This book review is reprinted with permission from The American Homeopath.
The Heritage of Homoeopathic Literature
By: Julian Winston
Reviewed by: Melanie J. Grimes
A book about books? A book that is a bibliography? What
about this topic makes interesting reading?
Many of the great homeopathic books are no longer in print. There
is a treasure trove of literature that no one has read. When the
golden age of homeopathy passed by, there was no generation to carry it
forward. Most of us were not taught by our elders, nor did we inherit
their libraries. When I first began studying homeopathy in 1972,
at National College of Naturopathic medicine, our library was an old, dusty
room full of boxes. Books were piled in boxes, donated or left by
doctors as they passed. Being eager to learn, I started carding the
books. At the same time, Dr. Bastyr loaned me a copy of an out of
print book that he thought I would like. It was The Organon.
Such was homeopathic literary life.
A chart in Winston's book shows that from 1950-1970 there were years in which no homeopathic books were published. We live in a time when according to the chart, 18 books are published every year. And now, one of these books is a book about books, the very heartblood of our science - the ancient repositories of ancestral wisdom - the recorded discoveries of our sages, who cannot teach us, their prodigal students, themselves, but have left this wealth of printed material behind.
Winston's book first lists each of the books by subject: organon, principals, materia medica, repertory, therapeutics, domestic manuals, pharmacy, journals, etc. Within these sections, the books are listed by publication date, with some occasional anec-dotal information from Julian. It's a bit like a trip through a library with a well-read friend, chatting along the way.
The final section contains lists of publishers, indexes by date and author, a glossary and graphs.
Many homeopaths have found this to be a good bedtime reading book. I agree.