by Paul J Croce
medicine was so strong that even its thread of connection to the main-
stream through therapeutic skepticism did not foster greater ac cep tance of
the unorthodox. 34
By the 1840s, therapeutic stimulants, including strong alcohol, had re-
placed many of the depletive remedies, but the earlier “heroic” treatments
continued to be used for de cades. In retrospect, the therapies appear grossly
unhealthful, with many cures being worse than the diseases, and with only
occasional therapeutic value, but the retrospective view tends to emphasize
the worst cases. The differences between the regulars and many sectarians
were not as great as they would become by the twentieth century. Both
types of doctors believed that ill health came from imbalances in the body,
with evaluation of its symptoms and secretions the only way to gain in-
sights to its inner workings. The doctor’s next job was to take action— often
with mineral or herbal remedies—to correct those imbalances. Moreover,
although the sectarians tended to put more emphasis on preventive medi-
cine, many in the mainstream were also very ready to recommend the role
of diet, exercise, and lifestyle to maintain health. 35
102 Young William James Thinking
The recognition of the limits of mainstream medicine, especially with its
aggressive therapies, was a major spur for many young doctors to go to
Paris to enlist clinical observation into the quest for improved treatment.
Ironically, this deeper immersion in the science of medicine led not to more
aggressive therapies, but simply to reduced action. The French clinical ap-
proaches, which were sometimes called ex pec tant medicine because of the
hopeful expectations that nature would bring better health, actually rein-
forced skepticism about destructive heroic treatment. This gave backhanded
support to the irregulars who had been criticizing aggressive therapies all
along and now found scientific support for their critique. Yet this hardly
enabled any alliance since the doctors returning from Eu rope, who were in-
spired by scientific analy sis to deepen their understanding of diagnoses,
did not approve of the irregulars. The mainstream, in the same spirit that fueled
du Bois- Reymond’s hope to find physical and chemical explanations, insisted
that continued scientific investigation would eventually issue in effective regu-
lar therapies that would fi nally discredit the nonscientific alternatives.
Until regular medicine could make a stronger case for its therapies, the
sects did particularly well. Despite their diversity, they were united by their
common attention to the whole person, mind and body in interaction, with
each as a manifestation of the elusive but very real fact of being alive. This
energetic vigor, which homeopaths called the vital force, was the center of
health, and this was what became compromised in ill health. The sectarians
largely operated in the tradition of vitalism, which was becoming increas-
ingly discredited by the materialist arguments of modern science. Sectari-
ans maintained that the distinctive vitality of life animated the physical
stuff of matter and yet was not wholly separate from matter; therefore, ill
health was not simply an affliction of the body but an expression of some
distortion of the vital force, manifesting not only in the body but also in
emotional, intellectual, or spiritual states. Improved health would come
from correcting that distortion, allowing the person to experience greater
energy, and this change would heal the body effectively as a byproduct of
increased vitality. Sectarians viewed the healer as a mere facilitator of this
pro cess, with the application of remedies, varying from plant extracts to
soothing baths to homeopathic remedies, helping the patient’s own healing
power. This strand of thought provided a metaphysical explanation for
what was commonly called, by supporters and critics, letting nature take its
course. Sectarians wore that critique with pride: reliance on nature? In-
deed, reliance on nature so robust. To sectarians, nature was no mere inert
Between Scientific and Sectarian Medicine 103
stuff but full of vital power. 36 The sectarian withholding of harsh medical
treatment offered a chance for patients to enlist— with the support of sec-
tarian prac ti tion ers— their own deep but untapped capacities, their own
part of nature’s power.
Guided by an emphasis on living vitality, sectarians approached each in-
dividual case for assessment of the many layers of immaterial and material
dimensions, always interacting, in order to identify that person’s constitu-
tional type, with symptoms appearing as expressions of a general picture of
that whole person. By contrast, the regulars, with their emphasis on mate-
rial solutions for medical prob lems, attended more directly to par tic u lar
symptoms, and therefore their focus was on the ills of par tic u lar places in
the body rather than the framework of the whole person. A wide range of
sectarian prac ti tion ers resisted the regulars’ hope for materialistic solu-
tions to medical prob lems, which in turn prompted the regulars to accuse
the sectarians of being unscientific because they could not offer empirical
explanations of their cures at the physical sites of ill health. Ironically, how-
ever, mainstream doctors also called their less scientific rivals “empirics”
because, without scientific explanations, sectarians based their therapies
on the accumulated facts of previous healing experiences— a “senseless em-
piricism” in the scornful charge of most mainstream prac ti tion ers.37 But to
James, that empirical openness to experience, especially lived facts not yet
pro cessed by mainstream professional analy sis, and experience beyond (or
perhaps deeply within) physical and chemical facts suggested the very sig-
nificance of alternative therapies.
