| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 220 words from this article are provided below; about 333 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The People's Doctors: Samuel Thomson and the American Botanical Movement, 1790–1860. By John S. Haller Jr. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. xvi, 377 pp. $49.95, ISBN 0-8093-2339-7.)

The author of a number of books on eclectic medicine in the nineteenth century, John S. Haller Jr. is well qualified to tackle yet another aspect of what he calls "the reform campaigns that rumbled through the underbelly of America's body politic" in the first half of the century. Samuel Thomson (1769–1843) is now a footnote in the history of medicine, but in its heyday Thomsonian medicine swept through the young republic and spawned a large number of imitators and rivals. As Haller convincingly demonstrates, Thomson and his do-it-yourself botanic medicine perfectly fit the Zeitgeist of the age. 1

Samuel Thomson lacked formal education and he turned from farming in northern New England to a career as an itinerant healer in 1805. His early experiences with local botanic healers profoundly influenced his subsequent suspicion of learned medicine and his attention to locally grown roots and herbs. Almost as an aside, Haller explodes two commonly held myths about botanic medicine: Native American lore had little or nothing to do with it (Thomson explicitly rejected Indian medicine), and the plants that he used, while local, were by no means entirely native. . . .

There are about 333 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.