Historical Perspectives of Homeopathic Medicine in ...

British Homeopathic Journal (1999) 88, 93±95 ß 1999 Stockton Press All rights reserved 0307±0565/98 $12.00 http://www.stockton-press.co.uk/bhj

BOOK REVIEWS Culture Knowledge and Healing: Historical Perspectives of Homeopathic Medicine in Europe and North America. Edited by Robert JuÈtte, Guenter Risse and John Woodward. Shef®eld University Press, UK 1998, £29.95 (EAHMH members £19.95). ISBN 0-9527045-7-9 This 338 page book contains eleven essays about the history of homeopathy in Europe and North America. The essays derive from a conference held in San Francisco in 1994. The book contains a very extensive bibliography, a good index and notes on the contributors. It was published by the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health (website http:// www.bbr-online.com/eahmh). The contributions include some of the ablest contemporary historians working in this ®eld. Of special value are the essays by John H Warner, Naomi Rogers, Robert JuÈtte and Martin Dinges. The chapters can be summarised as follows. Orthodoxy and Otherness: Homeopathy and Regular Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America, John Harley Warner (Yale University, USA). Professor Warner depicts the war of identity which exists in the US between regulars and homeopaths. He also illustrates the abandonment by the homeopaths of their old internal orthodoxy in favour of a new identity based in science. ` . . . 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.' (p 11). ` . . . a Detroit practitioner wrote . . . ` it does not make any difference whether he gives large doses of quinine or small doses of bryonia, or does not give any medicine at all as long as he thoroughly understands physiology and makes that the basis of his treatment; the remedial agent is only of secondary importance' (p. 21). American Homeopathy Confronts Scienti®c Medicine, Naomi Rogers (Yale University, USA). This depicts nineteenth century regular and homeopathic physicians in the US. Dr Rogers suggests that homeopaths never had a uniform, monolithic internal orthodoxy, but were essentially ¯uid in their beliefs, and able to assimilate parts of scienti®c medicine into their ideology as required. This article also provides

many useful insights into the early struggles of women in US medicine. ` . . . reformist homeopaths agreed increasingly with regulars that most of the medical knowledge of the 1880's and 1890's could be taught properly by anyone, and that there was no special homeopathic understanding of pathology, physiology and chemistry.' (p 46). `By the 1920's it was clear that the powerful image of the laboratory researcher had overpowered the notion of homeopathic physician as a healer. The homeopathic sense of distinctive identity had been weakened . . . ' (p 48). The Paradox of Professionalisation: Homeopathy and Hydropathy as Unorthodoxy in Germany in the 19th and early 20th Century, Robert JuÈtte (IGM Stuttgart, Germany). Professor JuÈtte compares homeopaths and hydropaths in Germany and how homeopaths appealed to upper-class support to win power and in¯uence in medicine and society. `Although medical historians have divided and labelled irregular healers according to training, skill, type of practice and ideological background, many practitioners of unorthodox medicine cannot be regarded as a distinctive group. Their beliefs and practices vary considerably from one medical sect or movement to another and form no consistent body of medical knowledge. They have `no real corporate identity' . . . ' (p 66). ` . . . those theories and practices labelled `heterodox' may not have been seen by contemporaries as `alternative medicine', in the sense of being ideologically completely different, but may have been regarded simply as therapies which were different from scientific medicine, which despite its impressive record as far as methodology, knowledge and technology are concerned, was for a long time far from producing convincing practical results.' (p 66). Critics and Converts of Homeopathy: the Dutch Debate in the Nineteenth Century, Marijke GijswijtHofstra (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands). In her account of homeopathy in Holland, Professor Hofstra depicts the almost invisible nature of early Dutch homeopathy. `Various explanations have been offered for the declining popularity of homeopathy in Germany after 1850, in England and France after 1870, and in the United States towards the end of the nineteenth century. They are based on various elements in the internal homeopathic conflicts between `pure' and

