An Interview With Dro James Stephenson Table of Contents Introduction Transcript 1 - 62 Footnotes 63 - 64 Index 65 - 68 .-----· . Dr. James Stephenson Dr. James Stephenson was born in St. Lou.is, Missouri on J:lllarch 29, 1919. He took his M.D. degree from Cornell University Medical College in 1951, and he is presently a practicing physician in New York City. He was interviewed in his office at 66 East 83rd Stree·t, New York, New York, 10028, on June 18, 1968. 'l'he interviewers were Dr. John Duffy of 1'ulane University School of Medicine and Mr. Martin Kaufman, his graduate student and research assistant. Dr. Stephenson was one of the most articulate of the homeopaths Mr. Kaufman and I interviewed. He was quite suspicious of our motives, however, and he only agreed to talk with any freedom after we had reassured him that he would have the right to edit the transcript. He was quite worried about my connection with a medical school, and was apprehensive that any material we collected might be used to discredit homeopathy. Even though he talked with considerable freedom, on certain questions be insisted on speaking off the record. In editing his transcript, he restricted himself largely to clarification and made only minor changes. l:Pl'. James Stephenson Tape l Pagel Oral history interview, Dr. James Stephenson, New York City, June !8, 1968. Interviewed by Dr. John Duffy and Mr. Martin Kaufman. IDr.· Duffy: Dr. Stephenson, I thought we would do this in three general sec- tions. First. we would like to find DlJ.t precisely how you got into homeopathy, what facets attracted you into it, etc.; secondly, we would like to get your definition and views on homeopathy; and third, we would like to discuss the organization and the role of homeopathy, that is, in relation to the orthodox medical profession., and then, of course, the various options and splinter groups within it. So do you think you could start by giving some of your back­ ground? i)r. Stephens on: My background particularly in reference to homeopathy? Yes • . . When I was a sophomore medical student at Cornell, through a series of coincidences, I found out about homeopathic medicine. Dr. Eliza­ beth Hubbard 1 s 1 name was given to me as a homeopathic physician, which I recorded and more or less forgot about. Then I got acute appendicitis in the middle of my sophomore year, and did not wish particularly to Lose a few weeks through an operation, so I thought I would try home apathy. She gave me a remedy, and overnight the symptoms went away, and this made me quite interested. I was pro­ bably more open-minded than the average physician 1n this direction, because I had gone into medicine late after five years in the army, and I had some background in various philosophic systems which are Dr. Stephenson 2 Page 2 to some extent coincident with homeopathy. How did you say you came in contact witb Dr. Hubbard? s.- well, I think my wife heard of her. No, my wife heard of 2 Boericke and I'afel, and I went into Boericke and Tafel when they used to have an office down in the fortie~and they gave me Dr. Hubbard's name and address as a homeopathic physician. ID.- Had your wife had contact with homeopaths or horneop6_thic physi­ cians? IS.- She bad heard about homeopathic medicine through some friend of hers. D.- Yes, but she had not ••• IS.- She had not been under homeopathic treatment before, although, amusingly enough, a maiden aunt of mine told me recently that I had been briefly under homeopathic care as a young child. But my parents never informed me of that. jD.- Now what is your formal medical training? Your special ties as of now? You are a graduate of Cornell? (s.- Yes, a graduate of Cornell Medical College. I did a year's in­ ternship and then I went right into a homeopa.thic preceptorship with Dr. Hubbard for three years. Before that I had attended the D postgraduate course of the American Foundation for Homeopathy be- tween my sophomore and junior yea.r in medical school. Or maybe between my junior and senior, I have forgotten. Who conducted that course? That was conducted by a whole bunch of people. Dr. Hubbard was on the faculty. Dr. Sutber1t~a? Dr. Ray Spalding~ who 1s notv de­ ceased, Dr. I'icClaran, Dr.--oh, there were five or six people, Dr. Stephenson 3 Page 3 Dr. Julia Green1 who is now dead. v.... And you are in general nractice I take it, right now? s.- Well, it is always hard to answer tbat question. Actually I am in general practic:e in the sense that I see people of all ages and sexes. But I am really rather highly specialized in that the therapies I use when 1 give med ic1nes are always homeopethic. In addition to homeopathy, I have some background in nutrition. I have worked for the New York City Bureau of Nutrition for ten years, and was trained there by Dr. Norman Jolliff, who is gener­ ally recognized as one of the outstanding nutritionists in the country. He is dead now. We had a project there called the Anti­ coronary Club which was involved with the question of cholesterol and dietary control of it. So that 1 really almost have a sub­ specialty in nutrition as well as homeopathy. I am one of those physicians who feel that homeopathy really is a specialty within the field of internal medicine, and ideally should be taught in this manner. They would probably classify you as an internist. Yes. I am an internist by practice. I am a general practitioner by the group of patients I accept. I D.- Any questions you want to ask before we go on'? r·- Incidentally, could I just add a point there? I am using the terms I Please understand, internist I and 'general practitioner' here as defined by the American Medical Association and their bureau of specialty colleges. These definitions, to me, are really political and not scientific, so I would just like to get that point on record. The A.M.A. definition of 'internist' is not nee- Dr. Stephenson 4 Page 4 essarily tbe scientific definition of 1 internist 1 , and there is simply no scient;ific reason why an internist should accept patients only of certain ages and sexes. This is a purely cultural and political decision that was made by people in the field of in­ ternal medicine. Heally the pediatrician is an internist who works with children. But I feel these specialty definitions are rather arbitrary and rather unscientific. I use them in the accepted sense, and I think this ••• I am sorry if I am being pompous, but I happen to be in the pro­ cess of writing a book on medical history at the moment, and I go into this a lot, and I thinlr it is an important point to make. Do you think we might ask yo1J to state briefly your views on homeopathy, or how you conceive of homeopathy? I know that there are certain essentials that I think you might ••• •- Well, if you could pin it down a little more. When you say homeopathy, I could talk on this for days. In fact, I could talk for days just on the research aspect of homeopathy, which is one of my big fields • •- 1slell, obviously as a homeopathist I assume that you accept the doctrine of similars ••• .- Well, again could I be pompous here, and say that I am not a homeopathist, 1·am a scientist. And as such I use certain things which are of value to me. I am not committed to any doctrine, or any dogma. I use homeopathic medicines in a particular way be­ cause they usually are effective, but I am not committed to this. In other words, I think of myself as a physician who likes to use homeopathic medicines when he treats medically, but I screen my Dr. Stephenson 5 Page 5 patients very carefully, and those patients not suited for homeo­ pathy are referred to colleagues of mine for otber forms of treat­ ment. v.- rhen your treatment is not necessarily based upon the doctrine 1 of similars. s.- Definitely not.· D.- Do you think there is some validity to the doctrine? s.- Very much so. I am completely committed to it in those patients that I treat medically. I am sorry to jump around like this but I have spent so much time in this kind of thing, and one 1s always being put into doctrinal boxes if one accepts certain terms without goj_ng down really to their incisive definition. ID.- \.\That about the concept of dilution--not quite the correct word-­ but let's say the assumption that the less or smaller quantity of the drug, the better, and we are apt, I guess, to get into potency. How do you feel about this? Does it have validity? ~.,... Well, here again it is not so much a matter of feeling. Hahnemann 6 introduced the use of medicines in very high dilution, as I am sure you are aware, around the early 1800's. And homeopathic physicians bave been using this now for many, many years, and they have had abundant clinical evidence that this is effective,. I don't know what yo~ have read about this new research work that has been done in the last few years with Prof. Boericke, and Dr. Smith, etc., but I have been very much involved in it. The recent work on nuclear magnetic resonance and some work done in England and France has indicated that, indeed, the high dilutions do exist Dr. Stephenson 6 Page 6 physically, and that it is not only a matter of dilution, but the dynamization consisting of suc.cu:s"sion and tri turation appears to be a vital factor in producing the so-called homeopathic medi­ cines. I am sure you have heard from some of your other contri­ butors that medicines are homeopathic in the manner in which they are used, not in the manner in which they are prepared. The medi­ cine can truly only be called homeopathic if it has been tested on a healthy person, its~; symptoms recorded, and. if the physician then gives that medicine to a patient who presents symptoms simi­ lar to the so-called proving symptoms, this renders the medicine homeopathic. Even water can be given on this principle, so that the dilution and succussion of·medicine does not make them homeo­ pathic. It just happens that homeopathic physicians introduced this method of preparing medicine into science, and it has really been tragic that it. has remained in t.he homeopathic field so long and has not been taken up.by other scientists for work in this. area. In the next issue o f ~ Currents magazine, which you will have access to in your college lib_rary, I have an article, written in conjunction with a physicist in England, that will 1::e going into all of this. I think it will be a fairly definitive and up-to-date treatment of this particular question. May I refer you to that? I think that when you read that it will really state the purpose. I would just be repeating now for tbe tape what I have said in the article. And if that could be included as part of the interview I think it might be worthwhile. t.- The question comes to my mind, and keep in mind that I am a lay­ man in the field of medicine, actually. My interest is in the application of medicine. But when Hahnemann first appeared, he Dr. ,:;tephens on 7 {:I,-, O'e Jt. O.L,.--:, 7 was successful primarily because he appeared in an a of ex- cessive dosage, and therefore any practice ich reduced the dosage and left tbe cure to nature was bound to be' better than what was happening. And I think this is true, the intervention in those days ••• b.- You are malring a statement based en about six different sub­ statements. Now which of these sub-statements am I to consider? p.- All right. Let me just say--this is my imy)ression--that in terms of medical practice the period around 1800 was a period of ex­ cessive dosage, heroic medicine, blood-letting, blistering and purging, etc. Hahnemann came in with a practice which obviously involved none of these excessive med ica ti ons. Now leaving out the question of the value of his treatment, I would say that even if the treatment had no value, it would have been more effective tban whet was happening. ~.- This is a possible premise. \~hetber one can go on and se.y that the effectiveness of homeopatl]y was in a sense an anarchic form of medicine •.• f·- I am not saying it was, but I am saying that this would have been the case. J. am saying th}t hypothetically this couJ.d have been tbe case. Nmv, it does seem to me tb~1t j_n the. past 160 years or so medicine bas obviously become more scientific, and I use that word in the sense that we have a better understanding of histology, physiology, etc. And we have developed some specifics, and part­ ly, l think, because of the influence of homeopathy, American medical practice did moderate. The orthodox practitioners .•• Dr. Stephenson 8 .Page 8 Is ... Yes. I have read Shryock7tho:coughly. I am well aware this is the standard doctrine '.3bryock offers. I don't b.appen to agree. Incidentally, nor do I agree with your limitation of the word science to purely laboratory science. In other words, I feel the scientific discipline can be applied to laboratory phenomena or to clinical phenomena. And I think we have gone through a period in science where the experimental laboratory investigation has occupied the center of the stage. But I. am ·sure that Walter Medell, the human pharmacologist, and people lH;:e this would not accept the thesis that this was the only scientific approach. 'l1berefore to spea1{ of homeope.thy as unscientific because it was not based on an e:xperimental laboratory apporach, I do not happen to agree.I feel that the scientific approach is deeper than this, whether it is applied in a· lat;oratory or whether it is applied to humans • .