Homeopathy

The practice of homeopathy may seem new in North America, but it's not. It's been here for 175 years, ever since the Danish homeopath, Hans Gram, emigrated to the United states. That was in 1825. Homeopathy captured the American people so much that practicing homeopaths decided to create their own medical society.

The American Institute of Homeopathy was born in 1844, the first medical society organized in the United States, predating the American Medical Association (AMA) by two years. By that time the European pharmaceutical companies were gaining power in the United States. The attack on homeopathic practitioners and on any practicing medical doctor who made use of homeopathic preparations was relentless, in almost every state.

The turf war was on. The fight became so petty that when the advocates of homeopathy convinced the Michigan legislature that they should establish a professorship of homeopathy in the department of medicine at the University of Michigan, the AMA refused to recognize a graduation diploma if one of the homeopath professors signed it! But towards the end of that century homeopathy began a slow rise, chiefly because of endorsement by some famous figures. America could not ignore the opinion of its beloved humorist, Mark Twain, for instance.

In an article in 1890 he was quoted as saying that homeopathy "forced the old-school doctor to stir around and learn something of a rational nature about his business. . . . You may honestly feel grateful that homeopathy survived the attempts of the allopathists to destroy it."

By the turn of the next century there were 22 homeopathic medical schools, more than 100 homeopathic hospitals and over 1,000 homeopathic pharmacies in the United States. The first women's medical college in the world was the homeopathic Boston Female Medical College, founded in 1848. In 1873 it merged with Boston University, another homeopathic college.

Death Rates Reduced

Dana Ullman, the author of Homeopathy Medicine for the 21st Century, says that probably the reason that homeopathy had such overwhelming popularity, was its success in treating various epidemic diseases during the 1800s. Death rates in homeopathic hospitals were often one half to as little as one-eighth of those in orthodox hospitals. In Cincinnati, the homeopaths published a daily list of their patients during the cholera epidemic. Only three per cent of those who were treated homeopathically died. Over 50 per cent of those under orthodox medical treatment died.

Similarly, with the yellow fever outbreak of 1878, death rates for those under homeopathic care were approximately one third of those who were treated conventionally.

Despite all the attempts of the American Medical Association to discredit and destroy homeopathy, it seemed that the practice was here to stay. There was a plan in place, however, and it came from the Carnegie Foundation in the form of the Flexner Report, a supposedly objective evaluation of American medical schools but done by members of the AMA. Schools that received a good report were those whose full-time teaching faculty taught pathological and physiochemical analyses of the human body. Professors at homeopathic colleges were often themselves in clinical practice as well as researchers. They received poor ratings. By 1921 only two homeopathic colleges were in existence.

The homeopathic decline continued. Drug companies contributed huge grants to the medical colleges that taught pharmaceutical "science." And because the drug companies published medical journals, they used these journals to discredit homeopathy. The people were finally persuaded in favour of pharmaceuticals until almost the end of the 20th century. Then the tide slowly turned.

In 1998 William LaVallee, MD, of Nova Scotia was charged by the provincial medical licensing board with practicing homeopathy, among other medical practices. LaVallee mounted his own defence campaign and won with the result that so-called "alternative" medicine is now part of the Nova Scotia Medical Act! Homeopathy is also fighting its way back in other provinces. A few physicians, like Stephen Malthouse, MD, in Victoria, BC, have left the practice of drug medicine and taken up homeopathy exclusively, "because it works!". He says, "my patients are now getting better!"

Schools of homeopathy are springing up in Canada and most naturopaths use homeopathic medicines as part of their practices. There are at present 30 doctors who practice homeopathy alone. None of them is covered by medical insurance so the patient who prefers this medical modality pays the consultation fee as well as his provincial medical insurance. The first session with a homeopathic doctor is usually an hour or more because a homeopath wants to know everything about the patient, including her family background, her parent's illnesses, her emotional as well as her physical state. The body and the mind operate as a whole.

Body Energy Increases

Homeopathy is energy medicine. It's dynamic. It works on the vital force of the body with the principle of "like curing like." In other words, the same ingredient that would cause a disease or illness can cure the same disease when the dose administered is sufficiently "potentized" or refined and diluted to the highest degree and energized through "succussion" (a series of vigorous shakes).

James Tyler Kent, MD, one of America's greatest homeopaths, said to the Society of Homeopathicians in Chicago (1912), "All acute disease, no matter how painful and malignant they may be, may be aborted or cured by homeopathy."

Greek homeopath George Vithoulkas states, "Homeopathy . . . is universally applicable to all disease . . . but cannot cure . . . when there is not sufficient vitality that may be aroused to cure . . . Every individual may have years added to his life if taken in time by being vitalized by the homeopathic constitutional remedy" (Medicine of the New Man).

In both the elderly and in children, Vithoulkas says, "Homeopathy has most spectacular results in both acute and chronic cases. Homeopathy can regenerate the population of any country that adopts it completely."

Samuel Hahnemann, the father of the medical principle that he named "homeopathy" left these words to modern physicians:

"Refute these truths if you can by showing a still more efficacious, certain and agreeable method than mine . . . [and] not by words alone. But if experience should prove to you as it has to me that my method is the best, make use of it to save your fellow creatures and give the glory to God. The physician's highest calling is to restore health to the sick, which is called healing."