Eighteenth-century medicine

Eighteenth-century medicine had gone overboard in its reliance on highly
speculative theoretical constructs as the basis for therapeutic decisions, suffering
an imbalance that encouraged a search for more empirical approaches. The
increasingly heroic therapeutic interventions that the theories encouraged likewise
created a backlash, and the resultant desire to place more trust in the
body’s natural restorative powers was reinforced by the appeals of Romantic
philosophers and poets to return to nature as the source of all truth and beauty.
Further, the quickening pace of professionalization of American medicine that
was evident by 1800 generated opposition. Eighteenth-century medical practice
had been only loosely organized and regulated, an activity in which just about
anyone was free to participate.