Countercultural Healing: A Brief History of Alternative Medicine in America

By James Wharton, M.C.

Although it seems like the current surge in interest in alternative medicine is a modern trend, in fact, alternative practioners like homeopaths and naturopaths have been active in America--and battling with conventional doctors--for over 150 years. Medical historian James Whorton traces the history of alternative medicine in America, and explores the evergreen appeal of holistic approaches to healing.

So explosive has been the growth of interest in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) over the last decade, one could easily draw the conclusion that unconventional approaches to healing must be a new phenomenon in American society. In fact, the current surge of enthusiasm for unorthodox treatments is merely the latest of three waves of popularity in the past century-and-a-half (the first was the mid-1800s, the second the early 1900s). And although it is true that the present environment differs in certain critical respects from previous cycles, there are still more ways in which historical patterns are mirrored by the interest in CAM today. It is therefore vital to have some familiarity with the historical background of unconventional medicine in order to understand our contemporary situation.

Unorthodox systems of medical treatment were first developed in Europe and the United States in the late 1700s; by 1850, Americans dissatisfied with conventional medicine could choose from among Thomsonianism (which employed botanical drugs and steam baths), hydropathy (which used various applications of cold water), magnetic healing (which relied on hypnotism and suggestion), and a number of other schemes. Most popular of all—comparable in scale to chiropractic today--was homeopathy, which prescribed drugs that were supposed to cure by duplicating the symptoms experienced by the patient, a form of "like cures like" ("homeopathy" is derived from the Greek roots omeos, or "similar," and pathos, or suffering; homeopathy thus means using treatments that are "like the disease"). Following the Civil War, a second generation of unorthodox systems emerged: osteopathy in the 1870s, and chiropractic and naturopathy in the 1890s. Many more alternative methods would establish a foothold in the twentieth century, most notably massage therapy and, since the 1970s, acupuncture.

From the beginning, doctors utilizing unconventional methods were dismissed by orthodox medicine as unscientific pretenders, and were collectively branded "irregular practitioners" ("alternative practitioners" would not become the common designator until the 1970s). Not surprisingly, through the entire nineteenth century and all but the last quarter or so of the twentieth, relations between MDs and irregulars were hostile. Venom flowed through all their exchanges with one another. In the mid-1800s, for example, a regular physician addressed the question of what should be the attitude of true medicine toward homeopathy. "It should be that of abomination, loathing and hate," he declared; "It should be considered the unclean thing--foul to the touch, wicked and treacherous to the soul…the death of every upright principle." In reply, a homeopath voiced his profession's feelings about regulars: "Spurn them beneath your feet as foul and slimy reptiles," he urged. "Dogs may return to their vomit, and sows to their wallowing in the mire," but homeopathy must never return to orthodox methods, "the chaos from whence it came forth."1

(It was the founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, who coined the term allopathy, from Greek words meaning "different from the disease," as a label for conventional medicine. "Allopathic medicine" has been revived and come into common use in recent years as a synonym for mainstream medicine, and many MDs today accept the designation uncomplainingly; in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, regular practitioners bitterly resented the name, as it implied their medicine was just one more "pathy," no more valid than homeopathy or naturopathy).

Conflict between regulars and irregulars has been a war not just of words, but of action too. Establishment medicine has striven all along to suppress alternative practitioners by pressing legal authorities to arrest, fine, and jail them as threats to public safety for practicing medicine without a license; as a result, many irregular doctors have indeed paid hefty fines and/or spent time in jail. In return, they have struck back forcefully. On one hand, they have successfully campaigned for legislation granting them legal standing in states throughout the union. On the other, they have refined a public image of being superior care givers that has proved very attractive to American consumers. It is an image drawn from a distinctive medical philosophy crafted in the early nineteenth century, and held in common by alternative practitioners of all stripes ever since. In considering the tenets of that philosophy, one can see several telling parallels between the irregular medicine of the past and the alternative medicine of today.

The emergence of irregular medicine in the late 1700s was encouraged first of all by the perceived ineffectiveness, even danger, of conventional allopathic therapies. Standard treatment up to the middle of the 1800s was centered on evacuation of morbid matter from the body through blood-letting, vomiting, purging of the bowels, blistering of the skin, and similar depletive measures. There were theoretical justifications for such therapies, physicians believed, but to observers guided only by common sense, they appeared useless if not murderous. The most frequently prescribed drug of all, for instance, was the purgative calomel, a mercury compound that caused ulceration of the gums, loss of teeth, and, in some cases, destruction of the jawbone. Even MDs acknowledged that "the mercurial treatment" left the sick "maimed and disfigured," objects "of pity and horror" not unlike cancer patients who a century and more later would be subjected to chemotherapy.2 Similarly, today a significant factor in the appeal of alternative medicine is public fear of the side effects of not just cancer drugs, but pharmaceuticals in general.

People are also drawn to alternative medicine today in hope of assistance for conditions that often are not curable by conventional medicine. Cancer, diabetes, AIDS, and other afflictions are the modern equivalents of the lethal infectious diseases that ravaged the country in the 1800s and early 1900s. Particularly important for encouraging nineteenth-century Americans to look to irregulars for help was Asiatic cholera, an acute intestinal infection that invaded the United States in epidemic waves in the early 1830s and late 1840s. Cholera killed through dehydration, so absolutely the worst thing to do to a cholera patient was to administer bleeding, vomiting, and purging. Standard treatment reinforced the effects of the disease, no doubt sometimes killing people who otherwise would have survived, and allopaths' obvious impotence when faced with cholera—or yellow fever or typhus or other epidemic infections—drove patients to irregulars. They, at least, did not make the situation worse.

They did not make it worse, irregular doctors believed, partly because their treatments were gentle and non-toxic, but fundamentally because they acted in concert with nature. Alternative doctors throughout the past two centuries have identified themselves as practitioners of "natural healing," by which they have meant they use remedies and procedures that support and stimulate the healing power of nature, the innate tendency of the body to react to illness and work to restore itself to equilibrium and wholeness. As the botanic healer Samuel Thomson announced in the 1820s, his approach had "always been...to learn the course pointed out by nature," then to provide "those things best calculated to aid her in restoring health."3 Compare that position to the first principle of naturopathic medicine as stated in 1999: "Naturopathic physicians believe that the body has considerable power to heal itself. It is the physician's role to facilitate and enhance this process with the aid of natural, nontoxic therapies."4 These are sentiments that have been expressed as bedrock philosophy by the proponents of every alternative approach to healing from the 1700s through to the present.

There has also been a consistent response from regular physicians throughout the history of alternative medicine, that the cures attributed to natural remedies are in truth nothing more than demonstrations of the power of a patient's belief in his doctor and the ability of the body to heal itself. As a mid-1800s regular said of homeopaths, they would be every bit as successful if they replaced their symptom-duplicating drugs with "atoms of taffy or sawdust [providing they] give their patients room to exercise their faith, and nature time and opportunity to do the work."5 The power of the placebo effect continues to be the explanation offered by many mainstream physicians today to account for patients who recover under alternative medical care.

To the extent that patient faith contributes to recovery, irregular practitioners have had an advantage from the outset by virtue of cultivating a more intimate and empathic doctor-patient relationship, by in truth offering what in present times we are calling holistic medicine. The word "holistic" was not introduced into medical circles until the 1970s, when it gained vogue as a catchphrase for providing personalized, humane treatment of the whole patient, psyche and soul as well as body. Nineteenth-century alternative doctors thus didn't know they were practicing "holistic medicine," yet they repeatedly cited their engagement with patients as complicated individual human beings, and not mere organ containers, as one of the chief marks of their superiority to allopathic medicine (it was during the first half of the nineteenth century that mainstream medicine began to focus diagnostic attention on physical pathology seated in specific organs or tissues, and to lose touch with the sick person whose life was being disrupted by that pathology). The words of homeopathy's Samuel Hahnemann in 1810 could have come from the leaders of any of the irregular systems in his day or after: "all parts of the organism are so intimately connected as to form an indivisible whole in feelings and functions."6 One sees this repeated in another of the basic principles of naturopathic medicine today, that naturopaths "view an individual as a whole entity composed of a complex interaction of physical, mental-emotional, spiritual, social, and other factors."7

Nevertheless, the appeal of gentle, natural therapies delivered holistically has waxed and waned over time. The first stage of popular excitement for unconventional medicine, the period from roughly 1830 to 1870, was fueled by distaste for calomel and other harsh allopathic drugs, the more detached bedside manner of regular physicians, and not least by the seeming determination of MDs to understand the human body as a purely mechanical construct, ignoring or denying the operation of forces or agencies that could not be quantified or accounted for by chemistry and physics. Lay people, after all, were inclined to see life as a more mysterious process, and so found satisfaction in homeopaths' declarations of faith in a vital spirit roused to activity by their drugs, and in magnetic healers' claims to manipulate a cosmic vital energy. Similarly, the current period of excitement over alternative medicine was stimulated in part by the reaction in the 1960s and 1970s against biomedical reductionism, the explanation of all vital phenomena in biochemical terms. Recent decades have witnessed a revival of faith that life is more complicated than the biochemists acknowledge, and many patients have opted for healing methods that presume the existence of a vital force (naturopathy) or some form of life energy (the human energy field of Therapeutic Touch, the qi of acupuncture, the prana of Ayurveda).

