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Nineteenth-century medicine was characterized by constant competition among three major medical sects: Regulars, Eclectics, and Homeopaths.<ref>Sandvick, Clinton (2016)<i>''Defining the Practice of Medicine: Licensing American Physicians, 1870-1907.'' </i>unpublished manuscript.</ref> Each of these medical sects not only meaningfully disagreed on how to treat illnesses and diseases, but sought to portray their type of practice as the most effective and scientific. Arguably none of the three sects was superior to the others, but their adherents concluded that their sectarian beliefs were better than their competitors.

Before 1800, western medical therapeutics changed remarkably little over the last 2,000 years.<ref> Charles E. Rosenburg, “The Therapeutic Revolution: Medicine, Meaning and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America,” in ''The Therapeutic Revolution: Essays in the Social History of American Medicine'', ed. Moris J. Vogel and Charles E. Rosenburg, (Philadephia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), 3.</ref> Traditional Regular physicians (also known as Allopaths) might have viewed themselves as learned professionals, but Galen’s 2,000-year-old “four humoral theory” was the basis for their therapeutic methods. “The body was seen, metaphorically, as a system of dynamic interactions with its environment,” and physicians believed that specific diseases played an insignificant role in the system. During the nineteenth century, this understanding of the human body came under assault because it was not effective in treating human illnesses.

As the Regulars’ monopoly over medicine waned during the nineteenth century, numerous medical sects quickly developed. In time, these dissenters became known as Irregulars. In some ways, these medical sects were pushed and pulled by the same fervor that led to the creation of many new and unique Christian faiths during the Second Great Awakening. Like those assorted faiths, some of these sects were little more than fads and disappeared quickly after their birth. However, two Irregular medical sects, the Eclectics and the Homeopaths, became formidable competitors to the traditional Regulars during the nineteenth century. Several unorthodox medical sects arose because they believed that heroic medical practice of the Regulars was extremely dangerous.<ref>Martin Kaufman, ''Homeopathy in America: The Rise and Fall of a Medical Heresy'' (Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1971), 23.</ref>

[[File:Samuel_Hahnemann_1841.jpg|thumbnail|255px|left|Samuel Christian Hahnemann in 1841]] Homeopaths in many ways resembled Regulars. Like Regulars, they were initially trained by experienced physicians as apprentices, but eventually they developed their own medical schools. They created local, state, and national medical societies. Homeopathy replaced the earlier herbalist sect known as Thomsonianism to become the most prominent unorthodox medical practice in America. Samuel Christian Hahnemann, a German physician and theorist, developed the underlying theories and medical practices of Homeopathy in 1790s. Hahnemann established a medical system based on the principle of similia and the law of infinitesimals.<ref> Kaufman, ''Homeopathy in America'', 23-24.</ref> The principle of similia held that physicians should treat patients with drugs that created the same symptoms in a healthy person that were being exhibited by an illness. Hahnemann created the law of the infinitesimal and he argued that the smaller and more agitated the dose of medicine, the more potent it became.

While Hahnemann’s therapeutic theories were not particularly sound, Homeopathic patients benefited from their doctors’ willingness to allow the body to combat illness without much interference. Additionally, the drugs advocated by Homeopathic physicians were extremely diluted and did not actively harm their patients unlike Regulars. In essence, Homeopaths allowed their patients’ bodies to heal themselves and they did not further endanger their patients with bleedings and purgings as the Regulars did.

[[File: Samuel_Thomson.jpg|thumbnail|250px|left|American herbalist Samuel Thomson creator of the Thomsonian System.]]