutics. Assisted by
 
 858 HISTORY OF MEDICINE, 
 
 J. U. Lloyd and Kent O. Foltz. Second Edition. San 
 
 Francisco. 1898. 
 Weyer, A. The Family Physician, or Poor Man's Friend. 
 
 St. Clairsville, Ohio. i88t. 
 Wilder, Alexander. See Transactions of the National 
 
 Eclectic Medical Association, Vol. V, 1877, to Vol. XXIV,, 
 
 1895. (As Secretary and contributor.) 
 Wilder, Alexander. See Medical Tribune. Medical Eclectic. 
 Wilder, Alexander. Biography of Wooster Beach in Eclectic 
 
 Medical Journal. 1893. 
 Wilder, Alexander. Plea for Collegiate Education of 
 
 Women. N. Y. 1874. 
 Wilder, Alexander. Intermarriage of Kindred. (Approving.) 
 
 1870. 
 Wilder, Alexander. Perils of Premature Burials. 1871. 
 Wilder, Alexander. The Soul. 1883. 
 Wilder, Alexander. Mind and Cerebration. 
 Wilder, Alexander. Later Platonists. 1884. 
 Wilder, Alexander. The Ganglionic Nervous System. 1882. 
 Wilder, Alexander. The Antecedent Life. 1895. 
 Wilder, Alexander. Life Eternal. 1885. 
 Wilder, Alexander. The Earlier Period of Reformed Medi- 
 cine. (From Eclectic Medical Journal.) 1898. 
 Wilder, Alexander. Scientific Feeding. (In Scientific 
 
 Man.) 1881. 
 Wilder, Alexander. Fallacy of Vacination. 1878. 
 Wilder, Alexander. Jesus of Nazareth. (Clipping from 
 
 Religio-Philosophical Journal, September, 1879.) 
 Wilder, Alexander. See also Metophysical Magazine, 
 
 Journal American Akademe, Universal Brotherhood, Ideal 
 
 Review, etc., etc. 
 Wilkinson, G. E. Botanic-Medical Practice. Cincinnati. 
 
 1845.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 859 
 
 Complete as the catalogue of Professor Lloyd appears, the 
 number can be largely increased, and even fall short of a 
 perfect enumeration. The early Reformers of different 
 places and shades of sentiment, felt the need of an intelli- 
 gent statement of their views and procedures. Books were 
 published and periodicals issued, almost in profusion. 
 Some had an existence of many years, while others had only 
 a name for a brief p"riod and were forgotten. Yet their 
 work was done faithfully, and their utterances were not in 
 vain. Public sentiment was changed, and the persecutions 
 which characterized the former years of the Nineteenth 
 Century were brought to an end by legislative action, follow- 
 ing in the wake of strenuous effort and a broader intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 The Botanic Physician^ by Elisha Smith, published in 
 Nuw York in 1830, was a work of merit equal to any of the 
 time. 
 
 Dr. Beach's publications underwent many revisions, 
 " The American Practice of Medicine," first issued in three 
 volumes, was afterward condensed and published as The 
 Family Physician, in which form it had an extensive sale, 
 and, indeed, is not yet superseded by its numerous suc- 
 cessors. He afterward prepared three new volumes, on 
 Surgery, Practice of Medicine and Materia Medica, which 
 quickly found sale. Besides these he published a little 
 manual of Physiology, a Medical Dictionary and a treatise 
 on Midwifery. He by no means confined his labors to the 
 medical field, but for years published a religious periodical 
 setting forth peculiar views on various doctrines and ques- 
 tions of personal duty. They created some agitation at the 
 time, and some of them are still extant in other forms. 
 
 The Digest >■/ Materia Aledica by Albert Merrell, pub- 
 lished in Philadelphia, was prepared under the supervision
 
 86o HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 and with the concurrence of a committee of the National 
 Eclectic Medical Association, and has the official approval 
 of that body. It embraces a full pharmacopceia, and joins 
 the merits of conciseness, thoroughness and fidelity. 
 
 The leading members of the Colleges at Philadelphia also 
 wrote works of great value of which the principal ones are 
 likewise here enumerated. 
 
 Band, Charles. Eclectic Practice, Its Office and Future. 
 Band, Charles. Eclectic Materia Medica, New Remedies, 
 
 Consumption and Its Cure. From Transactions of the 
 
 National Eclectic Medical Association. 
 Brown, O. Phelps. The Complete Herbalist. Jersey City, 
 
 N. J. 1872. 
 
 Buchanan, John. The Eclectic Practice of Medicine. 1861. 
 
 Buchanan, John. Treatment of Venereal Diseases. 1866. 
 
 Ellingwood, Finley. Synopsis of Medical Chemistry. Chi- 
 cago. 
 
 Ellingwood, Finley. Manual of Urinalysis. 
 
 Farnum, E. J. Deformities : A Text-Book on OrthopEedic 
 Surgery. Chicago. 
 
 Foote, E. B. Plain Home-Talk and Medical Common 
 Sense. New York. 1870. 
 
 Foote, E. B. Science in Story, or Sammy Tubbs the Boy 
 Doctor and Sponsie the Troublesome Monkey. New 
 York. 1874. 
 
 Foote, Edward B. Home Cyclopedia of Popular Medical, 
 Social and Sexual Science, embracing his New Book on 
 Health and Disease, with Recipes Treating of the Human 
 System, Hygiene and Sanitation — Causes, Prevention, 
 Cure, and Home Treatment of Chronic Diseases, In- 
 cluding Private Words for Both Sexes and 250 Practical 
 Recipes: Also Embracing "Plain Home Talk on Love,
 
 biblio(;raphy. 86i 
 
 Marringe and Parentage. Twentieth Century Revised 
 and Enlarged Edition. New York. 1891. 
 
 Foote, E. B. Pathology of the Primary Causes of Disease, 
 Insanity and Premature Death. A Paper Read Before 
 the World's Medical Congress at Chicago, June i, 1893. 
 New York. 
 
 Gunn, Robert A. Treatise on Venereal Diseases. New 
 York. 1876. 
 
 Gunn, Robert A. Home Physician. New York. 1883. 
 
 Gunn, Robert A. Forty Days \\'ithout Food, — Observa- 
 tions of the Famous Fast of Dr. Tanner. New York. 
 1881. 
 
 Gunn, Robert A. Vaccination ; Its Fallacies and Evils. 
 New York. 1878. 
 
 Hill, Benjamin L. Among the publications by Eclectic 
 writers in Cincinnati not included in the Lloyd Catalogue, 
 was a Treatise on Surgery by Benjamin L. Hill. Dr. W. 
 Sherwood, of the College of Eclectic Medicine, also issued 
 a work on the Eclectic Practice. 
 
 Howe, A. J. Fractures and Dislocations. Cincinnati. I870. 
 
 Howe, A. J. Operative Gynaecology. Cincinnati. 1890. 
 
 Isaacs, Judah.* Eye and Ear: Their Diseases. Philadel- 
 phia. 1861. 
 
 JeanSon, J. A. Pathological Anatomy, and Physical 
 Diagnosis. 
 
 JeanSon, J. A. Diseases of the Sexual Organs. (Male and 
 Female.) 
 
 Kunze, Richard E. The Asclepiadacaj. New York. 1878. 
 Also the Cacti ; Cereus Bonplandii in Amaurosis ; Cocos 
 Nucifera, Convallaria, Passiflora, L' belism. From Trans- 
 actions of National Eclectic Medical Association. 
 
 * Dr. Isaacs was a Lecturer on Diseases of tlie Eye and Ear in the Eclectic Medical 
 College of Pennsylvania.
 
 862 HISTORY OF MEDICINE 
 
 Lindorme, C. A. F. Medical Tractice of the Future. At- 
 lanta, Georgia. 1887. 
 
 Lindorme, C. A. F. Intoxicants and Narcotics : Their 
 Relation to the Mental Life. Also a Philosophic Expo- 
 sition of Man and this World. 1883. 
 
 Lindorme, C. A. F. Moral Requisite of the Criterion of 
 Truth. 1885. 
 
 Locke, A. J. and H. W. Felter. Locke's Materia Medica 
 and Therapeutics. Cincinnati, Ohio. 1900. 
 
 Longshore, Joseph. Practice of Midwifery. Philadelphia. 
 1866. 
 
 Lloyd, J. U. Chemistry of Medicines. Cincinnati. 1881. 
 
 Lloyd, J. U. Etidorhpa. Cincinnati. 1898. 
 
 Lloyd, J. U. Right Side of the Car. Boston. 1897. 
 
 Lloyd, J. U. and H. W. Felter. Materia Medica. 
 
 Lloyd, J. U. Reminiscences and Conclusions Drawn From 
 an Obstetric Practice of Twenty-Two Years. Reprint 
 from Massachusetts Eclectic Medical Journal, Vol. I, 
 1 88 1. Boston. 
 
 Miller, M. N.* Treatment of Venereal Diseases. Philadel- 
 phia. 1863. 
 
 Munn, S. B. Pathogenesis. Waterbury, Conn. 1893. 
 Also " Diabetes," "Cereus Bonplandii," " Old-School 
 Remedies in New-School Practice," "What I Know 
 About Gynaicology," " Are the Moderns Shorter-Lived ?" 
 
 Newton, Robert S. and W. Byrd Powell. Eclectic Treatise 
 on Diseases of Children. New York. 1867. 
 An edition substantially a reprint of " Syme's Surgery," 
 
 was also published under the following head : " Principles 
 
 and Practice of Surgery." By James Syme of Edinburgh. 
 
 Edited with Notes and Illustrations. By Robert S. Newton. 
 
 Cincinnati, 1S63. Several other works may also be men- 
 
 * Professor ol Anatomy in the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 863 
 
 tioned. Chapman's Treatise on Ulcers, with Notes, Selec- 
 tions aud Additions. By R. S. Newton. 
 
 Pierce, Ray V. The People's Common Sense Medical 
 Adviser. Buffalo, New York. 1875. 
 
 Pitzer, Geo. C. Medical Electricity. St. Louis. 1892. 
 
 Pitzer, Geo. C. Suggestion in the Cure of Diseases and the 
 Correction of Vices. St. Louis. Now Los Angeles, Califor- 
 nia. 1898. 
 
 Powell, William Byrd. Human Temperaments. Cincinnati. 
 
 Prince, William R.* A Treatise on Concentrated Reme- 
 dies. Flushing, N. Y. 1864. 
 
 Rodermund, Matthew J. The Murderous Fads in the 
 Practice of Medicine, and the Cause and Prevention of 
 Disease. Appleton, Wisconsin. 1900. 
 
 Sherwood, Wm. Eclectic Practice. Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 Simpson, Robert A. New Method of Treating Ulcers. 
 Liverpool, Pennsylvania. 1866. 
 
 Simpson, Robert A. The Eclectic Practice of Medicine, 
 (Particulars of publication not known.) 
 
 Sites, Joseph. t The Eclectric Obstetrics ; Diseases of 
 Women and Children. 1861. 
 
 Wilder, Alexander. Eclectic Medicine : Its History and 
 Scientific Basis. An Address delivered before the World's 
 Eclectic Medical Congress, auxiliary. 1893. 
 
 Wilder, Alexander. Ancient Symbolism and Serpent Wor- 
 ship, A Paper read at the American Akademe. 1886. 
 
 Wilder, Alexander. The Pha^do of Plato. Discourse at 
 the Celebration of Plato's Birthday at Jacksonville, 111. 
 
 * Dr. Prince was a well-known Botanic physician in Long Island, and early dis- 
 played warm sympathy with the Eclectic movement. He was an amateur and con- 
 noisseur in Botanic Science, maintaining a conservatory and cultivating many rare 
 plants. His son, the Hon. L. Bradford Prince, of Santa Fe, New Mexico, possesses 
 similar tastes. 
 
 t Professor of Obstetrics in the Kclectic Medical College of Penn'^ylvaiiia.
 
 864 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Wilder. Alexander. The Practical Value of Philosophy. 
 
 Address at the Philosophical Symposium of the Illinois 
 
 College, Jacksonville. 1897. 
 Wilder, Alexander. Life of Alphonse de Lamartine. 1898. 
 Wilder, Alexander. Egypt and Egyptian Dynasties. 1899. 
 Wilder, Alexander. The Fallacy of Vaccination. New 
 
 York. 1878. 
 
 PUBLISHED REPORTS OF MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 
 
 Transactions of the National Eclectic Medical Association 
 of the United States of America, Volumes I to IV, 1872 
 to 1875, by Robert A. Gunn, M. D., Secretary ; Vol- 
 V to XXIV, 1876 to 1895, by Alexander Wilder, M. D. ; 
 Volumes XXV, XXVI, 1896, 1897, by William E. 
 Kinnett; Volumes XXVII-XXIX, 1898-1900, by Pitts E. 
 Howes, M. D. 
 
 Annual Publication of the Massachusetts Eclectic Medical 
 Society. Forty numbers in pamphlet. 
 
 Transactions of the Eclectic Medical Association of Ar- 
 kansas. A. J. Widener, M. D., Secretary. 
 
 Transactions of the Connecticut Eclectic Medical Associa- 
 tion. Two pamphlets. By Elizabeth G. Smith, M. D., 
 Secretary. 
 
 Transactions of the Iowa State Eclectic Medical Society. 
 Pamphlet. 
 
 Reports of the Michigan State Eclectic Medical and Surgical 
 Society. Five volumes. By H. S. McMaster, Secretary. 
 
 Transactions of the Eclectic Medical Society of the State of 
 New Jersey. Two pamphlets. 1879. 1880. 
 
 Transactions of the Eclectic Medical Society of the State of 
 New York. Eighteen volumes. 1867 to 1901. 
 
 Report of the Ohio State Eclectic Medical Association. 
 Three Pamphlets.
 
 PUBLISHED REPORTS OF MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 865 
 
 Report of the Eclectic Medical Association of Pennsylvania. 
 Pamphlet. 1878. 
 
 Report of the Texas Eclectic Medical Association. Pamph- 
 let. 
 
 PERIODICALS BY ECLECTIC PHYSICIANS. 
 
 1. American Journal of Medicine By A. L. Clink- 
 scales. Macon, Georgia. 1873-75. (Representing the 
 Medical College succeeding the Reform Medical College 
 suspended during the Civil War. The title of the publi- 
 cation is conjecturally given.) 
 
 2. College Journal. By the Faculty of the College of 
 Eclectic Medicine, including J. R. Buchanan, W. Sher- 
 wood, John King and others. Cincinnati. 1856 to i860. 
 
 3. Eastern Medical Reformer. A Monthly Journal of 
 Medical and Chirurgical Science. By Joel R. Hibbard. 
 Rutland, Vermont, 1846. 
 
 4. Health Journal. S. H. Potter and J. L. Maffett. Syra- 
 cuse, N. Y. 1852. 
 
 5. Health Monthly. E. B. Foote, New York. 
 
 6. Medical Weekly. S. H. Potter. 
 
 7. New York Pathological Journal. By William W. Had- 
 ley. New York. 185 1. But one volume was published. 
 
 8. The Alkaloidal Clinic* By Doctors W. C. Abbott and 
 W. F. Waugh. 1892 to 1901. Chicago. 
 
 9. Eclectic Medical Review. Vol. IV. By George W. 
 Boskowitz, M. D. Assisted by the Faculty of the N. Y. 
 Eclectic Medical College. New York. 1901. 
 
 ♦Representing " American Alkalometry," a mode of treatment identical or analogous 
 to Dosimetric Medication as described in pages 363 to 367. Its method as set furtli by 
 Dr. Abbott is the administering of small doses frequently repeated till the required 
 result is produced. — " the smallest possible quantity of the best obtainable means to 
 produce a desired result." The active principle of every drug is adopted in granule 
 form whenever it can be obtained, and in other cases the best Galenic preparations. 
 He describes it accordingly as a " true Eclecticism witliout any fancies around it."
 
 866 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 THOMSONIAN AND BOTANIC PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 The earlier Botanic Physicians and HerbaUsts, especially 
 those who subscribed to the views of Samuel Thomson or 
 took their departure from the doctrines which he promul- 
 gated, were indefatigable. They evinced a vast energy in 
 controversy, and their pubUcations were numerous. Some 
 were ephemeral, especially in the line of periodicals, but 
 others more than compensate for defects. A good work was 
 done, and while the performers lived, it remained stable 
 against assault. The publications here enumerated, in 
 addition to those given in the Lloyd Catalogue, comprise the 
 principal part of the Thomsonian, Botanic and Herbalist 
 literature. 
 
 BOOKS AND PAMPHLEIS. 
 
 Biggs, A. Botanico-IVxedicai Text-Book. 1846. 
 
 Brown, Z. L. Lecture on the Principles of Medicine before 
 the Thomsonian Botanico-Medical Society of the State of 
 Michigan. 1846. 
 
 Colby, Benjamin. Guide to Health: Being an Exposition 
 of the Principles, of the Tiiomsonian System of Practice 
 and their Mode of Application in the Cure of Every Form 
 of Disease. 1841. 
 
 Comfort, J. W. Thomsonian Practice of Medicine. Phila- 
 delphia. 1842. 
 
 (Comfort, J. W. Comfort's Thomsonian Midwifery and 
 Treatment of Complaints Peculiar to Females and Infants. 
 Philadelphia. 1841. 
 
 Comins, L M. Reformed Practice of Medicine, and His- 
 tory of Medicine. New York. 1845. 
 
 Cook, William H. Physio-Medical Dispensatory — A Dis- 
 tinctly Original Work on Therapeutics and Materia 
 Medica. Cincinnati. 1872.
 
 BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS. 867 
 
 Cunningham, John. What is Thomsonism ? Poughkeepsie, 
 
 N. Y. 1845. 
 Curtis, Alva. Treatise on Midwifery. Cincinnati. 1840. 
 Curtis. Alva. Synopsis of Lectures on Medical Science. 
 
 Cincinnati. 
 Curtis, Alva. Synopsis of Lectures on Obstetrics and the 
 
 Diseases of Women and Children. Cincinnati. 
 Curtis, Alva. Fair Examination and Criticism of All the 
 
 Medical Systems in Vogue. Cincinnati. 
 Curtis, Alva. Provocation and the Reply. A Review of 
 
 Professor Wright's Hospital Address. Cincinnati. 
 Fonerden, William Henry. Lectures on the Botanic Prac- 
 tice of Medicine. Forsyth, Georgia. 
 Forenden, William Henry. Thomsonian Principles and 
 
 Practice of Medico-Chirurgical Obstetrics. New York. 
 
 1846. 
 Friend, Joseph D. Plain Practical Treatise on Midwifery. 
 
 New York. 1846. 
 Hersey, Thomas, Midwife's Practical Directory. Columbus, 
 
 Ohio. 1834. 
 Johnson, Dr. Good Samaritan, or The Sick Man's Friend. 
 
 Chester, Penn. 1841. 
 Kost, John. See Lloyd Catalogue, 
 Kost, John. Family Physician : The Practice of Medicine 
 
 According to the Plan Most Approved by the Reformed 
 
 or Botanic Colleges of the United States : Embracing a 
 
 Treatise on Materia Medica and Pharmacy, Mount 
 
 Vernon, Ohio. 1847. 
 Mattson, Morris. American Vegetable Practice. Boston. 
 
 1841. 
 Priest, N, L. Medical Companion. Exeter, N. H. 1838, 
 Price, Henry M. Reformed Medical Pharmacopoeia. 
 
 Petersburg, Va. 1841.
 
 868 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 Sperry, Isaac G. Family Medical Adviser: Containing a 
 Complete History of Disease with the Method and Mode 
 of Cure. Hartford. 1848. 
 
 Thomson, Samuel. Guide to Health. 1820. 
 
 Worthy, A. N. and Henry Lee, (ne Plummer.) Botanic 
 Practice of Medicine. Forsyth, Georgia. 1842. 
 
 PERIODICALS. 
 
 The foUowiug are the titles of various periodical publica- 
 tions of the Botanic and Reformed Schools of Medicine in 
 the United States. Beginning with the Botanico-Medical 
 Recorder by Thomas Hersey and the Botanic Watchman by 
 Dr. John Thomson, most of them belong to the period be- 
 tween 1830 and i860. 
 
 1. Botanic Advocate. Vermont, 1842. 
 
 2. Botanic Luminary. Hartford, Connecticut. 1842. 
 
 3. Botanic Medical Reformer. Philadelphia. 1843. 
 
 4. Botanic Register. Marion, Alabama. 
 
 5. Botanic Sentinel. 1845. 
 
 6. Botanic Watchman. By John Thomson. Albany, N. Y. 
 
 1834-5- 
 
 7. Botanic's Friend, and Herald of Truth. Philadelphia. 
 
 1836. 
 
 8. Botanico-Medical Recorder. See No. XVHI of the 
 Lloyd Catalogue. 
 
 9. Botanico-Medical Reformer. By John Kost. Mount 
 Vernon, Ohio. 
 
 10. Fall River and Middleboro' Medical Inquirer. Massa- 
 chusetts. 1846. 
 
 Ti. Georgia Botanic Journal. 1848. 
 
 12. Independent Botanic Advocate. Afterward the 
 
 Botanic Advocate and Thomsonian Family Physician. 
 
 By Doctors Wilson and Sperry. Connecticut. 1843.
 
 PERIODICALS. 869 
 
 13. Maine Thomsonian Recorder. By Benjamin Colby. 
 1859, Merged in the Thomsonian Medical Advertiser. 
 
 14. Medical Reformer and Temperance Advocate. By 
 I. M. Comings. New York. 1853. 
 
 15. Medical Truth-Teller. By J. Gates. Rochester, New 
 York. 1846. 
 
 16. New England Medical Eclectic and Guide to Health. 
 By Calvin Newton. Worcester, Mass. 1846. The title 
 was changed the next year to New England Botanic 
 Medical and Surgical Journal, and again some years later 
 as already explained. See Lloyd Catalogue No. LXVI. 
 
 17. Poughkeepsie Thomsonian. By Thomas Lapham. 
 Poughkeepsie, N. Y. 1837. Some years later J. M. 
 Lapham and John Cunningham became editors, and in 
 November, 1845, Dr. Abiel Gardner succeeded. He 
 transferred the establishment two years afterward to Dr. 
 Aaron Bassett. At this period the medical conflict had 
 been generally victorious, and the zeal for organization 
 and Reform journals sensibly waned. Dr. Bassett discon- 
 tinued the Thomsonian in 1848, turning the subscribers 
 over to the New England Botanic Medical and Surgical 
 Journal. 
 
 18. Rhode Island Medical Reformer. By B. Franklin 
 Clark. Providence. 1843. 
 
 19. Southern Botanic Medical Journal. William Henry 
 Fonerden. Forsyth, Georgia. 1846. 
 
 20. Southern Botanico-Medical Journal. By L. Bankston, 
 Hugh Quin, T. J. Hand and others. Forsyth, Georgia. 
 This journal was afterward removed with the college to 
 Macon. 
 
 21. Southern Medical Reformer. By Henry M. Price. 
 
 22. Southwestern Medical Reformer. By William liyrd 
 Powell. Memphis, Tennessee. 1846.
 
 870 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 23. Thomsonian Advertiser, By James Osgood. Boston. 
 1844. 
 
 24. Thomsonian Defender. By William Spillman. Mary- 
 ville, Tennessee. 1835. 
 
 25. Thomsonian Manual. William Alcott. Boston. This 
 was the publication recognized as the organ of Dr. Samuel 
 Thomson himself. 
 
