Marketplace of the Marvelous (44 page)

Even in the nineteenth century, when cooperation between regular and irregular medicine seemed all but impossible, some doctors expressed
hope for the future. In the 1850s, homeopath Walter Johnson implored his fellow healers to come together. “I think it sheer bigotry for any party to lay claim to exclusive possession of the truth,” he wrote.

Let us then join hands, and instead of degrading ourselves by contemptible bickering, devote our whole energies to the relief of suffering humanity, and earnestly hope for the dawn of that day, when the ephemeral systems which we now practice, shall be absorbed by a new revelation, and cease from affording a pretence [
sic
] for sectarian dissension.
⁶³

He was not alone. A regular by the name of Dr. Forbes proclaimed himself in 1846 “ready to grasp any proffered good in the way of healing, whoever may be the offerers, and wheresoever they may have found it.”
⁶⁴

Understanding the history of an idea is hard. But harder still might be tracing the path back to the beginning of your own ideas, particularly those that somehow move from a question to an entire book comprising several years of your life. For this, I thank Matt Jensen for introducing me to his field of medicine and for pushing me to take a look around with a questioning historical eye. Much to my surprise, I discovered that the history of medicine brought together some of my long-standing interests in women's history, utopian thinking, and oddball characters. Our conversations on medicine and nineteenth-century history formed the core of this book, as Matt questioned and challenged my assumptions, and offered me new insights and ideas that I never would have come to alone. Having the critical eye of an in-house doctor also proved invaluable as he disputed my claims and characterizations of regular medicine. For this, I thank him, and I apologize, since I'm sure my thankfulness frequently appeared as annoyance in the moment.

Thanks also to Christopher Hoolihan at the Edward G. Miner Library at the University of Rochester Medical Center and to the staff at Ebling Library at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for help in locating items new, old, and rare. Thanks as well to the librarians and archivists of the Wisconsin Historical Society and Memorial Library at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Thanks to my agent, Janet Rosin, for her excitement about this project when it was only half formed, and to the critical eyes of my editors, Helene Atwan and Crystal Paul, at Beacon Press.

Thanks as well to those friends who expressed (polite) interest and found themselves unexpectedly in a conversation about irregular medicine, particularly Anne Strainchamps, Mary Ellen Gabriel, Michael Edmonds, Nicole Miller, and Laura Kearney. Your comments and questions made me think and laugh, which added immeasurably to this book and the writing process.

1.
William D. McArdle, Frank I. Katch, and Victor L. Katch,
Essentials of Exercise Physiology
, 3rd ed. (Baltimore: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, 2005), 15–16.

2.
Kimberly Harper, “Historic Missourians: John S. Sappington,” State Historical Society of Missouri,
http://shs.umsystem.edu/historicmissourians/name/s/sappington/index.html
.

3.
Charles Neider, ed.,
The Autobiography of Mark Twain
(New York: Harper & Row, 1959), 64–65.

4.
Ibid., 65–66.

5.
Albert Bigelow Paine,
Mark Twain, a Biography: The Personal and Literary Life of Mark Twain
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1912 ), 2:162.

6.
Joshua Wolf Shenk, “Lincoln's Great Depression,”
Atlantic
(October 2005),
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/10/lincolns-great-depression/304247/
.

7.
Lora Romero, “Bio-Political Resistance in Domestic Ideology and
Uncle Tom's Cabin
,”
American Literary History
1, no. 4 (Winter 1989): 734.

8.
Fernando Orrego and Carlos Quintana, “Darwin's Illness: A Final Diagnosis,”
Notes and Records of the Royal Society
22 (January 2007): 25; Maria H. Frawley,
Invalidism and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Britain
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 46.

9.
Edgar W. Martin,
The Standard of Living in 1860: American Consumption Levels on the Eve of the Civil War
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942), 225–47.

10.
Charles E. Rosenberg, “The Practice of Medicine in New York a Century Ago,” in Leavitt and Numbers,
Sickness and Health in America
, 63.

11.
Charles E. Rosenberg, “The Therapeutic Revolution: Medicine, Meaning, and Social Change in Nineteenth Century America,” in Vogel and Rosenberg,
Therapeutic Revolution
, 8.

