James Martin Peebles
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/30/20
James Martin Peebles
Born: March 23, 1822, Whitingham, Vermont
Died: February 15, 1922 (aged 99), Los Angeles, California
Occupation: Physician, writer
James Martin Peebles (March 23, 1822 – February 15, 1922) was an American physician, prolific author and organizer of many professional, medical, and religious associations.
Biography
Peebles was born in Whitingham, Vermont.[1] Peebles was a member of the Indian Peace Commission of 1868,...
The Indian Peace Commission (also the Sherman, Taylor, or Great Peace Commission) was a group formed by an act of Congress on July 20, 1867, in order "to establish peace with certain hostile Indian tribes." It was composed of four civilians and initially three—later four—military leaders. Throughout 1867 and 1868, they negotiated with a number of tribes, including the Comanche, Kiowa, Arapaho, Kiowa-Apache, Cheyenne, Lakota, Navajo, Snake, Sioux, and Bannock. The treaties that resulted were designed to move the tribes to reservations, to "civilize" and assimilate these native peoples, and transition their societies from a nomadic to an agricultural existence.
As language and cultural barriers affected the negotiations, it remains doubtful whether the tribes were fully informed of the provisions they agreed to. The Commission approached the tribes as a representative democracy, while the tribes made decisions via consensus: Indian chiefs functioned as mediators and councilors, without the authority to compel obedience from others. The Commission acted as a representative of the United States Congress, but while Congress had authorized and funded the talks themselves, it did not fund any of the stipulations that the commissioners were empowered to negotiate. Once treaties were agreed to, the government was slow to act on some, and rejected others. Even for those treaties that were ratified, promised benefits were often delayed, or not provided at all. Congress was not compelled to support actions taken in its name, and eventually stopped the practice of treaty making with tribes in 1871.
The Indian Peace Commission was generally seen as a failure, and violence had reignited even before it was disbanded in October 1868. Two official reports were submitted to the federal government, ultimately recommending that the U.S. cease recognizing tribes as sovereign nations, refrain from making treaties with them, employ military force against those who refused to relocate to reservations, and move the Bureau of Indian Affairs from the Department of the Interior to the Department of War. The system of treaties eventually deteriorated to the point of collapse, and a decade of war followed the commission's work. It was the last major commission of its kind...
Their work was organized around three main goals in an effort to solve the "Indian question":
1. to remove, if possible, the causes of war;
2. to secure, as far as practicable, our frontier settlements and the safe building of our railroads looking to the Pacific;
3. to suggest or inaugurate some plan for the civilization of the Indians.
-- Indian Peace Commission, by Wikipedia
United States Consul at Trebizond, Turkey,...
A consul is an official representative of the government of one state in the territory of another, normally acting to assist and protect the citizens of the consul's own country, and to facilitate trade and friendship between the people of the two countries.
A consul is distinguished from an ambassador, the latter being a representative from one head of state to another, but both have a form of immunity. There can be only one ambassador from one country to another, representing the first country's head of state to that of the second, and their duties revolve around diplomatic relations between the two countries; however, there may be several consuls, one in each of several major cities, providing assistance with bureaucratic issues to both the citizens of the consul's own country traveling or living abroad and to the citizens of the country in which the consul resides who wish to travel to or trade with the consul's country.
A less common usage is an administrative consul, who takes a governing role and is appointed by a country that has colonised or occupied another...
Consuls of various ranks may have specific legal authority for certain activities, such as notarizing documents. As such, diplomatic personnel with other responsibilities may receive consular letters patent (commissions). Aside from those outlined in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, there are few formal requirements outlining what a consular official must do. For example, for some countries, consular officials may be responsible for the issue of visas; other countries may limit "consular services" to providing assistance to compatriots, legalization of documents, etc. Nonetheless, consulates proper will be headed by consuls of various ranks, even if such officials have little or no connection with the more limited sense of consular service.
Activities of a consulate include protecting the interests of their citizens temporarily or permanently resident in the host country, issuing passports; issuing visas to foreigners and public diplomacy. However, the principal role of a consulate lies traditionally in promoting trade—assisting companies to invest and to import and export goods and services both inwardly to their home country and outward to their host country. Although it is not admitted publicly, consulates, like embassies, may also gather intelligence information from the assigned country...
Consulates are subordinate posts of their home country's diplomatic mission (typically an embassy, in the capital city of the host country). Diplomatic missions are established in international law under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, while consulates-general and consulates are established in international law under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Formally, at least within the US system, the consular career (ranking in descending order: consul-general, consul, vice-consul, honorary consul) forms a different hierarchy from the diplomats in the strict sense. However, it is common for individuals to be transferred from one hierarchy to the other, and for consular officials to serve in a capital carrying out strictly consular duties within the consular section of a diplomatic post; e.g., within an embassy...
In the social life of 19th-century Lübeck as depicted in Thomas Mann's novel Buddenbrooks – based on Mann's thorough personal knowledge of his own birthplace – an appointment as the consul of a foreign country was a source of considerable social prestige among the city's merchant elite. As depicted in the book, the position of a consul for a particular country was in practice hereditary in a specific family, whose mansion bore the represented country's coat of arms, and with that country confirming the consul's son or other heir in the position on the death of the previous consul. As repeatedly referenced by Mann, a consul's wife was known as "Consulin" and continued to bear that title even on the death of her husband. Characters in the book are mentioned as consuls for Denmark, the Netherlands and Portugal.
-- Consul (representative), by Wikipedia
and representative of the American Arbitration League [Association]...
Chapter II: The Pattern Changes in America, Excerpt from “American Arbitration: Its History, Functions and Achievements”
by Frances Kellor
The new era in American arbitration began in 1920. It was characterized by the modernizing of arbitration law, systematic planning, organization of machinery, the cultivation of a spirit of arbitration, and the construction of foundations of knowledge. Its incentive came from World War I and the resolve to avoid future wars insofar as the settlement or control of disputes through arbitration could accomplish that end.
In thus changing the historical pattern, Americans had before them some invaluable lessons in previous undertakings. One of these lessons arose out of the Conferences of 1899 and 1907 which had laboriously established the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. The Conventions there adopted carefully defined the processes of inquiry, mediation, and arbitration, set up rules of procedure for each process, and provided machinery for their administration. High hopes were held that this Court might prove an instrumentality for the prevention of future wars. But one fundamental omission was made. No provision was made for cultivating the spirit of arbitration, or for education either governments or their people in the knowledge and use of arbitration. So, the first World War came without the Court’s having functioned in the settlement of major issues.
A second mistake was made in the next great international adventure when the League of Nations was organized. It also provided for arbitration and committed its members in principle. It went further and established the first Permanent Court of International Justice with ample machinery for its operation. But the League also failed to cultivate the spirit of arbitration or to teach nations or peoples its use either in their home affairs or in international relations. So, the second World War came, without the League or the Court having been able to settle differences among states.1
In the meantime, a third experiment had been tried. Over a period of half a century, the American Republics, acting through a central organization, known as the Pan American Union, were pursuing a different course. They were binding the Republics together in peace through a network of conventions, agreements, arrangements, and undertakings which established the central principle of settlement of disputes through amicable processes, including arbitration.2 Not only were these agreements consummated, but the Pan American Union unceasingly, through many different educational and scientific undertakings, cultivated the spirit of arbitration and educated governments in the use of pacific processes of settlement.2 This experiment held these Republics together under the stress of international war and the strain of threatened wars among themselves. This experiment furnished both the inspiration and the hope for a new era in American arbitration and for a change in the historical pattern.
The event that was the precipitate this change in pattern, like so many inconspicuous events that later proved momentous, gave no indication of its significance either to American life or to international peace and security. It was, on the contrary, the rather drab event of enacting a modern arbitration law in 1920 in the State of New York – the first of its kind in the United States.4 This law possessed the unusual features of looking forward instead of backward, and of enabling parties in dispute to control future disputes as well as to settle existing disputes. Although similar features had existed in British and Scottish laws for many generations, it proved to be a revolutionary step in the Americas as it had not been in other countries.
Under the provisions of this new law, agreements to submit to arbitration future disputes arising out of the contract containing such agreements, were made legally valid, enforceable, and irrevocable save as any other contract is revocable. Hitherto only existing disputes had enjoyed such legal protection. Furthermore, this law closed the courts to parties to arbitration agreements until they had complied with their arbitration agreements and it brought to the aid of the parties the powers of the court in enforcing agreements and awards by authorizing them to appoint arbitrators or otherwise expedite arbitration upon default of one of the parties.5
Little was it dreamed in 1920 that under this and subsequent laws of a similar nature, arbitration clauses in contracts would become the foundation stones of wide flung systems of arbitration.6
The enactment of this law might, however, have proved no more significant in the United States than had similar laws in other countries, but for the fact that it led to the organization of the first permanent independent institution of arbitration.
This new institution was organized in 1922 as the Arbitration Society of America. It offered arbitration a normal, active career of its own, with its own headquarters and personnel. It made possible the organization of systems of tribunals administered by an independent and responsible institution. It freed arbitration from commodity and geographical limitations to serve all of the people all of the time.
This change in pattern from indifference and casualness to scientific organization was effected not only by a new type of organization but by the adoption of different methods for the advancement of arbitration. Under a distinguished leadership, this institution put on an educational campaign that carried arbitration to the people in a new way throughout the country.
Under this stimulus, arbitration made front page headlines in the press. It went out to luncheon and to dinner; receptions were held in its honor, and forums were dedicated to its exposition. It became the subject of conference, debate, and instruction. It frequented exclusive clubs and found its way into homes, churches, schools and theatres. It passed the exclusive portals of law offices, banks, and corporation board rooms. It came out of dry law books, where only the difficulties were recorded, and found a place in general as well as special periodicals, books, and pamphlets. Sometimes arbitration wore evening clothes; at other times it appeared in overalls, or in a professor’s gown; but always it aroused curiosity and interest.
Nowhere in the world had arbitration ever had such an audience as when sixty members of the New York Judiciary sat down to dinner in its honor, followed by a conference at which more than four hundred business and professional men discussed its future.7
But, other experiments were to come. One morning the Arbitration News made its appearance – and the first arbitration publication was born. Arbitration had become news, for the things that were done and said about it were spotlighted and its leaders became known to the public. Along with Arbitration News, “Learn to Arbitrate” became the slogan of the new Arbitration Society, and a stamp bearing this slogan made its appearance.
A highlight of the Society’s endeavor to make arbitration better known, occurred in 1923, when May 7-12 was made “Arbitration Week.” Charles L. Bernheimer, Chairman of the Arbitration Committee of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, arranged a program in which more than fifty trade and commercial organizations participated. The educational work carried on during that week marked a sharp departure from the traditional treatment of arbitration.
During its first year and a half, the Society recorded the distribution of 158,000 pieces of literature at 1,200 meetings, conferences or gatherings where arbitration was discussed. It received 600 applications for information or for the settlement of disputes. And during its lifetime, from 1922-26, there were enacted modern arbitration laws in Massachusetts and New Jersey. The Society was also instrumental in effecting the enactment of the United States Arbitration Law in 1925, applicable to interstate commerce and foreign trade transactions.
The influence of the Society spread in many directions. Trade and commercial organizations began to furbish their own facilities and services for their own groups and to participate in making this broader pattern of arbitration a reality. For example, in 1923, Will H. Hays, soon to become a Director of the Society, established an arbitration system in the Film Boards of Trade for the motion picture industry. A report on this system, set forth in the Congressional Record, was instrumental in furthering the enactment of the United States Arbitration Act.
Not less significant was the new leadership developed by the Society. It brought business men together in a common endeavor. It found staunch and distinguished advocates to champion the cause of arbitration, not solely as judges in disputes, but for its general advancement. These advocates changed the passive role of arbitration to one of action and gave it a new prestige. No longer was it submerged in contracts or limited to resolutions and endorsements, not to having its failures publicized in law books. On the contrary, arbitration sought the people; it besieged their conscience to recognize its usefulness in the control of future disputes. It stormed the American’s complacency over the social consequences of discord and disputes. It confronted men in their trade press; it challenged their attention at meetings; it stared at them from cartoons and haunted their conference tables.
During the four years of its existence, from 1922-26, this new Society substantially changed the pattern of arbitration. It brought arbitration out of its austere juridical area into the limelight as an instrumentality which people themselves could use generally for the voluntary settlement of many kinds of differences. It made arbitration procedures readily accessible to the people through the establishment and operation of a commercial arbitration tribunal. It created a new leadership through panels of arbitrators and trade groups. It directed public attention to a hitherto drab and obscure subject. It flung a challenge of self-regulation to private enterprise. It opened the eyes of lawyers to a new practice in arbitration tribunals. It envisioned the dawn of a new profession by starting a panel of arbitrators and beginning their education. It brought arbitration to the people in a simple yet dramatic way and stimulated their faith in this age-old method of solving differences and maintaining friendships. It introduced into the American way of life a new institution for building and maintaining good faith, goodwill, and confidence in human relations.
All of this was the contribution of a single leader, Moses H. Grossman, and the devoted group of men who comprised the Society’s first Board of Directors and their associates of the bar, bench, business, education, and the professions. It was, therefore, representative of people from all walks of life, participating in a new concept of arbitration.
Having experienced this change from indifference to approval, from a passive role to action, and from obscurity to public acclaim, arbitration could never again become a forgotten way of American life and was destined to find its way eventually upon a broad international highway.
_______________
Notes:
1. Frances Kellor and Antonia Hatvany, Security Against War, I, International Controversy and the Machinery for Peace; II, International Courts and the Outlawry of War. (New York, Macmillan & Co., 1924)
2. For a summary, see The Basic Principles of the Inter-American System. (Pan American Union [1943].)
3. Among these treaties and agreements were the Gondra Treaty of 1923, which sought to avoid or prevent conflicts; followed in 1929 by a General Convention of Inter-American Conciliation, a General Treaty of Inter-American Arbitration, and an additional Protocol of Progressive Arbitration; then by an Anti-War Treaty of Non-Aggression and Conciliation in 1933. In 1936, there appears a scientific note, namely a Convention for the Maintenance, Preservation, and Reestablishment of Peace; and a Convention to Coordinate, Extend, and Assure the Fulfillment of the Existing Treaties between the American States. The same year, 1936, also witnessed an Inter-American Treaty on Good Offices and Mediation and one on the Prevention of Controversies.
4. The enactment of this law was due largely to the initiative taken by the New York State Bar Association, and to the support given by the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York and other commercial organizations. The publication of Commercial Arbitration and the Law by Julius Henry Cohen in 1918 was influential in obtaining the law.
5. For a full description of the provisions of this law and its application, see Suggestions for the Practice of Commercial Arbitration in the United States, published for the American Arbitration Association in 1928 by Oxford University Press.
6. This law was followed by the enactment in 1925 of the U.S. Arbitration Act and by similar statutory laws in the states of Arizona, California, Connecticut, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin.
7. At the home of Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Astor [elder son of John Jacob Astor IV, a wealthy businessman and inventor, and his first wife, Ava Lowie Willing, an heiress from Philadelphia], February 28, 1923.
at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.
The Paris Peace Conference was the formal meeting in 1919 and 1920 of the victorious Allies after the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers. Dominated by the leaders of Britain, France, the United States and Italy, it resulted in five controversial treaties that rearranged the map of Europe and imposed financial penalties. Germany and the other losing nations had no voice which gave rise to political resentments that lasted for decades.
The conference involved diplomats from 32 countries and nationalities, and its major decisions were the creation of the League of Nations and the five peace treaties with the defeated states; the awarding of German and Ottoman overseas possessions as "mandates," chiefly to Britain and France, the imposition of reparations upon Germany, and the drawing of new national boundaries, sometimes with plebiscites, to reflect ethnic boundaries more closely.
The main result was the Treaty of Versailles with Germany; Article 231 of the treaty placed the whole guilt for the war on "the aggression of Germany and her allies." That provision proved to be very humiliating for Germany and set the stage for the expensive reparations that Germany was intended to pay (it paid only a small portion before its last payment in 1931). The five great powers (France, Britain, Italy, Japan and the United States) controlled the Conference. The "Big Four" were French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, US President Woodrow Wilson, and Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando. They met informally 145 times and made all major decisions before they were ratified.
The conference began on 18 January 1919. With respect to its end, Professor Michael Neiberg noted, "Although the senior statesmen stopped working personally on the conference in June 1919, the formal peace process did not really end until July 1923, when the Treaty of Lausanne was signed."
It is often referred to as the "Versailles Conference," but only the signing of the first treaty took place there, in the historic palace, and the negotiations occurred at the Quai d'Orsay, in Paris.
-- Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920), by Wikipedia
A former Universalist minister, he became an Episcopalian after the American Civil War, and then a Spiritualist and Theosophist. Many of his books are on spiritualist subjects, although he also penned a quite popular book, titled How to Live a Century and Grow Old Gracefully.[2][3][4]
Peebles obtained a diploma in 1876 from the fraudulent Philadelphia University of Medicine and Surgery.[5][6][7] He obtained a Doctor of Philosophy from the Medical University of Chicago in 1882.[1][8] He was a professor in the Eclectic Medical College of Cincinnati.[3]
The Eclectics
Separate from the Thomsonians and the physio-medicals were the eclectics (from the Greek eklego, meaning to choose from), whose botanic system of medicine filled an important void in family practice. The name came from its use by Celsus, Agathinos of Sparta, Archigenes of Syria, Galen, and other medical men who preferred to stand apart from prevailing medical schools by choosing whatever curative measures most benefited their patients. Archigenes, styled the "founder of eclecticism," and his pupil Aretaeus were characterized by the lack of bigotry, choosing their curative agents from among the pneumatic, methodic, and dogmatic sects without adhering to any one particular creed. Although this early sect prospered over seven centuries, it lost ground during the age of the Roman Empire. Later descendants took their place in Germany, Italy, France, and England, but none obtained the importance or duration of these forebearers.
The term "eclectic" seemed to define adequately the nature of this reform philosophy, but Alexander Holmes Baldridge (1795-1874), one of the early pioneers of reform medicine, suggested an alternative, the "American School of Medicine." More expressive of the school's protestant origins, it failed to elicit the same level of sujpport. Nonetheless, individual reformers used the terms "eclectic" and "American School" interchangeably.45
American eclecticism had its origins in the first quarter of the nineteenth century in the investigations of Jacob Tidd, a German herb doctor from East Amwell, New Jersey, and his student Wooster Beach (1794-1868) [father of American Reformed Practice] of Trumbull, Connecticut. A graduate of the medical department of the University of New York, Beach parted ways with allopathic medicine by identifying almost exclusively with vegetable medicines and by being catholic in his selection of the most efficacious principles and agents from all medical systems. Beach was conversant with the botanical literature of his generation, including German physician and botanist Johann David Schoepf (1752-1800); Benjamin Smith Barton's Elements of Botany (1803) and his unfinished Collections for an Essay Towards a Materia Medica of the United States (1798-1804); Samuel Henry's A New and Complete American Medical Family Herbal (1814); Jacob Bigelow's American Medical Botany (1817-20); Constantine Samuel Rafinesque's Medical Flora: Or, Manual of the Medical Botany of the United States of North America (1828-30); the writings of Robley Dunglison (1798-1869) and William Tully (1785-1859); as well as the United States pharmacopoeias of 1820 and 1830. Having adopted the motto vires vitales sustinete (sustain the vital forces), Beach took exception to the practice of bloodletting and the use of strong mineral remedies and moved unhesitatinly toward a more kindly treatment of disease. This he did in opposition to both the Thomsonians and the allopaths.46
As part of his crusade to detect the errors of modern practice, Beach began privately instructing students at his New York City home in 1825, and two years later opened a clinical school known as the United States Infirmary. In 1829, he enlarged the school, calling it the Reformed Medical Academy; a year later, it bore the name Reformed Medical College of the City of New York.47 Assisting him at the college were Thomas Vaughn Morrow, Ichabod Gibson Jones, and John J. Steele, all graduates of regular schools. Each shared Beach's catholic view of botanic medicine and opposed the restrictive and authoritarian views of Samuel Thomson. Beach intended his reformed system of medicine "to release the mind from the dogmas of creeds and systems, the philosophy of medical schools, as they were then taught, and to direct it to an unlimited field of inquiry."48
In 1833, Beach published his popular three-volume American Practice of Medicine, presenting his views on reformed medicine. The founding principles of his system included admonitions against mercury and other mineral drugs; opposition to salivation and long-continued regimens of depletion; condemnation of bloodletting in all forms; and rejection of unnecessary surgery. Although Beach borrowed extensively from Rafinesque, William P.C. Barton, Jacob Bigelow, and Elisha Smith, his American Practice of Medicine became one of the more popular texts of botanical literature in the nineteenth century. His one-volume condensed version (1846) went through fourteen editions and received numerous testimonials and medals of recognition from abroad. Other popular works written by Beach included his Treatise on Pulmonary Consumption, Phthisis Pulmonalis, with Remarks on Bronchitis (1840), Medical and Botanic Dictionary (1847), and Am Improved System of Midwifery (1851).49
The eclectics were as forcibly opposed to the sweating, vomiting, and enervating regimen of the Thomsonians as they were to the bleeding, blistering, and mercurial purging and salivating regimens of the regulars. Both seemed unsound to eclectic thinking, wedded to obsolete theories of disease and disease nosology. Operating on a parallel but more kindly road to wellness, the eclectics introduced a distinctive pharmacy based on indigenous plant remedies -- the resin of podophyllum as a substitute for calomel; betony as an emetic and cathartic; maidenhair for pleurisy and jaundice; compound tar plaster in place of old-school applications of croton oil, catharides, and tartar emetic; and compound tincture of sanguinaria for emesis.50 In general, the eclectics favored the natural curative processes of the organism through the use of noninjurious medication; demanded freedom of thought and investigation; supported the development of the vegetable materia medica as the safest method of treating disease; supported the inductive method of investigation; advocated simplicity in prescribing; determined the value of a drug through the treatment of the sick patient rather than through laboratory experimentation; and condemned the extremes of over drugging and therapeutic nihilism.51
Throughout their history, the eclectics had an affinity for homeopathy, partly because they found common cause in facing the power and politics of old-school medicine. This affinity also derived from the strength homeopathy claimed among many wealthy and cultured Americans who objected to the "sledgehammer" doses of medicines then in vogue. Equally important, the eclectics were enamored with the homeopath's minimalist approach, believing excessive doses of innocuous drugs retarded the body's natural affinity for self-repair.52
Before 1860 thirteen colleges had organized as eclectic or a mixture of eclectic and phsio-medical. These included the New York Reformed Medical College (1826-39); College of Medicine, Botanic, in New York City (1836-46); Reformed Medical College of Georgia (1845-61); Eclectic Medical Institute of Cincinnati (1845-1939); Wooster Medical Institute (1846-59); Eclectic Medical Institute of New York (1847-48); Randolph Eclectic Medical Institute (1848-49); Central Medical College of New York (1849-52); Memphis Institute (1849-50); Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania (1850-80); Metropolitan Medical College of the City of New York (1853-62); American Medical College (1853-57); and the Cincinnati College of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery (1856-59).
By the end of the century, the eclectics numbered 9,703 compared with 72,028 allopaths, 8,640 homeopaths, and 1,553 physio-medicals.53 By then, there were eight eclectic colleges, one national and thirty state societies, ten medical journals, and more than sixty medical texts, many of which had become standard works of reference and study. The approved list of eclectic colleges as determined by the national association consisted of the American Medical College at 407 Jefferson Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri (1873); Bennett College of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery at the corner of Ada and Fulton Streets, Chicago, Illinois (1868); California Medical College at 1466 Folsom Street, San Francisco, California (1879); Eclectic Medical College of the City of New York at 239 East 14th Street, New York (1865); Eclectic Medical Institute at 1009 Plum Street, Cincinnati, Ohio (1845); Georgia College of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery at Tanner Street, near Edgewood, Atlanta, Georgia (1886); Lincoln Medical College at 121 South 14th Street, LIncoln, Nebraska (1899); and the American College of Medicine and Surgery, Chicago, Illinois (1901). Together, they formed the National Confederation of Eclectic Medical Colleges.54 Graduates held positions in private practices, colleges, hospitals, insurance companies, governmental sanitary boards, and as surgeons in the army and navy. Eclectics perceived themselves as an established force in the medical world "and as likely to be permanent as any other doctrine now held in the whole realm of art and science."55
-- A Profile in Alternative Medicine: The Eclectic Medical College of Cincinnati, 1845-1942, by John S. Haller, Jr.
A few organizations Peebles took a leadership role in are the National Spiritualist Association,...
The National Spiritualist Association of Churches (NSAC) is one of the oldest and largest of the national Spiritualist church organizations in the United States. The NSAC was formed as the National Spiritualist Association of the United States of America (NSA) in September 1893, during a three-day convention in Chicago, Illinois. Although American Spiritualists had previously tended to resist institutional or denominational organization, early NSA leaders hoped organization would help promote the truths of the religion both spiritually and practically. Organization could help non-Spiritualists distinguish genuine mediumship from the rapidly proliferating varieties of fraudulent mediumship, increase communication among Spiritualists, prevent the legal prosecution of spirit mediums under fortune telling and medical licensing laws, and counterattacks by "orthodox" ministers in the press. To these reasons, early leaders added the material support of spirit mediums and healers, just as other religious groups provided for the support of their clergy.
Among the NSA's first leaders were W. H. Bach, Harrison D. Barrett (former Unitarian clergymen), Luther V. Moulton, James Martin Peebles, and Cora L. V. Scott (spiritualist medium). The association is also important for its adoption of a number of statements on Spiritualism which have become a standard to which other Spiritualist bodies more or less adhere...
The influence of Unitarianism is obvious in the definition of God in principle one.
1. We believe in Infinite Intelligence;
2. We believe that the phenomena of Nature, both physical and spiritual, are the expression of Infinite Intelligence;
3. We affirm that a correct understanding of such expression and living in accordance therewith constitute true religion;
4. We affirm that the existence and personal identity of the individual continue after the change called death;
5. We affirm that communication with the so-called dead is a fact, scientifically proven by the phenomena of Spiritualism;
6. We believe that the highest morality is contained in the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (Principles 1-6 adopted in Chicago, Illinois, 1899. Principle 6 revised in Ronkonkorma, New York, 2004.[citation needed])
7. We affirm the moral responsibility of the individual, and that we make our own happiness or unhappiness as we obey or disobey Nature's physical and spiritual laws;
8. We affirm that the doorway to reformation is never closed against any soul here or hereafter; (Principles 7-8 adopted in Rochester, New York, 1909 and revised in Rochester, New York, 2001.)
9. We affirm that the precept of Prophecy and Healing are Divine attributes proven through Mediumship. (Principle 9 adopted in St. Louis, Missouri, 1944, revised in Oklahoma City, 1983 and in Westfield, New Jersey, 1998.)...
"Are Spiritualists also Christians?" was debated by the NSAC and generally decided in the negative. While the NSAC has drawn heavily on the Christian faith, from which most members came, it identifies its members as Spiritualists. The specifically "Christian Spiritualists" were found in other bodies such as the Progressive Spiritualist Church and the Spiritual Church Movement. Some Spiritualists differentiate between primitive Christianity, which they believe themselves to be following and practicing, and contemporary orthodox Christianity, which they strictly differentiate from both primitive Christianity and Spiritualism...
The Center for Spiritualist Studies (CSS) in Lily Dale, New York is located on the grounds of the NSAC-chartered Lily Dale Assembly, the world's largest Spiritualist camp. The CSS is incorporated as a religious seminary by the New York State Board of Regents. The goal of the curriculum is the training of Spiritualist Clergy, Teachers, Mediums and Healers...The Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York is the governing body of the University of the State of New York.
The board was established by statute on May 1, 1784. The members were divided into five classes: 1) ex officio members including the Governor of New York, the Lieutenant Governor of New York, the Secretary of State of New York, the New York Attorney General, and the Speaker of the New York State Assembly, the Mayor of New York City, the Mayor of Albany, New York, 2) two people from each of the then twelve existing counties, 3) one representative of each religious denomination in the state, chosen by their congregation, 4) founders of any college or school in the state (and their heirs or successors), and 5) representatives from selected colleges.[1]
The regents were spread across the state and getting a necessary quorum proved difficult given the size of the state and travel demands. On November 26, 1784, 33 additional members were appointed, twenty of them from New York City and affiliated with King's College (now known as Columbia University). This arrangement also proved ineffective, so on April 13, 1787, the Legislature legislated the existing regents out of office, and a new set of regents was appointed: the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor continued as ex officio members, and 19 regents were appointed for life. This legislation also shifted the regents' focus from Columbia to schools, colleges, and universities across the state. On April 8, 1842, the Secretary of State was added again as an ex officio member, and on March 30, 1854, the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Vacancies were filled by joint ballot of the state legislature.
The regents were made a constitutional body, no longer defined by statue, in 1894. In 1904, the Board was reorganized again and the ex officio members were legislated out. The offices of Superintendent of Public Instruction and Secretary of the Board of Regents were abolished and the duties of both transferred to the Commissioner of Education, who "serves at the pleasure" of the Board of Regents. The regents continued to be elected by joint ballot of the Legislature. Eleven of the sitting 19 regents were chosen by the Legislature to continue in office, and were classified to serve for different term lengths, so that every year one seat came up for election, for a full term. The number of board members was reduced to eight, one Regent per New York State Judicial District (based on the 1876 Act establishing the districts.), plus three "at large" members.
-- Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, by Wikipedia
The National Spiritualist Summit (TNS) is the official publication of the National Spiritualist Association of Churches. It has been continuously published each month since 1919. The Spotlight is a magazine, published 10 times a year, for Children of all ages produced by the National Spiritualist Association of Churches and maintains a continued emphasis on the progression of Spiritualism through teaching children.