- Well, the question I was going to ask, you see, is whether the success of Hahnemann may have been due to therapeutic nihilism ••• .- Hight • .- Then is it 1:1ossible that present day followers or those who accept some of his ideas may not be guilty of attempting to rationalize a process of medicine or a medical theory. •- He may not be guilty of trying to rationalize it? Could you ex­ pand that a little for me? •- Well, if vw could assume that homecipatl;ly was successfu.l because of its therapeutic nihilism ••• •- Yes. An assumption which I don't accept • •.., O.K. 'rben that would answer the question. Now the other ques­ tion wb ich I. .. Dr. :Stephenson 9 I mean this is an assumpt:ion wh:Lch I think has to be proven. F'ran1cly, I don't think a historian of science has a right to accept this unless it is proven, and really the only scientific way of proving this would be a very thorough clinical testing of homeopathy against nothing, to sr10w thEi.t the homeopathic med­ icines have no effect other than withholding medicines entirely. Since this has never been done, speaking purely as a scientist, Shryock, and frankly, you, have no right to accept this thesis as scientists, because a scientist has no right to accept an un­ proven thesis. p.- Let me ask this. The doctrine of similars is based on the as sumption--and incidenta~ly, one reason I'm operating as the devil's advocate is because I do want to catch your ideas on the subject. S.- I know. This is standard 'Sbryockianism' and it has permeated medical history in this country for many years. D.- If the doctrine of simila.rs is based upon the reaction of a normal, say, a healthy individual to a particular therapeutic ••• s.... Hight. D,- Yet it seems to me that homeopathy, or homeopaths who belong to the Foundation insist that homeopathy has an advantage over ortho­ dox medicine because of the emphasis upon the individual--th2ct the drug is related to the indivldual--and I have heard the id.ea ex­ pressed that each individual tends to react differently to any par- . ticular external stimulus or therapeutic stimulant. 'l'hen could we opera.te on the assumption that in testing out the doctrine of similars what assurance can we have that people will respond col­ lectively to it--to a;particular drug? br. Stephenson 10 Well, you ~re arguing theoretically about something that is a scientific fact. People do respond collectively, and anyone who has done proving with homeopathic medicine l:;;::nows this. You do get a collective response. I have done mamy provings. In addition. to that, you have probably seen this book of mine which is the only summary of recent provings. Now, in order to write .that, I had to go back into all literature and check the original proving records. And it is a fact that you can give an unknown substance to fifty or a hundred people and a significant number of those people will all get the same symptoms without any collusion. n.- Now wouldn't this justify the orthodox practice? Giving a speci­ fic remedy--here we have a specific diagnosis and so we give a specific remedy. s.- It might. I am not interested in justifying orthodox practice. I am not concerned with it. My concern is as a homeopathic prac­ titioner. !.•. b.~ I think it was ..• :S.- I am not responsible for what my colleagues say, or what homeo­ pathy as a political organizatit>'i/i. has said through the years. I make up my own mind. D... Well, I was thinking that Dr. Sutherland explained the difference between his practice and the practice of the ordinary practitioner is ·that an ordinary practitioner in dealing with a case of pneu­ monia for example, would give a specific therapeutic to the patient, whereas a homeopathic physician would deal with the in­ dividual, operating on the assumption that each individual react­ ed differently. DI'· Stephenson 11 Right. Now it would seem to me that if we accept tbe fact that a thera­ peutic can precipitate or will generally bring a common reaction out of people, then we can also assume that presumably this same specific may bring the same reaction in ten individuals. IS .... Well, we can assume anything we wish, but we can't really settle scien•tific questions by making ohilosophic assumptions. That is true. Say that your assumptions may be correct. If so, then it is up to you to put them to the scientific experimental test. Homeopathy is a rather pragmatic thing. It does work. Any homeopath, any physician, who really tried homeopathy ••• Let me give you au example. I just gave a dose of arnica 8 to a lady in Greenwich who has had a bursitis now for two years, and she has been to everybody you can think of for this. She is a real est.ate agent. I just happened to be getting some property from her. She has had no contact with homeopathy. She didn't even know what I gave her. ..':l.nd her shoulder is now fifty percent better than it has been in two years, and she had the best of so-called orthodox care. Now this is only one example out of thousands I could give, and which any homeopat;;h­ ic physician's practice is full of. And after one is exposed to this l{.ind of thing one has to accept homeopathy as a pragmatic science. And of course the counterpoise thet it is my psychoso­ matic power that suggests this--man, if I'm that powerful as a suggestor-hypnotist, Mesmer .is a pipsqueak by comparison. And to imply that all homeopathic physicians are supermen--tbeir ability to suggest; health into patients--and not to apply an equal super- Dr. Stephenson 12 buman quality to non-homeopath lo colleagues, again, is scienti­ fically incorrect. So I feel homeopathy works. I know it works. The theoretical definitions, explanations, of bow it works at the truly philosophic level, and I include here Allan Sutherland I s definitions, to me are of some interest but not of any great profit. I feel that we really are elaborating now for tbe first time a scientific .explanation, an acceptable scientific explana­ tion of how homeopathy works. This has to be done, I feel, at the level of basic physics. Onee we have elicited this, then the application in the field of animal biochemistry and physiology will follow, and the last step will be human physiology and bio­ chemistry. And already we are going ahead with this. In,,.. To what extent has any rather remote scale testing of homeopathic remedies been done under, let us say, controlled circumstances? Controlled conditions? 'l'his is one of the problems that I re cog­ nize-:-again this is a personal reaction. Obviously, I know from my own personal experience with physicians that the person under the physician does b 8 ve confidence in the man--there is no question that this is a factor • .,u,,, Is.- Ny copter-reaction to this always i s : - - ~ • • would you say that homeopathy would. be of value in treating animals? It is, believe me, animals are my best patients. I am a real general practitioner. I am a Dr. Doolittle. I have probably on the average· here fifty assorted dogs and cats that are patients. Often these animals are medicated with out even their knowledge. Sometimes I don't even see them. I will have some anxious patient say, 11 So­ and-so has been given up to die by a local vet. Is there some- or. Stephenson 13 thing I can give from the kit? 11 I will have this patient give lilF. this animal medicine from a·kit which they have. Now the animal will get better. I wish my human patients responded as consistent­ ly as my animal patients. I have treated cancers in dogs and cats successfully, where a cancer is a very bard thing for me to treat in humans. ·so whenever one gets into this psychological thought transference business with homeopathy--to me this completely in­ validates it. Would you gentlemen excuse me just for a few minutes? I will be back in five minutes. I have ••• I wonder, would it be possible, do you think, to briefly summarize clinical investigation of the type of research that ls being done in homeopathy? I know you have covered it fairly well in your writings, but I think it would be good to have it on record. First of all, we would have to talk about different aspects of homeopathic research. We would also have to find what we mean by research :now. I would say there has been no really adequate clinical research in homeopathy in the sense of the criteria used by the good people working in the field of human pharmacology today. irhe whole business of double-blind, random sampling, etc. This has never been done in homeopathy. One of the reasons for this is because the homeopathic medicines are not diagnostically specific, they are patient specific. Therefore I it would be very hard to f.ind .five hundred casually selected patients all of whom were indicated by the same homeopathic medicine for a particular diagnosis. So this really mitigates against that kind of human testing. One could test· the efficacy of homeopathy against the efficacy of nothing, and I think . t his would be a very desirable thing to do. Dr. Stephenson 14 would it be possible--of course I sup1:>ose you would. not--I started to say, if you could say hypothetically work against 100 cancer patients--but then you might not accept the fact, or would you, that there may be 100 cases of cancer which could be diagnosed and which you could treat. Cancer may be too ex­ treme, but something in which you have tested one group by homeo­ pathic remed.ies and another group by more traditional methods, and one oup in which presumably the disease is left to ru.n its course. 'I'here has been nothing on this order. [S.- Not really. ihere has been a little fragmentary work on this order. In England some cases of pneumonia were tested in:. Royal London Homeopathic Hospital with homeopathy as opposed to anti­ biotics. I his is available in the British Home_o12a.thic Journal 1 1 back about ten years or so ago. 'i'here .has been a little work done in India • . , D,- )", How large a sampling? ~.,,. Like, as I remember, in the neighborhood of fifty per sample. And I am sure you are aware of Mainlanq_•s 9work at N. Y. U. that small sample,s if handled in a rigid manner can yield statistically valid data, even down to 25 ss.mples in tbe controlled experimental group. But I am also sure that you are aware the statisticians argue among themselves as to what is a statistically significant ;Sample. So here we go .•• So the clinical testing hasn't really been proven out. I did some retrospective studies a number of years ago in consecutive cases of various disease diagnoses under homeopathic care. Not in an attempt to oo,npare them with the usual Dr. Stephenson 15 non-homeopathic met,hod of treatment, but rather as a means of using this for basic homeopathic research, and we have made some interesting findings in terms of the incidence of aggrava- tion running 20 to 25 percent. And the fact tbat the people who had arthritis under homeopathic care very often had a minimum of medicines indicated for them. SDdium chloride was high, and cal­ cium carbonate, etc. But these ar~ findings really of interest to homeopaths. This really represents the bulk of the research in the field of human pharmacology in homeopathy. It was done for our own homeopathic research interests, not to prove homeopathy. I don't tbink that homeopathic physicians are that anxious to prove the effectiveness of homeopathy to their non-bomeopathic colleagues. I don't really think we are ardently in the mission­ ary business. Whether any scientist should be is open to 1uestion. As far as laboratory research into homeopathy goes, have you read that paper of mine 11 1leviewin2_; the sis of Homeopathic tlesearch into the High Dilutions"?lO IP,- Yes. ,.,,e have all of these. I was wondering if you could summar- ize, though, for the tape. I felt this was a relatively select audience as you are probably aware. 11 IS.