Note Book. Eclectic Medical Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio. Winter Session 1853 & 4. [manuscript caption title; with:] Note Book. Eclectic Medical College Philadelphia. Session 1854 & 5. Charles H. Rose. Baltimore. Md. [manuscript caption title]

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Two student notebooks on eclectic medicine kept in 1853–1855 by Charles H. Rose of Maryland at the Eclectic Medical Institute in Cincinnati and the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In addition to medical lecture notes, each notebook also contains lists of some of Rose’s earliest patients, medical services, and fees from 1856 in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania[?] and Chapel, Talbot County, Maryland.

Dr. Rose was educated and trained as a physician by professors espousing the reforming and controversial principles of eclectic medicine which employed botanical remedies. The Eclectic Medical Institute in Cincinnati was incorporated in 1845 and traces its roots back to the Reformed Medical College of Ohio (Medical Department of Worthington College), itself founded by graduates of America’s first eclectic medical school, the Reformed Medical College of the City of New York (1830).

After only one year of study in Cincinnati, 1853–1854, Rose went to Philadelphia and enrolled at Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania and there followed a similar curriculum.

Rose’s Cincinnati notebook includes lecture notes on such subjects as surgery (Prof. Zoheth Freeman), anatomy (Prof. William Sherwood), chemistry (Prof. John Wesley Hoyt, later Governor of Wyoming Territory), physiology (Prof. Joseph Rhodes Buchanan), toxicology (“Prof. Chase”), and materia medica and therapeutics (Prof. George W. L. Bickley). Among his other instructors were Dr. Robert Safford Newton, dean of the medical faculty, co-editor of the Eclectic Medical Review, and professor of medical practice and Dr. John King, professor of obstetrics. Newton and King were the authors of The Eclectic Dispensatory of the United States of America (Cincinnati, 1852), later King’s The American Dispensatory, the leading eclectic medical textbook of the latter nineteenth century.

Laid into the Cincinnati notebook is a small handmade booklet containing 1½ pages of pencil manuscript entitled “Notes from Paine’s Practice of Medicine.” The notes may refer to William Paine’s book An Epitome of the American Eclectic Practice of Medicine, first published in 1857. However, these brief notes may have been taken down by Rose from a lecture delivered by Paine when Rose was a student at the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania and Paine was professor of the principles and practice of medicine and pathology there. The college reorganized itself in 1858, after Dr. Rose’s studies there, into two separate institutions: the Eclectic Medical College of Philadelphia and the American College of Medicine in Philadelphia. The former became a diploma mill, but the latter, led by William Paine, continued in the mainstream of eclectic medicine in alignment with the nervauric theories of Rose’s Cincinnati professor, Dr. Joseph R. Buchanan.²

Rose’s Philadelphia notebook includes an extensive, 46-page section on obstetrics and related subjects from lectures by Dr. Joseph Sites and lecture notes on toxicology from Dr. Thomas G. Chase. It is unclear whether this is the same “Prof. Chase” who taught toxicology at the Eclectic Medical Institute in Cincinnati. Other named Philadelphia lecturers include “Professor Fonday” [Dr. John Fondey], professor of theory and practice and “[Dr. Marshall] Calkins.” Other lecture notes treat such subjects as dislocations, organic chemistry, surgery, and diseases of the bone and fractures.

Both the Cincinnati and Philadelphia notebooks include recipes for medical formulations. Within in Rose’s notes on Professor Newton’s lectures are treatments for such ailments as dysentery, asthma, enuresis, cholera, hydropholia, and gonorrhea. The formulations in the Philadelphia include recipes for “gravel,” carminative, and liver pills. Other treatments include those for a variety of fevers (remittent, yellow, typhoid, etc.), small pox, tubercular disease, and a recipe for “Woman’s Friend” that included [false] unicorn [root], poplar bark, mandrake, and castor oil. The two notebooks, based on lectures at two different eclectic medical schools, offer scholars an opportunity to compare the medical practices and therapies presented to one medical student.

Charles Henry Rose (1834–1912) was a Maryland native and physician who spent much of his life in Chapel, Talbot County, Maryland. He was married to Julia (née Ridgaway) Rose (1847–1906). Rose’s student notebooks suggest that he practiced medicine as early as 1856. Both notebooks include lists of patients he treated in “Chambersburg” and in Chapel, Talbot County, Maryland This former place is possibly a reference to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania based on an entry by Rose concerning pharmaceutical ingredients and a “Dr. Reynolds.” (Cincinnati, p89)¹ There are a total of 10½ pages of these lists dating from March 21, 1856 to October 13, 1856. The lists give the patient’s name, the treatment (typically “visit,” but also “powders,” “drops,” “emetic,” “medicine,” and “bath”), and the cost, ranging from 25¢ to $1.50 for “Emetic, vapor bath & Liniment.”

Unusual pair of eclectic medicine notebooks, kept by one student at two of the leading American eclectic medical colleges of the 1850s, and that student’s first medical practice records.

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