This book review is reprinted with the permission of the National Center for Homeopathy
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Thorsons Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Homoeopathy:
the definitive reference to all aspects of homeopathy
by Harald Gaier, ND, DO, DHomM, FSAHA, DipAc HarperCollins, London 1991,
601 pages, hardback, 30 pounds (U.K.) [Editor's note: As of March 1996 Minimum Price Books' price is $55.00]
ISBN 0-7225-1823-4
Reviewed by Julian Winston

As a veritable collector of things homeopathic, this book made its way to me. It was thought that I would have the correct perspective to comment on this latest offering from over the sea.

On first examination, the work is most impressive. It begins with "A" (Absolute Alcohol) and progresses through "Z" (Zymosis). It apparently defines many things we are familiar with (chronic disease healing crisis, pain, pediatrics, etc.) and many more things that we are unfamiliar with (Homeomorphous, Parallelism, Probabiliorism, Spagyric, Ustus, etc.).

The author, in a lengthy introduction, offers us his reasons for making the work available, and assures us that ,sources were diligently checked to eliminate factual errors as far as possible. He states that he has "tried for comprehensiveness and to achieve an absence of notable omissions of pertinent material," and he also states that he is aware that "more, much more, could have been included."

After reading this book, I couldn't but help recall Hahnemann's footnote to Paragraph one of the Organon in which he berates the doctors of the time for employing "an abstract mode of expression...to astonish the ignorant." That is the very thing from which this book suffers. It says too much, it says it in a very complex and roundabout way, and, in too many instances, it has not been "diligently checked."

In discussing this with a friend, the word "neologism" was mentioned. It is defined in the dictionary as "a new word, usage or expression, or a usually compound word that is meaningless to the hearer." And in neologisms, this book abounds.

There is a plethora of unnecessary cross references (in large bold type) from one incomprehensible definition to another. For example, page 338 has six cross references (Measures, Measuring glass, Mechanical Causes of Disease, Mechanism of Physiological Response in Homeotherapeutics, Medical Methodism, Medicine, and Medicines) but only a dozen lines of text. "Solvation structures" is cross referenced on page 339 as "'Memory' Carried in Hydro-ethanol Solvent Used in Potentization" and the article itself, four pages long, is close to incomprehensible to this reviewer. Uromancy (page 564) was apparently used to divine whether a patient was a virgin, pregnant or had a spouse and the like. What is the conceivable connection with homeopathy? Homeopathy has enough ideas to explore and justify without claiming every obscure "ology" as a cousin. Two of my favorite cross references were "Psychological Commitment to Homeopathy (see Commitment to Homeopathy)" and "Ranking the Parallels in symptom complexes of diseases to drugs (see Disease and drug action in Homeopathic Congruity)."

The first eight entries in the"B" section are Bach Flower Remedies; Bad Hygiene; Baglivi, Georgio (1668-1707); Balances, Chemical and Physical; Bate's Method of Eyesight Training; Beam Therapy; and Benjamin, Alva (1884-1975). This should give you some idea of the scope of information presented. But once one gets by this barrage of verbiage, is what IS said accurate? There were enough historical errors in the book for me to raise serious doubts about the scholarship of the author. For example:
American homeopath and author Carroll Dunham died in 1877, but the book lists his death as 1887. Dunham is referred to as "a pupil of Constantine Hering at Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia," and is credited with a definition of "scientific medicine" he wrote in 1885. If the author had read the "memoir of the author" in Dunham's Lectures on Materia Medica, he would have found that Dunham met Dr. Hering as a friend, had not attended Hahnemann College, and had died in 1877. The quote comes from a Dunham book published in 1885.

The biography of James Tyler Kent is filled with inaccuracies. The author says that Kent did not graduate from medical school, but Kent IS listed as a graduate of the Eclectic Medical School in Cincinnati (page 138 of the 1852-1900 register), his third wife (Clara Louise) was NOT the wife in St. Louis (Lucy H. Kent) whose recovery under homeopathy prompted Kent to study the method, and the Post Graduate School in Philadelphia was NOT part of Hahnemann Medical College.

