Joseph Rodes Buchanan
Joseph Rodes Buchanan (1814—1899) was the second dean of the Eclectic Medical Institute in Cincinnati, serving from 1850 to 1856. He was a charismatic figure whose ambitions for eclectic reform medicine coexisted with pseudoscientific theories — psychometry, sarcognomy, and phrenological clairvoyance — that had nothing to do with botanical therapeutics. His deanship was marked by institutional crises: he introduced a chair of homeopathy, launched a financially ruinous free-school scheme, and was eventually expelled for misusing tuition funds. After his removal, he resisted medical licensing laws and spent his final years in California writing on religion. Buchanan illustrates the vulnerability of reform movements to charismatic leaders whose personal enthusiasms outrun their institutional responsibilities.
Life and Context
Buchanan entered the eclectic movement as, by his contemporaries’ own description, a medical philosopher and speculative reasoner who had “obtained no eminence as a practitioner of medicine” (Haller, 1994). Haller’s Medical Protestants (1994) documents how he joined the faculty of the Eclectic Medical Institute in March 1846 and dominated its affairs for ten years as chair of physiology, then professor of institutes of medicine and medical jurisprudence, and finally dean from 1850 to 1856 (Haller, 1994). He was one of eight deans who directed the college over its ninety-four-year history, and his tenure falls squarely in the “turbulent years” of the institute’s early life (Haller, 1999).
As a young medical student, Buchanan announced the discovery of two new sciences: psychometry, which he claimed demonstrated the influence of clairvoyance on cerebral tissues, and sarcognomy, which sought to determine the true relationship between mind and body (Haller, 1994). These were extensions of the phrenological tradition of Franz Joseph Gall and drew on the mesmeric tradition of animal magnetism. Haller’s account in Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection (2010) situates Buchanan as an American successor to Gall who extended animal magnetism into the claim that human beings exuded a “nerve aura” that could be detected and read by sensitives (Haller, 2010).
In the fall of 1854, a typical EMI class of 280 students — including sixteen women — attended lectures where Buchanan and seven professors taught subjects including phrenology and mesmerism alongside standard medical subjects (Haller, 1999). He composed the “Song of the Reformers,” sung to the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a student banquet around 1850, framing eclectic medicine as a battle against death under nature’s guidance (Haller, 1999).
Core Contributions
Vision for Eclectic Reform
Buchanan articulated four objectives for eclectic medicine: renovation of the medical profession, public enlightenment on reform practice, accumulation of statistics demonstrating eclectic superiority, and attainment of legal equality with allopaths (Haller, 1994). The fourth objective — legal equality — became a lifelong preoccupation. Late in life, Buchanan proposed that every physician signing a death certificate be required to state his school of practice, arguing this would allow the public to judge comparative outcomes and would “weed out quacks” more effectively than licensing laws .
Buchanan placed eclectic reform medicine in the context of world history, comparing its leaders Beach, Morrow, and Jones to Daniel Boone, Lewis, and Clark in opening the West (Haller, 1994).
Institutional Disruptions
The establishment of a Chair of Homoeopathy at the Eclectic Medical Institute in 1849 led to the resignations of Alexander H. Baldridge and James H. Oliver, and the forced retirement of Wooster Beach, creating what Haller calls the first critical crossroads in the institute’s history (Haller, 1994). Wilder’s account confirms the chair of homeopathy and the resulting faculty resignations, and notes that the death of Dr. Morrow left the institution without its founding leadership (Wilder, 1901) (Wilder, 1904).
In 1852, Buchanan inaugurated a free-school movement, renaming the institute the Central Free Medical College of America, which nearly wrecked the school’s financial integrity. Faculty members Freeman and Sanders left in disgust (Haller, 1994). The scheme collapsed within four years; the 1855—56 session reinstated fees and dropped the “Central Free” name (Haller, 1994).
He was also co-founder, with Morrow, of the Eclectic Medical Journal, the central professional organ of the eclectic school from 1849 onward (Wilder, 1904).
Buchanan also proposed incorporating homeopathy at the EMI in 1849. His lobbying led to the appointment of Storm Rosa and Horatio Gatchell as homeopathic professors, but at the close of the 1849—50 session the faculty voted to abolish both chairs, forcing Rosa to move to Cleveland (Haller, 1994).
