Interview
Questions.
by Peter Morrell
Dream of Egypt, 1995 – Peter Morrell
Interview
Questions
1-How
and when did you first become acquainted with homeopathy?
In
October 1978 through a friend who kept livestock and used to have
regular help and advice from the veterinarian, George McLeod. My
interest soon developed into study as I saw cases respond positively to
treatment. I began to buy books and remedies and very thoroughly
immersed myself in study of the subject.
2-Had
you seen any positive response of homeopathic treatment about yourself
or your family?
Enormously so in detail
too many…all my four children and my wife have had great benefit from
homeopathic acute treatment and also deeper constitutional remedies from
conception right through their lives. All are in excellent health and
have had few illnesses, few antibiotics, and no injections. I have also
seen many notable and often dramatic cures of long-standing conditions
using homeopathic treatment, both in humans and also in animals.
3-Tell
us about your background and career in homeopathy?
Started to learn with
passion once I saw it working, then read Kent and bought books and began
tentative practice on friends and relatives with moderate success. I
then obtained a part-time position in 1981 in Stoke at a therapy centre,
where I was pleased to have an opportunity to improve my prescribing
skills. I would say my success rate was 30-50% and I believe that is
about average for many homeopaths. I gradually came to realise that many
lifestyle and dietary factors were also contributing causes of sickness
that homeopathy alone could not address. I therefore became interested
in different approaches to natural health.
4
What factors have hindered the progress and accessibility of Homeopathy?
Primarily, homeopathy
is an empirical but deviantised system of medical knowledge and
practice, resident outside [expelled from and by] the mainstream even
since Hahnemann’s day; it has long been ridiculed by otherwise
intelligent people. Another problem relates to proof—some people
simply do not believe it can work because the doses are so tiny. Its
therapeutic effect is regularly and incorrectly dismissed as placebo
effect. There is a barrier of acceptance made worse by a mountain of
disbelief impossible to dislodge. The big problem is this idea today
that everything must be reduced to genes, germs and molecules or to mass
trials or it is not real. Because homeopathy cannot be reduced to
molecules, and because it treats individuals not populations, so it is
derided as fantasy or placebo. Attitudes are changing nowadays, both
towards homeopathy and also towards natural health in general. It is
manifestly not the professors of medicine who have initiated this shift
in attitude; it is the general public themselves who increasingly demand
these safe and natural treatments.
5-What
has been your contribution to the development of homeopathy?
I have studied its
history and written articles; I have not entered into evangelical work
of politics to support homeopathy, as that is not my forte. I feel I
have stimulated interest and continue to have interesting ideas about
the movement and its past…deep in that study lies the absolute truth.
My contribution has not been confined solely to historical studies, but
has also involved epistemological reviews which have attempted to
refine, explore and expose the fundamental doctrines of Hahnemann
himself and the core principles upon which homeopathy rests. This is an
important and ongoing task that seeks to unravel the precise lines of
development within Hahnemann’s thinking and methods in his
construction of homeopathy. Finally, I have also engaged with other
health professionals via journals [e.g. BMJ] to raise the profile of
alternative medicine and homeopathy so as to rescue it from oblivion and
place it back on the health agenda. When people learn about and discuss
homeopathy, they begin to see the varied and valid nature of wider
medicine beyond their own narrow field. This is a beneficially plural
and fertile approach we all benefit from.
6-Why
have there not been enough scientific research despite the necessity for
evidence based homeopathy?
I am not convinced this
is the case; much depends on what you mean by scientific and of course
EBM with clinical trials is a flawed methodology to study homeopathy
with. The problem is about proof on whose terms? And also about mass
trials and molecular reductionism. Are these the right ways to measure
the success of a truly holistic system of therapy? I think not. Science
is a belief system that I do not find remotely compatible with
homeopathy partly because it insists on the molecular paradigm of
chemistry and physics as being absolute and unnegotiable and also
because it is insistently reductionist, carving the body up into parts
and conceives of sickness solely in such terms; such is the very
antithesis of the type of holistic view of the organism common to all
natural therapies. There is a fundamental incompatibility between any
‘top-down system’ that views people in herd terms as populations, as
compared with a ‘bottom-up’ approach that views each unique
individual as exactly that. It seems that there are peculiar individual
factors that easily get lost in the epidemiological approach of mass
trials and population based studies that now so dominate allopathy. We
need to learn from each other as two-way traffic.
7-What
is your opinion about new methods created after Hahnemann?
All methods are fine
that work and that do not excessively abrogate the core principles of
homeopathy; even some of these can be bent and twisted; the strength of
homeopathy does not lie in a slavish devotion to Hahnemann, per se, as
Burnett, Clarke, Bach and even Kent showed; it lies in diversity and
intelligent research to push it even further forward. What works is the
driving force as long as it does not suppress symptoms in the longer
run. We need to keep in view the fact that Hahnemann was solely driven
by what works and what is truly curative; those were his sole beacons
through strict adherence to which homeopathy unfolded of its own accord
for him. That it must develop further through following the same
approach seems inevitable.
8-
If you were a patient, on what criteria would you choose your Homeopath?
A good physician in the
best sense – caring, compassionate, and intelligent and with a truly
holistic view of the person; it is a person who in the last resort
always stresses the human over the scientific. I would also want a
physician who can see all types of disease causes and has at his/her
disposal the therapeutic means to alleviate them all. This would mean
some knowledge of diet control, perhaps osteopathic manipulation,
psychotherapy and also lifestyle guidance.
9-What
is the definition of scientific homeopathy from your point of view?
I would define it as a
science in itself that needs a big push now to see it expand rapidly and
gain even greater acceptance. I would not define as possible a ‘scientific
homeopathy’ that is rooted in clinical trials and a solely molecular
view of life processes.
10-How
much are you aware of the condition of Homeopathy in Middle East?
Very unaware of this
aspect in fact completely ignorant.