- Eight. Have you Lisa Wurmser's series article also summarizing the research work? Which one is that? Lisa Wurmser. No, I haven't. She is head of the great French homeopathic pharmacy house • .!L I should have. pointed out. that I am me~,tY directing this for Mr. Dr. Stephens on 16 Kaufman. Oh, my apologies. Well, JVIr. Kaufman, maybe, is the one who has read this stuff. My particular interest, really, has been more in terms of the in­ ·stitutional development and the relationship of homeopathy to the professions rather than the philosophy of it. I am interested in getting some of this information because I am sure the National Medical Library would be happy to get it for their records. But we have not really gone into the philosophical approach or the rationale, ot;her than to get a brief statement. I am sorry to keep going into that. I am well aware of your his­ torical needs. My father was professor of Medieval history at Cornell, and indeed trained Henry Gerlach. Stephenson? Carl Stephenson? Good lord!!l So I have been brought up well within the historical field. So I am aware of your needs,, but also I don't think one can divorce · history from philosophy or from scientific approaches. So I 'hate to keep going into philosophy, but ••• It is not that I was denying it. I was really pointing out that I had.not gone into this>as I would were I conducting this study on.my own. O.K. Well, for the tape then. The laboratory work in homeopathy 12 really started in about the le,80 1 s with some work by Dr. Yaeger-- how do you call that--chronography, in which delicate measure­ ments of tirn.e response were made and the effect of home opatb ic medicines on this was tested. Then there was a whole batch of zoological and botanical work done in the 1910 1 s and the 1920 1 s, Particulerly in LeningT•sd, on tbe effect of homeopathic high di- Dr. Stephenson 17 lutions on enzymes. Really, tbere is so much--I mean, in my paper I must mention forty or fifty different references, and since that paper vJe.s done there has been quite a bit of work done further. So that ••• rbey were actually testing the efficacy of high dilutions on 1 s.nimal tissue, nerves, etc. _ Hight. l'he;y 11ere trying to prove the efficacy of high dilutions, to sh ow that they did exist and apparently to the sa tisfactir:m of many good scientists they did prove this quite effc;cti vely over and over and over again, so that I think anyone who is conversant with the existing literature doesn't realJ.y regard homeopathic high dilutions as chimeras or figments of the physician's imagina­ tion, because these are experimentally demonstrated r,henomena for seventy years now. - Then the second fact that I want you to attempt to explain is this. Of course you have done so in your writings. - Hight. Particularly the work of a Dr. Barnard, a physicist in England, v\Jbo has advanced the thesis that the homeopathic remedies represent polymers, or large:: three-dimensional molecules similar to DNA and HNA, and that these are thermo-specific, that is, heat labile, and they have other qualities which he derived from quan­ tum physics. We, in the Institute (Dr. Barnard, unfortunately, is dead) are conducting a whole series of programs testing out his theses one by one. I1he first thlng that we have to test - first 1 of all, we had to find out whether there was any existing instru­ ment which would demonstrate the high dilutions. 'l'here has been some work done in F'rance, which sho;1Jed that the homeopathic high ii Dr. St,ephenson 18 13 a iluti ons beyond Avogadro.' s number did have an ef feet on infra- red absorption and on electric capacitance. However, this was done with rather primitive machinery, and when we tried to repeat it here the electronic techniques they used v,1ere so suspect and so sophisticated and subject to aberrant forms the feeling of the electronic consultant that I work with here in this was just to forget it. So, Mr. Smith working with Professor Boericke at Hahne- mann came up v,Jith the idea of using nuclear magnetic resons.nce when it was first developed about six or seven years ago, and indeed nuclear megnetic resonance has demonstrated significantly that the high dilution beyond Avogadro's number do exist, physically. This work bas been done l)D.rt;icularly with Professor Moshe15 who is head of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Delaware:) for the last four years. Papers on this have been in the Inati­ tute journal for the last two or three years. Professor Mosher is going to come to our meeting next week, and vvith Mr. Smith is going to present further evidence of this work. Last year checking out Dr. Barnard's thesis the first thing we had to find out was whether tbe so-cal led mm response occurred in the water phase of the di­ lution or in the alcohol phase, the homeopathic medicip.es repre­ senting essentially alcoholic dilutions. However, it is in 87 percent ethyl alcohol and 13 percent water. Then, and frankly I have forgotten theoretically which phase it should have been in M,, from the theoretical standpoint, by using de•terium oxide--whioh does not have any nuelear magnetic resonance effect--in pla.ce of water, we repeated our work and showed no effect. Which meant that the function was in the water phase and not in the alcohol Dr. Stephenson 19 phase. And that was theoretically desirable. If it had been in the other it would have been rather sticky at that point to go a­ head with our theoretical thesis. Now we are checking out thermal 1 ' J,e lability. We have had a series of dilutions prepared with moietes A.. ' of five degrees centigrade between one going through a range of temperatures which Dr. Barnard advanced from quantum physics theory, and we are checking these with nuclear magnetic resonance techniques. Professor Arma Koffler Wannamaker, who is head of the Department of Pharmacognosy at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio, is carrying. out simultaneous work on their botanical effect J using uatra .... centrifuge ·techniques and serum viscosity measure- ments, and she has found some very interesting work along this line which she will be presenting at this meeting next week. And Professor W. John Boyd of the Department of Biochemistry at Hahne­ mann Medical School, who is doing a great deal of work in muscle enzyme chemistry during this year, has done some work with vera­ trum album alkaloids in homeopathic solutions to see what effect tr:iey have on muscle enzyme systems, and he is going to present this work at this next meeting. So, I think we have a fairly rich research program going ahead at a number of different ;Uriiversitie1-s, and frGm a theoretical s,tandpoint I am very happy because this really is the first good research,on the high dilutions at the academic level which bas ex­ isted in the history of American homenpathy, save for a little bit of work done by Dr. Stearns at Flower Fift1,., Avenue Hospital when it was the New York Homeopathic, which he did on fruit flies which Was very provocative. He showed that by using high dilutions of Dr. Stephenson 20 triturate of the fruit fly, and also arsenican album he could alter a genetic predisposition in red-eyed fruit flies to a genetically determ;ined cancer. So that beyond a certain point this particular breed of fruit fly, which when untreated, would pave a spontaneous incidence, I think, of spinal cancer in a hun­ dred percent, were stopped from having this. And if the high di­ lutions can effect genetically determined cancer, the biological application of this is obvi0us. But this was in the 1920 1 s, and like most homeopathic research of that period, it appeared solely in one 9f the homeopathic journals. This, I think, is an import­ ant point for the record. Most homeopathic physicians are clini­ cians, and they are involved primarily in treating sick pe0ple. They are not research people in orientation or training. And since the American Institute of Homeopathy has been largely an organ for the practicing homeopathic clinicians, only in very re­ cent years has it had any kind of research progra~ worth mention­ ing. In the past, any research that has been done has been large­ ly provings, or largely some clinical application of homeopathy. There has been no basic research in pharmacology, or physiology, or physics or chemistry. Save, as I say, for Dr. Stearns' work, and. a brief session of work done by Dr. McGavick, I think, on tinctures of 'v.arious medicines on gu'inea pigs, etc., and demon­ strating some kind of physiological action, but it was done with­ out any really clearly delineate.a research premise from which they were operating. It was pretty much data collecting stuf~. Not research in any basic sense. The research in the Institute in the last ten years has been primarily concerned not with demon­ strating a phenomenon, but with really investigating it from a D:r. Stephenson 21 scientific standpoint. And frankly, trying to liberate it out of the. homeopathic profession and put it into the field of chemis­ t.ry or physics where it belongs. Nothing would delight me more, as Director of Resear_ch for the Institute, than to be put out of pusiness because someone like Professor Mosher takes over our ·program, and using government funds, which certainly are available to him, he goes ahead, for he can·do all this in ten thousand ways better than I can. I am only functio rang as an amateur in this field .. I was going to ask you under what auspices do you conduct your research? Obviously, research is expensive •• • Right. We have some funds available to us. Really I should say I am in the research jobbing business. My job is to delineate ·research programs, and then to try to interest people in academic centers who have research.facilities available to ·them in doing this work, and give them a certain amount of money to conduot it with. And in recent years, we have been fortunate in having align­ ed with .us some outstanding scientists, who have some sympathy w;l.th homeopathy, and through that sympathy have been willing to . accept this very borderline kind of research, and willing to stick their professional necks out. Professor Anna Koffler Wannamaker was the. first, and she has been cooperating most beautifully with . us for many years. . She is an outstanding pharmacognosist--she did some work with Wachsman at Rutgers, and amusingly enough, she was at Rutgers with Albert Schatz, who discovered streptomycin when he was getting his Ph.D. under Wachsman. Schatz is now doing homeopathic research for us in another field, and came into the Dr. Stephenson 22 homeopathic research completely separate from Professor 1-Coffler. They hadn't any contact in all those years. Now as I understand it, you set up a research problem which ob- vibusly is of concern to you in terms of homeopathy, let us say, and these men then are dealing with it simply as a problem. The individuals assuming :-- 111fhis is a problem in pharmacology, or chemistry, or whatever it is." Right. So that what you are attempting to do then 1s to utilize ordinary scientific facilities and personnel--an orthodox medical school, foundation, etc. to conduct the research. How many institutions are involved in some phase of the work at present? At the moment in this country? Ohio Northern University, the University of Delaware, Hahnemann Medical College, and Geor•ge Washington University--well, Professor Schatz at St. Louis Univer­ sity, who was also professor at the UniveI'sity of Santiago in Chile, is working on a program for us. Let me ask you another question that we have never asked •.• Also my brother, by the way. \'ihen he was at Oak B.idge--he is professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Connecticut, in Storrs--and when he was still at Oak llidge, he ran some re­ search for me on homeopathic high dilutions to see the vanishing point one reached on a scintillation counter. Sorry to inter- rupt ••• You mentioned that the Foundation, and _,_ believe you work for the Foundation •.• Bight. Has some money. I was curious. What is the basis for their •.• or·. Stephens on 23 Actually I don't work through the Foundation. I have no connec­ 1· tion with it. My connection is solely with the American Institute 6f Homeopathy, and I knew the Foundation has come into some money recently, but I have never had any of that money at my disposal. You mentioned that you bad some at your disposal. I assumed that this was the Foundation's money. i•J No. It is a private fund. It is in New England. And they have about $30,000 a year to dispose of in support of medical resear~h, of which they have been giving us about half. Also, homeopathy has always had very wealthy people connected with it, of the wealthy homeopathic families has offered me for this year's research, and this is a family that has so much money that I think this· is a trial thing and if all goes ·•· well there may be much, more m6:~ available. results of any of this research found its way into scien­ tific journals, as opposed, say, to the Journal of the American , Institute. of HoID;e opathy? Well, this kind of dichotomy I completely abhor--to say the American Jour.lli!l of li9.!!!.eo12ath:y: is not scientific. Just the way, frankly, I don'_t care for the term I orthodox' as opposed to hemeopathy. I think this represents an unfortunate bias which -·• really is not properly scientific, and for h~aven I s sake, you, as historians of medicine, should not perpetuate this kind of If anybody in the field should be unbiased, you should be. certainly now, the Journal .Qf. the American Medical Assoc­ for example, is scientific. But scientific articles Dr- Stephenson 24 find their way into vir ology--J·ourna.l of Cell Biology: ••• I don't know what you mean by the word 1 scientific 1 here. You are the guy who used it, and you are going to have to define it. Now why don't we get o.ut of that particular Pandora's box and say that, "I am sorry to say that the homeopathic resear•ch which has been done so far has been reported only in the homeopathic j ournalsn •). This is very much against my wishes. Nothing would make me happier than to see it recorded in other· journals, and indeed I hope that if all goes as well as it bas in the last few years, that someone of Professor fVIosber's caliber will be putting it in something like the Chemical Joq~pal. Because he is bi2:h UP in the field. And \.._.~ ii -~:.::1{('' ~" ,.~ ·- this is all strictly en~!'