The Eclectic Medical Institute which Dr. Tilghman A. H. Lowe attended was only one of several. There were also the:
        California Eclectic Medical College in Los Angeles, 
        Hospital Medical College, Eclectic in Atlanta, Georgia,
        College of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery,
        Eclectic College of Physicians and Surgeons in Indianapolis,          
        King Eclectic Medical College in Des Moines,
        Eclectic Medical College of Indiana in Louisville Kentucky,          
        Eclectic Medical College of Maine in Lewiston,
        Worchester Medical College, Eclectic in Massachusetts,              
        Michigan Eclectic Medical College in Detroit,
        Eclectic Medical University of Kansas City,
        Lincoln Medical College, Eclectic in Nebraska,
        Eclectic Medical College of the City of New York,
        Randolph Eclectic Medical Institute in Rochester,
        American Eclectic Medical College in Cincinnati,
        Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia,
        Eclectic Medical Institute in Memphis,
        Wisconsin Eclectic Medical School in Milwaukee
So one can conclude that the word Eclectic probably meant something at one time.

 A quick look at the history of the Eclectic Medical Schools shows they were responsible for changing medicine in the United States from the dominate British Rationalist system.  They systematized the knowledge of Native Americans and other “root” doctors and experimented many times on themselves to obtain information on what certain plants and plant compounds would accomplish when administered to humans. Take five minutes and read the following page for an interesting background on something that was largely obliterated by it’s competition.

    http://doctorschar.com/archives/eclectic-school-of-medicine/

I’ve found three Eclectic Physicians who wrote books about traveling to the center of the earth. Dr. Tilghman A. Howard Lowe, Dr. John Uri Lloyd and Dr. Cyrus Reed Teed.
Did the idea carry some special meaning? Did their experimentation cause some type of mental aberration? Did these men ingest compounds which actually caused them to “go inside” in the meaning of investigating the interior landscape of the mind? Did they expand the normal range of consciousness and use the idea of traveling into the interior of the earth to explain traveling inside of their own minds? Were there plant compounds which decreased the power of their egos or changed the usual human “me first” perspective to one of compassion and consideration for their fellow man? With the acquisition and publication of some of these ideas, these physicians might be ostracized, ridiculed or literally “road out of town on a rail”.  So they wrote a book of fiction.

    What made me suspicious is that when Dr. John Uri Lloyd reflected on his writings he was adamant that he wrote, just to attempt to sell to “fictional readers”, but Lloyd actually writes about transcending the physical realm. Going inside. Some of the same ideas and approaches exist in Nequa.

There are still a lot of blanks in Dr. Tilghman A. Howard Lowe’s life story. Part of his life story centered around his desire to become a physician. I have not found any notations that explain  why he decided to become a physician.
Did he want to be of service to the world or his little part of it? Did he want to make a lot of money like a large percentage of today's medical school graduates? Maybe he just met someone and saw an opportunity that might give him an inside track  to acquire a profession.

The medical school he attended required a proctor. Some one to vouch for ones character. A person to oversee the progress and provide a little encouragement to each student. Dr. Lowe’s proctor was George Washington Hull.  Hull was probably born in Ohio  in 1820 and graduated from the Cincinnati Eclectic Medical College in 1861. He practiced medicine in Renick’s Mill up river from Lexington Missouri. He was evidently run out of Renick’s Mill, because he was a Union sympathizer. A lot of the state of Missouri was inhabited by slavers and confederate sympathizers. After a period of time in Indiana, G. W. Hull shows up in Labette County, Kansas, which is where Dr. Tilghman A. Howard Lowe’s parents lived. So probably Tilghman met Hull and found a way to get a little help getting into The Eclectic Medical College of Cincinnati, Ohio,

The Eclectic Medical College is where Tilghman's story gets real interesting. I’ll write about that a little later when I get it all straight.

Dr. Tilghman A. Howard Lowe graduates in 1883 and returns to Kansas, McPherson Kansas to be exact. The Eclectic College lists him as practicing in two locations, McPherson and Sherman City,  Kansas. It would have been a long drive between patients, particularly by horse and buggy.

The question about whether he was service minded or after the money may be answered in part by the fact that he charged his mother, his brother, and brother-in-law for medical treatments while living in McPherson Kansas. 

Maybe culprit is the wrong word. 

Me culpa , “accepting the guilt” was the position I was coming from.  My dictionary provides mostly definitions that carry hints of criminality or misdeeds for the word culprit. I mean that Tilghman was the person who supposedly started the project. He is the culpable human that must take responsibility for starting something which seemed to consume a lot of the time available to his wife and also the time of Alcanoan Grigsby. 

Who knows, there may have been a lot of others involved in some way or other, which we have no way at present of knowing about.
I know that it has consumed a lot of my hours over the last year and a half. My time is explainable as perchance, a bit  of obsessive behavior, which I prefer to call following a line of coincidences. 

The slight change in perspective which has appeared in my life,  in retrospect, seems almost inevitable, but it required a catalyst . The persons I’ve run up against, through out my life include several who could have been that catalyst, but for some reason it took a 114 year old book. 
Some have said the book is a very good read, I hate that type of talk. A good read can be equated with finally taking a long awaited “good elimination of water”.

The reality is that it is an intriguing book, it is something which I appreciated spending time reading. I also reveled in researching the who, what for, and where ever of its appearance. It’s pages  carry adventure. It’s pages carry and lay out succinctly, IDEAS worth PONDERING. I am also of the opinion that there are at least two levels at which one may read the book.

I am positive that Dr. Tilgman A. Howard Lowe started putting the book together.