Vol. 25 No. 4 September 2005

Not so long ago a couple of middle-aged men with a great interest in homœopathy spent a Saturday afternoon talking to each other. They thought their conversation would have been classed as a free and frank discussion, as the politicians’ cliche has it – an eavesdropper would probably have seen it as two grumpy old men bemoaning the state of homœopathy world-wide.One of them was in bed; he certainly did not want to be in bed but circumstances had put him there and he did his best to attend to things that seemed to him to need prompt attention; like checking, on his laptop, the accuracy of an obituary notice a friend in America had sent him. He thought it very nicely worded and was touched by the expressions used about him, because it was notice of his own death. And this reminded him that he had not put names on the backs of some photographs, which was a job probably no other individual could do.

Then the conversation turned to quirks of memory, like how one word could trigger a whole chain of recollections. Or if you put your mind to it you could come up with a joke on any topic, like, say, taxidrivers. So the pair of them swapped taxi-driver jokes.
Then it was time for some more important questions, such as why are most of today’s homœopathic publications full of crap (prime exceptions being publications they themselves had a hand in), and why is there not today a wonderful journal like The Organon (1878- 1881), edited by Adolph Lippe, Samuel Swan, Thomas Skinner and Edward Berridge. [An article from The Organon appears on page 3. Others will appear as a regular feature.]

And so they went on, for a wonderful afternoon that was a last farewell.

Julian Winston
31 May 1941 – 12 June 2005

A great loss to the world of homœopathy and to those who knew him.

Bruce Barwell