.e nousU-I mean none of this is getting back to Professor Mosher ••• You people don't have any contact with him so that ••• - No. vJe have no contact at all. No, we are not concerned. Because he is very interested. You know he has been cagey. You know no hard scientist, and particularly no chemist--they are the most materialistic of scientists, in my experience--is going to get out on this particular bandwagon unless he is really sure of his ,2:ro1-1.inds. So Mosher has been sort of flirting around with us now for four years, and I think the honeymoon is over because he is drawing up a really big and firm research proji:ict for this year, and I think he is willing to jump both feet into it. Once he has committed himself in that manner for a c ouplr:: of years, then I think he is going to see to it that there is an article in the non-homeopathic journals. I would, just for the record, question Martin's referring to the Journal, for example, by saying scientific journal. Dr. Stephenson 25 I am pleased ••• I apologize for that use of 11 orthodoxu, but it was a matter of convenience, you see ••• You may both be sticking needles in me to get reactions. I knew that is part of the interview, but ••• But I would think the research, as· I understand i t--the way in which you are planning these funds, 1 t would seem to me that the resu.lts of the research that is being done should certainly~ jus­ tifiably, be published in specialized journals. I agree. I agree completely. Am I to assume ·that so far the results have not completely justi­ fied this, or ••• I don't know what justifies it. I think that it is such a touchy subject that nobody wants to get aligned with it in the scienti- . fie world, other than Professor Koffler; God bless her. She stood up at the meeting of the A.A.A.s~ 4 in Montreal three or four years age--I went up and attended i t~-a:nd presented to this august body essential1y her research under a grant from the In­ stitute on 11 The Effect of Homeopathic Medicines on Botanical Growth 11 • And she said this was an appearance supported by the American Institute of Homeopathy, and when she finished her paper she took about five minutes for some ad-lib comments, and Water­ man, the president that year, was in the audience, and he is a close friend of hers. So she stood up and was willing to be counted• And after her talk she said tha-t she felt that this greup of people should be much more open-minded toward research done in fields which are not c0mpletely orthodox because it ls Dr. 5tephensbn 26 the unorthodox field that holds, in many cases, the future re.­ search developments. As historians of science you are aware of the fact tbat it is these peculiar- little offshoot things like Michaelsen's and Mor y's work, which they were so ashamed of be­ cause it was against existing dogma that they apologized for it after giving that first paper in Cleveland for the next, what, thirty years, until Einstein came out with his theory of relativity, whibh justified it. So this is science. And I think this is the reason that homeopathy is having difficulties. It has been pushed into an unfortunate siding--maybe it has pushed itself into it to some extent. But these are clinicians. You know I don't thinli'. clinicians can be criticized too much for not developing the basic aspect of their scientific research because they just aren I t oriented that way. I think, rather, it is to the shame of the basic chemists and physicists that for so many years now they have ignored the homeopathic high dilution principle on purely theoretical biased grounds. Bather than a good scientist saying, "O.K. This doesn't jibe with theory, but let's get into it, and see what goes on.» lvell, I can understand, of course, that one in science is leery of anything that has a cult connotation, and rightly or wrongly this is tr•ue of homeopathy. On the other band, it does seem to me that once they have done their- work, and if their work is valid, It they C(;)rtainly ought to have no reluctance to publish the results. Right. ~ 'c I assume that this is the theory you are operating on, and that eventually if you can say homeopathy concurred in this sort of work that it will pay off in terms of tangible benefits. Dr. Stephenson 27 Hight. One of the problems, of course, here, is that scienti­ fic magazines have editors, and editors determine policy. And Dr. Barnard and I, before v,ie submitted this paper to Main Currents-­ sent it to every outstanding scientific journal in Europe and this country. 11 hey all turned it down. The nicest turn-down we got 11~ as from Walter Modell' s Jo_urnaJ. of ll-~ Pharmacology:. Ana I think there may have been some justification. He said it was too theore­ tical and lacked experimental data. But there are a lot of theore- tical papers that are accepted, but they are not on homeopathy. If this bad been the same volume of theory on some very fashionable topic like DNA, say, I am sure it could have been published. So we have editorial advisors to function against as well as the re­ searcher's reluctance to stick their neck's out, but I have great hopes that Professor Mosher will. I think Dr. Boyd will. I think Dr. Schatz will. . Dr. Koffler already has. Yes, I think there might be an advantage in the sense if they simply stick to their results in terms of what you say. I he 1 orthodox mind does not relish something: completely different. 's.- I agree, I agree. P.- I belie,ve that one has to work through the standard journals, or the standard sources of communication. I agree completely. And I have instructed tbem to that point. They don 1 t need to mention homeopathy in any way. They don't even nee·d to mention where the funds are from. Just so they get the data out. It will come, I think, vvitbin the next five years. And once 1He have a couple of solid articles like': that homeopathy won't be so controversial because then the basic scientists will Dr. Stephenson 28 take over and carry it on from there. So I feel that American homeopathy is in a transitional period now, moving away from a hundred percent clinical thing in a disadvantaged position because it was only clinical. After all, psychoanalysis bas had a similar problem beoaus~ it is only a clinical specialty moving into a field of clinical application of laboratory demon­ strated phenomena. I would still wonder--assuming, you see, that what you hope comes true--whether this would lead to what I feel is essen:t.tal-­ where one could establish homeopathic treatment by a sound pro­ _gram of clinical testing. I think you are saying, in effect, that this has not been done simply because there has not been enough interest in it. People felt that it was m;)t worthwhile. You feel that your present program actually will stimulate more clinical and laboratory research? - Right. '.l:he clinical probably will be last. By rights it should move from physics and chemistry to animal work and last to humans. Also, don't forget the people working in the field of homeopathy~ I am sure you are aware of the sociological struc­ ture of the homeopathic physicians. In the initial phase. from its introduction here in 1825 until about the 1880 1 s, most homeopathic physicians were by and large well-trained physicians. Right. They were also the intellectuals of the day. - Right. Trained as good scientists of the day because, frankly, they were not trained in homeopathic medical schools. They were people of the caliber of Constantine Hering, who was assigned the job of repudiating homeopathy, and who was such an Dr. ~tephenson 29 honest physician that in the process of investigating it he became one of its major adherents. And so on through. Hahne­ mann was a damned good physician, an excellent scientist for his day, and was rated as one of the best chemis'ts in Europe by the authorities in his day. But there was an unfortunate view among homeopathic physicians that there should be special schools set up to train homeopathic physicians, and with the founding of the Allentown Academy in 1830,' you remember it was, "/'t- one them had this phenomena come in. And frankly, physicians then went into homeopathy who did not have the proper training in· science because the homeopathic medical schools from the be­ ginning did not have as high standards for entrance as many of the good non-homeopathic medical schools had. And so from the 1880 1 s until fairly recently, of the bulk of the physicians trained in homeopathy many of them were just high school,grad­ uates--few of them had any good scientific training behind them, and as people they came from the same kind of sociological back­ ground as many osteopaths have in this country. Tpe growth of osteopathy and homeopath~ is quite parallel, so that they were. primarily from smaller towns, primarily clinicians, and primar­ ily people from I would say--certainly not from the intellectual classes or from.the professional classes--by and large mostly from fairly humble working class; agricultural, without any per­ sonal tradition of scholarship or intellectuality. So that their approach to medicine naturally reflected their own formal academic training and their personal orientation. Now in the last twenty or thirty years in this country there have been Dr. Stephens on JO attr&ctcd into homeop,s_thy a fair number Df physicians who are not graduates Df homeopathic medical schools, who have had a fairly good background in science, and who come from--in thei1" own rsonal origins--they come from professional, and many people with some im;ere st in--1 don I t mt:,an to sound. 1 ike a Brah- min now, but I think one has to be aware of these things, and I think one reason that homeopathy is going aheafl more in certain areas now than it bas in the past is because the older group of physicians have died off, and now there is a oup of these, frankly, better-trained people, who are able to exert their influe-nce in homeopathic circles in the Institute. In previous years maybe there were always a few like this, but since the mem­ bership was so large, they couldn't exert much influence, but now with the atrophy of homeopathy people like this can have effect. D.- 1 would agree that homeopathy in the nineteenth century attract­ ed men with a more philosophical turn of mind. lhere is no question of this, I think. You look at the caliber of the men. And I think your analysis is correct that from 1880 on the in­ tellectual level and the cultural level has tended to decline. Now, of course, I would not 8.9TE::f; that the home thic schools were necessarily much below those of the standard schools, be­ cause all levels were low. But I know that medical education was at a fairly low level, and ••• .- But t;hey were never as good as the Ivy League ones, al though 16 Boston University was--pretty good • •- Yes. I think that is true. I suspect that the reason that Dr. Stephenson 31 homeopathy was the most successful in the sense that at that time the .intellectual physicians on the basis of curiosity were not so bound to the profession primarily because the profession itself was still a little amorphous, and there were not .the hard and fast lines, and it had no·t achieved what it feels to be its present scientific level, and I use that word in quotes. No dt;>ubt, I was interested to hear you say that it is now beginning to attract a number of minds, because the impression we have been gathering in our brief travels is that the reverse is true-­ that homeopathy is on its way out. - Yes. - But I was pleasantly surprised to see a relatively young man like yourself. I would like for you to elucidate on this a little bit. Where are other individuals? m11!3. - Well, I wasn't so much speaking in terms of youth,· as in back­ ~r ground. I would say it would be a safe .statement that up until 1940 ••• see, first of all, there was the split in homeopathy be­ tween the American Institute and the International Hahnemannian Association, and really the intellectuals in homeopathy went, to a large extent, with the -International Ha.hnemannian Associa­ tien. There was great fighting between the two groups which was emasculating homeopathy since that split back in the 1890 • s. Since the split has been healed in recent years, the ••• end of Tape No. 1. Dr. Stephenson Tape No. 2 32 This is tape 2. The interview with Dr. James Stephenson, New York City, June 18, 1968. _ Well, anyway I was saying--the more thinking element within homeopathy has been able to exert more influence on the American Institute of Homeopathy in recent years. Se that now if one looks at the composition of the American Institute--say its trus- tees and the people who are active in it--instead of seeing as in the past that 99 percent of the members are graduates of homeopathic medical schools, now you have, well, Dr. Panos;- 7 who is a graduate of Ohio State, which is non-homeopathic, Dr. Hubbard;- 8 my preceptorship,· is a graduate of Columbia which is non:..home opathic. I am a graduate of Cornell which is non-home o­ pathic.. Dr. Allan Neiswander191s a graduate of Ohio State, I · 20 believe, which is non-homeopathic. Dr. Bond is a graduate of the University of Illinois, which is non-homeopathic. Dr. Henry 21 Williams, I thi:nk was at Columbia, but I know he is a graduate· · 22 of a good non-home opa thio medical schopl. Dr. William Guttman , is a graduate of the University· of Vienna, as is Dr. Whitmont~ 3 I could probably think of some more. In other words, there is now functioning at the governing level in the American Institute of Homeopathy a group of people who have the education and back­ ground and the personal interest to make possible, I think, a more sophisticated and viable research and information program than has been the case in the. past. Now I may be speaking out of ignorance because I am fairly new in homeopathy, and I don•t really know that much about the.structure of the Institute back in the JO' s or 20 1 s, but I discussed this premise with some of the older members and they have tended to agree with it. Also, Dr. Stephenson 33 I think this may account for tbe fact that we have a more viable research program now than ever before because the Institute has people connected with it now who are interested enough to back such a program and who know enough about such a program to mount it, and that was not the case befere. Before there were . · .J.