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more liberal homeopaths, and secondly, developments which moved orthodox medicine away from heroic medicine, thereby lessening the differences between orthodox and homeopathic therapies.' (pp 103±104). `The very weakness of Dutch homeopathy might have been that it never stood apart as a clear alternative. It was permeated by a spirit of compromise, of fitting in, rather than of conflict with orthodox medicine. Dutch homeopathy was weakly opposed and weakly supported. Indeed, this seems to have been the fate of other medical newcomers as well, for sectarianism itself did not become an important factor in Dutch medicine.' (p 105). Homeopathy in Victorian Canada and its TwentiethCentury Resurgence: Professional, Cultural and Therapeutic Perspectives, J T H Connor (University of Toronto, Canada). He describes the relative peace and harmony which existed between regular and homeopathic physicians in Victorian Canada, and the generally mature way in which they conducted themselves, as compared with the strife and tensions elsewhere. Homeopathy in the American West: its German Connections, Joseph Schmidt (University of Munich, Germany). An account of homeopathic and regular physicians in the American West, especially those of the San Francisco area. It details their professional, institutional and educational backgrounds, especially in the 1850's. The Role of Medical Societies in the Professionalisation of Homeopathic Physicians in Germany and the USA, Martin Dinges (IGM Stuttgart). This chapter depicts the role of professional societies in promoting homeopathy in USA and Germany and how this led to changes in their perceived professional identity. I found this chapter brilliant and challenging. `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.' (p 186). `In Germany the efforts of the homeopathic physicians and their societies to gain influence can be seen as a relative failure. They did not succeed in securing permanent control of public hospitals nor were they able to set up or retain professorships in medical faculties. The picture of failure is not altered even if it is assumed that preferences shifted from the seemingly unattainable goal of professorships to the hospitals.' (pp 187±188).

The Role of Laymen in the History of German Homeopathy, DoÈrte Staudt (IGM Stuttgart). This chapter describes a German homeopathic lay organisation and its class make-up, ideology and links to other medical sectarians of the time. It provides useful insights into the importance of lay groups in homeopathy. ` . . . the spread of homeopathy, as seen from today's viewpoint, was unthinkable without the powerful lobby of the lay organisation.' (pp 208±209). Sectarian Identity and the Aim of Integration: Attitudes of American Homeopaths Towards Smallpox Vaccination in the Late Nineteenth Century, Eberhard Wolff (IGM Stuttgart). This chapter focuses on how US homeopaths in the 1870's used smallpox vaccination and how that revealed the evolving nature of their ideology and practices. This indicates that homeopaths softened their old dogmas in the light of their contact with scienti®c medicine. `The crucial point is that genuine homeopathic identity was weak enough to promote a prophylactic means which was totally opposed to the law of potentisation. Even among homeopathic anti-vaccinationists their specific identity was not strong enough to fight vaccination with homeopathic arguments. In this respect, those homeopaths taking the sectarian way, had no identity which was distinctive from other sectarians.' (p 238). ` . . . [they had] an eclectic pragmatism . . . [in which] both homeopathic and allopathic identity was superseded by a common `scientific' professional identity drawn from experimental medicine that did not have the need to rely on old dogmas.' (p 238). It Won't Do Any Harm: Practice and People at the London Homeopathic Hospital, 1889±1923, Bernard Leary, Maria Lorentzon & Anna Bosanquet. (Leary is a retired general medical practitioner and homeopath; Bosanquet lectures at the Roehampton Institute in London and Lorentzon is a researcher at Imperial College, London). Of greatest interest to the British reader will be the essay by Leary et al about the London Homeopathic Hospital. In some ways this essay is disappointing. There is some interesting information about prescribing habits of doctors in the period (pp 263±264) and how it changed under the in¯uence of Kent after 1908, but this is already fairly well-known. Even the useful new information about Dr Quin, is matched by some bad spelling mistakes (for example he twice refers to Dr J H C ClarkeÐp 264 and p 268; when it should be John Henry Clarke) and some factual inaccuracies. It is not very well referenced.

Book Reviews P Morrell

These essays are written by historians, largely talking to each other rather than to homeopaths. This can create a problem because homeopaths carry with them various beliefs and myths about its past. Inevitably therefore, some homeopaths reading these essays will ®nd their views about its past challenged. Underpinning all these essays seem to be three themes: ®rstly a concern over divergent medical identities, and second, the recurrent battles which periodically erupted between homeopathy and regular medicine. Thirdly, the con¯ict between professional medical practice and awareness of medical identity. It is commonly supposed that during the last century regular medicine simply welded its fortunes more and

more to science, while homeopathy remained hostile or indifferent to science, while clinging to its own internal orthodoxy. These essays to some extent challenge this viewpoint. It remains dif®cult to be certain to what degree nineteenth century physicians were aware of, their `medical identity', as opposed to just getting on with treating patients. It is equally uncertain to what degree scienti®c medicine was truly that and to what degree homeopathy was unscienti®c. These essays do not resolve this issue, but they do shed some light upon it. They also tend to portray homeopathy as shifting, adaptive and ¯uid rather than dogmatic and hard-line. Peter Morrell

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