Eclectic medicine

Eclectic medicine was a branch of American medicine which made use of botanical remedies along with other substances and physical therapy practices, popular in the latter half of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries.

The term was coined by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1784–1841), a botanist and Transylvania University professor who had studied Native American use of medicinal plants, wrote and lectured extensively on herbal medicine, and advised patients and sold remedies by mail. Rafinesque used the word eclectic to refer to those physicians who employed whatever was found to be beneficial to their patients (eclectic being derived from the Greek word eklego, meaning "to choose from").

Eclectic medicine appeared as an extension of early American herbal medicine traditions such as "Thomsonian medicine" in the early 19th century, and included Native American medicine. Standard medical practices at the time made extensive use of purges with calomel and other mercury-based remedies, as well as extensive bloodletting. Eclectic medicine was a direct reaction to those barbaric practices as well as a desire to restrict Thomsonian medicine innovations to medical "professionals."

Alexander Holmes Baldridge (1795–1874) suggested that because of its American roots the tradition of Eclectic Medicine should be called the American School of Medicine. It bears resemblance to Physiomedicalism, which is practiced in the United Kingdom.

In 1827, a medical tradesman named Wooster Beach, who broke with Thomson as he believed the field needed to become more professional, founded the United States Infirmary in New York, followed in 1829 by the Reformed Medical College in 1829. Both of these would practice and teach "Eclectic Medicine".

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