A Profile in Alternative Medicine The Eclectic Medical College of Cincinnati, 1845–1942 by John S. Haller Jr. 1999, 224 pp ISBN 0-87338-610-8 Cloth, $35.00 courtesy of our partner, Atlas Books Call (419) 281-1802 to order by phone.

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The Eclectic Medical Institute was an American institution in origin, concept, and practice. For nearly a century, EMI was known as the “mecca of eclectic thinking” and the “Mother Institute” of reformed medicine. A Profile of Alternative Medicine recounts the history of eclectic medicine which, along with hydropathy, homeopathy, physiomedicalism, chiropractic, and osteopathy, competed with regular medicine (allopathy) in the nineteenth century.

This history of EMI is set within the broader context of American medicine and recounts the internal feuds, successes, adversity, and ultimate failure of this bastion of freedom in medical thought.

John S. Haller, Jr. is a professor of history and medical humanities at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. His publications include Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859-1900 (winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award in Race Relations); The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America; American Medicine in Transition, 1840-1910; and Kindly Medicine: Physio-Medicalism in America 1836-1911 (The Kent State University Press, 1997).

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