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Divided Legacy, Volume III: Science and Ethics in American Medicine

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This is the second of 4 volumes comprising a massive scholarly effort to cast the history of medicine in a fresh light, in counterpoint to most works in the field which are written by those unfamiliar with homeopathy. This volume deals with the period during which conventional, "scientific" medicine emerged triumphant against alternative, "metaphysical" approaches, with particular attention paid to the political struggle between the emerging conventional and homeopathic forms of medicine. Through a careful review of the history of 19th-century American medicine, the author argues that the struggle between the two systens of thought was political rather than scientific in focus, a matter not of careful investigation of the merits of each system but a product of a historically contingent chain of events, which in a different time or place might have taken a different turn. Most important, the reader is provided with information rarely mentioned in conventional recitations of the history of 19th-century medicine, which tend to demonize rather than pay careful attention to the many alternative forms of medicine practiced by medical doctors of the era. In the case of homeopathy, which at one point was practiced in some form or another by 20% of American MDs, such omission amounts to scholarly incompetence. Minimally, therefore, this version of the the history of the era ought to be considered less biased than most.
This is essential reading (together with the first volume of the series) for anyone interested in the true origins of western medicine from a perspective which doesn't antecedently glorify the subject matter. The author is strongly biased toward homeopathy, but despite this - or perhaps because of it - the truth is allowed to emerge about the political context in which conventional medicine established itself as uniquely valid in the eye of western thought. This is a serious piece of scholarship, with copious references provided for the researcher interested in pursuing this further.