Review of homeopathic book in the Christian Science Monitor!
Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 8:51 pm
Friends,
I previously alerted people to the NEW book, COPELAND'S CURE: HOMEOPATHY
AND THE WAR BETWEEN CONVENTIONAL AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE. Below is a new
review in the CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR.
You can purchase this book from H.E.S. at a special discount...
http://tinyurl.com/52xjt
Click here to read this story online:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0329/p15s02-bogn.html
Headline: Tracking the idea smaller doses have bigger effects
Byline: Gregory M. Lamb
Date: 03/29/2005
Today conventional medicine conceives of itself as a strict science based
solely on facts and clinical evidence. Homeopathy - which some 15 million
Americans continue to seek out as an alternative means of healing - is one
of many therapeutic loose ends that medicine has trouble neatly tying up.
These often popular unconventional therapies leave medical practitioners and
researchers by turns frustrated, angered, bemused, or, in a few cases,
intrigued.
In "Copeland's Cure," author Natalie Robins traces the life of Royal
Copeland, the most prominent American proponent of homeopathy, to follow the
history and effects on society of this unconventional healing method. The
term homeopathy was coined in 1796 by a German doctor, Christian Friedrich
Samuel Hahnemann, codifying ideas that had far earlier roots.
One was the principle of similibus curentur, or like cures like: A small
dose of what ails a patient will cure him. It was also seen as a gentle and
humane alternative to the conventional medicine of the day, which routinely
included practices such as bloodletting. Followers of Hahnemann use common
minerals or extracts from plants or animals, highly diluted, usually in
plain water. (Many are herbs and some, such as belladonna, would be
considered poisonous if taken in larger doses.) The other chief homeopathic
principle concludes that the smaller the dose of the original substance the
stronger the healing effect. In some cases, the drug is diluted so greatly
it is unlikely that a single molecule of it remains in the solution. This
solution then may be absorbed into sugar pills or tablets that can be easily
stored and dispensed.
Shortly after its founding in 1847, the American Medical Association,
the practitioners of conventional medicine, promptly termed homeopathy "a
delusion" with no scientific basis. Nonetheless, in the late 19th century,
doctors continued to receive homeopathic training at some of the nation's
best medical schools, including Harvard, Columbia, and Dartmouth.
Homeopathic hospitals dotted the country. Among its advocates were Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Daniel Webster, John D.
Rockefeller, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Mark Twain wrote favorably of it. In
1901, a leading conventional doctor declared, "No one will deny that as many
patients recover under homeopathic treatment as recover under any form of
treatment."
As the 20th century dawned, Royal Copeland, raised in Michigan and
trained as an eye surgeon and in homeopathy, became homeopathy's most
prominent spokesman in America, Robins says. The busy doctor recorded a
number of his own homeopathic cures, including a patient who was
experiencing acute eye inflammation and great pain. "In all my experience I
never saw a remedy act more quickly," he wrote of the homeopathic drug he
administered. "Had it been a narcotic, the effect could not have been more
magical." Copeland also pursued a political career and became a United
States senator from New York, with a young Franklin Roosevelt as one early
campaign manager.
If homeopathy does work, is it because of a physical or mental effect?
Even its practitioners are divided on the subject, Robins says. Some expect
a biomedical effect will eventually be found - that the drug, though no
longer physically present in the homeopathic solution, has somehow affected
it in an as yet undetectable way. Others theorize it must be a placebo
effect, based on the expectation of the patient (and, more controversially,
the physician as well) that the patient will be helped by the drug. Perhaps
taking a homeopathic pill somehow "releases chemical impulses in the brain
that diminish symptoms," as the Mayo Clinic has suggested.
According to Robins, Copeland himself apparently recognized a mental
aspect. He told one patient after cataract surgery: "I wish you would not
worry over your condition. It does you no good and so depresses you that
your eye, as well as the rest of your body, is unfavorably affected.... Now
just take for granted that you are going to be all right, as I firmly
believe you are going to be, and you will find yourself in better spirits,
and as a result your eye itself will be better...."
