Young William James Thinking
Page 20
While homeopathy suggested that a person’s general health, with periodic
support, would prevent susceptibility to a host of potential prob lems, regular
medicine depicted ill health as a prob lem or an invasion that needed to be
quelled or attacked. In fact, the term allopathy, from words meaning oppo-
site suffering, still in use to describe mainstream medicine, emerged in its
contrast with homeopathy. The mainstream development of vaccines sup-
ported homeopathic reasoning; small doses of a malady (say, smallpox), would
keep a patient from contracting a full- blown case of it. But homeopaths went
further. Their minimal doses, produced by repeated dilution, had no chemi-
cal trace of the original symptom- giving substance after several dilutions.
More dilutions produced less of the original substance but a higher potency
of the resulting remedy. This assertion is what shocked and even disgusted
regular physicians the most, especially with the growing authority of mate-
rialistic laboratory methods, since they perceived that these claims for
cures were based on a material cipher.
The more tolerant regulars pointed to the ancillary medical advice of
the homeopaths as the source of any success they generated, since like the
other sectarians, with their par tic u lar emphasis on the whole person,
homeopathy also advised good general hygiene. And, in fact, this fostering
of the body’s own ability to cure (to which homeopaths added the role of
their remedies) provided more encouragement of healthy lifestyles than the
108 Young William James Thinking
nature- contrasting outlook of the allopaths. And the therapeutic skepticism
of the nature- trusting doctors even suggested reasons to tolerate homeopa-
thy since they perceived the minimum doses to be tantamount to letting
nature simply take its course, while patients took in what the regular doc-
tors regarded as medically inert substances. However, regulars more often
greeted homeopathy harshly, charging that it was the most seductive of
quackeries. Of all the sectarians, homeopathy appealed strongly within the
ranks of doctors themselves, who often reported “conversion” to Hahnemann’s
princi ples—or away from the harsh treatments of the mainstream— and it also
gained adherents among educated patients who provided physicians with the
most lucrative income. Homeopathic numbers were also swelled by immi-
gration from Germany, where the alternative practice began and remained
strong. Regular physicians feared this strongest of the sects not only for its
manifest popularity but also because, as one homeopath put it, “higher
potencies . . . defy . . . scientific sense”—in defiance of the common sense of
materialist assumptions. And that was the point: homeopaths did not just
disagree with mainstream practices; they offered a fundamental challenge
to the very meaning of science in medicine. Homeopaths claimed adher-
ence to empiricism based on therapeutic results, and they claimed that their
remedies operated on an energetic basis, rather than on the material sub-
stance of things; these views defied prevalent medical explanations of
causation in physical and chemical terms, which were supporting the in-
creased scientific authority of mainstream medicine.43 Even without fully
endorsing the views of homeopaths and other sectarians, James found
support for his own approach to science in their work.
There was another major medical sect, the eclectics, who attempted to
draw on the best of vari ous competing medical systems. In a context of
thorough competition, and plausible criticisms for and against each system,
their conciliating position had considerable appeal. They used regular
medicine, homeopathy, and botanical treatments each for their functional
worth, and they gained wide adherence throughout the nineteenth century.
They were especially popu lar in the upper North, and they established
several schools and organ izations. While the least professional systems of
botanical medicine, including Thomsonianism, dissipated after the middle
of the nineteenth century, eclectics continued to carry some of their in-
sights into a more formalized system of medicine. Their spirit of tolerance
influenced their cultural attitudes, including their pioneering inclusion of
women in their ranks.44
Between Scientific and Sectarian Medicine 109
While medical diversity had reigned in the early to middle nineteenth
century, health care experienced consolidations at the end of the century,
which parallel orga nizational developments in other parts of society. Among
the sects, the more or ga nized eclecticism and homeopathy peaked in strength
during the next few de cades, with many of their medical schools, profes-
sional organ izations, and publications remaining robust until the early
twentieth century. But the higher numbers of these alternative prac ti tion-
ers coincided with the still greater growth of mainstream medicine at the
same time. By the late nineteenth century, laboratory research had identified
the physiological sources of many diseases, beginning with demonstration
of the role of bacteria in leprosy, anthrax, tuberculosis, and cholera. Especially
as these insights were enlisted for therapeutic cures, this bacteriological
revolution confirmed the authority of modern science within medicine.
