THE HISTORY OF HERBAL MEDICINE IN NORTH AMERICA (Part Nine)

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THE HISTORY OF HERBAL MEDICINE IN NORTH AMERICA

 

(Part Nine)

 

By RFD Columnist, Todd Caldecott

of Clinical Herbal Studies

Wild Rose College Of Natural Healing

Calgary, Alberta

 

Email: phyto

Website

 

In this major series, RFD Columnist, Todd Caldecott explores the history of

herbal medicine in North America, with the view of fostering a better

understanding of the issues that face modern herbalists and a greater

appreciation of the evolution of the relationships between alternative,

complimentary and conventional medicine.

 

Herbal medicine in North America has a long and venerable tradition, from the

First Nations practices that were in existence thousands of years before the

first colonists arrived, to the development of four-year clinical programs at

the turn of the last century.

 

Eclectic medicine and homeopathy

 

When Wooster Beach opened his school of reform medicine at Worthington College

in 1830, it looked as though he was the undisputed torchbearer for medical

reform in the United States. But when the proceeds of a grave-robbery were found

lying on the dissection table at the college in 1839, the school lost its

charter and Beach’s ambitious plans were dashed. Struggling against all odds,

Beach and the faculty gathered themselves together and founded a new school in

Cincinnati in 1843 called the Eclectic Medical Institute.

 

While Beach and his supporters preached medical reform, the guiding principles

and practices of Eclecticism were too similar to Regular medicine to really be

considered reform. From the inception of the reform medical school at

Worthington College, through to its relocation in Cincinnati as the Eclectic

Medical Institute, the guiding principle or practice was the “doctrine of

substitution.” This meant that where a Regular physician might indicate a

bleeding, such as in fever, an Eclectic or reform physician would cord and bind

the patient’s limbs to inhibit the circulation of blood, to prevent the loss of

the vital force. Similarly, instead of using calomel to “touch the liver” an

Eclectic or reform physician would employ drastic vegetable cathartics such as

Mandrake root (Podophyllum peltatum) to the same effect. While using these

approaches however, Eclectic physicians also borrowed liberally from the

Thomsonian and folkloric traditions represented by Beach’s teacher Jacob Tidd,

all the while maintaining an appearance very similar to the Regular doctors.

Based on their practices, Eclecticism was criticized on both sides of the

medical divide, especially by the Thomsonians who saw the Eclectic physician as

little more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

 

With the opening of Alva Curtis’s Botanico-Medical College in Cincinnati about

the same time as the Eclectic Medical Institute, there was stiff competition for

students. To further this humiliation, many graduates of the Eclectic Institute

renounced Eclecticism, some, such as William Cook, returning to the Thomsonian

fold, and others embracing the newly imported system of homeopathy. When the

Civil War broke out in 1861 the Eclectic Medical Institute was on its last legs.

 

The legacy of John Scudder

 

At this desperate juncture an Eclectic physician named John M. Scudder stepped

in and took over the Eclectic Medical Institute in 1864, saving it from

impending ruin. He straightened out the finances and put together an admirable

coterie of instructors, including John King, who later authored the monumental

King’s American Dispensatory, the most important of any materia medica in the

North America. Scudder was, by all acknowledgements, a man of rare abilities,

and unlike the early reformers of the Eclectic movement, he lacked the

pugnacious and rebellious attitude that raised the ire of the Regular doctors.

Although some of the changes that Scudder brought to Eclectic practice were

initially ridiculed, within a few years all Eclectics had pretty much adopted

his methodologies. His status among later Eclectics was legendary.

 

