Criticism Of Homeopathy

Why Homeopathy Is Hated and Vilified
This is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy (North Atlantic Books, 2007)

On the tombstone of homeopathy’s founder, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, are the Latin words Aude sapere, which translate as “dare to be wise, to experience, to taste.” Hahnemann’s challenge to conventional doctors then and now was to simply try homeopathy and judge for themselves. Sadly, however, most doctors did not honor this simple challenge. In fact, most physicians have maintained a prejudiced and unscientific attitude toward the subject. In other words, they didn’t know much about homeopathy, and they never tried it, but they didn’t like it.

In the nineteenth century many physicians chose to try homeopathy and were surprised and impressed by the therapeutic results, even in the treatment of the infectious disease epidemics that raged during that time. In response to the growing popularity of this “new” medicine, homeopathic medical schools were created to teach basic medical sciences as well as how to prescribe homeopathic medicines. Boston University, New York Homeopathic Medical College, Hahnemann Medical College (of Philadelphia), and several others in the United States were founded to educate a new breed of physician.

Homeopaths did something else that was never done before. For the first time in history, a large and growing group of medical doctors began to criticize publicly the way “regular” medicine was practiced. Further, homeopathic physicians asserted that orthodox medical care did more harm than good.

Before this time, physicians maintained a certain gentlemanly attitude toward each other. Although there have always been differences of opinion within medical practice, the emergence of homeopathy and the development of homeopathic medical schools created a stronger and more sustentative analysis and critique of conventional medicine. Increasingly, the threat of homeopathic medicine was that it attracted the most respected literary elite, many of the leading members of the clergy, a large number of the human rights advocates, well-placed politicians, and many of the richest families in America. Homeopathy was emerging as a viable competitor to conventional medicine of the day.

From the origins of homeopathy in Germany in the early 1800s, Dr. Hahnemann and his colleagues sharply criticized the regular doctors’ use of high doses of mercury, antimony, arsenic, lead, and other poisons. Conventional physicians of the day also regularly performed bloodletting on their patients by using a knife (called a lancet) to open a vein and release blood in order to get rid of what was considered stagnant or excess blood. Even the use of leeches was common until the mid-1800s.

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The Evolution of Science and Medicine

The words “science” and “medicine” are changing and evolving terms. And yet, there is a seemingly innate tendency for physicians and scientists of any era to be resistant to whatever changes are occurring in medicine and science.
While it is certainly appropriate to maintain a certain healthy skepticism about various phenomena, especially those phenomena that seem especially peculiar or unpredictable, all too often physicians and scientists have maintained a closed-minded skepticism that has fostered unscientific thinking and actions.

Nearly fifty years after William Harvey (1578–1657) announced to the world his great discovery about the heart’s role in circulating blood throughout the body, the Paris Royal Society of Medicine determined that such action was impossible. Even when Harvey’s ideas were accepted into medical and scientific thought, they had little effect on clinical medicine of that time or for the next 200 years.

The Royal College of Physicians of Great Britain greeted Benjamin Franklin with shouts of laughter when he declared the identity of lightning with other electrical phenomena. When the members of the French Academy of Science witnessed a demonstration of Thomas Edison’s new invention, the phonograph, one famous professor of medicine literally jumped up and declared: “We have checked and found that it is a matter of ventriloquist hoax, for it is impossible to have a human voice speak from a roller.”

This resistance to change is not simply a problem in medicine and science but in virtually every field of human endeavor. The most determined opponents of church reform usually have been bishops and clergy. Even when Jesus lived, his ideas about God, life, and love were not eagerly accepted. In fact, as we all know, he died for his ideas and his actions.

A short story about Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) may be instructive here. Kepler was a highly respected German astronomer who lived in Austria during the last twenty years of his life. However, due to religious persecution for his Protestant beliefs, Kepler, his family, and friends left Austria. When the king of Austria heard that Kepler had left his country, the king sent horsemen to ask that he return. Kepler said, “If I go back, my friends will have to return with me!” And when he was asked how he could wait so long and so patiently for his theories to be accepted, he responded, “The Lord has waited a long time for people to understand the harmony of His creation! Why should I be impatient?”

Science and medicine have a long history of resistance to change. Because part of a healthy scientific attitude includes objectivity and humility, a true, healthy scientific attitude would replace the present name-calling, head-in-the-sand refusal to understand or investigate alternatives.

Abraham Lincoln once asserted, “I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon. … The great point is to bring them the facts.” One way to keep people from the facts about homeopathy is to cut off communication to them and from them. Another way to keep people from the facts about homeopathy is to disallow conventional physicians from consulting with homeopathic physicians or their patients. Another way to keep people from the facts about homeopathy is to play games with statistics so that it seems that homeopathic medicines are ineffective.

And yet, as science fiction writer H. G. Wells once asserted, “Kings and empires die; great ideas, once they are born, never die.”