“Eclectic medicine was a branch of American medicine which made use of noninvasive therapies and healing practices popular in the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Eclectic medicine became a populist expansion of early American herbal medicine customs, such as those of Samuel Thomson and Native American medical traditions. The Eclectic physician aimed to provide healing therapies that were in harmony with the body’s natural curative properties. In this quest, the Eclectics were determined to develop a distinct American materia medica. They primarily used plant-based drugs that were indigenous to the United States. The Eclectics’ rebellion against the old invasive medical modalities reflected the democratic principles of the young United States.” ( Lloyd Library )
“The movement peaked in the 1880s and 1890s. The schools were not approved by the Flexner Report (1910), which was commissioned by a council within the American Medical Association. The report criticized Eclectic medical schools on the grounds that they had poor laboratory facilities and inadequate opportunities for clinical education in hospitals. In 1934, J. C. Hubbard, M.D., the president of the Eclectic Medical Association said:
“We must choose between being absorbed by the dominant section, our professional activities dictated and controlled, our policies subject to the approval of an unfriendly, prejudiced, self-constituted authority, and soon lose our identity as the Eclectic Section of American Medicine, or adapt ourselves to the general social change and retain the old Eclectic values of individual freedom of thought and action, independence in practice and the right to use that which has stood the test of experience in our service to mankind.” ( wikipedia entry for eclectic medicine)
The last Eclectic Medical school closed in Cincinnati in 1939.
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Lloyd Library and Museum: The mission of the Lloyd Library and Museum is to advocate for education in plant-based science, medicine, conservation, art and history. We provide resources to engage visitors and researchers from the community and around the globe.
Wikipedia Entry: The term was coined by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1784–1841), a botanist and Transylvania University professor who had studied Native American use of medicinal plants, wrote and lectured extensively on herbal medicine, and advised patients and sold remedies by mail. Rafinesque used the word eclectic to refer to those physicians who employed whatever was found to be beneficial to their patients (eclectic being derived from the Greek word eklego, meaning “to choose from”).