The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy

5 Responses to “The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy”

1. JJM says:

   October 20, 2010 at 6:26 pm

   This book is an extended “argumentum ad populum.” It does not matter how many people like something if it is incorrect. Bleeding sick people was, once, well loved. Treating people with horrible purgatives was, once, well loved. History is stuffed with ineffective, yet well loved, remedies.

   Aside from the invalidity of the premise, the book is factually incorrect. For example, Darwin was treated by a “hydrotherapist” (James Gully, as I recall) not a homeopath. Darwin despised homeopaths, not that his attitude matters as regards their lack of efficacy. After 200+ years, there is no excellent support for any homeopathic treatment.

   Sorry, I can’t give this nonsense zero stars.
   Rating: 1 / 5
2. Health Conscious says:

   October 20, 2010 at 7:36 pm

   This book is really fantastic. Even if you have never tried homeopathy (and so despise it) this book is going to pry your mind open. All the biographies of well-known people who use homeopathy not only gives one courage to try it but also backs you up when your friends tell you using homeopathys is for weirdos. Is Tina Turner a weirdo?
   
   Beyond the bios are some really plotting provoking pieces about the pharmaceutical industry like Why Homeopaths are Despised and Vilified. Too, the chapter on water and its capacity for memory is most timely in science today. It consider it a MUST READ for 2008
   Rating: 5 / 5
3. Itiba says:

   October 20, 2010 at 10:17 pm

   I loved this book. I’m really impressed with the quantity of in rank that’s in there and never realized how many people really used homeopathy in the past. I also loved the author’s enthusiasm for the theme and am glad to see something like this being published for all to read and learn more about it.
   Rating: 5 / 5
4. E.W. says:

   October 20, 2010 at 11:38 pm

   The name and life work of Dana Ullman, MPH, should be familiar to practitioners of homeopathy nearly the world, and especially in the English speaking world. Indeed, in America, his name and service to homeopathy is certainly well known to every practitioner and to many grateful laypersons who rely upon the resources he offers them. His justified fame comes not only through the publication of his own fine books, but perhaps even more actively through his dedicated directorship of the Homeopathic Educational Services, based in California but accessible to the world by mailorder and online. I daresay most American students and practitioners of homeopathy may possibly hardly survive without this well-customary, reliable, and highly respected comprehensive source of books, media and software and publications focussed on homeopathy. Through the resources of the Homeopathic Educational Services and his well loved books, I judge Ullman has done more to educate, inform and so advance homeopathy in the United States than any other single individual. As such, any new book by Ullman is well worth the attention of the practitioner or anyone interested in this fascinating branch of healing, experiencing a rebirth in the 21st century–to a significant extent, midwifed in America by Ullman. His latest work, The Homeopathic Revolution (North Atlantic Press), provides a rich source of historical in rank on the source and rocky road of homeopathy by tracing its history and with brief biographies of its pioneers and patients.

   The Homeopathic Revolution through its highly readable text and uniquely appealing approach can be very valuable indeed for opening some
   
   minds which might very well be more influenced by the personalities and well-known exemplars from the history of literature, the arts and sciences and entertainment since the advent of homoepathy in the early 19th century through the bestow.
   
   In an age of Media where fascination with the personalities of the broadcast world, there is a particular attraction to the use of the well-known as exemplars, including the wide spectrum of those offered by the book, i.e., the many unique and
   
   accepted people who have been documented as devotees of homeopathy. The devotees of those devotees will certainly have their
   
   minds opened by the examples set. Although more detailed history within a broader historical setting may be found in Coulter’s multi-volume history,
   
   Ullman’s book provides something rather different in spite of the inevitable overlaps in historical material….and considerably more entertainment through the fascination of an historical play and its players.

   There will probably be rather fewer serendipitous surprises for readers already familiar with homeopathy’s history through Coulter, & al, in learning celebrities of the past and accounting for homeopathy’s struggle for survival, than for someone more or less unfamiliar with homeopathy’s struggle for recognition and survival. But, the struggle of homeopathy to achieve and maintain its unique approach is an heroic one, on the grand scale and worthy of more historical/private treatments which characterize Ullman’s book….especially given the increasingly prevalent phenomenon of celebrity worship and the cult of the personality in our media-influenced society. But I do not mean to suggest that this is merely a provoking read, with homeopaths as heroes: the book should prove a powerful raiser of consciousness among readers who might not otherwise give homeopathic treatment a try, influenced by its popularity among the fantastic and well-known.

