2 Doctor Williams and the Thomsonian System of Medicine

The messenger asked Dr. Frederick G. Williams to leave with him at once and travel to Kirtland. Mary Bailey Smith was in hard labor with her first child, and her alarmed husband, Samuel H. Smith, fearing that his wife might die in childbirth, sent his brother Carlos after the doctor and asked his older brother Joseph for help in seeking divine intervention. The Prophet records:

Tuesday, [October] 27 [1835]. —In the morning I was called to visit at Brother Samuel Smith’s. His wife was confined and in a dangerous condition. Brother Carlos went to Chardon after Dr. Williams. I went out into the field and bowed before the Lord and called upon Him in mighty prayer in her behalf. And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, “My servant Frederick shall come, and shall have wisdom given him to deal prudently, and my handmaid shall be delivered of a living child, and be spared.” The doctor came in about one hour afterwards, and in the course of two hours she was delivered, and thus what God had manifested to me was fulfilled every whit.¹

The baby was given the name Susanna B. Smith. Mary and Samuel Smith had three additional daughters born to them before Mary succumbed to childbirth complications on January 25, 1841.²

It had been the 1816 death of Frederick G. Williams’s sister-in-law Lovina while giving birth to her firstborn and the first pregnancy of Rebecca, his own wife, also in 1816, that had prompted Williams to take up the practice of medicine nearly twenty years before that October day when he delivered Susanna Smith.

Although Frederick had been member of the First Presidency for more than two years by this time and had previously participated in many spiritual manifestations, still, it must have been comforting for him to know that the Lord knew his heart and could inspire Joseph to prophesy that he would come when bidden. Also of comfort was the knowledge that the Lord knew he would be receptive to the influence of the Spirit to guide him in wisdom and that the Lord was mindful of his medical skills.³ The combination of medical knowledge and divine wisdom would be put to good use in serving the needs of the Saints and the community at large. Dr. Williams was not only the regular family physician for the Smiths, but also for the Saints in general and for other members of the community in and around Kirtland.

From Oliver Cowdery we gain an understanding of the view held by the members of the Church regarding the place of medicine in a society that strongly believed in the powers of heaven to heal. When Dr. Sampson Avard, a convert born in the Isle of Guernsey, inquired about the feasibility of coming to Kirtland to practice medicine, Oliver Cowdery answered him in a letter stating that the community relied on their faith in God for their health and physical needs, but that it also had the services of a botanic physician whom they turned to often.

I made enquiry on the subject of your coming to this place to establish yourself as a Botanic Physician. We are a people who design living near the Lord, that our bodies may be healed when we are sick, for a general rule, though our faith is yet weak, being young, weak, and surrounded by a wicked enticing world—When, however, we have need of an earthly physician, and in many instances we have, we call upon our highly esteemed friend and brother Dr. F. G. Williams, universally known through this country as an eminent and skillful man. I may say in short, he is also a Botanic physician—which course of practice is generally approved by us. I expect, however, that he will go to the west next spring.⁴

Attesting to Oliver’s statement is Williams’s last medical ledger containing the names of some 307 patients, 258 of whom received the doctor’s attention between 1834 and 1837, which corresponds to the latter half of the Kirtland period.⁵ In addition to continuing to care for some of his earlier patients, twenty new names were added to the ledger of patients who received treatment between 1838 and 1839, which roughly corresponds to the Missouri period, and twenty-nine new patients were added between 1840 and 1842 (the latter being the year of Frederick’s death), which would correspond to the early Nauvoo period.

In Frederick G. Williams’s probate file, Rebecca, his widow, acting in her official capacity as administrator of the estate, makes three lists of persons owing notes and accounts to Williams at the time of his death on October 10, 1842.⁶ The first lists twenty-nine people, only five of whom appear in his medical ledger, and with different amounts owing. The second lists forty-nine people, forty-one of whom appear in the medical ledger, and essentially with the same amounts owing. The third, titled “Bankrupts,” lists seven people, five of whom appear in the medical ledger with the same amounts owing. It is obvious that the longest list is of medical patients, and therefore we can reasonably assume that the eight additional names on that list of forty-nine are also medical patients, who for whatever reason were never entered into the ledger. This would bring the total of Williams’s known medical patients (who were charged a fee) to 315. The doctor would likely have treated several patients without charging them, and therefore their names would not appear in his ledger.⁷

