All disease is the effect of one general cause (a loss of the body's natural heat, caused by cold), and may be removed by one general remedy (steam baths, cayenne, and botanical emetics/purges to restore that heat).
Thomson’s foundational doctrine, stated in the 1822 first edition of his autobiographical Narrative and restated in his 1835 New Guide to Health: disease has one general cause (cold, or a loss of the body’s natural heat) and one general remedy (restoring that heat) (Thomson 1822; Thomson 1835). Young’s history, the standard scholarly account of American patent medicine, describes no controlled comparison run against this theory; the record it documents rests on Thomson’s self-reported recoveries and testimonial cures. The claim is treated here as refuted rather than merely untested, consistent with James Harvey Young’s assessment that the system built on it was not a sound system of medicine for the American people (Young 1961).
Appears in
Sources
- The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America before Federal Regulation (chapter 4, Samuel Thomson) — Young, James Harvey. The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America before Federal Regulation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961, chapter 4. Reproduced with permission of the author and publisher at Quackwatch, https://quackwatch.org/hx/tm/4-2/ (posted 29 April 2002).
- New Guide to Health; or, Botanic Family Physician — Thomson, Samuel. New Guide to Health; or, Botanic Family Physician. Containing a Complete System of Practice, upon a Plan Entirely New: with a Description of the Vegetables Made Use of, and Directions for Preparing and Administering Them, to Cure Disease. To Which Is Prefixed, A Narrative of the Life and Medical Discoveries of the Author. Boston: Printed for the Author, and sold by his General Agent, at the Office of the Boston Investigator, J. Q. Adams, Printer, 1835.
- A Narrative of the Life and Medical Discoveries of Samuel Thomson (1822), frontispiece portrait — Williams, H. (engraver). Frontispiece portrait of Samuel Thomson, captioned as botanist and noting his birth date of 9 February 1769, in Samuel Thomson, A Narrative of the Life and Medical Discoveries of Samuel Thomson; Containing an Account of His System of Practice, and the Manner of Curing Disease with Vegetable Medicine, upon a Plan Entirely New (Boston: Printed for the Author, by E. G. House, 1822).