ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that a number of Owenites and Chartists were, or later became, spiritualists, mesmerists, phrenologists, herbalists, vegetarians and homoeopaths. A preliminary check shows at least ninety individuals who can be traced as having associations with both social reform and fringe medical movements. The medical fringe, like Owenism and Chartism, aimed to secure the active involvement of ordinary people in its organisations and institutions. The botanic medical journals carried details of the activities of the local societies, much as the Chartist and Owenite branches were reported in the Northern Star and the New Moral World. Underlying the empiricism of anti-professionalism and self-help were deeper attitudes and convictions which were common to reformers and the medical fringe. The devotion to nature, which reformers and the medical fringe alike perceived as attractive, was usually found in association with some form of holism.
