Popular Health Movement

The Popular Health Movement of the 1830s–1850s was an aspect of Jacksonian-era politics and society in the United States. The movement promoted a rational skepticism toward claims of medical expertise that were based on personal authority, and encouraged ordinary people to understand the pragmatics of health care. Arising in the spirit of Andrew Jackson's anti-elitist views, the movement succeeded in ending almost all government regulation of health care. During the first two decades of the 19th century, states had regularly enacted licensing legislation; by 1845, only three states still licensed medical doctors. Among the leading figures within the movement were Samuel Thomson and Sylvester Graham.

Thomsonian medicine, characterized by Paul Starr as "a creative misreading of the Enlightenment," viewed therapeutics within the framework of political ideology. Thompson did not reject science per se, but rather the control of knowledge by an elite who sought to mystify it. One Thomsonian writer asserted, "There can be no good reason for keeping us ignorant of the medicines we are compelled to swallow." In the Thomsonian view knowledge, which in a democracy ought to be available to all, was an element in class conflict.

Egalitarian politics was thus a driving force in the Popular Health Movement, as articulated for instance throughout the writings of John C. Gunn:

political equality becomes synonymous with 'equality in knowledge,' and tyranny is fought by the 'equalization of useful intelligence' among American citizens … . Health becomes crucial in these Jacksonian equations because, without health, intelligence, the building block of republican government, becomes impaired and feeble. Citizens must be healthy in order to be politically free.

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