Background
Wooster Beach was born in 1794 in Trumbull, Connecticut.
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Wooster Beach was born in 1794 in Trumbull, Connecticut.
Wooster Beach received the usual scanty education of those who then attended the rural schools. Late in his teens he was apprenticed to Dr. Jacob Tidd, a German herb collector and physician of Hunterdon County, New Jersey, with whom he remained until Tidd's death in 1825. He then moved to New York and matriculated at the College of Physicians and Surgeons.
At the age of thirty-one Beach began to write prolifically in many fields of medical thought, and though not always original he was unusual in his defiance of authority and in the relentless energy with which he urged his views. He opposed blood-letting and purging with mercurials, and preached that most diseases would respond more readily to nature's remedies, such as herbs and roots. In 1833 he published a three-volume work, The American Practice of Medicine, which was, as expressed in the subtitle, "A Treatise on the Character, Causes, Symptoms, Morbid Appearances, and Treatment of the Diseases of Men, Women and Children of All Climates, on Vegetable or Botanical Principles; Containing Also a Treatise on Materia Medica and Pharmacy, with an Appendix on Cholera, etc. " This textbook had a large circulation and is noteworthy for being the first systematic compendium of medical practise published in America in which pathological changes were correlated with disease processes. Copies of the work were sent to many crowned heads of Europe, and the author received much regal praise, all of which was duly printed in the second edition. There was an abridgment of the treatise in 1846, which passed through at least fourteen editions. The last edition of The American Practice (1852) brought heavy losses on the author because of the large number of colored plates illustrating pathological conditions.
One may also mention Beach's Treatise on Pulmonary Consumption, Phthisis Pulmonalis, with Remarks on Bronchitis (1840), and An Improved System of Midwifery (1851). At least a dozen other less important medical works also came from his pen. In addition to Beach's medical activities he for many years published two broadsheets, the Telescope and the Ishmaelite, and through these channels he had an outlet for many of his novel views and speculations on religion, sociology, and medicine.
In the heat of argument a friend once referred to Beach as an "eclectic. " He replied quickly, "You have given me the term which I have wanted; I am an Eclectic. " So enamoured was he of the epithet that in 1836 he founded an Eclectic Medical Journal, and in 1855 became president of the National Eclectic Medical Association. Beach emphasized early the value of hospital practise for those who would keep abreast of medical progress. In 1828 he opened the United States Infirmary on Eldredge St. , New York, where he had a large out-patient clinic. He was the founder of the New York Medical Academy which later became the Reformed Medical Society of the United States. In 1830 he helped to establish a medical department in the new university at Worthington, Ohio.
Beach had brilliant flashes but even his best contributions were marred by a vain boasting and exaggeration. His protests against over-dosing with mercury, though they served a useful purpose, were untruthful in grossly exaggerating the harmful effects of that metal, and this unfortunate tendency is to be found in many of his controversial writings. His logic was often faulty and he allowed himself to be carried away by absurd prejudices. To the end of his life he refused to use a stethoscope, but he employed direct ear-to-chest auscultation. Wooster Beach died in New York in 1868.
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Wooster Beach was a member of the New York County Medical Society; president of the National Eclectic Medical Association.
In 1823, Wooster Beach married Eliza de Grove.