Broader cultural and po liti cal forces further contributed to the strength
of health care outside the mainstream. During the American 1820s to 1850s,
a power ful demo cratic impulse, often symbolized by Andrew Jackson, de-
fied special privileges of all kinds. The prickly defiance of elite status and
the expectations for equality (if only among white males) spilled over into
skepticism about claims to special knowledge or professional authority. The
proliferation of folk remedies provided a tangible expression of this impulse
in the relative simplicity of these systems, which could be understood by
any citizen who could read. While regular physicians were proud of their
scientific knowledge, the irregulars could easily tar them for claiming spe-
cial distinction. In this context, the regulars operated as one sect among
others in a medical marketplace largely free of special status beyond the
ability to gain patients. Because of this, the unorthodox were very effective
at persuading legislators to overturn licensing laws or to prevent new laws
104 Young William James Thinking
that would have restricted medicine to the practices of elites. Like Jack-
son’s objections to a national bank, the movem
ent against medical regu-
lation expressed the widespread antagonism to concentrated monopolies
of power or privilege that characterized these years. In the face of this
scorn, regular physicians steadily accumulated anatomical and pathological
knowledge of health and disease and, to encourage fidelity to scientific
medicine in practice and in the education of new physicians, formed nu-
merous state and local medical socie ties. In fact, the prior founding of
sectarian medical socie ties was the most immediate spur to the founding
of the national American Medical Association toward the end of this pe-
riod, in 1847. Harvard was a haven for regular medicine and its supporting
sciences, but the irregulars abounded throughout the country, especially in
New England.
On the least scientific end of the spectrum was mind cure, which did not
even use medicines to cure. From the mainstream point of view, this ap-
proach included a radical application of the nature- trusting heresy, or actu-
ally a trust in nature as understood to be controlled by mental and spiritual
powers. Its advocates believed in the mind’s power to shape beliefs, and
those beliefs would, in turn, shape a patient’s symptoms; health conditions
emerged, therefore, as manifestations of the mind’s influence. Phineas Quim-
by, who developed mind cure, was so thoroughly committed to the real ity
of spirit that he thought of the mind as spiritual matter, the substance with
the most palpable influence; by contrast, physical things were the insub-
stantial parts of the universe— much in the spirit of the elder James. From
the insights of Quimby’s own experience with self- healing and the influ-
ence of other romantic ideas of health and spirituality, including Sweden-
borgianism, the mind cure movement became the basis for Mary Baker
Eddy’s Christian Science. Because of mind cure’s message about the healing
power of hopefulness, James included it as a central example of his “reli-
gion of healthy- mindedness” in the Va ri e ties (1902), and he also frequently
visited mind cure prac ti tion ers. 38
Most popu lar sectarian prac ti tion ers, however, readily used medicines,
but of these, botanics or “Indian doctors” were the least professionally ori-
ented in their use of vari ous folk and herbal remedies based on traditions from
African, Eu ro pean, and native cultures. Samuel Thomson systematized some
of the folk practices of these “root and herb doctors” using his understanding
of the ancient theory of humors. A major premise of Thomsonianism was
that cold was a cause of disease and heat was its cure; and so Thomson
Between Scientific and Sectarian Medicine 105
wrote guides for home use of plant preparations, especially for use of cayenne
pepper to heat up the body. To this, he added herbal supplements that would
improve digestion often by first inducing vomiting— such emetics were
certainly uncomfortable, but they would surely expel many prob lem
substances. 39
Water cure was among the more popu lar therapies, including with the
James family; also known as hydropathy or hydrotherapy, this healing sys-
tem used water in multiple variations including drinking, immersion, and
wraps at diff er ent temperatures. With such apparent simplicity in materials
and practice, water cure could be used at home, but it was applied with
more sophistication at established “cures.” These practices overlapped with
the vegetarian reform Grahamism, the temperance crusade, physical cul-
ture, and other widely popu lar “body reforms” of diet and everyday life, es-
pecially in the Northern states and among the more prosperous, including
the Jameses. Hydropaths also sought to improve health through preventive
mea sures and better hygiene, which would improve the general health behind
any par tic u lar health prob lem. These sectarian movements supplied many
of the ideas and activists for the rise of public health mea sures during and
after the Civil War, including the Sanitary Commission. In addition, hydro-
paths regarded their health mea sures as prescriptions for the whole person,
with the body as physical expression of mind and spirit. These strands of
medical practice also veered into philosophical advice, alternative social
practices, and religious reform.40
The bound aries of what constituted science were still elastic and con-
tested, with the very term scientist recently coined by British phi los o pher
William Whewell in 1834 to identify those working in specialized research
as opposed to those involved in speculation, who remained mired in “empty
abstraction and barren ingenuity.” However, a more inclusive definition of
science endured as breadth of knowledge; advocates of science in associa-
tion with the learned and wise found support in the widespread spirit of
harmony between science and religion before the late nineteenth century.
