The History of Western Herbal Medicine      
    by Chanchal Cabrera    page 1 2 3 4       

One of his early students who later became a medical doctor was Wooster Beach. He opened the United States Infirmary in New York in 1827 and this was followed by the Reformed Medical College in 1829. He practiced a skillful blend of the old and the new, using modern science to understand the body and herbs to treat the diseases he diagnosed. He called his discipline "Eclectic" and was the first of many wonderful pioneering herbal doctors in America. 

John Scudder, John King, Finley Ellingwood, Harvey Wickes Felter, and perhaps especially John Uri Lloyd all helped to make Eclectic medicine popular throughout the latter part of the 1800s and even into the twentieth century. John Uri Lloyd was a brilliant chemist who, together with his brothers, devised new and improved methods of extraction for herbal products and who founded a herbal products company in Cincinnati. When the brothers died they endowed a library in their name which now houses one of the world’s largest collections of books on herbs. 

The ‘regular’ doctors as the medical practitioners were then called were appalled at the success and popularity of the ‘irregulars’ or herbal healers, most especially the Thomsonians. In 1847 the American Medical Association was founded and it served as a focal point for the concerted effort to wipe out natural remedies in favor of the new drug remedies that were increasingly available. One way to do this was issue licences to practice medicine based upon achieving certain standards of competence. At the turn of the century the AMA initiated a study of the medical education establishments then available, including the herbal and eclectic schools. Their requirements for approval included laboratories and texts that were not used or needed by the herbalists. When the AMA ran out of funding, the Carnegie Foundation stepped in and appointed Abraham Flexner to complete the study. The Flexner Report was released in 1910 and it was devastating to the herbal and eclectic community. Within the next 4 years 29 schools closed down because they were not approved by the AMA, even though no-one in the AMA was actually qualified to properly assess the medicine they were teaching. Herbal and Eclectic medicine in the USA virtually died out for the next 60 years, preserved only in folk tradition and by Natives. 

In the UK the story was not much better. One of Thomson’s fiercest supporters was Albert Coffin. Born around 1790 his life was twice saved by herbal medicine and he became a crusader for the cause. In his late forties, after a very successful medical practice in New York state, he sailed to England and established a chain of Friendly Botanico-Medical Societies providing educational materials and herbal remedies through agents all over the country. Coffin lectured widely, published a Botanic Guide to Health and a fortnightly Botanical Journal, and became a regular thorn in the flesh to the British Medical Association. He spoke out publicly against the common medical practices of the day - especially giving calomel and laudanum to small babies, as well as against various social injustices such as over long working hours, unhealthy working conditions, tight lacing of women’s ribs and poor nutrition. However, like Thomson, He was an arrogant and venal man and refused to advance with the times. He denied medical discoveries even when they could have helped to have explained his herbs and he became, eventually, an obstacle to the progress of the profession. One of his closest colleagues, John Skelton, defected and spoke out against him, and was joined in his complaints by Wooster Beach, visiting from America. By the 1850's herbal medicine in England was in disarray with much in-fighting and back stabbing. In 1854 when the Medical Reform Bill was introduced to parliament it threatened to make it illegal to practice medicine unless registered as a doctor by the BMA. This would remove the livelihood from an estimated 6000 herbalists and they were forced to band together to fight this threat. The bill was dropped and the various societies fell apart again until 1864 when the British Medical Reform Association was created. This eventually became the National Association, then the National Institute of Medical herbalists and it is still the major professional organization for herbal practitioners in the UK with their members being recognized worldwide. 

Today herbal medicine, according to the World Health Organization, is still the primary form of healing employed by over 80% of the world’s population. Sales of herbal products are soaring, enrollment at herbal colleges is growing steadily and the standards are rising all the time. In England now there are three different universities offering undergraduate degrees in herbal medicine and one even offers a masters degree. A survey by Prevention Magazine earlier this year revealed that one in three Americans, a whopping 60 million people, spend an average of $54 each per year on herbal remedies, totaling almost #3.24 billion annually. Another survey carried out two years ago found that 45% of Americans were aware of or had tried herbal products but that only 16% were using them regularly. The same survey repeated this year found that 70% were aware of or had tried herbal remedies and that 40% were using them regularly.

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