The New Thomsonian System of Medicine versus the Prevailing Heroic System

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the established medical leader in the United States was Benjamin Rush (1745–1813), one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He had trained in Great Britain at the University of Edinburgh, after which he returned to America to join the faculty of America’s first medical school, later to become the University of Pennsylvania.⁸ “Rush, his associates in Philadelphia and his fellows at what is now Columbia University, produced the first academically trained doctors in America.”⁹ His theory, which was the prevailing theory accepted by the trained physicians of the period, “was that the commonest disease entity of the day, fever, was due to debility, with an increase in blood vessel constriction producing heat and, therefore, fever, mediated through the nervous system.”¹⁰

His heroic use of anti-phlogistic methods of treatment—that is, bleeding and calomel—became widely used. These methods of treatment, commonly used by regular physicians—and, I might say, widely abused—ran into trouble when it became obvious to many, including some physicians themselves, that they produced no real disease cures. In fact they appeared, at times, to make patients even worse. Multiple excessive bleedings had, for instance, hastened the death of George Washington in 1799.¹¹

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the United States was a do-it-yourself nation, and nothing reflected this spirit more than the botanical system of medicine that began to flourish and successfully challenge the regular practitioners of the art of healing. The practice of botanic or herbalist medicine is as old as man’s pain. To better understand and situate it in the North American context, however, it should be understood as a people’s health movement that developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, based on the vegetable theories of Samuel S. Thomson (1769–1843), a New England farmer from New Hampshire.¹² By 1800, Thomson had organized a systematic indigenous American healing sect, based on folk practices. His approach to medicine was popular and relatively inexpensive. The theory behind the movement was based on the notion that all disease was caused by an imbalance in the body of the four basic elements out of which, according to the Aristotelian system of beings, all things were made: fire, earth, air, and water.¹³ One could rebalance them and return the patient to health by having them drink herbal teas, ingest vegetable pills, and take steam baths.¹⁴ It seemed to make good sense, and although the professionally trained doctors abhorred these unscientific methods, an increasing preference to them was shown by the general public over the often fatal practices of the orthodox practitioners, who followed the universally taught heroic system advocated by Dr. Benjamin Rush.

In 1805, Samuel Thomson (1769–1843), a New Hampshire farmer, made the momentous decision to pit his botanical medical system against the pretensions and therapeutics of the regular profession. Thomson’s teachings were quickly accepted by large segments of the population. In 1813, 1823 and 1836, the founder and first organizer of the botanico-medical movement received patents for his system. Purchasers of “Thomson’s Patent,” which was bought by thousands of people, were organized into Friendly Botanic Societies.¹⁵

The Botanico-Medical College of Ohio in Cincinnati was chartered in 1838. Thomson got the word out through those who purchased his patent and through a journal, The Thomsonian Recorder. By the mid-1830s, the Family Botanic Society (every holder of a patent automatically belonged to the society) began to hold its annual conventions.¹⁶ The Thomsonian doctors and remedies gained adherents in direct competition with the regular or trained allopathic pharmacists and doctors, who relied heavily upon chemical medicines, especially calomel (which contained mercury) and bloodletting. Increasingly, these routine practices became more and more unpopular with the general public, who preferred the milder and safer remedies of the herbalists. Contributing also to the abandonment of the old curative measures was the constant barrage of criticism hurled at the regular doctors by Thomsonian practitioners.¹⁷

The purchase of the Thomson Patent cost twenty dollars and entitled the holder to prescriptions, a guide, and the right to practice medicine. However, the holder of the patent was expressly forbidden (printed on the certificate itself) to share the contents with any trained doctor, “as they will most assuredly corrupt the System, as several have already done.”¹⁸ Thomson published many of his ideas, findings, and testimonials as pamphlets that steadily grew in size, but his major work was New Guide to Health (first published in 1822, later changed to The Thomsonian Materia Medica, or Botanic Family Physician) that included seventy plant remedies and a license to administer them. “A state of perfect health, according to Thomson, resulted from a balance (temperatures) of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water. Earth and water, Thomson said, constituted the solids, while air and fire (heat) were the cause of life and motion.”¹⁹ The foundation for his botanical system was the lobelia plant, which when ingested would induce vomiting (an emetic).

