Health Impact News Editor Comments:
While this excellent article on the rise of homeopathy in America, and
then its destruction by the American Medical Association monopoly, was
written in 2008, it is even more true today in 2014. Will our country
move further towards a monopoly system of medical care in this nation
led by the pharmaceutical industry and enforced by the federal
government, or will we return to our roots and the foundation of “health
freedom” where citizens have the choice to make their own decisions
regarding health care?
Maybe it is time for another “American Medical
Revolution.”
by
Jack Phillips
GreenMedinfo.com
About 170 years ago our ancestors forced
the repeal of licensing laws which had created a monopoly over the
practice of medicine for orthodox physicians. Ordinary people, farmers,
artisans, tradesmen and others got together and forced politicians to
act on their behalf. They were tired of bloodletting, and harsh
medications like mercury compounds that ruined their teeth and weakened
their bodies. They opted for kinder and gentler alternatives with lower
casualty rates, particularly the newly introduced homeopathy. They were
impressed that tiny doses of medicine were able to cure cholera much
better than the massive doses used by orthodox physicians.
The Rise of Homeopathy
Homeopathy, introduced in America in
1825, was a brand new medical discipline developed by a German physician
named Samuel Hanhemann (1744-1843). He was disillusioned with the
results of medical practices of his day. He stopped practicing and began
to study the effects of medicine on a healthy person, himself. He tried
quinine, a very popular medication, first. It caused symptoms of
malaria, the disease which it was able to cure. Similarly mercury
produced symptoms of syphilis on which it had therapeutic effects. This
experimental evidence lead to an assumption: substances which produce
symptoms in healthy people can have a curative effect on sick people who
experience the same symptoms. Extensive experimentation with his family
and friends resulted in collection of the symptomology of 27
medications. With this information he was able to investigate the
validity of his hypothesis.
Returning to the practice of medicine he
found that clinical experience validated his hypothesis. By this means
his hypothesis became a theory in accordance with scientific
methodology. Ultimately, confirmed by other investigators, it became the
law of similars.
Subsequently experimentation with
varying doses disclosed that small amounts of medicines had more effect
on the diseases of patients than large amounts. This experimental
evidence led him to conclude that his medications were stimulating the
inherent healing powers of his patients. They were getting well without
the damaging side effects of excessive amounts of medicines.
Many orthodox physicians in Germany,
observing Hahnemann’s successes, sought training in the application of
the new doctrines and began to practice homeopathy-generating a new
school of medicine in the process. It became popular all across Europe.
Homeopathic physicians began treating the royalty and nobility of
Europe.
Homeopathic physicians didn’t try to
find the cause of diseases. They spent a lot of time identifying
symptoms in consider-able detail since each patient was considered to be
unique. The symptoms defined the disease. Matching the symptoms of the
patient with the symptoms associated with medications was not an easy
job. Intelligence, training and dedication were required to achieve the
full benefits of homeopathic technology. Ultimately some homeopaths
limited themselves to the use of low potency medications while the most
effective practitioners used the high potency variety, those with the
highest dilutions.
Pharmaceutical Business Decreases
Hahnemann did not claim to have
discovered the law of similars. The therapeutic systems of empiric
physicians in ancient Greece and Paracelsus had included this theory.
The important discovery that medicinal substances could be more active
at high dilutions was his alone and he was vilified because of it. Those
whose incomes depended on the sale of large quantities of drugs found
it economically damaging. Orthodox physicians, whose use of excessive
amounts of mercury caused their patients to lose teeth and deteriorate
physically, hated it as a serious threat to their physical safety as
well as their professional reputation. But many physicians trained in
the orthodox tradition abandoned it and took up the practice of
homeopathy with great success.
Success of homeopathic treatments with
camphor, copper sulfate and Veratrum album, recommended by Hahnemann
during the Asiatic cholera epidemic in Europe in 1832, firmly
established homeopathy in France. When Hahnemann arrived in Paris in
1835 he was granted a license to practice medicine within 6 month. He
subsequently cured the Marquess of Anglesea of tic deleureux which
French physicians had been trying unsuccessfully to cure for 20 years.
After losing prestige and patients to the homeo-paths, member of the
French National Academy of Medicine called them knaves, ignoramuses,
charlatans and quacks.
