Revisiting Maverick Medical Sects: The Role of Identity in Comparing Homeopaths and Chiropractics‪.‬

The development of American medicine is of particular relevance to social historians as a window into and reflection of 18th and 19th century American social and cultural history; it is also commonly taken as an illustration of the professionalization processes. (1) Within this framework, the case of medical sectarianism, defined as practioners who developed outside the venue of the mainstream American Medical Association, has demonstrated, among other things, the tension between the extraordinary variance in medical practice, and the evolving political hegemony of a once fledgling medical association. Yet, underlying the many well-developed studies of sectarian groups such as the homeopaths, chiropractics, eclectics, water therapists, Christian scientists, and osteopaths, to name the strongest, certain tenets of conventional wisdom have dominated. These include the well-accepted notion that 'regular' and established medicine prevailed largely due to the preponderance of an increasingly accepted scientific medical model; the capability of regular physicians to dominate resources and institutionalizing mechanisms, such as schools, journals and hospitals; and an overall medical paradigm that increasingly won social support and professional legitimacy. (2) While condensed here, the reigning historical model explaining the dominance of regular physicians can be summed as a survival of the fittest theory in resource acquisition, institutional growth and affirmed paradigm. Some portions of the standard medical history model are irrefutable, such as the fact that mainstream medicine DID develop a more acceptable paradigm aligned with the scientific mindset of the day; its practitioners DID organize into an effective and vocal political majority (at least after fifty years of struggle); and its methods and outcomes did win social support as well as institutionalizing superiority in the advent of thousands of hospitals which emerged between 1880-1920, and the growing array of established medical schools.