The book of health; or, Thomsonian theory and practice of medicine, including the latest views of physiology, pathology, and therapeutics... Also, descriptions of disease, medical practice and materia medica
Bennington [Vt.] Cook, 1843.

Call no: RV3.R6 1843

After conventional allopathic medicine nearly killed his wife, the New Hampshire farmer Samuel Thomson (1769-1843) turned to the plant world to find an alternative therapeutics. Drawing upon the anti-elitism characteristic of the early national United States, Thomson developed a popular philosophy of medicine based in herbal remedies and the careful regulation of bodily heat. Bitterly resisted by mainstream physicians, Thomsonian medicine thrived from the 1820s through 1840s.

Typical of Thomsonian writers, Robertson and Wilcox advertise their book as a book of "domestic medicine" intended for use by "the farmer, the mechanic, and the non- professional reader in general." Their assertion was that nature provided cures for all ailments, and that ordinary persons were capable of becoming their own physicians.