Early on in his practice, Scudder was particularly influenced by John Brown, a

Scottish physician who nearly a century before had theorized that the phenomenon

of life manifests itself as stimulation. According to Brown, disease could thus

be broadly classified as a state of either excessive or deficient stimulation,

what he termed sthenic and asthenic states, respectively. For diseases of

excess, or sthenic conditions, Brown recommended the typical procedures of

bleeding, fasting, and cathartic drugs that characterized Regular practice. For

diseases of deficiency, or asthenic conditions, which for Brown comprised 97% of

all diseases, stimulation of the vital processes was the primary remedy (Wilder

1904, 242). Harnessing Brown’s concept, Scudder added the concept of “specific

medicines,” the idea that a specific, well-defined disease state could be

successfully treated by a specific remedy. Although the origin of this term lay

in the homeopathic system proposed by Samuel Hahnemann,

Scudder’s concept was somewhat different. Unlike Hahnemann’s conception of a

specific remedy, which was correlated to a specific symptom, Scudder used the

term “specific” to refer to a remedy that could be used to correct a specific

set of symptoms that represented a particular “wrong of life.” Later, this

concept would be introduced into homeopathic practice. Scudder was roundly

criticized however, and especially so by William Cook, who stated that the

notion of specific medicines “is an old Physio-Medical doctrine, that remedies

should be adapted to the work at hand; and the more exactly they are thus

adapted, the better” (Wilder 1904, 681). Indeed, if we look at how the Eclectics

used Lobelia as a specific remedy, we might have few complaints from Samuel

Thomson, despite the occasional obtuseness of the medical terms:

 

“Fullness of tissues, with full veins and full arterial flow; full labored and

doughy pulse, the blood current moving with difficulty; short, labored

breathing; sense of suffocation; dyspnea with precordial oppression; pain in

chest of a heavy, sore, or oppressive character; pulmonary apoplexy (full dose);

mucous accumulations in the bronchi; dry croupal cough, with scant

over-secretion; asthmatic seizures; short lancinating pain radiating from heart

to left shoulder and arm; spasmodic muscular contraction; muscular rigidity;

infantile convulsions from irritation of the bowels, or from respiratory

obstruction; hysterical convulsion; rigid os uteri with thick doughy unyielding

rim; perineal and vaginal rigidity during labor; angina pectoris (full dose).”

H.W. Felter, in the Eclectic Materia Medica, Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 1922

 

And yet, Scudder’s use of specific medicines did differ from physiomedical

practices, most notably, in his use of small, often diluted doses. In this

manner, Scudder truly represented the Eclectic ideal, employing essentially the

same rationale of use for many botanicals as the physiomedicalists, but

sometimes adopting homeopathic dosing strategies. In many ways Scudder was the

inheritor of the Samuel Thomson’s emphasis upon empiricism, and while remaining

true to the Hippocratic principle of “do no harm,” he experimented with methods

from several different schools of medicine, especially homeopathy.

 

Fundamental to the concept of homeopathy is the concept of potentization, which

is mutually supported by the homeopathic similum that “like cures like.” While

both these principles were features of the shamanic practices of ancient

cultures such as India, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, it is Samuel Hahnemann that

rediscovered and introduced them back into Western medical practice.

 

When the German-born Hahnemann began practicing medicine in 1779, his methods

were typical of Regular medicine, with an emphasis upon the use of toxic mineral

compounds. After noting the desperate effects of these toxic remedies he was

duty-bound to prescribe as a medical doctor, Hahnemann began to lose any faith

in Regular medicine. In 1789, while translating William Cullen’s materia medica

into German, he noted that the author had mentioned that Quinine bark (Cinchona

spp.) cured malarial fever by inducing the a fever similar to the disease

itself. Hahnemann decided to test Cullen’s hypothesis himself, and ingested

Quinine until he noticed that a slight fever had been induced. Although

Hahnemann only noted this event in passing, it would later form the inspiration

and the initial evidence to support his system of homeopathy. (Wood 1992, 40)

 

Although Hahnemann was an expertly trained physician, he refused to practice

according to the principles of Regular medicine, and spent several years in a

rather impoverished condition, with a large family to support. Hahnemann spent

these years investigating alternatives to Regular medicine, experimenting with

lose doses of toxic substances, noting that in many cases that the more dilute

the remedy was, the more effectively it acted to resolve the condition.

Hahnemann also began to note that specific remedies were closely tied to

specific symptoms. Inspired thus, Hahnemann began to use these specific

remedies in diluted form. His experiences with Quinine affirmed a developing

belief within him that an agent that produced the same specific physiological

symptoms as the disease itself could be used to resolve those same symptoms in a

patient. This would become the basis of Hahnemann’s similum, or Law of Similars.

