The Homeopathic Revolution [antikvár]

Foreword In the pages of this book, Dana Ullman paints a vivid historical and geographical panorama of homeopathy through the remarkable range of famous people and cultural heroes who have used and supported it: from Mahatma Gandhi to the French 1998 World Soccer champions; from Chopin to Cher, Charles Darwin, J. D. Rockefeller, and Pope John Paul II; several generations of the British royal family and eleven U.S. presidents over 150 years, to mention but a few. Quite a selection! But homeopathy isn't the preserve of the rich and famous. It is also widely used by ordinary people: in modern India alone there are more than 200,000 trained homeopathic practitioners. But despite its popularity and durability homeopathy has been, and continues to be, the subject of fierce polemical attacks from the scientific and medical establishment. In 2005, the leading medical journal The Lancet proclaimed in an anonymous editorial the "End of Homeopathy." This reminded me of the famous telegram sent by Mark Twain (another enthusiast for homeopathy): "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." Of course, the fact that the extraordinary range of talented, intelligent, and independent-minded people depicted in this book benefited from homeopathy does not represent a scientific argument, but it is a strong "no smoke without fire" argument. Homeopathy is accused of being "implausible" because of its use of extremely dilute medicines. But is it not at least equally implausible that such a diverse group of remarkable individuals would have espoused it, over such a long period, if its effects were imaginary? Meanwhile, the evidence that it has real and valuable therapeutic effects, and the scientific understanding of how those effects might be mediated, is steadily accumulating.