 26. Thomsonian Medical and Physiological Journal. By 
 Benjamin Colby. Boston. This periodical was merged 
 in September, 1846, in the New England Medical Eclectic. 
 
 27. Thomsonian Medical Independent. Boston. 1845. 
 
 28. Thomsonian Messenger. By Joseph D. Friend. New 
 Haven, Connecticut. 1845. 
 
 29. Thomsonian Recorder. By Thomas Hersey. Col- 
 umbus, Ohio. 1832. Afterward the Botanico-Medical 
 Recorder which was removed to Cincinnati and conducted 
 in turn by Alva Curtis and William H. Cook. 
 
 30. Thomsonian Scout. Standish and J. W. Johnson. Hart- 
 ford. 1841. 
 
 31. Thomsonian Sentinel. Philadelphia. 1841. 
 
 32. Thomsonian Spy. 
 
 33. True Thomsonian. Boston. 1843. Supporting the 
 cause of Dr. Morris Mattson against Samuel Thomson. 
 
 34. Western Medical Truth-Teller and Physiological 
 Journal. Hillsborough, Illinois. 1846. 
 
 35. Woonsocket Sentinel and Thomsonian Advocate. 
 Woonsocket, R. I. 1842. 
 
 There were several other periodicals which were con- 
 ducted with spirit and energy. The public mind was kept 
 in agitation for years, and there was even a political organi- 
 zation contemplated. In one or two States there was an 
 actual change of Governors effected by this issue, when as 
 though by general consent the enactments establishing legal
 
 PERIODICALS. 871 
 
 disabilities in the case of dissident practitioners of medicine 
 were abrogated. Almost spontaneously many of the 
 periodicals suspended publication. As has often been the 
 case with Reform movements, their great object having been 
 accomplished, they ceased to exist. 
 
 NOTE. — The following belong to the publications of Eclectic physicians and were 
 unavoidably omitted from their proper place in the catalogue : 
 
 Potter, George Edward. My Experience with the International Medical Congress. 
 Johnstown, Penn. 1887. Pamphlet. 
 
 Taft, Simon P. Unlawful Interference of Legislation with the Rights of Physicians 
 Newark, N.J. 1881. Pamphlet.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 LATER DEVELOPMENTS IN SURGERY AND MEDICINE. 
 
 Sir James Y. Simpson, himself a protestant against the 
 abuses of Old Surgery as well as Old Physic, made a pre- 
 diction of ail era when practitioners would look upon the 
 cure of certain maladies as simply a series of chemical prob- 
 lems and formulas ; melt down all calculi, necrosed bones, 
 etc., chemically, and not remove them by surgical opera- 
 tions; stop bleeding in amputations and other wounds, not 
 by septic ligatures or stupid needles, but by the simple a.p- 
 plication of haemastatic gases or washes, and healing by the 
 first intention, the few wounds required in Surgery. 
 
 This has not all been accomplished. Yet it must be 
 acknowledged to the everlasting credit of the surgical art, 
 especially in Europe, and we have still hope to be able to 
 include America, that it has become more cautious and con- 
 servative than it has been of aforetime. There is greater 
 courage in the undertaking of capital operations when these 
 are regarded as necessary, and perhaps somewhat less of the 
 reckless and wanton destroying of tissue or organs that are 
 still capable of preservation. The surgeon respects the 
 physiologic integrity of the organism, endeavoring as with a 
 holy purpose to limit his procedures to the removing only of 
 diseased parts that can not be restored, and the preserving 
 of the healthy material. 
 
 There was, till a very recent period, great hesitation in 
 regard to interfering with the brain. Trephining was chiefly
 
 LATER DEVELOPMENTS IN SURGERY AND MEDICINE. 873 
 
 employed to rem'^ve bone that was pressing upon the soft 
 tissue ; whereas, it is now an incident in the operations for 
 the treatment of all membranes. The Surgeon formerly 
 would not meddle with the posterior part of the vertebral 
 column. He now ventures upon such procedures with con- 
 fidence. 
 
 Of the surgery of the thorax, Mr. Pearce Gould remarks, 
 that not only the pleura, but the lung itself, is operated 
 upon ; and the chief bar to further pulmonary surgery is the 
 difficulty of diagnosis and localisation of lung-diseases. The 
 pericardium is aspirated or drained without hesitation ; and 
 the suggestion has been made, not only to tap the heart 
 itself, but to treat wounds of the muscular structure by care- 
 ful suture. The mediastinum, likewise, is now within the 
 pale of legitimate surgery. 
 
 No single organ in the great cavity of the abdomen is now 
 held to be beyond the reach of the surgeon's knife. The 
 removal of large abdominal tumors is almost a common- 
 place occurrence, and all the viscera of the abdomen are 
 now included in surgical procedures. Even the stomach has 
 been invaded. Portions have been removed, and the 
 patient survived ; and in several instances the entire organ 
 was amputated. The success thus far has not been gratify- 
 ing ; but if the operation is performed, and not only recovery 
 takes place, but the digestive process continues normally, 
 the theories of that function will require to be essentially 
 modified. 
 
 Yet till very recently surgeons have considered that many 
 organs and parts of the human body lay beyond the limits 
 of legitimate surgical interposition, and admitted that it 
 was no reproach to their art to refuse to interfere with the 
 peritoneum, the kidney, the lungs or the brain. A sur- 
 gical operation was thought to be in its very nature
 
 874 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 lethal, and certain tissues and organs were believed to be of 
 such anatomic delicacy that the submitting of them to opera- 
 tion was to court disaster. It is now known that simple 
 surgical procedures when well executed are not in them- 
 selves pathogenic, and that every tissue and organ of the 
 body is the seat of a power of repair superior to the demand 
 which surgery makes. With this knowledge the anatomic 
 barrier in the progress of surgery has disappeared. The 
 only bar now recognized is its mechanical impossibility. 
 The limit which is acknowledged is the physiological one. 
 The medulla oblongata, for example, and the central por- 
 tions of the brain, are outside of the field, not because they 
 cannot be reached, nor on account of their peculiarity of 
 structure, but because of their physiological importance. 
 The surgeon considers whether he can operate upon a tissue 
 or organ without injury to the structure necessary to life, or 
 without inflicting upon the patient greater disabilities than 
 those caused by the disease which he is called upon to 
 combat. 
 
 A new conception of the real nature of surgical operation 
 and the personal responsibility of the operator is beginning 
 to be entertained. Instead of brilliancy of execution, we 
 now demand actual success. When a patient succumbs to 
 shock or other fatal agency, the operation is practically a 
 failure, however it may be accounted technically. These 
 heroic achievements which are often described in glowing 
 terms in public newspapers, and in professional journals and 
 gatherings, may often be justly condemned in the language 
 of the French officer, slightly modified : " C est magnifique ; 
 mais c'est non chirurgie " — magnificent as a perform- 
 ance, but by no means a genuine surgical achievement. 
 When operations fail of their proper purpose, the operator 
 is to be regarded as the one responsible ; we may not at-
 
 LATER DEVELOPMENTS IN SURGERY AND MEDICINE. 875 
 
 tribute anything of the cause of failure to Divine Provi- 
 dence. 
 
 The highest ideal of Surgery is now apprehended to be 
 the treating directly of the causes of disease. Surgical 
 methods, heretofore, have been crude and unphilosophic. 
 They consisted almost entirely of the removing of pathologic 
 products, as by amputation, the relief of tension, and the 
 application of surgical rest — ^ but of little else beyond these. 
 The surgeon now directs his efforts not only to the remov- 
 ing of the effects or products of disease, but not of the 
 active cause. There is ground for hope, therefore, as there 
 is reason to desire ardently, that with superior enlighten- 
 ment there will also be a higher conscientiousness; and 
 accordingly, that there will be a ceasing to amputate and 
 mutilate in case of accident or disease, till the procedure 
 shall be known to be absolutely necessary and other means 
 morally certain to fail. An unnecessary surgical operation 
 is clearly allied to actual crime, and the faithful and upright 
 surgeon will be careful, and even punctilious, to avoid its 
 performing. 
 
 DENTISTRY. 
 
 Within the Nineteenth Century the art of Dentistry has 
 grown to the dignity of a learned profession. Like the other 
 departments of Operative Surgery, it had been previously 
 consigned to the barbers and others, whose principal skill 
 consisted in the removing of diseased teeth.. Yet this art 
 seems to have been not only very ancient, but to have been 
 at one time included in the calling of the physician. One 
 distinguished teacher and practitioner placed a model of his 
 instruments in an Ionian temple-hospital. The art of re- 
 placing lost teeth appears also to have been of great an- 
 tiquity. Artificial teeth have been found in the mouths of 
 the mummied human bodies in Egypt, and it is said that
 
 876 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 the two famous Roman Imperators, Julius Caesar and 
 Antony, were thus equipped. 
 
 During the Eighteenth Century there were individuals in 
 the various countries of Europe who made it their business 
 to insert teeth in place of those that had been extracted. 
 These were generally made from ivory, but some were taken 
 from the mouths of other persons.* 
 
 The first dentist in America was Mr. John Woofendale. 
 He plied his art in Philadelphia and New York in 1766, but 
 soon afterward returned to England. The next was Mr. 
 Joseph LeMaine, who came to the United States with the 
 French army in the Revolutionary war. Afterward Mr. 
 Isaac Greenwood engaged in the business in Boston ; and in 
 1788, his son began the practice of dentistry in New York. 
 He constructed an entire denture for General Washington, 
 which was greatly admired. It was not long, however, in 
 displaying many imperfections, changing the expression of 
 the countenance, obstructing speech, and otherwise giving 
 annoyance ; and finally they were laid aside. 
 
 For many years the art of dentistry was carried on in 
 America by practitioners from Europe. In 1820 there were 
 hardly more than a handred in the country ; in ten years 
 there were three times that number ; and in 1840 more than 
 twelve hundred Americans had adopted the profession, ad- 
 vancing it to the highest degree of development yet known. 
 It is, nevertheless, an unfortunate fact not to be disguised, 
 that in the United States the teeth very frequently become 
 diseased at an early period in life, and require careful 
 
 * An individual from Scotland accompanied the British army in the Peninsular «ar 
 against Napoleon for the purpose of procuring teeth from the mouths of the soldiers 
 who fell in battle. He supplied himself in this way with many thousands, and after- 
 ward obtained a large amount of money by selling them to dental doctors. The fact, 
 however, came to public knowledge, and his house in Edinburgh was destroyed by an 
 infuriated mob, while he himself was compelled to fly for his life.
 
 LATER DEVELOPMENTS IN SURGERY AND MEDICINE, 877 
 
 attention to arrest their destruction.* This was formerly 
 traced to the practice of medicatiLUi by mercury, wliich has 
 been general and is yet adhered to by many physicians, but 
 there has been no reform that has brought an adequate 
 remedy. The illnesses of infancy and early childhood, 
 especially those of an eruptive and infl immatory character, 
 impair the he.ilth ami vitality of the terth. The fever en- 
 suing from vaccination has the same intiuence An expert 
 dentist can, by an examining of the m iuth, tell with great 
 accuracy the period of these early sicknesses. 
 
 Invention, however, has been active, both for the 
 preserving of the natural teeth and for the replacing of 
 them skilfully and acceptably ; and as a result the fame of 
 American dentists surpasses the reputation of their profes- 
 sional brethren of the other hemisphere. Indeed, till the 
 Utopian ideal shall have been realized, and the way of re- 
 covering lost conditions shall have become widely kuvjwn 
 and followed, the calUng of dentistry bids fair to hold its 
 field triumphantly in all countries. The " broken tooth," 
 as well as the '-foot out of joint," is a fair illustration of the 
 misfortune of confiding in unfaithful persons. 
 
 The proclivity of mediocre practitioners of the art to 
 secure protection for themselves against competitors by 
 special legislation and a system of licensing by Examining 
 Boards, is still rife in many of the States of the American 
 Union. There is also a special examination required in 
 England, in connection with the Royal College of Surgeons, 
 and a curriculum of study has been arranged. Candidates 
 who attend there are admitted to examination, and if ap- 
 proved, receive a certificate which authorizes them to prac- 
 
 * Lord Byron in one of liis letters remarked that it is necessary to consult a dentist at 
 least every year. This indicates a similar state of affairs in England. In a former 
 century, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, black and diseased teeth were common 
 among the courtiers and yenlry.
 
 878 HISTORY OF MEDICINE 
 
 tice as dentists. In Scotland, diseases of the teeth and 
 surrounding structures are subjects of lecture and examina- 
 tion at the universities, but no special or partial diploma is 
 given. In the United States there are Colleges of Dentistry 
 in several of the principal cities, with a curriculum including 
 every branch of knowledge that is regarded as pertaining to 
 the art, but omitting mnch that relates to General Anatomy, 
 Pathology or Therapeutics. Diplomas are conferred ac- 
 cordingly. The right to practice, however, is more or less 
 controlled in many of the States by the special legislation. 
 
 OTHER FORMS OF THERAPY. 
 
 Besides the three Schools of Medicine now distinctly 
 acknowledged by the legislation of the majority of the 
 States, there are several others preferring claims to popular 
 favor. The doctrines of Samuel Thomson, or more cor- 
 rectly, of the Physio-Medical School, are still entertained by 
 several thousand physicians, and are represented in two 
 medical colleges, several State Societies, three or more 
 Medical Examining Boards, and a National Physio-Medical 
 Association. Any persecution of them after the manner of 
 the former years of the Nineteenth Century, would be likely 
 to enkindle anew the fires which at that period so com- 
 pletely burned away the barriers which had been so assidu- 
 ously constructed and strenuously maintained against Medi- 
 cal Freedom. Indeed, a revival of that School in its former 
 force and aggressiveness, is predicted. 
 
 The mode of Therapeutics, known in Europe as Dosi- 
 metry, has been introduced into this country and received 
 with favor by many physicians of the different Schools of 
 Practice. Its peculiar features are set forth in a work en- 
 titled " American Alkalo7nctry^^'' recently published at Chicago 
 by Doctors Abbott and Waugh. The professed aim is set
 
 LATER DEVELOPMENTS IN SURGERY AND MEDICINE, 879 
 
 forth as " accuracy in Therapeutics with cUnical appHca- 
 tions." It is described by its advocates as " an idea, not a 
 system," and it is characterized by the chrono-thermal 
 methods and minute dosage. 
 
 Colleges of Hygiene for the instructing of students have 
 been established at St. Louis, Cincinnati, and other places, 
 beginning their career with encouraging prospects. The 
 founder at St. Louis was Miss Susanna W. Dodds, a 
 physician of merit and intelligence, abundantly capable of 
 bringing her views into successful realization. The courses 
 of study included the branches of knowledge usually taught 
 in medical colleges, together with Hygiene, Sanitary En- 
 gineering and Physical Culture. But the professional 
 hostility encountered, and the general indifference stood in 
 the way of success, and most of these institutions now con- 
 fine their operations to professional service. 
 
 OSTEOPATHY. 
 
 Another enterprise of analogous character is the " Ameri- 
 can School of Osteopathy." The founder, Dr. Andrew V. 
 Still, was a surgeon in the Federal Army during the war 
 between the Northern and Southern States. He had be- 
 come disappointed in the use of the various medicines, from 
 observing that they were uncertain in their action, and that 
 they were followed by different effects at different times. 
 After the return of peace he made his home in a frontier 
 town of Kansas, where he might prosecute his investigations 
 and elaborate the conclusions. Afterward, in 1885, he re- 
 moved to Kirksville in Missouri, where he began the prac- 
 tice of his new method, and established a School for the 
 promulgating of his doctrines. 
 
 Osteopathy appears to be a form of the " Swedish Move- 
 ment Cure," assuming, however, to be a distinct branch of 
 the Healing Art. It dispenses entirely with the administer-
 
 88o HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 ing of medicines. The theory represents the human body 
 as an ensouled mechanism which is not to be improved by 
 any art or invention. It considers the cause of a large 
 proportion of diseases to be occasioned from a deficiency in 
 the supply of blood. It aims, accordingly, to remedy this 
 condition by a proper course of manual therapeutics, secur- 
 ing thereby to the recipient the greatest physical activity, 
 and at the sante time assuring to the nervous system com- 
 plete rest. The organism, it is insisted, can be treated by 
 a skilful operator, and the various structures and functions 
 regulated by judicious manipulation much better than by 
 drugs. For example, in cases where a cathartic medicine is 
 usually administered, it is considered to be only necessary 
 to open the gall-duct by this means, and that better results 
 will be thereby obtained. Nervous troubles and paralytic 
 affections, it is affirmed, will yield readily to this mode of 
 treatment ; and a satisfactory cure is Ukewise held to view 
 for asthma, bronchitis, cancer, consumption, diphtheritis, 
 epilepsy, female complaints, goitre, spinal meningitis, 
 ophthalmic affections, renal disease, hip-disease, heart- 
 disease, spinal disease, fever and other disorders. The 
 treatment is begun with a procedure called desetisitizing, and 
 this is followed by manipulations. 
 
 " The American School of Osteopathy " at Kirksville, 
 though not formally recognized as scientific according to the 
 denominational sense in which that term is often employed, 
 is described as having a curriculum of study sufficiently 
 
 thorough to enable the pupils to become proficient* There 
 
 « 
 
 * Ihere are the usual appointments and fac'lities, such as a dissecting room, lecture 
 hall, recitation-rooms, study-rooms, operating rooms and offices. The department 
 which receives the most attention is Anatomy ; and it is stated that there are bestowed 
 upon it time and attention many times over that are given to it in other institutions. It 
 is considered necessary to know minutely every organ and constituent part of the 
 corporeal organism. The instruction next to this is clinical, and consists entirely in 
 lessons and demonstrations of Osteopathy. Classes were graduated in 1891 and suc- 
 ceeding years.
 
 LATER DEVELOPMENTS IN SURGERY AND MEDICINE. 661 
 
 are also Colleges of Osteopathy in Chicago, Milwaukee and 
 other places, in which instruction is given in the various 
 departments of anatomic and physiological study, and other 
 knowledge pertaining to the peculiar theory and practice. 
 
 The usual attempts have been made to bring Dr. Still 
 and practitioners of Osteopathy to account under the various 
 medical enactments in Missouri, Kentucky and other States, 
 but the prosecutions resulted in acquittals. In several 
 States the practitioners have obtained a statutory recog- 
 nition, but in others, the purpose to suppress the various 
 schools of " healers " by exemplary legislation, includes 
 Osteopathists with the others.* 
 
 Endo-Therapy or the " Drugless Science " of which Dr. 
 W. W. Fulkerson of Kirksville, Missouri, is said to be the 
 original promulgator, appears at first sight to be closely akin 
 to Osteopathy, if it is not actually an offshoot. It is ex- 
 plained as pertaining to treatment arising from internal 
 causes, and it purports to include the curative treatment of 
 the interior structures of the body and the healing of disease 
 by rallying the internal vital fluids and forces to the per- 
 
 * During the winter of igoi bills were introduced in no less than twenty of the 
 Legislatures of tlie States to subject the practitioners of clairvoyant healing, Christian 
 Science, Mental Therapy, etc., to the jurisdiction of the Medical Examining Boards. 
 In several of these, those practicing Osteopathy were included. The results are not yet 
 certain. In North Dakota the Senate emasculated the medical bill of its contem- 
 plated objects by an amendment exempting practitioners of these several Schools from 
 Its provisions. A bill directed against the Osteopathists having passed the Legislature 
 of the State of Washington, Governor Rogers returned it on the 15th of February with 
 a message containing a severe rebuke. 
 
 " It is undeniably true," said he, " that the Practice of Medicine and the art of heal- 
 ing have advanced only by the innovations of those who were looked upon with ex- 
 tremes! disfavor by members of the regular Schools. Truth is mighty and will prevail. 
 God forbid that we of Washington should attempt to stay its progress. » » * 
 
 " In our day physicians of the bluest blood and the highest attainment? are guilty of 
 poisoning the springs of life. The contents of the drug store are perhaps more dan- 
 gerous to the well-being of the race than those of the saloon. Dope fiends are thus 
 created by the thousand. Morphine powders administered to parents bring forth their 
 natural fruit even to the third and fourth generation of descendants." 
 
 The degenerates thus created, the Governor declares, form an ever-increasing army, 
 and threaten by their weakness and criminality, the very existence of civilization itself. 
 
 "If," he adds," if the Osteopaths can show us a better way, and deliver us even 
 in the smallast degree from enormous admitted and increasing evils, let us not deny 
 them the poor honor of the title of Teacher or Doctor."
 
 882 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 formance of their natural functions — thus constituting " a 
 scientific system of healing without the assistance of drugs." 
 The treatment itself is described as consisting of " kinetics, 
 or movements and manipulations administered by a skilful 
 operator, who has a scientific knowledge of the anatomical 
 construction of the human body, ?nd by one thoroughly con- 
 versant with the nature of disease." 
 
 The " Chiropractic " or hand-practice is described as " a 
 new Science of healing discovered by Dr. Palmer " of 
 Davenport, Iowa. It has hardly attained the dimensions of 
 a distinct School, having been in existence for only a few 
 years ; nevertheless, there are students of the method and a 
 definite course of instruction. The " underlying philosophy " 
 is explained as being the same as that of Osteopathy, with a 
 wider range of possibilities for both operator and patient — • 
 the Chiropractic using only one specific " movement " for 
 each disease, while the Osteopath employs many. The 
 various other methods and systems are repudiated which 
 have had dominion from earliest history till the present time 
 — from astrology and necromancy, clown to the whole array 
 of drugs and knives. The cause of disease. Dr. Palmer 
 declares, is a mechanical obstruction of the natural functions. 
 " The human mechanic can remove and adjust that cause 
 by his knowledge of Anatomy and a highly-cultured sense of 
 touch," — doing with the h mds what the medical men aim 
 to do with drugs and the knife. 
 
 Medical legislation calls forth a forcible utterance. 
 " People have been made to believe," says Dr. Palmer, 
 " that medical laws were made for the ' protection of the 
 public against quacks.' But the facts are that these laws 
 are usually framed by professional quacks for their own pro- 
 tection." Being reviled, the Doctor should not revile again, 
 but commit his cause to the one who judges righteously.
 
 LATER DEVELOPMENTS IN SURGERY AND MEDICINE. 883 
 
 The term " quack " is vulgar slang, such as no well-bred in- 
 dividual ever employs, or cares to employ. The true pro- 
 fessional man is a gentleman in speech as well as in deport- 
 ment. 
 
 AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS. 
 
 In October 1894 a meeting of physicians was held in the 
 city of Indianapolis, and an Association formed by the name 
 of "the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons.'' 
 The original members were principally from the State of 
 Indiana, but there were accessions soon afterward from other 
 parts of the United States. The first annual meeting was 
 held in Indianapolis on the 14th day of January, 1895, at 
 which Dr. C. Edson Covey of Michigan was elected presi- 
 dent, and Dr. RusselL C. Kelsey of Indianapolis, secretary, 
 with a vice-president from each of the States represented in 
 the Association. The next annual meeting was held at 
 Indianapolis in 1896, and awakened much general interest. 
 Electro-therapeutics, Abdominal Surgery and Vaccination 
 were allotted to Sections, and elicited a full discussion. 
 Hygiene, Preventive Medicine, Practice, and several subjects 
 of a more novel character, were also presented by their 
 advocates. The Association is undenominational, and the 
 members had been identified with the different Schools, as 
 orthodox, Homoeopathist, Eclectic, Physio-Medical, Hygienic, 
 Hydro-Therapeutic, Electro-Therapic, etc., and the different 
 views which had been entertained were vigorously set forth. 
 The Association met at Buffalo in the summer of 1897. It 
 has held meetings since that time in other parts of the 
 Northwest. 
 
