Alexander Wilder

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Dr. Alexander Wilder

Alexander Wilder (1823-1909) was an American physician and Neoplatonist scholar, and a prominent early member of the Theosophical Society.

Early life and education

Alexander Wilder was born in Verona, Oneida County, New York, on May 14, 1823. His father, a farmer named Abel Wilder, married Asenath Smith, and they had ten children in eighteen years. The boy and his siblings were educated at the Tildon Hill District School. "Alick" memorized every word of the school textbooks, and was an apt student.

I was passionately desirous to know. I was disposed to ferret out the reason of things. I could not believe a thing right or wrong because anybody said it was… Books were not easily had, and the Newspaper came only once a week and meager at that. But I think that few whom I knew desired books as I did. . .

The family had few books and the town lacked a library, but in 1935, when the school's library was expanded, the children took full advantage. Alexander, along with three brothers and a sister, became teachers in the district schools. He studied Latin and Greek to prepare for college, aspiring to become a cleric or physician.

The family became "unsettled" when two of the brothers left the Congregational Church to become Baptists. Wilder wrote of his life in 1841:

So by eighteen I was adrift, out of the Church, and seeking knowledge in other directions. It was a period of fearful risk, but I had the mens conscia recti [a mind conscious of integrity], and I must believe the care of Providence to preserve me from the worst of perils. Having been kept in abnormal subjection all my younger years, I knew not how to act wisely or properly for myself. I had first of all to acquire freedom both in thought and action. I was with all my experience, at twenty-one, more simple and artless than most lads at fifteen. I excelled all my equals in book-learning, but I was far behind in the savoir faire.

So for years I kept on feeling my way, blundering, and only extracting yself with much anguish of mind...

Alick tried farming to please his father, then worked as a typesetter and a lumberjack. Eventually he was able to get his higher education, and was graduated at the age of 44 in 1867 from Homeopathic Medical College of New York. He lived in New York at first, but by 1880 had moved to Newark, New Jersey.

Introduction to Mesmerism and Swedenborgianism

In 1840, Wilder heard of Mesmerism.

I read such literature about it as I could find, and had opportunity to witness anaesthesia produced by manipulation. I also read about clairvoyance resulting from it. Some years afterward I consented to become the subject of such experimentation, and have had abundant l’eason for regret. It developed a sensitiveness acute even to abnormity, and the power of will, already too much weakened in early life, was still further affected...

What little I learned and observed in Mesmerism opened the fact to perception that there is a spiritual region to which we really belong, and with which, under certain conditions, we may have perceptible intercourse. It may be heaven or hell, but that depends upon our own state of mind. There are no rewards or punishments, except as they are incident with ourselves. It took me long to learn that. The Calvinistic notion held me for years, and, indeed, was about the last that I was able to discard.

In the field of mind, spirituality and the higher knowing, I made haste very slowly. I sought information from everyone and conscientiously examined it, unwilling to accept anything blindly. I exercised the reasoning faculty, but sought to be open to the superior sense.

From 1844 to 1851,1 drifted from one place and employment to another—part in Massachusetts, and part at my father’s in New York. My religious experiences consisted in becoming disentangled from the various beliefs and opinions which for a few years had held me fast, and in the endeavor to learn more of the world of reality. Prompted by a lady who had been one of my teachers in boyhood, I procured and read with interest the philosophical and theological works of Emanuel Swedenborg.

To this day I esteem the philosophic doctrine of Swedenborg the most perfect that has been promulgated in modem times. I cannot, however, subscribe to many of the constructions which have been placed upon them, and I have never been able to comprehend intelligently the principle upon which he interpreted the books of Genesis, Exodus and the Apocalypse. I have since become a student of the Platonic Dialogues, with which he seems to have in many respects to have been en rapport. But with all their profundity and fulness they strengthen rather than weaken my regard for Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite all that may be said captiously or sneeringly of his peculiar statements and methods, he is most emphatically the philosopher of common sense.

He studied with Dr. George Bush and Dr. J. J. G. Wilkinson.

Professional career

In his time, Dr. Wilder was a very well-known physician. He held a position as Professor of Psychological Science in the United States Medical College, and lectured at other medical schools.

He was editor of at least three medical publications, including 19 vols. of "Transactions of the National Eclectic Medical Association," of which organization he was Secretary. He also published in 1901 the 946 pp. "The History of Medicine." Wilder's viewpoint in medicine was that the Spiritual, Psychological and Physical nature of man was one thing and that medical practice must include all. Today he would probably be regarded as a practitioner of Holistic Medicine.

Theosophical Society involvement

Dr. Wilder was one of the earliest members of the Theosophical Society, being admitted on December 1, 1875. During the years 1877-1880 he served as a Vice President, along with John A. Weisse, of the Theosophical Society, under President Abner Doubleday. After that, he was a member of the General Council of the Theosophical Society.

Work on Isis Unveiled

During 1886 and 1887, H. P. Blavatsky wrote her first major work, Isis Unveiled and then reworked it with the assistance of Colonel Olcott. She wrote,

When the work was ready, we submitted it to Professor Alexander Wilder, the well-known scholar and Platonist of New York, who after reading the matter, recommended it to Mr. Bouton for publication. Next to Colonel Olcott, it is Professor Wilder who did the most for me. It is he who made the excellent Index, who corrected the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew words, suggested quotations and wrote the greater part of the Introduction 'Before the Veil.' If this was not acknowledged in the work, the fault is not mine, but because it was Dr. Wilder's express wish that his name should not appear except in footnotes. I have never made a secret of it, and every one of my numerous acquaintances in New York knew it."