Both regular and sectarian medical prac ti tion ers claimed to be not only
empirical but also scientific. While the specialized research of clinic and
laboratory set regular medicine on a path toward what would become pro-
fessional science, sectarians could claim empiricism in the tangible experi-
ences of individuals reaping benefits from their work.41
The most institutionally or ga nized and intellectually elaborate alterna-
tive medicine of the time was homeopathy. The German doctor, Samuel
106 Young William James Thinking
Hahnemann, presented his laws of cure when experimenting with quinine
in the 1780s. Naturally occurring in the bark of the South American quin-
quina tree, quinine had been known for more than a hundred years as a
cure for malaria. Hahnemann observed that when a person in full health
took a dose of quinine, it temporarily produced intermittent fevers similar
to those of malaria, often called “intermittent fever.” From this and similar
experiments on a wide range of natu ral substances in varying amounts, he
made his first medical proposal, the law of similars. Sometimes expressed
with the phrase “like cures like” (hence the name of his medical system:
originally spelled homoeopathy, from the words for “same suffering”), this
proposition was that, as in the case of quinine, substances similar to the
disease itself, ones that produce its symptoms, also help the body recover
from that disease. Similars work for healing, Hahnemann maintained, because
of correspondences between individual constitutions and specific natu ral
substances, which, if well chosen, resonate with the patient’s own constitu-
tional state as a whole, thus supporting the person’s natu ral healing powers.
He began his search for remedies with the medicines of his day, and he and
succeeding homeopaths added a wide range of other remedies. These sub-
stances were often toxic at full dose because, after all, he was looking for
things similar to the illnesses themselves; but he also needed, of course, a
way to deal with their full- dose toxicity.42
Early in his experimentation, when Hahnemann gave himself increas-
ingly smaller doses of the quinine, he found that
the remedy- producing ef-
fects increased. He “potentized” the remedies by systematically reducing
the original concentrations and agitating the results. He called his experi-
ments provings from the German word for “testing” because he would care-
fully test, in minute detail, the effects of remedies, which often prompted
“aggravations” of symptoms before improvement; this was a temporary
stage in the recovery from the health prob lem, and even a welcome step.
This empirical methodology gave homeopathy a scientific air, and it briefly
gained a reputation for being more scientific than regular medicine. But the
proposition about smaller amounts of the remedy substance making for
more healing power was more difficult to grasp. This proposition, about the
high potency of infinitesimal doses, was the basis of his second law at the
heart of homeopathic theory. These laws of homeopathy defied materialis-
tic thinking and countered common sense, even as its naturalistic and
empirical thinking could make claims to science. Hahnemann presented a
Between Scientific and Sectarian Medicine 107
third law of cure: one remedy was to be administered at one time; a well-
chosen single remedy would address the patient’s whole constitution, up-
lifting health in general, including any current acute symptom. As with
most alternative healing, the improvement in the acute condition would
emerge as a side effect of the whole person’s rise in health— hence the word
holistic. From its introduction to the United States in 1825 to the 1880s, ho-
meopathy met stern re sis tance from the scientific mainstream, yet it main-
tained a wide following because of its preventive focus in association with
healthy living, its use of natu ral substances and treatment of the whole per-
son, its sheer avoidance of harsh remedies, and its ability to be understood
in relation to predominant nineteenth- century cultural trends for social
reform and expected harmony of science and religion. Countless patients,
including James and his family, used homeopathy for maintaining and im-
proving heath.
Homeopaths presented an inversion of mainstream thinking in emphasiz-
ing the degree of strength of the patient instead of the severity of the illness.