User:Ndogar/History of medicine in the United States

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The history of medicine in the United States encompasses a variety of approaches to health care in the United States spanning from colonial days to the present. These interpretations of medicine vary from early folk remedies that fell under various different medical systems to the increasingly standardized and professional managed care of modern biomedicine.

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Colonial Era

At the time settlers first came to the United States, the predominant medical system was humoral theory, or the idea that diseases are caused by an imbalance of bodily fluids. Settlers initially believed that they should only use medicines that fit in this medical system and were made out of "such things only as grown in England, they being most fit for English Bodies," as said in The English Physitian Enlarged, a medical handbook commonly owned by early settlers. However, as settlers were faced with new diseases and a scarcity of the typical plants and herbs used to make therapies in England, they increasingly turned to local flora and Native American remedies as alternatives to European medicine. The Native American medical system typically tied the administration of herbal treatments with rituals and prayer. This inclusion of a different spiritual system was denounced by Europeans, in particular Spanish colonies, as part of the religious fervor associated with the Inquisition. Any Native American medical information that didn't agree with humoral theory was deemed heretical, and tribal healers were condemned as witches. In English colonies it was more common for settlers to seek medical help from Native American healers. However, their medical knowledge was still looked down upon as it was assumed that they didn't understand why their treatments worked because their medical system differed.

19th Century

Moving into the early 19th century, there was a general move to distinguish America from its ex-colonial ruler, Britain. Part of this spilled over into medical systems as well. Given that contemporary European medical interventions included things like blistering, blood letting, and calomel, there was a push to find a less damaging alternative. Samuel Thompson introduced his own alternative medical system, Thomsonianism, in the early 19th century. It quickly became extremely popular as a medical system in New England, especially in the northeast. While Thompson claimed his medical system was entirely his own, it was more so a repackaging of the humoral and Native American medical theories combined. Thomsonianism was all about maintaining heat in the body, and he accomplished this through various herbal interventions. His most commonly used drug, which he himself referred to as his number 1 drug, was Indian Tobacco, a commonly used native American medicinal herb. Thompson attributed his discovery of the herb and its medicinal properties to his explorative youth, but he also credits an old lady in his village with introducing him to the herb. Scholars have suggested that this lady was actually Native American, but that Thomson occluded that fact due to the general stigma and inferiority associated with Native Americans at the time.