Transcription contributed by Martie Callihan 15 December 2004

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The medical system of the noted New England empiric, Samuel Thompson, was introduced into Warren County about 1826. It was termed the Botanic system, or Thompsonian system. Steaming a patient for the purpose of producing perspiration was such an important branch of the practice that the followers were frequently called steam doctors. They were also popularly termed herb or root doctors. The practitioners purchased Dr. Thompson's "New Guide to Health, or Botanic Family Physician, containing a complete system of practice upon a plan entirely new," with a patent right to the system, and, without any previous course of study, they were prepared for the practice of medicine. The system was extensively introduced in Ohio between the years 1825 and 1835. Dr. Thompson's book and patent right to the system were sold at $20, and the publishers of the book at Columbus, Ohio, put forth the statement that Thompson's agents disposed of 4,319 copies in three and a half years preceding 1832, and that Dr. Thompson's share of the proceeds of his Western agency for that time was $17,500. The most important article used in Dr. Thompson's practice was lobelia, which he called the emetic herb, and the medicinal virtues of which he claimed to have discovered. The following extract from the " Botanic Physician" gives the doctor's prescription of a stock of medicines for a family: "One ounce of the emetic herb, two ounces of cayenne, one-half pound bay-berry root bark in powder, one pound poplar bark, one pint of the rheumatic drops. This stock will be sufficient for a family for one year, with such articles as they can easily procure themselves when wanted, and will enable them to cure any disease which a family of common size may be afflicted with during that time. The expenses will be small and much better than to employ a doctor, and have his extravagant bill to pay."It is impossible to learn at this

The earlier regular doctors were of the heroic school, and made liberal use of the lancet and calomel. In their treatment, they relied on purging, bleeding, blistering and salivation. The quantities of calomel sold by druggists to some physicians of the last generation, as shown by accounts still in existence, are sufficient to startle the modern scientific practitioner.

The medical system of Hahnemann was not introduced into the United States until 1825, and it did not have practitioners in Warren County until twenty-five years later. Thomas W. Cuscaden, M. D., who died at Lebanon in 1861, aged thirty years, was probably the first resident homoeopathist in the county. Of recent years, there have been six or seven homoeopathic physicians practicing in the county.

The Eclectic School of Medicine has never had numerous representatives in Warren. Mrs. K. L. V. Anton, M. D., of this school, who commenced the practice with her husband, James Anton, M. D., at Lebanon in 1859, was the first female physician with a diploma in the county.