IMAGES OF HOMEOPATHY IN THE HISTORICAL LITERATURE – Peter Morrell

Main

‘The manner in which critical methods undermined the old order is
well illustrated by the history of homeopathy. This system was established in Germany
during the last days of the ‘naturphilosophie’, and was characterized like the others by a
monistic pathology and therapeutics. All diseases save two were viewed as forms of psora
or ‘the itch’ and a single scheme of treatment was recommended for all cases…
Hahnemann’s works appeared just in time to be subjected to exact and critical analyses.
The French clinicians seemed willing to give homeopathy a trial. Andral in particular,
checked the system with care, trying it out in his wards in Paris with negligible results,
and reporting to the Academy of Medicine that he had systematically experimented with the
‘Materia Medica’ without finding any of the results Hahnemann had reported. Somewhat later
Joerg at Leipzig and Holmes in Boston, examined Hahnemann’s citations of authorities and
condemned them as misleading and unreliable.’ [Shryock, 1936, pp.160-161]

What does he mean by ‘a single scheme of treatment’? There is no routine
prescription in homeopathy or single unified rote technique dished out automatically to
every patient. This idea is a nonsense.

Warner then repeats this ‘monistic pathology’ nonsense:

‘… the homeopathic physician blithely prescribed a uniform therapy
for all cases classified as the same ailment… compared to the lecture notes of regular
medical students, those of homeopathic and eclectic students more strikingly resemble
cook-books, cataloging a fixed recipe for each disease.’ [Warner, 1986, p.60]

Note also the highly value-laden term ‘seemed willing’. Just as if they
were being so kind to Hahnemann to even stoop to such an action! What arrogance. Here is
another view of the same information Shryock is referring to:

‘Up to the year 1835 there were six public and formal trials
undertaken by order of governments, made of homeopathic practice:

1. at Vienna in 1828 conducted by Dr. Marenzeller.
2. at Tulzyn, Russia in 1827.
3. at St. Petersburg in 1829-30 by Dr. Hermann
4. at Munich in 1830-31 by Dr. Attomyr
5. at Paris in 1834 by Dr. Andral Jr.
6. at Naples in 1835 by order of the King by a mixed commission
   in the hospital of La Trinite.

These were all made by allopathic physicians and were not considered
by members of the homeopathic school as fairly conducted.

Dr. Tessier, in 1849-51 made tests at Hopital Ste Marguerite,
deciding in favour of the homeopathic system. When he presented his report to the Paris
Academy he aroused a storm of protest for his fairness in admitting that there was good in
homeopathy’ *

[Footnote: * see Hom Examiner vol. i p.20 (1840) Rosenstein’s ‘Theory
and Practice of Homeopathy’ p.267. Brit. J of Hom vol. ii p.49; vol. xi, p.133; vol. xiv
p.308.] [from Bradford, 1895, p.165]

We can add here Dr. Burnett’s clinical experiments in 1870s Glasgow, which
proved to him the therapeutic success of homeopathy, in a neutral setting, conducted
scientifically, and with children in a hospital fever ward, and with people who did not know
what treatment they were receiving: in essence, a double blind trial. It was the nurse who
despaired and secretly gave doses from ‘Dr. Burnett’s fever bottle’ to all the
children, which promptly ’emptied the entire ward’.

‘… Hughes had suggested aconite as a remedy for simple fever and Dr
Burnett determined to test the advice on his children’s fever ward, dosing all the
patients down one side with Fleming’s Tincture of Aconite, and treating the others as
usual. Within twenty-four hours all the aconite children were cured (save one, who had
measles) and smartly discharged, while the rest still languished in hospital. The
experiment was repeated with the same startling results until a truculent nurse, impatient
of the doctor’s hard heart, dosed all the patients indiscriminately from ‘Dr Burnetts’
Fever Bottle’ and emptied the ward.

‘The doctor was ‘simply dumbfounded’, spent his nights reading
homoeopathic literature and, having suffered a conversion which he afterwards compared to
St Paul’s on the road to Damascus, instantly resolved to ‘fight the good fight of
homoeopathy with all the power I possess: were I to do less I should be afraid to die.’
His M.D thesis, submitted when his year’s term at Barnhill elapsed, was rejected for
heretical, homoeopathic tendencies (a second thesis was accepted in 1876).’ [from Clarke’s
ŒLife of Dr Burnett]

Then there is all the data about Dr. Quin and cholera in Tischnowitz.

Dr Quin was the founder of English homeopathy. After graduating MD in 1820
in Edinburgh, Quin then became the Duchess of Devonshire’s family physician and travelled
with her entourage. He met Dr Hahnemann and travelled extensively in Europe, residing for a
time in Rome and Naples.[Bonnard, Jean, Dr Quin, Student Homeopath 25, Dec 1994, London, 32;
this article is very closely based upon the Quin biography in the Dictionary of National
Biography; see also Blackie, Margery, The Patient Not The Cure, The Challenge of Homeopathy,
1976, MacDonald and Jane’s, London, 25; Dr Blackie was 1969-81 the Queen’s Physician; see
also F Bodman, The Life and Times of Dr Quin, British Homeopathic Journal 50:2, April 1961,
73-82]

He is said to have successfully used Camphor against Cholera in Moravia
(Czechoslovakia) and to have cured himself of the condition by following Hahnemann’s advice
[Cook, Trevor, Samuel Hahnemann The Founder of Homeopathy, Thorsons, UK, 1981: 146;
Hobhouse, Rosa W, Life of Samuel Hahnemann, Harjeet, India, 1933: 248]. During the 1830’s
and 40’s he spent a lot of time in Paris among the inner circle of Hahnemann’s proteges
[Handley, Rima, A Homeopathic Love Story, N Atlantic Books, Berkeley, USA, 1990: 47, 99 and
109; see also Blackie, op cit, 29]

‘Dr Quin first learned homoeopathy from the Austrian, Dr George Necker
(c1770-c1840) in 1825 in Naples. He put Quin in touch with most of the literature on
homoeopathy; ‘Necker was a disciple of Hahnemann’s.’ [Blackie,op cit,27-8; Hobhouse,
op cit, 248].

Quin then went to Leipzig to study with Hahnemann himself. Along with Dr
Gerstel and two surgeons he had charge of all Cholera in the town of Tischnowitz and
neighbouring villages ‘where the disease was raging.’ [Bonnard, op cit, 33].

Quin wrote to Hahnemann telling him of his successful use of
Camphor.[Bradford, op cit, 266]

‘Quin was… appointed physician to Emperor Napoleon I at St Helena
but he died on the eve of Quin’s departure, then physician to the Duchess of Devonshire,
after her decease in 1824 became physician to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, King of
Belgium; Quin went to Kothen in 1826 to study with Hahnemann; on return in 1827 to England
he introduced homoeopathy; known especially in the higher classes of society for promoting
homoeopathy there… he died 24 Nov 1878’.[Haehl, vol 2, 507; see also Griggs, op cit,
228]

‘In fact, underlying most regular considerations of the role that
systems played in determining the socioeconomic standing of the profession were the
examples of Thomsonianism and especially homeopathy. By challenging the regular
profession’s intellectual hegemony, denouncing its practices to the public, and competing
with it for patients, these sects were a leading source of its experience of decline.
Furthermore, regular physicians clearly saw both sects as themselves rooted in
rationalistic systems of practice. After all, Hahnemann had cast homeopathy in
substantially the same eighteenth century mold that had given shape to the systems of
Cullen, Brown and Rush; as regular physicians assessed it, homeopathy offered an
unambiguous example of extreme rationalism informing a dogmatic system of practice with
dire consequences. The rise of this explicitly heterodox system of medicine at the very
time that orthodox physicians were embracing the ideal of empiricism led those regular
practitioners who did not adopt homeopathy to dissociate themselves from its adherents and
from its intellectual misdirection, including its grounding in rationalism.’ [Warner,
pp.52-3]

Many things in this passage require comment and amplification. The
inflated phrase ‘challenging the regular profession’ is a nonsense because there was
no such thing as a medical profession in the modern sense at that time. Thus this is a very
weak argument. To distinguish it from a mere occupation, a profession must contain certain
features which were largely absent from medicine until 1858 in England and probably 1900 in
the USA. Features like high status; unified teaching facilities, qualifications and
registration procedures which contrive to restrict entry; challenging entry requirements; a
code of ethics which regulates members’ conduct; and Œoccupational closure’: systems which
bar entry to the unqualified. The phrase Œdenouncing its practices to the public’ is also
highly misleading. The public already denounced heroic practices, without need of much
urging from sectarians. Was such denouncement from sectarians the ‘leading source of
their decline’ as Warner claims? Or was it rather the failure of their own disreputable,
dangerous and highly unpopular methods?

Did those physicians ‘clearly see’? did they see homeopathy as a form of
‘medical system’? What evidence is there that this was their particular perception? Warner
arrogantly gives us his opinion, supported by no evidence. Or did they see it very jealously
as a simple threat to their own practice? Something successful and which was attracting the
very kind of wealthy clientele which they wanted for themselves?

‘Homeopathy was especially successful among the more wealthy and
educated classes in the United States, in contrast to other irregular systems… ‘ [Blake,
p.85]

‘Homeopathy… appealed primarily to those urban middle and upper
class persons who were seeking an alternative to regular medicine… homeopathy was
extremely fashionable among the European nobility and upper classes, whose tastes were
often copied by affluent Americans.’ [Rothstein, p.160]

‘Homeopathy rapidly became extremely popular among the wealthy in
many communities throughout the country… ‘ [Rothstein, p.234]

‘In the USA homeopathy was an early challenge to regular medicine
since it appealed to a more affluent clientele with well-trained doctors, who offered, in
addition, a less heroic type of therapy… the body of homeopathic doctors was a
relatively small sect, concentrated geographically in the North-East and in the large
cities… [upon] a clientele from a high and correspondingly influential class.'[Dinges,
p.186]

‘… high fees the public was prepared to pay the homeopaths,
especially in the early years after the doctrine’s introduction… “the homeopathic
physicians pocket a far larger income for their little medicated pills than any other
class of practitioner in the country.”… ‘ [Boston Medical and Surgical Jnl 1846,
xxxiv, p.364, quoted in Coulter vol. 3, p.120

It is absurd to portray homeopathy as a system ‘cast in the same 18th
century mold’ as Rush, Cullen and Brown. Such a view stems from a total misapprehension of
what homeopathy is. Far from being grounded in rationalism, homeopathy stems in fact
entirely from experiments. Hahnemann’s experiments. Method comes first then the theory. The
provings of drugs were conducted empirically and neutrally with no theoretical driving force
pushing them through. They were discovered, not invented. They compare very well and very
scientifically with the arrant nonsense and mumbo-jumbo that allopathy used and promoted in
the very same time period. Let us just place the question in reverse: on what basis can
allopathy justify any claim at that time to be truthfully regarded as scientific or
empirical? Where is the hard evidence in the 1830s that allopathy was empirical and
scientific? There is none. There is very little in medicine before 1890 which we today would
recognise as ‘scientific’. Warner labours hard to rationalize and justify the use of calomel
and bloodletting by regulars, but it is a barely credible performance.

Aphorism 25 of the Organon praises what ‘… pure experience, the sole
and infallible oracle of the healing art… ‘. Also in the Preface to the 1st edition of
the Organon he states that none of his conclusions should be ‘… accepted unless
confirmed by experience… ‘ [Hahnemann, p. xiii]

Thus it is very clear that he regarded experience and experiment as being
vastly superior to ‘theoretical medicine’, which he scathingly calls ‘speculative ideas’ in
his Preface to the 2nd Organon:

‘… the splendid juggling of so-called theoretical medicine, in
which a priori conceptions and speculative subtleties raised a number of proud schools…
the art of medicine was merely a pseudo-scientific fabrication, remodelled from time to
time to meet the prevailing fashion.’ [ibid., p.xv]

In Aphorism 6, he bemoans the

‘… futility of transcendental speculations which can receive no
confirmation from experience..’ [ibid., p. 32]

And, as Dr. Krauss candidly states in his Introduction,

‘Hahnemann was, in all essentials, a flawless experimenter.’ (p.
xxiv). He goes on, ‘The era of scientific medical experimentation begins with
Hahnemann and nobody else. Scientific to the core, Hahnemann experimented scientifically
for scientific observation… ‘ [ibid., p. xxvii]

Finally, Hahnemann states in the Preface to the 2nd Organon:

‘The true healing art is in its nature a pure science of experience,
and can and must rest upon clear facts and on the sensible phenomena pertaining to their
sphere of action.’, and that it ‘… dares not take a single step out of the sphere
of pure, well-observed experience and experiment, if it would avoid becoming a nullity, a
farce.’ [ibid., p. xiv]

These quotes clearly demonstrate that Hahnemann was a scientist in the
most modern sense and in no way devised or invented homeopathy as a speculative ‘system’ in
the manner Warner suggests.

In Juette Risse and Woodward ‘Orthodoxy and Otherness: Homeopathy and
Regular Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America’ – Dr. Warner says:

‘… the social and professional boundaries between regular and
homeopathic physicians often were blurred. Private interactions between American allopaths
and homeopaths were more common and more congenial than the public rhetoric of sectarian
warfare implied.’ [Warner, 1998, p.11]

Warner makes the same point in ‘The Therapeutic Perspective’ (pp.181-2).
But Rothstein reveals another side to this problem:

‘In the late 1840s, regular physicians undertook a series of measures
to ostracise homeopaths from the major regular medical institutions… the intention to
practice as a homeopath was sufficient reason to deny the application.’ [Rothstein, p.232]

‘In ways too numerous to mention, regular physicians drove homeopaths
out of the regular societies, persecuted them in the courts, and otherwise endeavoured to
destroy homeopathy or at least to separate it from regular medicine.’ [Rothstein, p.170]

‘The followers of conventional medicine heaped ridicule and constant
opposition on practitioners of homeopathy, and they refused to meet them in consultation.’
[Siddall, p.121]

‘… homeopaths were banned from regular medical societies, denied
hospital privileges at regular hospitals, excluded from boards of health, forbidden to
serve on the faculties of regular medical schools and blacklisted from consultations or
any professional association with regular physicians. Even their apprentices were denied
certification of preceptorship at regular medical schools.’ [Rothstein, p.233]

Uncritically repeating the errors of one’s forebears amounts to a subtle
means of tacitly approving of and legitimizing such arguments and stealthily casting doubts
into the mind of the reader. It prevents the reader from approaching such subjects
uncritically and neutrally thereafter. They already have a negative view of the sectarians
implanted in their minds before opening a single book about it. Some would prefer to call
this a ‘smear tactic’. By portraying someone as mad before you even read what they have to
say is probably an unforgivable travesty in an academic discipline which claims in all
seriousness to be detached, rational, unbiased and neutral.

‘In addition to similia similibus curantur, he developed a theory
that the remedy must be given in very small doses to be most effective, and that the basis
of all diseases was ‘psora’ or the itch. The latter theory was not long adhered to by his
followers.’ [Flinn, p.427]

This is a pretty comprehensive distortion. He did not ‘develop a theory’
about small doses, he observed that it improved the action of the drug and also diminished
its harmful effects. Nor did he state that drugs MUST be given in minute doses. All
homeopaths have used tinctures and quite crude doses for certain drugs. It is thus not a
sweeping theory applied across the board like a dogma. as this passage implies. When he says
‘the latter theory’ he is wrong. It was an observation, not a theory. It is empirical
observation and evidence-driven, not some wild ‘theory’. This passage reveals a very poor
grasp of the basics.

‘Then came the hypothesis — drugs cure disease by causing lesser
diseases which the organism can effectively overcome — which is to say, ‘similia
similibus curantur’ or ‘like cures like’.’ [Cameron, p.29]

No, not a ‘hypothesis’, an observation. But he is right when he says ‘then
came the’ because it rightly suggests the theory was derived from observations in practice.
The ‘lesser disease’ is not ‘overcome by the organism’ — again this is a very inaccurate
portrayal of Hahnemann’s views.

‘… the second of homeopathy’s prime principles rendered them
impotent. In a nutshell, the doctrine held that drugs increase in potency with their
dilution… ‘ [Cameron, p.30]

Again, we must respond by saying this is not a ‘doctrine’ but an
observation based in empirical observation in practice.

‘Homeopathic theory embodied a dual commitment to the principle of
‘like cures like’ and the doctrine of infinitesimals… remedies were administered in
minute doses, reflecting the belief that dilution increased a drug’s therapeutic potency.’
[Warner, 1977, p.299]

Not a ‘doctrine’ but an observation. The ‘administration of minute doses’
did not reflect a BELIEF that ‘dilution increased a drug’s therapeutic potency’. It
reflected an observation. Every time they make this mistake and every time it must be
corrected.

‘The third basic doctrine of Hahnemann was that psora, or suppressed
itch, was responsible for a large proportion of all disease… ‘ [Cameron, p.30]

Again, it was no ‘doctrine’, but a practical observation. The ‘psora
theory’ is an idea based upon the neutral appraisal of an enormous mass of evidence. It is
strange that Darwin, for example, is revered in science for the very same meticulous
process. Why not Hahnemann too?

‘In the United States, regular physicians… found Hahnemann’s
theories absurd and incredible. Reasoning that no one in his right mind could believe such
arrant nonsense, they concluded that homeopaths must be either knaves or fools.’ [Blake,
p.86]

Not theories, but observations. Why ‘absurd’, ‘incredible’ or ‘arrant
nonsense’?

‘[according to]… medical historians… homeopathy is deemed to have made
no contribution to the development of modern medicine and Hahnemann’s theories have remained
as unacceptable as they were to Holmes [in the 1840s].’ [Blake, p.87]

Well, it depends which historians he is referring to. According to
Garrison and Shryock, who are widely revered as America’s greatest medical historians,
homeopathy improved scientific medicine by getting them to reduce their doses. Is that not a
‘contribution to the development of modern medicine’?

‘Hahnemann’s followers promised help, but help in the form of
pleasant ‘water medicine’ and sugar pills instead of castor oil and calomel. No wonder
homeopathy acquired some popularity. It is a plausible surmise, indeed, that the success
of this sectarian guild brought more pressure on the regulars in favor of moderate
practice than did the appeals of nihilistic clinicians.’ [Shryock, pp.144-5]

‘Yet today in retrospect homeopathy merits a more favorable
consideration for its ultimate influence upon the field of medicine. First, along with
others, it forced the conventional practitioners to give up the harmful and obsolete
practice of bloodletting and the use of calomel. Second, it proved to be the stimulus
which led orthodox medicine to improve medical education.’ [Siddall, p.124]

‘… in a day when clinicians were condemning heroic practice,
homeopaths ‘went them one better’ by prescribing drugs so diluted that they must have been
entirely innocuous… homeopaths avoided the extremes of both nihilism and heroic
practice.’ [Shryock, p.144]

‘Before his death in 1843, Hahnemann was known throughout the world,
and homeopathy had become one of the fastest-growing movements in medical history.’
[Karst, p.5]

‘… many of them did not accept [Hahnemann’s ] every word. In
particular, the psora theory was widely ignored and there were repeated arguments over the
extent to which dilution of drugs should be carried. Homeopathic physicians have generally
agreed… on the principle of treatment by similars, the use of one drug at a time, and
the use of a minimal dose… ‘ [Blake, p.85]

This depiction of homeopathy as being ‘small doses, similars and psora’ is
incorrect, distorted; it is a caricature of homeopathy, and derives from a very superficial
grasp, and thus to criticize it on that basis is bad and invalid. It was chiefly a ‘holistic
approach to disease’ which Hahnemann set in train, and to criticize it as an ‘abstract
theoretical system’ is baseless, incorrect and futile and just reveals the monumentally
superficial grasp of it which these writers truly have obtained. There was no ‘psora
theory’, it was an idea derived from observations. There were not ‘repeated arguments’ about
potency, but different views, ideas and techniques in the offing: Loa and behold a
democratic form of medicine!

Discussion

It seems that a history of homeopathy cannot be written from the outside,
as JW and HLC have demonstrated and have repeatedly stated. One must apprehend it as a
working system which can produce definite therapeutic results and whose theoretical ideas
were not primary, but derive from its practical base, and are therefore secondary. To write
Hahnemann off as some kind of theoretician is thus a nonsense and completely at variance
with the facts. In what circumstances would a working doctor become so unhappy with orthodox
medical practice that he gives it up and then systematically creates a new system entirely
through experiment, and yet all the time be some crazy theoretician who knows nothing about
medicine and who is a deluded fool? The idea just does not add up. It is not credible.

I think we must also strive not to glorify or eulogise him, but to place
Hahnemann in a truer context, so as to put the record straight and act as a counterweight to
some of this nonsense. In all his writings and letters, and seemingly in all he said and
did, he reveals himself as an individual with an astonishing grasp of medical theory and
method, and of medical history. In his translation work alone, for example, not to mention
the thesis he successfully defended before the stunned professors of Leipsig, or even his
own profuse writings, he repeatedly and consistently demonstrated a wide and deep knowldge
of every aspect of the healing arts. His was certainly one of the most formidable of
intellects, which apprehended any subject it chose with the same subtlety and nuance of
profundity. Thus it is just not possible to ‘do the man to death’ and successfuly argue that
he was a fool, a knave, or an ignoramus. Such arguments are wholly inappropriate and even to
entertain them reveals once again a massive lack of study on the part of those who attempt
such a strategy.

Maybe they disbelieved Hahnemann because they did not want to hear the
‘good news’ that homeopathy was often superior to allopathic drugging and that allopaths
must therefore have been ‘barking up the wrong tree’. These ‘historians’ also conveniently
ignore the mass of powerful evidence of homeopathic success in hospitals and in epidemics
like cholera, yellow fever, typhoid, scarlet fever etc. They would all have to be
written-off as delusions. Thus it is merely biased and highly selective reportage which is
being palmed onto the reader as literal truth.

I think there is a danger in the argument which is being presented.
Throughout the Juette, Risse and Woodward book, for example, there is a recurring theme of
historians wanting to portray homeopathy as very ideologically fluid. That is fine to an
extent.

If this is apprehended through evidence then, of course, I have no
objection, BUT I still think there is only scant evidence for that view and it gives one the
impression, therefore, of people who wish to further their academic careers by ‘finding
something new to say’ and who are actively seeking such material for that sole purpose,
rather than for the purpose of revealing actual historical truth. The same argument applies
to the whole of Warner’s ‘The Therapeutic Perspective’, which I enjoyed reading to start
with, but I soon began to realise that he was ‘adopting a certain posture’ towards his
material. This led me to consider why that might be.

His book makes a lot more sense when it is viewed against the background
of other books of the same type which immediately preceded it in the 1960s and 70s [those of
Kett, Kaufman and Rothstein in particular], all of which seemed fairly pro-sectarian
medicine, or at least neutral towards it. Warner’s book seems to have been designed as an
‘antidote’ to that perspective — consciously or unconsciously, I do not know which.

The interesting background to Warner’s book is as follows. Until the
publications of Kett (1968), Kaufman (1971), Rothstein (1972), Burrow (1977) and Coulter
(1975), the historian’s view of American medicine was chiefly determined by the works of
Garrison and Shryock, neither of whom had portrayed the sectarians in anything like a very
sympathetic light. They were sidelined as events that happened, yes, but of little interest
to us today, and of little real lasting consequence to the history of medicine. Garrison was
either scathing of them or dismissive, emphasizing much more the headline-grabbing ‘glorious
stories’ in the development of scientific medicine. Yet none of these new texts seems to
have been designed other than for neutral historical study. None of them can seriously be
regarded as a wholesale attack upon allopathic medicine, except, perhaps, some of the
rhetoric in Coulter.

‘Garrison devoted a mere half-page to homeopathy in the first edition
of his comprehensive ŒIntroduction to the History of Medicine’, published in 1913. He
briefly stated the three salient principles and noted that Hahnemann’s doctrines found
wide acceptance, especially in America. Their extreme popularity…’ he wrote, Œis
probably due to the fact that they lessened the scale of dosage of drugs in
practice…otherwise this system is but an offshoot of eighteenth century theorizing.’…’
[Blake, pp.86-7]

This requires some amplification. The position here is much worse than
Blake indicates. This book by Garrison is a monumental tome of 996 pages! Thus to give
homeopathy only half a page in such a book indicates a breathtaking amount of allopathic
vindictiveness on Garrison’s part. It speaks volumes about the appalling degree of hatred
which homeopathy has been subjected to down the years. With regard to Kett, Blake goes on…

‘More recently, other social historians have been granting homeopathy
a larger role. Thus Joseph Kett in 1968 described… the contrasts and conflicts between
the orthodox physicians and the principal sects… but the chief significance of
homeopathy is seen as offering the orthodox physicians a caricature of themselves… in
Kaufman’s account… the development of medical science plays [only] a minor role in the
analysis.’ [Blake, p.88]

‘More recently the view that regulars and all the sects are to be
lumped together as equally valid cultural artifacts… is as value loaded in its own way
as the denomination of homeopaths as sectarians or irregulars. The emphasis on
homeopathy… reaches a high point in the he recent works of Harris Coulter, a political
scientist by training and medical historian by inclination, who is also convinced of the
superiority of homeopathy and is active as its Washington lobbyist. According to Coulter’s
interpretation… ‘the economic forces which shaped the one led to the decline of the
other’… ‘ [Blake, pp.89-90]

What therefore was it that Kett, Coulter, Rothstein, Burrow, and Kaufman
did which was so new, interesting and different?

For the first time, they did at least six important things:

1. they portrayed homeopaths and sectarians in a sympathetic or at least a
   neutral light; it gave them a voice which had hitherto been smothered rather than heard;
2. they explored and exposed in some detail the horrors of the heroic
   methods which hitherto had been largely neglected and downplayed;
3. they examined in depth the primary literature of the sectarians and
   presented to readers their interests and legitimate medical concerns;
4. they gave some encouragement to the idea that these were legitimate
   alternative systems of healing with valid, impressive and interesting therapeutic and
   theoretical foundations;
5. they suggested that sectarians and their followers might not have been
   mad afterall, as they had always been portrayed, but might in fact have stumbled upon
   some important medical truths;
6. they explored in depth some of the economic, professional and social
   factors operating within medicine generally, and especially in 19th century medicine,
   which impinged very importantly upon the sects and which probably also led to their
   gradual exclusion from the American medical scene.

Some of this historical interest might have derived from the resurgence of
public interest in medical sects during the 1960s, a period of time well-known for its
sympathies with ‘alternatives’ of all kinds. That provides a sort of social context and
gives a renewed legitimacy for their historical study. But it must have made the allopaths
pretty nervous, if not incensed. In particular, we must single out Rothstein for giving a
very plausible, compelling and well-argued sociological analysis of the sects and Coulter
for giving a very pro-homeopathy line; Coulter also gives a sound socio-economic background
for the decline of homeopathy, and its competitive exclusion from the medical marketplace. A
theme also explored by Rothstein.

By pursuing such essentially non-medical arguments, these writers had
unwittingly also done some pretty serious damage to the entrenched, unquestioned and
oft-repeated regular mantra: that all the medical sects were ineffective; that they were
fairy stories from a bygone era; that these had all been events way out on the margins of
medicine; that these sects had died out because they were ineffective and nonsensical; that
their adherents had all been deviants, ‘knaves or fools’ of questionable sanity; and that
they therefore warranted far less attention than the great headline-grabbing heroic stories
of the development of modern, scientific medicine. These new texts all seemed to question
these perspectives. Yet none of these texts had been published with that purpose or with any
malicious intent, but merely to examine afresh some actual historical events. Maybe the
allopaths were guilty of protesting too much?

Thus for the first time these publications offered some useful insights
into the reasons for the existence of medical sects, their concerns and histories and some
possible reasons for their demise. Of course, another important factor is that in all these
publications there were implicit and well-argued criticisms about regular medicine, such as
the uncharitable way it had behaved towards the medical sectarians and the way their
exclusion had been a pretty shameful and disreputable episode. Other criticisms of regular
medicine included fresh and the very unpalatable portrayals of heroic methods, which became
(quite rightly?) seen in the modern era as barbarous techniques wholly without any rational
justification and which must have belonged to a system of medicine composed of largely
under-qualified practitioners whose sanity must still be open to question. Bloodletting is
the ghost which ever keeps coming back to haunt so-called ‘scientific’ medicine. If the
sects were to be portrayed as part of a fairy-story, then here surely were some key elements
of a medical nightmare!

‘A belief in nature’s power in disease was blind idolatry of a
mythical force… .medical students taught to place their trust in nature would come to
believe that scientific study was a useless expenditure of their time, and that laboratory
research would be an imprudent investment of their professional talents in later life… ‘
[Warner, 1977, pp.321-2]

That is a fair portrayal of the background against which the publication
of Warner appears. Yet here is probably the most telling quotation of them all:

‘This raises the further question as to whether the bleak view of
nineteenth century American medicine that is apparently becoming the vogue among
historians has not itself been overdone… ‘ [Blake, p.90]

That was written in 1981 and seems to signal a sense of despair within
allopathy. It therefore seems to me that Warner has sought to tip the balance back by
returning to the essentially hard-line and allopathic stance of Garrison, basically
sceptical of and hostile towards the sectarians and seeking yet again to justify and
contextualise the horrors of heroic methods, to uncritically repeat many of the allopathic
criticisms against sectarianism and to undo all the professional, legal and social aspects
argued so eloquently in the 60s and 70s. However, Warner goes much further than this, he
seems to be out on the attack, meat-cleaver in hand, seeking to punish those who recently
had the audacity to portray sectarian medicine so sympathetically. If you compare Warner’s
work with the list of six items discussed above, you can see that he has reversed each of
them; that is downplayed, marginalised and minimised each, or completely ignored them. Can
that possibly be a coincidence?

He seeks to downplay the horrors of the heroic methods, and to legitimize
them as perfectly valid techniques with a sound theoretical underpinning metaphysic. A
somewhat ironic twist considering that he persistently charges the medical sects themselves
as comprising little more than ‘rationalistic systems’ cast ‘in the same 18th century mold
as those of Rush, Cullen and Brown’! Warner also downplays differences between allopaths and
homeopaths and seeks to show that they worked happily together side-by-side as professional
colleagues throughout most of the last century. A view which is laughable, as it rests at
best upon only the flimsiest of evidence. Warner also pays only very scant attention to the
primary literature of the sectarians, he dismisses the impressive evidence of sectarian
therapeutic successes and the arguments of Coulter, Rothstein and others for their decline
(see Rothstein quotes given above). He seeks to justify their decline wholly on the ground
that they were eclipsed by the triumphalist rise of a medical science superior
intellectually, philosophically, scientifically and therapeutically. Apart from Warner’s
rhetoric and with little recourse to actual evidence.

Consideration of this background therefore gives one the distinct
impression that Dr. Warner might have obtained his academic reputation and his Yale
professorship by pandering to the palpable outrage allopaths felt in the early 1980s against
the books discussed above. Maybe he unwittingly got caught up in a vendetta, contrived by
desperate allopaths who run and finance most university history of medicine faculties, for
vengeful purposes, inspired entirely by that same outrage against the Œpolitical
correctness’ of daring to portray sectarian medicine as being just as intellectually valid
and as worthy of study as modern scientific medicine. And allopaths who jealously wished to
reassert the power and dominance of allopathy over and against all deviant medical sects.

‘… in the words of Simon Flexner of the Rockefeller Institute, who
was quoted by the Ohio State Medical Journal [in 1922] as saying: ‘The obvious retort to
any special school or sect of medicine is that there is only one science of medicine. It
would be as reasonable to maintain that there are several sciences of physics as of
medicine.’… ‘ [Roberts, p.85]

My position is that I represent no-one. I write for pleasure. I have no
axe to grind either academically or in terms of homeopathy. I would just like to see
impartial truth and justice prevail rather than a farrago of lies, distortions and innuendo.

Sources:
Blake, John B, Homeopathy in American History,
Trans. Stud. Coll. Phys., Philadelphia, Series 5, vol. 3, 1981, pp.83-92
Bradford, Thomas L, The Life and Letters of Hahnemann, Jain, 1895
Burrow, James G, Organized Medicine in the Progressive Era: the Move Towards Monopoly, Johns
Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore, 1977
Cameron, Charles S, MD, Homeopathy in Retrospect, Trans. Stud. Coll. Phys. Philadelp., 27,
1959, pp.28-33
Close, Stuart, The Genius of Homeopathy, Lectures and Essays on Homeopathic Philosophy, Jain
reprint, India, 1924
Coulter, Harris L, Divided Legacy A History of the Schism in Medical Thought, 3 vols.,
Wehawken Books, Washington, USA, 1973
Dinges, Martin, The Role of Medical Societies in the Professionalisation of Homeopathic
Physicians in Germany and the USA in Juette, Risse & Woodward, 1998
Dudgeon, Robert, Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Homeopathy, 1853, London, Jain
reprint, India
Flinn, Lewis B, MD, Homeopathic Influences in the Delaware Community A Retrospective
Reassessment, Del. Med. Jnl., 48:7, July 1976, pp.418-428
Gevitz, Norman, Sectarian Medicine, Jnl Amer. Med. Assoc., 257, 1987, pp.1636-40
Gevitz, Norman, (Ed), Other Healers, Unorthodox Medicine in America, Johns Hopkins Univ.
Press, Baltimore, USA, 1990
Gumpert, Martin, Hahnemann – The Adventurous Career of a Medical Rebel, L B Fischer Publ
Corp., New York, 1945, a translation into English of: ‘Hahnemann, die Abenteurlichen
Schicksale einea Arztlichen Rebellen und seiner Lehre, der Homoöpathie’, S. Fischer,
Berlin, 1934; translated from the German by Claud W Sykes.
Haehl, Richard, Samuel Hahnemann His Life and Works, 2 volumes, Jain India, 1922
Hahnemann, Samuel, Organon of Medicine, Dudgeon/Boericke translation, combined 5th/6th
edition, 1921, Jain reprint
Juette, Risse and Woodward (Eds.), Culture, Knowledge and Healing: Historical Perspectives
on Homeopathy in Europe and North America, Sheffield Univ. Press, UK, 1998
Karst, Frederick, Homeopathy In Illinois, Caduceus, 4:2, 1988, pp.1-33
Kaufman, Martin, Homeopathy in America: The Rise and Fall of a Medical Heresy, Johns
Hopkins, Univ. Press, Baltimore, USA, 1971
Kaufman, Martin, Homeopathy In America: The Rise, Fall and Persistence of a Medical Heresy,
in Gevitz, 1990
Kett, Joseph F, The Formation of the American Medical Profession: the Role of Institutions
1780-1860, New Haven Conn., Yale Univ. Press, 1968
Kishore, Jugal, About Entry of Homeopathy Into India, Bull. Ind. Hist. Med., vol. 3 (2),
April 1973, pp.76-78
Porter, Roy, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, A Medical History of Humanity, W Norton &
Co., New York, USA, and London UK, 1998
Roberts, William H, Orthodoxy vs. Homeopathy: Ironic Developments Following Flexner Report
at the Ohio State University, Bull. Hist. Med., 60, 1987, pp73-87
Rothstein, William G, American Physicians in the 19th Century From Sects to Science, Johns
Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore, USA, 1972
Shryock, Richard H, The Development of Modern Medicine, Univ. Penns Press, USA, 1936
Shryock, Richard Harrison, Medicine and Society in America 1660-1860, Cornell Univ. Press,
New York, USA 1972
Siddall, A Clair, MD, History of Homeopathic Medicine at Oberlin, Ohio, 1833-1933, Ohio
State Med. Jnl, 74, pt. 2, 1978, pp.121-124
Warner, John Harley, The Nature-Trusting Heresy, Perspectives on American History, 11, 1977,
pp.291-324
Warner, John Harley, The Therapeutic Perspective Medical Practice, Knowledge and Identity in
America 1820-1885, Harvard Univ. Press, USA, 1986

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