Thomson’s Six Courses of Herbal Medicines to Restore Health

Thomson developed six courses of herbal medication to be used for restoring health. The botanical physician was free to use some or all of them, in sequence or out of sequence (for example, numbers 1 and 2; or 1, 3, and 5), depending on the requirements dictated by the disease he was treating. What follows is a simplified summary of more than one hundred pages taken from The Thomsonian Materia Medica, or Botanic Family Physician.²⁰

Number 1—Emetics (581–89): Teas meant to cause the patient to vomit (but also used as a stimulant, an expectorant, and a diaphoretic) made from Lobelia inflata (illustrated in color between pages 580 and 581) that helped “to cleanse the stomach, remove obstructions, and promote perspiration” (581).

Number 2—Stimulants (590–96): Teas meant to cause heat within the patient, the harshest of which was made of capsicum (cayenne pepper, illustrated in color between pages 590 and 591), which could act not only as a stimulant but as an aperient (laxative), an aromatic, and an expectorant “to raise and retain the vital heat of the body, and promote free perspiration” (590). A milder tea in the arsenal of number two was made of ginger, which likewise provided the patient with a stimulant but could also act as an expectorant, an aromatic, and a carminative whose uses were “the same as Cayenne, but less active” (594). A third tea, made of black pepper, also provided a stimulant, an astringent, and an aromatic, and the black pepper was said to be “a substitute for Cayenne pepper—but more astringent and less active” (596).

Number 3—Astringents or Remedies for Canker (597–613): Teas that provided the patient an astringent (but that could also act as a stimulant, an emetic, and a sternutator) to “cleanse the stomach and bowels, by removing the canker” (597), or removing mucus, films, and coatings of various types. Under number three, thirteen different herbs are highlighted (six of which are illustrated in color) suggesting that the teas made for number three were typically a mixture of several different plants, including bayberry, white pond water lily, marsh rosemary, small sumac, witch hazel, red raspberry, and tree hemlock, dispensed as teas and tonics. Some of the plants were identified as useful “for canker, thrush, sore throat, and dysentery” (marsh rosemary, 601), “to remove thrush, discuss ulcers, and cleanse sores” (red raspberry, 604), “for dysentery, hemorrhage, intermittents, and obstinate diarrhea” (black oak, 610), and “to ease arterial and nervous excitement, and quiet the mental faculties” (sage, 611).

Number 4—Bitters to Correct the Bile and Restore Digestion (613–24): Tonics for stomach upset used “to correct the bile, and assist the digestive powers” (balmony, 613) or “to restore digestion, and correct the morbid state of the liver” (kercuma, 613). A total of eleven plants were highlighted (four of which were illustrated in color), including balmony, kercuma, the bark of poplar trees, Balm of Gilead (Populus angulata), barberry, bitter root, dogwood, horehound, and comfrey, the last used “for female complaints, and weakness of the back and stomach” (623). As with step number three, the large number of herbs highlighted in number four suggests that the tonics were made from a mixture of plants.

Number 5—Restorative Tonics; to Restore the Digestive Powers, and Give Tone to the Stomach and Bowels (624–28): The three plants that are highlighted are the peach, wild cherry, and almond trees. From the peach, a brandy can be made; or using Jamaica rum (fourth proof) and sugar, a syrup can be made that is good for indigestion, for use as a laxative for costiveness (constipation), for whooping cough, and for killing worms. From the wild cherry, syrup is made using Jamaica rum (fourth proof), which is good for “consumptive complaints, scrofula and jaundice . . . and well adapted to cases of dyspepsia” (627). Medical uses from the almond include compounds and syrups. These are prepared as follows, which serves as an example of how herbal medicines were used:

Take poplar bark, and bark of the root bayberry, of each one pound; boil them in two gallons of water; strain off, and add seven pounds of sugar; then scald and skim, and add half a pound of peach meats, bitter almonds, or black cherry stones, pulverized. When cold, add one gallon of good brandy, and stir it well together. If put into different vessels, let the sediment be proportionally divided amongst it.²¹

This medication, like many others, the reader is instructed, can be used in connection with others proposed in the Materia Medica and should be kept on hand for when there is exposure to diseases like dysentery:

