John Uri Lloyd: The Great American Eclectic

Michael A. Flannery provides the first full-length biography of John Uri Lloyd (18491936), the man generally accepted as one of America’s most influential pharmaceutical pioneers. Lloyd was a phytochemical researcher, pharmaceutical manufacturer, teacher, author, library founder, and leader among both professional pharmacists and the sectarian medical practitioners known as eclectics.

Most of Lloyd’s story takes place in the Cincinnati area, where the eclectics emerged in response to America’s dissatisfaction with the harsh, heroic therapies characteristic of regular physicians. Instead of bloodletting and chemical cures, the eclectics stressed botanical remedies derived from natural sources.

In 1871, when prominent physicians John King and John Milton Scudder offered him the job of developing a line of botanical tinctures known as "Specific Medicines" for the eclectic drug wholesaler H. M. Merrell, Lloyd began his lifelong professional association with the eclectics. Called upon to develop more and better botanical drugs, he turned to original research in fluidextracts, formulated schemes for assaying, discovered a buffering compound that came to be known as Lloyd’s Reagent, and created a world-class pharmaceutical and botanical library. He was elected to the presidency of the American Pharmaceutical Association and won three Ebert Prizes for original research and American pharmacy’s highest honor, the Remington Medal.