User:Parkwells/Eclectic Medicine Institute

The Eclectic Medicine Institute (EMI) was founded in Worthington, Ohio in 1833, by Thomson]], who believed that the field needed professionalization and training. The institute was part of a movement in the Midwest to establish what some called American medicine and others eclectic medicine, relying on ethnobotany, pharmacy, herbalism and pharmacognosy, with associations to the vitalist tradition. It was opposed to contemporary practices of bloodletting and use of metals such as mercury. As a result of the Resurrection Riot in 1839, the town evicted the school. EMI was re-established at Cincinnati, Ohio, where it opened for classes in the winter of 1841. It operated there until 1939, when its last class graduated. Medical studies in the United States became regularized under a different tradition, putting increasing pressure of such institutions as EMI. The Flexner Report, issued to improve and standardize medical training in the United States, required curriculum and practices that the college could not accommodate. It finally closed in 1939, after years of declining enrollment during the Great Depression.