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Eclectic physicians differed from both Homeopaths and Regulars. Eclectic physicians were the indirect descendants of the preexisting botanic movement known as Thomsonians. Unlike the Thomsonians, however they did not just provide herbal remedies. They incorporated herbal remedies into their practice, but they also worked as surgeons and utilized some Regular medical practices. As Thomsonianism was displaced by Homeopathy as the second largest medical sect, the remaining professional Thomsonsian practitioners allied with disgruntled Regulars and other medical reformers to form Eclectic medicine in 1830s and 1840s. Eclectics were a discordant group. They were extremely independent and predisposed to oppose any type governmental regulation. Unlike Homeopathy, Eclectics did not have a rigid medical orthodoxy. Eclecticism was true to its name; it was a mishmash of different types of physicians who practiced medicine as they saw fit.  Unlike traditional Thomsonians, Eclectics encouraged medical education, and they took a far more pragmatic approach to medical treatment.<ref>Kaufman, ''Homeopathy in America'', fn. 114.</ref> Eclectics saw themselves as reformers and dissidents from traditional European medical tradition. Eclectics rejected the four humoral theory and sought to end “the vast amount of human suffering, the anguish of soul, the premature decay, and death, resulting from this Paganism [Galenism] in medicine.”<ref> ''Transactions of the National Eclectic Medical Association for the Years 1870 and 1871'' (Geo. R. Yeates & Co., New York, 1872): 142.</ref> Their objections to Regular medicine were well-founded. Many Eclectics were originally trained in Regular medical schools or by Regular physicians, but became disenchanted with heroic medicine and shifted towards a more pragmatic approach to health care.

While Numbers argued that the development of the Irregular sects undermined the status of the Regulars, it is just as likely that the ineffectiveness of traditional Regular medicine and the ambiguous benefits of early Regular medical science spurred the expansion of these new sects.<ref>Numbers, ''Sickness'', 226.</ref> If Regulars had demonstrated to the public that their therapies were successful, patients might not have searched for alternatives. John B. Beck wrote a series of articles in 1847 and 1848 in the New York Journal of Medicine, which argued that heroic treatments such as blistering, mercury, and bloodletting were dangerous and potentially lethal, especially when employed by reckless physicians.<ref>Cited by Rothstein, ''American Physicians'', 180.</ref> Beck challenged the basic tenets and undermined Regular medicine in general.  The gradual shift away from heroic treatments could have also undermined public trust in Regular medicine. While heroic methods were dangerous, the public would not necessarily have known that. All they would see was a major shift in how they were treated by their doctors. Homeopathy, Eclecticism, and later Osteopathy and Christian Science, gained adherents because of the growing public skepticism of the efficacy of Regular medicine. Homeopaths presented the greatest threat to Regulars because they persuasively argued that their therapeutic methods were potentially more scientific than those of the Regulars and they obtained credibility comparable to Regular physicians.