Medicine, publishing and ancient philosophy
Born in 1823, Wilder grew up in a New York farming family where work repeatedly interrupted schooling. Books and the study of languages became lasting interests. He entered medicine, taught in medical colleges and edited professional periodicals. His career included disputes over medical education: the United States Medical College, where he taught, closed amid accusations of fraud.
Wilder’s literary work reached beyond medicine. An early member of the Theosophical Society, he helped revise Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled for its publisher in 1877. He also wrote about Platonism and alchemy and prepared editions of older works on religion and symbolism. His 1901 History of Medicine returned to the professional movements and conflicts he had known. He died in 1908.
A later editor reading ancient mysteries
The 1891 fourth edition of The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries names Thomas Taylor as the author of the dissertation and Wilder as editor, with an introduction, notes, emendations and glossary. A. L. Rawson receives the illustration credit. These are separate contributions to a book whose argument about ancient religious rites originated before Wilder’s own work.
The retained introduction to the third edition shows the spirit of his intervention. Wilder urges readers to approach rites that may seem strange or offensive with respect for what earlier worshippers held sacred. He interprets the mysteries as forms of spiritual regeneration and inward understanding. The edition therefore carries both Taylor’s dissertation and Wilder’s sympathetic philosophical framing; its account of antiquity is an interpretation developed by those writers.
