“D.R. THOMAS became professor of Chemistry. He was a native of London and the son of a Congregationalist minister. He had enjoyed the instruction of the ablest teachers of surgery and medicine; among them Abernethy, W.W. Sleight, Sir Ashley Cooper, and Sir Charles Bell. He possessed a restless temper, and was an enthusiast in politics and religion.
“Hopeless of any reform in medical procedures at home, he had come to America, only to find matters worse. He would have returned but for his strong Republican proclivities. For a time he made his home in Richmond, where he maintained a theological controversy with the Rev. Alexander Campbell. He removed to Illinois, and was elected president and professor in the Franklin Medical College. Resigning these appointments, he returned to the East.
“Fond of the study of medicine, he had become disgruntled with the practice, and with the routinism of the men who made of it a mere trade by which to gain a livelihood. In all his opinions, medical and philosophic, he was an eclectic. He insisted upon a radical reform in the organization, theories, and practice of the medical profession. He strenuously denounced the practice of the Medical Colleges all over the United States, in graduating men as physicians whose attendance at lectures was merely nominal, who had pursued the study of medicine for an insufficient time, and were shamefully illiterate in their general scholarship.
“He was appointed a professor [at the S&E Medical College] with permission to select his own department, and made choice of Chemistry as being the pursuit most neglected. He also, at the request of the trustees, delivered the lectures upon anatomy, but only till a professor should be appointed.”
Note that I have no means of checking the sources of Wilder, as he gave no references to this account. The comments on the political activities of John Thomas are not elsewhere substantiated!
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One