There is a far-reaching physique of justification that Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) reliable a special seductiveness in and appreciation for homeopathic medicine. It is therefore not startling that many of Lincoln’s advisors were users of and advocates for homeopathy.
Before Lincoln was inaugurated president, in 1854 he was defended as a counsel to ready a state legislative offer to licence a homeopathic medical college in Chicago.[15] Chicago was a home of a American Medical Association, that had been founded in 1847 in partial to stop a expansion of homeopathy, and therefore, Lincoln’s pursuit was no elementary effort.
Yet many of Chicago’s many distinguished adults and politicians participated on a house of curators of a due Hahnemann Medical College, including Chicago’s mayor, dual congressmen, an Illinois state representative, a Chicago city councilman, a co-founder of Northwestern University, a owner of Chicago Union Railroad, and several medical doctors who were homeopaths.[15] Despite poignant opposition, Lincoln was successful in receiving a licence for a homeopathic college.
Today, a Pearson Museum during Southern Illinois University has an vaunt of a 19th-century doctor’s bureau and drugstore; enclosed in this vaunt is a homeopathic medicine pack from a Diller Drug Store of Springfield, Ill. The vaunt records that Abraham Lincoln was a visit patron of a drug store and a unchanging user of homeopathic medicines.[11]
Lincoln’s Cabinet Members
Of special significance, Lincoln surrounded himself with advocates for homeopathy, among them a postmaster general, a secretary of a book and his many devoted confidant and Secretary of State, William Seward. Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln’s Secretary of a Treasury, might have had his life saved by homeopathy after being treated for cholera in a summer of 1849 when a cholera widespread was rampant.[14] Montgomery Blair, Lincoln’s postmaster general, was a control of a National Homeopathic Hospital in Washington, D.C.[12]
Ultimately, what befell William Seward is a classical story to illustrate required medicine’s opinion toward and actions opposite radical medical treatments and a physicians who yield them. It is initial critical to realize that a American Medical Association in a 19th century was so threatened by homeopathic medicine that a AMA combined and enforced an ethics formula that barred AMA members from consulting with homeopathic doctors or homeopathic patients.
On a famed night that Lincoln was assassinated, Seward was stabbed in a multi-person assassination tract opposite a Union. The murderer gained opening to Seward’s home and to his personal bedroom by claiming to have a smoothness of medicines from his homeopathic doctor, Tullio S. Verdi, M.D.[13] Thanks to a medical caring supposing by U.S. Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes, M.D., Seward survived. However, according to John S. Haller, some members of a AMA wanted to condemnation Dr. Barnes for comparing with Verdi, a homeopath, in providing Seward’s medical care.[8]
Lincoln’s Leader of a Union Army
On Nov. 1, 1861, Lincoln allocated Major General George Brinton McClellan (1826-1885) to authority a Union army during a Civil War. However, in late Dec McClellan engaged typhoid fever, that left him incompetent to go to his bureau to control business. According to troops historian Ethan S. Rafuse:
During a initial week of McClellan’s illness, dual homeopathic doctors arrived from New York to tend a ill ubiquitous and his father-in-law and chief-of-staff, Randolph B. Marcy, who was also ill. McClellan’s practice of homeopathic treatments is one of a some-more engaging sidelights of this episode, quite in light of a fact that a ubiquitous came from a family of distinguished physicians.
Despite this critical illness, General McClellan remained active, giving unchanging orders to his subordinates, arranging for couple transformation and supply transport, assembly with a boss on a weekly basis, arising justice martial orders, and even providing commendations to officers. By Jan 2, he seemed to be many improved and shortly thereafter had no conspicuous earthy limitations. McClellan lived another 23 years.[19]
Despite a success of homeopathic diagnosis on a troops personality of a Union army, that really month, Jan 1862, according to Rafuse, “The Army Medical Board deserted requests by homeopathic doctors to offer in troops hospitals, arguing that to extend this ask would entice applications from all forms of ‘quacks’ and ‘charlatans’ claiming medical expertise.” The problem with this fake critique is that homeopathic doctors during that time graduated from several heading required medical schools or name homeopathic medical schools, such as Boston University, Hahnemann Medical School (in Philadelphia), or a New York Homeopathic Medical College (many famous medical schools currently started off as homeopathic medical colleges).