~ . a few researchers that. the clinicians in the Institute brought . . 24 • in like Dr. Thomas H. MoGav@ck and Dr. Boyd of Flovmr, but tnese ~·,'i are people who r~mained full-time researchers and who never really were practicing homeopathic physicians. What about the faculty at Habnemann? I don't know much about that. All I know is that other than Professor Boericke, who for years did this work in basic homeo­ pathic research, they really haven't done that much. 'rbey did some provings many years ago, but then Hahnemann ran into the political pressure of the A.M.A. which I am sure you are aware of. Yes • .At a certain state in the development of the power of the.A~M.A. as soon as they got the Flexner report which, as you know, was pur@ly advisory under the Carnegie Foundation, it was first ) made the basis for licensure examination by the state of Ala­ bama, and frc,m then on other states accepted this A.M.A. class- /"'{" ification. Really th_is was the end of' therapeutic freedom, in this CG}untry, because it meant that the states were accepting the criteria of a political medical organization, for all ad­ missions to 'medical licensure. This would be comparable te the states requiring that a minister had to have a license in Dr. Stephenson J4 accepting the criteria from one church for the license to be anted. And the A • • A. was very clever. They didn't push their gun too far. 'I1hey were playing for cooperation with the homeopathic group, and bit by bit by bit they used their poli- tical lever more until in the JO I s--and nothing is in writing, you will never find this anywhere in ,•,Yriting, but I have been told this verbally by many people of the older homeo­ pathic group who were involved at that level of decision at the time it happened--rcpresentatives from the A.N.A. went to places like Flower, they went to places like Hahnemann, and said, "If you continue teaching homeopathy on an undergradu2.. te level, you will lose your Class A rating." And if they lost their Class A rating, it \l<Jould have meant that their gradw3tos could no longer be accepted for state licensure examinations. 5o they knuclded under. Ana this really, I think, wes one of the major causes oft demise of home thy in this country. Well navli, I can see h:;w this would hurt homeopathy from a very practical standpoint, but I would still wonder why they could not continue an with re search. They couldn't do anything. Even to research. Anything. What it meant was that researchers connected with these institutions went in fear of their jobs because the word was passed down from on high - 11 Hands off homeopathy.n How has Hahnemann done as a research in~titution, period? I· gather it has done quite well in recent years. I really den' t know. I ••• What I s-his-name--start' s with B--who introduced heart surgery here even before Michael De8akey. He did some of the early work Ftl Dr. Stephenson 35 beart surgery and it was at Hahnemann. I §,'1Hess they have done some very good research in many areas, but in homeopathy-­ nothing. Dr. Griggs, who probably you are interviewing, he's tl1e 'grand old man' of homeopathy in the Philadelphia area. He is like ninety-something~ What was his name? Dr. Griggs. G-r-i-g-g-s. Do you lmow his first name? ;.Jilliam. William Ben tl@y Griggs. He is blind and half deaf, I believe, and has about a fourth wife who really rides close herd on him. If you can t past her to him. But be is the oldest living graduate of a Homeopathic Medical School. And in addition to that he is the American who has done the most in borne o:pathic provings. He was in char of the Hering Proving Laboratory in Philadelphia, and has done more provi s than any­ one else in this country, alive or dead. Anyway, Dr. Griggs v.;as thrown off as Director of this He::ri:ng Laboratory back in the twenties or thirties because they were doing homeopathic provings. rbis was at Hahnemann. 1 And Dr. Gr,iggs told me--and he practically cries when he says it--that when he was re~oved from that post his records were seized by the University and dest:t!'.'oyed, and a number of very valuable prov ings which he had already conducted were lost~ Well now, I must confess that this jolts me. v✓ell, frankly it jolted me, when I first heard it. But I would question it, you see. I am not quite sure precisely why should this have been the case. Wel 1, I have been asking mysc lf that, but I think anyone with Dr~ Stephenson 36 SeinM-c I We,i s•· any knowledge of medicine, ~(11111111,olii.;f;'!eirl-s, etc • ., shouldn't be too surprised that medical innovators were treated in this manner. You know Harvey didn't dare publish his findings until after his death. And I can show you a lov@ly quote from ••• You are wrong on Harvey. I thought this was--before--maybe it wasn't until after his death until he was an old man--he sat on those. He published fairly early actually. 1634, I think, or some­ where in that period. His work was accepted. 'fhere were others. I think you ceuld cite some other examples. I am wrong on that. I will have to check it. - You were wrong on Harvey. Now, I would assume that Hahnemann . as a homeopathic college with presumably a homeopathic board of trustees, while it might, say, submit to subtle pressure er direct pressure, in terms of licensing its graduatcs--I am not passing judgment on this. I can understand th.at this conceivably could be the case. On the other hand, why should they wish to destroy evidence that might justify homeopathy? Ifs.- Because they didn't wish to justify it. They wished to kill. And I think with a little thought we can understand why this is. One has to ge baclc to the fact that b ome opa thy is a clini­ cal specialty. And as soon as a group of clinicians start to get inte>the ~ospital and medical school business they are forced to hire non-clinicians. And since the non-clinicians .,( are oo-mmitted to a full-time life with the institution, where­ as the clinicians spend only part of tb$ir life in the insti tu­ ti on--a large·part of their life is in their office--automati- Dr. Stephenson 37 cally there develops a separation of interest. 'I'he full-time non-clinicians--thc pathologists, the radiol ists, the physiol­ ogists, the anatomists, the pharmacologists, etc., are non­ homeopathic in training. Tbey really are non-homeopathic in interest because t y are not clinicians. Only the clinician really would be interested in homeopathy. They are committed to an institutional way of life. 'l1 hey hav1~ a close bond with their scientific colleagues who couldn't care less about homeo­ pathy, and homeopathy becomes an embarrassment for them, and becomes a professional detErrent because they are subjected to the kind of academic 'looking-dmin-noses' that the world of Academe is full of, and to be a professor of Anatomy at Hahne­ mann Medical College: means automatically you are on a lower rung of the ladder professionally than the same fellow that you went to t your Ph.D. in Anatomy with, v,iho happend to be a professor at Harvard, Yale, or Cornell. Now I think it is asking too much of human nature to expect that people will function in this kind of deleterious psychological atmosphere and not be biased toward producing a way of life that will make them happier. And when the eventual push for power comes between clinicians and the non-clinicians in a hospital or an institution, and when they start to jockey for political pressure with the trus­ tees who run it, it is just a matter of time before the non­ clinicians win out. And as soon as the non-clinicians win out, then hom~~opa-th,y b(acomes a dirty word. And this has been the case at ev®ry homeopathic medical school I know of in this country. D. - At Fl owe r ? Dr. Stephenson 38 Flower, ~ertainl~. William Gutmann was professor at Flower. I was on the staff. Dr. Hubbard was on the staff. We were all thrown out because we were homeopaths. They never say it. You know, th®y · just discontinue your appointment after a certain period of time. But we knew darned well it was because we were homeopaths.. We were all good scientists. If we had chosen t!D do the orthodox kind ef thing we would probably be professors, or heads of our departments. Se, I think this is just human nature. Scientists are human beings. And I think this is the climate which has produced in this country the atrophy of homeo­ pathy. Historically, I think it was the result of particularly two most unfortunate things, ·two things which were, incidentally, unique to the United States. Number one, the formation of homeo­ pathic medical schools. I don't thllmk this ever should have been done. Homeopathy should have been kept as a postgraduate specialty for duly licensed and trained physicians, which was always the case in Europe. 'ihere ar·e only homeopathic medical scho0ls in this country, in Latin American, and in India. Every­ where else throughout the world .. homeopathy is a postgr•aduate specialty. And number two, the most unfortunate example of accept­ ing the sectarian opinion as to a medical school from a sectarian group like the A.M.A. by official state legislatures. Again, this is unique to this country. In all other countries, any graduate of a medical school is accepted for a licensure exam­ ination, as far as I know. In fact, in many countries if you graduate from a medical school you automatically get a license. This whole business of having to take state licenses and the Jack Dr. Stephenson 39 of reciprocity between them is pretty much an American pbenome-- non. Yes. I know this is true. And it is a lousy phenomenon which physicians are trying gradually to do something about. So I fee.l these two factors, unique to this country, were the roots ef the destruction of American homeo­ pathy. It is rather irenic in this country that boasts about its in­ dividual liberty and freedom that we still have the strictest medical licensure laws. Yes. It sure is. l£he British have always been far mere liberal in this respect. And anyone can practice, providing he 0f course doesn't claim to be some thing he isn't. This is really spreading, you know--the angel in the office, the devil in the home. And you find this same phenomena in Catholic countries. In Catholic countries--I hope neither of you are Catholic, but in any event--where you have strict control by the Church of every act of the individual you have the great freedom for individual licensure~ in terms of in­ dividual license. These are countries where you have only with great difficulty any stable pelitical ©rganizati@ns, because .each person is a political power unto himself. You know the definition ef a pelitical party in France is when three French­ men get together it is a new political party. And I really think that is a factor here. Where we have the great religious freedom we have to have dogma somewhere, and I guess eur medicine - Dr. Stephenson 40 is fulfilling that role. "vJhat is the status of homeopathy in Europe, weuld you say? I don 1 t know much about it. It depends on how one defines status again--legally, or culturally? I think--let's say tbis--I think one can say that homeopathy has declined in the United States, without question. Are you in a position tD say whether this has been true in Eu.rope, or do- you know? I think it has declined in England because of the British medi­ cal system. It has declined since England has become socialis­ tic, I believe. And one reason for that is similar to the situation here. Por instance, as part of the social system, the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital had to have a director of a certain medical stature. So they were forced for the first time in their history to bring in a non-homeopathic physician as a dir•ector, because again, homeopathic physicians were clinicians. Most of them were G.P 1 s. in the English use of the term, almost without exception, because in England, in many cases, the specialist really is not a clinician. He is a re­ search man usually connected with a hospital, who is more re­ search-oriented than clinically-oriented. But as part of the socialization of England they set up these programs for hos- picals and for the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital to be ap­ proved they had to have a man of this stature, and they now have a non-homeopath running the hospital. And because the hameo­ pathic physicians were not recognized as a specialty, the homeo- pathic training ogram has suffered. Young people don•t see why they should spend three or four years in additional train- Dr. Stephenson 41 ing for a specialty that will not give them any professional or economic advantages otbc~r than being just a G.P., 1,,1ben they could spend that same time and be a notch up in the rank of the bure;aucratic medical ladder. So, England is having troubles. I don I t thin}~ this is the case in France, or in Germany, where I gather homeopathy is quite flourishing, and always has. Would it be true to generalize that as state medicine flourishes it may actually work to the detriment of any diver•gent groups. s.