THE HISTORY
OF THE GLASGOW HOMOEOPATHIC HOSPITAL
Presented by Peter Morrell & Sylvain Cazalet
Reproduction of the booklet ‘What Homoeopathy
is doing in the National Health Service in Scotland 1953’RESEARCH
The LaboratoryThe Homoeotherapeutic method used in Hospital and
Out-Patient Departments with its critical analysis of patients both from the subjective and
objective individualistic view-point necessitates on the part of the physicians a continual
research attitude. The wide range of remedies for possible selection in each case requires
discernment and careful assessing of values to distinguish between the objective signs and
symptoms which are direct effects of the disease, and the signs and symptoms which are the
evidence of individualistic reaction against the disease. Only thus can the best choice be
made of a remedy to help the particular patient.Thus, as in any hospital, the clinical work from
day to day is a valuable and constant form of research. At the same time, however, the
practice of Homoeotherapy has its own particular research problems. The present medical
controversy centres round two questions. Firstly, is the principle of the simile, on which is
based medical treatment with homoeotherapeutic remedies or potencies, as they are called, a
useful and reliable one; and secondly, are the remedies themselves, often but not always used
in extremely small material quantities, active and potent?The first question can best be answered by
clinical observation and treatment in the Hospital and Out-Patient Department but such
observation must be supplemented by all possible laboratory and instrumental evidence obtained
from the patients themselves. One of the aims, therefore, of the Board of Management is to
encourage, by every means open to them, the development of laboratory methods and apparatus,
to assist in demonstrating results of the administration of remedies given on the simile
principle.The second question, as to the activity and nature
of the action of the remedies in both low and high potency, is a laboratory one. The low
potencies so designated because they contain material, though minute quantities, of drug,
require investigation to find to what extent they have properties capable of some form of
activity and whether they are capable of causing effects detectable by biochemical,
biological, or biophysical methods. The high potencies require an even more extensive
investigation, much of it in little understood fields termed paraphysical, but some of it
planned to demonstrate activity of these potencies using biological or biochemical reactors
and measuring effects by methods and apparatus developed for the purpose. Such research has
only become possible through scientific advance in the last twenty years. A simple example is
the one where, by physical methods, a low potency of gold, made according to the directions of
Hahnemann, who was not only a physician but a well-known chemist of his time, has been shown
by the Boyd Medical Research Laboratories to have physical activity of a high degree, although
Hahnemann himself was condemned for claiming to have made a solution containing gold.Investigations of this nature require laboratories
especially equipped for microchemical and microphysical investigation, so in the last few
years the Board of Management has sought facilities from the Trustees of the Boyd Medical
Research Trust, Glasgow, for the carrying out of research in these laboratories under the
direction of a hospital physician and under the supervision of a small Hospital Research
Committee, which receives continuous reports of the work.One aspect of the work in which the Board of
Management has taken a practical and financial interest has been the design and development of
a Biological Heart Rate Recorder which is now being used with convincing results in the
laboratories to demonstrate the biological activity of low potencies containing doses of an
incredibly small material quantity, specially prepared on homoeopharmacological lines. Out of
this development a wider application for general use has been found, and Electronic Engineering, one of the leading British scientific
journals, published a full description of this Biological Recorder, commented on later with
interest by The Lancet.A second line of research is an investigation into
the possibility of analysing electronically the usual human electro-cardiograph (heart)
currents in such a way as to detect changes not heretofore noticed, and to discover whether
these changes can provide information of value in the assessment or treatment of heart cases.
That this electronic wave analysis can be done has now been demonstrated on a large number of
hospital patients. To determine the future value of the method will require much further
clinical research.In addition, the Board has taken a great interest
in supporting the development of a Human Heart Rate Recorder with new features for clinical
use in Hospital. Giving a continuous and accurate record of the heart rate like a barometer
chart, this recorder will provide valuable information not only on homoeotherapeutic potency
action, but will, it is hoped, prove of general use to cardiologists in assessing heart
conditions, to physicians in assessing treatment, and to anaesthetists during operations.The Boyd Medical Research Trust which is carrying
out this research work is a charitable trust, supported by private and public funds. It is
engaged in studying the biophysical properties of the body, its electrical changes on
thinking, its electric field, surface electrical changes, radiation etc., while at the same
time studying the electrophysical properties of microdoses and their biological and
biochemical reactions. The aim is to elucidate effects which suggest strongly that, in certain
circumstances, special preparations of drugs act not in the ordinary medicinal way but by
virtue of physical or paraphysical properties, as yet little understood. A long and tedious
but rigid research on the effect of such drugs on enzyme activity is strongly supporting this
view. Enzymes play a large part in the living processes in the body.The illustrations show some of the laboratories
and workshops of the Trust in which this research work is carried on. The financial
contribution of the Board of Management and of the Western Regional Board relates to special
fields of research, and funds from other sources are continuously required to meet the needs
of other sections of the research work, additional staff salaries and equipment and overhead
expenditure. The Board of Management commends the work of the Boyd Medical Research Trust to
those of the general public who are interested in research of a pioneering character in
medicine.
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