Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1806

JOHN KING (1813-1893) The eclectic dispensatory. H. W. Derby 1852 viii, 708 pp. 22.7 cm.

Eclectic medicine became a major force in American medicine following the Civil War. Founded in 1829 by Wooster Beach (1794-1868), a medical school graduate with strong interests in botanical medicine, eclectic medicine relied heavily on botanical remedies but utilized other therapies as well. The stronghold of the movement was the Eclectic Medical Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, which enjoyed its greatest popularity during the latter years of the nineteenth century. "If there are any saints in the Eclectic profession, John King must be one, at least he has received the rites of canonization at the hands of hundreds of his pupils and followers, who revere him as the embodiment of all those traits that go to make up a good and great physician" (Otto Juettner, Daniel Drake and his followers. Cincinnati, 1909. p. 373). A native of New York City, King had studied at Beach's medical school and spent the early years of his career as a botanist, pharmacologist, and chemist. He began teaching at Cincinnati in 1851 and remained on the faculty until his death. In addition to being a prolific author, King developed several alkaloid-based drugs and introduced them into medical practice. King's coauthor, Newton, was a country school teacher before completing his medical studies at the Louisville Medical Institute in 1841. He practiced privately for eight years and became professor of surgery at the Memphis Medical Institute. Called to the chair of surgery at the Cincinnati Eclectic Medical Institute in 1851, he became editor of the Eclectic medical journal and an influential member of the faculty. This was one of King's best-known works and it was still being published in the early years of this century. A large treatise, it has been divided into two parts which include an alphabetical arrangement of the plants with their botanical characteristics and the eclectic pharmacopoeia with instructions for compounding and using the medications.