Overwhelmed by the persuasive power of bacteriology’s germ theory of the
cause of diseases, the irregular systems often compromised their distinc-
tiveness to gain intellectual and social legitimacy. While “high- potency” ho-
meopaths relied on their distinctive infinitesimal doses, resisting convergence
with the mainstream, a larger group of “low- potency” homeopaths sacri-
ficed the controversial high- dilution, high- potency approach to remedies in
order to retain homeopathy’s distinctive princi ples of like curing like; with
remedies resembling the full doses of allopathic medicines, the lows” also
strayed from holistic premises in giving remedies, not for constitutional
conditions of the whole person, but for acute prob lems, which coincided
with specialized allopathic practice. By the early twentieth century, such
compromises effectively addressed some mainstream critiques in the short
run, but because of the dissipation of their distinctive identity, they eventually
contributed to the withering strength of homeopathy and other sectarian
healing practices. Their outlooks would remain on the fringes of medicine
until the 1960s, when doubts about philosophical materialism and cultural
conformity in general also touched medicine, encouraging a resurgence of
these holistic approaches to healing, defended as alternative medicine and
increasingly treated as complementary to or even integrative with the
mainstream. By the early twenty- first century, despite continued re sis tance
from the scientific mainstream, there has been a widespread turn to what
James Whorton calls “curapathy,” reviving a term from the nineteenth-
century marketplace, indicating that diff er ent approaches should be treated
with re spect if they contribute some degree of cure in
the experience of
patients.45
110 Young William James Thinking
Secular and Spiritual Contexts for James Family Medicine
Recent trends echo nineteenth- century practices when irregular medicine
was not restricted to the cultural fringe. The vari ous botanical and folk
medicines were popu lar with the poor, who also simply could not afford
regular medicine; and water cures and homeopathy appealed to the more
cosmopolitan and affluent, who craved the gentler paths to better health
along with their liberalization of Calvinist doctrines, increased attention to
comfort and humanitarian concerns, and interests in intellectual alterna-
tives in general. Members of the James family offer a case in point. As with
many wealthy families, they traveled for cultural and intellectual stimula-
tion but also for visits to water cures for their physical well- being. During
sojourns in Eu rope and Amer i ca, they would find improved health, but also
contact with fellow intellectuals, new family tutors, and language learning
for the children. Their intellectual motivations for exploring unorthodox
medicine ran even deeper.
The holistic approaches of sectarian medical care meant attention to in-
terwoven features of body, mind, and spirit, understood to be existing to-
gether and operating in constant relation, even as they could be described
separately. By no means did all of these therapies adopt an explic itly spiri-
tual orientation, but on a spectrum from immaterial mind cure to increas-
ingly materialist mainstream, most sectarians maintained varying degrees
of spiritual and materialistic commitments: religious outlooks could find a
more ready kinship with sectarians than with regular physicians who fo-
cused on the body, with nonmaterial factors considered largely irrelevant to
healing; many sectarian prac ti tion ers themselves, however, had little place
for religious worldviews within their practice, ranging from the Thomso-
nian populist focus on challenging medical elites to homeopaths who pre-
sented their remedies as alternative (and milder) substances compared to
those prescribed by regular prac ti tion ers. In fact, until the 1880s the essential
similarity in the pharmacopoeia of all the medical therapies reflected their
practical commonality as healers using the tools of the times, even as they
had markedly diff er ent views of the pro cess of healing: regulars expected
immediate action, whereas homeopaths, eclectics, and hydropaths often
waited for indirect action, with remedies prodding individual healing pow-
ers, further encouraged by healthy lifestyles.46
The James family offers a microcosm of the religious spectrum among
sectarians: to the elder Henry James, the vital force had explic itly religious
Between Scientific and Sectarian Medicine 111
overtones, coinciding with his belief in the primacy of the spirit, with mate-
rial things, including the physical body in all its variety of conditions, as
material manifestations of the spirit’s identity; for William James, espe-
cially as a young man— studying mainstream medicine no less— sectarian
therapies offered tangible therapeutic improvement and remarkable examples
of natu ral experiences worthy of consideration, use, and further inquiry.