 The American Medical College at Indianapolis is under 
 the auspices of this Association. It was organized in 1894, 
 with a force of thirty professors, and has graduated several
 
 884 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 classes. In it all Schools are united and students elect to 
 take either or all the courses : '• Regular, Homoeopathic, 
 Eclectic or Physio-Medical." 
 
 IN CONCLUSION. 
 
 We sometimes hear it pleaded that in the Healing Art 
 there should be no parties, no separate organizations. Man- 
 kind have a common interest in health and in the means to 
 preserve it. This pleading is plausible, and perfectly con- 
 sistent with that charity that seeketh not its own advantage, 
 but the welfare of others. But in the human constitution, 
 as in every department of Nature, there is a principle of 
 polarity, and an impulse to differentiation. One class of 
 human beings hold fast, sometimes almost convulsively, to 
 what has been long esteemed and venerated ; while another 
 is ready, and frequently even eager, to discover what is new, 
 and to bring it into possession. In a state of savagery 
 there may be little distinction in art, but in the civilized 
 state there is certain to be differencing of effort in every 
 direction. It is in the plurality of faculties, in the variety of 
 aspirations, the infinite extending of conceptions, that man 
 is developed and perfected. 
 
 In the Art of Healing there is, accordingly a multiplicity 
 of methods to be brought into view, and with each of them 
 must come the modifying and even the discarding of older 
 notions and procedures. With the bringing of them into 
 contiguity, there is very certain to follow collisior*, degen- 
 erating into strife. Personal ambition and selfish motive 
 are likely to transcend philanthropy and love of truth. 
 There has been in every country and every historic period 
 an official Medical Practice, taking its sanctions and theories 
 from enforced authority. It boastfully claimed to be ample 
 for its purpose, and was characterized by jealousy and in-
 
 IN CONCLUSION. 885 
 
 tolerance of innovation. From the Shaman of the Siberian 
 village to the pretentious stickler for scientific regularity 
 this has been the case. As in former religious crusades 
 and persecutions, the arm of the Civil Power has been in- 
 voked and employed without scruple to arrest changes by 
 the punishment of innovators. The record of history in 
 this respect in both hemispheres has been far otherwise 
 than humane or honorable. In every new period there 
 have been demonstrated the shortcomings of its predecessor, 
 and instead of truth-loving candor, there have been en- 
 countered derision, social proscription, persecution and even 
 virtual outlawry. 
 
 In Europe the disciples of Hahnemann, and in America 
 the associates and followers of Beach and Thomson, 
 breasted alike the torrents of calumny and proscription. 
 The Homceopathists who bravely adhered to their convic- 
 tions, opened a New World, like Columbus, to subsequent 
 explorers and colonizers. Eclectic Medicine in America, 
 was likewise characterized by a career of vigorous protest 
 and earnest endeavor. It was an enthusiasm not to be 
 measured by common understanding. Its champions 
 labored to develop a practice of Medicine, not cosseted 
 and fenced about by special legislation, but having its 
 foundations planted upon its intrinsic usefulness, without 
 factitious privileges, always open to new light, and still re- 
 taining tenaciously the principles to which it owes its incep- 
 tion and continued existence. 
 
 There is vastly more to be learned than has been known. 
 No one has a commission to set up a standard, to cast a 
 measuring-line and say to the explorer : " Thus far shalt 
 thou go, and no farther." We may account nothing com- 
 mon or unclean. It is the unalienable right of every one to 
 do without arbitrary restriction the work which is appro-
 
 886 HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 
 
 priate to him, for which he has fitness and aptitude. For 
 as every star has a glory of its own which we may not decry, 
 so human beings have their genius and vocation whicli to 
 crush or to cramp is murderous. Nor may we in order to 
 give the stars superior distinctness, endeavor to extinguish 
 or ecHpse the sun. Enough for the glow-worm that shines 
 in the dark to hate the brilliant orb of day ; the true soul 
 will esteem them both for what they are, and will admire the 
 light of each. Every age teems with new convictions. The 
 latest knowledge gives us freshest thought and inspiration. 
 
 The words of Augustin of Hippo are replete with the best 
 sense : " In the things which are necessary let there be 
 unity ; in those not absolutely certain let there be liberty, 
 and in them all let there be charity." That is not genuine 
 Science where these are not. The divine Art of healing has 
 but a single ethic : to live in charity, doing to others as we 
 desire them to do to us, and to all as we have opportunity 
 All else is factitious and extraneous. This implies knowl 
 edge, purpose and skill akin to intuition. 
 
 This is the Higher Law of Medicine !
 
 INDEX. 
 
 [As most of the individuals here named who belong to the modern period, had the 
 rank and title of " Doctor," the designation is generally omitted.] 
 
 Abdomen has no organ beyond the surgeon's knife, pages 72, 873 
 
 Abdul Kasim, 118 
 
 Abu Bekr ben Tophail, philosopher, 129 
 
 Academic degrees made a subject of traffic, 648 
 
 Academie de Chirurgie at Paris, 250 
 
 Academy, Platonic at Paris, 147 
 
 Achillini, Alessandro, the " Second Aristotle," 151 
 
 Act of 1830 in New York repealed, 472 ; 1855, 480 
 
 Actual healing preferred before medical orthodoxy, 511 
 
 Acupuncture practiced in Japan, 397 
 
 Addison, Doctor, 285; " Joseph, the author on minute organisms, 
 381 
 
 Address of the Independent Thomsonian Botanic Society, 494 
 
 Adolphus. Joseph, offers resolution for a National organiza- 
 tion, 692 
 
 Advertising, disreputable, declared not professional, 697, 7Ul 
 
 ^sculapius, 41, 47; his serpent brought to Rome, 51, 82 
 
 ^•Esculapian procedures explained, 41, 59 
 
 jEther, the doctrine of Ficino, 148 
 
 Aetios, 114 
 
 Affections, their physiological centre, 264 
 
 Agamede, a Grecian woman proficient in medical lore, 88 
 
 Agassiz, Louis, his tribute to Rafinesque, 423 
 
 Agathiuos, 91 
 
 Agrippa, Cornelius, scholar and alchemist, 178 
 
 Akasha, or aether, 392 
 
 Akron, an itinerant physician, 56 
 
 Al Hakham, Khalif in Spain, 117 
 
 Al Magest, 113 
 
 Al Mamun, Khalif at Baghdad, 113; denounced as a religious 
 apostate, 112, 123, 190
 
 055 INDEX. 
 
 Alabama, its former legislation in favor of the Botanic practice, 
 473 ; the Medical Institute, 530 ; watchword in 1835. 476 ; 
 the Eclectic movement, 751 ; the present medical statute, 530 
 
 Albigeois exterminated by a crusade, 124 
 
 Alchemists, the original investigators, 354 ; described by Para- 
 celsus, 174 ; reasons for their obscure terminology, 354 
 
 Alcohol, a discriminator between medicinal and poisonous bodies, 
 661 ; early known in China, 35 
 
 Alexander of Macedon, a pupil of Aristotle, 68; " of Tralles, 
 105 ; " VI. (Borgia) pope, 149 
 
 Alexandrian school and medical caste, 45.71; " Library de- 
 stroyed, 111 
 
 Ali the "Magus," 115 
 
 Alkalometry, American, 878 
 
 Allen, Nathan, of Lowell, the phrenologist, 289 ; " Paul W. presi- 
 dent of the Eclectic Medical Society of the state of New York, 
 691; " " professor in the Medical Institute at Petersburg, 551 
 
 Alumni Association at Philadelphia, 647 
 
 Alpino, 165 
 
 American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, 883 ; " College 
 of Medicine, 593, 644; " College of Medicine and Surgery, 
 527; " Practice of Medicine, its evolution, 402; " Reform 
 Medical Institute incorporated, 601 ; " University of Medicine 
 and Surgery, 740 
 
 "American Medical Association " in New York City, 585 
 
 American Medical Associatiun formed, 551 ; its principal objects, 
 551 ; assumes to be " the only governing body in Medicine," 
 682 ; demands that Legislatures grant no more charters to 
 medical colleges without its sanction, 6t?9 ; seeks to remove 
 the former partisan medical legislation, 774 
 
 " American Medical College " of Ohio, 584, 605, 739 ; " " " of 
 Indianapolis, 732, 883; " " " of St. Louis, incorporated, 737 
 
 American Medical Institute of Cincinnati, 524 
 
 American Medicine and Surgery, College, 527 ; " Practice of 
 Medicine, praised, 405 ; " Reform Medical Institute, incor- 
 porated, 601 ; University of Philadelphia, incorporated, 647; 
 '■ " of Medicine and Surgery at Philadelphia, 741 
 
 Anaesthesia, artificial, 296 
 
 Anatomy, little known in China, 36 ; studied in Ancient Egypt, 12. 
 first taught at Bologna by dissection, 142; taught at Padua by 
 Montagnono, 150
 
 INDEX. 889 
 
 Anaxagoras, the philosopher, 57 
 
 Andral, 288 
 
 Animal magnetism in ancient Egypt, 11 ; explained by Paracelsus, 
 177, see Mesmerism 
 
 Animistic theory, 2.8 
 
 Animosity between early medical reformers, 435 
 
 Ann Arbor, conflict in the medical department, 689 
 
 Anntial meetings of the National Eclectic Medical Association 
 after its original organization in 1848-49; first, at Cincinnati in 
 1850, 577; second at Pittsburg, 606; third at Rochester, New 
 York, 608; fourth at Philadelphia, 610; fifth at Worcester, 
 Mass., 613; sixth at New York, 614; seventh at New York, 616; 
 eighth at Cincinnati, 618 
 
 Annual meetings after the revived organization at Chicago, in 
 1870, 694; first at New York, 697; second at Indianapolis, 097; 
 third at Columbus, Ohio, 698; fourth at Boston, 699; fifth at 
 Springfield, 111., 699; sixth at Washington, D. C, 700; seventh 
 at Pittsburg, 7i'l; eighth at Detroit, 702; ninth at Cleveland, 
 Ohio, 703; tenth at Chicago, 704; eleventh at St. Louis, 705; 
 twelfth at New Haven, 706; thirteenth at Topeka, Kansas, 
 7ti6; fourteenth at Cincinnati, 707; fifteenth at Altoona, 708; 
 sixteenth at Atlanta, Georgia, 7U8; seventeenth at Waukesha, 
 Wisconsin, 709; eighteenth ac Detroit, 709; nineteenth at 
 Nashville, Tennessee, 710; twentieth at Niagara Falls, 713; 
 twenty-first at Hot Springs, Arkansas, 712; twenty-second at 
 St. Louis, 714; twenty- third at Chicago, 71 6; twenty-fourth at 
 Niagara Falls, 718; twenty-fifth at Waukesha, 719; twenty- 
 sixth at Portland, Oregon, 720; twenty-seventh at Lake 
 Minnetonka, 720; twenty-eighth at Omaha, 730; twenty-ninth 
 at Detroit, 723; thirtieth at Atlantic City, N. J., 723; thirty- 
 first at Chattahooga, 724 
 
 Anti-Masonic party, 470, 507 
 
 Anti-Monopoly party proposed in order to procure repeal of 
 oppressive medical statutes, 507 
 
 Antimony discovered, 153; its use as medicine opposed, 189, 614 
 
 Antiokhos Soter and Stratonike, 71 
 
 Anton, James, of Lebanon, Ohio, elected Treasurer of the 
 National Eclectic Medical Association, 699, etc. 
 
 Antonines, the Roman Emperors, medical customs at their period, 
 94 
 
 Apion, his malady, 185
 
 890 INDEX. 
 
 Apollo, God of healing, 39 
 
 Appletons, requested to correct statement in their Cyclopedia, 706 
 
 Applicants for medical appointments, four-fifths rejected, 670 
 
 Aquinas, Thomas, and the New Gospel, 149 
 
 Aquitaine, the terrible pestilence there, 131 
 
 Arabian scientific writings denounced as profane, 163 
 
 Aranzi, his discourses, 183 
 
 Aratseos, the Eclectic, 91 
 
 Archseus, the theory explained, 176 
 
 Archagathos, at Rome, 84, 86 
 
 Archebiosis, the views of John Hunter, 261 
 
 " Arena of Debate " in the National Eclectic Medical Association, 
 709 
 
 Argentinos, a reformer and empiricist, 165 
 
 Aristotle, the philosopher, an Asklepiad physician, 68 
 
 Arizona, its medical statute, 776 
 
 Arkansas, the Eclectic Medical Association, 753; medical legis- 
 lation and Governor Fishback, 754; the medical statute, 777 
 
 Arkhigenes, the founder of the ancient Eclectic School of 
 medicine, 91 
 
 Army Surgeons, their unfitness, 064 
 
 Arnold of Villenova, 189 
 
 Arsenicals disapproved by the National Eclectic Medical Associa- 
 tion, 614 
 
 Artseos, 87 
 
 Artificial disease not induced by Homeopathic treatment, 339; " 
 teeth in Egyptian mummies, 875; " also possessed by Julius 
 Caesar and Mark Antony, 875 
 
 Aryans, 20 
 
 Asa, king of Judah rejects the priests as physicians, 18 
 
 Asiatic Cholera described as a bleeding to death, 360 ; attributed 
 to animalcules, 381 ; its first appearance in America in 1832, 
 436 ; its types different at each recurring, 331 ; treated suc- 
 cessfully by Dr. Beach, 436 ; also by Thomsonians, 488 ; its 
 treatment by Benjamin Thompson, 411 
 
 Asklepia, or medical schools, 48 
 
 Asklepiades, founder of the sect of Methodists, 86 
 
 Asklepiads, a clan or caste of priest-physicians, 44, 46, 50 ; said to 
 cure the body by the soul, 60 ; their final subversion, 51, 102 
 
 Asklepidotos, 102 
 
 Asklepios or .^sculapiup, 41
 
 INDEX. 891 
 
 Asoka, the Buddhist king of India, 73; fills India with hospitals, 81 
 
 Assyria, its bird-god Nis-Rokh. 81 ; medical formulas, 21 ; dis- 
 eases treated mesmerically, lU ; the pharmacy, 16 
 
 Astral influence in disease, 174 
 
 Astrology denounced by Chancellor Gerson, 149 ; condemned by 
 the University of Paris, 150 ; declared heretical, 150 ; its 
 supposed relation to medicinal plants, 702 ; the views of . 
 Ficino, 147 
 
 Astronomy in human science explained by Paracelsus, 174 
 
 Athenaeos, the founder of the Pneumaticists, or school of spirit- 
 ualist physicians, 90 
 
 Athens, its medical customs, 57 
 
 Athoth, an archaic Egyptian king also a physician, 6 
 
 Attalos, king of Pergamos, his learning, 78 
 
 Attenuation of medicines, 271 ; excepted to by Dr, Rau, 333 
 
 Aurelius, Marcus the Antonine Emperor, makes Galen his court- 
 physician, 98 
 
 Australia, the Reform practice of Medicine introduced, 769 
 
 Austrian physicians interfere with Priessnitz, 368 
 
 Auxiliary Eclectic Medical Societies in Pennsylvania, 748 
 
 Avenbrugger, 285 
 
 Avenzoar, 118 
 
 Averroes, 121 
 
 Avicenna or Ibn Sina, 115 
 
 Babbitt, E. D. and Chromopathy, 374 
 
 Babylonia, ancient, its university-towns, 20 ; said also to have 
 no physicians, 16 
 
 Bacilli, the theory, 382 
 
 Bacon, Francis, disbelieves the utility of optical instruments, 196 
 
 Baghdad becomes the metropolis of Islam, 112 
 
 Baker, Vincent A., elected president of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, 719 
 
 Bakhtan, its king sends to Egypt for medical aid, 14 
 
 Balfour, Doctor, his testimony of Homeopathic treatment, 3136 
 
 Baltimore, the Physio-Medical or Physopathic convention adopts 
 there a new declaration of principles, 5G7 ; the "Reform" 
 Medical Convention makes it broader, 589 ; the latter is 
 adopted by the National Eclectic Medical Association in 
 New York, 615 
 
 Bankston, Lanier, the Southern pioneer adopts the Botanic
 
 692 INDEX. 
 
 practice, 525 ; becomes dean of the College at Forsyth, 526 ; 
 opposes Dr. Morrow's proposition for united action, 541 ; is 
 president of the Southern Reform Medical Association, 590, 
 591 ; his services and history, 501, 525 ; speaks at the Eclectic 
 Medical College of Georgia, 528 
 
 Barbarism universal in the sixth century, 104 
 
 Barbers and Surgeons, their association dissolved, making the 
 callings distinct, 251 
 
 Barnes, Doctor, surgeon-general, excludes Eclectic and Homoe- 
 opathic physicians from appointments as surgeons in the 
 army, 700, note 
 
 Barthez, 229 
 
 Barton, William, 420, 461 
 
 Bastian, his explanation of micro-organisms, 384 
 
 Bay State Medical Reform As30ciation, 563 
 
 Bayle, Gaspard Laurent. 284 
 
 Beach Medical College, 731 ; its name changed to Beach Medical 
 University, 731 
 
 Beach, Wooster, founder of the American School of Reformed 
 Medicine, 433 ; student and practitioner, 434 ; has charge of 
 a Cholera hospital in lS!ew York, in 1832, 436; establishes 
 the Reformed Medical Academy, 468, 513 ; his Infirmary, 
 490 ; organizes the Reformed Medical Society of the United 
 States, 468 ; introduces the Reformed Practice into England, 
 762 ; proposes a medical department in Worthington College, 
 484 ; Emeritus professor in the Central Medical College at 
 Syracuse, 580 ; also in the Eclectic Medical Institute, 549 ; 
 displaced, 6o2 ; when first called "an Eclectic," 433, 536; 
 presides at a meeting to celebrate the medical triumph of 
 1835, 480 ; elected president of the National Eclectic Medical 
 Association, and introduced as the "Father of Eclectic 
 Medicine," 615 ; approves of the Baltimore " Reform" plat- 
 form, 568 ; his works, 859 
 
 Bell, Sir Charles, his discoveries in Physiology, 291 
 
 Bellini, 212 
 
 Benedictine monks, the original ecclesiastic physicians, 129, 152 
 
 Bennett College of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery, incorporated, 
 678 
 
 Bennett, Gen. John C, 486 
 
 Bennett, John Hughes, founder of the Medical Society of Paris, 
 285 ; denies Virchow's hypothesis that the cell is the ultimate
 
 INDEX. 893 
 
 element, 293; is described as a "leader of the Eclectic 
 " School of Medicine," 678 ; disapproves of mercury, arsenic 
 and antimony as medicines, 286 ; his treatise on Human 
 Physiology, 285 ; also on female complaints, 381 
 
 Berenger de Carpi introduces mercury as a remedy, 156 ; his 
 works, 168 
 
 Berlin, the first surgical school founded there, 250 
 
 Bernard de Gordon, 126 
 
 Bertipagli, Surgical writer at Padua, 150 
 
 Betrucci, 144 
 
 Bibliography of the Lloyd collection and other works by Eclectic 
 Botanic and Physio-Medical Authors, 847, etc. 
 
 Bichat, 262 ; his theory of physiologic duality, 263 ; his two 
 classes of vital phenomena, 287 
 
 Bigelow, Jacob, 420 ; he opposes the incorporating of the 
 Worcester Medical Institution, 564 
 
 Biochemic theory and " tissue-remedies," 367 
 
 Bishops in England formerly empowered to license physicians, 
 167 
 
 " Black Death," De Chauliac's astral theory, 128 
 
 " Black Laws " for physicians, 464 
 
 Black, Sir Joseph, his chemical theories, 273 
 
 Blackwell, Elizabeth of London, her Botanic garden, 763 ; " " of 
 America the first woman received here as a medical student, 
 accepted first by the Eclectic Medical Institute, 580 
 
 Blaine, James G , favors the Reform and Eclectic practice, 737 
 
 Blood, the discoveries cf its circulation, 184 
 
 Bloodletting, profuse, recommended by Botal, 164 ; also by 
 Broussais, 247 ; assiduously practiced in America, 409 ; 
 opposed by Chrysippos, 70; discarded by Hahnemann, 271 ; 
 also by Dickson, 359; denounced by the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, 014 ; a desire to return to it, 410 
 
 Bloyer, William E., elected president of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, 720 
 
 Boerhaave, 287 ; the "modern Galen," 224 
 
 Bologna, the University renowned for its superior medical learn- 
 ing, 141 
 
 Bonet, Theophile, 233 
 
 Books of Hermes on medicine, 7 ; " of Science compiled by 
 Aristotle, 08; " zV/., imported into Baghdad by Al Mamun, 113 
 
 Boorish manners of ancient Roman physicians, 91
 
 894 INDEX 
 
 Borelli, 211 
 
 Boskowitz, George W., elected president of the National Eclectic 
 
 Medical Association, 723 
 Boston Eclectic Medical Society organized, 672 ; " meeting of 
 
 the National Eclectic Medical Association, 699 
 Botal advocated profuse bloodletting, 164 
 Botanic physicians become a distinct school, 416 ; not illiterate, 
 
 417; desirous of better educational facilities, 517; their 
 
 practice of medicine upheld by the legislature of Alabama, 
 
 472 ; Societies, 462. 
 Botanic Physicians and Surgeons, Society formed, 445 ; " reme- 
 dies " introduced" to the medical profession, 419 
 Botanico-Medical Colleges — at Columbus, Ohio, incorporated, 
 
 501 ; at Forsyth, Georgia, 525 ; at Memphis, 528 ; at Worces- 
 ter, 561 ; at Cleveland, Ohio, 563 
 Botanico-Medical Society of Connecticut, incorporated with 
 
 power to establish a medical college, 562 ; " Southern, 526 
 Botany, Medical, proficiency required as in ^Materia Medica, 699 ; 
 
 Beck, Bigelow, Barton, Lewis, TuUy and other writers, 420 
 Bouillard, 283 
 
 Boycott, medical, enforced, Pol 
 Boyle, Robert, 218,'273 
 Bradley, Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, his 
 
 definition of "liberty," 798, note 
 Brahmans, Hindu physicians of that caste, 25 ; are said to have 
 
 anaesthetised the women at the suttees, 296 
 Brain subject to surgical inierference, 872 
 Breathing gives blood its life, 211 
 Brewster, Hon. F. Carroll, declares officially a medical college 
 
 to be a "literary institution," 742 
 British Eclectic Medical Reform Association, 676, 767 
 British and Foreign Medical Review advocates a radical change 
 
 in the practice of medicine, 337 
 Broadbent, John, a Botanic physician in Australia, 769 
 Brooklyn Eclectic Medical Society or " Academy of Medicine," 
 
