by Peter Morrell
PART 7 CONCLUSIONS
In general terms I feel that I have
produced a reasonably complete account of all the main figures and events in the period
studied. On the limited resources and limited time for part-time research, which a full-time
job allowed me, I feel that a quite decent attempt has been made to study almost every
aspect of the subject. To qualify that claim, my reservations regard greater use I could
have made of primary sources, especially documents held at the Faculty Library and BT
Archive in London and at the Glasgow Homeopathic Library. Cost and time prevented me from
using those more.I regret not being able to include masses
of material I prepared about the relative philosophies of allopathic medicine and
alternative therapies. I also did a lot of reading and writing about science, the
sociological critique of science, about the class struggles of the 1830s, and also about the
1960s. I also did some reading on the religious struggles of the 1850s and the other
alternative therapies, like Galvanism and Mesmerism, which were marginally relevant to our
theme. All of this other material could have been used, but was found to be too bulky and
too difficult to condense into this thesis. It is all valid background information to the
events described here, though some of it is more relevant to our main theme than others.Given a second attempt, I would certainly
have availed myself of those libraries. I would also have persisted with more postal probing
of people in the lost history. I feel sure that at least some of the people who wrote essays
or letters to journals in the 30s and 40s can still be traced. Or their immediate relatives.
But the amount of effort required to obtain all that would be quite large and would almost
certainly involve going to visit people, making many telephone calls and recording
interviews. Even then the actual amount of information retrieved from such an operation
would probably be very small. I found a poor response just to writing them letters. A better
response would most probably ensue from telephone calls and visits.For future research I would include those
areas just mentioned as being very fruitful lines of enquiry. I would also add further
surveys of various aspects of the practice and beliefs of homeopaths of all types. One could
easily compare medically trained and lay persons on many aspects of belief and methods. That
would most probably provide some useful contrasts. I personally intend to do more surveys. I
am currently compiling data from surveys of the caseloads of homeopaths from all over the
world, obtained through e-mail. I have received some excellent responses from USA, New
Zealand and Spain, plus many from other countries too.I have also been conducting some
semi-quantitative research into the Paris years of Hahnemann and have purchased my first
Casebook in microfiche [from the years 1840-43]. I am currently extracting data from it
about his workloads and use of potency and remedies. That is progressing nicely for a paper
on homeopaths’ workloads for the next Stuttgart conference in April 1999. Much more research
could be done into the Paris years of Hahnemann, which is a badly-neglected area. Most of
the casebooks are now available in microfiche and two in hardcopy. They clearly show a wide
divergence in his techniques compared to his instructions to others in works such as The Organon
6th Edition and the Chronic Disease 2nd Edition, instructions which far too many
homeopaths seem to regard as sacrosanct, immutable and ‘carved in stone’.Finally, I do intend to conduct more
research into the fine detail of the figures and events of the social history of lay
homeopathy. Having retrieved the main figures and events, I would like to add further
detail. It would also be interesting to add to that, more information about the class
struggles of the 1830-70 period and the social, religious and political backgrounds to the
main figures. No social history can be complete without that sort of fine detail and gaps
filled up, where possible, with sound thinking and intelligent speculation about the
beliefs,
