The Midwest pioneer, his ills, cures, & doctors - University Library ...

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copy right in Boston, and printed an edition of two thousand
copies, which are seUing from fifty to sixty-two and
a half cents a copy. They contain much information relative
to the practice of medicine as taught in medical colleges,
and found in medical authors; not to be found elsewhere
in so small and cheap a work." "He is entitled to
much credit for this service done the system."
The success of the Thomson and Robinson books led to
spontaneous publication of a small deluge of Botanic medical
works. Among others. Miles, who had been selling
Thomson's books, published his own New and Improved
System of Medical Botanical Practice at
"Cleaveland" in
1829, in which he made no mention of Samuel Thomson.
Horton Howard published a three-volume An Improved
System of Botanic Medicine at Columbus in 1832. Two
m.ore editions followed. A one-volume edition was published
by J. Kost of Cincinnati in 1852. Meanwhile
J. Kost, M.D., wrote, and published at Mt. Vernon his Practice
of Medicine according to the Plan Most Approved by
the Reformed or Botanic Colleges etc. etc.^ These books
drew upon Rafinesque and others for plant illustrations and
were of much more elaborate content than the original
Thomson. Without illustrations, but with seven hundred
pages and two hundred thirty "valuable vegetable remedies"
plus a dispensatory was J. E. Carter's The Botanic
Physician or Family Medical Adviser, published at Madisonville,
Tennessee, in 1837. There were many others.
Even printers ran off anonymous Botanic manuals. At
Norwalk, Ohio, in 1835, for instance, S. and C. A. Preston
set up and distributed the thirty-page The Medical Instructor,
or the Cause and Cure of Disorders, expressed in
Plain, Easy Language, and Intended for the Great Benefit
of Manki7td.
Botanic medicines were widely advertised, not only in
Botanic publications but in general newspapers as well.
They were dispensed both wholesale and retail in such centers
as Cincinnati, Louisville, Indianapolis, and St. Louis.
Directions given in Thomson's book for preparation of