Vol. 21 No. 2 April 2001

It is 50 years since the inaugurating meeting of the New Zealand Homœopathic Society was held on 26 February 1951. Its first members were chiefly grateful patients of Alfred Grove, who in those days had consulting rooms at 193A Symonds Street, above a hardware shop.He shared the space with a woman, Lillian Flay, who made hats and traded under the name of Lilli Anne Millinery. They even had the same telephone number. Later, when Mr Grove saw people in rooms built for the purpose as part of his house at 14 Rangiatea Road, Epsom, the Symonds Street premises continued to be used for homœopathic meetings, the tenure of the room being shared with the Children’s Bible Crusade organisation. If you called there other than society meeting nights the crusaders would sell you kits of homœopathic medicines on the society’s behalf – though they did exhibit a tendency to turn conversation to matters of morality that concerned them.

For many years the society had fewer than 100 members, which was no wonder, for it did little to attract new members other than Mr Grove’s patients.

When I joined the society in 1968 it was run rather like a fan-club for Alf Grove, and he controlled it firmly, creating an atmosphere of my way or no way. This autocracy crumpled somewhat in the early 1970s, and the society achieved quite a high profile through radio and television appearances of myself, Dr Wesley Newport and Dr Diwan Harish Chand (when he visited New Zealand). Magazine and newspaper articles I engineered were good publicity too. The indefatiguable secretary Tom Cusack wrote hundreds of individualised letters to people who contacted the society after this publicity – nearly 300 after I debated on air with the Minister of Health in July 1985.

People other than Mr Grove began to teach homœopathy to quite large numbers all over New Zealand – notably Wolfgang Jaeger, Sue Muller and myself – with little thought of personal financial gain. There was a strong atmosphere of sharing knowledge. Connections I made with publishers when in India in 1971-72 helped create a busy homœopathic book trade.

The bookroom soon became the province of Erna Stokes, and to this day runs under her stewardship.

Mr Grove died in July 1974. The society stopped relying on getting a British homœopathic magazine for its members, and Brian Murray produced Homœopathica in 1980.
Public meetings addressed by Dr Lambert Mount attracted big audiences in the early 1980s.

On 27 July 1985 the society took possession of the Mt Eden property now its headquarters. Money for its purchase came from book sales and donations from members. The seed for the property purchase was a donation of $100 from the King family in 1975, opening an investment account. Monthly meetings were for years held in halls because of the number of people attending; now they are held at the society’s premises.

For some years the society held seminars, with different speakers, attended by upward of 300 people. The last was held in March 1980. The society set up a register of approved practitioners in 1980; practitioners encouraged their clients to join the society. The establishment of other practitioner groups unsympathetic to the society, and the wider availability of homœopathic medicines and books on homœopathy, eventually eroded the society’s position, and membership is declining.

Perhaps this decline is inevitable in a global tendency for the “power” of homœopathy to no longer lie with groups of enthusiastic lay people but with a class of professionals with scant interest in an educated laity; this class is increasing in quantity and declining in quality (well, I think so, anyway).The number of people with quasi-electronic devices for treatment and/or diagnosis calling themselves homœopaths is alarming.

I feel somewhat pessimistic about the future of bona fide Hahnemannian homœopathy in New Zealand, and the effect this will have on the society.
I hope events prove me wrong.

Bruce Barwell