Marketplace of the Marvelous (7 page)

As Thomsonism grew, Thomson designated “agents” to help him spread his system even further. Agents could sell additional family rights and prepare medicines while sharing in the profits of the sales. Many of these agents did whatever they could to sell as many rights as possible—and thus make as much money as possible—even to the point of exaggerating and misrepresenting Thomson's system. A few agents took their role as franchisers to mean that they could set up infirmaries where they administered medicines and treated people reluctant to treat themselves. These agents became, in essence, practicing doctors, actions that won the harsh condemnation of Thomson for directly opposing the intent of his system. Some of these facilities had beds for inpatients, and one infirmary in Norfolk, Virginia, treated more than six hundred people in its first year. “It has generally been the case, with those I have appointed as agents, that as soon as they have been sufficiently instructed to attend to the practice with success,” declared Thomson, “[they] have attempted to get the lead of the practice into their own hands, and deprive me of the credit and profits of my own discovery.”
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Thomson also registered his disappointment with his agents in verse:

As Doctor Thomson's Agent—he

A bond had sign'd, to faithful be

Unto the Doctor's views;

His med'cines all, both wet and dry,

Agreed of Thomson for to buy,

And not his trust abuse.
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To protect his proprietary information from misrepresentation, Thomson patented his system in 1813. It had simply spread too far for him to meet with every rights holder personally. His success
had also spawned a legion of copycats making claims similar to his own. Thomson's decision to patent his medical system was unusual but not unique. Before Thomson, Dr. Peter Davidson had received copyright protection from the state of New York for his proprietary cancer plaster, a paste that inflamed, swelled, and then supposedly destroyed the cancer, and Dr. Elisha Perkins patented his electric tractors, three-inch brass and iron rods with healing powers. With his patent in hand, Thomson spent the rest of his life tenaciously and a bit pompously guarding his system from imposters.
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Thomson turned to Benjamin Smith Barton and Benjamin Rush for advice on how to publicize and win support for his newly patented system. The busy Dr. Rush had little time for Thomson, but Barton advised him to seek celebrity endorsement for maximum success: “[M]ake friends of some celebrated doctors and let them try the medicine and give the public such recommendation of it as they should deem correct.”
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Thomson appreciated the advice but feared that some unscrupulous doctors might claim his system as their own and deprive him of the credit he so eagerly sought. He trusted Barton, though, and convinced him to try Thomson's system on himself and give his own recommendation. Unfortunately for Thomson, Barton died—not from a Thomsonian treatment—before he could render judgment.
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Thomson announced his newly patented system in newspapers and soon began appointing more and more agents to sell family rights to practice and distribute his medicines. Authorized agents often received notice in newspaper ads. “Dr. Samuel Thomson . . . now has the pleasure to recommend to the people of Boston and vicinity, Dr.
JOHN LOCKE
, who has had long experience in the practice and is well-qualified to administer relief to the sick,” announced the
Columbian Centinel American Federalist
, followed by an address for Locke's office and an invitation to visit.
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Thomson moved his own office to Boston in 1818 to better manage and centralize his business affairs in a larger, more accessible city. By 1833, Thomson had 167 agents operating in twenty-two states and territories.
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Agents could sell rights to anyone who would pay. The right to practice on oneself and one's immediate family still cost twenty dollars, but now buyers had the option of paying one hundred dollars to start a mini-practice for nonfamily members. Thomson and his agents made buyers swear never to share
the secrets of the system, nor could they ever resell it, subject to a sixty-five-dollar fine for each transgression.
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Even with his patent, Thomson still faced the difficult task of protecting his enterprise and his name. The patent gave him some legal protection against those who tried to steal his system, but Thomson became so paranoid about his property that it became a source of contention and division among his followers. Thomson soon came to regard many of his agents not as allies and friends but as enemies out to steal his profits for themselves.

