Letter to the Editor of Homoeopathica September 1998

Dear Editor:

In the Editorial in the April 1998 issue titled “When will this trend end?” you mention the work of John Renner, MD, and say, “He firmly believed that homœopathy declined in his country not so much through assault by orthodox medicine, but because of the rise, and eventual dominance, of a homoeopathic cult long on theory and short on results.” You then draw a comparison between Renner’s beliefs, and things you see happening in New Zealand. I do not wish to address the topic of what is happening with homœopathy in New Zealand, other than to say that I see it being healthy, supporting several colleges, supporting several registers, which are about to merge, and having two pretty good newsletters devoted to the subject.

I would, however, like to discuss John Renner and the decline of homoeopathy in the USA.

The statements you quote from Renner that apparently led you to your conclusion, come from a biography written in 1985 by Adelaide Suits. In my capacity as editor of Homœopathy Today, the newsletter of the National Center for Homœopathy, and in my capacity of Registrar, and later Dean, of the National Center’s educational programs, I had the opportunity of meeting Renner at a meeting in Santa Barbara in 1984, which resulted in a continued correspondence with him until his death in 1989. I also knew Adelaide Suits. She was on the NCH Board of Directors for three years.

Renner was a delightful old man, but was steadfastly myopic in his view of American homœopathy. “Prickly” and opinionated, he didn’t get along with many others, and he withdrew from the general American homœopathic community by the early 1940s. In his last years he was recognized by the homœopathic community as the “venerated elder” and argued with everyone. The 1984 meeting in Santa Barbara, was one of the only times he emerged from his solitude.

Renner refused to believe that anyone who used high potencies (and he considered anything above a 3X high) or who used a Kent’s Repertory could have any success with homœopathy. He completely dismissed four generations of homœopaths – including Arthur Grimmer (who had been his teacher), Royal E. S. Hayes, Charles Dixon, Alfred Pulford, Elizabeth Wright-Hubbard, Benjamin Woodbury, Ray Spalding, Allen Neiswander, Henry Williams, Lucy Clark, Mæsimund Panos, Richard Moskowitz, Nick Nossaman, Karl Robinson, David Wember – to name but a few. He refused to look at literature describing their cases, dismissing them out of hand because they used high potencies and the repertory. In one of the last correspondences I had with him, he asked me if I really believed that homœopathy would survive. At that point in time, our summer school attendance had quadrupled, the Hahnemann Clinic was fully operational in California, the membership in the National Center had tripled, and homœopaths from abroad – for example, Eizayaga from Argentina, Imberechts from Belgium, Dixit from India – were holding regular seminars in the USA. I assured Renner that it was alive and well. He was relieved to hear that I thought so, but was incredulous that it could possibly happen.

Since you so readily quote the work of some of these people and have, obviously, read the journals in which their cases are presented, you would undoubtedly be aware of the quality of homœopathy that was being practiced through those times. The decline of homœopathy in the United States had nothing to do with any cult (I assume you are talking about the followers of Kent and the “Kentian/Swedenborg” school). The factors leading to the decline were many. The early factors were discussed in an article by Daniel Cook and Alain Naude that appeared in both the Journal of the American Institute of Homœopathy and in The Homœopath. As the decline deepened in the 1940s through the late 1960s, it was the people who were trained by Kent and those who were trained by Kent’s pupils who kept homœopathy alive in the United States. They were the only ones using the methodology described by Hahnemann in the Organon.

All the other “homœopaths” were, at best, “half-homœopaths” who prescribed low potencies, often combinations, based entirely on “disease” categories. They often fell back on their allopathic training when homœopathy “didn’t work.” The entire story will be clearly spelled out in The Faces of Homoeopathy-a history of homoeopathy in the USA – a book I have been working on for the last few years and expect to have in print by early next year.

That you choose to think of homœopathy in the USA as “long on theory and short on results” suggests to me that you know little of the homœopathy that was practiced in the USA in the times between the 1940s and the 1970s. Although homœopaths were few and far between during those times, those that were practicing were doing good (and some outstanding) homœopathy. They were to a man (and woman) all medical doctors-used to handling what you would call “real disease” and they came to homœopathy because they saw it work better than the conventional methods they were using. They were obviously having results with homœopathy.