This compound is a corrector of digestion, is good to strengthen the stomach and bowels, and restore health to the patients, and is also particularly useful in dysentery and the fluxes. In a relaxed state of the bowels, a tea of No. 3, used night and morning, and this syrup through the day, will generally restore the patient. By using these medicines occasionally, when exposed to dysentery, there is but little danger of taking the disease. It would be well for every family to have this syrup on hand, ready for use, in case of any debility of the stomach and bowels.²²

Number 6—Antiseptics; Drops from Gum Myrrh; to Prevent Mortification, and Remove Colic, Dysentery, and Rheumatism (629–31): It can be tinctured in alcohol, brandy, or Jamaica rum and, with the addition of cayenne pepper, prickly ash seeds, and gum camphor, is “useful to the lungs, and strengthening to the uterus” (629).

It is employed as an emmenagogue to regulate the periodical turns of females. . . . It is given in chronic catarrh, in pulmonary consumption, and other affections where the secretion of mucous is abundant but too morbid to be easily expectorated; in chlorosis, or green sickness, amenorrhea, or obstruction of the menses, and the various affections of the uterine functions. It is also used for spongy gums, aphthous, or thrush, sore mouth of children, and for unhealthy ulcers.²³

In addition to the administration of the above courses of herbal teas, drops, and syrups, the Thomsonian system also employed steam baths as an integral part of the treatment: “Steaming is an important part of the Thomsonian practice. Many cases which prove too stubborn for the medicine unassisted by the vapor bath, are through its agency relieved. In all diseases where the vital heat has become so far exhausted as not to be rekindled by the administration of medicine, steaming is indispensably necessary.”²⁴

Ezra Summarizes His Father’s Medical Career

Dr. Frederick G. Williams’s life and medical practice was summarized by his son, Dr. Ezra Granger Williams, in the first pages of his short autobiographical “Memories of My Life.” Ezra compares the Thomsonian system, which used herbs, with the allopathic system, which used calomel and bloodletting. Always eager to learn, even from the old-school doctors, Dr. F. G. Williams, along with other early Thomsonian doctors, was responsible for the development of the Eclectic system, which, as its name implies, took the best of both systems (it left out bloodletting and mercurial calomel and other toxic drugs) and became popular in the United States during the last half of the nineteenth century.

My father, Frederick Granger Williams, was born in Suffield, Hartford Co., Conn, October 28th 1787, whose father was Wm Wheeler Williams of Conn. My mother, Rebecca Swain Williams, was born in Loyalsock, Northcumberland County Pennsylvania August 3rd 1798, daughter of Isaac and Elizabeth Swain. I was born Nov. 17th 1823 in Warrensville, Cuyahoga Co. Ohio, seven miles N. East of Cleveland where father cleared up a heavy timbered farm of over a hundred acres his father having emigrated to the western reserve in Ohio in 1797, father being ten years old when he came to Cleveland only one house there at that time he labored very hard in cutting down heavy timbers and piling in heaps to burn to get rid of it; in doing this he broke down in health, also was called on a great deal to wait on the sick of the country round about, being a good mercy for the sick, and about this time the Thomsonian System of Practice came in vogue he was very much taken up with the simplicity of the theory and practice that he bought a Thomsonian Book and which gave him license to practice & made himself well acquainted with its theory and soon commenced practice on that system; at that time the General practice was calomel and bloodletting for everything which made great havoc with the people and consternation so the people were glad to adopt a more simple treatment and one that would not be so serious to the constitution; he rapidly gained in popular favor and in about 1827 moved to Chardon in what was called Kings row, finally settled in Kirtland, Ohio. Here his practice increased so much so that his fame was known all over the country, and was kept constantly busy. Members of the old school physicians would call on him and stop over night and interest themselves late in the night discussing the theory and practice of medicine as he was always ready and anxious to gain all information possible and add any and all improvements and additions to the restricted practice of the Thomsonian System of practice he was well liked by the old school (or allopath) physicians; he as well as others of the Thomsonians, by adding all known good remedies leaving out mercurial and other minerals, poisonous drugs, and bloodletting, gradually formulated the system called the Eclectic practice of medicine which is now so much esteemed above the old method and has caused great change in theory and practice of the old style or system or practice.²⁵