 585 
 Broussais lays the foundation of '• Positive Medicine" in France, 
 
 283 ; his notions of bloodletting, 243 ; follows in the lines of 
 
 John Brown, 243 
 Brown, John, the last systemiser in orthodox medicine, 241 ; his 
 
 quarrel with Cullen, 241 ; his theory of disease, 242
 
 INDEX. 895 
 
 Brown, Gov. Joseph, a friend of " Reform Medicine," 501 
 
 Bruno, Giordano, 191 ; his praise of Paracelsus, 178 
 
 Brunonian system of medical practice, 241 
 
 Buckraan, E. D. professor and dean in Penn Medical University, 
 652 
 
 Buchanan, John, the first Eclectic to advocate the enacting of 
 statutes to regulate the practice of medicine, 685 ; received 
 as member of the Eclectic Medical Society of the State of 
 New York, 691 ; procures an act to incorporate " the 
 American University," 740 
 
 Buchanan, Joseph Rodes, accepts a chair in the "American 
 Medical Institute," 386 ; becomes a professor in the Eclectic 
 Medical Institute, 386, 549 ; his conditions of acceptance, 
 549 ; his dislike of Thomsonians, 556 ; elected president of 
 the National Eclectic Medical Association, 577 ; suggests 
 the abandoning of any national organization, 6n8 ; hostility 
 to Lorenzo E. Jones, 603 ; declares his opposition to the 
 National Association, 625 ; styles the Eclectic Medical 
 Institute the "parent school of Eclectic Medicine," 635; 
 withdraws from the Eclectic College of Medicine, 635 ; his 
 philosophy, 600 ; theory of Sarcognomy, 385 
 
 Buddhistic India, its hospitals, 80 
 
 Bundy, Joseph H., his discoveries in indigenous medicinal plants, 
 719 ; introduces new remedies, 745 
 
 Bureau of Correspondence created, its functions, 700 
 
 Burggrave teaches dosimetric medication, 363 
 
 Burnham, Walter, first president of the Bay State Medical 
 Reform Association, 563 ; his career as an operative surgeon 
 in ovarian disease, 305 ; is first to remove the womb, 308 ; 
 elected president of the National Eclectic Medical Associa- 
 tion, 309, 313 ; defines the platform of the Allopathic or 
 orthodox school, 615 ; his resolution in regard to medical 
 colleges, 616; also in favor of the medical instruction of 
 women, 616 ; he withdraws from all Eclectic Medical 
 Societies, 309 
 
 Burton, Amos N., opposes the proposition to support only men 
 for the legislature of New York, pledged to vote for repeal of 
 the medical statutes, 508 
 
 Burton Medical College incorporated, 743 
 
 Buzzell, James M., professor in the Worcester Medical Institu- 
 tion, 563 ; also in the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsyl-
 
 S96 INDEX. 
 
 vania, 594 ; procures the act of incorporation for the Eclectic 
 Medical College of Maine, 735 
 By-Laws of the National Eclectic Medical Association radically 
 changed, 701 ; important amendments, 704 
 
 Caesar, Julius, grants citizenship to foreign physicians, 88 
 Caldwell, Professor, accepts phrenology as scientific, 289 
 California, Eclectic Medicine introduced and Society formed, 745; 
 Medical College organized and formally recognized, 705, 729; 
 medical statute, 777 
 Calkins, Marshall, professor in the Eclectic Medical College of 
 Pennsylvania, 594, 643 ; professor in the Penn Medical 
 College, 643 ; professor in the University of Vermont, 643 
 Call for a Convention of Reformed Physicians at Cincinnati, 574 
 Cambridge, the Harvard Medical School, 167 
 Canada, its Eclectic Medical Society, 676, 687; a Medical Examin- 
 ing Board created to examine Eclectic physicians, 687 
 Cancer cured by Deraokedes, 54 
 Capistran, 159 
 
 Carlisle, Sir Antony, on human birth, 360 
 Caste of physicians hard to maintain, 45 
 Cathartic medicines disapproved by Hippokratea, 65 
 Gate the Censor, scorns the medical calling, 84 ; writes on 
 
 medicine, 85 
 Cause of disease, Dickson's theory, 359 
 
 Cavendish, Henry, the Father of Pneumatic Chemistry, 275 
 Cell-development taught by Virchow 293 
 Celsus, his talent, 89 
 Censors, Board announced in 1870 as from the National Eclectic 
 
 Medical Association at Philadelphia, note, 693 
 Censorship over medical practitioners proposed in Ohio, 686 
 Central Indiana Eclectic Medical Society formed, 673 
 Central Medical College of the State of New York, 579 
 Cerebellum, the organ of "unconscious cerebration," 290 
 Cesalpino, Andrea, claimed to have anticipated Harvey in his 
 
 discovery, 184, 205 
 Chaldsean astronomers, 196 ; " priests emigrate to Pergamos, 17 
 Chancellors of the Massachusetts Medical Society oppose the 
 
 incorporation of the medical college at Worcester, 564 
 Changes of sentiment and procedures among Homoeopathic 
 physicians, 335, 337
 
 INDKX. 897 
 
 Changes in the Renascence, 192 
 
 Chaos, Doctor, the physician at Vienn.i, 203 
 
 Charaka the Indian physician and his works, 28 
 
 Charlemagne, the Roman and Prankish Emperor, requires 
 
 medicine to be made a branch of study in schools, 108 
 Charms for diseases, 399 
 Chase, Rev. Philander, procures a charter for the college at 
 
 Worthington, Ohio, 514 
 Chauliac, the surgeon, 127 
 Chaumette Antoine, the Surgeon, 188 
 Chemiatric or Chemical School of Medicine, 189, 213 
 Chemical facts discovered by Basil Valentin, 153 
 Chemistry developed at Baghdad, 112, 273 
 Chicago, Eclectic Convention and reorganization of the National 
 
 Association, 694, 695 ; tenth anniversary in 1880, 704 ;' 
 
 Columbian Exposition and World's Congress Auxiliary of 
 
 Eclectic Physicians, 716 
 Chiefs at the siege of ancient Troy expert as surgeons, 48 
 Childs, Gov. H. H., of Berkshire Medical College, declares that 
 
 the physician should be essentially eclectic, 558 ; opposes 
 
 proscriptive medical legislation, 558 
 Chin-nun, the learned Emperor of China, 33 
 China or Kathay, 29 ; the learned emperor, 33 ; the healing art, 
 
 394 ; medical books, 84 ; little knowledge of anatomy, 35 ; 
 
 the Tail sect, 84 
 Chinese engineers and physicians, 86 
 Chiropractic, 882 
 
 Chiruri^ic, Academy, 250 ; P Ecole, 250 
 Chittenden, Governor, helps Thomson prepare specifications for 
 
 patent, 4*J0 
 Chondesabar or Gandisapur, its school of medicine, 104, 110 
 Christendom, earlier, its healing art, 128 
 Christian Rosenkreutz, 200 
 "Christian Science," 375 
 Chromopathy or the Light-Cure. 371, 374 
 Chrono-Thermal system, 357 
 Chrysalore, 145 
 
 Chrysippos, an innovator and reformer, 70 
 
 Chun-Sin, an ancient Chinese physician prescribes calomel, 156 
 Church, Sanford E., his views of medical questions, 506 
 Cicero, his praise of the medical art, 87
 
 890 INDEX. 
 
 Cincinnati, the Academy of Medicine, 671; Medical colleges of the 
 Physio-Medical or Thomsonian School, 524, 525; Reformed 
 Medical School, afterward the Eclectic Medical Institute, 543 
 et passim; National Eclectic Medical Association first orga- 
 nized, 576; its Eighth Annual Meeting, 618; Eclectic Medical 
 Society, 671; disputes in the Eclectic Medical Institute, 600, 
 623, etc. 
 
 Circular Address of the Faculty of the Eclectic Medical Institute, 
 550 
 
 Civil war causes desertion of medical classes, 650 
 
 Clairvoyance recognized by Hippokrates, 67 
 
 Clairvoyant physicians in Egypt, 11 
 
 Clark, Anson L., first president of the Illinois Eclectic Medical 
 Society, 675 ; elected president of the National Association, 705 
 
 Clark, Sir James, a medical recusant, physician to Queen Victoria, 
 335, 764 
 
 Class-legislation upon medical matters opposed, 707 
 
 Clement, Julien, his innovation in obstetrics, 207 
 
 Clergy in the American colonies practicing medicine, 408; " of 
 England forbidden to practice medicine, 773 
 
 Cleveland, meeting of the National Eclectic Medical Association, 
 703; its Botanico-Medical College, 563 
 
 Cleveland, C. H., made a professor in the Eclectic Medical Insti- 
 tute, 623; his views of calomel, 632; denounces the transfer of 
 the Eclectic College to the E M. Institute, 687; becomes a 
 professor in the Eclectic Medical College of Philadelphia, 650 
 
 Cleveland, Chauncey F., supported by Botanic physicians, 502 
 
 Clinic Surgery and Medicine, 250 
 
 Clinical instruction introduced, 190 
 
 Clowes, William, his works on army surgery, French disease 
 and scrofula, 188 
 
 Coal-tar medicaments, 419 
 
 Cobb, Daniel J., edits the Botanic Seniinei inV^estQvn New York, 
 483 
 
 Cobbett, William ("Peter Porcupine"), his utterance against Dr. 
 Rush's procedures, 765 
 
 Cochrane, Jerome, attacks the platform of the " Reform" Medical 
 Convention at Baltimore, 590; becomes a member of the 
 Southern Reform Medical Association, 592; abandons the 
 cause and becomes Health Officer of Alabama, 592; his rigor- 
 ous enforcement of the medical statute, 711, 751
 
 INDEX. 899 
 
 Code of Ethics of the American Medical Association, 551; " " 
 view of Dr. J. Marion Sims, " " adopted by the National 
 Convention at Chicago in 1870, 695 
 
 Coe, Grover, elected Secretary of the National Eclectic Medical 
 Association, 617, 618; criticised in regard to " Concentrated 
 remedies," 656 
 
 Coffin, A. J., introduces the American Botanic ( Thomsonian ) 
 Practice into England by his own name, 764 
 
 Colby, Benjamin, publishes the Thomsonimi Recorder, 518; his 
 efforts to establish a medical college in Maine, 518; delivers a 
 course of medical lectures at Nashua, 521 
 
 Collections in Natural History made by Alexander for Aristotle, 
 68 
 
 College of Medicine, American, at Philadelphia, 594; " American 
 MedicalatCincinnati,605; " " " at St. Louis, 727; " Eclectic 
 Medical at Cincinnati, 634; '• of American Medicine and 
 Surgery, 527; " Beach Medical, 736; " Bennett, of Eclectic 
 Medicine and Surgery, 678; " Botanic in New York, 446; " 
 Botanico-Medical at Cleveland, Ohio, 623; " at Columbus, 
 501; " id. at Forsyth, Georgia (afterward Macon), 501, 525. 
 etc ; " at Memphis. Tennessee, 528; " zi/. at Worcester, 
 Massachusetts, 561, etc , called also New England, 563; •' 
 California Medical, 7(i5, 729; " Central Medical of New York, 
 580, 581; " "Christian" of New Albany, Indiana, 486; " 
 Eclectic in Cincinnati, 684; " Eclectic Medical, of the City of 
 New York, 677; id. of Maine, 735, etc., " of New Jersey, 738; " 
 id. of Pennsylvania, 593, etc.; " id. of Philadelphia, 644, etc.;" 
 Franklin Medical, 640; " Georgia Eclectic Medical 628, etc.; " 
 Indiana, Eclectic Medical, 730; " Indiana, of Physicians and 
 Surgeons, 732; " Iowa Eclectic Medical, 73 J; " Jeffer.son 
 Medical, 638; " King Medical, 733; " Lincoln Medical, 719, 
 734; " Metropolitan, 567, etc.; " New England Female Medical, 
 570, etc ; " Penn Medical, 596; " Pennsylvania Medical, 639; 
 " Philadelphia, 641; " Physicians in London, 773; " Surgeons 
 in Paris, 141; " Physicians and Surgeons, 523; " Syracuse 
 Medical, 582; " United States Medical, 727; " Woman's 
 Medical, 484, 513 
 
 ■Colleges established in the Moslem world, 116; " Medical, in Iowa, 
 708; " Indiana and Georgia, 705; certain methods denounced 
 by John Thomas, 555; " of dentistry, 878; " of Hygiene, 879; 
 " of Osteopathy, 881
 
 l^GO INDEX. 
 
 Colonial legislation in New York, Mr. Haskell's charge, 479; " 
 practice of medicine, 406 
 
 Colorado, the Eclectic Medical Association formed, 758; the 
 medical statute, 778 
 
 Colot, Germain, performs lithotomy, 151 
 
 Columbia District, its medical statute, 780 
 
 Columbian Exposition, Committee appointed to confer with the 
 commission to obtain an Eclectic Department, 714; " Journal, 
 710 
 
 Columbo, 183 
 
 Cc.lumbus, Christopher, 153 
 
 Combe, George, the phrenologist, 288 
 
 Combination of Medicines, Rafinesque's explanation, 431 
 
 Comings, Isaac M., professor in the Botanico-Medical College at 
 Macon, Georgia, and of Petersburg, Virginia, 554; appointed 
 to a chair in the college at Worcester, 561; has a controversy 
 with Dr. Calvin Newton, 605; joins the college movement in 
 New York, 566; acts with the National Eclectic Association 
 with the "Reform" platform, 615 
 
 Commissioner of Education, his criticism of the conducting of 
 medical colleges, 513 
 
 "Complea: Method of Physick," 407 
 
 Concentrated remedies, 633, 057 
 
 Confederate Authorities employed Botanic and Eclectic Surgeons, 
 527 
 
 Conflict at the Eclectic Medical Institute, 627, etc. 
 
 Congress of German physicians at Magdeburg dissenting from 
 Hahnemann, 324, 
 
 Connecticut, the Botanico-Medical Society incorporated with 
 power to establish a school, 562; '■ id. plans a course of 
 lectures, 563; " id. is hostile to the Worcester Medical 
 Institution, 566; " the Eclectic Medical Association incorpo- 
 rated with similar powers, 672; " id. changes its name, 589; " 
 id. proposes to establish a medical college, 743; exempted 
 specifically from provisions of the medical statute, 778; 
 synopsis of the medical statute, 778; " Constitution inhibits 
 exclusive privileges, 501 
 
 Conscientious praciitioneis refuse to be bound by the code, 551 
 
 Constantinople, its fall and the result to learning, 157 
 
 Contemplated excluding of certain physicians from practice, 685 
 
 Controversy of the Eclectic Medical Colleges at Cincinnati, 598-
 
 INDEX. 901 
 
 et passim; " at Philadelphia, 645; " of Dr. R. S. Newton and 
 Jos. R. Buchanan, 628 
 
 Controversies of the Medical Colleges at the meeting of the 
 National Eclectic Medical Association at Pittsburg, 607; " " 
 at Rochester, 608 
 
 Convention of Botanic (Thomsonian) physicians of New York to 
 protest against medical enactments, 476; " first at Columbus, 
 488; " second at Pittsburg, 490; third at Baltimore, 491 ; " id. 
 in New England to provide for a medical college, 519, 520; " 
 of Reformed physicians at Cincinnati, 574; " of physicians of 
 different Reform Schools, in New York, 588; " " at Philadel- 
 phia, 589; " Eclectic physicians at Chicago, 694 
 
 Cook, William H., professor in Syracuse, and Metropolitan 
 Medical Colleges, 524, 567; conducts Journal of Medical 
 Refor7n, 567; Dean and professor of the Physio- Medical 
 Institute at Cincinnati, 524; Editor of the Physio-Medical 
 Recorder, 524, 590; his criticism of Dr. Jerome Cochrane, 590, 
 note; declares Specific Medication "an old Physio-Medical 
 doctrine," 681, note 
 
 Cooke, Thomas, a student of Dr. Howell, 533; declares himself 
 an Eclectic, 535, 536, 537; procures charter for the Eclectic 
 Medical College of Pennsylvania, 593; " founder of the 
 college and Eclectic Botanic Medical Society of Pennsylvania, 
 754; death. 594 
 
 Copernicus, his theories denounced, 190, 191, 196 
 
 Corbeil, Giles de, 136 
 
 Cordova, its Moslem university, 117 
 
 Correspondence, theory advocated by Hempel as more correct 
 than Hahnemann's of similars, 338; " Bureau in the National 
 Eclectic Medical Association, 7(.i0 
 
 Corvinus, Matthseus, king of Hungary, 159; advertises for a 
 surgeon, 144; proposes to Ficino to establish a philosophers" 
 Academy. 149; founds the university of Buda, 159 
 
 Corvisart, introduced percussion, 284 
 
 Cotner university in Nebraska, its Department of Eclectic 
 Medicine, 734 
 
 Couvade. a custom at birth of children, 399 
 
 Covert, George, elected president of the National Eclectic Medical 
 Association, 712 
 
 Covey, C. E., president of the American Association of Physicians 
 and Surgeons, 883
 
 902 INDEX. 
 
 Creighton, Charles, of London, his tribute to De Chauliac, 127; 
 his description of Paracelsus, 170; his sketch of surgery in the 
 sixteenth century, 189 
 
 Crusade against the Turks, 159 
 
 Cruvilhier, 284 
 
 CuUen, William, 237; his theory and classification, 238 
 
 Culpepper, Nicholas, eulogy by Dr. Howell, 533; the pioneer of 
 Herbal medication in England, 7G2; his treatise on Herbal 
 medicine, 407; his works, 762 
 
 Culver, Erastus D., his report in the Assembly of New York 
 recommending the enfranchisement of Botanic physicians, 
 504 
 
 Cures, Swedenborg's hypothesis, 348; " effected by invoking of 
 saints, 108 
 
 Curryer, William P., elected president of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, 714 
 
 Curtis. Alva, his report to the first Thomsonian Convention in 
 1832 on treating of Asiatic Cholera, 4b9; forms the '"Indepen- 
 dent Thomsonian Botanic Society," 493; begins medical 
 instruction at Columbus, Ohio, and procures a charter for the 
 "Literary and Botanical Medical Institute," 523; opposes the 
 establishing of more Botanic medical colleges, 524; proposes 
 to open a medical college at Boston, 5G1; is appointed pro- 
 fessor in the Worcester Botanico-Medical College, 563; 
 disclaims the designation of '■Th(.msonian" 564; takes part 
 in college enterprises hostile to the college of Worcester, 564 
 
 Cycloganglionic nervous system, 2>8 
 
 Dalton, E. G , a professor in the Eclectic Medical College of 
 Philadelphia, 6.j0 
 
 Danger of attenuation, Dr. Rau's judgment, 333 
 
 Dante, 140 
 
 Dareios Hystaspis, king of Persia, tieated surgically by Demo- 
 kedes, 53 
 
 Dark Ages, 124; begin with the fall of Constantinople, 157 
 
 Darwin, Erasmus, 244, 284 
 
 Davis, Nathan S., suppresses all reports of Eclectic and Homoe- 
 opathic physicians made at the Centennial exposition in 1876, 
 702, 703 
 
 Davis, Orin, a professor in the Central Medical College of New 
 York, 529, 580; elected president of the rival National organi- 
 zation, 725
 
 INDEX. 903 
 
 Davy, Sir Humphrey, discovers nitrogen protoxide, 297; his 
 remark on obstacles to overcome old errors, 336 
 
 De Graaf, 208 
 
 De la Boe, 213; his theory of fermentation, 273 
 
 De Monte, Giovanni, 190 
 
 De Zerbi, the "Medical Seer," 152 
 
 Death of Dr. Thomas V. Morrow, 578; " of Thomas Cooke, 594: 
 " of Calvin Newton, 620 
 
 Death-penalty inflicted on students, 163; imposed on colored 
 persons in Virginia for administering medicine, 163 
 
 Decline of ancient medical learning, 101 
 
 Degrees in medicine when first conferred on students, 138 
 
 Delaware, its medical statutes, 779 
 
 Demand of American Medical Association in respect to incorpora- 
 ting of medical colleges, 689 
 
 Demokedes, in Persia, 15; his story, 53; treats king Dareios, 
 cures Queen Atossa of cancer, 54 
 
 Demokritos of Abdera, 57 
 
 Dentistry, its province, 875; in Egypt, 11, 12; " the Examining 
 Boards, 876 
 
 Depletion, opposed by Chrysippos, 71 
 
 "Desensitising," 880 
 
 Detwiller, Dr., opens the North American Homoeopathic Acade- 
 my, 317 
 
 Dickinson, Andrew Bray, reports in favor of free medical 
 practice, 470 
 
 Dickson, Samuel, propounder of the Chrono-Thermal System, 
 358; his theory of life, 3G0; denounces blood-letting, 359; 
 deprecates mutilation by surgery, 361; disapproves of the 
 Homoeopathic dogma, 360; repudiates the theory of specific 
 remedies, 362 
 
 Difference between original Homoeopathists and the new German 
 school of Specific Medication, 335 
 
 Different specialties of medical practice in ancient Rome, 94 
 
 Digby, Kenelm, and the "Sympathetic Powder," 203 
 
 Dioskorides, his learning, 91 
 
 Diploma-traffic, the complaint of Hon. Andrew D. White, 741; 
 " " an old practice of medical colleges, 741; " " denounced 
 by the National Eclectic Medical Association, 697 
 
 Diplomas of medical colleges declared of no value by the 
 Surgeon-General, 686; " " must be surrendered whenever 
 the holder abandons the orthodox practice, 573
 
 904 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Disco-Series following the invention of the microscope, 217 
 
 Disease a degeneration, 384; " Burmese theory, 392; " Burg- 
 grave's theory of dynamic and organic, SQi ; " an exaggera- 
 tion or diminution of vital motions, 358; " may be caused 
 by mental emotion or shock to the nerves, 384; " engendered 
 by Aramanya the evil energy, 23; " an " erroneous belief," 
 378; Hahnemann's theory, 271 ; " Rau's explanation, 331; 
 "theory of parasitic origin, 381; "said to be caused by 
 spiritual beings, 398 
 
 Diseases, their five causes, and five methods of treatment, 177; 
 said to be changed in type, 86; those of women, 300; " in 
 China, 395 
 
 Dislocations, prescription of Cato, 85 
 
 Dispensaries in the Roman Empire, 93 
 
 Dispensatory, American, compiled, 626; accepted by the National 
 Eclectic Medical Association as its standard, 703 
 
 Disreputable proceedings alleged against the Eclectic Medical 
 College of Pennsylvania, 047 
 
 Dissension in the Faculty of the Southern Botanico-Medical 
 College, 526 
 
 District of Columbia, its medical statute, 780 
 
 Districts, composed of several states, project of societies so 
 arranged, 759 
 
 Division of Thomsonian physicians, 492 
 
 " Doctor Caius " (Keyes), 167 
 
 Doctrines, medical, 221; " of Galen, 99; of Hippokrates, 65 
 
 Dodds, Susanna W., and the School of Hygiene, 879 
 
 Dogma of Symptoms, 271 
 
 Dogmatic or Philosophic School of Medicine. 63 
 
 DoUey, L. C, reports the platform of Eclectic principles in 
 1852, 609 
 
 Dosimetric Medication, 363, 878 
 
 Dosimetry hardly a distinct school. 367, 878; not a system but a 
 method, 363. See Alkalometry, 732 
 
 Drake University and Iowa Eclectic Medical College 
 
 Drelincourt, 208 
 
 Druggists practicing medicine in ancient Rome, 93 
 
 " Drugless Science," 881 
 
 Drugs, Rau's theory of their action, 330 
 
 Druidic Society at Lewiston, Maine, 737 
 
 Druses not vaccinated and escaping small-pox, 344
 
 INDEX. goS 
 
 DuBois, Jacques (Sylvius), 179 
 
 Duel between Man and the Age in which he lives, 362 
 
 Duncan, Joseph R., elected president of the Eclectic Medical 
 Association, 697 
 
 Dunglison, Doctor, his criticism of the Arabian medical learn- 
 ing, 125 
 
 Durham, William M., of Georgia, becomes president of the 
 National Eclectic Medical Association, 709 
 
 Duvernay, 208 
 
 Dynamic force separable from the material substance, 333 
 
 Eaton, Gen, John, Commissioner of Education, criticises the 
 medical curriculum, 512; his report of the Centennial 
 exhibition omits the accounts furnished him of the Eclectic 
 and Homoeopathic Schools of Medicine, 702. See Davis, N. S. 
 
