That school of medical philosophy and therapy founded by the American messianic nature therapist Samuel Thomson (b. 1769). Thomson’s great axiom was, “Heat is life, and cold is death.” He lived in New England, which explains some of this. He and the later Thomsonians made great use of vomiting, sweating, and purging to achieve these ends-crude by present standards, but saner than the standard practice medicine of the times. The Thom sonians split vehemently from the early Eclectics before the Civil War; the latter, larger group preferred to train true professional physicians as M.D.s. The first group disavowed any overt medical training (“physicking”). Many of the practices of Jethro Kloss (Back. to Eden) and John Christopher are neo-Thomsonian, and much of what still goes on in the old guard of alternative therapy is what Susun Weed calls the “Heroic Tradition” (no compliment intended). Rule of thumb: If you see Lobelia and Capsicum together in a formula, along with recommendations for colonies, it’s probably something Sam Thomson did first.<\/p>\n
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That school of medical philosophy and therapy founded by the American messianic nature therapist Samuel Thomson (b. 1769). Thomson’s great axiom was, “Heat is life, and cold is death.” He lived in New England, which explains some of this. He and the later Thomsonians made great use of vomiting, sweating, and purging to achieve these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-t"],"yoast_head":"\n