12.
“Bloody Suckers: Leech Therapy,”
Nature
, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/bloodysuckers/leech.html
(accessed March 21, 2013).

13.
Roy Porter, ed.,
The Cambridge History of Medicine
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 56, 58, 109.

14.
Duffy,
From Humors to Medical Science
, 15; Whorton,
Nature Cures
, 4–5.

15.
Duffy, F
rom Humors to Medical Science
, 14–16.

16.
Rush quoted in John Warner,
The Therapeutic Perspective: Medical Practice, Knowledge, and Identity in America, 1820–1885
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 18; Whorton,
Nature Cures
, 6.

17.
Wesley,
Primitive Physick
, 36, 84.

18.
John R. Betts, “Mind and Body in Early American Thought,”
Journal of American History
54, no. 4 (March 1968): 791; Thurs, Science Talk, 30–31.

19.
T. Gregory Garvey,
Creating the Culture of Reform in Antebellum America
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), 2, 33.

20.
Ibid., 33; Haller,
Medical Protestants
, 31; Numbers, “Do-It-Yourself the Sectarian Way,” 49.

21.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,”
Essays: First Series
(Stilwell, KS: Digireads, 2007), 31.

22.
Porter,
Greatest Benefit to Mankind
, 281; Starr,
Social Transformation of American Medicine
, 595; Eric H. Christianson, “Medicine in New England,” in Leavitt and Numbers,
Sickness and Health in America
, 64; Whitfield J. Bell, “A Portrait of the Colonial Physician,” in Leavitt and Numbers,
Sickness and Health in America
, 45–46.

23.
Haller,
Medical Protestants
, 3; Cassedy,
Medicine in America
, 191; Reed, Healing Cults, 67–71.

24.
Worthington Hooker,
The Treatment Due from the Profession to Physicians Who Become Homeopathic Practitioners
(Norwich, CT: John G. Cooley, 1852), 8.

25.
Wrobel, “Introduction,” in Wrobel,
Pseudoscience and Society
, 2–3.

26.
“American versus European Medical Science Again,”
Medical Record
4 (May 15, 1869): 133.

27.
Starr,
Social Transformation of American Medicine
, 65.

28.
Charles Rosenberg, “The American Medical Profession: Mid-Nineteenth Century,”
Mid-America
44 (July 1962): 166, 168.

29.
William Cobbett, “Comments,” Republican Rush-Light 1 (1800), 49; “Doctors in Trouble,”
Eclectic Medical Journal
1 (1853), 132; Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Caspar Wistar Jr., June 21, 1807, in
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson
, vol. 10,
Correspondence and Papers, 1803–1807
, ed. Paul L. Ford (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1904–1905), 81–85.

30.
Caroline de Costa and Francesca Miller, “American Resurrection and the 1788 New York Doctors' Riot,”
Lancet
33, no. 9762 (January 2011): 292–93.

31.
Cohen, “Medical Social Movements,” 32.

32.
Duffy,
From Humors to Medical Science
, 12–17.

33.
Matthew Baillie quoted in Porter,
Greatest Benefit to Mankind
, 266.

34.
Starr, “Medicine, Economy and Society,” 591.

35.
“American vs. European Medical Science Again,” 183; Ronald L. Numbers, “The Fall and Rise of the American Medical Profession,” in Leavitt and Numbers,
Sickness and Health in America
, 225–26.

36.
Thomson,
New Guide to Health
, 7.

37.
Starr, “Medicine, Economy and Society,” 591.

38.
Caleb Ticknor,
A Popular Treatise on Medical Philosophy; or, An Exposition of Quackery and Imposture in Medicine
(New York: Gould and Newman, 1838), 17.

39.
Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Currents and Counter-Currents in Medical Science with Other Addresses and Essays
(Boston, 1861), 27.

40.
“Reviews,”
American Journal of the Medical Sciences
40 (Philadelphia: Blanchard and Lee, 1860): 469–70.