The author states that Hering returned briefly to Germany from South America, before settling in the USA. This piece of information appears in ONLY ONE place in the homeopathic literature: Richard Haehl's two volume biography of Hahnemann. It is in total contradiction to all other information in the four other books containing information about Hering (Bradford's Pioneers, Raue's Hering Memorial, Knerr's Life of Hering, and Eastman's Life and Reminiscences Of Hering) which all state that Hering never returned to Germany after he left South America. Although R. Gibson Miller is given a heading, no mention is made that he came to the United States (St. Louis) to study with Kent in 1884. It was Gibson Miller who brought back to England the beginnings of Kentian thought.

Sir Henry Tyler is listed as being born in Woodhull, NY, in 1849. This piece of information comes from An Encyclopedia of Homeopathy by Trevor Smith, MFHom- a book, published in 1983, that is filled with misinformation. First, it was not possible, at that time, for a person of American birth to be knighted. That should be the tip off. Sir Henry Tyler was born in Mayfair, England, in 1827, and died in 1908 (not 1910 as the book states). The eminent American homeopath James TYLER Kent was born in Woodhull, NY, in 1849. Had Sir Henry been born at the same time at the same place, I'm sure we would have heard about it by now!

The author also mentions that Henry's daughter, Margaret Tyler, came to the USA on a scholarship to study with Dr. Kent in Chicago. In her eulogy of Kent, published in 1916, Tyler said it was her great disappointment to have never heard him lecture. As far as I can determine, they corresponded, but never met. I have searched for information to the contrary, and no one has ever found any. Also, the book gives two different dates for her birth.

The author mentions that the decimal scale (the "X" scale of potencies) was introduced by Hering. It was not. It was introduced by Dr. Samuel Dubs, of Philadelphia, in 1839. The author says that Pierre Schmidt, MD, learned of homeopathy in 1918 in England, then came to the US where he "came under the influence of Kent." This information, as with much of the other, seems to come, almost verbatim, from An Encyclopedia of Homeopathy by Trevor Smith, MFHom. Although the author does not say that Schmidt "met Kent" (as Smith says), it is implied that he learned directly from him. Schmidt learned from Fredericka Gladwin, MD, a pupil of Kent. He could not have met Kent, since Kent died in 1916.

There are numerous errors in the article about potentization, especially when the author talks of the machines being used to produce the potencies. When he speaks of the Kent Machine at Ehrhart and Karl as a "model Skinner improved" he was obviously not referencing the lengthy article I wrote on the history of potentizing machines for the British Homeopathic journal in April of 1989. Furthermore, having lectured on the subject of potentization for a number of years, I read and re-read this book's article on the subject, and found it overly complex to the point of being incomprehensible.

Generally, an encyclopedia consists of a collection of articles written by experts in their respective fields. This particular book is an amazing piece of work, but not, necessarily, an amazing piece of scholarship. The medical community needs books that will present the concepts of homeopathy in the simplest and easiest to understand terms. We do not need the creation of "double-speak" terms to define what we are doing. By creating these neologisms, the author has increased the jargon with which we can discuss homeopathy and is guilty of Hahnemann's charge of being "wrapped in unintelligible words and an inflated abstract mode of expression, which should sound so very learned in order to astonish the ignorant."

This is the third book on homeopathy I have seen in the last month that has facts that ARE, liberally mixed with facts that ARE NOT. Unless we are vigilant in our efforts to ascertain the truth of matters (and be honest enough to say we don't know when we don't), succeeding generations will be left a mish-mash of half-truths, generated by authors who don't have time for scholarship, but who continue to write bigger and less understandable books.

The book does contain some wonderful bits of information (a list of nosodes and their provers, and many interesting pieces on the historical context of homeopathy), but most of it can easily be gotten from other books. If the book had been checked for inaccuracies and edited to about half its size, it might have had some merit.

Hahnemann was right. It is time we said "enough." If one wants to learn about homeopathy there are a number of good books available. If one reads Hahnemann's Organon, Close's Genius of Homeopathy, Roberts' Principles and Art of Cure, Harris Coulter's several books on homeopathy, and Vithoulkas' Science of Homeopathy, one could get a good, and accurate, understanding of homeopathy. The recently reprinted Complete Book of Homeopathy by Weiner and Goss presents homeopathy in an easy to understand fashion.

As it stands, Thorsons Encyclopaedic Dictionary has different degrees of reliability. It certainly should not be used as a definitive reference source.

HOMEOPATHY TODAY JUNE 1992