Nevertheless orthodox physicians adopted camphor,
copper sulfate and Veratrum album as remedies for cholera.
The Height of Homeopathy Success
American homeopaths were as successful
treating cholera in the 1830s as the French homeopaths. They added to
their reputation when in 1878 a yellow fever epidemic spread from New
Orleans into the Mississippi Valley with alarming death rates: 4,600 of
27,000 cases in New Orleans, 5,000 out of 18,500 cases in Memphis with a
total of 15,934 death out of 74,265 cases reported in the Mississippi
Valley. Homeopathic physicians in New Orleans had treated 1,945 cases
with loss of 110. In the rest of the south they had treated 1,969 cases
with loss of 151–7.7%. The overall death rate for reported cases in the
south was at least 16%. The French Government awarded a gold medal to a
French homeopath for his work during the New Orleans epidemic.
Homeopaths were popular!
Insurance companies began offering
reduced rates to persons employing homeopathic physicians and
homeopathic life insurance companies were being chartered. In 1870 the
Homeopathic Life Office of New York reported that it had sold 7,927
policies to followers of homeopathy and 2,258 to other; 84 deaths in the
first category and 66 in the second justified the lower premiums
charged to the former.
As a result of these successes by 1892,
homeopaths in the United Stated controlled about 110 hospitals, 145
dispensaries, 62 orphan asylums and old peoples homes, over 30 nursing
homes and sanitaria and 16 insane asylums.
In 1889 the Westborough, Massachusetts
insane asylum was run by homeopaths and the Springfield Republican
reported that the cost of maintenance is much less and recoveries and
general success greater than in allopathic asylums.
The AMA Strikes Back
Meanwhile competing medical technologies
and an oversupply of physicians drastically reduced the income and
status of about 110,000 orthodox physicians. An average one earned $750
per year in 1900 and about 40 per year committed suicide because of
financial difficulties. But about 15,000 homeopathic physicians
prospered and 26 schools of homeopathy flourished at the end of the
century. Unsuspecting homeopaths, fully occupied with their lucrative
practices, gave grudging support to their own organization not realizing
that they were in danger.
Orthodox physicians at the American
Medical Association (AMA) plotted their downfall. The first objective
was reduction in the number of medical schools and medical students.
This had been a cherished goal since 1846 when the founding convention
of the AMA occurred.
Politically astute George Simmons, M.D.
who graduated from Hahnemann Medical College of Chicago in 1882 and
later attended Rush Medical School, was appointed secretary of the AMA
and editor of its journal (JAMA) in 1899. Soon thereafter he was
appointed secretary of a committee to consider reorganization. In 1901 a
reorganized AMA changed from a loose federation of independent
professionals into a political powerhouse. The reorganization
substantially reduced the influence of individual physicians who had
been objecting to unethical drug company advertising.
In 1904 the AMA established a Permanent
Council on Medical Education. In 1905 the Council arranged a conference
of state medical licensing boards to review the status of medical
education and set standards for medical schools. A temporary standard
required four years of high school and 4 years of medical school and
examination of graduates by state boards before licensing. In 1906, the
committee inspected 160 medical schools, grading 82–A, 46–B and 32–C.
Fifty schools agreed to require 1 year of college sciences courses for
admission.
In 1907 Arthur D. Bevan, M.D., the
Council’s chairman, convinced Henry Pritchard, former President of MIT,
who now headed the Carnegie Foundation, to sponsor a study of medical
education. That Foundation, founded in 1905 with the objective of
upgrading the status of college teachers and creating a uniform system
of higher education, was a logical ally. In November of that year the
trustees approved the proposed study and Pritchard hired Abraham
Flexner, an educator who had graduated from Johns Hopkins University, to
work on the project.
Flexner headed for his alma mater’s
medical school, which he used as his standard of comparison. Accompanied
by Nathan Caldwell, M.D., who replaced Bevan as Chairman of AMA’s
Council on Medical Education, Flexner made a comprehensive survey of
medical schools in 1910. His opinions of most of the schools he visited
and evaluated were not flattering. Harvard University was incensed at
his opinion of their medical school which had been reorganized by
Charles Elliot in 1870.
Flexner was convinced, probably by Dr.
