WILDER, DR. ALEXANDER. Distinguished physician, author and Platonic scholar, b. at Verona, Oneida Co., N.Y., May 14, 1823; d. at Newark, N.J., September 8, 1908. Descendant of a New England family which came from Lancaster, England, to Massachusetts Bay in 1638. Sixth son of Abel and Asenath (Smith) Wilder, and the eighth child of a family of ten. Educated at first in the common schools of New York state. Being precocious beyond years, started teaching school at fifteen, studying by himself the higher branches of mathematics and the classics, to which were added later French, Hebrew and political science. The circumstances of the deaths of several of his father's family demolished his confidence in current medical methods, and he began studies in medicine, in order to render himself as far as possible independent of physicians. Meantime, he worked at farming and typesetting, reading medicine with local physicians, and was awarded in 1850 a diploma by the Syracuse Medical College. Became then a general practitioner, lecturing for about two years on anatomy and chemistry in the college. After several assignments as Editor of various dailies, he settled in New York City and became, 1858, a member of the editorial staff of the Evening Post with which he remained connected for thirteen years. Despite his repeated refusals, Dr. Wilder was made to accept in 1873 a professorship of physiology in the Eclectic Medical College of New York, but left there in 1877 on account of internal dissensions and dishonest practices beyond his control. From 1878-93, he taught psychology at the U. S. Medical College, until it went out of existence by a decision of the courts. In 1876, he became secretary of the National Eclectic Medical Association, and held the office until 1895, meantime editing and publishing nineteen volumes of its Transactions, besides contributing extensively to its literature. However, to quote Dr. Wilder's own words: ". . . my observation of medical colleges is not favorable to them as schools of morals or as promoters of financial probity. The more there is professed, the less it seem to be believed . . . physicians boasted loudly then, as now, of being a learned body and invoked special legislation to protect them from competitors . . ." He allowed himself to become for a while a subject in such experimentations, and had abundant reasons, as he says himself, to regret this. He was influenced to a very considerable extent by the study of Swedenborg, and later by the writings of General Hitchcock on Alchemy, and Hermetic Philosophy. He experienced a number of radical changes in his religious views, identified himself for a time, together with his brothers. with several religious movements of a revivalist kind, but finally grew out of them and into a sphere of spiritual freedom, and became an outstanding -- yet, unfortunately, not well recognized -- exponent of Platonism and the Hermetic Philosophy. A strong individuality brings with it into life a forgotten knowledge of its real work, but it takes often many years to bring it out into the open.

In 1882, Dr. Wilder attended the School of Philosophy at Concord, Mass., and a year later took part in the organization of the American Akademe, a philosophic society holding meetings at Jacksonville, Ill. He edited its journal for four years, contributing many monographs on such subjects as: "The Soul," "Philosophy of the Zoroasters," "Life Eternal," "Creation and Evolution," and others. He also made a translation from the Greek of the Dissertation of Iamblichus On the Mysteries of the Egyptians (orig. publ. in The Platonist; issued in book form in 1911 by The Metaphysical Publ. Co., New York).

Dr. Wilder wrote a number of most scholarly and illuminating articles in The Evolution, a Journal published in New York, on such subjects as: "Bacchus the Prophet-God" (June, 1877), "Paul, the Founder of Christianity" (Sept., 1877), "Paul and Plato," and others. He contributed philosophical essays to The Metaphysical Magazine of New York around 1894-95, and wrote extensively on various metaphysical and Platonic subjects for The Word, from 1904 on. One of the most valuable pamphlets issued by him is entitled 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, N.Y., 1869). H.P.B. quoted many passages from the various writings mentioned above, and expressed her delight over the attitude of Dr. Wilder towards the subjects of which they treat.

In addition to various essays on medical subjects, such as Thought, Cerebration, the Ganglionic Nervous System, Vaccination as a medical fallacy, and others, Dr. Wilder wrote a History of Medicine (New Sharon, Main: New England Eclectic Publ. Co., 1901. 946 pp. Index), and contributed invaluable Notes and Comments to special editions of the works of other scholars, such as: Ancient Symbol-Worship by Westropp and Wake (Boston, 1874); Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology by R. Payne Knight (New York, 1876).

Dr. Wilder contributed a good deal of material to the section of Isis Unveiled entitled "Before the Veil," the circumstances of which are fully explained in the Introductory chapter to the edition of that work forming an integral part of the present Series. He was a staunch friend of both H.P.B. and Col. H. S. Olcott, and had a very high regard for their work. Dr. Wilder was a tall man, spare of person, with a massive head and piercing eyes; he spoke fluently, was an omnivorous reader, and possessed a remarkable memory. His many-sided writings should some day be compiled into a uniform edition and published for the benefit of present-day scholars who are quite unaware of his intuitive insight into so many different regions of thought.