Predominant medical theory and practice in the United States in the early 19th century that stressed phlebotomy, purgatives, and emetics. Based upon the belief that most diseases caused the overstimulation of various bodily systems, heroic therapy was designed to lower dangerously excited states to more natural, balanced ones. The term “heroic” referred to the aggressive intervention of doctors that was thought necessary to effect these cures. Heroic practitioners often employed harsh medicines such as opium and mercury-based calomel, and their therapeutic techniques included controlled bleeding, leeching, blistering the skin, purging, reduced diets, and induced vomiting. The various therapies were designed to cleanse the body of any offensive matter that might inhibit its normal function, lower fevers and inflammations (which were regarded as dangerous stresses upon the heart and circulatory system), and stimulate the restorative powers believed to reside in internal organs.
The theoretical perspective that informed heroic medicine was widely accepted by both the medical profession and the lay public. Patients and their families often insisted upon heroic therapy in spite of its intrinsic harshness and the many horror stories that circulated about overzealous practitioners who accidentally bled or poisoned their patients to death. Therapies usually produced an immediate and dramatic change in the patient’s symptoms, for example, a lowering of body temperature or heart rate that corresponded to the expectations set forth by the theory. Deaths and relapses could be explained away by asserting the implacable strength of the affliction and were perhaps less suspicious in an era with high disease-mortality rates.