The History of Homeopathy and the politics of health care

The History of Homeopathy and the politics of health care

With health care being the number one topic in government, you might want to know about homeopathy. Homeopathy is a system of medicine developed by German physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843). He created the name from the Greek words homio and pathos, meaning "similar illness.
Rebelling against the unscientific and often barbarous practices in medicine of his day--including bloodletting--Hahnemann was attracted by Hypocrite’s accounts of the cure or prevention of some diseases by the administration of substances known to produce effects similar to the symptoms of the disease. These radical "similars" consisted of vegetable, mineral or animal material, that, if given in large or repeated doses, produced in a healthy person symptoms similar to those manifested by sick patients.
Hahnemann decided to test the validity of treatment using similars by experimenting on himself. He took a strong dose of quinine, used to relieve symptoms of malaria, and soon developed the symptoms of malaria. He concluded that the reason quinine relieved the symptoms of malaria was its ability to stimulate the body's natural immune response.
Emboldened by this discovery, he tested various medicinal substances on obliging friends and relatives. Hahnemann also discovered that the more a substance was diluted, the stronger its effect. It was as if it released more of the substances energetic force. He then kept a record of the symptoms produced. These "provings" became the basis of Heinemann’s homeopathic method of treatment. His original sixty-eight provings grew to some six hundred by the end of the 19th century.
Hahnemann formulated his findings into the "law of similars," which states that "each individual case of disease is most surely, radically, rapidly and permanently removed only by a medicine capable of producing in the human system in the most similar and complete manner the totality of the disease symptoms."
Fed up with the barbaric and ineffectual treatments offered by orthodox medicine, American doctors began to turn to homeopathy as a safe, gentle alternative. By the 1880s, homeopathy had taken root and was successfully competing with existing medicine.
Homeopathy spread rapidly in this country and in Europe among the educated and affluent; the establishment of homeopathic dispensaries was a boon to the poor, who were usually not charged. The New York Times (June 7, 1883) commented that homeopathy "often cures when allopathy fails... Whatever else it may be, it is not quackery. It has all the elements of science."
By 1900, about 25% of all American physicians subscribed to the homeopathic discipline. It was taught in twenty-two American medical colleges, and there were over a hundred homeopathic hospitals and thousands of pharmacies in this country that filled homeopathic prescriptions. Numerous homeopathic medical journals were published, and state homeopathic societies regulated the practice. In every respect, including licensing, the homeopathic physician enjoyed the same status as the traditional physician.
The rise of homeopathy shattered orthodox medicine's monopoly on health care. But the forces of orthodox medicine weren't complacent. They were determined to eliminate homeopathic medical practice from the American scene.
In 1847, the American Medical Association was organized with the implicit purpose of eliminating the practice of homeopathy in the United States. They called homeopathy a "delusion" and rigorously forbade physicians from consulting or consorting with homeopaths, regardless of the latter's medical expertise. In New York City, the Academy of Medicine excluded homeopaths from membership. The Connecticut Medical Society in 1852 summarily expelled some members of the Fairfield County Medical Society for practicing homeopathy. In 1873 the Massachusetts Medical Society, bowing to AMA insistence, booted out eight homeopathic physicians who had held membership in the society for thirty years! The consequences of these expulsions--which The New York Times (6/7/1883) called "unjust, unfair and abusive--was that Boston became a hotbed of hostility toward the AMA.
By 1865, the pharmaceutical industry fully supported the AMA's campaign against homeopathy. Since the homeopaths prescribed no propriety medicines, they did not contribute to the manufacture and use of pharmaceuticals. Furthermore, homeopathic physicians actually discouraged the use of mass-produced drugs in favor of an individual approach t illness.
By the turn of the century, the pharmaceutical industry's economic support of the AMA was a fact. Prominent allopathic physicians were paid for endorsing specific proprietary medicines. By 1909 advertisements placed by pharmaceutical companies in the AMA's journal were the major source of all the AMA's revenues.
Pharmaceutical companies deluged allopathic physicians with free samples of their products (as they still do today) and sent droves of public relations men to medical conventions and doctors' offices nationwide. By such methods, the bond among the AMA, allopathic physicians and the pharmaceutical industry was cemented. The AMA, with its control over American medicine assured, used the revenues provided by its powerful ally, the pharmaceutical industry, to prepare for the final assault on homeopathy. Homeopathic medical schools were a primary target of the AMA when it formed its Council on Medical Education in 1904. The council's DE CLAREd purpose was a noble one: to upgrade medical colleges. Unquestionably, medical colleges always need upgrading. But in retrospect, it is clear that the elimination of homeopathic medical schools was no small part of the AMA's purpose. One way to banish homeopathy was to get rid of the institutions in which it was taught.
The AMA planned to prove that homeopathic medical students were not as proficient as their traditional allopathic colleagues. However, this plan would have been impossible to implement. An AMA survey conducted in 1905 showed that 12% of allopathic graduates failed their medical licensing exams, compared with only 3% of homeopathic school grads!
Raising admission standards and extending the medical school program to four years was not going to work either. AMA studies of this showed that on the whole, the caliber of students and teachers at homeopathic institutions was higher than at conventional schools.
But the results of these studies spurred the AMA to devise a new rating system for schools. Its criteria would eliminate homeopathic schools from consideration for endowments and grants, on which medical schools depended (and still do) for their existence. The rating system made a school's graduates' performance on state licensing exams an insignificant criterion for the school's rating. Major significance was instead placed on the nature of the courses taught at the school, the elaborateness of its laboratories and whether physicians teaching first and second year classes were employed full-time at the school and whether they engaged in original research and published scientific papers in medical publications such as the AMA's journal. The most important criteria were whether the school was affiliated with a hospital and dispensary, the extensiveness of its libraries, and whether it maintained a museum of medical exhibits for students and faculty.
Both homeopathic and traditional medical schools protested the AMA's right to rate them, and they objected to the rigging of the criteria. In response, the AMA council brought in Abraham Flexner of the Carnegie Foundation endowment, which was a primary source of funding for medical institutions.
The Flexner Report of 1910 embodied the AMA's unsolicited judgment of American medical schools. It was influenced by the AMA's opposition to homeopathy. Flexner shared the AMA's bias; he saw no justification for the continued existence of homeopathic medical schools in the age of "modern medicine."
Based on this report and the AMA's ratings, some state licensing board barred homeopathic graduates from taking the exams. Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller and other philanthropists accepted the AMA's recommendations and drastically cut their allocations to homeopathic medical schools. This occurred despite the fact that Rockefeller, who was 98 when he died in 1937, never let anyone but a homeopathic physician treat him!
Not long after, homeopathy began to feel the effects of this campaign to eliminate it. Without funding, the number of homeopathic medical schools has dwindled to seven in 1918, and in 1938 the last one closed its doors. This was the death knell for homeopathy.
I have described in some detail the events leading to the demise of homeopathy in order to illustrate how the medical establishment deals with its adversaries. Homeopathy was not unique; it was merely the first in a long line of alternative methods of health care that he medical establishment singled out for elimination.
However, medical care has become the largest industry in America, and today health care is the prime topic in government. I believe we will soon see a massive switch to options, as our health care system continues to crumble.




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