   From other perspectives, the book offers fascinating insights and syntheses of the historical, biographical and scientific. For example, of fascinating interest is the repeated presence and reference to the fantastic 19th century naturalist whose theories of evolution and the origin of species through natural selection also constituted a revolution, viz., Charles Darwin. I found the Darwin’s appearances in the tale especially relevant in an account of the origin of homeopathy and its descent in man and the survival of the fittest….i.e., in the evolution of medicine. Homeopathy appeared and gained its place in medicine at a time when allopathic medicine offered small in the way of effective treatments for most diseases and was making real progress only in the mechanics of surgery and sanitation. Once allopathic medicine found itself threatened and hired a PR expert to promote itself and discredit its more effective competition, the historical equivalent to Darwin’s concept of mutation (here in the form of the Madison Avenue approach to conditioning a populace regarding choice of medical care), homeopathy faltered and nearly disappeared into extinction. Yet, it survived and I am reminded that although the incredibly powerful and once dominant dinosaurs are today report has it that extinct and so one might not reckon “fit” enough to survive, it is also clear that the dinosaurs really do survive the world over on earth as birds. That is, their survivors adapted to fresh forms to preserve their unique genus and genius…..which is what I judge happened, and is happening, to homeopathy. Far from apt extinct, it is surviving, not only reappearing in its classical forms far from its birthplace (e.g., in India, a land with a history for tolerance of diversity in plotting) but in new forms (e.g., complex homeopathy, EAV and vegatesting, &c).

   For myself, reading through the book felt like a guided tour through a wax museum of homeopathic history, a Mme. Tussaud’s of the Similimum, pausing at each of the larger than life statues as Ullman profiled the intriguing personalities who populate the history of homeopathy and so define it in a private way. It is an impressive cast of characters in the saga: US Presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Bill Clinton, Benjamin Disraeli, numerous Indian political and religious leaders in particular (India, to its fantastic credit, seeming to be the land of the Second Appearance of homeopathy), many well-known females, e.g., in medicine, Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, in civil rights Susan B. Anthony,and Louisa May Alcott and fellow literary luminaries such as Mark Twain… and a stellar cast of 19th century authors. Perhaps even more impressive than the more traditionally open-minded masters of arts, are homeopathic partisans among plutocrats like J.D.Rockefeller, many monarchs including, most famously, the bestow sovereign of England and Prince of Wales, And as for musicians, actors, athletes and other entertainers, I feel hopeless to know where to start listing the superstars who depend upon homeopathic treatment. Ullman skillfully weaves literary references to homeopathy with historical excerpts to humanize the generations of some of the cream of human creativity and productivity who respected or depended upon homeopathy for their health. Of course, many physicians appear in the account, most of their names unknown to the layperson, but influential both in the progress and preservation of homeopathy…as well as in its defamation by the broadcast relations office of the American Medical Association, whose outlandish overdramatic antics (including outright blackmail) tramp belief.

   As an alternative medical therapy, homeopathy is about people, after all. With a few exceptions, since most new books about homeopathy are about technical praxis or theory, I had to keep reminding myself of this private slant– that homeopathy is also a history which reflects the vagaries of the human personnae. But, since I myself admittedly have a theoretical bias, the following comments address that orientation:

   I especially appreciated how larger, vital issues of society seem to
   
   naturally arise in the narrative –e.g., the account of the
   
   relationship of feminism to homeopathy, a correlation which has long
   
   fascinated me as a reflection of a powerful, arguably essentially feminine,
   
   energy in homeopathy insofar as it is a gentle, relatively
   
   nonintrusive and nurturing form of therapy compared to the more
   
   aggressive allopathic interventions.
   
   other issues which i have everlastingly found fascinating in homeopathy
   
   which are integrated in the saga, address include the notable presence and influence of
   
   Swedengorgian thoughts. the fundamental commonality of swedenborg’s
   
   cosmology to certain asian metaphysics has also struck me–e.g.,
   
   jainism. both Swedenborg and the Jains perceived the universe
   
   metaphysically as a macrocosmic physiology. other asian philosophies
   
   are also compatible with homeopathic concepts. for instance, the
   
   basic meditation methods advocated in early buddhism (and still
   
   practiced more than 2500 years later) include a visualization of the
   
   pathological counterparts to desire and attachment, which by the side of with
   
   a fundamental delusion about the materiality of the ego, constitute
   
   the source of suffering. such meditations (e.g., charnal ground
   
   meditations, &c) are essentially homeopathic in their psychodynamics.

