Alcinous B. (Alcinous Burton) Jamison

Born on September 1, 1851, in Wooster, Ohio, Alcinous Burton Jamison trained in Indiana and earned his medical diploma from Fort Wayne College of Medicine in 1878. He worked first as a schoolteacher, then built a medical career that took him through Portland and Decatur, Indiana, as well as Grand Rapids and Detroit, before he settled in New York City.

Jamison became known as a proctologist and a prolific writer on intestinal health. His books focused on constipation, indigestion, and related ailments, and he promoted treatments centered on enemas and devices such as his "Internal Fountain Bath." That work made him a visible figure in a very specific corner of turn-of-the-century popular medicine.

He is also remembered for interests well outside conventional medicine. Contemporary accounts linked him to psychic phenomena, and his later writing touched on spiritualism and occult ideas as well as health. That mix of medical advice, invention, and metaphysical curiosity makes him an especially unusual author from his era.