Because of the achievements of materialist mainstream medicine, and the
authority of scientific naturalism in general, it is tempting to regard the
James family’s use of sectarian health care dismissively; some commentary
has even associated its views with “crackpot” ideas. However, the family wel-
comed these practices outside the medical mainstream as it similarly
embraced other forms of alternative thinking. Henry James encountered
homeopathy during the first wave of American interest, and it would be-
come the major alternative to mainstream medicine nationally. Before the
late nineteenth- century compromises of the low- potency homeopaths, the
high- potency practice in homeopathy lent credence to the more spiritual
sides of Hahnemannian therapies. This is how the James family first en-
countered homeopathy. The elder James’s Swedenborgian views found ready
expression in homeopathy, and indeed many homeopaths were themselves
Swedenborgian, including James John Garth Wilkinson, who was fre-
quently the James family’s own doctor. Henry James encountered homeopa-
thy at least as early as 1844, the same year he experienced his spiritual crisis
and discovered Swedenborg. James and Wilkinson shared an interest in
Swedenborg, and the British doctor credited his American friend with in-
troducing him to this sectarian medicine; he went on to transform his own
practice away from his mainstream training to become a leading advocate
for homeopathy. The two alternative thinkers became very close, with
James even providing financial support to Wilkinson early in his career.
The families also named their children in each other’s honor, including
William’s brother Garth Wilkinson James and Mary James Wilkinson.47
The James family used homeopathy extensively. A cousin, John Vander-
burgh James, who had been unruly during his teen years and increasingly
troubled, was fi nally put in an asylum, one that was run by a homeopath
who was also the boy’s maternal grand father. In 1857, while the James
family was in Eu rope, William’s brother Henry, age fourteen, contracted a
bad case of typhus that kept him bedridden for a month. They entrusted his
case to a homeopathic physician. In 1870 when the brothers William and
Henry were both suffering health prob lems, Henry hoped for relief at a
112 Young William James Thinking
British water cure and suggested a homeopath in New York who might help
his brother. Two years later, when William himself was not feeling healthy,
he wrote to Henry that “I have found a homeopathic remedy, hydrastis [ Hy-
drastis canadensis, which is commonly called golden seal], to be of deci ded
efficacy for constip[atio]n.” In 1874 Henry praised the “remedy Calcaria car-
bonica which I have been taking regularly”; this remedy made from oyster
shells also addressed people with constitutional tendencies to digestive is-
sues, habits of overwork, and a tendency to suffer frequent relapses.48 These
informal, even casual, references to sectarian approaches suggest the depth
of the James family’s immersion in alternative medicine as therapies of first
resort— a broadly attractive approach since these therapies were far less in-
vasive than allopathic remedies.
In the fall of 1869, after William James had finished his medical degree,
when he was starting to slide into his darkest moods, the Jameses had their
own homeopathic doctor and longtime friend Wilkinson take his case. Brother
Henry wrote expectantly in October, saying “I was extremely interested, in
[ Mother’s] mention of Dr. Wilkinson’s diagnosis & prescription for you.” He
did not specify, but a few weeks before, their mother said that the prescrip-
tion was “high dilutions of Rhus and Nux Vomica”: to homeopathic physi-
cians, Rhus toxicodendron, a tincture of poison ivy, would have
likely been
indicated by his chronic back trou bles; and Nux vomica, a strychnine tincture
derived from poison nut, was frequently prescribed for those with digestion
prob lems and an overworked ner vous system— the symptoms were all ones
that James repeatedly showed and therefore would serve as keynotes in
Wilkinson’s case- taking diagnosis of William’s whole remedy picture.49 The
minimum dosage would obviate the toxicity of these substances, and in light
of Mary James’s reference to high dilutions, Wilkinson was not compromis-
ing on homeopathic princi ples in addressing William’s whole constitutional
state, not just his par tic u lar symptoms. William James took homeopathic
remedies, just as he went to water cures, for their practical impact, even as he
did not adopt the same unquestioning spiritual enthusiasm of his father. In
addition, to the young James, sectarian experiences, even when understood
spiritually, offered subjects for future scientific investigation.
Water- Cure Crises and Other Healing Diseases
While James continued to use homeopathy throughout his life, in his youth
he made even more substantial use of irregular medicine with water- cure
treatments for his chronic health prob lems. In his evaluation of hydropathy,
Between Scientific and Sectarian Medicine 113
James even studied variations within water- cure practice. For example, he
communicated with Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, the future geologist, about
a Doctor Meinert, a German whose variation on “the Schott cure” involved
water cure and included wet sheets, large tubs of water to sit in, steam
baths, and large quantities of water to drink, along with a “tolerably rigor-
ous diet”; the goal was to purge negative material from the body in order to
“relieve such organs as may be obstructed by congestion.” Far from engag-
ing in the scorn that mainstream doctors directed toward such sectarian
practices, he maintained that “this water cure . . . is certainly a most divine
agency.” His light application of religious language shows how he main-
tained his scientific posture, and he did not regard these therapies as pana-
ceas; yet even when the baths did not cure his ailments, he was willing “to
give the baths a fair chance of working.” Still, he maintained the mainstream’s