Robins makes several mentions of Christian Science, which would take a
step beyond homeopathy's highly diluted drugs to no drugs at all in treating
disease. Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of this newspaper, experimented
extensively with homeopathy before discovering Christian Science in 1866.
She felt it gave her an insight into the mental nature of disease, which she
ultimately concluded was most effectively healed through prayer to God.
(Copeland said he "respected" Christian Science, Robins writes, and conceded
it had "beaten to a frazzle" homeopathy with its "popular success.")
As with other alternative healing methods, homeopathy is difficult to
assess through conventional clinical trials, Robins points out. Treatments
are designed uniquely for each patient; what works for one doesn't for
another. So a similar reaction to a certain homeopathic drug from a broad
sample of test subjects wouldn't necessarily be expected.
Some homeopaths have asked why they must prove how their remedies work
when many conventional drugs are approved and dispensed without
understanding exactly why or how they work either. Nonetheless, Robins says,
to be accepted as "scientific," homeopathy will have to submit to this kind
of testing. While many such tests have shown no therapeutic effect, some do.
Just last year a team led by a British researcher, an admitted skeptic of
homeopathy, found that a highly diluted homeopathic solution of a histamine
influenced the action of human white blood cells. "We are, however, unable
to explain our findings," the befuddled researchers concluded, "and are
reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon."
That's just what Copeland - and Robins - would propose: a deeper, and
perhaps broader, look into the puzzle of homeopathy and the questions it
poses about the nature of disease and healing.
* Gregory M. Lamb writes about healthcare and technology for the Monitor.
Copeland's Cure: Homeopathy and the War Between Conventional and Alternative
Medicine
By Natalie Robins
Alfred A. Knopf330 pp., $24.95
(c) Copyright 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
To read what the WASHINGTON POST said about this book, HES has a review of
it here:
http://tinyurl.com/52xjt
Dana Ullman, MPH
Homeopathic Educational Services
2124 Kittredge St.
Berkeley, CA. 94704
(510)649-0294
(800)359-9051 (orders in the US only)
(510)649-1955 (fax)
dullman@igc.org OR mail@homeopathic.com
http://www.homeopathic.com
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
I previously alerted people to the NEW book, COPELAND'S CURE: HOMEOPATHY
AND THE WAR BETWEEN CONVENTIONAL AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE. Below is a new
review in the CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR.
You can purchase this book from H.E.S. at a special discount...
http://tinyurl.com/52xjt
Click here to read this story online:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0329/p15s02-bogn.html
Headline: Tracking the idea smaller doses have bigger effects
Byline: Gregory M. Lamb
Date: 03/29/2005
Today conventional medicine conceives of itself as a strict science based
solely on facts and clinical evidence. Homeopathy - which some 15 million
Americans continue to seek out as an alternative means of healing - is one
of many therapeutic loose ends that medicine has trouble neatly tying up.
These often popular unconventional therapies leave medical practitioners and
researchers by turns frustrated, angered, bemused, or, in a few cases,
intrigued.
In "Copeland's Cure," author Natalie Robins traces the life of Royal
Copeland, the most prominent American proponent of homeopathy, to follow the
history and effects on society of this unconventional healing method. The
term homeopathy was coined in 1796 by a German doctor, Christian Friedrich
Samuel Hahnemann, codifying ideas that had far earlier roots.
One was the principle of similibus curentur, or like cures like: A small
dose of what ails a patient will cure him. It was also seen as a gentle and
humane alternative to the conventional medicine of the day, which routinely
included practices such as bloodletting. Followers of Hahnemann use common
minerals or extracts from plants or animals, highly diluted, usually in
plain water. (Many are herbs and some, such as belladonna, would be
considered poisonous if taken in larger doses.) The other chief homeopathic
principle concludes that the smaller the dose of the original substance the
stronger the healing effect. In some cases, the drug is diluted so greatly
it is unlikely that a single molecule of it remains in the solution. This
solution then may be absorbed into sugar pills or tablets that can be easily
stored and dispensed.