 Ebers' manuscript, 14 
 
 Ecclesiastical power supreme over imperial, 133 
 
 Ecclesiastics the former practitioners of medicine, 133 
 
 Echo for freedom of medical practice, 476 
 
 Eckley, Hon. E. E , makes a report to the legislature of Ohio, 
 affirming the right to incorporation, 545 
 
 Eclectic— the name applied to Doctor Beach, 433, 536; adopted 
 by Thomas Cooke, SBj, 573; used at first by Calvin Newton, 
 559; given also to Samuel Thomson, 536; assigned to an 
 ancient school of medicine, 91; designation of a little school 
 in Germany, 212; now shunned by many practitioners, 053; 
 defi ed by the National Association at Rochester, 609, 610; 
 the term explained by Dr. Morrow, 546 
 
 Eclectic Botanic Medical Association of Pennsylvania, 537 
 
 Eclectic College of Medicine at Cincinnati, 634 6:!6 
 
 " Eclectic Conciliators,'' 212 
 
 Eclectic Medical Associations, " American," organized, 576; " " 
 British, 676; " Alabama, 752; " Arkansas, 753; " Canada 
 671; " Central Indiana, 673; " Colorado, 758; " Connecticut, 
 672, 753; " Georgia, 750; " Indiana, 673, 692; " Iowa, 694; 
 ■' Kansas, 675, 744; " Kentucky, 757; " Missouri, 747; 
 " National, organized, 576, 695; et passim, " Nebraska, 
 675; " New England, 760; " Ohio, 673, 691; " Pennsylvania, 
 645. 743, 749; " Texas, 755; " "Union," 673; " Utah, 758; 
 " Washington, 758; " West Virginia, 757
 
 go6 INDEX. 
 
 Eclectic Medical College of the City of New York, 677; " of 
 Georgia, 678; " of London, projected; " of Maine, 735, etc.; 
 " of Michigan, 735; " of New Jersey, 738; " of Pennsyl- 
 vania, 583, 683, 739; " of Philadelphia, 644, 6J2; " of St 
 Louis, 725, 727 
 
 Eclectic Medical Colleges, 726; " in New York, 578 
 
 Eclectic Medical Institute, incorporated, 544; dissensions, 600; the 
 Faculty repudiate the National Eclectic Medical Association, 
 624; two parties and two elections of trustees, 627; conflict 
 for possession, 630; Faculty divided and two classes gradu- 
 ated, 633; Union with the Eclectic College of Medicine, 636; 
 trials in the beginning of the war in 1861, 663; radical change 
 in the corporation, 664 
 
 Eclectic Medical Society of Brooklyn; " of California, 745; " of 
 Illinois, 675; " of Maine, 674; " Massachusetts, " of Min- 
 nesota, 675; " of Missouri, 676; " of New Jersey, " of New 
 York, 582, 649, 677, 691; " of Ohio, " of Oregon, 757; " of 
 Pennsylvania, 694; " of South Dakota, 758; ' of Tennessee, 
 757; " of Vermont, 674; " of Washington, D. C, 759; " of 
 West Kentucky, 757 
 
 Eclectic Medical Societies of the Southern States, 592 
 
 Eclectic medicines " introduced " into other Schools as their 
 original discoveries, 616 
 
 Eclectic Practice in Canada, G87, 768; " in England, 766 
 
 Eclectics of ancient times, 91; " in the Roman Empire, 536; 
 " as described by Rafinesque, 427 
 
 Eclecticism (Medical) defined by the National Eclectic Medical 
 Association, 610; " purpose to kill it off during the civil 
 war, 666 
 
 Ecole Pratique de Chirurgie founded, 251 
 
 Eddy, Mrs. Mary J,, teacher of " Christian Science," 379 
 
 Edessa, the seat of a University, 110 
 
 Edinburgh, the school founded, 236 
 
 Edmcnds, John W., advocates restrictive medical legislation, 473 
 
 Educational requirements advance after the medical statutes 
 were repealed, 511 
 
 Efforts for restrictive statutes renewed, 689 
 
 Egypt, anatomy studied, 12; dentistry practiced, 11; its schools 
 and men of learning, 73; occult rites, 11; its medical art, 5; 
 royal scribe sent to Bakhtan, 14 
 
 Electric light a healing agent, 374
 
 INDEX. 907 
 
 Elliott, Stephen, 420 
 
 Ely, Sumner, defeats repeal bill in New York, 507 
 
 Embryology, writers upon the subject, 293 
 
 Empedokles, philosopher and physician, 56 
 
 Emperor of Germany assumes power to elect Popes, 133 
 
 Empiric School, 76; the doctrine advocated by Argentino, 165 
 
 Empirics and pretenders common in ancient Egypt, 11; defined 
 by Rafinesque, 427 
 
 Enactments to regulate medical practice said to be unconsti- 
 tutional, 775 
 
 Encroachments by legislation on the rights of persons, 774 
 
 End of the world expected, 189 
 
 Endotherapy, or " Drugless Science," 881 
 
 England; Botanic and Eclectic Medicine, 762; British Medical 
 Reform Association; 707; National Association of Medical 
 Herbalists, 708; severe medical statutes, 676, 770 
 
 English kings partial to Mohamedans, 122 
 
 Epidavros, its temple and sacred serpents, 42 
 
 Epidemic constitution, Sydenham's explanation, 217 
 
 Epigenesis, the theory, 220 
 
 Equal opportunity the ideal, 34?; " rights, efforts in different 
 States to secure them, 471; " " Dr. J. V. C. Smith opposes 
 giving such to Botanic practitioners, 520 
 
 Eranian physicians directed how to begin practice. 23 
 
 Erasmus consults Paracelsus professionally, 169 
 
 Eristratos, a pupil of Chrysippos, 70 
 
 Esdaile, Doctor, employs mesmerism, 346 
 
 Essenes, a Jewish School of phy.sicians, 79 
 
 Esprit de corps of Homoeopathists, 318; " desirable elsewhere, 761 
 
 Ether the primal principle of Nature, 372; " theory of Hahne- 
 mann, 230 
 
 Ethics, the code, 551; amended, 697 
 
 Etienue, Charles, his discovery of the ganglionic system, 180 
 
 Euphorbius, 88 
 
 Europe in the wake of Asia, 403; '' scourged by syphilis, 156 
 
 European physicians in Japan, 398 
 
 Eustachi, 182 
 
 Evans, W. P., teacher of mental healing, 378 
 
 " Everlasting Gospel," the Iniroducii07i, 139 
 
 Evil uses " absorb malignities," 338 
 
 Examining boards, military, refuse Eclectic physicians for army 
 surgeons in the civil war, G65
 
 9o8 INDEX. 
 
 Exclusive privileges to physicians denounced by Dr. Rush, 404 
 
 Exorcisms, 400 
 
 Ezekiel the prophet describes surgical treatment, 79 
 
 Fabiola, a lady of rank, founds a hospital at Rome, 103 
 Fabricio, Hieronymo, his works on anatomy and surgery, 185 
 Faculte de Medecin opposes the introducing of mercury and 
 
 antimony as remedies, 189 
 Faculty of the Eclectic Medical Institute, its circular of 1849 
 
 defining Eclectic medicine, •''50 
 Faith-cure in the early Christian centuries, 139 
 Faith-Homes, 380 
 Fallopi, 183 
 
 Faraday, Michael, discovers the soporific property of ether, 298 
 Farnum, E. J., elected president of the National Eclectic 
 
 Medical Association, 721 
 Fathers coddled instead of mothers at childbirth, 399 
 Fatimites in Egypt, 116 
 
 Faust, Johann, scholar, soldier and physician, 179 
 Favorable sentiment of eminent physicians toward Botanic 
 
 practitioners, 498 
 Female Medical Education Society, 570 
 Fernel oppose the humoral pathology, 164, 287 
 Fever the result of disease, 858; " traumatic, due to stoppage 
 
 of blood, 364 
 Ficino, Massilio, physician, 146; his philosophic opinions, 147; 
 
 declines proposition to establish a Platonic Akademy in 
 
 Hungary, 149 
 Fiffy thousand dollar law framed to prevent the incorporating of 
 
 medical colleges in New York, 587; " " petitioners in 
 
 1831 for repeal of medical statute, 471 
 Filkins, Morgan L., elected president of the provisional Eclectic 
 
 national organization, 725. See Davis, Orm 
 Filthy medicines imported into America, 396 
 " Finer Forces" applied remedially, 374 
 First Eclectic medical society of New York, 579 
 First employers of anaesthesia in America, 298 
 First medical college for women, 570 
 First medical enactments relatively mild, 687 
 First and only medical statute ever enacted in New York in 
 
 obedience to the will of the people, 509
 
 INDEX. 909 
 
 First session of the Eclectic Medical Institute, 545 
 
 Five methods enumerated of treating disease, 177 
 
 Flap-operation introduced 311 
 
 Fleishman's Homeopathic Hospital at Vienna, 336 
 
 Florida, medical department of the university with Doctors 
 
 Kost and Baker, 738; " the medical statute, 781 
 Fludd, Robert, physician and alchemist, 201 
 Fonerden, William H., edits the Southern Medical Recorder, 526; 
 
 is removed from the faculty of the Southern Botanico-Medical 
 
 College, 526 
 Foote, Edward B., his paper on medical examining boards, 720 
 Forbes, Sir John, physician to the Royal household, 830, 764; 
 
 declares in favor of a new practice of medicine, " Hygienic, 
 
 Eclectic, Hippocratic," 336; encounters professional hostility, 
 
 336 
 Forceps invented, 208 
 
 Form and growth explained as due to magnetism, 372 
 Former experience repeated, 316 
 Forty thousand petitioners in 1835 to the Legislature of New 
 
 York for freedom of medical practice, 477 
 Four primal elements, 273 
 Four thousand petition in Elaine for freed(;m of medical practice, 
 
 500 
 Fowler, Lydia F., a student of the Central Medical College, 581 
 Franklin Medical College, 640 
 Free-masonry, 140 
 Freeman, Zoheth, professor in the " Eclectic Medical Institute," 
 
 at Fredonia, 579 
 French, Doctor, procures the indictment of Samuel Thomson 
 
 for wilful murder, 457 
 Friend, Joseph D., advocates the compiling of a history of 
 
 Reform Medicine, 617; obtains an act to incorporate the 
 
 Metropolitan Medical College, 507 
 " Friendly Botanic Societies" established by Samuel Thomson, 
 
 462 
 Fulkerson, W. H., founder of Endotherajiv, 881 
 
 Gabbert, Michael, founder of the Botanico-Medical College at 
 
 Memphis, 528, 529, etc. 
 Galen, his personal history, 97; an Asklepiad, 98; castigates the 
 
 ignorance of the regular physicians, 90; denounces the diverse
 
 9IO INDEX. 
 
 sects in medicine, 97; teaches at Rome and is driven away 
 by the physicians, 98; becomes archiatros, 99; keeps a drug- 
 store, 100; taught the humoral pathology, 287; his teachings 
 discarded by Paracelsus, 171 
 Galenic remedies, their failure in the Sixteenth century, 189 
 
 Galileo, 196 
 
 Gall, the founder of Phrenology. 288; his teaching on the spinal 
 cord, 290 
 
 Galloupe, J. B., explains how medical students often graduated, 
 555, note 
 
 Gandesapur, the seat of a Moslem medical school, 104, 110 
 
 Ganglionic nervous system, 180; further explained, 264, 288 
 
 Garfield, president James A., 295 
 
 Garrison, Herod D., a professor in the Eclectic Medical Insti- 
 tute, 636; a founder of Bennett College, 678; his resolution 
 in favor of stringent medical legislation, 698 
 
 Gas, the name invented, 199 
 
 Gassner, Joseph, his mesmeric cures, 268 
 
 Gaza, Theodoros, 145 
 
 Geber, the alchemist, 114 
 
 Geddes, New York, holding of the Thomsonian convention to 
 oppose medical legislation, 476 
 
 Gemmill, William T., elected president of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, 712; now treasurer, etc 
 
 General hospitals, a third of the patients die, 683 
 
 Genesee Union Botanic Medical Society organized, 482 
 
 Georgia College of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery, 528, 730; 
 " Eclectic Medical Association, 750; " Eclectic Medical 
 College, 528, 678, 706, 729; " medical statute repealed in 
 1S40, 501; present medical statute, 781 
 
 Gerbert, Pope Sylvester II, a student at Cordova, 117 
 
 Germ-theory, 381 
 
 German Eclectics, 212 
 
 Germany, complete change among Homoeopathists, 334; " 
 " Positive Medicine," 286 
 
 Gerson, Chancellor writes against medical astrologists, 149 
 
 Gladstone, William E., in favor of freedom of medical practice, 
 770 
 
 Good, J., Mason, 281 
 
 Gothia, the new European Empire, 107 
 
 Gottingen, the university founded, 220
 
 INDEX. 911 
 
 Gould, Pearce on surgery of the thorax, 873 
 
 Governors of New York unfriendly to medical freedom, 504 
 
 Graduating of Students, forbidden except they subscribe to 
 
 orthodox medical dogmas, 576, note; " " denounced also 
 
 by the National Eclectic Medical Association, where attend- 
 ance at college is nominal, 613 
 Gram, Doctor, pioneer of Homoeopathists in America, 317 
 Granger, Hon. Francis, presents petitions from forty thousand 
 
 signers for amendment of iht medical statutes, 471 
 Granier, his theory of the fiuidic powers of medicines, 321 
 Grant, Doctor, on the nervous systems, 288 
 Gray, Asa, adopts the classitication of Rafinesque, 424; " 
 
 Richards explains dosimetric medicine, 363 
 "Great Secret," 198 
 Greece, prehistoric, 38 
 Greek Empire, its extinction preceded the Renaissance, 145; " 
 
 language learned in Europe, 146; " " why prescriptions 
 
 were written in it, 89; " medicine taught in Oxford 
 
 University, 167; " lexicon tortured for new names, 282 
 Greeley Horace advocates and exults over the medical law of 
 
 1844, 508 
 Green, Milbrey, elected president of the National Eclectic 
 
 Medical Association, 704; his resolution for the holding of 
 
 Sections, 705 
 Greenwood, Isaac, 876 
 Gregory, the family of physicians in Edinburgh University, 239; 
 
 '• Samuel, his endeavors to establish a medical school for 
 
 women in Boston, 570 
 Griffith, Moses, his contest for the repeal of the medical statute 
 
 of Georgia, 500 
 Griswold, R. W., on the remedies formerly used in New England, 
 
 406 
 Gross, S. D., 386 
 Gunn, Robert A., elected the first secretary of the reorganized 
 
 National Eclectic Medical Association, 696 
 Giinther, Johannis, 161 
 Gynaecology, 299; " as it is taught in Burma, 398 
 
 Hadley, William W., professor of the Central Medical College of 
 New York. 580
 
 912 INDEX. 
 
 Hahnemann, Samuel, 270; his three methods of cure, 319; oppose 
 bloodletting, 332; his mode of treatment criticised by Dr. 
 Rau, 329; his doctrines controverted and declared visionary 
 by Homoeopathists, 337, 840; his expectation that HomceoDa. 
 thy would be a family practice, 343; " medical college, 317 
 
 Hakhams or Moslem physicians, 389 
 
 Hale, E. M., praises Samuel Thomson, 455 
 
 Hall, Marshall, his discoveries in physiology, 291 
 
 Halle, the university founded, 227 
 
 Haller, 226 
 
 Hamilton, Robert, his resolution of protest, 649 
 
 Hammond, William A., appointed surgeon-general, 667; issues 
 an order excluding mercury and antimony from the supply 
 table, 668; is denounced, and his removal surreptitiously 
 effected, 669 
 
 Hari Dhas, the fakir, buried alive for six weeks and resuscitated, 
 345 
 
 Harun al Rashid, the great khalif, 112 
 
 Harvard Medical School opposes the incorporation of the College 
 at Worcester, 564 
 
 Harvey, William, discovers the circulation of the blood, 185, 
 203, 287; describes medical proscription by medical men, 443 
 
 Haskell, Judge, denounces proscriptive medical legislation, 474; 
 " Job, declares a law restricting medical practice unconsti- 
 tutional, 473; " " successfully advocates a bill to remove 
 medical disabilities, 477 
 
 Hazard, Joseph P., undergoes remarkable surgical operation, 312 
 
 " Healers," proposed legislation to restrict them, 835 
 
 Healing, the art of ancient Thfessaly, 39; " described in the 
 New Testament, 380; " liberalized in ancient Greece, 52 
 
 Hebrew Medical Science, 78 
 
 Helmboltz and his theory of vibriones, 383 
 
 Hempel, Charles, an opponent of Hahnemann, 334; publishes 
 the " Organon of Specific Homoeopathy," his theory of Cor- 
 respondences, 338 
 
 Henry, Samuel, author of a treatise on Herbal Medicine, 420 
 
 Henry H of England, contemplates the introduction of the 
 Mohamedan religion, 122; " V, introduces the practice of 
 burning heretics, 722; " VH brings the " sweating sick- 
 ness" with his soldiers, 154; " VHI a physician and 
 patron of the " new learning," 165
 
 INDEX. 913 
 
 Herbal medicine in England, 407, 762 
 
 Herbert Spencer, on the Americans, 774 
 
 Hermg, Constantine, procures an act of incorporation for the 
 Homoeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania, 317 
 
 Herod the great, his malady. 155 
 
 Herodikos, his remedial procedures criticised by Plato, 59 
 
 Herophilos the first teacher of medicine at Alexandrina, 74 
 
 Hersey, Thomas, editor of the T/iomsonian Recorder, 486, 488; 
 his tribute to Samuel Thomson, 585; becomes an advocate 
 for union of the several schools of medical reformers, 535 
 
 Heterodox practitioners numerous and popular in America. 773; 
 " " in Ancient India, 29 
 
 Hierarchy professional, of physicians like a national church, 403 
 
 Hilarios, Saint, overcomes the serpent of Epidavros, 102 
 
 Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII, 132 
 
 Hildegard canonized for her medical skill, 133 
 
 Hill, Isaac, governor and senator, a friend of Doctor Benjamin 
 Thompson, 491 
 
 Hippocratic oath, a spurious production, 63 
 
 Hippokrates 61; arrests the plague, 61 ; creates medical literature, 
 61, 64; his surgical skill, 06; treats of curing by similars, 270 
 
 Hippokratic Medicine in Italy and France, 163, 164 
 
 Hippokratian or Dogmatic School, 63 
 
 Hitchman, William, of Liverpool, an English Eclectic, 767 
 
 Hoffmann, Friedrich, 229; his theory, 230; advocates humoral 
 pathology, 287; " Michael, a bitter foe of Reform Practice, 
 505 
 
 Holland, Sir H., 283 
 
 HoUembaek, Henry, professor, his enlogy of Samuel Thomson, 
 455; approves of the union of Reform physicians, 56S; also 
 favors later the reviving of the National Eclectic Medical 
 Association, 691 
 
 Holtzendorff founds a medico-chirurgic college in 1714, 250 
 
 Homer, on medical knowledge, 8 
 
 Homoeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania, 317; " dogma, 
 denied by the new leaders, 334; " physicians, their utter- 
 ances on medical legislation, 775; " practice radically 
 changed, 337 
 
 Homoeopathists, two parties in America, 340 
 
 Homoeopathy, its progress, 315; said to have been all but aban- 
 doned in England, 341
 
 914 INDEX. 
 
 Honain, Arabian physician, translates medical works from the 
 
 Greek, 113 
 Honigberger, Johann Martin, founder of the "Medium System," 
 343; introduces vaccination into Syria, 343; enters the service 
 of the Maharaja Runjeet Singh, 344; visits Hahnemann and 
 adopts Homoeopathy, 344; success in Turkey, 345; finds it 
 not efficacious in India, 347; his theory of the two systems of 
 practice and new doctrme of specifics, 347; his Medium 
 Svstem with minute dosage and procuring medicine from 
 indigenous plants, 34S 
 Hospitals in Ancient Greece, 52: " established by Asoka in 
 
 India, 81; " founded at Rome, 103 
 Hot Springs, Arkansas, meeting of the National Eclectic National 
 Association, 712 
 
 " House of Seti " in Ancient Egypt, a university, 9 
 Howe, Andrew J., in the Medical College at Worcester and an 
 editor of the Journal of Medicine, 621; a "corporator" in 
 the Eclectic College of Medicine, 634; professor in the 
 Eclectic Medical Institute. 637; elected president of the 
 National Eclectic ivledical Association, 706 
 
 Howell. John B., a Botanic physician m London, 573; introduces 
 the Botanic practice in Philadelphia, 763 
 
 Hughes, Joseph R., represents the Eclectic physicians of England 
 at the World's Eclectic Medical Cungrehs Auxiliary at 
 Chicago, 768 
 
 Human temperaments. Dr. W. B. Powell's theory 599 note 
 
 Humboldt, Alexander, quoted, 297 
 
 Humoral pathology, the orthodox theory, 213; " " opposed, 164 
 
 Hunt, Harriott K., refused admission in the Harvard Medical 
 School, 571 
 
 Hunter, John, 255; refuses a university education, 256; regarded 
 surgical operations as proof of imperfect knowledge, 258; his 
 philosophic opinions, 261; his services to surgery and com- 
 parative anatomy, 260 
 
 Hunter, William, 252; lectures in America, 252, 2 "4; made 
 physician to Queen Caroline, 252; his great work and museum, 
 253 
 
 Huxley, Thomas H,, advocates freedom in medical practice, 770 
 
 Hydrophobia in Rome, 87; " treated by inoculation, 382 
 
 Hydro-therapeutics. 368 
 
 Hygiene, colleges, 879
 
 INDEX. 915 
 
 Hypnotism, 267 
 
 Hysterectomy, first operation performed by Dr. Walter Burnham, 
 308 
 
 Jatreia or hospitals in Greece, 52 
 
 Ibn Badja of Zaragosa, 120 
 
 Idaho, its medical statute, 782 
 
 Ignatia, an Armenian remedy for plague, 345 
 
 Illinois State Eclectic Medical Society formed, 675; " the 
 medical statute, 782 
 
 Illiteracy in Europe, 107; " of those denominated " scientific," 
 686 
 
 Impulse to learning in Europe, 158; " in the Eclectic ranks for 
 organization and schools, 578, 676 
 
 Incompetency among army surgeons, 666 
 
 Incus and malleus discovered, 151 
 
 " Independent Thomsonian Botanic Medical Society " formed by 
 Dr. Curtis, 493 
 
 India, ancient law in regard to medical attainments and exami- 
 nations, 25, 26; " medical practice, 389; " medical class 
 at Nynce Tal, 769 
 
 Indian territory, the medical statutes, 785 
 
 Indiana, College of Physicians and Surgeons, 713, 732; " " of 
 Medicine and Midwifery, 731; " Eclectic Medical College, 
 706, 731; " Eclectic Medical Association, delegates 
 appointed, 692; " Medical Statute, 784 
 
 Indigenous plants, their use as remedies generally permitted in 
 medical statutes, provided no pay is taken, 442 etc. 
 