- This isn't ,just state medicine. Bureaucracies don't lo0k with favor on divergent groups because the first thing a bureaucracy does, usually before it takes over a profession, is wait for that profession to be largely focused in one direction, because it likes to take over one thing, not a group of quarreling people. D.- Of COUI'[~e the democratic government operates on the: consensus anyway that ••• That is right. One of the points you are making is the minor role of the clinical group within an institution. I have had relatively little expe1°ience in medical schools--this is my tbird year at Tulane and I was in an orthodox history department prior to that time. ~Jhat impresses me is tbat the two clinical departments, medicine and surgery, seem to dominate the school. S.- I wish you wepe right. Now ••• This is the impression I get. Now whether this is only true of Tulane or not, but ..• l'iell, here we are in semantics again. rbere are research clini­ cians, and there are practicing clinicians. You are correct. The oU.nioal and surgical departments do dominate most medical Dr. Stephenson 42 schools. But the clinical departments in most medical schools arc being largely tal{c:n over by fu.11-time men who are primarily research-oriented. The part-time men who are clinically-oriented on the outside, who have private practices, are gradually being shunted out, and the new direction here, particularly with gov­ I ernment funds being funneled into the medical schools, is toward the schools being staffed entirely by full-time clinicians. D.- Yos, I tnow that .. s.- Who--tbey are nGt really to function primarily as clinicians, but because some research desires t have in one direction or another. And I hear this all the time from my colleagues out of homeopathy. ,'3o the part-time man is ing forced out, and we seem to be moving in the direction of the continental n pattern where the hospital is entirely separate from the community. When a patient cs to the hospital he becomes the property of the hospital. There is~~ such thing as being on the staff of a hospital, or having a local practice in the neighborhood. 'lbe local pra.cti ti oner surrenders his patient to the hospital, and then the patient is delivered back to him often with little liason as to what has been done. And to some extent the 1 ocal praoti ti oner irs fu.nctionlnz as the screening agent for the hospital. Now this is a pattern vJhich ~as always been the case on the Continent, yet it never was the ce.se in England. But with the direction at Johns Hopkins of the con­ tinental German system of medicine, and particularly with the Flexner repli)rt., which set a further standard for continental medical practice, because these were Flexner' s criteria. 'I1hus, Dr. Stephensen 43 American medicine has become, in a sense, Continentalized and Germanized more and mere, and moved toward this positill)n away from our traditional British heritage. I know that many physi­ cians are sad about this. With the impacf of socialized medi­ cine and the government moving in more and more, it is harder and harder to fight this l<ind of current. And homeopathy suffers with it. You mentioned the struggle between the American Insti tu.t~ of Homeopathy and the International Hahnemann Association. De you know anything about that, or are you ••• I came in mn the end of that. Shortly after I joined the In­ ternational Hahnemannian. Association 1 t was disbanded, and its members all joined the American Institute. I knew that had happened and I was just wondering whether you had gathered a few impressions as to ••. Well, pretty hysterical impressi@ns. I can remember--I mean it was far apart. It was almost like a quE:irrel, say between Catholicism and Protestantism in the middle. ages. I felt cem- . . plete vituperaticms frori:t people in ene camp or another, violent emotional stmirms, scientific meetings breaking up into arguments, and people storming out of the room, to the point where seme­ times they wouldn't even speak. I remember when I joined the International Hahnemannian Association and told some of the members that I wished te join the Institute and get th\'!"l Insti­ tute Journal, they were horrified! They wondered what I was doing. 11.···- What were the basic issues? tr11·-: Dr. Stephenson 44 tt1::~- The high dilution, initially. But then, many other issues~ The Institute largely turned intm a political old-schaol-tie­ organization. Again, like the osteopaths, the bulk of the graduates of the homeopathic medical schools never practiced homeopathy. They went out and became G.P. • s or specialists of one variety or another, and once a year they would get t@- . ge.tber for a kaffee-klasche, and bring the wife and the kids and have a nice week's vacation. And that was what the Insti­ tute meetings degenerated into. Whereas the International · Habnemannian people, who really were working clinical home 0- paths, wanted to get together and work. But these things were compremised and the tw0 organizations came together. ,, t.- The name 'International' ·-aid rn,t mean too much. It was pre- dominantly an American organization, was it not? S.- Hight. But it was International in a way. There were inter­ national members. IP• - You touched on one of the things, excuse me, Martin. I am dominating it. Do y0u have some questions? tK.- Well, not really, on this section. You joined somewhere between 1951 and 1959? Is that ••• '1f· - 'l'he International '2 1.- You graduated in fifty ••• S.- Yes. I had to have five years of what they called Hahnemannian practice bef0re I c@uld submit my thing for acceptance. Probab­ ly be ab0ut '58 that I joined the International. ~~- At this time there still was strife? J\ ,~.-- Oh yes. Fifty-four and fifty-five, lots ·or strife. I I, Dr. Stephenson I take it that this had been overceme in tbe two or three, years be tween the time y©u joined and 19 59 when the Hom~O.Qq;,t_hi.c Recer­ .lli merged ;nto the Journal cf the American Institute. No. It hasn I t been @ver come to any large extent. Bridges had been made, and I think everybody saw the writing on the wall, so they felt, "Well, we have t0 get together." But I think many people had reservations., I would say it was a stermy c o·urtship, in the next few years .. · But now it is pretty go!;lld. But there are still old guard elements in the Institute and periodically if· the board of trustees is made up predominantly of these elements--men who are in their sixties, seventies and eighties, who have been practicing small-t@wn general practition­ ers for, like fifty years, and who d0n 1 t. have any kind of scien­ tific training eir background--and when they get to determining the policy of 'the Institute it can get pretty rocky for a yeE?-:r or· so, because, you know, they think along certain lines, and frankly, I think along other lines, and Dr. Panos thinks along other lines. So that there is still conflict inherent in the organization which only will cease when some of these people go to their reward. And every year this happens with mere and mere, SID that just in terms of attrition the governing power in the Institute has to fall in the hands of people like myself be­ cause there are no young homeopathic medical school graduates , much, coming into the Institute. Heally, it has been taken ever to a. large extent by the yc,unger members of the- Internatienal Hahnemannian Association. It seems ir~nic that your group suffers from the same preblem Dr. Stephenson 46 which beset the American medical profession: a dichotomy be­ tween practitioners and the academicians. This, of course, is always true. I gather that, on a lesser scale, you have s orne­ wha t the same problem. s.- Hight. Well, let I s get on to another· aspect of pretty much• the same thing. .uuring the early 1950 1 s, which is really before you be­ came deeply involved in organizational work, there was a move­ ment vvithin homeDpathy to gain acceptance es a therapeutic specialty within the A.M.A. S.-- Right. ~-- dhat are your feelings on this? S. - I was very much in favor of it. As a matter of fact I was one of the persons who suggested this. I didn't think it would ever happen, but I thought we might as well make the effort. .- Well, did.this pre-suppose then the feel that the A.JVl.A • was r~ady to accept homeopathy as a specialty? S.- The A.M.A. had ceased to oppose homeopathy in the 1890 1 s, or ,,, whenever it was. D.- Yes. Hight. S.- Before then, no member of a homeopathic organization ceuld be elected to membership in a ceunty A.N.A. oi-'ganization. So really, tacitly the A.M.A. accepted homeopathy then. And in its official prcmouncements, save for some self-elected prophets, like Morris F'ishbein~5the A.M.A. did not make any statements centra-h ome opathy. So officially they have: been going hand in hand, in a way, since thel:l. But the concept of homeopathy as a :Or. Stephenson 47 specialty is not something the A.M.A. has ever accepted, and I idn I t think they ever would. Som1.:: of the membe1.. . s of the In- s ti tutc felt that this would be a good thing to try, and we ·tried, and we were turned down. So then we said, 11 Al1 right, if the A.M.A. won't take us, lct 1 s set up our own criteria", which we did. And the Board of Home opa thio Tberapeuti cs was set up then with their own criteria. And after all, this isn't such an unusual thing. I think the il.rnerican Urological group has remained out of the A.ILA. ~[·hey have their own specialty training system, and their mm diploma system. So to belr'•ng to the A.M.A. is not de R.igueur for all physicians. -- ~----~~,_,;-A..,,...,.,,.- Jhat are your personal relations with the A.M.A.? Both state and local societies? .- Hy own? I do not belong to any of these organizations. For many reasons. Number one, I do not approve of their basic poli6ies. I belonged to them briefly when I was on the staff I of F'lower, because here again, one has to belong to the A.N.A. before_you can have a hospital appointment. D.- Does this e elude you from practically all hospitals? p.- Yes. I have no hospital appointments. But I don't need it. As a homeopathic physician, I try to keep people out of the hos­ pitals. ~vcn when I was on thG staff there I didnrt use it that much, frankly. In a way it always griped me to have compromised my principles for that, because I did not approve of the A.N.A~ 's code of ethics. I thinlc it is completely medieval and it is futile. And you can't honestly belong to the State Society and not support the code of ethics. Plus the fact that you are sub- Dr. St,ephens on l.i,8 ject to censorship by the A.M.A. if you belong to the Society and say s0mething they don't approve of. i'bcn you are called □n the carpet. So for all these reasons I choose not to belmng to it. I like to be in a position where I can do and say as I wish. It is interesting that talking to homeopaths is having an Effect ·Jn me in the sense that I have alvva ys had some qualms ab6ut a strict licensure program, and without agreeing with any of your ideas at all, necessarily, I am convinced that we do need to leave room for free spirits in this oppressive society. There is an increasing need to let people have a measure of freedom. Yet in the period when there was frc:;edom--from 1840 to 1900-­ you had men like John 3uchanan selling over JO,OCO diplomas, a head. Well, there is a difference between freedom and license. 11, this is the primary reas,m why state licensure was nec­ essary, and why the simple graduation from medical C'Jllcge was no criteria at all, when one could purchase a diploma ••• S,... ,Some tr Lt th there ••. I used the expression limited freedom. I think that there are certain basic requirements one can put in, but the point is it got much beyond that •.• t1&.- Eight. You see, our concept here .••• As I a:m sure you are aware, Ah England the poE:ition is that the State: bas the right to re­ quire that anyone whD uses a certain title have certain qualifi­ cations and. no one can use that title unless he has these quali- Dr. Stephenson fications. But they do not feel that it is the order of the State to deny any person from having any kind of therapy that they vvisb as long as that person is aware of the qw.::tlifications of the tL:erapist. So, in England if you v:ish to be what is called an 'un-licensed practitioner' and sell rain water at fifty dollars a bottl~ and someone is idiot eneugh ta buy it, you can do tbis, and no one will censure you for it. But in this country because of the big-brother attitude--however in God I s-name tba t got started here--suddenly the. government is in the business of inte1""posing itself between the citizen and his right to have a therapy, and the government is the one wh D is saying, nyou, citizen, can have only these thera1Jies which we approve, and these other therapies which we don I t a:Jprevc are denied you.n Bnd the is merely c0ntinuin~ this kind of opptessive control in its handling of medicines and drugs now. So, as J. say, I don't know how the United States, 11 'I1he land of the free, and the home of the brave, n has tten to this phase of me,dical prcwtioe. There was one question that came to my mind ••• •- i/Vell, there is one more aspect. Duri the early 1950 1 s, vvhich really may be before your time within the org.srnizatinns, chiropractors and naturopaths, espe"clally from the West Coast, tried to set up medical schools using the name homeopathy. Homeopathy? They still are. Are they still? Could you list some specifics on this? S.