   Correlated to such western (e.g., Swedenborg) and asiatic (e.g.,
   
   Jainism, Buddhism from Theravada to Dzogchen) spirituality is,
   
   increasingly, Dr Rajan Sankaran’s evolving and innovative theoretics: his
   
   conceptualization of the alien (and alienating) , nonhuman realms of
   
   the vegetable, mineral and nonhuman animal kingdoms as energetic
   
   pathological entities, also resonates with thoughts in all three
   
   paradigms (e.g., the jains judge that animals, vegetables and even
   
   minerals are sentient, accumulators of pathogenic karma, &c. likewise
   
   the realms of rebirth which karma propels human beings according to
   
   their conduct, also include the same kingdoms which materialize
   
   energy on earth and which can be diagnostically identified in
   
   sankaran’s theory of sensations.(fascinatingly, the ancient title given
   
   to psychoanalysts of “alienist” would seem to better apply to
   
   homeopaths using Sankaran’s diagnostic criteria for locating the
   
   remedy in the alien energy bestow in the patient. )

   fFr me, the crucial key is the understanding and finding homeopathy
   
   credible is to embrace the concept that homeopathy functions
   
   essentially nonmaterially. this concept is the least palatable and
   
   digestible to conventional allopathic thought because of its belief
   
   that the human being is a material being. buddhism, in particular,
   
   clarifies the nonmaterial nature of human beings, that its apparent
   
   corporeality or materiality is the fundamental delusion in the
   
   aetiology of suffering (whether it is experienced physically or
   
   psychically). for anyone who accepts this metaphysical develop (e.g.,
   
   me), the concept of the treatment with nonmaterial remedies of
   
   essentially nonmaterial suffering in essentially nonmaterial humans
   
   makes profoundly perfect sense…

   (By the way, if the reader has not already read it, may i suggest you
   
   Prof. B. Alan Wallace’s brilliant book, Choosing Reality? If
   
   the readers of this review are unfamiliar with Wallace, he was trained as a physicist but became a Buddhist monk. a translator for the dalai lama and now a
   
   professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Wallace’s book analyzes the so-called “scientific method” (is it really scientific) which allopaths claim to use and compare it with other valid means to knowledge. The “weakness” of homeopathy being “tested”
   
   by inappropriate methodology more suited to allopathy, and found wanting, can be better understood by the insights of this brief but invaluable study of the assumptions and intellectual monopoly of the so-called scientific method.
   
   Although I do not recall that it mentions homeopathy or even medicine
   
   particularly, I found this slim volume to be one of the best
   
   catalysts for opening the mind to unfamiliar, if not unorthodox paradigms.
   
   (it is readily available, in print by Snow Lion press).

   From these contemplative digressions inspired by the plotting provoking contents of Ullman’s The Homeopathic Revolution, one can perhaps get a sense of
   
   how inspiring of integrative and connective plotting this very
   
   enjoyable book was…. and, for me, that is the highest praise of
   
   an book, being, for me, the most vital potential of any work of
   
   art, including literary (even when nonfictional) is to invite,
   
   catalyze and inspire the partaking of the creative thoughts
   
   of its audience, and so inspire synthesizing gestalts to be made
   
   by making the insightful connections which unify knowledge and inspire as the antecedents of wisdom.

   Prof. Neal White

   -30-
   
   (About the author of the review: Dr Neal White is Emeritus Professor of San Francisco State University, where he taught for 25 years. He is a complementary medical practitioner, whose do includes not only homeopathy, but also a variety of acupuncture paradigms, herbalism, etc. He is supposed to be retired, but continues his work in the healing and visual arts in Nova Scotia, Canada.
   Rating: 5 / 5
5. K. Z. Berg says:

   October 21, 2010 at 1:14 am

   If you have ever sought after to try homeopathy, but weren’t sure what it is, or plotting your doctor would laugh at you, read this book and learn more about it, it’s history and other well-known people who were helped by it. I have found it incredibly helpful and fun to use the in rank in conversations with others about natural health care. Who can scoff at all those well-respected people and their incredible tales?

   The first book I ever read about homeopathy–about 16 years ago–was written by Dana Ullmann and it helped me pursue homeopathy for health and as a profession. Thanks for writing this one! It is the start of what homeopathy really needs–well-known people advocating its incredible healing powers.

   Rating: 5 / 5