 Infective diseases said to be on the decline, 157 
 
 Infirmaries, 490 
 
 Ingalls, William M., electedpresidentof the National Association, 
 699 
 
 Innovators in medicine or religion opposed by the civil power, 885 
 
 Inoculation for hydrophobia by Pasteur, 382; " for small-pox, 
 265 
 
 Insane, their treatment, 312 
 
 Institute, American Reform Medical, 601; " Eclectic Medical, 
 545 etc. ; " " of New York, 579; " National of Homoeo- 
 pathy, 723; " Memphis, 599; " Physio-Medical. 525; " 
 Scientific and Eclectic, of Virgina, J52 
 
 Instruction in medical knowledged classified, 141
 
 9l6 INDEX. 
 
 International Medical Congress, delegates elected, 709 
 
 Intuition, explanation by Paracelsus, 174 
 
 Iowa, Eclectic jNIedical Association, 074; appoints a committee of 
 Correspondence, 694; " Medical College, 733; " Eclectic 
 Medical College, 709, 732; ' medical statute, 786 
 
 '• Irregular Sects," it is insisted that they should not be repre- 
 sented in the service of the Government, 682 
 
 Irritability, 227 
 
 Islam, its rise, 109 
 
 Issue between the Old and New Schools, 576 
 
 Izdubar healed, 17 
 
 Jacobi, Abraham, his directions how to become a professor in a 
 
 medical college, 308 
 Jacobs, Isaac, first prepares medicines by condensing the juices 
 
 of plants, 623, 656 
 Japan, its medical art, 397 
 Jay, Milton, elected president of the Central Indiana Eclectic 
 
 Medical Society, 673; also of the National Association, 710 
 Jefferson Medical College of Cannonsburg establishes a branch 
 
 at Philadelphia, 638 
 Jefferson, Thomas, notes "ephemeral medical novelties," 403; 
 
 foreshadows the development of an American Practice 
 
 of Medicine, 837 
 Jenner, Edward, 204; his hypothesis of vaccine disease, 266 
 Jesty inoculates his children from milch cows, 266 
 Jews the principal physicians in Moslem countries. 111; " 
 
 teachers at the university of Salerno, 135 
 John of Arden, 144 
 John, King of England offers to make Islam the national religion, 
 
 122 
 Johnson, John W., Secretary of the Independent Thomsonian 
 
 Botanic Society, 494; trustee, professor and dean of the 
 
 medical college at Worcester, 563 etc. ; first president of the 
 
 new National Eclectic Medical Association, 696 
 Johnstown, the flood and resolutions of sympathy, 711 
 Jordan, Johnson H., has charge of c cholera hospital at Cincin- 
 nati, 602; professor in the American Reform Medical Institute, 
 
 602 
 Jones, Ichabod G., an associate of Dr. Beach in New York, 483; 
 
 a colleague of Doctor Morrow in Worthington College; 515; 
 
 becomes a professor in the Eclectic Medical Institute, 600
 
 INDEX. 917 
 
 Jones, Lorenzo E., professor at Worthington, 543; Secretary of 
 the National Convention at Cincinnati, 576; professor in 
 the Medical Institute, 601; a founder of the American Medical 
 College, 605; elected trustee again of the Eclectic Medical 
 Institute, 629; not retained after the union in 1860, 664 
 Jones, Margaret, herb doctor, the first woman executed in New 
 
 England as a witch, 267 
 Journal of the World's Eclectic Medical Congress Auxiliary, 716 
 Judd, Samuel S., elected president of tte National Eclectic 
 
 Medical Association, 709 
 Julian, the Roman Emperor, his effort to revive learning, 101 
 Justinian the Emperor, closes the schools of philosophy, 104 
 
 Kansas, the Eclectic Medical Association formed, 744; its powers 
 to license physicians, 744; its medical statute, 787 
 
 Kaye, John, the " Doctor Caius " of Shakespeare, 167 
 
 Keith, B., manufactures " concentrated remedies," 657 
 
 Kelsey, R. G., Secretary of the American Association of 
 Physicians and Surgeons, 883 
 
 Kendrick, W. H., president of the Eclectic Medical Association of 
 Indiana, 672 
 
 Kentucky, the Eclectic Medical Association formed, 757; medical 
 statute, 787 
 
 Keppler, Johann, his great genius, 194; his works proscribed, 195 
 
 " Key of the Universe." 371 
 
 Khalifat in Egypt, 117 
 
 Khalifs encouraged learning. 111 
 
 Kheiron, a physician, 40 
 
 Kheirourgike, or manipulation, 12 
 
 Kheops or Sufi, king of Egypt, the medical papyrus of his reign, 81 
 
 Kidd, Doctor, his view of Galen's law and Hahnemann's, 389 
 
 Kilbourne, Col. James, founder of Worthington, Ohio, 488; his 
 services to Dr. Morrow and colleagues, 544; the testimonia 
 and presentation, 511, 546; his reply to Dr. Morrow, 548 
 
 Kinesipathy or " Swedish Movement Cure," 370 
 
 King, John, address on medical legislation, 707; denounces the 
 medical statutes, 703; controversy with Dr. R. S. Newton, 
 620; Secretary of the National Convention at Cincinnati, 576; 
 president of the Eclectic Medical Association of Ohio, 673; 
 professor in the Eclectic Medical Institute, 001 ; dean of the 
 Eclectic College of Medicine, 635; president of the National 
 Eclectic Medical Association, 703
 
 9l8 INDEX. 
 
 King Medical College, 783 
 
 Kittredge, Doctor, famed for surgical skill, 311 
 
 Knidos, its Asklepiad School, 70 
 
 Koch, Robert, 383 
 
 Kohlrausch, historian, 158 
 
 Korea, its medical examiners, 398 
 
 Kost, John, founder of the Botanico-Medical College at Cleveland, 
 
 rjQS; elected professor in medical college at Worcester, 563; 
 
 also in the American Medical College, at Cincinnati, 606; 
 
 engages in medical department in the University of Florida, 
 
 73S 
 Ktesias, historian, an Ionian physician, carried to Persia, 67 
 
 Laennec, 284 
 
 Lapham, Thomas, on the medical statute of 1834, he declares that 
 
 no such measure originated with the people, 475 
 Latta, William S., elected president of the National Eclectic 
 
 Medical Association, 706 
 Lavoisier, 276; classifies chemical bodies anew, 277 
 Lawyers, why they advocate medical statutes, 690 
 Lay persons in England prescribing remedies, 773 
 Learning called magic, 1C3; when revived, 158; little esteemed in 
 the sixth century, 107; introduced anew from Constantinople 
 into Europe, 145; received a new impulse in the Fifteenth 
 Century, 161 
 Lecture terms of twelve weeks formerly the rule, 417 
 Lecturing in the vernacular introduced in medical colleges, 172 
 Lee (ne Plummer), Henry, a professor in the Southern Botanico- 
 Medical College, 526; also editor of the Southern Botanico- 
 Medical Journal, 526 
 Leeuwenhoek, invents the microscope, 381 
 
 Legal enactments to regulate medical practice declared vain, 558 
 Legislation that follows a war, 440; " sought by the American 
 Medical Association to regulate medical practice, 775; " a 
 protection for the dominant school only, 464; " invoked 
 against Samuel Thomson and his disciples, 464; " American 
 copied after the English, 442; " how affected in Ohio by 
 the first Thomsonian Convention, 489 
 Legislature, its duty affirmed to grant charters, 545, note; " of 
 New York, induced in 1844 to abolish restrictions of medical 
 practice, 508
 
 INDEX. 919 
 
 Lenses employed in ancient Assyria, 196 
 
 Leoniceno, Nicolo, 163 
 
 Lettres de cachet for persons accused of being insane, 313 
 
 Liberal medical laws annulled in Canada, 687 
 
 Liberty often curiously interpreted, 448; " defined by Justice 
 
 Bradley, 798, note 
 Library of Alexandria, 74; " of Cordova, 117; " of Pergamos, 
 
 77; •' of Thebes in Egypt, 9; " of the Vatican, 146 
 Licensing physicians in Mediaeval England, 167 
 Life and its manifestations, Doctor Rau's theory, 330; Doctor 
 
 Dickson's theory, 360 
 Life Insurance Companies, their attitude toward physicians, 
 
 715, 721 
 Light an affinity of the ether, 378; " nature's specific," 371, 373 
 Lincoln Medical College of Cotner University, 734 
 Ling, the inventor of the Movement Cure, 371 
 Lister, Robert, employs ether in operations, 288; " his use of 
 
 antiseptics, 383 
 Literary and Botanic Medical Institute incorporated, 523 
 Literature, efforts in its behalf, 518; its importance to a cause, 836 
 " Lloyd Library," list of its publications, 838 
 Lobbying after the war for medical legislation, 673 
 Lobelia, 453; described as a deadly poison, 458 
 Locke, John, 218 
 Loiijmius, 164 
 Longshore, Joseph, a founder of the Penn Medical College, 596; 
 
 becomes a professor in the Eclectic Medical College of 
 
 Philadelphia, 652 
 Louis, M., 284 
 
 Louisiana, its medical statute, 788 
 LuUi, Raymond, leader of the chemical school, 189 
 Luiher, Martin, denounces the theory of Copernicus, 191 
 Lyceum, opened in Athens by Aristotle, 69 
 Lynaker, Thomas, 166; physician to Henry VIII, 166; becomes a 
 
 priest, 773 
 
 Maclean, Daniel, elected president of the National Eclectic 
 
 Medical Association, 720 
 McClellan, George, his efforts to establish the Jefferson and 
 
 Pennsylvania Medical Colleges in Philadelphia, 638, 639; 
 
 proposes to adopt the Thomsonian practice, 498
 
 920 INDEX 
 
 McClellan, General George B., procures the appointment of 
 Doctor Hammond as Surgeon-General, 667 
 
 McClintock, James, professor in the medical colleges at Castleton 
 and Pittsfield, 640; procures an act of incorporation for the 
 Philadelphia College of Medicine, 641; becomes professor 
 in the Eclectic College of Pennsylvania, 642; cooperates in 
 forming the Eclectic Medical College of Philadelphia, 643 
 
 McDowell, Ephraim, begins the practice of ovariotomy, 304 
 
 Macon, Georgia, the Botanico-Medical College removed, 537 
 
 Magdeburg, Germany, the Congress of Homoeopathists declare 
 in favor of Specific Medication 
 
 Magic explained, 36; " the name given to profound learning, 
 163, 267 
 
 Magnetism explained by Paracelsus, 176; " a property of 
 the Ether and Light, 372; '' human, 177 
 
 Maimonides the great sage, 121 
 
 Maine, medical statute repealed, 499; Eclectic Medical Society 
 formed, 674; Eclectic Medical College, 735; new medical 
 statute, 790 
 
 Maladies classified by Themison, 88 
 
 Malpighi, 206 
 
 Man-Midwifery deprecated, 360 
 
 Marriage of the clergy prohibited by Pope Gregory VII, 133 
 
 Maryland, the medical statute, 791 
 
 Massachusetts, the majority of the inhabitants in favor of the 
 Reform practice, 564; the Eclectic Medical Society incorpo- 
 rated, 672; it recommends a National organization, 690; the 
 medical statute, 792 
 
 Materia Medica of the native Indians, a catalogue, 415; " 
 Merrell's Digest, 859 
 
 Mathematics, occult learning so called, 162 
 
 Matteo of Gradi, 153 
 
 Mattocks, E. J., describes the medical persecutions in New York, 
 4<55; he unrolls the great petition, 509 
 
 Mattson, Morris, 495; his conflict with Dr. Samuel Thomson, 496; 
 proposes to open a medical school, 520; advises young men to 
 enter " regular " instead of Thomsonian Colleges, 521 
 
 Maudesley, Henry, his definition of disease, 384 
 
 Maximilian I, German Emperor, his character, 159; contemplates 
 becoming Pope, 160 
 
 Mayerne of Venice, his invention, 186
 
 INDEX. 921 
 
 Mead, Richard, 22-2 
 
 Mechanical theories of medicine taught in Italy, 212 
 
 Medal to John Thomson, TilO 
 
 Meddlesome interference in midwifery deprecated, 360 
 
 Medeia and her arts. 88 
 
 Medical Academy founded by Dr. Beach, 491; " act of 1844 in 
 New York enfranchising medical men, 509; " in Mains in 
 1839. oOc; " art in archaic Egypt, 5; " art in India, 26; 
 " bill in Arkansas vetoed, 777; " bill in Colorado vetoed, 
 778; " bill ill Washington vetoed, 881); bills from a common 
 source offered in Legislatures, 775; " Boards and religious 
 Boards, 68^; " books in China, 34; " books in. verse at 
 Salerno, 136; " Botany, early writers in America, 420; " 
 Rafine>que's works, 422; '' Cabinet Officer opposed by the 
 National Association 713; " class of women in India, 769; 
 code in archaic Egypt, 14, " College founded by "Dr. 
 Caius " at Cambridge, 167; " College see College; " 
 Colleges, demand of the American Medical Association, 775; 
 " " general practice criticised, 555; " " a proscriptive 
 regulation !7i] note; " " Colleges, their undue number 
 deprecated, 614; " degrees, classical education required 
 in Europe, 282; " degrees, protest against bartering, 649; 
 " diplomas of no value as evidence of capacity, 606; " 
 enactments regarded by eminent jurists as unconstitutional, 
 775; ethics in examinations in Ancient India, 247; " Exami- 
 ners first proposed after the civil war, 686; examining b ards 
 conditionally approved 720; " fashions change regularly, 
 403; •' Flora of America, 422; " Flora of India, 391; " 
 gibberish, 170; " Inquisition, 465; " instruction promoted 
 in Italy, 141; " intolerance in Philadelphia 63''; " law 
 of Alabama, 592; " laws declared disgraceful to the Legis 
 latures enacting them, 488; " learning not scientific 
 knowledge, 418; " literature scouted as barbarous, 163; 
 meeting houses for instruction, 93; " orthodoxy as 
 intolerant as religious, 456; " petition of 1814, 508; " 
 practice declared a failure, 404; " defects admitted, 433- 
 " proscription in England, 769, " prohibition in London, 
 442; '■ protestants in convention in 1834. 476; " societies 
 procured the cashiering of Surgeon-General Hammond, 669; 
 " societies, virtually police stations, 467; " societies 
 Botanic, formation urged by Doctor Smith, 445; " staff in
 
 922 INDEX. 
 
 ancient temples, 10; " statutes in Kansas declared uncon- 
 stitutional, 704; " statutes why in the several states, 776- 
 " students excluded from college, 576; " study promoted 
 in England, 167; " Symposiac, 710; " tyros, Jefferson's 
 denunciation, 413 
 
 Medici Cosimo de, founds a Platonic Academy, 147; " Lorenzo, 
 aids fugitives from Greece, 145, 146 
 
 Medicinal plants employed by Thomsonians, 453; ' " 
 enumerated by Ratinesque, 415; " " named as used 
 during the colonial period, 406 
 
 Medicine, an art, 174; " in Egypt, 14; " in India 25, 389; " 
 in the Roman Empire, 32; '■ a distinct vocation, 133; " 
 in the Middle Ages, 107; " in the Renascence, 162; " 
 theory by De la Boe, 213; " first regulated by the Imperial 
 code, 137; " as practiced in New England in the colonial 
 period, 406; " attractive to one and repulsive to another, 
 361; ■' how to be administered, 359; " affected by the 
 stars, 712 
 
 Medicines, employed in China, 395; " should leave no disease 
 behind them, 420; " their virtues derived from light, 373; 
 " patent or proprietary, their vending disapproved, 697 
 
 Medico-Botanical Society in London, 335, 764 
 
 "Medium System," see Hoiiigberger 
 
 Medulla oblongata beyond the limit of surgical invasion, 874 
 
 Meeting of Thomsonian Reformers at Geddes, New York, 476; 
 '• first of United States Thomsonian convention at CoIum,bus 
 111 1832, 489; " second id. at Pittsburg, 490; " third id. 
 at Baltimore, 491; fourth /^. at Philadelphia, 493; " fifth /i/. 
 at New York, 494; " of Independent Thomsonian Society 
 at New York, 494; " of the United States Thomsonian 
 Society, 497; " of the Thomsonian Society of New York, 
 516 
 
 Megasthenes describes the healing art in India, 80 
 
 Meibonius, 207 
 
 Memphis Botanico-Medical College, 528; " Institute, 599 
 
 Men introduced into the obstetric practice, 207 
 
 Mental exaltation suppressing pain, 297; " emotion causing 
 disease, 384 
 
 Mercurialis, 165 
 
 Mercury, its figurative meaning with the alchemists, 157; an old 
 remedy in India and China, 156, 391; first knowledge brought
 
 INDEX. 923 
 
 to Europe, 156; first employed by De Carpi, 156; its use 
 
 denounced by Paracelsus, 169; also by the Facultede Medecin 
 
 at Paris, 189; excluded by Surgeon-General Hammond, 66S; 
 
 discarded by the National Eclectic Medical Association, 610, 
 
 614 
 Merodakh, the Babylonian divinity, invoked as a healer, 18 
 Merrell, Albert, his plan of a pharmacopoeia submitted to the 
 
 National Association, 704; authorized to publish it, G63, 705, 
 
 859 
 Merrell, William S. , Father of American Pharmacy, 658; extract 
 
 from his address to students, 660 note; death, 663 
 Mesmer, Anton, 267, 268 
 Mesmerism, 377; produces anaesthesia, 346; employed in ancient 
 
 temples, 48, 267; a medical treatment in Egypt, 11; also in 
 
 Assyria, 18; described by Paracelsus, 177; investigated by a 
 
 Royal commission at Paris; condemned and afterward 
 
 recognized, 269; employed in surgical operations, 346 
 Metallic medicines introduced, 15'3 
 Metamorphosis, the theory, 226 
 Metaphysical Medicine or Mind-Cure, 875 
 Methodists, 86 
 Methods and procedures destructive to life and health disapproved, 
 
 614; discarded by Thomson, 452 
 Metropolitan Medical College incorporated, 567; the act repealed, 
 
 569 
 Michigan, the Eclectic Medical Association replaced by the 
 
 ]\Iedical and Surgical Society, 746; " Eclectic Medical 
 
 College, 735; " University, the Homoeopathic department, 
 
 318, 689; the medical statute, 793 
 Microbiogencsis, 381 
 Microscopic Anatomy, 2i'^6 
 Middle Ages closed, 1")7 
 
 Middle States Reformed Medical Society, 591, 593 
 Midwife held in honor, 300 
 Midwifery, anaesthesia employed, 298 
 Miles, C. Edwin, elected president of the National Eclectic 
 
 Medical Association, G98 
 Military hospitals, 93; " Surgery, professorships established in 
 
 medical colleges, 6G9 
 Mind the only active principle, 379 
 Minnesota, the Eclectic Medical Society, 675; the medical 
 
 statute, 795
 
 924 INDEX. 
 
 Miracles, the modern belief, 377 
 
 Misdemeanor, to sign a spurious diploma, 649; See Synopsis of 
 Statutes 
 
 Mississippi, the medical statute, 796; " Valley Medical Associa- 
 tion, 760 
 
 Missouri, the Eclectic Medical Association and Eclectic Medical 
 Society, 747; the medical statute (since made more stringent), 
 797 
 
 Missouri Valley Eclectic Medical Society, 671 
 
 Mitchill, Dr. S. , helps Thomson procure his second patent, 460 
 
 Morrow, Thomas Vaughn, 483; appointed to organize the Medi- 
 cal department at Worthington College, 484; his platform, 
 487; establishes the Reformed Medical School at Cincinnati, 
 510, 543; exults at the repeal of medical statutes, 511; his 
 overture for union of the several parties of Medical Reform • 
 ers, 537; project of the National Medical University, 539, 
 572; procures the mcorporation of the Eclectic Medical 
 Institute, 543, o44; his address to Col. James Kilbourne, 547; 
 elected first president of the National Eclectic Medical 
 .'\ssociation, 576; his resolution protesting against oppressive 
 medical legislation, 577; death, 578 
 
 Mortality extraordinary in soldiers' hospitals, 683 note; " of 
 syphilis in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 156 
 
 Morton, Oliver P., Governor, appoints regimental surgeons in 
 disregard of medical partisanship, 667; " Samuel G., 639; 
 " W. T. G., his conflicts in introducing anaesthesia, 298 
 
 Moslem imans denounce the Copernican System, 191; " 
 Madonna, 116 
 
 Mourners, a profession in ancient Egypt, 13 
 
 Movement-Cure, 370 
 
 Mullen, William J., his efforts to establish a Medical College for 
 Women, 571 
 
 Multiplying of offices, 689 
 
 Mumia, the vehicle of life, 176, 268 
 
 Mummification in Egypt, 12 
 
 Munn, S. B., elected president of the National Eclectic Medical 
 Association, 702; offers a resolution to take part in the 
 World's Medical Congress in Chicago, 715; offers amend- 
 ment increasing annual dues of members, 723 
 
 Musa, Antonius, cures Octavianus Caesar, 88 
 
 Mutilation, an opprobrium in medicine, 861
 
 INDEX. 925 
 
 Myers, Hon. Mordecai, declares that qualified physicians never 
 need legislative aid, 473 
 
 National Association of Medical Herbalists in England, 768 
 "National College of Physicians and Surgeons " 586 
 National Eclectic Medical Association. See Annual Meeting 
 National Eclectic Medical Association reported by Dr. John 
 
 Buchanan to have been formed in Philadelphia in 1869-70, 
 
 693, 724 
 National Institute of Homoeopath}-, 318 
 National Physio-Medical or Physopathic convention adopts a 
 
 broader platform, 567 
 " National " Reform Medical Association declared impracticable 
 
 in 1857 at the Reform Medical Association at Memphis, 591 
 National Thomsonian Infirmary proposed, 490 
 Native tribes in America, their modes of treating the sick, 414 
 " Natural bone-setters," 310 
 
 " Nature " the first of physicians, 65; what she teaches, 334 
 Nebraska, the Eclectic Medical Association, 675, 747; " Eclectic 
 
 professorships in the State University, 734; the inedical 
 
 statute, 800 
 Neophytes denouncing learning, 162 
 Nervous diseases, theory of De la Boe, 214 
 Nestorians, their zeal, 110; " establish universities at Edessa, 
 
 Nisibis, etc., 103, etc. 
 Neuropathy, 208 
 
 Nevada, its medical act, 802; action of Supreme Court, 802 
 New devices in Surgery 294; " diseases with discoveries, 158; 
 
 " departure in pharmacy, 655; " era introduced, 73; 
 