The initial phase of popular enthusiasm for irregular medicine wound down in the 1870s and 1880s as the germ theory of disease was developed and applied to drug therapy, surgery, and public health. By 1900, allopathic medicine had undergone a revolutionary transformation into an enterprise based on a far more solid scientific foundation and capable of treating, and preventing, disease with a degree of effectiveness not previously approached. Deeply impressed by this new medicine, the public shifted allegiance in great measure back to regular practice. Adding to the decline of medical alternatives was the internal professional dissension that weakened many irregular groups.

But during the decade from 1892 through 1901, three new alternative systems opened schools and began to send graduates out into practice. Osteopaths, chiropractors, and naturopaths all sensed that people actually felt a fair amount of ambivalence about the recent advances in allopathic medicine, realizing that the new surgical operations, vaccines, and drugs could not only do more for them—they could also do more to them. Campaigning under the banner of "drugless healing," all three systems grew rapidly in support, as measured both in patient visits and enactment of state licensing provisions. Surveys conducted in the 1920s indicated that anywhere from one-quarter to three-quarters of the American population received treatment from a drugless healer at least occasionally (surveys published in the 1990s showed that 30% to 40% of Americans used some form of alternative medicine, though usually in conjunction with conventional treatment).

This second stage of prominence for non-allopathic medicine ended in the 1940s, with the introduction of antibiotics and other so-called "wonder drugs." A honeymoon with regular medicine ensued, but it turned out to be brief. By the 1960s patients were once again growing restless, unsettled by news of the untoward effects of many of the new drugs (the thalidomide tragedy having an especially profound impact) and disaffected with the clinical style of allopathic physicians who were more than ever directed toward an objective diagnosis of pathology at the expense of relating to the patient's subjective experience of the illness. Further, doctors trained to intervene decisively to cure infections with antibiotics were poorly equipped to deal with the emotional needs of patients suffering from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and the other chronic degenerative diseases that came to the fore as infectious disease was brought under control. It was this lack of attention to the whole person that generated the holistic health backlash of the 1970s, and alternative medicine, whose practitioners had always preached a holistic philosophy, benefited from the popular demand for more personal care. Over time, "holistic" would be expanded in meaning to include all the principles of alternative medical philosophy, until by the 1990s "holistic medicine" had become virtually synonymous with alternative medicine.

Unconventional doctors profited as well from the counter-culture movements of the 1960s, particularly the call to return to a more natural way of life (and more natural ways of healing) and rebellion against authority and the establishment; alternative practitioners had been rebelling against the authority of the medical establishment for more than a century. Renewed awareness of alternative medicine snowballed through the 1970s and 1980s, culminating in 1992 in the establishment by the United States Congress of an Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) at the National Institutes of Health. Given the charge of promoting and funding research into the efficacy of alternative therapies, OAM saw its budget increase forty-five-fold during its first decade.

In 1998, the status of OAM was upgraded by Congress to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, in recognition of the strengthening conviction that many alternative methods could actually serve as complements to standard therapy. This idea of complementariness is what is most distinctive about the current era of unconventional medicine. Prior to the last quarter of the twentieth century, cooperation between the two sides was unthinkable, and as much so for irregular as for regular physicians. Historically, alternative systems operated on the assumption they were capable of treating all disease, and anticipated they would one day drive allopathic medicine (as well as all other irregular groups) into extinction. "Hydropathy aims not at a reform," a water-cure doctor proclaimed in the 1840s, "but a total annihilation of the present system."8 As alternative medicine matured through the twentieth century, however, practitioners came to accept both their own limitations and the strengths of allopathic medicine. Alternative doctors today accept that for the treatment of trauma and acute infections, conventional medicine is unsurpassed. For other problems, however, they feel their medicine is often superior and almost always useful. "If I get into a serious accident," a naturopath has recently written, "take me directly to the hospital emergency department. Do not take me to a naturopathic physician." But, she continues, "once they stop the hemorrhaging, I want the hospital to call my naturopathic doctor, because then I want to integrate. I want the best of both medicines."9

Integrating the best of all medical systems into a single grand program of healing is the new goal of advocates of CAM from both the alternative and the allopathic camps. But integration will not be achieved easily, for wounds from past conflicts have not fully healed and are easily reopened. Distrust and wariness remain on both sides. It will take time, coupled with continuing demonstrations of the efficacy of alternative therapies, to put the turbulent past of irregular medicine to rest.

NOTES
1. Harris Coulter, Divided Legacy: A History of the Schism in Medical Thought, volume 3 (Washington, DC: McGrath, 1973), 157-8.

2. J. W. Heustis, "Remarks on the endemic diseases of Alabama," American Journal of Medical Sciences (1828) 2:41-2.

3. Samuel Thomson, A Narrative of the Life and Medical Discoveries of Samuel Thomson (Boston: Author, 1822), 9.

4. Michael Murray and Joseph Pizzorno, "Naturopathic Medicine," in Wayne Jonas and Jeffrey Levin, editors, Essentials of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Williams, and Wilkins, 1999), pp.307-8.

5. David Cathell, The Physician Himself and What he Should Add to His Scientific Acquirements, 4th edition (Baltimore: Cushings and Bailey, 1885), 152.

6. Samuel Hahnemann, Organon of the Art of Healing, 5th American edition, C. Wesselhoeft, translator (Philadelphia: Hahnemann, 1875), 149.

7. Murray and Pizzorno (n. 4), 308.

8. Richard Claridge, "A letter from Graefenberg," Water-Cure Journal (1846), 2:4-5.

9. Eileen Stretch and Nancy Faass, "The evolution of integrative medicine in Washington State," in Nancy Faass, editor, Integrating Complementary Medicine into Health Systems (Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen, 2001), 35.

From: pbs.org

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Abraham Lincoln- a Homeopathic Enthusiast

From: seattlehomeopathy.com

Homeopathic SupporterDana Ullman, owner of Homeopathic Education Services, is a prolific writer on the homeopathic subject.  His latest article in the December 23, 2012 edition of the Huffington Post titled “Lincoln and his Team of Homeopaths” is another timely look at past accomplishes of homeopathy.  The 1800’s were a high time in homeopathy.  It had numerous accomplishments and many people in Europe and the Eastern United States sought homeopaths for medical care as Ullman shows in his article.  He states that Lincoln surrounded himself with homeopathic supporters.  Many prominent citizens and politicians participated on the board of trustees of the Hahnemann Medical College, which Lincoln obtained a charter for.  Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, frequently sought the advice of homeopaths.  The American Institute of Homeopathy dedicated a monument, named Scott Circle, which can still be seen today in Washington, DC, in honor of  Tullio Suzzara Verdi, MD, doctor to William Seward.  Dr. Verdi was appointed to the bureau of health in Washington, DC.  Lincoln’s appointed Major General to the Union Army during the Civil War, George Brinton McClellan, fell ill from typhoid fever and was treated by homeopathic doctors.  The Major General was well enough to work during the illness and full recovered to live another 23 years.  Typhoid fever is known to have killed more people during the Civil War than warfare itself.  Lincoln was a regular customer of homeopathic medicines at the Diller Drug Store in IL.

To put Lincoln’s time into perspective:
1796: Homeopathy was invented by Samuel Hahnemann, MD in Germany
1825: First American Homeopath, Hans Burch Gram, MD
1835: First American Homeopathic School run by Constantine Hering, MD
1843: Hahnemann dies
1847: AMA established
1861: President Lincoln inaugurated as the 16th President of the United States
1861-1865: U.S. Civil War
1865: President Lincoln assassinated
1870: Germ Theory began to come together

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The Story of Boericke & Tafel: Homeopathic Pharmacists

By Boericke & Tafel, Presented by Sylvain Cazalet

In 1835, Andrew Jackson was President of the United States. We lit our homes with whale oil lamps traveled from city to city by stage coach, and cooked our meals in Open fire places Life expectancy was approximately 40 years for women and 38 years for men. In 1835, Constantine Hering, the Father of American Homeopathy, was in practice in Philadelphia and Hans Burch Gram in New York.