Shortly after its founding in 1847, the American Medical Association,
the practitioners of conventional medicine, promptly termed homeopathy "a
delusion" with no scientific basis. Nonetheless, in the late 19th century,
doctors continued to receive homeopathic training at some of the nation's
best medical schools, including Harvard, Columbia, and Dartmouth.
Homeopathic hospitals dotted the country. Among its advocates were Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Daniel Webster, John D.
Rockefeller, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Mark Twain wrote favorably of it. In
1901, a leading conventional doctor declared, "No one will deny that as many
patients recover under homeopathic treatment as recover under any form of
treatment."
As the 20th century dawned, Royal Copeland, raised in Michigan and
trained as an eye surgeon and in homeopathy, became homeopathy's most
prominent spokesman in America, Robins says. The busy doctor recorded a
number of his own homeopathic cures, including a patient who was
experiencing acute eye inflammation and great pain. "In all my experience I
never saw a remedy act more quickly," he wrote of the homeopathic drug he
administered. "Had it been a narcotic, the effect could not have been more
magical." Copeland also pursued a political career and became a United
States senator from New York, with a young Franklin Roosevelt as one early
campaign manager.
If homeopathy does work, is it because of a physical or mental effect?
Even its practitioners are divided on the subject, Robins says. Some expect
a biomedical effect will eventually be found - that the drug, though no
longer physically present in the homeopathic solution, has somehow affected
it in an as yet undetectable way. Others theorize it must be a placebo
effect, based on the expectation of the patient (and, more controversially,
the physician as well) that the patient will be helped by the drug. Perhaps
taking a homeopathic pill somehow "releases chemical impulses in the brain
that diminish symptoms," as the Mayo Clinic has suggested.
According to Robins, Copeland himself apparently recognized a mental
aspect. He told one patient after cataract surgery: "I wish you would not
worry over your condition. It does you no good and so depresses you that
your eye, as well as the rest of your body, is unfavorably affected.... Now
just take for granted that you are going to be all right, as I firmly
believe you are going to be, and you will find yourself in better spirits,
and as a result your eye itself will be better...."
Robins makes several mentions of Christian Science, which would take a
step beyond homeopathy's highly diluted drugs to no drugs at all in treating
disease. Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of this newspaper, experimented
extensively with homeopathy before discovering Christian Science in 1866.
She felt it gave her an insight into the mental nature of disease, which she
ultimately concluded was most effectively healed through prayer to God.
(Copeland said he "respected" Christian Science, Robins writes, and conceded
it had "beaten to a frazzle" homeopathy with its "popular success.")
As with other alternative healing methods, homeopathy is difficult to
assess through conventional clinical trials, Robins points out. Treatments
are designed uniquely for each patient; what works for one doesn't for
another. So a similar reaction to a certain homeopathic drug from a broad
sample of test subjects wouldn't necessarily be expected.
Some homeopaths have asked why they must prove how their remedies work
when many conventional drugs are approved and dispensed without
understanding exactly why or how they work either. Nonetheless, Robins says,
to be accepted as "scientific," homeopathy will have to submit to this kind
of testing. While many such tests have shown no therapeutic effect, some do.
Just last year a team led by a British researcher, an admitted skeptic of
homeopathy, found that a highly diluted homeopathic solution of a histamine
influenced the action of human white blood cells. "We are, however, unable
to explain our findings," the befuddled researchers concluded, "and are
reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon."
That's just what Copeland - and Robins - would propose: a deeper, and
perhaps broader, look into the puzzle of homeopathy and the questions it
poses about the nature of disease and healing.
* Gregory M. Lamb writes about healthcare and technology for the Monitor.
Copeland's Cure: Homeopathy and the War Between Conventional and Alternative
Medicine
By Natalie Robins
Alfred A. Knopf330 pp., $24.95
(c) Copyright 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
To read what the WASHINGTON POST said about this book, HES has a review of
it here:
http://tinyurl.com/52xjt
Dana Ullman, MPH
Homeopathic Educational Services
2124 Kittredge St.
Berkeley, CA. 94704
(510)649-0294
(800)359-9051 (orders in the US only)
(510)649-1955 (fax)
dullman@igc.org OR mail@homeopathic.com
http://www.homeopathic.com
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]