Thomson's loose system of agents and rights holders made cohesion and unity challenging if not impossible, and made even more so by Thomson's demanding nature. Thomson fought to maintain tight control over his system throughout his life. He insisted that it was incapable of amendment or improvement by anyone but him, and he dismissed any competing or new ideas as illegitimate and treasonous. He sarcastically accused one agent of palming his “literary pillage upon the world as a book of reformation, new discoveries, and wonderful improvements,” and called the efforts of other agents an attempt to “mislead and confuse enquiring minds.”
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Thomson's annual letter to his agents became predictable for its recitation of enemies, unfaithful agents, and “pretended friends” who had tried to change his system, insulted his character, and stolen profits from the sale of family rights. Some successful agents established their own regional reputations and broke with Thomson to start their own more lenient and inclusive botanical medical practices.
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Thomson filed suit against many of his own agents, as well as unaffiliated pretenders, to defend what he believed to be protected by federal law. Many of his claims were successful, but not every case went Thomson's way. With these losses, he could only print announcements listing the agents authorized to sell his system and denouncing everyone else as a botanic faker and quack, likely much to the amusement of regular doctors who saw them all, Thomson included, as quacks.
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Despite his admonitions against book learning, Thomson published his own book in an attempt to police the boundaries of his theory and to keep his system within reach of every agent and rights holder. In 1822, he published two lengthy works, often packaged together, the
New Guide to Health: Or Botanic Family Physician,
Containing a Complete System of Practice on a Plan Entirely New
and
A Narrative of the Life and Medical Discoveries of the Author
, the latter an autobiographical account of his conversion to botanicals. The books used plain and direct language to craft stories of the patients Thomson had cured, including many who had found no relief in regular medicine. Thomson claimed to have taken on some of these cases reluctantly, worried that his method may not work on people who had suffered for so long. One woman in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, came to Thomson for relief from a venereal disease she had suffered from for more than five years. Her doctors had “filled her with mercury to kill the disorder” and then “left her to linger out a miserable existence,” Thomson wrote, adding, “I felt very unwilling to undertake with her, apprehending that it would be very uncertain whether a cure could be effected, [her illness] having been of so longstanding.” But she insisted, and after three weeks of treatment with his numbered system along with sweats and purges, “her health was restored, and she returned home well.”
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These types of stories filled the pages of Thomson's
New Guide to Health
, providing illustrations of the many types of people and cases that he could effectively treat as well as the kinds of people he hoped to attract to his system. In contrast to the sometimes fantastical and inflated language contained in the literature of other medical irregulars, Thomson described his system frankly and without ornament, as though to emphasize the intuitive rather than miraculous nature of his cures that he hoped would appeal to commonsense Americans.
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Always careful of giving out too much information, though, Thomson did not include full instructions for his course of medicines. He continued to reserve this information for agents and rights purchasers.
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Thomson used his books to draw particular attention to the democratic character of his system. At a time ripe with distrust of professionalism and formal education, Thomson worked hard to portray himself as a friend and champion of the people. He explained how regular doctors wasted several years in school learning theories that had little relevance to daily practice when experience had long been shown to be the best teacher.
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Copies of the
New Guide to Health
appeared virtually everywhere in North America, going through twenty-one editions between 1822 and 1851.
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Thomson may have prided himself on creating a medical
system that any illiterate person could use, but his own book clocked in at nearly four hundred pages, suggesting a well-educated following.
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The book spawned an array of imitators, including several from within his own ranks, just as Thomson had long feared. Some of Thomson's agents sold unauthorized copies of
A New Guide to Health
while others, such as Elias Smith, who was, for a time, Thomson's right-hand man, published their own botanic medicine books at a discounted price to cut into Thomson's business.
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Thomson offered a reward to anyone who provided information on those who attempted to sell his system under any name other than his own.
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By the 1830s, Thomson claimed that more than a million people in a country of nearly thirteen million practiced his medicine, a number even regular doctors admitted was probably accurate. The proliferation of Thomson's books and other literature attracted followers and provided cohesion to a movement that might otherwise have fallen apart in the consumer marketplace. Just a few years later, in 1835, the Thomsonians bombastically proclaimed that one-sixth of the American population practiced only botanic medicine, and that in some states, particularly in the West and South, the number was closer to one-third.
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“The people, the
common
people, have been found capable of examining, judging, and deciding correctly,” declared the
Thomsonian Recorder
. “Give them the facts, the whole facts, and nothing but the facts. By them, we conquer!”
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The governor of Mississippi corroborated these claims, announcing in 1835 that half the citizens of his state were Thomsonians.
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It was true that Thomson found his greatest success in frontier regions of the country, where trained regular doctors were virtually nonexistent and many people relied on home medical care by necessity. A simple system that promised to cure everything with natural remedies at a low cost held undeniable appeal.

Like the other irregular systems that followed, Thomsonism was particularly welcoming to women. In fact, Thomson was the first to recognize women as legitimate medical practitioners on par with men in an organized system in the United States. Thomson's message that the family rather than the infirmary should be the primary forum for medical care proved a natural match for women, who had long acted as healers in their homes and communities. Thomson hailed the introduction and education to the plant world he had received from Mrs. Beaton. “All the valuable instruction I ever received was from a woman in the town where I lived, who had practiced as a midwife
for twenty years,” wrote Thomson, saying “she gave me more useful instruction than all I ever gained from any other source.”
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Not only could women practice Thomsonism, but their special role within the family as moral arbiters and caretakers made them uniquely qualified to provide medical care. Women could purchase the right to practice Thomson's system, just as any man could, and women were encouraged to buy and read medical guides, to establish Friendly Botanic Societies, and to act as agents. Thomsonian books often included information on female anatomy, conception, pregnancy, and birth at a time when women's health was rarely included in health texts, much less discussed in medical practice. Thomson, for instance, advised women to drink raspberry leaf tea for birthing pains, which many pregnant women continue to swear by to this day. Chemicals in the plant may help relax blood vessels and the muscles involved in contractions. He also became an early proponent of the continued use of female midwives over regular male doctors for obstetrical care at a time when regular medicine had become increasingly wary of anyone but trained regular doctors attending to women's care. “Thirty years ago the practice of midwifery was principally in the hands of experienced women, who had no difficulty,” asserted Thomson. “The practice of midwifery at this time, appears to be altogether a matter of speculation with the medical faculty,” depriving families “of their wives and children, by such ignorant and unnatural practice.”
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Thomson and his followers criticized the inexperience of male regulars delivering babies, their use of invasive techniques like forceps, and the high fees they charged for a service that women performed better.
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Among those to adopt Thomson's method were regular doctors, though not everyone came by choice. Thomsonism became so popular in some areas of the country that many regular doctors couldn't maintain their practices without publicly disdaining heroic drugs and bloodletting. Others offered patients a choice of botanic or heroic treatments.
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Ever suspicious, Thomson was seldom convinced that regular doctors had honestly made the switch to his system. He distrusted regulars who purchased rights or who appeared to embrace his system. Friendly Botanic Societies carefully examined the case of any regular doctor intending to switch, and Thomson directed agents to obtain a doctor's written pledge to follow Thomson's principles and to
abandon mineral drugs, blistering, and bleeding. Regular doctors also had to pay more for the right to practice, up to five hundred dollars on a case-by-case basis.
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