Joseph Rodes Buchanan

Who was Joseph Rodes Buchanan?

Joseph Rodes Buchanan was an American physician and professor of physiology at the Eclectic Medical Institute in Covington, Kentucky. Buchanan proposed the terms Psychometry and Sarcognomy.

Buchanan came to prominence in the 1840s when mesmerism and spiritualism were popularized. He is given credit for coining the term "Psychometry" as the name of his own "science" whereby knowledge is acquired directly by the "psychometer". Having promoted his science from the 1840s onward in 1893 he released a comprehensive treatise entitled Manual of Psychometry: the Dawn of a New Civilization in which he predicted that Psychometry would eventually supersede and revolutionize every other field of science. Though himself a physician in lectures he denounced contemporary schools of medicine as "educated ignorance" while promoting Psychometry and appealing to Spiritualists. His work inspired other Spiritualism-based scientists such as Stephen Pearl Andrews.