Knowledge in the Time of Cholera by Owen Whooley Page B

because it adorns her by laying all her beauties open to general inspection” (
BTLC
1841, 114). Nature made itself readily comprehensible to all. The public therefore had the capacity to grasp medical knowledge. The flattened hierarchy of knowers and egalitarian Thomsonian epistemology was defined in opposition to the authoritative, paternalistic approach of regulars, who mystified medical knowledge for selfish ends to the point where “the acquirement of medical knowledge having been considered a matter beyond the ordinary pursuits of life, the people have fallen into a complete state of darkness and superstition on this important subject” (Colby 1839, 2). If the public shed the belief in the authority of the regulars, medical insight was there for the taking. By juxtaposing their epistemology of folk wisdom and common sense with allopathy, Thomsonians demanded epistemological account from allopathy that did not fall back on obfuscation.
    Cholera offered a powerful symbol of regular failure that Thomsonians exploited to undermine licensing laws. As part of their rhetoric, they consistently contrasted the self-proclaimed success of their therapeutics with the dismal record of the regulars. Thomsonian periodicals were rife with condemnations of regular therapeutics like calomel and contrasting stories of the successes of Thomsonism. Bloodletting was viewed as not only ineffective, but deadly in treating cholera (Thomson 1825), as regulars “destroy more frequently than they can save” (Whitney 1833, 319). As for their own success, Thomsonians claimed, in a fit of hyperbole brash even for the period, to have saved 4,978 of the 5,000 cholera patients they treated in New York City (Haller 2005, 98). The critique of the allopathic handling of cholera was a common refrain among all alternative medical movements. The innovation Thomson brought was to link this failure to the monopoly regu lars held over medicine, reframing the tragedy of cholera as an exemplar of what happens when a profession with monopolistic power cannot be held to account. The cruelty of heroic medicine in treating cholera was a direct outcome of licensing laws that encouraged callous experimentation. These laws were framed as part of a concerted campaign by regular physicians to stifle freedom in a way that violated the spirit of American democracy: “Exclusive privileges are incompatible with those for civil rights for which the martyrs of the revolution fought and bled and died!” (
Thomsonian Botanic Watchman
1834a, 131). Furthermore, the monopolies attained through licensing laws created an apathetic public, stunting their intellectual capacities and, in turn, stifling medical progress. An editorial in the
Boston Thomsonian Manual
(1841, 98) noted the pernicious effects of monopolies on the intelligence of the public: “Every individual who permits himself to be ignorant of medical knowledge, exposes his life to a banditti, who are ‘regularly’ drilled and legalized to go out into the world and experiment on human life. It is a duty we owe our God, ourselves and families, to exercise our reasoning faculties, in order that we may not only benefit ourselves but those of our species.” Because the talent for healing could develop in anyone regardless of educational attainment, licensing laws were not just inefficient; they were immoral.
    In promoting their vision of a democratized medical epistemology, Thomsonians often sounded more like a political and economic movement for egalitarianism than medical reformers. Indeed, the great innovation of Thomsonism was to take the rhetoric from democratizing religious and political movements and apply it to medicine. John Thomson (1841, 172), Samuel Thomson’s son and ardent disciple, made this connection explicitly: “People who are competent to judge who shall be their Legislators, are also equally qualified to select their doctors.” Prohibiting people from