Eclectic Medicine and Cases of the Gilded Age
From 1852 to as late as 1939, eclectic medical doctors claimed to be the adopters of all medical theories, including homeopathy, but at strengths of medicines shown to help the patient. Eclectics contended that regular physicians were the quacks that used lancets for bleeding and poisonous mercury. What was eclectic medicine, and how did these doctors define eclectic medicine compared to medical doctors of homeopathic and allopathic medicine? My small digital history website will focus on one of the professors, named John King, MD and the plants he recommended for women’s diseases and some men’s complaints. Dr. King taught at the Eclectic Medical Institute of Cincinnati. The institute itself has its own history and a large contribution to this history about eclectic medicine.
This proposed website will strive to answer the following questions. Who were these men that wrote seemingly standard medical texts with additional plant therapies? Who was John King, who wrote King’s obstetrics, diseases of women, and more importantly, The Eclectic American Dispensatory? Specifically, what were some of the more popular medical treatments? What did these professors and doctors charge for these treatments, and were they like today’s medical dollars? Who were their patients, and did they belong to upper-class society, or could anyone afford these treatments?
I plan to use Omeka to build the website. There will be a small exhibit of John King’s discoveries that are used today. Of course, there are many more poisonous plants and quack medicine that can also be displayed that are not effective for specific conditions. As an example, he recommended Cannabis Indica to prevent bleeding in miscarriage as one of the many other treatments for this condition. Additional content will be actual cases and notes from John King supplied by the archivist at Lloyd Library that have not been displayed on any other website. This is important to show how eclectic physicians charge for medical care, their prescriptions of these compounds of plants, and treatment regimens. Digital technology within the website will be relatively limited to a collection of images, images of text, and interpretation.
In a larger dream prototype, I would have an interactive website about the more extended chronology of eclectic medicine, showcasing the more significant number of female graduates than traditional medical schools. The proprietary eclectic medical institute also accepted more Jewish students than professional medical schools. The prototype design would include these individuals who achieved their physician credentials that allopathic medical schools had shunned due to discrimination and antisemitism. For the people interested in the history of herbal remedies, there would be an interactive quiz on diseases and a matching of plants from the American Dispensatory. There were professional societies of eclectic physicians from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Guthrie, Oklahoma. Maps of these doctors who practiced this kind of medicine in the gilded age could also be illustrated from accessing eclectic medical newsletters and placed in interactive popup maps. Other future proposals would include a more extensive database of the papers of the different professors and physicians. Currently, the National Library of Medicine and the Lloyd Library in Cincinnati have digitized the textbooks. Most of the personal and professional papers are not digitized. On my actual website, since I do not know how to make games on websites, I will stick to what I know. It will be images from John King’s notes, pictures, and information about eclectic medicine.
The target audience will be people interested in quack medicine, herbal medicine, and medicine in the late 1800s. Another target audience will be people interested in offbeat medical history and the use of plants in North America, tied to indigenous knowledge of plants, like Cannabis indica. Historians and fellow graduate students working on their digital history projects will be the secondary audience. My personas were both women as a representative audience for the general public, and these personas are to be extrapolated to a large age group for men and women. Women interested in medical history and quack medicines will be more interested in the current small, proposed website, focusing on Dr. John King’s female cases and his herbal remedies.
Secondary Sources:
John S. Haller. A Profile in Alternative Medicine: The Eclectic Medical College of Cincinnati, 1845-1942. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, (1999).
John King, “Introductory Lecture Before the Eclectic Medical Class, in Greenwood Hall.” Cincinnati, Eclectic Publishing Office, (1852). Digitized National Library of Medicine. http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9516547.