Dr. Hering was one of the founders of America's first homeopathic medical college where lessons were taught in German. That same year, William Radde, Senior in Philadelphia and Junior in NY were managers of stores which later became a part of Boericke & Tafel. Their advertisement in Herring’s The Domestic Physician offered readers: "All works on Homeopathy, as well as pocket cases of homeopathic medicines, prepared by approved hands and very neatly arranged." In 1848, Hering established the Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania, which later became the Hahnemann Medical College, the nation's leading homeopathic medical school.

In 1849, a cholera epidemic swept the nation. Because of the superior results achieved by homeopathic physicians, many orthodox doctors took up the practice of homeopathy. At the same time, many of the intelligentsia were attracted to homeopathy because of its scientific basis in experimental pharmacology. In 1853, Dr. Hering persuaded Francis E. Boericke and Adolph J. Tafel to enter into the manufacture and sale of homeopathic medicines. Ten years later, Dr Boericke acquired the Radde pharmacies in Philadelphia and N. Y.

By this time there were over 2400 homeopathic physicians in the United States with over 700 in New York and over 325 in Pennsylvania. Keeping pace with the continuing growth in the practice of homeopathy, Boericke & Tafel established pharmacies in New Orleans, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Chicago and Cincinnati in addition to the two in New York City and Philadelphia.

As pharmacists, Boericke & Tafel has been privileged to serve the founders and pioneers of homeopathy, including Christian Hering and James Tyler Kent. In a letter dated July 30, 1903 recommending B &T's Skinner potencies to another physician, Kent wrote: "I am the one who urged the firm of Boericke & Tafel to put in a Skinner potentizer…I have a full set of Skinner potencies- they work well - I know how they are made."

Boericke & Tafel has an equally distinguished record as publishers. They were responsible for issuing over a hundred titles, approximately eighty-five percent of all homeopathic books published in the United States, including the American Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia, the sixth edition of Hahnemann's Organon of Medicine (translated by William Boericke), and Boericke's Materia Medica with Repertory, which is today the standard U.S. materia medica and an integral part of most homeopathic computer repertorization programs.

Starting in 1915, a concerted effort on the part of the American Medical Association resulted in a steady decline in the number of homeopathic medical schools, homeopathic physicians, and homeopathic pharmacies. During this bleak homeopathy almost ceased to exist in the United States. Fortunately, the worldwide reputation that Boericke & Tafel medicines had earned for purity, quality, and efficacy generated sufficient export business to enable the firm to survive in spite of greatly diminished U.S. sales.

In 1980's and 1990's, the growing interest in the environment, natural products, and the individual's assuming responsibility for his or her own health initiated a renaissance in homeopathy. The number of practitioners increased, study groups were formed, naturopathic medical colleges developed courses in homeopathy, homeopathic medicines became available nationwide in health food stores and a small number of pharmacies, the Food and Drug Administration issued a Compliance Policy Guide regulating the manufacture and marketing of homeopathic medicines, and several European homeopathic pharmaceutical firms entered the U.S. market.

In 1987, Boericke & Tafel became a part of Hom Int (Homeopathy International), a federation of homeopathic firms doing business throughout the world, sponsoring basic and clinical research and professional and lay education and development programs. With its new state-of-art headquarters and the nation's most advanced full-line homeopathic production facilities, Boericke & Tafel, America's oldest pharmaceutical firm, has combined the best of both worlds.

From: homeoint.org

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American Homeopathy

From: homeoinfo.com

The same sorts of medical systems that haunted Hahnemann with bad dreams were at work with some differences in the New World. The nineteenth century found chiropractic, osteopathy and naturopathy gaining popularity. Opium, liquors, hot baths, garlic, mercury, and wine were used by the gallon as stimulants for phlegmatic ailments. Fads which oversimplified the practice of medicine led to a reduction in recognized diseases and a corresponding reduction of medicines. Benjamin Rush, the most respected American physician was a strong advocate of mercury and bloodletting. Calomel, mercurous chloride, was a stimulant for treating just about anything. Mercury poisoning was common at this time and many mothers would not let their children be treated. Medical historians see the introduction of homeopathy as stopping the harm of this corrupt medicine which was the only good it could do.

Homeopathy was introduced into the USA by Hans Burch Gram in 1825 and many German immigrants took to the system. Constantine Hering, a graduate of Leipzig University, founded the first American school of homeopathy in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1835 with instruction in German. After six years, it was replaced by him with the Homeopathic Medical College in Philadelphia. In 1844, licensing standards were put together by the newly founded American Institute of Homeopathy. The AIH also was the clearinghouse for the provings of North American native plants and other new remedies. Later the American Medical Association (AMA) would form in reaction to growing popularity of homeopathy as a business guild in order to protect the interests of its physicians with the help of the pharmacies who supplied calomel and the like.

The formal counterattack against homeopathy grew slowly as the system became more apparent through translations and increasing practitioners who used sweet tasting globules instead of foul preparations. In 1842 the New York State Medical Society ruled that homeopathy was a form of quackery. The members believed that the success of homeopathy was only because of their poor marketing and public relations and decided that medical education needed a revamp as long as they could get rid of the homeopathic community. The pretentiously named sugar pills under the guise of pharmacy shouldn’t allow homeopaths immunity as practitioners of other medical system. This is the groundwork that the AMA was formed on in 1847. In 1856 the AMA banned any discussion of homeopathic medical theory in their journals and threatened expulsion of any doctor who even consulted with a homeopath. You were expelled even if you were married to a practicing homeopath. Even though the official stance is that they were trying to eliminate quackery, the records show that their main target was homeopathy, the only other major force in American medicine.

Eclectic medicine was widespread in nineteenth century medicine, one of the greatest homeopaths, J. T. Kent had originally been an eclectic. The effect of homeopathy on the general medical community created a bridge for many eclectic practitioners to become allopaths. They could choose to back their choices of a homeopathic remedy with allopathic philosophy. The patient didn’t care about the esoterica; the results were creating sympathetic adherents in many influential areas. Calomel, quinine and jalap as well as bleeding finally passed out of fashion.

By the Civil War in America, homeopathy was the American medicine and standard medicine Using bloodletting and large mercury doses were gradually eliminated. Much of Hahnemannian thought was adopted by the developing modern medical system except for the homeopathic principles including diet, hygiene, immunization, preparation of medicines, the origin of germs, and the techniques of surgery. Hahnemann would applaud the system of controlled laboratory experiments with a clear-minded procedure but scorn the principles on which they were based.

The cholera epidemic of 1849 was a resounding success for homeopathy claiming a 97% cure rate by the Cincinnati physicians in over a thousand cases. The medical establishment openly admitted it had no cure and went through major excuse production to cover their beliefs. Housewives picked up Hering’s The Homeopathic Domestic Physician along with a homeopathic kit with numbered remedies and understood how to protect her family without a knowledge of physiology or chemistry. The New York Times, powerful politicians, and business interests all supported homeopathy during the peak of popularity in the 1870s and 80s. The yellow fever epidemic in the South during the 1870s was treated successfully and the homeopaths left their mark in recommending sanitary corrections in the water systems. Hundreds of homeopathic hospitals, clinics, insane asylums, nursing homes, orphanages and schools were in operation.

But as quickly as the popularity increased, once modern medicine learned to adopt many of the homeopathic practices, it kept in touch with the American public by providing a standardized medicine while homeopathy was perceived more and more as an old-fashioned system. The mobility of the American public worked best with the specialization of the modern physician and the fundamentalists of homeopathy did little to keep up as they were bickering ideology couched in rigid anti-modernist terms amongst themselves.

The AMA at first did not like the introduction of pharmaceutical proprietary medicines, the formulations that doctors knew almost as much as their patients did, from companies such as Parke-Davis. But under pressure from the common enemy of homeopathy, the medical establishment and the pharmaceutical firms aligned through a continued business relationship. Parke-Davis created and supported a number of medical journals including American Lancet and Medicine. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) was supported by the advertising of proprietary medicines. AMA’s resistance to the drug machinery quietly subsided.

The International Hahnemannian Association split from the American Institute of Homeopathy (AIH) in 1880.

