allv followed the Hippocratic injunction “First, do not harm”rnand refused to worship abstract Science. As a result, thernclergy—an important interest group in 19th-centurv Americarn—sympathized with them. As the president of the New YorkrnState Medical Society noted in 1844, “We feel severely therninfluence of the clergy as operating against our collective interest.”rnOne prominent pastor, for example, had called thernmedical establishment “an expensive vampire upon society.”rnHow the “regulars” came to crush the homeopaths andrnother competitors, and penalize patients in the process, is a storyrnof deception and manipulation, of industry self-interest andrnstate power. The organized regulars or allopaths first set out torndemonstrate that the homeopaths were ill-educated and thereforernshould be shunned, but that was difficult to substantiaternbecause most of them were eon’erts from orthodox medicine.rn^—y^n law, a professionrn^^/ with much freerrnf _ ^ ^ entry, some lawyersrnget rich, others make middle incomes,rnand others have to go into another linernof work. But thanks to almost a centuryrnand a half of AMA statism, even terriblerndoctors get lavish incomes.rnOne was William H. Holcomb. When he graduated fromrnthe University of Pennsylvania, he worried, as he wrote in hisrnmemoirs, that physicians “were blind men, striking in the darkrnat the disease or the patient—lucky if [we] killed the maladyrn[instead of] the man.” One da’ Holcombe was called by thernparents of a seriously ill child, whom Moleombe subsequentlyrnset about to bleed. Bloodletting was considered especiallyrnimportant for children, and the younger the child, the morernblood was to be drawn. But the mother clutched the babyrnto her breast and cried, “The blood is the life—it shall not berntaken away.” When the benighted father agreed, Holeombern”explained to him candidly, and with some display of professionalrndignity, that my opinion was worth more than his or hisrnwife’s.”rnHoleombe left and returned the next day, expecting to findrna dead baby, histead, the child—who had been treated by arnhomeopath—was playing in the yard. Holcombe later wroternthat “after having blistered, bled, and drugged my patients forrntwenty-seven years, I determined to find some more humanernmode.” He was charged with violating “medical ethics,” whosernfirst principle was: “A physician . . . should cautiously guardrnagainst whatever may injure the general respectability of hisrnprofession.”rnEventually, homeopathy became almost as popular as allopathy,rnespecially in the Northeast and Midwest. Many businessrnleaders favored it and funded free dispensaries for the poor.rnThis was made possible by the free market. From the early partrnof the century until 1850, state laws interfering in medicalrnpractice were gradually repealed. The AMA was founded to reversernthe trend.rnNew York, for example, got rid of nearh- all of its criminal legislationrnregarding medicine, forbidding only malpractice andrnimmoral conduct by physicians. As one state senator said, “Thernpeople of this state have been bled long enough in their bodiesrnand pockets.” He called on them to demand medical freedom,rnin the tradition of “the men of the Revolution.”rnMost Americans were interested in nonorthodox treatmentsrnand believed they should be allowed to compete in thernmarketplace. Organized medicine claimed people were beingrnfooled. But as Harris Livermore Coulter explains in his extraordinaryrn1969 study of the AMA’s founding, “People wererndeserting orthodox medicine . . . not out of ignorance, but outrnof knowledge of regular practice and consequent dislike of it.”rnAn 1848 AMA convention speaker laughed at the “mass ofrnthe community” who thought there was “a wide difference” betweenrna physician’s “Apothecary Medicine and our nativernmedical plants.” The first “they regard as almost uniformh’ poisonousrn—the other, as harmless and healthful.” He called thisrn”an absurd idea,” although virtually none of the official treatmentsrnof the time is still in use and many drugs from our “nati’rne medical plants” have proven to be effective.rnWorse than absurd was the effect on doctors’ incomes.rn”Quackery [i.e., unofficial treatments b- unofficial practitioners]rnoccasions a large pecuniary loss to us,” lamented an 1846rneditorial in the New York journal of Medicine. Quacks “too frequentlyrntriumph and grow rich, where wiser and better menrnscarceh’ escape starvation.” lb the medical dean at the Universityrnof Michigan, the specter of free competition was a “discouragement”rnto “graduates in scientific medicine,” renderingrntheir work “arduous and unremunerative.”rnIn the golden age, “the doctor could tell his patient” anything,rnincluding, “‘gape, sinner, and swallow,'” wrote J.H. Nuttingrnin 1853. Then, with his “grave look of profound wisdom,”rnthe doctor had a “reputation for almost superhuman skill.”rnDoctors, wrote the journal of the Massachusetts Medical Societyrnin 1848, should be “looked upon b’ the mass of mankindrnwith a veneration almost superstitious.” Instead, there was publicrncontempt.rnA Michigan physician reported that the profession had “fallenrnso low that there are few^ to do it reverence. Quackery andrnempiricism in diverse forms like the locusts and lice of Egypt,rnswarm over our state and are eating out the very vitals and suckingrnthe life blood” of doctors, some of whom said they were denouncedrnon the street for bumping off their patients.rnOrganized physicians argued that popular reputation meantrnnothing. In fact, claimed the journals, a good standing in thernprofession usually meant a bad one with the public. At thernsame time there was the complaint—echoed by eartelizers tornthis da—that there were simply too main doctors. “The profession”rnis “crowded,” argued one journal, vith “unworthy andrnignorant men” who ought to be prohibited from practicing.rnThe regulars also villified their opponents with such works asrnOliver Wendell I lolmes’ Uomeopatlix and Us Kindred Delusionsrn(1842).rnIn 1849, the AMAyyorried that simply outlawing competitionrnwould not override the public’s per’crsity. The only longtermrn”remedy against Quackery, is medical Reform, by whichrna higher standard of medical education shall be secured.” Asrnpart of this drive, homeopathic physicians were expelled fromrnstate and local medical societies, even if the- were trained in of-rn18/CHRONICLESrnrnrn