Self-Help Books

1736 - Institutional Event

Today’s bookstores offer shelves full of medical advice books for people seeking alternatives to doctor visits and prescription drugs. The treatments may be new, but self-help books aren’t. They’ve been guiding North Carolina for hundreds of years. The following are excerpts from some popular ones.

 Dr. John Tennant published the first American home medicine manual, Every Man His Own Doctor; or, The Poor Planter’s Physician (1736). He wrote that:
“[Many people would be] glad of Assistance, if they did not think the Remedy near as bad as the Disease: For our Doctors are commonly so exorbitant in their Fees, whether they kill or cure, that the Patient had rather trust to his Constitution, than run the Risque of beggaring his family.”

 The Indian Physician (1828) by Dr. Jonas Rishel advocated herbal and household remedies in order to:
“...avoid the enormous charges made by physicians for services and medicines which are in themselves more injurious in many cases to the patient than were they to let nature have its course without the interruption of impregnated doses!”

  Manufacturers of herbal remedies often published their own manuals. In The Herb Doctor and Medicine Man (late 1800’s), the Indiana Herb Company promoted herbal healing and, of course, their own products. The introduction asked:
“Why Use Poisonous Drugs when nature in her wisdom and beneficence has provided, in her great vegetable laboratories—the fields and forest—relief for most of the ills of mankind?”

 The People’s Pharmacy (1999) was written by Durham authors and radio-show hosts Joe and Teresa Graedon. They combined scientific research and accumulated folk wisdom to offer advice on using home and herbal remedies safely. Their warning:
“With 60 million people taking herbs and dietary supplements as well as prescription drugs and over-the-counter remedies, the potential for dangerous interactions is enormous.”

Sampling of early self help books.