Introduction to Ellingwood's Materia Medica.

Second Edition
1919

Scanned version copyright © 2001-2015 Michael Moore. Used with permission.
This is the .html version. You'll find the .pdf version on Michael's site.

Ellingwood was a hard-working Chicago physician with many years experience, and an acknowledged expert in ob/gyn medicine. What we would now call "a Networker", he was a vocal advocate of women physicians, and edited Ellingwood's Therapeutist for many years. His brand of Eclectic Medicine, like a Chicago-Style pizza, differed a bit from the Cincinnati style ("smothered, covered and chopped" - a regional joke) as mentored by Scudder, Lloyd, Fyfe and Felter.

This is a serious medical text from the early 20th century, it was intended for practicing physicians and surgeons, and can be hair-raising at times. Remember: No antibiotics, no cardiac monitors, no CAT-scans, no blood-glucose stick tests, no sulfa drugs, no machines that go "beep"...old fashioned physicianing when heart monitoring was done artfully with a stethoscope and physical diagnosis, not lab tests, was King. There is good now, there was good then...but then, you KNOW that already.

These files are organized in the same manner as in Ellingwood's original text. I used to hate this format of his, but I have come to understand a bit better why he listed them by organ systems, even though most herbs have multisystemic effects. Several section I deleted as they dealt solely with chemicals, but in the sections that compare herbs and drugs/chemicals, I retained all the material.

-Michael Moore.

We get another classic text, courtesy of Michael Moore, both as .html files (on this site) and as .pdf files (on his site). Thank you, Michael!

A facsimile reprint of the original is available from Eclectic Medical Publications.

As always, you need to know your plants before you use information this old.

--Henriette.

The American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy, 1919, was written by Finley Ellingwood, M.D.
It was scanned by Michael Moore for the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine.