by Peter Morrell
PART 6: UK HOMEOPATHY 1930-76
Discussion 1900-30
This phase seems to show a period of great
stagnation and general decline during which many different avenues were explored, but none
of which were sustained into modern times or had a truly lasting impact upon the core
teachings of homeopathy. This phase was punctuated by the huge lay revival of the 30s and
40s, already discussed, but was followed by general collapse and a brief engagement with
radionics and Steiner in the 50s and 60s. None of that had a lasting impact upon the
movement as far as one can tell, and they largely remained events occurring on the margins
of homeopathy as a movement.Probably the most interesting point about
the 30s was that it was doubly heretical: heretical firstly as a deviant medical system and
secondly as they were mostly lay practitioners. And in that sense it seemed to work fairly
well. It almost seemed acceptable. Doctors did not want herbalism or homeopathy within
mainstream medicine, so it seemed convenient to them to let these ‘deviant laypersons’
get on with peddling these ‘quack therapies’ to a public which seemed to enjoy them.
That seems to sum it up quite well.
After 1930
This final section covers homeopathy in
Britain from 1930 to 1995 and inevitably focuses mainly upon the activity of the lay
practitioners. I say ‘inevitably’, because the overwhelming historical trend since 1930 has
been for doctors to abandon homeopathy, and for the movement to be gradually taken over by
and controlled by laypersons. At the end we shall also be able to make some assessments of
the current scene.Homeopathy of the medically-trained
continued in this period pretty well as flat as it was in 1900, with a small number of major
figures and very little change to a rather slack scene. As previously mentioned, the main
change in methodology was the gradual increase in the potency in use from 3x, 6x and 6c at
the beginning of the century to 6, 12 and 30 as standard potencies in use. This was also
accompanied by an increased use of the higher potencies, like 200, M and 10M, under the
influence of Kentianism. There was also a corresponding increase in the routine use of
nosodes, especially the Bowel Nosodes developed in the 1920s by Bach and Wheeler, and later
elaborated further by Dr. John Paterson. These dozen or so remedies have become part of the
mainstream within UK homeopathy, but are little known or used outside of Britain.So much for the medical scene. The lay
scene during the same period went through enormous changes. After the death of Dr. Clarke in
1931 the journal which he edited, The Homeopathic World was taken over by a lay
homeopath J Ellis Barker and renamed Heal Thyself. This coincided with [or itself
created?] a big revival of homeopathy at grassroots level and a massive increase in its
sales and readership. This can be shown from the size of the magazine, which peaked at 1073
pages in length in 1937.After that point it slowly declined to the
late 40s and flattened out. During this same period of time the homeopathic scene became
dominated by many hundreds of unqualified practitioners. Most towns had their own herbalist
and ‘penny herbal store’ and many also had one or several lay homeopaths too.We might speculate as to why homeopathic
activity peaked in the late 30s and why it then declined during the War years and after. I
think it peaked because of the efforts of people like Barker who kept hammering away at the
publicity side of things throughout that period and placed it within the public domain and
in the minds of ordinary people, a place it had never been to before. The decline is partly
explicable due to the War itself, and the focus of most minds being elsewhere. And also due
to the NHS Act which was going through Parliament from 1946 and which became law in 1948. As
we shall see, Edwin Tomkins founded the Incorporated Institute of Homeopaths in 1946,
largely in response to the NHS Act. The prospect of free medical treatment for all ‘scared
the living daylights out of us all’ [Tomkins, 1990]. It also sent tremors of fear throughout
the whole of medicine.I have also looked at this period in
another way. If you count, as I have, the total number of lay names and the total number of
doctor’s names you find an interesting pattern. This means all names, authors of articles,
letters and any name mentioned anywhere on the page, excluding advertisements. In the early
30s, between 60 and 80% of the names in the Journal are doctors. This declines progressively
to only 15-20% by the early 50s. Likewise, we find that the number of non-doctor people
mentioned by name in Heal Thyself rises from around 20% in the early 30s to 80-90% by the
early 50s.This again shows a drift away from
doctor-dominated homeopathy and towards one controlled largely by laypersons, which is
exactly what Ellis Barker and his friends wanted from the start. So from this observation we
are tempted to make two very likely conclusions.Firstly, as some homeopaths of the period
said to me in conversation [especially Tomkins and Brown], that after around 1930 the
homeopathic doctors more or less gave up on its promotion and regarded the subject as ‘all
but finished’. They thought its ‘race was run’. Second, that the movement was indeed taken
over by lay people, who gradually began to dominate and control it. This has implications
for the current scene, in which the same applies. Today, we find that doctors want to claw
back some of the power and influence over homeopathy which they had unwittingly surrendered
in the 40s; and begin to take charge of the movement again. We shall discuss the problems
relating to this shortly.During the same period of time the actual
number of homeopathic doctors in Britain drops from around 200 in 1910 to 130 in 1940. That
is a slump of 35% over 30 years. This figure only rises slightly after 1970 and then
steadily increases from 1981. So, again, we can see that the fortunes of homeopathy, whether
lay or medical, have fluctuated a great deal during this century, and there has been a
gradual move away from doctor-domination, from the last century, up to the ambivalent
mid-40s, since which time it has been almost entirely dominated and controlled by the lay
practitioners.
Lay Practitioners of the Period
Glancing through the 30s and 40s editions of Heal Thyself we find
the same names cropping up again and again. They include Ephraim Connor [1893-1981], Otto
Leeser [c.1890-1964], Darnall Cooper [c.1890-c.1965], F Parker Woods [c.1900-65], Eric
Powell [1900-91], Noel Puddephatt, etc. Some of these people we know quite well, but many
others I have been unable to trace or obtain any extra hard information about. They have
become mere names in a ‘lost history’.
