Medical protestants : the eclectics in American medicine, 1825-1939 / John S. Haller, Jr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Haller, John S., Jr., 1940-

Contributor:

Edward Potts Cheyney Memorial Fund.

Series:

Medical humanities series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Medicine, Eclectic--United States--History.

Medicine, Eclectic.

History.

United States.

Physical Description:

xix, 340 pages : illustrations, photographs ; 24 cm.

Edition:

Paperback edition.

Other Title:

Eclectics in American medicine, 1825-1939

Place of Publication:

Carbondale, Ill. : Southern Illinois University Press, 2013.

Summary:

The Eclectic School (sometimes called the "American School") flourished in the midnineteenth century when the art and science of medicine was undergoing a profound crisis of faith, at the heart of which was a disillusionment with the traditional therapeutics of the day and an intense questioning of the principles and philosophy upon which medicine had been built. The Eclectics surmounted the crisis by forging a therapeutics based on herbal remedies and an empirical approach to disease.

Throughout much of their history the Eclectics provided access into the medical profession for those men and women who lacked the financial, educational, and gender requirements of regular schools. They defended their second- and third-tier medical schools as legitimate avenues for poor and disadvantaged students and accused the American Medical Association of playing aristocratic politics behind a masquerade of curriculum reform before grudgingly changing their curriculum and tightening admission standards. Eventually, the Eclectics found themselves in the backwaters of modern medicine, unable to break away from their botanic bias and ill-equipped to support the implications of germ theory, the financial costs of salaried faculty and staff, and the research implications of laboratory science. John S. Haller Jr. provides a modern history of this group that was pushed aside by the rush of modern academic medicine. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The American Landscape 1

2 Every Man His Own Physician 31

3 Reformed Medicine, 1825-1856 66

4 Buchanan's Feuds and Fads 94

5 Consolidation, 1856-1875 139

6 Eclectic Materia Medica 167

7 Challenges, 1875-1910 198

8 Malaise, 1910-1939 227.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 297-323) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Edward Potts Cheyney Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

080933142X

9780809331420

OCLC:

823766750

Publisher Number:

99952350266