Copeland's Cure Homeopathy and The War Between Conventional And Alternative Medicine

Chapter 1 "Like a Pleasant Dream" The land near Dexter, Michigan, flat in some places, rolling in others, was, in the early 1800s, one of the healthiest-looking regions in America. Bordering the Huron River and Mill Creek, the territory was fertile and green. Crystal-clear lakes, rapids, streams, and marshes were surrounded by cottonwood trees, sugar maples, black walnuts, elms, and ashes. Meadows overflowed with wildflowers. Sunfish, perch, and bulletheads flourished in the waters. Red squirrels, grey foxes, turkeys, and wild pigeons roamed the thick woods. Frances Holmes Copeland's ancestors had traveled from the Berkshires in Massachusetts to a region near Dexter in 1825, the very year it was founded by Judge Samuel William Dexter, who said he came to Michigan from New York "to get rid of the blue devil . . . which like a demon pursues those who have nothing to do." The town, in a county called Washtenaw, was laid out so that every house received sunlight. The early settlers lived in log cabins and grew corn and wheat, and later also barley, oats, clover, and apples. Sawmills soon abounded as lumber became an important business, and before long, the log cabins had sash windows, shingle roofs, and doors. The Potowatami and Mohican Indians lived nearbyfirst settling near the streamsand the people of Dexter eagerly exchanged liquor, tobacco, flour, or powder and lead for buckskins, beeswax, furs, and venison. By 1847, when Roscoe Pulaski Copeland arrived in Michigan on a covered wagon with his parents, Joseph and Alice, and ten siblings, from Dexter, Maine (which had been founded by Judge Dexter's father), the area was thriving. They first rented a log house near Pontiac, in southeast Michigan, and then another log house near what was known as Webster Township, in Washtenaw County. When twelve-year-old Roscoe and his family finally settled in Dexter in the fall of 1850, it was, as he later wrote in a letter, "a busy little village." The family bought an 80-acre farm with an old white frame house and a small barn on Joy Road. Nearby were flour mills"with farmers coming 20 to 40 miles with their wheat and other crops to sell"a foundry, several dry-goods stores, a blacksmith shop, a wagon shop, four hotels (the biggest one was the Eagle, until it burned down) and four saloons. Cows, pigs, and chickens freely roamed the dirt roads. There was a small brick schoolhouse, where the children were taught that the world was flat, and four churchesMethodist, Baptist, Congregational, and Catholic. The Copelands were Methodists, and their church, built in 1841, had the only bell tower in the village. "The church was full every Sunday," Roscoe wrote, and "after a two-hour sermon, there was a one-hour recess so neighbors could visit and have lunch and then a two-hour service again." The village had an apothecary housed in a two-story frame building on Main Street that also sold soaps, brushes, perfumes, paints, and varnishes. There was even a passenger train from Dexter to Detroit. Still, Roscoe wrote, "the first settlers had to go through many hardships . . . dig out the stumps and stonessplit rails to build fences and do all work with ox teams." He and his brothers slept in the unfinished upstairs of their house, and "the snow would blow in it and it was pretty cold for us boys the first winter." In 1850, the apothecary carried a multitude of medicinescastor oil, camphor, syrups, digestives, salves, opiates, herbals, roots, and tonics of all kinds. Tonics made ofRobins, Natalie is the author of 'Copeland's Cure Homeopathy and The War Between Conventional And Alternative Medicine', published 2005 under ISBN 9780375410901 and ISBN 0375410902.