- In recent years thEre was an attempt to do this as fer as I know. rind in instances like this suddenly the homeopaths be- Dr. Stephenson 50 ; i i come extremely enamored of licensure and st;ate control. In other words, this is politics. This is who 1s hurting at the moment. And I don't see why naturepaths and chiropractors sheuldn I t have the right to set up schools and call t;hemsel ves homeopathic if they see fit. I- mean I really believe in therapeutic freedom, not just as medical prer@gative, but cer­ tainly the average homeopaths doesn't. I can remember before the A.N.A. accept;ed ostevpaths, when it was brought up at one of the meetings Qf the Institute whether We should admit os­ teopaths to membership in eur organization, and it was the feeling of the members definitely net. So that, by and large, the feelings of the members of the American Institute I think have reflected outside of h onieopa thy the same p©li ti cal views that the average physician has had. Indeed, most members of the .American Institute are members of the American Medical Ass0cia­ tion, because they are not all that ardently enamllred of homeo­ pathy. They de it occasionally. How do you tbink homeopathic education should be conducted? On the undergraduate level, graduate course, or ••• ? Well, I think 1 t should be ccmducted just like any therapeutic education ideally. ·l'here sheuld be undergraduate courses in it, presented in unbiased manner, factually, and there should be good graduate programs in it, in institutions. - Now under the existing cir•cumstances do you feel that this summer program 1s effective or w.0uld you ••• No, it is the best ~h«t is available. I think the most effect­ ive training program of the Institute is the precepterships Dr. Stephenson 51 which I had, where one works with a practicing homeopathic phy:3 ician. I was with Dr. Hubbard for three years. I must have been with her sixty or seventy hours a week f,n~ three years. One really le m"ns the art of me:dicine this w,:3.y. And since home o­ pathy is L .11 0 gcly a clinical art, one doesn't really need a lot laboratory basis to practice it. One can learn it in this manner. ·rhis is the vmy psychoanalysis is taught. The medical s cicnces which are i-•eally clinical can be learned through pre- ceptorships. The ones which are largely experimental or surgi­ cal--those need residencies. And-it is not coincidental that the first medical residencies in this country were introduced at J"ohns Hopkins in the Department of Surgery, because surgeons are committed to institutional training. Clinicians are not. In fact, I think really institutional traini is bad for clini- oians in many ways because it teaches a kind of impersonal re- lationship with patients which institutions have, but which one cannot have in a doctor 1 s office. So I feel that inter6i~ts have sufferE"jd by the institutional residency training they have bei::n re: quired to have in this country. Excuse my going off intD areas which arc n t homeopathic, but these are germane to sGmc 2xtent. May I get back for a few rninute·s '? The relationship Df home o­ pathy to nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy. In your lecture, I believe in 19 58, yGu said t~1 st homeopa y can be seen through the twentieth century advances in physics and science. I wonder if you would care to elaborate on th~t? 26 s. - Jell, first of all, that was 1958. And my thinking certainly· Dr. Stephenson 52 would be much different now, ten years later. Particularly, since hardly any research ~,10:r:ik in which I have been involved for the last five years oxisted at tba t time. S::i I really was talking in a vacuum, using whatever material ·was available. lU­ s o, I was talking philosophically then for laclr. of anything better to do, because there wasn't really any valid experimental data ~n the high dilutions that one could refer to. In 1 58 I may not even have been aware that most of the data was buried in the literature, until I brought it out in that little summary paper. So, I would think completely differently from that paper now. Now we have some facts tri work from, and I would always rather philosophize about facts than just airing nothings. In terms of answering yeur question on philosophical premises, I think one can do this fairly well in terms cf relativity physics because the homeopathic high dilutions in their essence cause a relaticmship betwet;n the medicine:: and the diluting material. ""nd in a sense they say that the therapeutic effect- iveness of the medicine must be carried in the diluting material and not in the original medicine. '.I1bis is viewing the rnedicine­ .dilutant relationship in a larger context than it is viewed in the orthodox npharmacologyn where, this relationship is used solely in terms of the original solute, not in terms of the solid. So that this 1s applying ts the field of pharmacology a relation­ al view just as Blnstein viewed the field of physical phenomenon in a larccer b context than did haxwell or Newton. So I think this would. be an applioati:m tr:: pha:rrnacology of relativistic ideas, as opposed to more particularistic. 'l'bis, to me, is the major Dr. Stephens on 53 anolication in this area. C • J.- Earlier--actually before we got started in the interview--you said tbat you felt that homeopathic research could have some natural defense ur seem· ity implications. 'i!ould yuu care to elaborate on this? J.- rtight. It is so far-fetched I don't ev~n know whether I want " to talk about it. It would probably sound really screwy to you but •••• If one takes the thesis that the homeopathic medicines work as the interposition of an energy field around medicine in whose presence the molecules and solvent arrange themselves into a constant reproducable pattern, then one is moving out of the field of physical matter, concrete lumps of matter, into energy field concepts. Then one has to say that human beings in ad­ dition t0 their atoms are energy fields. Ana·that there is a whole field--a whole area--of human physiology in which humans as energy fields are to be evaluated, ~hich will be coming in. ':rhe1:·e has been some work done on this by Becker at Syracuse. I have forgotten the reference--it is in this article in the Main Currents--bas done work with salamanders in which he sh,fl/11S that salamanders will not re nerate normal limbs if the limbs are out off and then they are exposed to alternat:lng magnetic fields. There has been auite a bit of work done on the effect :L en humans of changing magm~tic polarities in the cai~th, particul­ arly reflect:Lng alterations in the HEaviside la r, and bur•sts of solar plasma coming in to the i,;cirth and ,south Pole which occurred in p~riodiQ intervals. Bielogical effects can ba traced statistically to this kind of energy field phenomenon. Dr. ,3tephenson 54 One then might be able to m,we into the field c..1f defense in terms of energy field effects 'Jt1 hum:rns with warfare Ei.pplioa- ti,:ms. And "it may be that materials could be preduccd which would be of value in defense efforts, through sucoussion and dilutirm. ""nd I would, ratherlto into any more detail in this f" ;; . at the moment. But frankly r have been concerned about this for some time. I have been concerned that the Russians who read our literature would get on to smme of this stuff and start working on it, or somebody who is opposed to us. I guess the Chinese are more our Gppositlon at the moment than the: Rurrnians. ~he Russians are doing a lot of work in this area. You know tbey have Spera.nski, the great physiolegist. ilussian physiol­ ogy is built around Speranski's work, and Speransk1 27 thinks very much along these lines. I read Russian, so I have some lrnowledge of iiussian literature in this area. And dussia has done much more work in ESP really than we have. And who knows 1:Jba t defense applioa tions they are going to make ®f this stuff? You know anybody who reads science fiction can go off on these things. D.- 1 Hight. It is certainly a fascinating possibility. I guess we can say that is beyond the realm of homeopathy. s, at the moment. But ••• Do you think that the trend within medical science has been to­ wards or away from the ideals of homeopathy? Well, medical scienoe--here I gather you are excluding homeopathy? I gather that and again I am unhappy with it. Dr. Stephensen 55 :I.· '·. . . ,,.:• •. - li'lell, h@meopathy is n(')t standard. medical practice. You are going to have to brush up your semantics @n this a little bit frrom that assumpti~n. Let's say that as it is, av@wed medical therapy has incorpeirated unt~ itself elements frcim many, many facets 0f homeopathy; I have a paper on this-- 28 "The HGmeepathic Pharmacwlegy, 11 I think, in which I relate the basic elements of homempathy, and then th~ir historical inclusion into. the body of·· medicine one by on<!J. SG, I would say that mest @f the basic elements that have made up the practice of home 0pathy have already been included by physicians, by se-called orthodox medicine, wi thcmt any rec€lgni tien ef their source or ackrn,wledg,.... .I.·.-_. ment @f their sourc(!. ' Such as? '_· Such as Pasteur 1 s work. Did y©u,read that nice little qu~te ef mine fr©m Vi,n Behring 29IDn Pasteur in which he said that Pasteur was practicing homeepathy. Pasteur's basic principles represent­ ed homeepathy, so what better w@rd to call it t hari homeopathy? The use of a highly e.ttenuated substance to prevent the illness which it weuld produce in the healthy--what is this but homeopathy? And V@n Behring had guts enough t@ stand up and say this in fr@nt of one of the major medical congresses in Europe. ~~- Of course immunology presumably is the ••• ~,~- Sure--allergy. But the homeopath~ don't have any rncmopoly on 'the similar principle. This has been kicking aNmnd fDr a long time. The Vedic physicians delineate this thoroughly, as d® the Greeks, but Hahnemann first engineered this into a sophls­ ticated medical therapeutics. The only unique principle of home@- I, Dr. Stephenson 56 pathy is the succussion of medicines. Even the use of serial dilutions has been used by other physicians • .clut the introduc­ tion of succussion QY Hahnemann was historically unique-as far as I know. I have never been able to run it down in anything else. Suddenly he just announced it, 1.n an issue of the Orgal1Ql;!?O around i806 or 1815. He didn't succuss his original medicines, although they were all triturated, I suppose, but the business of band succussion came in later. And where he got it fr·om he didn 1 t say. So that really how can one talk about homeopathy being accepted by so-called orthodox medicine, when all of the other principles. of homeopathy were not unique to homeopathy. In other words, I think one has to take things in their histori­ cal framework. And orthodox medicine doesn't really accept such things. Medicine is made up of a continuing series of dis cover­ ies, each standing on the shoulders of the other. Some of the outstanding discoveries have represented re-discoveries of 1· things which people had said before, and then were gone. After all, Einstein's relativity physics really represents the appli­ cation of good mathematics to a kina of relativistic philosophy which you can find in the Vedas and the Upanishads, and Plato. This is a·large relativistic way of viewing things. But Ein.:. stein gave it mathematical formulation. Hahnemann gave practi­ cal engineering formulation to the concept of similar treatment which had been kicking around for a long time. The concept of individualization, as opposed to generalization. Have you read Professor Guttentag•s 31article on this? Yes. 1Jr. Stephenson 57 $.- Well, I think gives a good historical genesis of these two things. One of ich is very important in homeopathy. ihe con- cept of using natural medicines as opposed to again certainly is not unique to homeopathy. Pharmacology in the \1Jest has moved from a period prim'>rily concerned with ohemi- cal unnatural substances until now, by and lbrge, the average pharmaceutical research organization is spending a large t of their efforts investi bing botanical substances. So we are right ck into botany and natural substances again. D.