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| Research article summary (published 29 Sep 2002): |
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The early botanical medical movement as a reflection of life, liberty, and literacy in Jacksonian America.
Full Abstract
This paper describes a popular, grassroots health crusade initiated by Samuel Thomson (1769-1843) in the early decades of the nineteenth century and the ways the Thomsonians exemplified the inherent contradictions within the larger context of their own sociopolitical environment. Premised upon a unique brand of frontier egalitarianism exemplified in the Tennessee war-hero Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), the age that bore Jackson's name was ostensibly anti-intellectual, venerating "intuitive wisdom" and "common sense" over book learning and formal education. Likewise, the Thomsonian movement eschewed schooling and science for an empirical embrace of nature's apothecary, a populist rhetoric that belied its own complex and extensive infrastructure of polemical literature. Thus, Thomsonians, in fact, relied upon a literate public to explain and disseminate their system of healing. This paper contributes to the historiography of literacy in the United States that goes beyond typical census-data, probate-record, or will-signature analyses to look at how a popular medical cult was both heir to and promoter of a functionally literate populace.
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Author information
Author/s: Flannery, Michael A (MA);
Affiliation: Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 35294, USA. flannery(-atsign-)uab.edu
Journal and publication information
Publication Type: Biography; Historical Article; Journal Article
Journal: Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA (J Med Libr Assoc), published in United States. (Language: eng)
Reference: 2002-Oct; vol 90 (issue 4) : pp 442-54
Dates: Created 2002/10/25; Completed 2003/02/14; Revised 2007/11/15;
PMID: 12398251, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)
Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.
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