Browse Items (34 total)

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"Promulgated for the purpose of spreading medical light and information in America," Samuel Stearns' herbal is the first to be printed in the United States and incorporates information from the traditions of American Indians.

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The本草原始 [Ben cao yuan shi] ("Origins of the materia medica") describes medicinal plants and herbal substances with their uses and manner of preparation. Like many Chinese medical texts, this early 17th century work was reprinted in Japan during the…

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William P. C. Barton's Vegetable materia medica of the United States, along with Jacob Bigelow's contemporary American medical botany, are the first two American botanical publications with colored illustrations. Barton's contains hand-colored…

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In reaction to the harsh practices of regular physicians and also the sweating and purging regimens of Thomsonianism, Wooster Beach developed his own botanical medical system which evolved into medical eclecticism, one of the most popular sectarian…

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In addition to being a detailed examination of plants native to the United States with their medicinal uses, American medical botany is the first publication in this country to employ a color printing process for its plates, using an innovative…

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In addition to publishing this popular botanic medical text, O. Phelps Brown made and marketed proprietary medicines, such as the "Magic Assimilant" (boneset, chamomile blossoms, smartweed, vervain, and whiskey) for fits and indigestion. He also…

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Churchill's Treatise is the first English monograph devoted to the subject of acupuncture; it describes four cases for which the therapy provided relief of pain. In 1828, James Morss Churchill published a companion work, describing the efficacy of…

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A member of the l'Académie royale de Chirurgie, Franҫois Dujardin reviewed Chinese and Japanese medicine in his survey of the history of surgery. He reproduced several of the plates from Willem ten Rhijne's treatise on acupuncture and, in…

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English physician Sir John Floyer invented a watch to measure the rate of the pulse and here translates some relevant portions of the Specimen medicinae Sinicae("The Chinese art of Feeling the Pulse is describ'd; and the Imitation of their Practice…

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Herbals are the original foundation for botanical medicine. The somewhat erratic English botanist John Gerard here provides descriptions of over 1,500 plants, accompanied by detailed engravings, and then outlines the "vertues" or medicinal uses of…

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A later translation into English of the work of Englebert Kaempfer, who traveled in Japan in the early 1690's, as part of an historical survey of Japan

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Some of the best descriptions and illustrations of acupuncture and moxibustion appear in the work of Englebert Kaempfer who traveled in Japan in the early 1690s.

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Some of the best descriptions and illustrations of acupuncture and moxibustion appear in the work of Englebert Kaempfer who traveled in Japan in the early 1690s.

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Many of the patients treated at the Ophthalmic Hospital in Canton by Peter Parker in the 1830s were immortalized in large color portraits produced by the artist Lam Qua (1801-1860). This album contains rare watercolor studies for a number of the Lam…

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In 1821, Philadelphia physician John Kearsley Mitchell met and examined Aké, a Chinese youth with a partially-formed parasitic twin protruding from his stomach, and sent back this first-hand report from Canton.

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This first American publication on acupuncture was translated from the French by Franklin Bache, a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, "believing … that a short treatise on Acupuncturation, from the growing importance of the remedy, and the…

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In the first edition of his monumental textbook, Sir William Osler advocates the use of acupuncture for sciatica and, as here, lumbago "in acute cases, the most efficient treatment…. I can corroborate fully the statements of [Sydney] Ringer,…

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Published by a physician and botanist of the Dutch East India Company in Japan, this text contains the first Western description of acupuncture.

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This first account of American plants and their medicinal uses was, oddly enough, published in Germany. Johann David Schöpf was a military surgeon who came to the country during the Revolutionary War and later traveled through New York,…

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The Thomsonian botanical movement, like homeopathic medicine, developed its own culture of authorized druggists and agents and published books and a number of short-lived periodicals, including this one from Boston.

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First published in 1822, Thomson's New guide to health (later known as The Thomsonian materia medica) was the cornerstone of the Thomsonian botanical medical movement and went through thirteen editions by 1841. Many editions were prefaced, as here,…

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Many copies of the New guide to health and the Thomsonian materia medica contain, as does this one, certificates attesting to the holder's right to use Thomsonian preparations as a member of the Friendly Botanic Society. By 1840, Samuel Thomson had…

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As Samuel Thomson opposed the formation of Thomsonian medical schools, local societies—such as this one in Hartford, Connecticut—assumed the authority to grant diplomas to certified botanical practitioners.

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An 1881 graduate of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, Dr. M. Elizabeth Reifsnyder (1858-1922) worked in Shanghai, China, as both physician and missionary and founded the Margaret Williamson Hospital there in 1885. Of this print, the donor…

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These are some of the earliest translations into Latin of Chinese medical texts on the pulse written by Wang Shuhe of the third century. The translations, though here edited by Andreas Cleyer and published anonymously, were made by Michel Boym…

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One of the most notable supporters of Samuel Thomson was Benjamin Waterhouse, formerly Harvard's Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic. Here, in a letter to Wooster Beach (1794-1868), founder of the eclectic medical movement,…

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Although the use of extracts from the foxglove in cases of dropsy had been common, William Withering was the first to analyze preparations of the plant scientifically and so isolated digitalis. Withering's An account of the foxglove describes over…

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