Book dossier

Medical protestants

by John S. Haller

John S. Haller, Jr., provides the first modern history of the eclectic school of American sectarian medicine. The eclectic school (sometimes called the "American school") flourished in the mid-nineteenth century when the art and science of medicine was undergoing a profound crisis of faith. At the heart of the crisis 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. Many American physicians and their patients felt that medicine had lost the ability to cure. The eclectics surmounted the crisis by forging a therapeutics built on herbal remedies, family practice, and an empirical approach to disease, and a system ostensibly independent of European influence. Haller makes clear that in the early decades of the nineteenth century when therapeutic nihilism threatened to destroy the bond between physician and patient, the eclectics offered an optimistic palliative that healed, comforted, and reassured Americans that medicine was indeed governed by rational laws. Eclectic practitioners portrayed their system as a unifying force, one that could salvage the public's faith in medicine. They symbolized a faith in science and practical experience, the value of self-direction and dedication, and the distrust of theory as an end in itself. Haller tells the story of eclectic medicine from the perspective of the eclectics themselves, as medical protestants within a pluralistic culture. . Although rejected by the regulars (adherents of mainstream medicine), the eclectics imitated their magisterial manner by establishing two dozen colleges and more than sixty-five journals in order to proclaim the wisdom of their therapeutic approach. Central to the story of eclecticism was the Eclectic Medical Institute of Cincinnati, the "mother institute" of reform medical colleges. Organized in 1845, the school existed for ninety-four years before closing in 1939. Throughout much of their history, as Haller explains, the eclectic medical schools provided access into the medical profession for those men and women who lacked the financial, educational, and gender requirements of regular schools. Defending their second- and third-tier medical schools as legitimate avenues for poor and disadvantaged students, the eclectics accused the American Medical Association of playing aristocratic politics behind a masquerade of curriculum reform. By the late nineteenth century, the eclectics found themselves in the backwaters of modern medicine. Unable to break away from their botanic bias and ill-equipped to accept the implications of germ theory, the financial costs of salaried faculty and staff, and the research demands of laboratory science, the eclectics were pushed aside by the rush of modern academic medicine.