Page 39 - 2015_Cabin Days curriculum booklet

process) was almost exclusively in the hands of males in both America and England. The forceps
also eased the delivery of the child during protracted labor. With their use, William Dewees, an
author of a midwifery book, felt the hooked crotchet should be employed only when immediate
delivery of the child was necessary; now, every effort was to be made to save the child's life.

Nevertheless, in cases where the fetus was turned in the uterus and presented an arm or foot,
either embryotomy or amputation was still considered necessary to save the mother's life. Had
doctors been aware of the germ theory and anesthesia, more Caesarian operations could have
been performed, saving both the mother and child.

MEDICAL TRAINING AND THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVE METHODS
Medical training ironically contributed further to the ill health of the early settlers. Formal
education was limited to those practicing orthodox medicine; however, many physicians never
attended medical school, studying instead for three years as apprentices under practicing
physicians. Those who received a medical education suffered from the colleges' low educational
standards and the lack of clinical facilities, anatomical specimens, and research libraries.
Admission was open, terms were short, and graduation requirements were minimal. (Indiana did
not have a medical college until 1841-1842 when the Indiana Medical College of LaPorte
opened.) The absence of adequate training and the seemingly barbarous conditions employed by
early physicians led to severe criticism of the profession, although it was sometime before the
profession became regulated. Consequently, many patients sought the milder forms of treatment
offered by dissenting medical sects, which preached "self-help" methods and advocated an end to
the use of harsh drugs and bloodletting. As a result, the layman often treated serious diseases
requiring professional help.

The largest "irregular" sect and opponent to orthodox medicine was the Thomsonians, or
Botanics, founded by Samuel Thomson, a poor New Hampshire farmer. Thomson's major
objective was to establish a simple system of botanic cures, free from the technical language of
doctors and administered by the common man (New Guide to Health or Botanic Family
Physician, 1822). According to Thomson, illness had only one cause--the loss of the body's heat.
Heat represented life:

Our life depends on heat; food is the fuel that kindles and continues the heat. The digestive
powers being correct, caused the food to consume; this continues the warmth of the body, by
continually supporting the fire.

(New Guide to Health, 1825, p. 8)

Therefore, by restoring the body's heat, disease could be cured. A medicine was employed to
open the obstruction in the bowels, allowing free perspiration and restoring digestion:

All disease is caused by clogging the system; and all disease is removed by restoring the
digestive powers, so that the food may keep up that heat on which life depends.

(New Guide to Health, 1825, p. 9)

Thomson's system consisted of a regular course of six botanic medicines, given in numerical
order, beginning with the cleansing of the system and ending with its restoration with tonics. The
average person could obtain his own botanic medicines, administer the remedy, and be his own

Medicine of Jacksonian America Page 5 of 8