-- National Spiritualist Association of Churches, by Wikipedia
the California College of Sciences, the Peebles College of Science and Philosophy, the California Centenarian Club, and the California Humanitarian League. Peebles was an opponent of vaccination and vivisection.[1] He authored Vaccination a Curse and a Menace to Personal Liberty in 1900.[9] He was editor of the monthly magazine Temple of Health and Psychic Review.[1]
Peebles was influenced by Sylvester Graham and opposed the consumption of alcohol, coffee, meat, tea and tobacco.[10]
The Reverend Sylvester Graham (July 5, 1794 – September 11, 1851) was an American Presbyterian minister and dietary reformer known for his emphasis on vegetarianism, the temperance movement, and eating whole-grain bread. His preaching inspired the graham flour, graham bread, and graham cracker products. Graham is often referred to as the "Father of Vegetarianism" in the United States of America...
Like other members of the temperance movement, Graham viewed physical pleasure and especially sexual stimulation with suspicion, as things that excited lust leading to behavior that harmed individuals, families, and societies. Graham was strongly influenced by the Bible and Christian theology in his own idiosyncratic way. He believed that people should eat only plants, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and believed that plague and illness were caused by living in ways that ignored natural law. He urged people to remain calm, and not allow worry or lust to shake them from living rightly – perhaps one of the first people to claim that stress causes disease.
From these views, Graham created a theology and diet aimed at keeping individuals, families, and society pure and healthy – drinking pure water and eating a vegetarian diet anchored by bread made at home from flour coarsely ground at home so that it remained wholesome and natural, containing no added spices or other "stimulants" and a rigorous lifestyle that included sleeping on hard beds and avoiding warm baths. The regimen has been described as an early example of preventive medicine. The emphasis on milling and baking at home was part of his vision of America in which women remained at home and nursed their families into health and maintained them there, as his wife had done for him. Graham believed that adhering to such diet would prevent people from having impure thoughts and in turn would stop masturbation (thought by Graham to be a catalyst for blindness and early death) His piece On Self-Pollution, published in 1834, contributed to the masturbation scare in antebellum America. He believed youthful masturbation was dangerous to children's health because of the immaturity of their reproductive organs.
As a skilled and fiery preacher, his peculiar message, combining patriotism, theology, diet, lifestyle, and messages already prevalent from the temperance movement, captured the attention of the frightened public and outraged bakers and butchers, as well as the medical establishment. When the cholera epidemic reached New York in 1832, people who had followed his advice appeared to thrive, and his fame exploded. When he published his first book in 1837, Treatise on Bread and Bread-Making, his lectures in New York and Boston that year were thronged; the Boston lecture was disrupted by a threat of riots by butchers and commercial bakers.
As his fame spread, "Grahamism" became a movement, and people inspired by his preaching began to develop and market Graham flour, Graham bread, and graham crackers. He neither invented nor endorsed any specific product, nor did he receive any money from their sale. Graham influenced other Americans including Horace Greeley and John Harvey Kellogg, founder of the Battle Creek Sanitarium.
Grahamite boarding-houses were established in the 1830s. The Grahamites applied dietetic and hygienic principles to everyday life including cold baths, hard mattresses, open windows, a vegetarian diet with Graham bread and drinking cold water. Animal flesh was banned from Grahamite homes but eggs were allowed to be eaten at breakfast and were an important component of Grahamite diets...
Graham died of complications after receiving opium enemas, as directed by his doctor, at the age of 57 at home in Northampton, Massachusetts. His early death was the source of criticism and speculation. Historian Stephen Nissenbaum has written that Graham died "after violating his own strictures by taking liquor and meat in a last desperate attempt to recover his health".
Russell Trall, who had visited Graham, noted that he had strayed from a strict vegetarian diet and was prescribed meat by his doctor to increase his blood circulation. Trall wrote that before his death Graham regretted this decision and "fully and verily believed in the theory of vegetable diet as explained in his works".
After his death, vegetarians distanced themselves from Grahamism. However, his vegetarian message was disseminated far into the 20th century.
Food historians cite Graham as one of the earliest food faddists in America.
-- Sylvester Graham, by Wikipedia
He a vegetarianism activist and contributed articles to The Vegetarian Magazine. His diet was ovo-lacto vegetarian, he ate butter, cheese, eggs, milk, fruits, nuts and vegetables.[11]
Peebles was married to Mary M. Conkey, and they had three children, none of whom lived past infancy.