The History of American Homeopathy: From Rational Medicine to Holistic Health Care

Chapter 4

Chapter 4 Postwar Trends Postwar Trends At the close of the Second World War, homeopaths at home and abroad sought to reestablish contacts interrupted by the war and to resume their collective and cooperative efforts. At the first postwar meeting of the Council of the International Homeopathic League which met in London in 1947, William Gutman, MD, of New York proposed the establishment of an International Homeopathic Research Council as an instrument for future research initiatives. The institute ’s functions were to include the proving of drugs; the collection of toxicological facts; the collection of pharmacological data which confirmed the Law of Similia; the publication of case histories; the pooling and comparing of statistical information; clinical trials of both old and new remedies; publishing abstracts reviewing international homeopathic literature; identifying laboratory experiments that approach homeopathy through modern physics; the preparation of homeopathic remedies; the incorporation of information for repertories; encouraging scientific cooperation; and the publication of an international homeopathic bulletin.1 For Robert H. Farley, MD, writing in 1948, the pressing need for homeopathy was to identify research programs and pursue them with vigor. While nonhomeopathic topics might be interesting, only those research topics with the potential for furthering the purposes of homeopathy were given the highest priority. This meant the continued development of remedies by provings; republication of the standard homeopathic texts; publication of new works on homeopathic problems ; collecting clinically confirmed symptoms; better indexing of repertories; improvement of the punch card repertory project; and 87 follow up on cases reported cured or helped. In laboratory research, tasks included measuring the effects of drugs upon diseased organisms ; exploring the degree that a similar drug may influence susceptibility , immunity, idiosyncrasy, allergy, and anaphylaxis; identifying the minimum effective dose; and exploring the effects of dilution, trituration, succussion, age of preparation, light, and heat upon the minimum effective preparation.2 Now that instruments existed to measure the energy of potentized remedies, homeopaths felt an awakened sense of importance and hoped to counter the humiliation they had faced in previous decades. Not only had the Baruch Committee on Physical Medicine (1944-51), financed by industrialist Bernard M. Baruch and headed by Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, declared that drugs were becoming obsolete, but homeopathic remedies were also being admitted to the official French Codex and the homeopathic movement was growing in India, Pakistan, and countries in South America. In England, by act of Parliament, homeopathic hospitals were authorized to maintain their independent specialties. In France, homeopaths were pleased to claim Pierre Curie, director of the Curie Institute for Radiology, as a homeopathic physician . For many of homeopathy’s advocates, Hahnemann’s concept of dynamization, interpreted in the light of modern physics, suggested that the electric energy present in potentized remedies was the force that ultimately met the disease and destroyed it.3 ATOMIC ENERGY In spite of initial skepticism voiced in the editorials of the JAIH, the possibility of a relationship between atomic energy and the remedial power of potentized medicines ignited a firestorm of discussion among professional and lay homeopaths in the years following the Second World War. To rank-and-file members in the AIH, there appeared to be no proof that drug atoms were “smashed” by either the succussion or trituration processes, there being insufficient power in the shaking or in the heaviest mortar and pestle to achieve that capability . The fact remained, however, that highly dilute remedies had “an astonishing degree of curative energy” and how this happened remained a paradox and was “at present impossible of explanation.” It was a fact of nature “which we have to accept but cannot understand 88 THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN HOMEOPATHY or elucidate,” explained the editor. That being said, the AIH as an organization refused to support speculation that the atomic bomb provided “a tenable theory to account for the action of homeopathic remedies.”4 On the other hand, individual homeopaths took an entirely different approach. K. C. Hiteshi, MD, insisted that the development of the atomic bomb verified the law of dynamization “beyond all doubt.” It was nothing less than the “disassociation of matter” that converted massive energy by means of triturating, diluting, or by some other chemical process into infinitesimals as laid down in homeopathic practice.5 Similarly, William P. Mowry, MD, of Michigan noted two types of atomic energy: one which occurred when the mass and energy system of an atom split into protons, electrons, and neutrons; and...