NLM logo

Gallery: WEAPON

A History of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania..., Joseph Carson, MD, Philadelphia, 1869

Physician and educator Joseph Carson (1808-1876) recounts the history of the department of medicine at one of the leading "regular" medical schools, the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. Carson writes as if the Thomsonians (who relied on botanic ingredients in their ministrations), homeopaths (whose practitioners believe disease can be cured by a substance that produces symptoms of the disease in healthy people), hydropaths (who believed that the administration of water and baths of various kinds would purify and invigorate the body's physiology), and physio-medicalists (who relied on botanic ingredients, too) never existed or, at least, presented no serious challenge to the mainstream profession.