One of the people who severely weakened homeopathy was George H. Simmons, general secretary of the AMA (1899-1911) and editor of the JAMA until 1924. As a previous ardent homeopathy from Nebraska, he welcomed the estranged homeopaths caused from the internal disputes into the AMA depleting the homeopath ranks and lessening the demand for homeopathic remedies. The AIH began a counter-movement in 1910 but lacked anything more important than a name ignoring training and subsequently letting the practice die. Materia medica chairs in medical colleges were kept but seen as historical interests. Names were gradually changed eliminating the words homeopathy and Hahnemann. The change of the last school’s name occurred in 1996.

The policies of the American Medical Association and Abraham Flexner’s Report on Medical Education in the United States and Canada (1910) took away homeopathy’s professional sanction and was isolated it as a non-scientific medicine. Under the direction of the AMA, policies concerning the criteria of medical schools were formed terribly biased against homeopathy. These were included in the temporary survey know as the Flexner Report that became official policy for denying lower schools the power to give medical licenses. Those schools became known as sectarian schools, lost enrollment, and lost financial support from the government which eventually put them out of business. Modern medicine was created and homeopathy and allopathy were seen as outdated systems to discard while incorporating what was useful. Until the late 1960s few new homeopaths entered the practice.

In the 1918 Flu Epidemic allopathic death rates were 30%, while the homeopathic rates were 1%.

Sulfanilamide kills enough people that they become the impetus for the stricter regulation of drugs by the government, as embodied in the FDA Legislation of 1938.

Homeopathy in the USA was in steep decline from the 1920s to the 1960s but has had a strong recovery since the 1970s. A new clinic, the Hahnemann Clinic, in Berkeley, California, was the first one in operation in decades with patients numbering two thousand and growing. The Greek George Vithoulkas revitalized a group of California homeopaths with the help of Bill Gray, his Mill Valley physician and editor of his The Science of Homeopathy, the first major work in over 50 years. He formed the International Foundation for the Promotion of Homeopathy with the intention of raising standards of homeopathic practice and publicizing homeopathy in North America and the world. He first restricted his education to licensed physicians as they were the only legal ones allowed to practice in order to start things out on the right foot.

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Lincoln and His Team of Homeopaths

By Dana Ullman, Evidence Based Homeopath, 2-22-13

There is a wide body of evidence that Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) maintained a special interest in and appreciation for homeopathic medicine. It is therefore not surprising that many of Lincoln’s advisors were users of and advocates for homeopathy.

Before Lincoln was elected president, in 1854 he was retained as a lawyer to prepare a state legislative proposal to charter a homeopathic medical college in Chicago.[15] Chicago was the home of the American Medical Association, which had been founded in 1847 in part to stop the growth of homeopathy, and therefore, Lincoln’s job was no simple effort.

Yet many of Chicago’s most prominent citizens and politicians participated on the board of trustees of the proposed Hahnemann Medical College, including Chicago’s mayor, two congressmen, an Illinois state representative, a Chicago city councilman, the co-founder of Northwestern University, the founder of Chicago Union Railroad, and several medical doctors who were homeopaths.[15] Despite significant opposition, Lincoln was successful in obtaining a charter for the homeopathic college.

Today, the Pearson Museum at Southern Illinois University has an exhibit of a 19th-century doctor’s office and drugstore; included in this exhibit is a homeopathic medicine kit from the Diller Drug Store of Springfield, Ill. The exhibit notes that Abraham Lincoln was a frequent customer of the drug store and a regular user of homeopathic medicines.[11]

Lincoln’s Cabinet Members

Of special significance, Lincoln surrounded himself with advocates for homeopathy, among them the postmaster general, the secretary of the treasury and his most trusted advisor and Secretary of State, William Seward. Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, may have had his life saved by homeopathy after being treated for cholera in the summer of 1849 when a cholera epidemic was rampant.[14] Montgomery Blair, Lincoln’s postmaster general, was the head of the National Homeopathic Hospital in Washington, D.C.[12]

Ultimately, what befell William Seward is a classic story to illustrate conventional medicine’s attitude toward and actions against unconventional medical treatments and the physicians who provide them. It is first important to realise that the American Medical Association in the 19th century was so threatened by homeopathic medicine that the AMA created and enforced an ethics code that barred AMA members from consulting with homeopathic doctors or homeopathic patients.

On the famed night that Lincoln was assassinated, Seward was stabbed in a multi-person assassination plot against the Union. The assassin gained entrance to Seward’s home and to his personal bedroom by claiming to have a delivery of medicines from his homeopathic doctor, Tullio S. Verdi, M.D.[13] Thanks to the medical care provided by U.S. Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes, M.D., Seward survived. However, according to John S. Haller, some members of the AMA wanted to censure Dr. Barnes for associating with Verdi, a homeopath, in providing Seward’s medical care.[8]

Lincoln’s Leader of the Union Army

On Nov. 1, 1861, Lincoln appointed Major General George Brinton McClellan (1826-1885) to command the Union army during the Civil War. However, in late December McClellan contracted typhoid fever, which left him unable to go to his office to conduct business. According to military historian Ethan S. Rafuse:

During the first week of McClellan’s illness, two homeopathic doctors arrived from New York to tend the ill general and his father-in-law and chief-of-staff, Randolph B. Marcy, who was also ill. McClellan’s employment of homeopathic treatments is one of the more interesting sidelights of this episode, particularly in light of the fact that the general came from a family of prominent physicians.
Despite this serious illness, General McClellan remained active, giving regular orders to his subordinates, arranging for troop movement and supply transport, meeting with the president on a weekly basis, issuing court martial orders, and even providing commendations to officers. By January 2, he seemed to be much better and shortly afterwards had no noticeable physical limitations. McClellan lived another 23 years.[19]

Despite the success of homeopathic treatment on the military leader of the Union army, that very month, January 1862, according to Rafuse, “The Army Medical Board rejected requests by homeopathic doctors to serve in military hospitals, arguing that to grant this request would invite applications from all types of ‘quacks’ and ‘charlatans’ claiming medical expertise.” The problem with this false critique is that homeopathic doctors at that time graduated from various leading conventional medical schools or select homeopathic medical schools, such as Boston University, Hahnemann Medical School (in Philadelphia), or the New York Homeopathic Medical College (many famous medical schools today started off as homeopathic medical colleges).

Reasons for the Animosity

The public today does not adequately understand the degree of animosity that conventional doctors had toward homeopathic physicians. The reasoning for this animosity is probably best described in the words of one doctor to an AMA meeting:

“Too many wives of conventional physicians are going to homeopathic physicians. And to make it worse,” he added, “they are taking their children to homeopaths too.”[5]

Homeopathic physicians were not simply competitors to conventional physicians; homeopaths were medically trained and could not be considered “uneducated” or under-educated. Further, inherent in homeopathy is a profound respect for the “wisdom of the body,” and therefore, homeopaths tend to maintain a significant skepticism of and criticism for using powerful drug treatments that tend to suppress symptoms and push a person’s disease deeper into his/her body and mind.

The conventional medical community was also threatened by the fact that homeopathy was attracting so many U.S. cultural leaders. The strongest advocates for homeopathy tended to be educated classes and wealthy Americans as well as the abolitionists, the literary greats (including virtually all of the leading American transcendentalist authors), and the suffragists (homeopaths admitted women into their medical schools and associations several decades before the conventional doctors did).

In the 19th century, the AMA did not enforce the many ethical code or professional health care violations of its members, therefore allowing physicians to prescribe mercury in dangerously high doses, enabling physicians to blood-let their patients to death, and even engage in treatment while inebriated. And yet, the AMA was ridiculously strict in their enforcement of their ethical code against any interaction with homeopathic doctors or their patients.

One AMA member got kicked out of his local medical society for consulting with a homeopath who also happened to be his wife.[18]

Typhoid fever caused more deaths during the Civil War and the Spanish-American War than the deaths caused by bullets.[20] History shows that homeopathy gained widespread popularity in the United States and Europe from its successes in treating various infectious disease epidemics of the mid- and late-1800s, including typhoid epidemics.[3],[5] Despite these good results, the AMA’s influence on governmental regulations led to stipulation that graduates of homeopathic medical colleges could not receive a military commission.[18]

Thankfully, the antagonism toward homeopaths was not as severe during World War I; almost 2,000 homeopathic physicians were commissioned as medical officers. Even the American Red Cross authorized a homeopathic hospital unit.[6]

Recent research has confirmed the clinical efficacy of homeopathic medicines and the cost-effectiveness of homeopathic treatment, as determined by what is widely recognized as the most comprehensive report ever conducted on homeopathy — and this report was commissioned by the government of Switzerland.[2]

A detailed article in the famed Archives in Internal Medicine has verified that the small doses used in homeopathic medicines are no smaller than many hormones and cell-signaling agents, which are widely recognized to have profound biological effects on daily human functioning.[7] Further, a wide and multi-disciplinary body of modern scientific evidence has confirmed the biological power of homeopathic nano-doses.[1],[4]

In a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, Dr. Paul Starr wrote about homeopathy in the 19th century, asserting, “Because homeopathy was simultaneously philosophical and experimental, it seemed to many people to be more rather than less scientific than orthodox medicine.” Although Lincoln surrounded himself with advocates for homeopathy, that didn’t protect the medical science from his famous wit. He described homeopathy once as “medicine of a shadow of a pigeon’s wing.”[18] This exaggerated metaphor is reference to the very small doses sometimes used.