Reasons for a Animosity
The open currently does not sufficient know a grade of passion that required doctors had toward homeopathic physicians. The logic for this passion is substantially best described in a difference of one alloy to an AMA meeting:
“Too many wives of required physicians are going to homeopathic physicians. And to make it worse,” he added, “they are holding their children to homeopaths too.”[5]
Homeopathic physicians were not simply competitors to required physicians; homeopaths were medically lerned and could not be deliberate “uneducated” or under-educated. Further, fundamental in homeopathy is a surpassing honour for a “wisdom of a body,” and therefore, homeopaths tend to say a poignant doubt of and critique for regulating absolute drug treatments that tend to conceal symptoms and pull a person’s illness deeper into his/her physique and mind.
The required medical village was also threatened by a fact that homeopathy was attracting so many U.S. informative leaders. The strongest advocates for homeopathy tended to be prepared classes and rich Americans as good as a abolitionists, a literary greats (including probably all of a heading American transcendentalist authors), and a suffragists (homeopaths certified women into their medical schools and associations several decades before a required doctors did).
In a 19th century, a AMA did not make a many reliable formula or veteran health caring violations of a members, therefore permitting physicians to allot mercury in dangerously high doses, enabling physicians to blood-let their patients to death, and even rivet in diagnosis while inebriated. And yet, a AMA was ridiculously despotic in their coercion of their reliable formula opposite any communication with homeopathic doctors or their patients.
One AMA member got kicked out of his internal medical multitude for consulting with a homeopath who also happened to be his wife.[18]
Typhoid heat caused some-more deaths during a Civil War and a Spanish-American War than a deaths caused by bullets.[20] History shows that homeopathy gained widespread recognition in a United States and Europe from a successes in treating several spreading illness epidemics of a mid- and late-1800s, including typhoid epidemics.[3],[5] Despite these good results, a AMA’s change on bureaucratic regulations led to chapter that graduates of homeopathic medical colleges could not accept a troops commission.[18]
Thankfully, a enmity toward homeopaths was not as serious during World War I; roughly 2,000 homeopathic physicians were consecrated as medical officers. Even a American Red Cross certified a homeopathic sanatorium unit.[6]
Recent investigate has reliable a clinical efficiency of homeopathic medicines and a cost-effectiveness of homeopathic treatment, as dynamic by what is widely famous as a many extensive news ever conducted on homeopathy — and this news was consecrated by a supervision of Switzerland.[2]
A minute essay in a famed Archives in Internal Medicine has accurate that a tiny doses used in homeopathic medicines are no smaller than many hormones and cell-signaling agents, that are widely famous to have surpassing biological effects on daily tellurian functioning.[7] Further, a far-reaching and multi-disciplinary physique of complicated systematic justification has reliable a biological energy of homeopathic nano-doses.[1],[4]
In a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, Dr. Paul Starr wrote about homeopathy in a 19th century, asserting, “Because homeopathy was concurrently philosophical and experimental, it seemed to many people to be some-more rather than reduction systematic than approved medicine.” Although Lincoln surrounded himself with advocates for homeopathy, that didn’t strengthen a medical scholarship from his famous wit. He described homeopathy once as “medicine of a shade of a pigeon’s wing.”[18] This farfetched embellishment is anxiety to a really tiny doses infrequently used.
Considering a reputable place accorded homeopathy by many informative heroes and a flourishing physique of simple scholarship investigate and clinical evidence, it is unsurprising that homeopathic medicine is some-more renouned currently than during any other time worldwide.
And it seems suitable to finish this essay on Lincoln’s organisation with homeopathy by citing U.S. author and crony to many presidents, Mark Twain. In an article for Harper’s Weekly, he warned others of a dangers of required medicine (“allopathy”) and thanked a advocates of homeopathy:[17]
When we simulate that your possess father had to take such medicines as a above, and that we would be holding them currently yourself yet for a introduction of homeopathy, that forced a old-school alloy to stir around and learn something of a receptive inlet about his business; we might overtly feel beholden that homoeopathy survived a attempts of a allopathists [conventional physicians] to destroy it, even yet we might never occupy any medicine yet an allopathist while we live.
Part dual of this essay will yield some-more information about Abraham Lincoln and his group of homeopaths.
References
[1] Bell, I; Koithan, M. “A indication for homeopathic pill effects: low sip nanoparticles, allostatic cross-adaptation, and time-dependent sensitization in a formidable adaptive System.” BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2012, 12:191 doi:10.1186/1472-6882-12-191.
[2] Bornhoft, Gudrun, and Matthiessen, Peter F. Homeopathy in Healthcare: Effectiveness, Appropriateness, Safety, Costs. Goslar, Germany: Springer, 2011.
[3] Bradford, T. L. The Logic of Figures or Comparative Results of Homoeopathic and Other Treatments. Philadelphia: Boericke and Tafel, 1900.
[4] Chikramane PS, Kalita D, Suresh AK, Kane SG, Bellare JR. “Why Extreme Dilutions Reach Non-zero Asymptotes: A Nanoparticulate Hypothesis Based on Froth Flotation.” Langmuir. 2012 Nov 13;28(45):15864-75. doi: 10.1021/la303477s. Epub 2012 Nov 1.
[5] Coulter, H. L. Divided Legacy: A History of a Schism in Medical Thought. Volume I: The Patterns Emerge-Hippocrates to Paracelsus. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1973.
[6] Dearborn, F. M. American Homoeopathy in a World War. Washington, D.C.: American Institute of Homeopathy, 1923.
[7] Eskinazi, D., “Homeopathy Re-revisited: Is Homeopathy Compatible with Biomedical Observations?” Archives in Internal Medicine, 159, Sept 27, 1999:1981-7.
[8] Haller, J. S. The History of American Homeopathy: The Academic Years, 1820-1935. New York: Pharmaceutical Products, 2005. p. 192
[9] Hill, B. L., and Hunt, J. G. Homoeopathic Practice of Surgery and Operative Surgery. Cleveland: J. B. Cobb, 1855.
[10] Hughes, T. A Boy’s Experience in a Civil War, 1860-1865, 1904.
[11] Karst, F. “Homeopathy in Illinois,” Caduceus, Summer 1988, pp. 1-33.
[12] Medical Visitor, Volume 16, 1900, p. 434.
[13] “Other Days,” Homeopathic Recorder, 1887, p. 6.
[14] Niven, John. Salmon P. Chase: A Biography in Paradox. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.p. 126.
[15] Spiegel, A. D., and Kavaler, F. “The Role of Abraham Lincoln in Securing a Charter for a Homeopathic Medical College,” Journal of Community Health, 2002, 27(5):357-380.
[16] Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York: Basic, 1982.
[17] Twain, M. “A Majestic Literary Fossil,” Harper’s Magazine, Feb 1890, 80(477):439-444.
[18] Ullman, Dana. The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2007.
[19] Rafuse, Ethan S. “Typhoid and Tumult: Lincoln’s Response to General McClellan’s Bout with Typhoid Fever during a Winter of 1861-62.” Journal of a Abraham Lincoln Association, Vol. 18 Issue 2, Summer 1997.
[20] Wershub, Leonard Paul. One Hundred Years of Medical Progress: A History of a New York Medical College Flower and Fifth Avenue Hospitals. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1967. p 175
Special Resource:
SueYoungHistories.com on Abraham Lincoln
Special interjection to Jeanine and Guy Saperstein for their ongoing support for my educational advocacy work for homeopathy.
Footnotes:
(1) Other members of a homeopathic hospital’s house of curators enclosed Morrison R. Waite, Chief Justice (from 1874-1888), and Hon. Thomas F. Bayard, Secretary of State (under Grover Cleveland) and Ambassador to England.
(2) McClellan’s father was a distinguished surgeon, author, and educator, and his uncle and comparison hermit were rarely reputable members of a unchanging medical profession. McClellan’s use of homeopathic treatments can be attributed to his wife, Ellen Marcy McClellan. One alloy who treated a ubiquitous was Ellen’s uncle, Erastus E. Marcy, a owner and editor of a North American Homeopathic Journal, who was a heading disciple during a 1840s and 1850s.
(3) The story of Hughes, however, is really engaging since he used in Richmond, Virginia, where many heading Union officers became his patients, including General Peter Michie, a sovereign quartermaster ubiquitous in assign of all reserve for a Union army. Another homeopathic alloy who served soldiers of a Confederacy was Samuel Hunt, MD, of Georgia.
Dana Ullman, MPH, is America’s heading orator for homeopathy and is a owner of www.homeopathic.com . He is a author of 10 books, including his bestseller, Everybody’s Guide to Homeopathic Medicines. His many new book is, The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy (the Foreword to this book was created by Dr. Peter Fisher, a Physician to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II). Dana lives, practices, and writes from Berkeley, California.
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