126 SOME AMERICAN MEDICAL BOTANISTS 



materia medica. Spaulding, of New York; 

 Hewson, of Philadelphia; Ives, of New Haven; 

 and De Butts, of Baltimore, were his co-workers. 

 Bigelow, disregarding the double or triple names 

 in the English pharmacopoeias, let Gentiana 

 appear without the " lutea ' or " radix ' and 

 treated all names in the same way. " This simple 

 nomenclature continues to be used in this country 

 and seems likely to supersede all others, at least 

 so long as medicine continues to be made a mys- 

 tery, and pharmacy a trade, and therapeutics 

 almost a pseudo-science." 



Bigelow at middle age was visiting physician 

 to the Massachusetts General Hospital, was Pro- 

 fessor of Materia Medica at Harvard, had an 

 enormous consulting practice, wrote frequently 

 for the press, and keenly worked for reform in 

 the practice of medicine. He had clear vision, 

 and for many years, in season and out of season, 

 insisted particularly upon the self-limited char- 

 acter of disease. In 1835, when he read an 

 address with this title before the Massachusetts 

 Medical Society, the effect was instantaneous and 

 immense. O. W. Holmes says, " This remark- 

 able essay has more influence on medical prac- 

 tice than any other similar brief treatise." The 

 paper is bound up in a little volume entitled 

 Nature in Disease and Other Writings, 1854. 