Considering the honored place accorded homeopathy by many cultural heroes and the growing body of basic science research and clinical evidence, it is unsurprising that homeopathic medicine is more popular today than at any other time worldwide.

And it seems appropriate to end this article on Lincoln’s association with homeopathy by citing U.S. writer and friend to many presidents, Mark Twain. In an article for Harper’s Weekly, he warned others of the dangers of conventional medicine (“allopathy”) and thanked the advocates of homeopathy:[17]

When you reflect that your own father had to take such medicines as the above, and that you would be taking them today yourself but for the introduction of homeopathy, which forced the old-school doctor to stir around and learn something of a rational nature about his business; you may honestly feel grateful that homoeopathy survived the attempts of the allopathists [conventional physicians] to destroy it, even though you may never employ any physician but an allopathist while you live.
Part two of this article will provide more information about Abraham Lincoln and his team of homeopaths.

References

[1] Bell, I; Koithan, M. “A model for homeopathic remedy effects: low dose nanoparticles, allostatic cross-adaptation, and time-dependent sensitization in a complex adaptive System.” BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2012, 12:191 doi:10.1186/1472-6882-12-191.

[2] Bornhoft, Gudrun, and Matthiessen, Peter F. Homeopathy in Healthcare: Effectiveness, Appropriateness, Safety, Costs. Goslar, Germany: Springer, 2011.

[3] Bradford, T. L. The Logic of Figures or Comparative Results of Homoeopathic and Other Treatments. Philadelphia: Boericke and Tafel, 1900.

[4] Chikramane PS, Kalita D, Suresh AK, Kane SG, Bellare JR. “Why Extreme Dilutions Reach Non-zero Asymptotes: A Nanoparticulate Hypothesis Based on Froth Flotation.” Langmuir. 2012 Nov 13;28(45):15864-75. doi: 10.1021/la303477s. Epub 2012 Nov 1.

[5] Coulter, H. L. Divided Legacy: A History of the Schism in Medical Thought. Volume I: The Patterns Emerge-Hippocrates to Paracelsus. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1973.

[6] Dearborn, F. M. American Homoeopathy in the World War. Washington, D.C.: American Institute of Homeopathy, 1923.

[7] Eskinazi, D., “Homeopathy Re-revisited: Is Homeopathy Compatible with Biomedical Observations?” Archives in Internal Medicine, 159, Sept 27, 1999:1981-7.

[8] Haller, J. S. The History of American Homeopathy: The Academic Years, 1820-1935. New York: Pharmaceutical Products, 2005. p. 192

[9] Hill, B. L., and Hunt, J. G. Homoeopathic Practice of Surgery and Operative Surgery. Cleveland: J. B. Cobb, 1855.

[10] Hughes, T. A Boy’s Experience in the Civil War, 1860-1865, 1904.

[11] Karst, F. “Homeopathy in Illinois,” Caduceus, Summer 1988, pp. 1-33.

[12] Medical Visitor, Volume 16, 1900, p. 434.

[13] “Other Days,” Homeopathic Recorder, 1887, p. 6.

[14] Niven, John. Salmon P. Chase: A Biography in Paradox. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.p. 126.

[15] Spiegel, A. D., and Kavaler, F. “The Role of Abraham Lincoln in Securing a Charter for a Homeopathic Medical College,” Journal of Community Health, 2002, 27(5):357-380.

[16] Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York: Basic, 1982.

[17] Twain, M. “A Majestic Literary Fossil,” Harper’s Magazine, February 1890, 80(477):439-444.

[18] Ullman, Dana. The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2007.

[19] Rafuse, Ethan S. “Typhoid and Tumult: Lincoln’s Response to General McClellan’s Bout with Typhoid Fever during the Winter of 1861-62.” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Vol. 18 Issue 2, Summer 1997.

[20] Wershub, Leonard Paul. One Hundred Years of Medical Progress: A History of the New York Medical College Flower and Fifth Avenue Hospitals. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1967. p 175

Special Resource:
SueYoungHistories.com on Abraham Lincoln

Special thanks to Jeanine and Guy Saperstein for their ongoing support for my educational advocacy work for homeopathy.

Footnotes:

(1) Other members of the homeopathic hospital’s board of trustees included Morrison R. Waite, Chief Justice (from 1874-1888), and Hon. Thomas F. Bayard, Secretary of State (under Grover Cleveland) and Ambassador to England.

(2) McClellan’s father was a prominent surgeon, author, and educator, and his uncle and older brother were highly respected members of the regular medical profession. McClellan’s use of homeopathic treatments can be attributed to his wife, Ellen Marcy McClellan. One doctor who treated the general was Ellen’s uncle, Erastus E. Marcy, the founder and editor of the North American Homeopathic Journal, who was a leading advocate during the 1840s and 1850s.

(3) The story of Hughes, however, is very interesting because he practiced in Richmond, Virginia, where many leading Union officers became his patients, including General Peter Michie, the federal quartermaster general in charge of all supplies for the Union army. Another homeopathic doctor who served soldiers of the Confederacy was Samuel Hunt, MD, of Georgia.

Dana Ullman, MPH, is America’s leading spokesperson for homeopathy and is the founder of www.homeopathic.com . He is the author of 10 books, including his bestseller, Everybody’s Guide to Homeopathic Medicines. His most recent book is, The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy (the Foreword to this book was written by Dr. Peter Fisher, the Physician to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II). Dana lives, practices, and writes from Berkeley, California.

From: huffingtonpost.com

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History of Homeopathic Nursing

by Lia Bello RN, FNP, CCH

Homeopathic nursing is the nursing that takes place with patients who are being treated homeopathically or in a homeopathic hospital or homeopathic doctor’s office.   I include the work of a nurse who educates her patients in the basics of homeopathy and uses homeopathic remedies in their healthcare. The story begins hand in hand with the history of nursing–which closely follows that of women’s’ rights in America and England.

The Royal London Homeopathic Hospital was founded in 1850 in Golden Square in London by Dr. Quinn–who was then King Leopold’s physician. Before that time nurses were not paid or trained and were simply part of the domestic staff like cleaners and cooks. Over the next 50 years, nursing reform in England took place, spurred on by Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Twining and by 1890 most of the hospitals in London had training programs for nurses and nursing management departments, though they were not always considered part of the medical staff.   The Royal London Homeopathic Hospital was thought to be modern and progressive, having an elevator, separate bedrooms and bathrooms for nurses, who traditionally lived in the hospital and quit nursing if they got married.

Florence Nightingale,1820 – 1910, founder of modern nursing, used and recommended homeopathy.  Homeopathy and Nightingale’s life intersected in several ways. Sue Young’s Histories says  “Florence Nightingale lived at a time when allopathy and homeopathy were competing for dominance in medical care. Nightingale’s philosophy of health and healing was more similar to the holistic philosophy of homeopathy than to the mechanistic philosophy of allopathy.”   She was a patient of homeopathic physician, James Manby Gully and she called him a “genius”,  and she also had homeopathic nurses with her in the Crimea, and she mentored Linda Richards, an American nurse who trained at the Brooklyn Homeopathic School. Nightingale also wrote to her mother that she hoped her father would try homeopathic treatment for an eye problem.

In America, the same reforms were taking place. There were scores of Homeopathic Hospitals with nursing staffs from as early as 1848 in the case of Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital in Philadelphia, PA. Metropolitan Hospital on Blackwell’s Island in New York City opened in 1875 and Dr. S.H. Talcott attempted to start clinical and scientific lectures for nurses as early as 1876, but the training of nurses was postponed until 1892. Hahnemann Hospital on Park Avenue in New York City, founded in 1869, had a Nurses Training School from 1895. The lectures at Metropolitan were given by staff doctors like Dr. Guernsey, Samuel Lilienthal and J.H. Demerest. with lecture titles like: Nursing the Insane and Delirious, Management of the Female Breast, Conduct in Accidents and Emergencies, Hemorrhages, Catheters, Diet and Cookery for the Sick.