 " Gospel and its suppression, 140; " learning at Italian 
 
 universities, and in England, 161, 165; " maladies aflSrmed, 
 
 86; " medicines, 659; " methods taught by Erasistratos, 
 
 71; " platform of medical principles adopted at Baltimore, 
 
 589; " practice <*f medicine anticipated by Jefferson, 413; 
 
 " remedies of the Botanic and Reform Schools, so termed, 
 
 419 
 New England Eclectic Medical Association, 760; " Female 
 
 Medical College, 570; " Medical Eclectic, 559 
 New Hampshire, its medical statute, 803 
 New Jersey, aboriginal remedies, 414; the Eclectic Medical 
 
 College, 738; Eclectic Medical Society, 748; the medical 
 
 statute, 803
 
 926 INDEX 
 
 New York, annual meetings of the National Eclectic Medical 
 Association, 611, 616, 696; " Association of Botanic Phy- 
 sicians, 44); " Association of Reform Physicians, 567; 
 " Eclectic Medical Society, 584; " society declares against 
 the sale of medical degrees, 648; " also takes steps for a 
 national organization, 694; " Medical and Pathological 
 Society, 585; " State Eclectic Medical Society formed, 
 TS49, 580; " ceases to exist. 584; " statute of 18 18, 342; 
 " id of 1821,442; " zV/. of 1827, 466; " /i/. penalties repealed, 
 471; " id. penalties again imposed, 474; " id. declared 
 *' infamous" in Alabama, 475; "' id. repealed in 1835, 480; 
 " statute of 1S44, 509; " the present medical statute, 805 
 
 Newman, Prof. Francis W., of England, denounces the enacting 
 of a medical creed, 770 
 
 Newman, Dr. John B., declares Homoeopathy a form of fascina 
 tion, 2:2 
 
 Newton, Calvin, 557; explains his position, 559; why he adopted 
 the name "Eclectic" in 1S45, 562; calls neither Beach nor 
 Curtis master, 562; crit cises Samuel Thomson, 566; contro- 
 versy with Dr. I. M. Comings, 565; elected president of the 
 National Eclectic Medical Association, 582, 608; proposes 
 the union of three medical colleges, 582; leaves the Syracuse 
 Medical College, 583, 620; his address to the National 
 Association, 611; suggests to make it a representative body, 
 611; death, 618 
 
 Newton, Horatio G. , 674 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, his discoveries, 273 
 
 Newton, Robert S., 575; professor in the Memphis Institute, 599; 
 becomes professor in the Eclectic Medical Institute, 601; 
 elected president of the National Eclectic Medical Associa- 
 tion, 607, 618; his contest in the Eclectic Medical Institute, 
 628, etc. ; renews fealty of the Institute to the National 
 Eclectic Medical Association, 632; denies that the Faculty of 
 the Institute set up for leaders, 663, 664; removes to New 
 York, 664; active in organizing societies. 673; stipulation not 
 to establish a medical college, 677 note; becomes professor 
 of the Eclectic Medical College of New York, 678; endeavors 
 to revive the national organization, 690, 691; presides over 
 the convention in Chicago in 1870, 695; died in 1S81 
 
 Nicolas V, pope, founds the library of the Vatican, 146; estab- 
 lishes a despotic rule, 148
 
 INDEX. 927 
 
 Nikandros of Kolophon, physician and high priest, 77 
 
 Nisibis, seat of a Nestorian and Jewish University, 104, 110 
 
 Nis-Rokh, the bird-god, 18 
 
 Non-conformist physicians opposed by the dominant medical 
 
 authorities in the civil war, 683 
 " Normal Tinctures." 662 
 North Carolina, its medical statute, 808 
 Nostrums of India, 391 
 Nur ed Din and Sa]adin, their general attempt to exterminate 
 
 philosophers and heretics in Asia, 123 
 
 Obsession, 400 
 
 CEkolampadius the Reformer, recommends Paracelsus for pro- 
 fessor in Basel University, 161 
 
 O'Ferrall, Doctor, declares medical science incapable of reform, 
 and opposes the incorporation of the Eclectic Medical Insti- 
 tute, 545 
 
 Official physicians in the Roman Empire, 93 
 
 Ohio, the Eclectic Medical Society formed 671; the State Eclectic 
 Medical Association takes its place, 69; resolves in favor of a 
 National organization, 691; medical statute repealed in 1833, 
 472; another enacted in 1868, 685; the General Assembly in 
 1861 forbids discrimination between schools of medicine, but 
 the governor evades obeying, 668; the present medical 
 statute, 810 
 
 Oklahoma, its medical statute, 802 
 
 Oldshue, Lincoln, a professor in the Eclectic Medical College of 
 Philadelphia, 651 
 
 Ommiad dynasty established in Spain, 117 
 
 Ontario, an Eclectic Medical Society formed, 676 
 
 Order No. VI, forbidding calomel and antimony in military 
 supplies revoked, 670 
 
 Oregon, an Eclectic Medical Society formed, 757; medical statute, 
 813 
 
 Organic Chemistry, a law explained, 660; " nervous system, 
 264 
 
 Organizations of Reformed Physicians in Western New York, 481 
 
 Organon, Hahnemann's great work, 319; " of Specific Homceo- 
 pathy by Hempel, 337; " of Specific Medication by G. 
 Ludwig Rau, 324 
 
 Organopathy, 339
 
 928 INDEX. 
 
 Oribasius, 101 
 Osteopathy, 879 
 
 Ovaries, their extirpation a prominent feature of modern sur- 
 gery, 303 
 Ovariotomy in England, 307; Walter Burnham's superior skill, 305 
 
 Padua, anatomy taught at the university by dissection, 150 
 
 Paine, William, professor of the Eclectic Medical College of Penn- 
 sylvania, 595: declares approval of the movement to unite all 
 parties, 568; separates from the College and establishes the 
 Eclectic Medical College of Philadelphia, 643, 644; disap- 
 proved by the Eclectic Medical Society of New York, 646; 
 procures consolidation with other medical colleges, 650; lays 
 aside the name of " Eclectic " for '" New School of Medicine," 
 652; his conflicts and triumph, 740 
 
 Palmer, Alderman of New York City, appoints Dr. Beach to the 
 charge of a Cholera hospital in 1832, 436; " Doctor, teaches 
 "Chiropractic," 882 
 
 Pancoast, Seth, his work, 373 
 
 Papyrus, Prisse, 0; " medical, found in the reign of Kheops, 8; 
 " at Letopolis, 8 
 
 Parasitic origin of disease, the theory, 381 
 
 Paracelsus von Hohenheim, 168; consulted professionally by 
 Erasmus, 109; professor in the University of Basil, 169; a 
 reformer of surgery, 170; denimnces mercury, bloodletting, 
 etc., 171, 3j3; pioneer of direct or specific medication, 172; 
 his theosophic belief, 173; definition of magnetism and the 
 " Mumia," 176, 208; theory of "elemental spirits, 382; "sig- 
 natures," 177; his disciples, 178; murdered at Salzburg, 173 
 
 Pare, Ambroise, 186; introduces the suture, the ligature and other 
 innovations, 187; denounced like Paracelsus for teaching in 
 the language of the people, 188 
 
 Paris, the university established, 139; it condemns astrology, 150 
 
 Parkins, author of " The Holy Teinp/e of Wisdom" 533 
 
 Parliamentary Commission in England, recommends removal of 
 compulsary requirement of vaccination, 267; " legislation, 
 770 
 
 Parritt, E. M., professor in the college at Worcester, 563 
 
 Parsons, Theophilus, Justice — his action in the case of Samuel 
 Thomson, 458, 459 
 
 Parties in medicine in the eighteenth century, 236
 
 INDEX. 
 
 929 
 
 Partisan medical statute enacted first in North Carolina, 682 
 
 Partisanship of Medical Examining Boards, 666 
 
 Pasteur, 381 
 
 Pastiphori or ark-bearers, the priest-physicians of ancient Egypt, 
 10 
 
 Pathologic Anatomy becomes a department, 271 
 
 Patients often crippled by medical treatment, 412; " in ovario- 
 tomy in hecatombs, 307 
 
 Patricians at Rome refused to educate their children to a profes- 
 sion, 96 
 
 Paul of ^gina, 106; " II., pope, persecutes men of learning, 148 
 
 Peckham, Justice Rufus W., his explanation of "liberty" as 
 signified in Amendment XIV. of the Federal Constitution 
 798, note. 
 
 Pedro Juliani, medical writer, afterward pope, 126 
 
 Penal medical legislation, 316 
 
 Pennsylvania, Associate Society of Botanic Physicians, 533, 764; 
 " Eclectic Botanic Medical Association, 537; " Eclectic 
 Medical College — see College; " Eclectic Medical Society, 
 645, 671, 692, etc. ; " history of Eclectic Medicine in the 
 State, 748; " Eclectic Medical Association formed having 
 auxiliary societies, 749; " id. resolutions adopted, 711; " 
 no medical order protected by special enactments, 479; " 
 a special statute, 750; present statute, 815 
 
 People of Alabama in 1835 freemen in medical matters, 476 
 
 "People's Western Reserve Reform Medical Society," 674 
 
 Pergamos receives Chaldean priests as colonists, 17; its school 
 and library rivals to Alexandria, 77 
 
 Period, historic, 46 
 
 Persecution not formerly practiced in England, 773 
 
 Persia becomes the refuge of scholars outlawed in the Roman 
 Empire, 103 
 
 Persian "Great Kings" employed Egyptian physicians, 16; " 
 schools, 109 
 
 Peruvian bark, its use advocated by Sydenham. 218 
 
 Petit, father of osteology, 250 
 
 Petition of physicians to Henry V. of England, 771; " to the 
 legislature of New York to repeal medical restrictions, 469, 
 471,477,508 
 
 Petty and unchartered schools denounced by Calvin Newton, 612 
 
 Peyer, 207
 
 93° INDEX. 
 
 Pharmaco-dynamics, our knowledge fragmentary, 333 
 
 Pharmacopoeia, National Eclectic projected, 696; " Committee 
 appointed, 698, 703; " work reported by Albert Merrell and 
 authorized, 704, 707; " adopted as a manual and text book, 
 708— see Merrell, Albert 
 
 Pharmacy, the new departure, 655; " Rafinesque's theory, 430 
 
 Philadelphia, American University incorporated, 648; " College 
 of Medicine established, 641; " University of Medicine and 
 Surgery, 652; " id. surrenders its charter as a "literary- 
 institution," 742; " meeting of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, 610 
 
 Philalethes, or lovers of truth, 76 
 
 Philinos, founder of the Empiric School, 76 
 
 Philosophic dogmas of Hippokrates, 63; " physicians in Mos- 
 lem countries, 169 
 
 Philosophy, schools in Grecian colonies, 52; " anciently included 
 medical skill, 1 
 
 Phoenicians in the East, 45 
 
 Phrenology, first taught, 288 
 
 Phrenopathy, 379 
 
 " Physic and physicians," the terms first employed, 108 
 
 Physical wrecks made by medical treatment, 442 
 
 Physician, " he who can cure," 175; what constitutes one, 665 
 
 Physicians not " created," 175; " anciently priests, 1; " formerly 
 self-taught men, 411; " generally empirics, 76; " treat 
 empirically, 60; " two classes, 59; " in Buddhistic India, 
 80; " in China, 395; " in ancient Egypt not arbitrarily 
 restricted, 10; " in republican Rome held in contempt, 83; 
 classified in Rome under the Empire, 92; " hard to 
 retain them as an exclusive caste, 45; " heterodox in India, 
 29; " those really great condemn the fashionable practice, 
 46; " declared by Rush to be ignorant of disease and 
 remedies, 404; " those of London licensed by the bishops, 
 167; " they petition Henry v., 771; ' those of America, 
 howthey began formerly their procedures, 416; their number, 
 771; approving Thomsonian proceedures, 462 
 
 Physio-Medical College at Cincinnati, 739; " Institute of Cin- 
 cinnati, 525; " society of New York incorporated, 564; " 
 /^. proposes to establish a College, 566,588; " /it/, changes 
 its name to " Reform," 589; " the name retained in the 
 Northwest, 589
 
 INDEX. 
 
 931 
 
 Physiology, scientific researches, etc., 287 
 
 Physiopathic College of Ohio, 524 
 
 Physopathic National Convention, 567 
 
 Pico della Mirandola, the philosopher, 149 
 
 Piffard, H. G., urges a combination to crush the " new heresy," 
 551 
 
 Pinel, Philipp, introduces more humane treatment of the insane, 
 314 
 
 Piper, Henry B., elected president of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, 708 
 
 Pitard, Jean, founds the College of Surgeons at Paris, 141 
 
 Pitcairn, Doctor, 235 
 
 Pittsburg, meeting of the National Eclectic Association, 606, 701 
 
 Plague, arrested at Athens, 61; " devastates the Roman world, 
 104 
 
 Planetary influence assigned in the "Black Death," 128 
 
 Platform of the Alopathic School, 615; " of Dr. Morrow, 487; 
 " adopted by the National Association, 609, 615; " of the 
 Physopathic and "Reform" conventions at Baltimore, 567, 
 568 
 
 Plato denounces the necessity for hospitals or dispensaries, 58 
 
 Pleasant medicines prescribed by Asklepiades, 86 
 
 Pleasantness an important condition in administering medicines, 
 351 
 
 Pleasanton, Gen. A. J., and light-cure, 372 
 
 Pliny criticises practitioners of medicine, 95; his explanation why 
 prescriptions were written in another language, 89 
 
 Pneumaticists, 90 
 
 Podophyllin discovered, 659 
 
 Polarity and impulse to differentiation, 884 
 
 Pontifical chair at Rome, its inscriptions, 122, 123. 
 
 Poor in England, voluntary medical service rendered them, 773 
 
 Portland, Oregon, meeting of the National Eclectic Medical Asso- 
 ciation, 720 
 
 Positive or Empiric medicine, 283 
 
 Potter, Stephen H., teaches at Randolph, New York, 579; pro- 
 fessor in the Central Medical College, 580; establishes the 
 Syracuse Medical College, 582; becomes professor in the 
 American Medical College at Cincinnati, 584 
 
 Powell, William Byrd, Editor of the Southwesierii Medical 
 Reformer, organ of the Memphis Botanico-Medical College,
 
 932 INDEX. 
 
 529; active in behalf of the Memphis Institute, 599; his theory 
 of human temperaments, 599; note, p. 
 
 Powers conferred on the Eclectic Medical College Association 
 and Committee on Affairs of Colleges, 719 
 
 Practice, Homoeopathic, its changes, 337 
 
 Practitioners of medicine classified by Rafinesque, 427; nine- 
 tenths in 1864 not graduates of Medical Colleges, 670 
 
 Praxagoras, his discourses, 69 
 
 Prayer employed as means to cure the sick, 129, 134 
 
 Prelatic authority claimed for the American medical association, 
 606 
 
 Price, Henry M., his effort in the legislature at Richmond to pro- 
 cure a charter for a medical college, how defeated, 553, 554 
 
 Priestley, Joseph, 274; his discovery of oxygen, 275; is excluded 
 from the expedition of Capt. Cook for religious reasons, 275 
 
 Priessnitz, Vincent, and water-cure, 368; prosecuted on a charge 
 of practicing medicine, 369 
 
 Private charters in Connecticut not affected by medical statute. 
 778 
 
 Procedures, simple ones not pathogenic, 874 
 
 Professional men need not and do not ask for severe laws, 471 
 
 Prophets of Sidon, 38; " of the temples of Egypt, 11 
 
 Proscription of Eclectic physicians in England, 769 
 
 Proscriptive legislation as demanded by a few described, 474 
 
 Prosecution of Eclectic physicians in Utah, 758 
 
 Protection of the people from quackery tte pretext for stringent 
 medical legislation in 1831, 471; " id. the same now as 
 then, 684 
 
 Protest of Dr. Morrow against unequal and oppressive laws in 
 relation to medicine and surgery, 577 
 
 Pruitt, John W , an Eclectic physician, appointed a surgeon in 
 the Confederate army, 663 
 
 " Psychrolousia," 369 
 
 Ptolemy I, 73; founds the Museum and School at Alexandria, 74 
 
 Public dispensaries in the Roman Empire, 93; " physicians at 
 Athens, 58; " id. regulated by Roman law, 94; " policy 
 requiring repeal of restrictions on the practice of medicine, 504 
 
 Publications, Eclectic and Botanic, see Lloyd Library, etc. 
 
 Purdy, Doctor, states the objects of the American Medical Asso- 
 ciation, 573, note 
 
 Pythagoras skilled in medical knowledge, 55
 
 INDEX. 
 
 933 
 
 Quacking, not to be complained of when no harm is done, 686 
 Qualifications for a medical degree, 701 
 
 Quimby, Phineas P., the introducer of Metaphysical Medicine, 377 
 Quin, Hugh, dean of the Faculty in the Southern Botanico- 
 
 Medical College, 526; a professor in the Alabama Iftedical 
 
 Institute, 530 
 
 Rabbis, Jewish, established schools in France, 138 
 
 Radcliffe, John, 221; his diagnosis of Queen Mary, 222 note 
 
 Rademacher, Johann Gottfried, 353; he begins a Reform Practice 
 of Medicine employing vegetable remedies, 355; his views, 35-4 
 
 Rafinesque, Constantin, 421; his genius acknowledged by Asa 
 Gray and Louis Agassiz, 423; he foreshadows and opens the 
 way for the new Reformed School, 424; he regards the 
 knowledge of medicine as not to be limited to a profession, 
 426; he classifies practitioners, 427; his notions of pharmacy, 
 430; he welcomes Beach and the Reformed Practice, 438; 
 death, 439 
 
 " Rational Physicians," 427 
 
 Rau of Leiden, 210 
 
 Rau, Gottlieb Ludwig, 323; his Orgation of Specific Medication^ 
 324; criticises half-instructed disciples of Hahnemann, 328; 
 praises eclectics, 329; his theories, 330; advocates compounded 
 prescriptions, 332; forms an opposing school of Specific 
 Medicine, 334 
 
 Rayer, a physician of the new Positive School, 284 
 
 Raymond, Henry J., as speaker of the Assembly of New York 
 appoints an impartial medical committee, 470 
 
 Razes, 114 
 
 Recamier, founder of the school of Gynaecology, 301 
 
 Red Cross, a badge of Rosicrucians and Knights of the Temple, 
 200 
 
 Reform comes from outside the ranks in medical practice, 249; 
 " Practice of Medicine favored in Massachusetts, 504; " 
 physicians appointed to official positions. 472; " physicians 
 in the Confederate army, 527; " movement of 1851 to 
 unite the several parties, 587; " Convention adopts the 
 name of " Reform Medical Physicians," 583; " physicians 
 unite with the National Eclectic Medical Association, 614; 
 " Association of New York State, 507; " id. merges into 
 the Eclectic Medical Society of the State of New York, 673
 
 934 INDEX. 
 
 Reformed Medical Society of the United States, 468, 483, 487, 
 572; " id. of the State of New York, 482; " Medical 
 Association of Western New York, 579; " school opened 
 by Dr. Morrow at Cincinnati, 543; " Practice of Medicine 
 not originating with Samuel Thomson, 487; " physicians 
 in England under legal and professional disabilities, 576 
 
 Reformers stigmatized as sorcerers, 163 
 
 Regulation of medicine by legal enactment begun in England, 773 
 
 " Regular physician" in Arizona, any legal practitioner, 777 
 
 Reid, Doctor, learns the " Sweet procedures," 312 
 
 Relics, amulets, incantations, prayer, etc., anciently believed to 
 possess healing virtue, 129 
 
 Remedial agents accredited to Hippokrates, 66; " plants, 
 every region said to have its own, 414; " procedures, theory 
 of Joseph R. Buchanan, 387 
 
 Remedies act differently with individuals, 361; those learned 
 from the Indians, 415; those derived from the vegetable 
 kingdom, 406; those known in India, 391; those used in 
 dosimetry and alkalometry, 366, 878; " Eclectic, and 
 adopted as official by the dominant school, 700 
 
 Renaissance, 145; in Italy, 158; closes the Middle Ages, 158 
 
 Resins and resinoids, 659 
 
 Reuben, Levi, a professor in the Central Medical College, 582; 
 his eulogy upon Dr. Calvin Newton, 613; resigns his chair in 
 the Syracuse Medical College and becomes professor in the 
 college at Worcester, 620 
 
 Revival of learning, 158 
 
 Revulsion of religious sentiment in Spain, 123 
 
 Rhinoplastic operation first performed, 150 
 
 Rhode Island, the medical statute, 818 
 
 Richard III. of England, encourages the liberal arts, 161 
 
 Right to pursue any calling affirmed by the United States 
 Supreme Court, 798 note 
 
 Riley, Capt. James, declares his tortures from physicians worse 
 than those of his African enslavement, 412, note 
 
 Riolan, Jean, of Paris, adopts Harvey's theory of circulation of 
 the blood, 205 
 
 Rival National Eclectic Medical Association exploited at Phila- 
 delphia, 724 
 
 Rochester, meeting of the National Eclectic Medical Association,
 
 INDEX. 935 
 
 Rock-inscriptions of King Asoka in India, 81 
 
 Rogers. Governor of Washington, his veto message, 881; note 
 
 Rokitansky, Karl, the chief luminary in the "New Vienna 
 School," 286 
 
 Rolando, of Parma, 142 
 
 Rome, the Senate sends an embassy to Epidavros for its serpent- 
 god, 51 
 
 Roman Empire, its medical art, 92 
 
 Romulus Augustus, the last Roman Emperor at Rome, 107 
 
 Root, Gen. Erastus, advocates freedom of medical practice, 470 
 
 Rosicrucians, 200 
 
 Royal College of Physicians of London, founded, 107; " id. of 
 Surgeons of Paris opposed mercury and antimony as reme- 
 dies, 189; " id. of Surgeons of Scotland founded, 251; " 
 Family of England ."preferring independent physicians, 335; 
 " touch for scrofula, 129 
 
 Runjeet Singh takes Honigberger into his service, 344; his 
 death, 345 
 
 Rush, Dr. Benjamin, criticises the current medical practice, 280, 
 404; he receives Samuel Thomson courteously, 418 
 
 Russell, Lorenzo E., elected president of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association. 709 
 
 Sabbath in ancient Assyria, 17 
 
 Sacrilege, so accounted anciently to engage in a priestly calling 
 
 without authority, 63 
 St. Hilaire, 288 
 St. Lawrence University, its experience with mixed classes, 
 
 597, note 
 St. Louis, meetings of the National Eclectic Medical Association, 
 
 705, 714; " meeting of the rival seceding organization, 725 
 Saladin of Naples, a writer on Materia Medica, 150 
 Salerno, its medical school — the oldest in Europe, 134; " the 
 
 medical practice and theories current, 136 
 Saliceto, 142 
 Sanders, J. Milton, declares European Allopathy to be American 
 
 Eclecticism, 632; note 
 Savonarala, 150 
 Sayce, the Orientalist, his opinion of mental proficiency in 
 
 ancient Egypt, 14
 
 936 INDEX. 
 
 Scholars, rather than practicing physicians, beg^n reforms, 162 
 
 Schonlein, Johann Lukas, 286 
 
 Schools and sects in England, 108; " of medicine in the seven- 
 teenth century, 211; " /V/, in the United States, 878; " of 
 philosophy, 52, 104 
 
 Schuessler, his biochemic theory and tissue-remedies, 368 
 
 Schwann, his discovery, 381 
 
 Science, in four departments, 174 
 
 Scientific learning of Hippokrates, 65; " medical reform 
 defined, 487 
 
 Scientific and Eclectic Medical Institute of Virginia, 553, etc. 
 
