BENJAMIN COLBY

Colby was probably the most popular and readable of all the followers of Samuel Thomson (1769-1843). Thomson himself made a living as a

practitioner ("Root Doctor" was his preferred term), and by selling, for $50, the "Patent" to practice as he did...this included books and some

training. A true populist, he refused to sell "patents" to trained physicians. After his death, his followers wrote books for popular and

home use and, as if early Franciscan herbalists, vowed to make Every Man and Woman Their Own Doctor. When George Washington lay dying, the country's best physicians, from Harvard and Yale, proceeded to kill him by draining 3 QUARTS of blood, giving him several doses of Calomel

(mercury sub-chloride) and covering his body with blisters. Into this milieu came Thomson, who believed that all health derived from life

energy, and nearly all diseases derived from congenital, environmental and life-style compromises to that life energy. Although both he and his

early followers were persecuted in a number of highly publicized trials, the Thomsonians flourished everywhere...a sane and radical

answer to Medicine Gone Mad. Colby delineated the basic practices and philosophy of Thomsonian Medicine in this widely sold (and pirated)

book,