41.
Hooker,
Physician and Patient
, 37.

42.
Haller,
American Medicine in Transition
, 98–99; Whorton,
Nature Cures
, 6–7.

43.
Thurs,
Science Talk
, 13–14, 20; Porter,
Greatest Benefit to Mankind
, 29, 40.

44.
Morantz, “Women in the Medical Profession,” 163–64.

45.
Morantz-Sanchez,
Sympathy and Science
, 8–9; “Opposition to Women,”
Evening Bulletin
(Philadelphia), November 8, 1869.

46.
Morantz-Sanchez,
Sympathy and Science
, 168; Eve Fine, “Women Physicians and Medical Sects in Nineteenth-Century Chicago,” in More, Fee, and Parry,
Women Physicians
, 256–57.

47.
“African American Physicians and Organized Medicine, 1846–1968,” American Medical Association,
http://www.ama-assn.org/resources/doc/ethics/afamtimeline.pdf;
“Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler,”
Changing the Face of Medicine
, National Library of Medicine,
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_73.html;
Haller,
History of American Homeopathy
, 56–57; Duffy,
From Humors to Medical Science
, 305–6.

48.
Mary Gove Nichols, “Woman the Physician,”
Water-Cure Journal
11 (1851): 74–75.

1.
Samuel Thomson,
The Constitution, Rules and Regulations to be Adopted and Practiced by the Members of the Friendly Botanic Society at Eastport, Pass
. [sic]
and Portsmouth, N.H. Together With the Preparation of Medicine and System
(Portsmouth, NH: 1812), 21–22.

2.
E. E. Helm, “Untitled,”
Botanico-Medical Recorder
8 (January 18, 1845): 83.

3.
Anonymous, “Ode to Lobelia,”
Thomsonian Manual and Lady's Companion
5 (June 15, 1839): 230.

4.
Haller,
People's Doctor
, 33–34.

5.
Flannery, “Early Botanical Medical Movement.”

6.
Haller,
Medical Protestants
, 9–10, 37.

7.
Thomson,
New Guide to Health
, 16.

8.
Ibid., 16.

9.
Whorton,
Nature Cures
, 26; Haller,
Medical Protestants
, 38.

10.
Rothstein, “Botanical Movements,” in Gevitz,
Other Healers
, 30–32; Haller,
Medical Protestants
, 8–9; Susan M. Kingsbury, ed.,
Records of the Virginia Company of London
, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1933), 237–38.

11.
Haller,
People's Doctor
, 8.

12.
Rothstein, “The Botanical Movements and Orthodox Medicine,” 33; “Herbal Medicine,” University of Maryland Medical Center,
http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/herbal-medicine-000351.htm
.

13.
Rothstein, “Botanical Movements,” 32–33.

14.
Haller,
People's Doctor
, 10–11.

15.
Numbers, “Do-It-Yourself the Sectarian Way,” 49–51; Thomson,
New Guide to Health
, 38–43.

16.
Haller,
Medical Protestants
, 38–39; John S. Haller Jr., “Samuel Thomson and the Poetry,” in
Samuel Thomson and the Poetry of Botanic Medicine
,
1810–1860
, Lloyd Library and Museum,
http://www.lloydlibrary.org/Haller/hallerpoetrychone.html
(16 January 2012); “Dr. Samuel Thomson,”
Boston Investigator
, November 15, 1843.

17.
Thomson,
New Guide to Health
, 40.

18.
John S. Haller Jr., “The American Hippocrates,” Lloyd Library and Museum,
www.lloydlibrary.org/Haller/hallerpoetrychone.html
.

19.
Rothstein, “Botanical Movements,” 42–43; ibid.

20.
Thomson,
New Guide to Health
, 42.

21.
Ibid., 6.

22.
Thomson, “Narrative of the Life,” in ibid., 30–44.

23.
J. U. and C. G. Lloyd, eds.,
Bulletin of the Lloyd Library: Life and Medical Discoveries of Samuel Thomson and a History of the Thomsonian Materia Medica
11 (Cincinnati: Lloyd Library, 1909), 32; Thomson,
New Guide to Health
, 56–58.

24.
Haller,
People's Doctor
, 18–21.

25.
“Cold,”
Online Etymology Dictionary
,
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cold
.