Divided Legacy Volume III: Science and Ethics in American Medicine: 1800-1914

Divided Legacy (Vols. I-IV) is a history of Western medical philosophy from the time of Hippocrates to the twentieth century, treating it as a unified system of thought rather than a series of fortuitous discoveries. Dr. Coulter interprets the development of medical ideas as the product of a conflict between two opposed systems of thought, Empiricism and Rationalism. This third volume of Divided Legacy continues the account of the conflict between the Empirical and the Rationalist approaches to therapeutics but introduces a socioeconomic dimension which had earlier been lacking. This volume traces the history of the rise and decline of Samuel Hahnemann's formulation of the Empirical therapeutic doctrine (homeopathy) in nineteenth century United States. The third volume investigates why the historical conflict between homeopathic physicians and their physicians should have persisted. Coulter explains its duration by appealing not only to the purely scientific and methodological aspects of medical history but also the socioeconomics of the two competing therapeutic methods (homeopathy and orthodox medicine). After all, the practice of medicine is not only a scientific form of endeavor but also a fundamentally economic activity pursued for profit. Coulter's startling conclusion is that there was, in fact, no straight line through which therapeutic theory developed from primitive and mystical beginnings readily upward to a platter at which the practice became science. This standard historical assumption is wrong because it fails to account for the economic dimension. Volume III concludes with Coulter explaining the significance of his findings for the relationship between therapeutic method and scientific method. Dr. Harris Coulter (1932-2009) was a native of Baltimore, Maryland, and a graduate of Yale University. He received his PhD from Columbia University. He is the author of numerous articles and several books on acupuncture, osteopathy, herbalism, and alternative health care.