Then Again: A fight between medical mainstream and renegade

At a time when physicians had a poor reputation, Samuel Thomson developed a large following for his Thomsonian medical system. Thomson, a farmer and botanist who lived for a time in Vermont, believed in the healing powers of plants. WikiMedia Commons image(“Then Again” is Mark Bushnell’s column about Vermont history.)
Samuel Thomson had every reason to hate doctors. They had killed his mother, he believed.
Thomson’s mother had fallen ill in 1790, perhaps suffering from tu