Caldwell, that Hahnemann and homeopathy were frauds, since this was the
official opinion of the AMA which denied that homeopathy possessed
therapeutic efficacy. Flexner also bought the opinion of William Osler,
M.D. that “sectarian allopathy and homeopathy” were yielding to the new
scientific medicine.
Flexner’s famous report, coauthored by
Nathan Caldwell, caused substantial changes. It started a process that
empowered the AMA, disorganized the homeopaths and forced the closure of
homeopathic medical schools. Even though John D. Rockefeller favored
homeopathy and repeatedly insisted that it be sup-ported, all of his
money was spent on “scientific medicine”. Frederick Gates who was
influential in disbursing Rockefeller’s money wrote that Hahnemann was
in-sane. John D., Jr. told his father that the homeopaths were
integrating with the allopaths. Letter requests for funds from one
homeopathic school were said to have been unanswered.
Scientific medicine was designed to be
capital intensive. Requirements for teaching it increased costs beyond
the capability of students to support the schools with tuition and fees.
As a result schools, unable to supplement their income from other
sources like grants and bequests, were forced to close or consolidate.
In 1910 the number of medical schools was reduced from 166 to 131. Only
63 were left in 1929. In the 1930s and 1940s, 11 homeopathic schools
closed. After 1930 even the Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia
was teaching allopathic medicine except for one or two classes of
homeopathy.
New laws gave the AMA the power to
control what the schools taught. Curricula were heavy in the sciences,
but there was only minimal training in nutrition and pharmacology.
Physicians who used to make up their own remedies began to rely on
pharmaceutical company formulations and for information on drugs.
Production of physicians was substantially reduced. Competing medical
sects, whose members had totaled less than 10% of all physicians, were
all but emasculated.
Evidently our present unsatisfactory
situation came about because the frustrated monopolists of the 1820s
found a way to put themselves back in the driver’s seat. They convinced
upper and middle class people that they were scientists who could bring
the benefits of science to their patients. At least $300 million ($600
million according to Harris Coulter’s The Divided Legacy) contributed by
wealthy donors, supplemented by an unknown amount funneled through the
JAMA by the pharmaceutical industry and other advertisers, helped them
regain control. At a time when one dollar bought a 10-hour day’s work,
this was an irresistible flood that carried the orthodox physicians back
into power and supported the monopoly for almost a hundred years.
The AMA in Control: Monopolized Medical Care
Once in control, efforts to reduce
competition and increase income have been unceasing. Physicians who
practice alternative medicine, in competition with regular physicians,
are subject to harassment. In the state of Washington about 30% of them
are being harassed at this time. Those who make substantial advancements
in medical science often find the Federal Government moving against
them. The FDA and FTC have used taxpayer money to suppress new
technology in a number of cases. Even State legislators have cooperated,
in cases where other means failed.
The purpose of the new licensing laws
was to protect the public but, in fact, monopolized medical care,
according to reports, has been killing over 200,000 of us every year and
promises to bankrupt the country. These laws are used to prevent free
public access to less lethal, more effective and less expensive
therapies. As Daniel Haley so eloquently wrote, in Politics in Healing,
“we don’t need government protection from things that can’t hurt us”.
Medical science should be a search for
the truth and many medical scientists have spent their lives in this
search. Unfortunately scientific medicine, as practiced by the medical
monopoly during the last century, has rejected the discoveries of a
number of medical scientists. Too many promising technologies have been
consigned to the dust bin of history. As a result, medical services are
much more expensive than they should be and lower in quality than they
could be. Less suppression and more competition can make people
healthier at lower cost.
One hundred years of suppression of
advancements in medical science is enough. Even physicians have been
victimized. Their expensive schools don’t teach them about the
suppressed science and give them inadequate training in nutrition and
therapeutics. We can do without the high prices and poor care. Let’s
recover and apply the suppressed technology and reward, rather than
discourage, innovations that promise lower costs and better quality
care. Replace the medical monopoly with laws guaranteeing freedom of
choice in medical care.
Again in 2008, as in the 1830s, orthodox
medicine is killing lots of people and creating lots of invalids. The
exorbitant price of $2 trillion a year is too much. We owe it to
ourselves and our descendants to reintroduce competition into the
medical marketplace.
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