Many of the older homœopaths had graduated from New York Homœopathic or Hahnemann Medical College, having only a brief taste of homœopathy when they were there. Most found their education completely lacking and their homœopathic practices bordering on failure. Those that wanted to continue with homœopathy, and realizing their inherent lack of expertise, looked for more education. They found this at the American Foundation courses which were taught mostly by Kent’s pupils. I met a number of these old homœopaths while they were still alive (Reed in Ohio, Kaplowe in Connecticut, Rood and White in Michigan, Fromhold in Indiana) and have met patients of “greats” like Hayes in Connecticut and Dixon in Ohio. These physicians had full practices and took care of generations in the same family. They had a thorough understanding of homœopathy. None of them ever prescribed for “the healthy personality” as you often infer. They were good homœopaths and good doctors. And when they died, there were few who could fill the gap.

The generation “in the middle” who learned from the generation after Kent were, likewise, good homœopaths. And there were enough of them-folks like Sutherland, Bond, Reed, Gladish – who lasted long enough to pass their information to the next generation – in the persons of Panos, Williams, Rodgers, and Clark. And they, in turn, passed it on to the next generation – Chase, Moskowitz, Wember, Nossaman, Robinson, etc. I know these people. I have spent hours with them at meetings, on Boards, and simply socially. I have had a chance to sit in on their practices. They are far from “short on results.” They are medical doctors who serve as the primary-care physician of the people they treat. They choose to use homœopathy. They all have busy, full practices. It is these people who kept homœopathy alive in the USA despite the efforts of Renner who, to the last, was trying to convince the government to make it illegal to manufacture and sell any homœopathic remedy above the 3X.

To give Renner any credit for “understanding” the failure of homœopathy is to believe in the rantings of a bitter and myopic man who saw only what he wanted to see and refused to believe anything else.

Julian Winston, Board Member Emeritus, National Center for Homœopathy
Editor, Homœopathy Today (USA)
Editor, Homoeopathy NewZ (NZ)

THE EDITOR REPLIES:
I do not endorse Renner’s views in entirety, and do not believe I said so; he was indeed a strange old man who rarely prescribed above 6x potency and sometimes selected remedies on astrological grounds.

Rightly or wrongly, though, the majority of homoeopaths in India and Continental Europe hold views close to Renner’s on why homoeopathy faded in America.

They do not believe persecution by orthodoxy is the chief culprit; after all osteopaths and chiropractors did not dwindle to near extinction. They blame internal discord and increasing nuttiness (Renner exemplifying both) as souring potential benefactors. Renner gives examples of billionaires’ changes of heart – Wrigley the chewing gum magnate, General Motors’ Kettering, and the great John D. Rockefeller, who accepted only homoeopathic treatment throughout his long life.

A typical European view is this piece from Jacques Jouanny in his The Essentials of Homoeopathic Therapeutics:

“Some authors, more spiritualist than doctors, have described in extreme detail the psychological characteristics of certain susceptible types of patients on the basis of a few patients and integrated this into the Materia Medica and Repertories.”

“These nuances, often psychoanalytic, are described and treated as if they were experimental reactive modalities of nervous behaviour, which they are not.”

“All these nuances are not brought about toxicologically or experimentally. These are the psychic descriptions of particular cases. They expose those who practise such a repertorial technique or those who want to treat patients especially upon psychic symptoms, to many misinterpretations and disillusionments.”

“This was the attitude of Kent and his spiritualist school which went so far as to say that `the pathognomonic signs of disease have no importance in the selection of the homoeopathic drug.’

“This is a philosophical attitude which makes homeopathy into a theology, and considers man to be made only of the soul. There is a great danger here of ignoring a serious and obvious diagnosis.”

“This attitude has practically destroyed homoeopathy in America where it was at one time a flourishing discipline. It is now practised only by a few esoteric doctors.”

I do not believe it is appropriate to repeat criticisms I have heard of the actual ability of named homoeopaths, but since it has already appeared in print I feel I can say that when I spoke to him in 1973 P. Sankaran was still hurt that Maesimund B. Panos and others with her at a course she ran feigned interest in a demonstration of Boger’s Synoptic Key but failed to do more about it as they said they would. A sweetened-up version of this incident appears as a footnote in one of Sankaran’s booklets.

When I first read American homoeopathic publications in chronological order it was noticeable that from about 1930 on some of the big-name practitioners did not hesitate to mention their use of dowsing (for example the piece by Arthur Grimmer in this issue) or mumbo-jumbo esotericism such as saying hair and nails are manifestations of the Ego.

Perhaps it is a case of when looking at a lot of individual trees you fail to perceive the nature of the forest.

I see both deviation from core concepts of Hahnemann and a tolerance of wackiness being dangerous trends in New Zealand, and will continue to express my opposition to such developments … the NZ Homoeopathic Society was formed to champion Hahnemannian homoeopathy; that is my job.

Bruce Barwell