Expulsion and Later Career
Buchanan was expelled from the EMI in April 1856 after he and four allies issued seven thousand dollars in new stock without notice to the trustees, stockholders, or treasurer — an attempt to shift the institution’s voting majority to his faction. Haller’s Profile of Alternative Medicine confirms that the expulsion rested on two grounds: personal use of tuition funds and participation in a cabal to install a fraudulent board (Haller, 1999). The District Court of Cincinnati upheld the expulsion in October 1856 (Haller, 1994). He then filed to create the Eclectic College of Medicine in Hamilton County, which opened in October 1856 with the faculty who had followed him; the two rival institutions eventually reunited in 1859 (minus Buchanan) under the title Eclectic Medical and College Journal (Haller, 1994). In his latter years, he actively resisted the passage of medical licensing laws and, after moving to California, spent his final years preparing Primitive Christianity, which he claimed was based on psychometric “messages” received from George Washington in 1855, from St. John at a Boston ladies’ society, and from Moses in 1891 (Haller, 1994).
Legacy and Influence
[GAP: Explanation of Buchanan’s significance and critique of his deanship, lacking citation.] Wilder, himself a committed eclectic, observed that at certain periods the reformed medical cause suffered worse from unspecified causes than from persecution by open adversaries (Wilder, 1901).
After Buchanan’s removal, Robert S. Newton stabilized the institute, and John Milton Scudder’s subsequent long deanship (1861—1894) brought the school through its most productive period.
Scholarly Assessment
Haller’s Medical Protestants (1994) devotes an entire chapter to Buchanan under the title “Buchanan’s Feuds and Fads,” which accurately captures the historical judgment. Haller frames eclectic medicine itself as “less a school of thought than a temperament, disposition, or attitude” at mid-century (Haller, 1994), and Buchanan’s career illustrates the liabilities of that openness. In A Profile of Alternative Medicine in America (1999), Haller again places Buchanan at the center of the EMI’s early institutional life, emphasizing that his pseudoscientific interests in phrenology and mesmerism coexisted with legitimate institutional administration (Haller, 1999).
Wilder’s 1901 and 1904 editions of History of Medicine treat Buchanan with notable restraint, recording the homeopathy crisis and institutional disruptions without the personal denunciation found in Haller. Wilder was himself a participant in the eclectic movement and had reason to minimize internal scandals, though he is frank that infighting caused more damage than external persecution (Wilder, 1901).
Speculative Theories
Sarcognomy and Psychometry
Haller reports that Buchanan coined the word “sarcognomy” in 1842 while affiliated with the American Medical Institute in Cincinnati (Haller, 1994). Derived from the Greek sarx (flesh) and gnoma (opinion), the term meant “a knowledge of the flesh, or recognition of its character and relations” (Haller, 1994).
Psychometry appeared as the final piece of Buchanan’s system (Haller, 1994). He first published on it in his Journal of Man (1849) and later incorporated it into Outlines of Lectures on the Neurological System of Anthropology (1854) (Haller, 1994). By “psychometry” — from psyche (soul) and metron (measure) — Buchanan meant soul-measuring: the assessment of an individual’s psychic or soul capacity (Haller, 1994).
Buchanan organized a demonstration in 1849 in which 42 out of 130 EMI students, along with five faculty members including John King, signed an attestation that they experienced the effects of medicines merely by holding them, wrapped in paper, for five to twenty minutes (Haller, 1994).
His vitalist philosophy opposed Cartesian materialism and Huxley’s scientific materialism: Buchanan posited the pneuma as the essence of vitality and aligned himself with van Helmont, Stahl, John Hunter, Harvey, and Bichat (Haller, 1994).
Buchanan also renamed animal magnetism “nervauric treatment” to distance it from the stigma attached to mesmerism in orthodox circles, arguing that regular medicine had “shamefully neglected and discouraged therapeutic magnetism, because it could be practiced by persons without a medical education” (Haller, 1994).
See Also
- eclectic-medical-institute
- wooster-beach
- thomas-vaughan-morrow
- John Milton Scudder
- robert-s-newton
- john-king
- phrenology
- animal-magnetism
- eclectic-medicine
- medical-licensing