This book review is reprinted from the British Homoeopathic Journal Vol 83, No 2, April 1994, with permission from Peter Fisher, Editor.
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The Magical Staff. The Vitalist Tradition in Western Medicine.
Matthew Wood.
Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books.
Paperback, pp. 209.
Price US 14.95. [Editor's note: As of July 1996 Minimum Price Books' price is $14.50].
ISBN 1 55643 127 9.

One of the ways in which homoeopathy differs from conventional medicine is in the importance a grasp of its history has for understanding present-day practice. In conventional medicine, little that happened before, say, 1960 has much direct relevance today; few books go out of date so quickly as medical textbooks. In homoeopathy things are very different. Most of the therapeutic ideas we make use of today had their origin in the 19th century, and, for better or worse, little has been added since then. Unless you understand how concepts such as the miasm theory, constitutional prescribing, and potentization came into being and developed, you will be unable to form a clear idea of their significance and you will lack the foundation needed to make an assessment of their value.

Unfortunately it has hitherto been difficult for students to obtain this information, and the difficulty has sometimes been compounded by certain writers who have presented seriously biased accounts of homoeopathic history. My own The Two Faces of Homoeopathy was an attempt to redress the balance, and Matthew Wood's new book contributes to the same end. Wood belongs to the vitalistic tradition, which he is concerned to defend, but this has not prevented him from looking at his subject matter objectively.

The first representative of vitalism he considers is Paracelsus. He presents a fairly detailed account of this enigmatic figure, and if he does not succeed in making Paracelsus's somewhat obscure ideas readily comprehensible to the modern reader that is hardly his fault. Next, he outlines Hahnemann's thought, pointing out some of the ways in which it changed and evolved over the years. He is understandably sceptical of Hahnemann's claim never to have read Paracelsus, though he does not mention Hahnemann's contacts with Freemasonry, which are surely relevant in this regard.

There follows a short chapter on Hahnemann's contemporary Rademacher, whose ideas undoubtedly influenced the development of homoeopathy, especially in France, and then we pass on to what, for me, is the most interesting part of the book: the evolution of homoeopathy in America. Here Wood provides some fascinating facts.

North American medicine before the Civil War boasted a number of highly, colourful practitioners. Samuel Thomson, for instance, a 'root doctor' from New Hampshire, made up his own simple theory of physiology based on heat and cold; fever, he said, represented the attempt of the body to expel cold and restore health. Thomson was at least courageous; wishing to experience what he was talking about at first hand, he deliberately caught yellow fever in New York and then cured himself (and others) with his own treatment. His favourite remedy was Lobelia; at one time his enthusiasm for it led to his imprisonment for a year on remand in the harshest circumstances, when a certain Dr French, after first threatening to shoot him, accused him of killing a patient with Lobelia.

Wood writes at length about the method of practising medicine known as 'eclecticism', in which James Tyler Kent was initially trained. The founder of this school was Dr Wooster Beach, although he eventually broke away from his own followers. He preached moderation in the use of conventional therapy and introduced several native American medicines, as did a later 'medical reformer', C. S. Rafinesque, who probably inspired the use of the term 'eclectic' to describe the new movement. Both Beach and Rafinesque were influenced by contact with the 'root and Indian' doctors, as indeed was the homoeopath Edwin Hale, whose New Remedies were later incorporated into the homoeopathic materia medica, often without the formality of a standard homoeopathic proving.

Kent's apprenticeship in eclecticism was due to a later, and very influential teacher: John M. Scudder. Wood makes a convincing case for his view that many of Kent's ideas, even after his conversion to homoeopathy, derive from Scudder, who was Kent's professor of pathology and philosophy of medicine in 1870. Although Wood fully recognizes the central importance that Swedenborgianism came to have for Kent, he believes that many of Kent's most characteristic teachings derive from eclecticism. Hahnemann, Wood says, had a basically scientific, objective view of the role of the physician, whereas Scudder taught that the life force of the physician was an important part of the healing process. 'Unfortunately, (Kent) was unaware of the fact that he was borrowing the central tenet of eclecticism, presenting it as a Hahnemannian approach, when it was really a homeopathic heresy.'

Although one might expect that Wood, as a self-avowed adherent of the 'spiritualist' version of homoeopathy, would approve of Kent, this is not the case. 'An historical and critical spirit is lacking among Kent's followers. This has encouraged the development of a narrow, tiresome approach which restricts creativity within the movement, creating a cultish atmosphere which impinges upon both wings of homeopathy.'

The picture of Kent that emerges from Wood's study differs in several ways from what we have been accustomed to hitherto. It seems that Kent was regarded as something of an interloper by the homoeopaths of his day, and his views were by no means universally welcomed. Wood describes him as appearing suddenly on the homoeopathic scene in about 1885, and he quotes Julian Winston, editor of Homoeopathy Today, as saying that Kent 'rode out of the West like the man in the black hat'. This swashbuckling version of Kent is perhaps a little difficult to take in, but is probably broadly correct.

It seems that it is not only our view of Kent and his background that we need to revise: other aspects of 19th-century homoeopathy are also rather different from what we had assumed. For example, C. J. Hempel, the translator of Hahnemann's Chronic Disease). was totally at odds with Hering, with whom he disagreed radically about psora (was it, or was it not, the same as Original Sin?). Hempel's insistence that psora is a spiritual contamination would naturally lead one to suppose that he was, like Hering, a high-potency enthusiast, but in fact he later became the leader of the low-potency wing. And yet, equally paradoxically, Kent-the uncompromising advocate of ultra-high potenciesadopted Hempel's view of psora unreservedly. As Wood remarks, this crisscrossing of ideas makes the ascribing of labels and talk of medical factions somewhat irrelevant.

Wood's discussion of the American homoeopathic scene in the 19th century is fascinating. I could have wished him to give us even more of this. For my money, he should have ended the book here. Instead, he concludes with a chapter on Compton Burnett and another on Edward Bach; although these are quite adequate and informative I found them a little anticlimactic.

This book is undoubtedly a major contri bution to the history of homoeopathy. It should be required reading for students on the Long Course and indeed for anyone who wishes to form a proper understanding of how homoeopathy came to be as it is today.

ANTHONY CAMPBELL

British Homoeopathic Journal
Volume 83, Number 2, April 1994