French empiricism (Louis) and antebellum American medical reform

“Just how were the epistemological ideals attached to the Paris School supposed to uplift the regular medical profession in the United States? . . . First, by escaping the reign of rationalistic systems, the regular profession would shed those features of its knowledge and practice that had come most under attack, depriving antiorthodox critics of their targets. Second, by cultivating empirical observation of nature, regular physicians would improve the character of their ideas and practices, with the expectation that such betterment would win public favor. And, third, having undermined the attack on orthodox medicine, regular reformers would go on to use the ideals of empiricism and antirationalism to discredit their irregular competitors, thereby affirming the superiority of regular medicine in ways consonant with American values. . . . The target of critics’ most violent denunciations was orthodox heroic therapy, aggressive depletion by bloodletting and mineral purgatives such as calomel and tartar emetic. . . . Regular physicians took up an empiricist faith akin to that of their assailants and used it to launch a counterattack against them [Thomsonism, Eclecticism, Homeopathy]. . . . The crusade against the spirit of system thus became a crusade against alternative healers and outright quacks as well. The ideal of empiricism gave regular physicians a powerful weapon for assailing their rivals without offending the epistemological sensibilities of the American public” (Harley, 231-32, 234, 237).