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THE PEOPLE'S DOCTORS. SAMUEL THOMSON AND THE AMERICAN BOTANICAL MOVEMENT, 1790-1860.
By John S. Haller Jr., Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000, Illustrated, 377 pp., $49.00 (hardcover).
John S. Haller Jr. is one of this country's leading medical historians. He has brought to this current volume the same superb scholarship and superior writing skills that characterize his previous works. A social historian, well versed in the complex tapestry of nineteenth century medical and health movements, Haller enriches his discussion of Samuel Thomson and his movement with the threads of larger social and medical practice issues which gave birth to and sustained movements such as Thomsonism.
Samuel Thomson was a New England farmer who was born in pre-revolutionary New Hampshire in...