As was the tradition until approximately 1950, nursing schools before that time were 3 year live-in/work/study arrangements, staffing the hospital with students working long hours, while providing training and an acceptable female career in a supervised environment for single women. Student nurses staffed the hospitals and graduate nurses went on to work in private homes or with doctors. A report of the Hahnemann Hospital Nurses training home in 1910 recorded that a hospital shift was 12 hours–day shift -7 am to 7 pm, and night shift -7 pm to 7 am. No tuition was required–because of this work study structure and each student nurse received an allowance of $7 /month for books and uniforms. In 1920 a student nurses allowance was $25 / month. In 1895, a student nurse who was lent out by the school to do private duty at a patient’s home received $1 for day shift, $2 for evening shift and $3 for night shift.

A list of rules to be followed at the Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital included: “Nurses are not permitted to do do the doctors sewing or mending”. “Nurses are to see that no games are played on the Sabbath Day”, “ Any bottles found in patients possession are to be brought at once to the supervising nurse, with the name of patient.”, “ The face and hands of all patients shall be washed each morning and a general bath given once each week”, “Nurses shall not accept any gift, bribe or special compensation from any patient”

It seems that homeopathy was not well thought of by the U.S. government during the Civil War and so was not part of the medical care of the soldiers. An exception was one hospital base in Mound City, Missouri, that had a doctor who was adamant enough to create a homeopathic ward of patients who were beyond hope of recovery with conventional methods. 30% of them did recover after having been given up. So there was some homeopathic nursing going on during the Civil War.

An outstanding figure in homeopathy at that time was Susan Edson MD, who graduated from from the Western College of Homeopathy in Cleveland in 1854 and practiced in Washington DC. Though she could not practice medicine at the Civil War frontlines–she chose to forego medicine and serve as a nurse at the Meriden and Fortress Encampments for two years during the Civil War. Though she was ill and could not work for 3 years after this experience she went on to an eminently successful practice in Washington DC and was President Garfield’s family doctor. She was distinguished enough to be asked to attend the birth of the child of the Chinese Ambassador in Washington.   Again homeopathy was discriminated against when she was not allowed to doctor President Garfield after he was shot in an assassination attempt. He lived for 80 days after the shooting and Dr. Susan Edson nursed him during this time.

Homeopathy lent itself well to a phenomenon which took place in the second half of the 1800’s called the Popular Health Movement. These facts were taken from the book “Woman as Healer” by Jeanne Achterberg (Shambala, Boston 1990).   This was a movement in which formerly repressed, post Victorian wives and mothers found creativity and freedom of expression in domestic health practices. Social reforms started to allow for education in nutrition, hygiene, temperance, and new cures. Women flocked to learn about pregnancy, birth,, women’s diseases and birth control. In short they were being taught the facts about their own bodies so that they could better care for themselves and their families. This new freedom within the middle class, combined with an active dislike for the existing standard of heroic medical care which included blood-letting, opium, purgatives and harsh chemicals spurred this movement in reaction to allopathy.

During this time many women obtained a mahogany box of homeopathic remedies and a book on their domestic use. The American Institute of Homeopathy, the oldest medical association in the U.S., was founded in 1844, several years before the AMA, reported that “many a woman, armed with her little stock of remedies, has converted an entire community”.   These women nursed their families and used homeopathy to be self-sufficient because they were more trusting of nature’s laws and the promise of health in this era of optimism and social reform. Homeopathy was carried across America with women whose families pioneered west in wagons and needed to be self-sufficient and prepared for the harsh conditions away from civilization.

The Popular Health Reform Movement opened the doors for women to enter the public sphere into the healing professions of nursing, medicine and the ministry, while remaining true to traditional healing themes of prevention through healthy lifestyle, treatment with natural remedies and compassion as a healing modality. Women made up 2/3 of the followers of the natural health care movement and this statistic remains true in today’s surge toward complementary and holistic health.

Many early feminists and suffragettes supported and learned homeopathy. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was one who learned homeopathy and other health techniques taught by Dr. Clemence Lozier, the female founder and head of New York Medical College for Women, and used them in her work as a lay nurse helping Irish immigrants in western New York.

By coincidence, a neighbor of mine in Questa ,New Mexico, told me that her great aunt, Miss Kitty Herrer, was the nurse for Mark Twain, the famous author, a great proponent for homeopathy, when he lived in upstate New York before he died in 1910. Perhaps she administered his remedies.

World War I saw many nurses who had been trained in the homeopathic hospitals volunteering and being sent over seas–usually in groups made up of doctors and nurses from the same hospital or at least the same city.   Many of the nurses were decorated and honored for their service as part of the Red Cross attached to the Army.   This information came from a book titled “American Homeopathy in the World War” by Dr. Dearbourne and, though we have little information, we know that some of the Army Base Hospitals were supplied with a full armamentarium of remedies by the Boericke and Tafel pharmacy. One statistic contended that the death rate in Army Base Hospital #48, which was staffed with homeopathically trained doctors and nurses, was only 1.6% and that they treated 38,000 patients. The nurses wore long black dresses and large black hats as their uniform.

There seem to be only two books which were written specifically for homeopathic nurses. One is quite obscure and I was unable to find it in the National Center Library. It is  “The Nurse, or Hints on the Care of the Sick” by Charles T. Harris, from 1879.   The other book is “Homeopathic Materia Medical for Nurses” by Benjamin C. Woodbury, from 1917. It included chapters on: Essentials of Correct Homeopathic Prescribing, Value of Careful Observation in Obtaining Symptoms, Isopathy, Nosodes, Remedy Selection and Action, Preparation of Medicines, Scales of Attenuation, and Rules of Administration. Other chapters in this book were titled: How Homeopathic Nursing Differs From Regular Nursing, General Rules Regarding Diet and Care of Homeopathic Cases, Electricity, Relations Between Nurse and Physician, and the Necessity of the Proper Understanding of Homeopathy.

Information on about thirty homeopathic remedies was included in the materia medica section. These topics were merely brushed upon and were hardly a way to learn anything but the very introductory knowledge of materia medica. But the thought was there that nurses should know the basics of prescribing for the patients for which they were caring. These excerpts from this book, “Materia Medica for Nurses” are very interesting: “In homeopathic hospitals the official drugs, both materia medica and dosage are most carefully studied and this is required. Yet after all, when we consider it from the nurse’s standpoint, anything more would seem almost unnecessary, for it is only exceptionally, outside of institutional work that any mention is made to the nurse as to what homeopathic remedy is being prescribed (page 7)…..This volume has been prepared with the intent to stimulate an interest in this subject among the nursing profession as a whole, and to offer to those particularly interested, a book of reference, wherein may be found some of the fundamental principles of Homeopathy, and a requisite knowledge of the most frequently used remedies, their dosage and indications. Furthermore its aim has been to show why many procedures peculiar to the practice of homeopathic physicians are so little understood by the nursing body at large (page 9)….The selection of the remedy is not a part of the nurse’s duty. It is essential for her to know, however, that in no other way can she render more valuable service to the physician than in the cultivation of careful observation regarding the development of the disease. The physician bases his prescription upon the totality of the symptoms. No one, not even the physician himself, has so good an opportunity to observe the development of the patient’s symptoms as the careful trained nurse. Careful attention and observation of the details of the patient’s illness will be of greatest value to the physician in his selection of the remedy (page 30)…..The nurse should be sure that the medicine is given at the exact intervals directed by the physician. During treatment by a homeopathic physician the nurse should never venture to prescribe or suggest any other kind of medicine, or any measure not in accord with the strict practice of Homeopathy (page 37)….The nurse’s equipment should include a small set of homeopathic remedies…including phials of the commonly prescribed remedies. This does not mean that the nurse is ever to prescribe for the patient, at any rate not upon her own responsibility,m but only under the direction of the physician, when absent or unavoidably detained (page 38)…..Dietetic modalities may prove most useful to the physician in prescribing. Hence it is most valuable for the nurse to note carefully the immediate and remote effects of different diets as well as aggravations from strong odors, music, cold and heat, emotional excitement and sexual excesses, etc. (page 43)…..Without a proper understanding of Homeopathy and an abiding faith and confidence in the physician, the patient and family will not find in their nurse a common sympathizer .“ (page 45)

Chris Ellithorpe, a homeopathic historian in upstate New York, was very helpful in helping me research this topic and he gave me an old yearbook from the Nursing School at Hahnemann Hospital from 1930 which made very little mention of homeopathy, but showed well how modern and mainstream the Hahnemann Hospital was during those years before its transition away from homeopathic training.

