Who was Dr. John King? Cases of his Treatments that Represent Eclectic Medicine

Letter describing his discovery of the resin from Mandrake, otherwise known as resin of podophyllum. 

Resin of Podophyllum made from this plant, otherwise known as Mandrake,  by Dr. John King

Dr. John King was a professor of obstetrics and gynecology for almost thirty years at the Eclectic Medical Institute of Cincinnati. This exhibit will give examples of eclectic medical treatments for women in the following cases. His importance was as a teacher to multiple physicians and he wrote multiple textbooks including King's Obstetrics, Women and Their Diseases, and the American Eclectic Dispensatory. The female cases in this website are from later in his career during the gilded age. This image from his casebooks at the Lloyd Library shows how he kept notes on scraps of paper and glued in on top of his case logs. This information was given to me by the archivist who took these pictures of his cases. 

The importance of his later cases for this website was the distinct change to having the Lloyd Brothers pharmacy available to help make his prescriptions. You will see how he tallies the charges for these prescriptions. 

Earlier in his career, he would have had to make his own. He was a chemist and experimenter of plants and chemicals in his own right, which led him to be the author of the American Eclectic Dispensatory. In that essential eclectic textbook, he detailed all the known medical plants, how to prepare them, and for what conditions. Dr. King discovered the therapeutic use of the resin of podophyllum along with several other resins that "regular" physicians later adopted. He did acknowledge that he found the use of these resins in 1844. He did not get credit nor lend his name to later manufactured resins.

What is the significance of this discovery? We know of the resin of podophyllum even today. It is used as a topical treatment for genital warts. 

Podophyllin: Uses, Interactions, Mechanism of Action | DrugBank Online