 Scott, Judge George G., hurls back charges of ignorance and 
 quackery in the Assembly of New York, 509 
 
 Scribes of the Temple, 9 
 
 Scudder, John M., professor in the Eclectic Medical Institute, 632; 
 elected secretary of the National Eclectic Medical Associa- 
 tion, 685; becomes sole owner of the Eclectic Medical Insti- 
 tute, 664; criticises the position of the Bennett College, 679; 
 affirms his own departure from the earlier teachers of Eclec- 
 tic medicine, 679; adopts the doctrine of Specific Medication, 
 680, 681; remarks only one school of physicians active in pro- 
 curing medical legislation, 686; affirms the object to convict 
 all "irregulars," 686; his own views, 687; resolution in favor 
 of a national organization, 691; his (resolution to recognize 
 five Eclectic Medical Colleges and approve their courses of 
 instruction, 704; his observations on Asiatic Cholera, 331 
 
 Scurvy, first noticed, 153; its remedy, how found, 154 
 
 Second Thomsonian Convention, 490 
 
 Sections ordered by the National Eclectic Medical Association, 
 705 
 
 Serapion criticises Hippokrates, 76 
 
 Serpent, the symbol of the healing art, 4; " the ^sculapian 
 carried to Rome, 51 
 
 Servetus or Miguel Serveto, describes the circulation of the blood, 
 184; burned for heresy, 184 
 
 Seti, king of Egypt, establishes a seminary at Thebes, 8 
 
 Seven spirits or demons said to disorder human beings, 78 
 
 Seventh day sacred with the Akkadians, 17 
 
 Seward, William H., advocates a stringent medical statute, 473 
 
 Seymour, Horatio, his service to the friends of medical freedom, 
 505
 
 INDEX. 937 
 
 Shamanism, 37 
 
 Sharp, Dr., his theory of Organopathy, 339 
 
 Shepherd-rulers in ancient Egypt abolish medical restrictions, 14 
 
 Shoemaker, O. H, P., elected president of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, 701 
 
 Sick, treated in the temples of ^sculapius, 48; " placed in 
 the public squares, 16 
 
 Signatu7n, a doctrine of signatures or specific medication, 177 
 
 Simmons, John, his labors in England, 768; " Thomas, pub- 
 lishes Beach's work in England, 760 
 
 Simms, John, 'of Delaware, elected president of the National 
 Ec'ectic Medical Association, 610 
 
 Simpson, Sir James Y., introduces anaesthesia in midwifery, 298; 
 discovers chloroform, 299; studies in uterine pathology, 301; 
 his prediction of the future of surgery, 872 
 
 Sims. James Marion, 302; his discoveries in surgery for lacera- 
 tions unnoticed in New York, 802; helped by Dr. Elijah 
 Whitney and others, he opens the Woman's Hospital, 303; 
 his remarks on the Medical Code when president, 551 
 
 Sixteen states repealing their medical statutes, 501 
 
 Skelton, Dr. John, promulgates American Botanic Medicine in 
 England, 765 
 
 Skyths or Scythians, 36; their drugs, 37; use hemp] as an anaes- 
 thetic, 290 
 
 Slave-doctors in ancient Athens, 59, [60 
 
 Slaves forbidden in Virginia to administer medicine, 460 
 
 Sleigt, Dr., declares the blood superfluous, 410 
 
 Small-pox first mentioned. 111; when first severe in London, 205; 
 seven types enumerated in Burma, 392 
 
 Smart, Senator, pleads for the repeal of the medical act of Maine 
 as unconstitutional and evil in policy, 392 
 
 Smedley, John, 370 
 
 Smith, Elisha, 439; repeatedly prosecuted, 444; organizes the 
 " New York Association of Botanic Physicians," 445 
 
 Smith, Isaac S., organizes the "Society of Botanic Physicians 
 and Surgeons " and establishes a medical college in New York, 
 445 
 
 Smith, Dr. J. V. C, proposes methods by which to prevent Thom- 
 sonians from obtaining equal professional rights, 520 
 
 Smith, Rev. Matthew Hale, elected president of the rival Na- 
 tional Eclectic Medical Association of Philadelphia, 693, 724
 
 938 INDEX. 
 
 Smith, Dr. Nathan, performs ovariotomy after Dr. McDowell, 
 304 
 
 Smith, Samuel, historian of New Jersey describes medical skill of 
 the natives, 414 
 
 Society, Independent Thomsonian, organized, 493; " of Re- 
 formed Physicians, at Rochester in 1828, 482 
 
 Societies, medical, denounce Surgeon-General Hammond, 669 
 
 Solar rays a curative agent, 374; " ganglion, 264 
 
 Solidism, 164 
 
 Solly, 288 
 
 Soul, the actual vis medic atrix naturcE, 228; " Asklepiad phy- 
 sicians by it cured the body, 60 
 
 South Carolina following New York, repeals its medical act, 510; 
 its medical statute, 819 
 
 South Dakota, its Eclectic Medical Society, 758; its medical 
 statute, 819 
 
 Southern Botanico-Medical College, 501, 525, etc.; " Botanico- 
 Medical Society, 526; " Reform Medical Association, 589, 
 etc. 
 
 Souvenir de Naples, 155 
 
 Specialties in medical practice, 697; " in ancient Egypt, 14 
 
 Specific Hojna:opat/iy, Hempel's Organon, 337 
 
 Specific indication explained by Paracelsus, 177; " mode of 
 administering medicine, 321 
 
 Specific Medication, propounded by Rau, 324, etc.; also recom- 
 mended by Dr. Honigberger, 349, 350; " organized in 
 Southern Germany as a distinct school, 234; " new form 
 propounded by Dr. Scudder, 679, 681; " doctrine claimed 
 by W. H. Cook as originally Physio-Medical, 681 
 
 Specifics commended by Dr. Honigberger, 350; " a doctrine 
 repudiated by Dr. Dickson, 361, 362 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, remarks the failure of arbitrary measures to 
 produce their intended effect, 316; observes a losing of the 
 instinct of liberty in America, 774 
 
 Sperry, B. W., leader of Thomsonians in Connecticut, 502; " 
 Isaac J., reports fifteen thousand petitioners for repeal of 
 medical restrictions, 502 
 
 Spinal nerves described by Marshall Hall, 291, 292 
 
 Spiritual beings supposed to cause disease, 398; " power said 
 to exist in medicines, 320 
 
 Spiritualists or Pneumaticists, an ancient school of physicians, 90
 
 INDEX. 939 
 
 Spurious diplomas issued in Philadelphia, 741 ; " action of the 
 Eclectic Medical Society of New York in reprobation, 648; 
 their issue made a misdemeanor, 649 
 
 Spurzheim, Kaspar, the phrenologist, 288 
 
 Staats, B. P., his efforts to reinstate the restrictive act^ 473 
 
 Stahl, George Ernst. 227; his theory of medicine, 228; teaches 
 animism or psychic influence, 228, 229; is a humoralist, 228, 
 287 
 
 Standlee, E. Lee, elected president of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, 723 
 
 State Eclectic Medical Society formed in Missouri, 676; " Eclectic 
 Medical Societies represented at the forming of the National 
 Association, 694; " id. two in New York unite, 582; " 
 Reform Medical Associations organized in 18(35; — id. recom- 
 mended in lieu of a national body, 591 
 
 States without an Eclectic medical organization, 759 
 
 Stephanus, 180 
 
 Stephen of Edessa, 103 
 
 Stephens, Alexander H., patron of Reform Medicine, 501 
 
 Still, A. v., founder of the school of Osteopathy, 879 
 
 Stokes, William, on the use of the stethoscope, 285 
 
 Stomach invaded by surgeons, 873 
 
 Stow, Benjamin J., elected president of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, 699; elected treasurer in 1870, etc., 696 
 
 Stratford, Henry K., elected president of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, 708 
 
 Successful treatment defined by Dr. Morrow, 544 
 
 Sun-tissue, 599 
 
 " Superstition," former meaning of the term, 375 
 
 Surgeons formerly barbers, 250; " College at Paris, 141; " 
 Royal College at Edinburgh, 251 
 
 Surgery in ancient Egypt, 12: " taught by Sushrata in India, 
 26, 27; " its low condition in the Middle Ages, 144; " 
 part of the barber's craft, 144, 273; " modern, its rise, 
 250; " in the reign of Henry VIII, 773; " in the sixteenth 
 century, 189; " advances in the seventeenth century, 209; 
 " in the American colonial period, 408; " military, 
 professorships, 669; " predictions of Simpson, 872 
 
 Surgical skill of Hippokrates, 66; " apparatus improved in 
 ancient periods, 75; " practitioners in former centuries, 
 186; " influence deprecated by Dickson, 360; " instruction
 
 940 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 more desired, 294; " operations evidence of imperfect 
 
 skill, 258; " school founded, 250 
 Sushrata and hisjlearning, 27 
 
 " Sweating sickness" in England, 154; " Dr. Keyes' treatise, 167 
 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 245; his genius, 246; his theories of 
 
 pathology, 247; his views of medicine, 338 
 Swedish Movement-Cure, 370 
 Sweet family of " natural bone setters," 310; " Job, employed 
 
 by Count de Rochambeau at Newport, R. I., 310; " perse- 
 
 cuted under medical statutes, 467 
 Sweet, Hermes M., a Botanic physician in New York, medical 
 
 society formed at his house, 585 
 Swine, formerly made subjects for dissection in medical colleges, 
 
 136 
 Switzerland by referendum defeats the statute for compulsory 
 
 vaccination, 267 
 Sydenham, Thomas, the "English Hippokrates," 215; pro- 
 nounced ''not a profound man of science," 215; a sectary, 
 
 215, 216; his new doctrines, 216, etc.; his contempt for 
 
 medical book-learning, 219 
 Sylvius 179 
 
 Sympathetic nervous system, 180, 288; " powder, 202, 203 
 Symptoms, their gouping less regarded, 234 
 Synopsis of medical statutes in the United States, 776, etc. 
 Syphilis described in the Bible, 155; " rages over Europe with 
 
 great fatality, 155, 156 
 Syracuse medical college, 582, 585, etc. 
 
 Tagliacozzi, his notion of the artificial nose, 151 
 
 Tait, Lawson, declares micro-organisms harmless, 383; his con- 
 viction of duty toward young practitioners regardless of 
 their beliefs on medicine, 551 
 
 Taranta applies arsenic for cancer, 127 
 
 Tali sect in China, 34 
 
 Taylor, Dr. William, his efforts to prevent repeal of medical 
 restrictions, 506 
 
 Teeth, their replacing an ancient art, 875. See Dentistry. 
 
 Telescope mightier than rack or faggot, 197 
 
 Tennessee, the new school and its aspects, 756; Eclectic Medical 
 Society formed, 757; the medical statute, 821 
 
 Terms of study at medical colleges increased, 714
 
 INDEX. 941 
 
 Test resolution at Thomsonian Conventions, 492 
 
 Testimonial to Col. James Kilbourne, 547 
 
 Texas, history of Eclectic movements, 754; partisan legislation 
 inhibited by its constitution 823; the medical statute, 823 
 
 Theatre, its evolution from religious rites, 140 
 
 Themison employs blood-letting and the trephine, 88 
 
 Theophrastos, his history, 69 
 
 Theoretic physicians as described by Rafinesque, 437 
 
 Theory of disease, Samuel Thomson's, 453; " of indigenous 
 remedial plants recogaized by Culpepper, 414 
 
 Theosophy in schools where medicine was taught, 102 
 
 Therapeutic Sarcognoiny, 385 
 
 Therapy, other forms, 872 
 
 Thessalia, its healing or magic art, 394 
 
 Thomas, A. R., professor in Syracuse Medical College, 582; also 
 in the Penn Medical University and Hahnemann Medical 
 College, 651 
 
 Thomas, John, president and professor in the Franklin Medical 
 College, 555; denounces graduating of men upon nominal 
 attendance at college, 555, 556; becomes professor of 
 chemistry in the Institute at Petersburg, Virginia, 55 1 
 
 Thomas, Joseph, considers the bacterial hypothesis not fully 
 proved, 383 
 
 Thompson, Dr. Benjamin, a disciple of Samuel Thomson, 491, 
 note; establishes an infirmary at Boston, 491; removes to 
 Concord, New Hampshire, 491; misrepresented in two 
 Cyclopedias as founder of the Thomsonian practice, and 
 member of the Eclectic School, 449, 491 
 
 Thomson, Dr. John, first in New York to oppose perniciou 
 medical legislation, 468; heads the first medical petition, 
 469; fined for visiting a patient, 473; he wheels the great 
 medical petition in 1844 up State street in Albany to the 
 capitol, 509; publishes the Thomso7iian Materia Mcdica, 
 519; death, 532 
 Thomson, Samuel, 449; the first to attack Allopathy in America 
 455; resembles John Hunter, 453, 455; his theory of disease, 
 453; his methods differ from other Botanic physicians, 452: 
 practice said to be like that of the Marshpee Indians, 496; also 
 to resemble that of Dr. Woodward, of England, 452; defamed 
 and virtually outlawed, 456; indicted for wilful murder, 457, 
 etc.; medical statutes enacted against him, 464; procures
 
 942 INDEX 
 
 patents on his discoveries, 459; etc., visits Doctors Rush and 
 Barton, 461; receives favorable testimonies from physicians, 
 463; organizes " Friendly Botanic Societies," 462; convokes 
 the first United States Thomsonian Convention, 488; opens 
 an Infirmary in Boston, 491; contention with Dr. Mattson, 
 495; his name dropped as a designation, 497; death, 532 
 
 Thomsonian and Botanic Publications, 866. See Lloyd Library, 
 etc., " Materia Medica, 519; " conventions, 488, 490, 
 492; " Medical Society of New York honors its agents in 
 1844 " for their active exertions in procuring the repeal of an 
 unjust law," 516; etc. 
 
 Thorax opened to surgical invasion, 873 
 
 Thornton, Doctor, of London, a Botanic physician, 763; " Doctor, 
 a clerk in the Bureau of Patents, his trick on Doctor 
 Thomson, 460 
 
 Thoth or Hermes, his books on medicine, 7 
 
 Thrita, the Eranian hero, his skill in healing, 22 
 
 Thurlow, Lord, and the Non-Conformists, 315 
 
 Tinctures, Essential. See Merrell, \V. S. 
 
 Tissue-Remedies, 368 
 
 Tod, David, Governor of Ohio, evades an order of legislature, 667 
 
 Torrey, John. 420 
 
 Transatlantic influence causes discredit of vegetable remedies, 416 
 
 Transfusion of blood, 210 
 
 Traumatic fever, explanation of its cause, 364 
 
 Treatment of the sick at Babylon and Assyria, 16; at Pergamos, 
 78; made a penal offense in American States after the war of 
 1812, 441 ; Homoeopathic, rejected by the native physicians of 
 Runjeet Singh, 345. See also Synopsis of Medical Statutes, 
 Chapter XVII 
 
 Trend of American legislation toward creating monopolies, 689; 
 " zV/. toward making professional education costly, 835 
 
 Trephining, 211 
 
 Trotula, 135 
 
 Troubles at Cincinnati, 600 
 
 Trousseau, Doctor A., 284 
 
 Tuke, William, introduces a more humane treatment of the 
 insane, 314 
 
 TuUy, William, his researches in Botany, 420 
 
 Tuthill, Samuel, elected president of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, 617
 
 INDEX. 943 
 
 University at Baghdad, 112; " at Edessa, 110; " at Gandis- 
 pura, 110; " of Florida, medical department, 738; " of 
 Indiana, 480; " of Paris, 150; " at Thebes in Egypt, 9; 
 " towns in Babylonia, 20 
 
 Universities in Italy, 138 
 
 Unzer, 289 
 
 Utah, the Eclectic Medical Society formed, 758; the medical 
 statute, 824 
 
 Vaccinated persons contracting small-pox, 843 
 
 Vaccination made compulsory, 266; introduced into Syria, 343; 
 rejected in Switzerland by an overwhelming vote of the 
 people, 265 
 
 Valentin, Basil, introduces antimony and other metallic sub- 
 stances as medicines, 152 
 
 Van Aernam, Dr. Henry refuses Eclectic and Homceopathic 
 physicians as pension examiners, and is removed, 700, note 
 
 Van Helmont, 197 
 
 Van Swieten, 225 
 
 Varoli, 183 
 
 Vasco de Gama, 153; scurvy first observed with his crew, 1^3 
 
 Vatican library, founded, 146 
 
 Vaughan, Thomas, reputed Master of the Rosicrucian Brother- 
 hood, 201 
 
 Vegetable substances all compounds — Rafinesque's inference, 431 
 
 Velpeau, 302 
 
 Vend/dad, its art of healing, etc., 22 
 
 Veratrum alba in the ancient Eclectic practice, 92; again intro- 
 duced, 102 
 
 Vermont, the Eclectic Medical Society organized, 674; law of 
 1876. 825 
 
 Vernacular of the people employed in teaching by Paracelsus, 
 Pare and Rademacher, 172, 188, 354 
 
 Vesalius, Andreas, 180; sets aside Galen and the ancients, 181; 
 is professor at three universities, 181; is denoimced to the 
 Inquisition, 181; died at Zante, 181; taught anatomy by 
 dissection of human bodies, 182 
 
 Vieussens on neuropathy, 208 
 
 Vigilance Committees, medical, recommended, 710 
 
 «' Vitidication of the Art of Healing " Rademacher's great work, 
 356
 
 944 INDEX. 
 
 Virchow, Rudolf, on cell-development, 293 
 
 Virginia, old laws in relation to colored persons administering 
 
 medicine, 466; medical statute, 826 
 Votive offerings received by priests, 50 
 Voudu, 400 
 
 War, Civil, extinguishing professional animosities in the South, 
 592 
 
 Washington, General, plans the American Union, 531; his medi- 
 cal treatment, 416 
 
 Washington (State) Eclectic Medical Association formed, 758; 
 " the Governor vetoes the bill in regard to Osteopathy, 
 881 note; " the medical statute, 827 
 
 Wasson, David A., his generous sentiment, 356 
 
 Water Cure, 368; etc. 
 
 Waterhouse, Prof. Benjamin, protests against arbitrary uncon- 
 stitutional legislation of New York, 442; praises Samuel 
 Thomson, 457; compares Thomson to John Hunter, 455 
 
 Wesley, John, his comment on the branding of certain physicians 
 as empirics, 463; criticism of the current practice of medicine, 
 411 
 
 West Kentucky Eclectic Medical Society, 757 
 
 West Virginia, a medical organization effected with counties in 
 northern Ohio, 673; a State Eclectic Medical Association 
 formed, 757; the medical statute, 829 
 
 Western New York, the Reformed Medical Association, 579; " 
 the Reformed Medical Society, 482 
 
 Western States of sixty years ago unanimous for equal rights for 
 all schools of medical practice, 472 
 
 Wharton, Thomas, the first to describe the glands, 207 
 
 White, Hon. Andrew D., Ambassador to Germany, calls attention 
 to the sale of American medical degrees, 341 
 
 Whitney, Dr. Elijah, helps and encourages Dr. J. Marion Sims, 302 
 
 Who make colleges, but whom colleges did not make, 532 
 
 Wilder, Alexander, elected secretary of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, 701, etc.; requested to prepare a history 
 of Eclectic Medicine during the earlier periods, 712; delivers 
 an address at the World's Medical Congress Auxiliary, 717 
 
 Wilkinson, J. J. Garth, his estimation of Swedenborg as a scien- 
 tist, 247; his explanation of the Homoeopathic theory of the 
 Science of Correspondences, 322
 
 INDEX. 945 
 
 Will the bias humamun, 199 
 
 Williams, David, elected president of the National Eclectic 
 Medical Association, 723; " J. W. R. explains the opera- 
 tion of the medical statute of Alabama, 711 
 
 Willis, Thomas, his arrangement of cranial nerves, etc., 209; 
 "Circle of Willis," 209; accepts the chemiatric doctrines and 
 the views of Paracelsus, 214 
 
 Winslow, Forbes, his explanation of disease, 384; his theory of 
 mental causes, 376 
 
 Wisconsin, the "Eclectic Medical College," 743; the Eclectic 
 Medical Society formed, 676; the medical statute, 831 
 
 "Wise women" supplanted by men-midwives, 207, 300 
 
 Wiseman, the Father of English Surgery, 210 
 
 Witchcraft, accusations become numerous, 194 
 
 Witch-herbs, 78, 267 
 
 Wolff, Kaspar Friedrich, founder of the science of Embryology, 
 293 
 
 Woman's Hospital founded by Dr. J. Marion Sims, 303 
 
 Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania incorporated, 571 
 
 Women accepted as members of the National Eclectic Medical 
 Assocition in 1870, 695; " admitted as students of the Cen- 
 tral Medical College of New York, 580; " in the Medical 
 College at Worcester, 621 ; " Cincinnati, 571; their medical 
 instruction approved by resolution in 1855, 616; forbidden to 
 practice obstetrics, 75; " lecturers, professors and students 
 in the ninth century in the college at Salerno, 135; " prac- 
 ticing medicme at Rome during the Empire, 93, 300; their 
 graduation not recognized by medical societies of the domin- 
 ant school, 571, note. 
 
 Wood, Dr., James R., praises Dr. Wooster Beach, 438 
 
 Woodward, Dr., of London, his treatise on the " , State of PJiysic 
 and Diseases" said to be like the doctrines of Samuel Thom- 
 son, 452— note, 763 
 
 Woofendale, John, the first dentist in America, 876 
 
 Worcester Medical School, opened in 1846, 560; becomes a branch 
 of the Southern Botanico-Medical College, 561; organized 
 anew as the " New England Botanico-Medical College," 563; 
 incorporated as the "Worcester Medical Institution," 564; 
 its proposed union with the Metropolitan Medical College, 
 568, 622; removal to Boston, 622; suspended. 622 
 
 World's Fair at Chicago, Committee on Eclectic Medical Depart-
 
 946 INDEX. 
 
 ment appointed, 714; " Eclectic Medical Congress Auxiliary,, 
 
 715 etc. 
 Worthington, Ohio, founded, 514; the college incorporated, 484, 
 
 514; medical department opened by Dr. Morrow, 484; the 
 
 building pillaged by a mob, 517; school suspended, 543 
 Wyld, Dr. George, of London, disapproves of Hahnemann's. 
 
 views, 340 
 Wyoming, medical statute, 834 
 
 Yahia ben Masaiah, (Maswa,) at Baghdad, 118 
 
 Yeagley, Benjamin L., elected president of the National Eclectic- 
 Medical Association, 715 
 
 Yin and Yajt/i, or energy and potency, 395 
 
 Young, James, and the flap-operation, 211 
 
 Younkin, Edwin, elected president of the National Eclectic- 
 Medical Association, 707; his suggestion about medical 
 charters, 798 note 
 
 Zerbi of Verona, the "medical seer," 152 
 
 Zeuxis, (Philalethes) establishes a medical school in Phrygia, 75 
 
 Z winger of Basel, 165 
 
 Zymotic diseases probably varieties of one thing, 265 note
 
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