The professional nurse is a modern development. Education of nurses has advanced greatly and is part of the history of the homeopathic hospitals and their training schools. Homeopathic nursing went into dormancy along with homeopathic medicine during the time between 1930 and 1970–except for the domestic nursing that happens in every homeopathic household. But in the 1970’s a resurgence of interest in natural and holistic medical techniques started a growth in homeopathic education and practice that nurses and nurse practitioners have been a large part of. A good percentage of all students in professional homeopathic schools are nurses and many go on to practice privately or under the supervision of an MD. Some advanced practice nurse practitioners are fully licensed to diagnose and prescribe and can accept insurance and Medicare payments.

The Royal London Homeopathic Hospital–now called Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine has adapted to the times and operates many outpatient clinics staffed by doctors and nurse clinicians. Their inpatient ward nurses are very familiar with homeopathy as well as offering reflexology and therapeutic touch to their patients.

The Homeopathic Nurses Association (HNA) was founded in 1984 by myself and Richard Evans, BSN. Sidney Skinner, an advanced practice nurse has written a homeopathic textbook, “An Introduction to Homeopathic Medicine in Primary Care”.     The Homeopathic Nurses Association supports nurses in their transition toward homeopathic education and practice. Many nurses teach homeopathy in their communities and there are quite a few homeopathic courses which confer continuing education units to nurses.

I have personally taught 2000 nurses the basics of homeopathy and homeopathic history was made in 1997 when I taught an introductory homeopathic course at Ohio State University Nursing School. That school had been a homeopathic nursing school from 1914 to 1922. They had an old diploma on display from 1921 with the inscription ”Ohio State University Homeopathic Nurses School”, though they didn’t know what that meant. History is coming back around!

Many nursing and nurse practitioner conferences now include lectures about homeopathic healthcare. More homeopathic history was made in 1998 when the American Institute of Homeopathy voted to allow advanced practice nurses and physician’s assistants to join as associate members. This bastion of MDs, DO’s and dentists opened itself partially 14 years after we, the nurses, asked to be admitted in 1984.

I expect homeopathic nursing to flourish–it is a worldwide phenomenon and is quite alive in Europe and will advance in other countries as women’s rights progress. The announcement in 2000 of the research project showing that nurse practitioners provide equal quality health care when compared to physicians can only help the acceptance of nurses as competent and professional healthcare providers. A smart integrative physician is one who makes a bold move and hires a homeopathic nurse to partner in their practice. Homeopathy is well suited to the training and sensitivity that nurses bring to healthcare and our listening skills, compassion and holistic and preventive ideas create homeopathic practitioners of high caliber and skill.

From: learnhomeopathy.org

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The Early History of Medical Licensing

From: mnwelldir.org

The Constitution of this Republic should make special provision for medical freedom. To restrict the art of healing to one class will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic. . . . Unless we put medical freedom into the constitution the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship and force people who wish doctors and treatment of their own choice to submit to only what the dictating outfit offers. [Dr Benjamin Rush, at the Constitutional Convention]

In 1800, all forms of medicine were practiced together. It wasn’t long before medical societies sprung up with the sole purpose of supporting one type of medicine over another.

In 1806 the first licensing laws were passed in the US, in New York, called the Medical Practices Act. This act allowed the state to license practitioners, which meant that only licensed physicians could recover their fees in courts. Unlicensed practitioners were fined $25.00 for practicing without a license. The New York Journal of Medicine candidly published the reasoning behind this new law: “the suppression of empiricism and the encouragement of regular practitioners.”

Empiricism: the application of observation and experiment, rather than theory, in determining something. This is, supposedly, the core of modern science.

It should be noted that when the first medical licensing laws were passed, legalizing only the practice of medicine based on the philosophy of the four humors, that this particular medicine had neither cured nor had it even palliated a single illness. In fact, if you pulled all of the nutritional and herbal medicines out of their pharmacopoeia, there wasn't a single medicine left that could help an ailing patient. Pharmaceutical medicine would have to wait exactly one hundred years from this first licensing laws before it cured an illness. Yet local governments, pressured by the physicians (not the citizens), tried to force bad medicine onto the populace.

America was still very young and many remembered the struggle for freedom and liberty. Many of these early Americans felt this kind of law to be unconscionable and far too restrictive on their rights and freedom. In 1807 the Medical Practices Act was modified to a point just short of its being repealed. The fine was dropped significantly, and the definition of an “irregular” physician was so defined as to hardly include anyone. Even a student of any of the competing practices did not fall under the parameters of this new definition.

Connecticut passed a similar law in 1832. The Thomsonians fought back and had it repealed in 1842. In 1827 the medical societies attempted to put teeth back into the New York laws, but in 1830, much of this new law was reversed, and by 1844 it was completely abolished. Even with laws on the books, the juries often took the side of the irregulars. Coulter’s book, Divided Legacy, tells us of a case in 1843 where a man charged with practicing homeopathy without a license was found guilty by a jury of his peers, but they fined him 3/4 of a cent for every infraction, and when the trial was over, they all donated their fees received for being on the jury to a local homeopathic society.

Early Americans still remembered the price of freedom, and were loath to relinquish theirs.

Massachusetts passed its first licensing laws in 1819, but they were repealed in 1835. Illinois passed their first laws in 1819, which were repealed in 1821, and then reinstated in 1825, but finally abolished the following year. Some of the strictest licensing laws were passed in Ohio in 1810 and in 1816. These were repealed in 1819, with new laws on the books by 1824, though these didn’t last ten years. In the South, where Thomsonians flourished, licensing laws were passed in Alabama restricting practices outside regular medicine, but in 1832 were modified to allow Thomsonians to practice and recover their fees in courts. Georgia passed medical licensing laws in 1825 and established the first Board of Examiners. In 1839 the law was revised to allow herbalists and Thomsonians to practice and in 1847 Georgia even established a Botanic Medical Board of Physicians along with laws allowing only those practitioners who had graduated from proper botanical schools to practice.

Throughout the 1820s and 1830s Delaware, Mississippi, Vermont, Indiana, Maryland, South Carolina, and Maine all repealed their licensing laws to allow irregulars to practice, and by 1850 Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri had never regulated medicine. In fact, by 1850 only Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, and Washington DC had laws concerning the licensing of regular physicians.

As you can see, the regulars held sway during the 1820s and 1830s. They influenced a lot of legislation, but because laws in any society represent the will of the people, public opinion won out and the network of medical societies collapsed as the competition built up a strong following.

Then something happened that nearly put a stake in the heart of regular medicine: the advent and spread of Homeopathy throughout the land.

Homeopathy

Though developed and codified by 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1845), homeopathy didn’t find its way to America until 1825.

Homeopathy was a reaction to “heroic” medicine. Its foundation was nutrition, exercise, minimal medicine, and, interestingly enough, human relationships. You might say that this was America’s first foray into holistic medicine.

For every disorder there was just one medicine needed. Mixing two together made no sense, because no one could know what the two would do together inside the human body (unlike today when we put our seniors on a slew of medicines, and despite the fact that no one could possibly tell us what will happen with the various combinations; yet we are told that today’s medical practice is highly scientific).

Diet meant a “mixed and varied” diet, and exercise was simply movement. Walking was encouraged.

One of the basic foundations of Homeopathy is that the human body, if given a bit of help, can heal itself. Nature was not an enemy to the homeopath as it was to the regular physician. Hahnemann created homeopathy as “the instrument of total reform in therapeutics.”

During the early 1800s the Thomsonians, many of whom practiced with botanicals too, were regular medicine’s greatest competition. In the 1840’s the Thomsonians joined forces with the botanical physicians and formed the Eclectic school of medicine. But by this time, it was Homeopathy that had become traditional medicine’s greatest competition.

One reason that Homeopathy was so successful was that it did not kill the patient. Another reason was that the theory was integrated and coherent. The average citizen of this period could attend lectures at a regular medical school and walk away having learned nothing, whereas the bulk of homeopathy theory was, in comparison, easily comprehended.

There was hardly a visitor to the US during the early 1800s who did not return to Europe with horror stories about the state of the average American’s health. They reported that we had crooked jaws, teeth missing, a grey pallor, a lazy gate, and our overall health dilapidated. Their reports were not good; our cities were filled with weak and tired people. Historians today tend to agree mercury poisoning (from traditional medicine) would be one good explanation for the state of our health.