- I can 1 t recall from my readings whether the research that you have mentioned dealt specifically with succussion as such .... the value of succussion. Yes, it has. D. - Yes. I believe they were, as I recall, specific in j_cb they •.. I remember something on dilution. Giving examples ... -s. - checked om sucoussion, too. 1 Professo1" Koffler. I set up a program for her of twenty-five permutations of succussion and dilution. You know, no succussion, five stages of dilution, etc., on onion, with sulphur, in various degrees of dilution_ And we hav0: all this data. 3uccussion appears to be an important part of it. The nuclear magnetic resonance work was done on succussed and unsuccussed things, and the unsuccussed dilutions did not bave nearly the effect that tbe suocussed ones did. But, interestingly enough, they still had some effect • •- Well, let me ask you, what do you think the prospects of homeo­ pathy are? Does homeopathy have a future? rrhe average homeo­ path today is proudly approaching seventy • .- That is right. You mean in th is country? Dr. tephenson 58 re- Y<:::s. There ars very fGvJ homeopaths beini=:; trained today. There are no homeopathic medical schools. Very few are being enlisted throuDh the American Foundation of Homi:~opathy' s postgr2.duate '-• /' courses. ~oes homeopathy have a future? s.- >fell, homeopathic pr•actice, but whs.t do you mean by future? Do you mean wi11 it increase in number, or ma.intain its numbers? S.- Well, which? K.- ~ell, either, or both. S.- I would h that we can maintain a certain number of practicin&; homeopaths. Certainly as long ss l 2.m alive homeopathy will exist in New York City. I am good for a few more years. And there are a·few orle in tbe ir f ort:Le s scattered e.rou nd the country. Dr. Senry N. Jilliams in Pennsylvania, Dr•. Panos in Washington, Allen Neiswander in Los ALgeles. So, through us, it is g:·)od for another twenty, thirty, or forty years, anyway. If it reaches a point where there are just five or tPn practi­ tioners in the country, it will still be in existence through our efforts. And there are a few people who come in. have a Eumanian d. octor in his forties o has come into New York City and has stc1rted pract:l.cing homeopathy in the last year or so. The larger cities, I think, probably always will have homeopathic practitioners. One needs a large population to practice some- thi like homeopathy, bec2.use it is so cialized. I have a little local practice in Greenwich, but this never will amount to much. How me:ny people in Cirecnwicb really w:i.11 want bomeo- pathy? 3o in terTs of its continul to exist as a practice I think it will. If the research work goes along well, I think Dr. Stephenson 59 this could produce a regeneration of homeopathy in this country and indeed throughout the world. It could give it a sound scientific foundation for the first time in its existence. And I thinl{ as soon as this comes about, then, automatically, good scientists will be attracted to it. It may be that homeopathy as I practice it will be modified in terms of these new develop­ ments. But I don't thinl{ it will just die out as long as this r·esearch work is going on. If suddenly a large amount of money became available, then even clinical research could be done. You know, if you really had enough money, like millions, an awful lot could be done. And this is always a possibility. Because then all you need is one department and one University, who, for a certain amount, is going to run some good controlled clinical tests on homeopathy. Where there is a homeopathic physician in the neighborhood, where you take five hundred or a thousand patients with this diagnosis or that, and you do all the randomization and the double-blind bit, it could be done • .But it takes a lot of money and a lot of time. And so far homeopathy has not had that kind of money available. We al­ ways manage to anta.gonize our wealthy people. John D. Rocke­ feller, Sr. was homeopathic. Sure. You know he died when he was about 95 because his physician, Dr. Austin, wasn't around, or that is what they say. He wa,s down in Florida and got another heart attack and got pumped full of digitalis and- died. But John D., Jr., who I guess wasn't too happy with his father, hates homeopathy. He went out of his way to oppose it. He wouldn't even hear the word around the house. So, after John D., Sr. Dr. Stephenson 60 died, that was the end of the Rockefeller 1 s association with homeopathy. John D.--sure, he would be treated homeopathically, but when he was investing money with his interest in petroleum, which was making synthetic medicines, he set up the Rockefeller Foundation not to investigs:te homeopathy, but to investigate things that were going to put money in his pocket. I1his demon­ 1 strates one of the big problems with homeopathy. It is very cheap. 'l1be medicines cost in the neighborhood· of 50¢;. And we do not live in a culture where things that are cheap do well. ~,. ~/­ t. - rrue. 1 ~;. rs.- Something that is cheap and simple, where you can treat people without a lot of x..;rays, without a lot of blood tests, where you can treat the-m in an office without sending them to some hospital, where you can give them benefits even.if you have not done a diagnostic work-up, or if you don't honestly know what caused their 'trouble--our culture is out of step with this kind of. tbing. People don 1 t really like that. They want to go to ·the hospital and be stuck, and have the x-rays, and go home and .say they sper.it three hundred dollars to get over something. Of course this is tradit,tional in medicine itself'. After all, the customers want to be bled and purged. How many other homeo­ paths are there in New York? Practicing homeopaths? Do you know? Yes. rrhe real .practicing homeopaths, there are about three or four--oh, five. Do you know the yqungest of the group? I think it is Dr. Sofrin. Yes, he is about 48; How old is he? '· !: 48. Oh, 49. Dr. Stephenson 61 o.- And the others would range from .•• '? $.- Guttman is in his sixties. itmont is in his late fifties. 3ofrin is, I think, in his late forties, early fifties. Dr. Abraham Hieger is very ~mcient. He is in his eighties. Dr. Kanner is over in ~rooklyn who µractices a little bit of homeo- pathy. T n I think there arc a few people who practice homeo­ pathy here tbat l don't know. 'those who nevsr gCJ to the medi-­ cal meetings, never write a paper, etc • • D. - I would assume that you would take a dim view of laymen prac­ ticing homeopathy? S.- ~ell, it depends. It depends upon what they are treating. One can get into trouble with homeopathy if it is used ill-advisably. But the treatment for home thinr;s, you know; srnica for cu·ts, apas for bee stings, etc. I am in favor of this. I even have little instruetion manuals for my patients, and they can go to Boericke and 'l'afel and get medicines in certaiu potency for home treatment. 'ril1e only problem Tvi th lay practice is the dsnger of the wrong diagnosis, and this is a problem. ~S.- That is right. tf:D.- I thinl::: one can again make a difference bctm':Eri routine problems. t ;S.- .d.ight. If it's acute stuff, that is O.iC Constitutionally, no, I am not in favor of that. But it is a blessing. A little Aconitum with a head cold. Aconitum and Gclsemium take care of most colds. Arnica is like a miracle for cuts and sprains, or pre-partum or post-partum. J\'ly ladies who go into tb2 l10spital to have babies--ovcr and over they tell me their obstetricir::ins 62 are amazed how they do. I give them a little arnica to take before and after. rrbey don't have bleeding. "I'hey don't have discomforts. 'l'heir labors are about half thc normal time. It makes an enormous difference. And this is something one can do by one's self at home. I think I am probably going to have to start seeing patients fairly soon. h.- Fine. D.- 1'Je are just about to the end of the tape. Anytb1ng.you 1,1ould like to ask ••• K.- I think we have pretty much covered the field. ·l1bank you very much, Dr •••• S.- '.rhank you for your courteous attention. I am awfulJ.y so:rry if I have been so picky about not answering generalities, ~but I just can't do it. I think that it is not good for homeopathy to be discussed at the level of unthought out generalities. rhere is much too much of it. 1 D.- Yes, I agree, and I think you are quite right in asking us to be a little more specific, and obviously your answers are going to be more valuable if we ask you a specific :1uestion. End of Tape No. 2 Dr. Stephenson 63 Footnotes 1. Elizabeth Wright. Hubbard, a .leading New, York City homeopath, died, in 1967.. 2. Boeric.ke and Tafel,. homeopathic pharmacists, ,Philadelphia,.:. 3. AllanSutherland, Brattleboro, Vt., ed., Homeopathic Recorder :: and JoµrnaJ ,B;f: American ,Insti:t-µte of Homeopacthy. 4. LeapJ.11g ;figure in Americ,an hoIIleopathy, qied recently. 5. ,F_ounder. of Am~pica,n Foundation for, Homeop1:,1thy, now, dec~ased. 6 •. Samuel Hahnemann;, ~erma11, physician and ,therapist--founder of . hoi;neopathy. 7. Richard H. Shryock, Devel?J?'l:llent of ~ocle,rn ~¢#cine (New York, 1947). i ·: 8. · Drug qsed as :t9p:i,cal. pain kille.r and. as preventive taken internally. I 9.: Donald Mainland, ·M.D., (1902--}; New York .. City physician. 10. "Fre:sh .Evidence for ·,a-Biophysical Field," Main Currents, XXIV (i968), 115-22. 11. French physicist, in 1948 investigatecl action of microdilutions in physics.· 12. G. Yaeger, in ,1880 tested effe:cts of mic•rodilutions on :aspee·d qf nerve transmissions. 13. 6\z'"x 10 23 • "rheoretical level of dilution. Above that level, none ·b.f' the original subs,tance can. be :detected. 14. American Assoc,iation for ·.the Advanoei:nent of Science • 15. Const·antine Hering (1800-1880), early American homeopathic medical ·educator·. ... - - ., 16. Homeopathic Medical College until 1918 Dr. Stephenson 64 17. M.aesimund B. Panos, M.D., Washington, D. C., Ohio State, 1957. 18. Elizabeth Wright Hubbard, M.D., New York City, died in 1967. 19. Allen C. Neiswander, M.D., Alhambra, California, Ohio State, 1942. 20. Wilbur K. Bond, Mo D., Greensfork, Indiana, graduate of University 0£ Indiana, 1930. 21,, Henry N. Williams,. M.p., La.ncaster, Pennsylvania, Columbia University, 1941. 22. William Guttman, M.D., New York City, Vienna, 1925. 23. Edward C. Whitmont, M.D., New York City, N. Y. 24~ Thomas H. McGavack, M. D., Martinsburg, West Virginia. 25. Linn J. Boyd, M.D., Yonkers, New York. 26. Lecture, February 25, 1958 to Boston Homeopathic Layman's League, published by Homeopathic Information Service, 1964. 27. A. D. Speranski, Russian physiologist~ 28. Lecture published by Homeopathic Information Service, Chestnut Hill, Mis~achusetts, 1964. 29. Emil Von Behring (1854-1917), discoverer of tetanus anti-toxin, cited in.James Stephenson, Homeopathic Pharmacology (Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, Homeopathic Information Service, 1964), p. 8. 30~ Oi:-ganon der Ratiortellen Heilkunde, Samuel Hahnemann I s major work, the most basic homeopathic reference. 31. Otto G~ttentag, M. D., "Trend towards Homeopathy," Bulletin of the ,History of Medicine, VIII (1940), 1172-1193. Dr. James Stephenson 65 rCI INDEX Acon1tum, 61 Allentown Academy, 29 American Foundation for Homoeopathy, 2, 22-23, 58 American Institute of. Homeopathy 20, 2.5, 31, 4J-45, .50 · American Medical Assoo1at1on, 3, JJ-34, 38, 46-48, 50 Ant1coronary Club, 3 Arniea, 11 Austin, Dr., .59 Barnard, Dr., 17-18, .27 Becker,. Dr., 53 Boa.rd of Homeopathic Therapeutics, 47 Boer1oke, Professor Garth, 5, 18, 33 Boerioke and Tafel, PharmaQeutical House, 2 Bond, Dr. Wilbur, ;2 Boston University, JO Boyd, Professor John w., 19, ,,27, 33 :Sri tisb. HomAopathic Journal, '14 Buchanan, John, 48 Carnegie Foundation, 33 Chemical Journ§!, 24 Cornell University, 16. 37 DeBakey, Dr. Michael, 34 DNA, 17, 27 . Dr. Stephenson 66 I· Fishbein, Dr. Morris, 46 Flexner Repqri, 33 Gelsem1um, 61 George Washington University, 22 Gerlach, Henry, 16 Green,. Dr. Julia, 3 Griggs, ·William Bentley, 35 Guttentag, Otto E., 56 Guttman, Dr. William, 32, 38, 61 Hahnemann, Samuel C., 5-6, 8,. 56 Hahnemann Medical College, 22, 33-35, 37 Harvard University, 37 Harvey, William, 36 Hering, Constantine, 28 Hering Proving Laboratory, 35 Homeopath:!-.Q. Recorder, 4,5 Hubbard, Dr. Elizabeth Wright, 1-2, 32, 38, · 51 International Hahnemannian Assoc1ation, 31, 43-45 Johns Hopkins University, 51 Jolliff, Dr. Norman, 3 ,-£1111fJl§:L~~7.:A ~!l:i!?!:.~tr ~ Journal .Qf. Cell Biologx. · 24 Journal .Qf Human ,P.har,macology. 27 Journal of the American J.nstitute ..Qf ---iToiiieoP.,ath;t. 2JJ '+5 Dr.. Stephenson 67 Journal of the American Medical -Tssoo1it1on; 23 --- Kanner, Dr., 61 Koffler-Wannamaker, Professor Anna, 19, 21-22, 25, 57 Main Cur:r::,~:qt.§,, 6, 27, 53 Mainland, Donald, 14 Mcclaran, Dr., 2 McGavick, Dr. Thomas H., 20 Mesmer, E. Ii\ Anton, 11 Mosher, Professor, 18, 24, 27 Neiswander, Dr. Allen, 32, 58 New York City Bureau of Nutrition, 3 Ohio Northern University, 22 Panos, Dr. Maesimund, 32, 4,5, 58 Rieger, Dr. Abraham, 61 RNA, 17 Rockefeller, John D., Jr.,, 59 Rockefeller, John D., Sr., 59 Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, 14, 40 Schatz, Dr. Albert, 21-22, 27 Semmelweis, Ignaz P., 36 Shryock, Riobard H., 8, 9 Smith, Dr. A. Dwight, 5 Dr. Stephens on · 68 Smith, Mr., 18 Sofrin, Dr., 60, 61 Spalding, Dr. Bay, 2 Sperans3:t1, A. D., ,54 Stearns, Dr. , 19-20 Stephenson, Carl, 16 Sutherland, Dr •. Allan. D., 2, 10 University of Delaware, 22 Wh1tmont~ Dr., 32, 61 Williams, Dr. Henry, 32, 58 Wurmser, Lisa, 15 Yaeger, Dr. G., 16 Yale University, 37