As Boris de Zirkoff pointed out,

"Many statements by HPB, particularly in Isis Unveiled, the Key and the Glossary are taken from Dr. Alexander Wilder's small booklet: New Platonism and Alchemy, Albany, N.Y., 1869.

Later years

Dr. Wilder died on September 19, 1908, in Newark, New Jersey.

Writings

Dr. Wilder wrote about medicine, Theosophy, religions, symbolism, ancient languages, and many other topics.

Books

• New Platonism and Alchemy: a sketch of the doctrines and principal teachers of the Eclectic or Alexandrian school; also an outline of the interior doctrines of the alchemists of the middle ages. Albany, NY: Weed, Parsons and Company, 1869. Available at Theosophy NW website. Minneapolis: Wizards Bookshelf, 1975.
• History of Medicine. A brief outline of medical history and sects of physicians, from the earliest historic period; with an extended account of the new schools of the healing art in the nineteenth century, and especially a history of the American eclectic practice of medicine, never before published. New Sharon, Me., New England eclectic publishing co., 1901. Available at Scholars Portal.
• The History of Medicine From Archaic Times Until the French Revolution. McClure, Ohio: Canine Endeavors, 2017. An excerpt of The History of Medicine, Eclectic Publishing Company, 1901. 1901 edition and 1904 edition are available at Hathitrust.
• Plea for the Liberal Education of Women. New York: Judson Print. Co., 1884. 16 pages.

Compilations

Mark Jaqua compiled published four volumes of correspondence and articles from many sources:

• The Later Platonists and Other Writings of Alexander Wilder: Miscellaneous Writings of Alexander Wilder Volume I. McClure, Ohio: Canine Endeavors, 2016. Available at Scribd for a fee.
• The Undying Soul and Other Writings of Alexander Wilder: Miscellaneous Writings of Alexander Wilder Volume II. McClure, Ohio: Canine Endeavors, 2017.
• Eclectic Medicine and Other Writings of Alexander Wilder: Miscellaneous Writings of Alexander Wilder Volume III. McClure, Ohio: Canine Endeavors, 2017.
• The Perfective Rites and Other Writings of Alexander Wilder: Miscellaneous Writings of Alexander Wilder Volume IV. McClure, Ohio: Canine Endeavors, 2017.

Articles

The Union Index of Theosophical Periodicals lists over 60 articles by or about Wilder. In addition, he contributed many articles to Metapyhsical Magazine and The Word.

• "The Ganglionic Nervous System," Intelligence (February and March, 1898). Wilder posited that "this system preceded the cerebro-spinal nervous system and is the germ of everything that is afterward developed." He claimed "it is the first thing created in our bodies, the last which is palsied by death."
• "How "Isis Unveiled" Was Written". The Word 7.2 (May 1908). Available at Theosophical University Press Online

Correspondence

• "Letters from H. P. Blavatsky to Alexander Wilder, M. D.", The Word 7.3 (June 1908). Available at Theosophical University Press Online.

Translations and editorial work

He served as editor of these works:

• Westropp, Hodder M. and Wake, C. Staniland Wake. Ancient Symbol Worship: Influence of the Phallic Idea in the Religions of Antiquity. New York, J. W. Bouton; London, Trübner & Co., 1874. by Hodder M. Westropp and C. Staniland Wake, also ed. by Alexander Wilder Available at HathiTrust and Internet Archive.
• Taylor, Thomas. The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries. New York, J. W. Bouton, 1875, 1891 and oather editions. Illustrated by Albert Leighton Rawson. 1875 edition and 1891 edition are available at HathiTrust.
• Clarke, Hyde, and C. Staniland Wake. Serpent and Siva Worship. New York: J.W. Bouton, 1877. Two articles reprinted from the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
• Knight, Richard Payne. Ancient Art and Mythology. Wilder also contributed an introduction, notes, and and index.
• Westropp, Hodder M. and C. Staniland Wake. Ancient Symbol Worship. Wilder contributed an introduction, notes, and an appendix.
• Taylor, Thomas. The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries: A Dissertation.
• Knight, Richard Payne. The Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology: an Inquiry. New York : J.W. Bouton, 1876. 1976. "New ed., with introduction, additions, notes translated into English and a new and complete index, by Alexander Wilder, M.D. With 348 illustrations by A.L. Rawson."
• Medical Advocate or Eclectic Medical Advocate. Journal edited by Wilder and Joseph House. New York: 1884-1887.
• Iamblichus. Theurgia, or, The Egyptian Mysteries. New York: Metaphysical Pub. Co., 1911. Translated from the Greek by A. Wilder.

Additional resources

• Kimberley Nichols, "The Eclectic Life of Alexander Wilder: Alchemical Generals, Isis Unveiled, and Early American Holistic Medicine", Newtopia Magazine (February 15, 2013). Available at Newtopiamagazine.wordpress.com.
• Austin, Benjamin W. Autograph Collection, 1885-1894. "Collection assembled by Benjamin W. Austin as secretary of Trinity Historical Society, Dallas, Tex., 1885-1894, includes letters from physicians, several eclectic or homeopathic, accepting honorary or non-resident membership in society."