Dr Rush, being open-minded, would have probably been a proponent of homeopathy had he lived long enough. His career was exemplary, and he was even called upon by President Jefferson in 1803 to work with Lewis and Clark prior to their expedition. Rush furnished them with questions they would ask the natives concerning their remedies, sweats, purges and bleeding. [http://www.geocities.com/bobarnebeck/ch18.html]

Rush had treated patients through a slew of epidemics and fevers. The epidemic of 1804 that affected farmers living in the outskirts brought food shortages to the city dwellers. A nationwide flu epidemic broke out in 1807, and what was called the “Winter Epidemic” lasted from 1812 to 1814; one long winter, wouldn’t you say?

It was at this time, according to historian Bob Arnebeck, that, “Medical science achieved a tone, which it has maintained to the present day, challenging any complacency about health and death.” This was the advent of heroic medicine. Nature was an enemy, and sometimes, even the Creator was the enemy.

Rush, however, did not partake in this philosophy. He kept an open mind and felt that research would eventually find answers. This is why I feel, that had he lived long enough, he would have been a proponent of homeopathy. Rush, though, did have his detractors. (And they might have been right; for Rush's brand of medicine, and the way he practiced it, killed many and helped few, very few.)

It was at this time that the first “germ theory” of medicine had been first proposed, by a Dr John Crawford, who “suggested in 1807 that ‘amiculae’ caused fevers. He even associated insects with the process. Remarking on the incredible ability of insects to multiply over swamps, he drew the analogy with smaller pests multiplying inside the body.” [Arnebeck]

Amiculae were the little creatures discovered in water through the invention of the microscope.

Rush was excited about these new theories, although he was a regular, charged with “remorseless bleeding” by some of his contemporaries, and even challenged to a dual by another physician. Rush, however, believed in empiricism, and in this respect, he was a true scientist bent on learning as much as he could. Ironically, in the end it was regular medicine that eventually caught up with Dr Rush when he became ill and required a physician. He died shortly after being bled and fed calomel.

Homeopathy had no quarrel with nature or with the Creator. This was homeopathy’s greatest philosophical distinction from the heroic tradition of medicine. The next distinguishing facet was that the regulars felt that everything could be known, eventually; that all disease was mechanical. To Hahnemann, disease was not logical, and not always material; that there was a spiritual aspect to disease.

In Chinese medicine, the spiritual aspect to disease is a given. To modern science, if it cannot be measured, it does not play into the equation. The spirit cannot be measured. This is where biophysics separates from biochemistry. It is also where homeopathy separates from allopathy. The only things a homeopath knows are the symptoms. Homeopathy treats according to the symptoms.

We often come down hard on allopathy for treating symptoms, however, there is a distinction here, between homeopathy’s treatment of symptoms and allopathy’s. Take cancer as an example. Modern allopathy treats cancer as a disease, when in fact it is a symptom. Dr Sam Chachoua demonstrates in his lectures time and again that cancer has come about evolutionarily to protect the body from and issue that can become systemic and kill the individual. Allopathy attacks the symptom. Outside of allopathy, cancer is a symptom and localized. To the homeopathy, the distinction, though seemingly slight, is that it treats "according to the symptoms" (cancer in this case), but not by attacking them. To treat cancer, the homeopath gives the body a minute quantity of substance that would normally cause that same cancer.

In an interview with Dr Sam, he pointed out that homeopathy was on the right track because when you give take a patient with cancer and give that person a cancer in another part of the body, the first cancer dies off.

If you have arthritis, allopathy treats the pain, but the arthritis doesn’t go away. If you have high blood pressure, drugs are given that lower your blood pressure, but the problem does not go away. If you go off the blood pressure drugs, your blood pressure shoots up again. Treating symptoms allopathically is different from treating according to the symptoms homeopathically, but to understand thoroughly this exotic theory, it is best to read the article What is Homeopathy?

Hahnemann accepted that we cannot know the body, we cannot know the disease, we cannot know the human spirit, but what we can know are the symptoms. “When the physician has discovered all the observable symptoms of the disease that exist, he has discovered the disease itself, he has attained the complete conception of it requisite to enable him to effect a cure.” [Coulter]

By 1845, homeopathy had become regular medicine’s greatest competition. Its ranks began to swell from regulars leaving behind their educations and taking up this less toxic brand of medicine. Humorists of the latter half of the 19th century, when discussing the subject of medicine were sure to give the standard patter that regular medicine would kill you, but at least with homeopathy, you’d die of the disease.

Hahnemann was attacked for treating symptoms and not the cause of illnesses (not that regular medicine had ever treated the cause of illness, though I’m sure many had thought they had). Hahnemann responded to his critics claiming that, in treating the symptoms with homeopathy, nothing was left to do. The person was off the drug, and the disease was gone.

It is not conceivable, nor can it be proved by any experience in the world, that, after removal of all the symptoms of a disease, and of the entire collection of perceptible phenomena, there should or could remain anything else besides health, or that the morbid alteration of the interior could remain uneradicated. [Organon of the Medical Art, section 8]

There was then, and is today, a difference between treating symptoms to get symptomatic relief, and treating “according to the symptoms” so that the body will repair itself. However, this distinction is often lost on the narrow-minded.

By discovering all the symptoms exhibited, Hahnemann could find the “exact” medicine to deliver, while the orthodoxy wasted far too much time speculating on the various causes that oftentimes got them enwrapped in contradictions and inconsistencies. “It is safe to say that the Solodist [orthodox] doctrine of diseased, causes, and symptoms was never worked out in detail.” [Coulter]

Hahnemann felt that since there were no criteria for distinguishing the unimportant symptoms from the important ones, that all symptoms must be considered.

Orthodox physicians of that time arrived on the scene with a shotgun full of remedies. They bled, purged, blistered, applied mercury, administered bark, etc. For Hahnemann, after determining all the symptoms, there was one and only one medicine to administer:

In no case under treatment is it necessary and therefore not permissible to administer to a patient more than one single, simple medicinal substance at one time…. As the true physician finds in simple medicines, administered singly and uncombined, all that he can be possibly desire … he will, mindful of the wise maxim that “ it is wrong to attempt to employ a complex means when simple means suffice”, never think of giving as a remedy any but a single, simple substance…. [Coulter]

Today, it is hard to find an elderly patient who is on fewer than 3 or 4 medications. No one can tell you what the overall, cumulative effect of those drugs will be. However, we’re beginning to suspect what can happen as cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s disease seem to be the main diseases suffered by our overly-drugged elderly population. A few renegade physicians are beginning to point to the treatments (drugs) as being the causes of these many illnesses.

Funny, but this was known way back when: “even though the simple medicines were thoroughly proved with respect to their pure peculiar effects on the unimpaired healthy state of man, it is impossible to foresee how two and more medicinal substances might, when compounded, hinder and alter each other’s actions on the human body…” [Organon of the Medical Art, section 274]

The orthodoxy had few medicines. As stated above, their pharmacopoeia was small and most physicians preferred to administer just a handful of medicines (calomel being their favorite). It was the homeopaths (and herbalists, see below) who employed a greater number of medicines at that time, since, according to the tenets of homeopathy; there was only one possible medicine for any disease (considering all the symptoms). Homeopaths were constantly looking for more medicines to classify, prove, and apply.

The rise of homeopathy was not without constraints. In Austria, it was banned by imperial decree shortly after its introduction in 1819, but was still used underground to treat the cholera epidemic of 1831. Statistics published in The Logic of Figures or Comparative Results of Homoeopathic and Other Treatments in 1900 show that cholera patients treated with conventional medicine had a 50% death rate, while those treated homeopathically had less than a 22% rate of death. Understandably, the decree was revoked in 1837.

In Great Britain homeopathy got a similar welcome, was quickly outlawed after its introduction, and then courageously contested, resulting in a repeal of the prohibition and by the 1880s homeopathy prospered handsomely. A homeopathic dispensary had been opened in 1841, a second in 1867, and by 1885 fifteen hundred people a week were being treated with homeopathy.

In France a medical student was expelled for merely expressing interest in homeopathy. According to Coulter’s book, Divided Legacy, when a conventional physician in France evaluated the results of a homeopathy study in a favorable light, no orthodox medical journal would publish the results. So, he published his work in an Homeopathy journal, and was summarily expelled by his medical society.

What few people realize today, is that “the history of nineteenth-century therapeutics is essentially one of the progressive adoption by allopathic physicians of a numerous medicines originally introduced by homeopathy.”  [Coulter]

Homeopathy today is cursed, laughed at, and derided by orthodox medicine, and ironically, if the orthodoxy had not adopted many of the medicines along with the rule that less is more, orthodox medicine would not even be close to what it is today. When they are through attacking homeopathy, perhaps some orthodox physicians will open a history book and rediscover their roots.

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