Homeopathy Movement

Homeopathy, which draws its name from the Greek homoios (similar) and pathos (suffering), is a 200 year-old system of therapeutics founded by German scientist Samuel Hahnemann. Homeopathic treatment was a popular alternative to orthodox medicine both in Europe and the United States in the mid- to late 19th century, and organized homeopathy soon followed with the founding of the American Institute of Homeopathy (AIH) in 1844. However, despite positive achievements such as success in treating epidemic disease, homeopathy went into gradual decline in the late 19th century until it was nearly phased out altogether in the United States in the 1950s. A public in search of nontoxic, holistic, approaches to health care renewed interest in homeopathy's methodology in the 1960s and 1970s. Today global concern about antibiotic-resistant infectious diseases and the escalating cost of health care place homeopathy at the fore-front of the debate about complementary alternative medicine.

Based on the principle, similia similibus curentur (like cures like), homeopathy is a diagnostic system that evaluates the whole organism not simply its parts. Unlike synthetic pharmaceuticals that suppress the immune system, homeopathic treatment uses serial (repeated) microdoses of water-based substances from the plant, mineral, or animal world to stimulate the body's autoimmune system and initiate the self-healing process.

Not without skeptics, homeopathy enjoyed a span of influence in both Europe and the United States in the era before preventive medicine (about 1830 to 1870).

Homeopathy's main organ, the AIH, was the United States' first medical society, antedating its rival the American Medical Association (AMA) by 3 years. Though homeopathic practitioners were physicians trained in both orthodox medicine and homeopathy, homeopathy's popularity prompted the institution of homeopathic colleges. Between 1850 and 1880, colleges in New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Detroit, and Des Moines graduated approximately 5,000 homeopathic physicians. Homeopathy proved disproportionately popular among women both in the roles of physician as well as patient. In fact, the AIH invited women to join their ranks in 1871, long before the AMA did likewise. Contemporary studies reveal that homeopathy was practiced at a higher rate in the northern United States than in the South, and because many homeopathic practitioners were abolitionists, the movement is often connected to black emancipation.

Yet despite its popularity as an alternative to 19th-century medicine's often risky and ineffective practices, the homeopathy movement began a measured deterioration. Economic factors associated with the rise of modern medicine are usually considered to blame. In addition, Pasteur's Germ Theory of disease became the dominant paradigm for modern medicine and in response, contemporary skeptics (including the AMA) maintained that homeopathic treatments were old-fashioned, therefore unscientific. Pressures such as these caused an increasing number of homeopaths to steer away from Hahnemann's teachings, and by the close of the 1860s, more and more homeopaths were taking an eclectic approach to the practice of homeopathy, incorporating allopathy (what homeopaths called orthodox medicine) with homeopathic remedies.

However, in a drive to protect the interests of the homeopathy movement, Carroll Dunham, MD, and AIH president, proposed in 1870 that the AIH open itself to all practitioners. This preemptive measure, designed in the hope that “pure” homeopaths within the ranks of the AIH would teach physicians with little knowledge about the science, met with derision. As a result, divisions between “pure” homeopaths and “half” homeopaths (those who adopted an eclectic approach to homeopathy) developed and ruptured the AIH from within. Also contributing to AIH fractiousness at the time was increasing antagonism from its rival society, the AMA. Traditionally, homeopathic practitioners could belong to both the AIH and AMA; however, the AMA view of homeopathy as an economic and philosophical threat to orthodox medicine prompted new AMA membership rules. In 1871, the AMA restricted membership, expelling its eight remaining homeopathic physicians; in 1882, it declined to acknowledge delegates from the New York Medical Society because the society had passed a resolution recognizing all properly graduated doctors (implying homeopathic physicians).

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