Vol. 18 No. 3 June 1998

Times for getting together Some years ago, when there were few professional homœopaths and only one or two bookshops sold books on homœopathy, the Homœopathic Society had a number of people living outside Auckland, often in a rural area, who had put their names forward to be contacts for people in their region interested in homœopathy and keen to meet like-minded people socially or to study.
In some districts these links grew till what was virtually a branch of the society was operating, with benefit to all involved. It has been suggested that there would be merit in reviving this set-up, and the society’s executive committee thinks this is an avenue that should be explored. Perhaps in this era of e-mail and cheaper toll calls, and homœopathic colleges offering extra-mural courses, this is an idea that has had its day, but I, for one, remember the enthusiasm and admirable energy expended on helping one another and advancing the cause of homœopathy, and would like to see this bloom again.

If anyone is interested in being the nucleus of a local centre of homœopathic interest, and willing to have their names listed in this magazine and other publicity, we would like to hear from you. Please contact the secretary if you can contribute to this project in any way at all.

The meetings the society holds at its Auckland headquarters, on the second Monday of the month (except January), have attracted diminishing numbers of people, and finding speakers and new topics on which they could speak has become difficult.

So, to create a more useful evening these meetings are no longer taking the form of someone speaking on “childhood complaints” or “winter ills” but a more informal discussion focused on pre-nominated topics. An effort is made to have knowledgeable professionals contributing, and the hope is that students of homœopathy as much as other interested people will benefit from attending. Please come, and encourage others to do so, too.

Is this trend worrying?
In my editorial in the April issue I drew a comparison between trends I see in contemporary New Zealand homœopathy and developments some people believe caused a drop in the quantity and quality of homœopaths in America, starting in the late 1930s.

The point I was making was that when homœopaths fall into widely differing schools of thought-some distinctly non-Hahnemannian, the use of medicines generated by machine or “prescribed” by machine grows, and remedies containing a mixture of medicines are sold with implied therapeutic claims, there is a great danger that schisms will develop, slanging matches erupt, the general public become confused or cynical, and the only registered medical practitioners (doctors) who will be attracted to practise homœopathy are people with religious or philosophical beliefs that they believe consonant with homœopathy.

In the States many disgruntled homœopathic doctors sunk into the orthodox medical establishment and multi-millionaires who had previously pledged to support homœopathy gave their money to other projects-these two things don’t apply in the Antipodes, of course.
Julian Winston, a leading homœopathic historian, if not the leading homœopathic historian, has written a long letter to Homœopathica (too long for this issue) strongly contesting that there is any parallel between the two situations and painting a rosier picture of the local scene than I perceive.
His letter will appear in the next issue.

Am I being alarmist? Is quality homœopathy in danger? Do visiting homœopathic gurus do more good than harm here? Am I “myopic” and “blinkered” as my critics claim? Are local training establishments turning out graduates fully competent to set up a practice and treat virtually the full range of complaints people would go to a GP about? Is the trend for health food shops and pharmacies to stock homœopathic medicines and offer advice on their use a good thing, or likely to lead to homœopathy getting a poor image?

Correspondence on these questions is invited.

Bruce Barwell