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

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to the spread of the good cause in foreign lands." The fourth, of 1829,
had some important variations from the text of its immediate predecessor,
and the last, in 1833, contained several novelties, such as the theories
of the "vital force," the belief that the action of drugs was due to their
power of stimulating cells of the body to curative reactions, and of
"the dynamisation of medicines."
^ Dr. Frederick C. Waite, "Thomsonianism in Ohio," Ohio State
Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, XLIX (1940), 330.
^ Hertzog, "Rise of Homeopathy," ibid., 332.
^ See his review in Western Monthly Review, I (1827), 3 57. Also
review of the pamphlet "New Views of Penitentiary Discipline and
Moral Education and Reform," ibid.. Ill (1829), 50-6.
^ Daily Cincinnati Gazette, January 3, 1849.
^ Grace Adams and Edward Hutter, The Mad Forties
(New York,
1942), Chapter XI, give a clever account of these developments.
^ Therapeutic Sarcognomy, A Scientific Exposition of the Mysterious
Union of Soul, Brain and Body, and a New System of Therapeutic Practice
without Medicine, by the Vital Nervaiira, Electricity and External
Applications, Giving the only Scientific Basis for Therapeutic Magnetism
and Electro-Therapeutics. Designed for the tise of Nervauric and
Electric Practitioners, and also for intelligent families, for the prevention
and cure of diseases, and moral and physical development of youth.
^Ibid., 258-9.
^^ In California in the 1930's Dr. Albert Abrams, licensed physician,
hooked up a couple of cheap resistance boxes and an old Ford spark coil
and announced to the world that he had a magic detector of such delicacy
that he could tune in on the electronic vibrations which emanate
from a drop of blood. Given a drop of blood from a human being and
this apparatus, one could determine exactly what the patient was suflFering
from, if anything. Also whether he was Chinese or Jewish, Catholic
or Presbyterian. Anmial Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1917,
414.
Somewhat less awe-inspiring, but more valid, is the work of Dr.
Edgar Douglas Adrian, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who
received a Nobel prize in physiology in 1932 for his experiments in
measuring electrical impulses from, and locating images in, different
portions of the brain, when stimulated by sight, sound, etc. The scientist
modestly states, "The present technique of recording brain events,
by oscillographs connected with electrodes on the head, is not likely to
lead very far." Time, XLIII (May 8, 1944), 74. Perhaps it was just as
well that Dr. Buchanan was not handicapped by modern apparatus.
NOTES: CHAPTER SIX
^ See Shryock, Development of Modern Medicine, Chapter EX.
^Ibid., 160.