Abstract
The progress of medical botany in North America — ‘Thomsonianism’, as it was called — is well known to historians of medicine, for it posed a major threat to the barely organised ranks of orthodox practitioners. Thomsonianism thrived in the open, democratic, self-improving culture of Jacksonian America.1 Predictably, when a similar system was introduced into Britain, it took root in districts where that kind of culture was strongest — in the industrial towns of the north.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
A. Berman, ‘The Thomsonian movement and its relation to American pharmacy and medicine’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 25 (1951), pp. 405–28, 519–38.
J.V. Pickstone, ‘Medical Botany and Self-help in Victorian England,’ Memoirs of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, 119 (1976–7), pp. 85–95. Also see, E. Gaskell, ‘The Coffinites’, Society for the Social History of Medicine Bulletin 8 (1972), p. 12.
More recent historical work on Coffinites includes: P.S. Brown, ‘Herbalists and Medical Botanists in Mid-nineteenth Century Britain, with special reference to Bristol,’ Medical History, 26 (1982), pp. 405–20; J.F.C. Harrison, ‘Early Victorian Radicals and the Medical Fringe’, in W.F. Bynum and R. Porter (eds), Medical Fringe and Medical Orthodoxy (London, 1987); L. Barrow, ‘Anti-establishment Healing: Spiritualism in Britain’, in W.J. Sheils, (ed.), The Church and Healing (Oxford, 1982).
B. Griggs, Green Pharmacy (London, 1981), gives a useful general view of British herbalism.
J.V. Pickstone, ‘Establishment and Dissent in Nineteenth-Century Medicine’, in W.J. Sheils (ed.), The Church and Healing (Oxford, 1982). Also on Methodists see Henry Rack, ‘Doctors, Demons and Early Methodist Healing’, in Church and Healing. For a survey of ‘medicine and religion’, see R.L. Numbers and D.W. Amundsen (eds), Caring and Curing (New York, 1986).
Notes on Joseph Evans are from an article by S. W. Partington in the Medical Herbalist, 5 (1929), p. 84; Samuel Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical (1884; Oxford, 1984), p.40.
See, for example, J.F.C. Harrison, Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America (London, 1969).
Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians: the temperance question in England 1815–1872 (London, 1971).
Samuel Westcott Tilke, An Autobiographical Memoir (London, 1840).
A.I. Coffin, Botanic Guide to Health and the Natural Pathology of Disease (42nd edn., London, 1864), p. 356; and Dr. Skelton’s Botanic Record and Family Herbal, 1 (1852), Introduction.
Coffin’s Botanical Journal and Medical Reformer, 1 (1849), pp. 72–3.
Coffin’s Botanical Journal and Medical Reformer, 1 (1849), p. 277.
Ibid., pp. 97–8.
Ibid., p.135.
Coffin, Botanic Guide to Health (42nd edn., 1864), p. xviii.
Ibid., preface.
J.T. Slugg, Reminiscences of Manchester Fifty Years Ago (Manchester, 1881); L. M. Hayes, Reminiscences of Manchester (Manchester, 1905).
Quoted in Dr. Skelton’s Botanic Record and Family Herbal, 2 (1853), p.220.
Skelton’s Botanic Record and Family Herbal, 5 (1855), p. 597.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1988 Roger Cooter
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Miley, U., Pickstone, J.V. (1988). Medical Botany around 1850: American Medicine in Industrial Britain. In: Cooter, R. (eds) Studies in the History of Alternative Medicine. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19606-7_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19606-7_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-19608-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-19606-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)