 

As already mentioned, the law of similars and the concept of potentization are

integral to the practice of homeopathy. Remedies are potentized by subjecting a

material to a series of systematic dilutions and succussions (forceful

shakings). Potencies in homeopathic medicine are designated by the combination

of number and a letter (e.g. 6X). The number refers to the number of dilutions

the tincture has undergone, and the letter refers to the proportions used in

each dilution, as well as the number of succussions the vial of solution

undergoes in each successive stage (the Roman ‘X’ numeral means ‘10’, and ‘C’

means ‘100’). If for example we wish to prepare a 6X potency, one part of a

mother tincture or mineral solution is combined in a vial with nine parts of the

carrier liquid, and succussed ten times, making a 2X solution. This process is

repeated four more times, for a total of six series of dilutions and

succussions, yielding a 6X potency. To make a 30C potency, one part of the

material remedy would be combined with 99 parts of the carrier liquid and

succussed 100 times in each of thirty steps. Hahnemann himself generally

believed that no additional benefit would come from using potencies higher than

30C, but many of his followers continued to experiment with even higher

potencies, and a schism erupted within the homeopathic movement, between those

who used low and those who used high potencies.

 

Homeopathy, like physiomedicalism, revolutionized health care practices in North

America, gaining many adherents, particularly among the intelligentsia of the

major urban centers like New York and Chicago. As an eclectic, John Scudder had

some training in homeopathy, and committed to the concept of empiricism,

probably felt duty-bound to investigate homeopathy further. He slowly began to

incorporate the concept of homeopathic dilutions in his practice, while at the

same time, utilizing the rich variety of plant-based drugs instead of relying

solely on the homeopathic form of toxic substances like mercury and arsenic.

Although Scudder is characterized as a diplomat, it appears that he didn’t agree

with the concept of the law of similars, but rather, emphasized the idea of the

specificity of a remedy. This freed Scudder from the often dogmatic application

of the similum, allowing him to focus instead on the relationship between a

specific remedy and a specific disease. In 1870 Scudder

published Specific Medication, offering a radical departure from conventional

Eclectic practices, influenced by physiomedicalism and homeopathy alike.

 

Scudder followed Specific Medication with Specific Diagnosis in 1874, a text

emphasizing that all disease states and the signs and symptoms derived from them

could be understood with a simple, but highly specific application of the

senses. Scudder exhorted his students to ask themselves, “when brought into

contact with the sick, what do we feel, see, hear, smell, taste that differs

from the normal condition” (Scudder 1874, 28). The proper study of the patient,

thought Scudder, only occurred when the physician applied these skills, rather

than the suspect knowledge gained through medical texts. “The man of educated

and acute senses will be far superior to and has every advantage over the man

who has not been thus trained and developed” (Scudder 1874, 32). In this

monumental work, Scudder describes important techniques for distinguishing

specific physical signs, such as the tongue, face, posture, voice, urine, and

feces, that could provide clues as to the specific nature of the

condition, and thus the corresponding specific medication. While Eclectic

medicine is certainly a distinct practice in its own right, in many respects

Scudder’s approach to assessment and treatment is remarkably similar to the

methods of Traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda.

 

Eli G. Jones

 

Among the many physicians that Scudder inspired, there was perhaps no greater

student of his eclectic and empirical spirit than Eli G. Jones. After

graduating as a Regular from the Dartmouth Medical College in the 1870’s, Jones

became quickly disillusioned with his training. Establishing himself early on

as a “medical maverick,” Eli G. Jones set out on an enthusiastic study of what

he termed the “five schools of medicine,” comprised of Eclectic, Physiomedical,

Regular, Homeopathic, and Bio-chemic (i.e. tissues salts) medicine, practicing

each of them exclusively for five years. After this twenty-five year experiment

Jones assembled all of the knowledge he had gained from experimentation and

practice and published his findings in his landmark work Definite Medication.

Eli Jones would continue the work of John Scudder, blending together the

practices of homeopathy and herbal medicine into a seamless and wholly practical

approach to healing. Jones became one of the busiest

practitioners in the United States, and a valuable resource for physicians of

all schools, consulted on average about 2000 times a year by physicians with

difficult cases (Jones 1989, iv). His only other published book, Cancer: Its

Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment is arguably the most important text ever written

on the subject of cancer and natural medicine. Among his other more important

series of works is Reading the Eye, Pulse and Tongue for the Indicated Remedy,

originally published in the Homeopathic Recorder (1915-18), and recently

republished as a book.

 

CONTINUING

 

 

 

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