An Interview With Dro Lucy Swanton Clark Table of Contents Introduction Transcript 1 - 55 Footnotes 56 - 57 Index 58 - 61 Dr. Lucy Swanton Clark Dr. Lucy Swanton Clark was born in Washington, D. C., 1n the year 1906. After completing her undergraduate work, she took an M.D. degree from George Washington Medical School 1n 1938 and subsequently moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where she practiced for many years. In 1967 she moved with her husband, Mr. Sheldon Clark, to her present location 1n Houston, Texas. She is not practicing at this time. The interview, which took place 1n Dr. Clark's home, was a very pleasant and cheerful one. Dr. Clark was doubtful that she could contribute very much to an under­ standing of homeopathy, but she was quite cooperative. Because she 1s a kindly individual, it was not possible to get her to evaluate her oontempories as objectively as the interviewer would have liked. By nature she seems inclined to think the best of her associates and professed to know very little about the infighting within the homeopathic group. She has not been active in the homeopathic organiza­ tions, however, and her protestations may be quite justified. Dr. Clark made a great many editorial changes in her trans­ cript, but nearly all of them were designed to improve the literary style rather than to change the content. Dr. Lucy Swanton Clark Tape 1 Pagel Dr. Duffy: I wonder, Dr. Clark, if we could start out by asking you to give me a brief biographical sketch, where you were born-­ I don't know if you would like to give us that date, but we would like your background, and your training, and how you got into homeopathy. Dr. Clark: I was born in Washington, D. C. in 1906. I went through George Washington University and George Washington University Medical School. I graduated in 1938. All our lives, we, as a family, had homeopathic physicians. These were Dr. John R. Sharp and Dr. Gregg Custis Birdsall, later Dr. Julia Green and Dr. Louise Ross. They were all in Washington, D. c •... .Dr. Duffy: Dr. Julia Green was the one who gave the house that the Foundation ••• Dr. Clark: This was her home. Dr. Duffy: Right. Dr. Clark: l Dr. Green, Julia Green, was one of the early founders of the American Foundation for Homoeopathy. {This is getting a little off the biographical subject but we will come back to it.) She had, along with others at the time, a very strong feeling to keep the principles upon which homeopathy was based alive, and to have it taught. These were not being taught generally by 1920. Thus started the postgraduate school under the Foundation, and now jointly under the Dr. Clark 2 American Institute of Homeopathy. So my interest in homeopathy was from earliest days. My greatgrandfather was a homeopathic physician. He was a Spanish gentleman of the lesser nobility, who left Spain to go to England when the political climate removed the Constitution and an absolute monarchy came in; he was one of the young students who left Spain in the middle 1800 1.s. He married an English wo~an, and studied homeopathy in England and in Paris. He also studied art at Fontainbleau, and used to spend his vacations traveling. They came to America; his daughter, my grandmother, married an American and stayed here. He lived with them (this American family) for quite a while, after the death of his son-in-law. So my grandmother had grown up knowing quite a bit about homeopathy. Her husband decided to go west to Missouri and Arkansas from eastern New York state, and died shortly afterward. My grandmother was the only person around with any medical knowledge, and she had her father's medical books and supplies, which she was called upon to use from time to time until doctors moved into the area. One family story, was that when one of the first doctors did come into Arkansas where she was ••• he laughed at her homeopathic drugs and said, well, he would be glad to do a proving, and took a bottle and swallowed its contents. Pretty soon he was violently ill and sent for my grandmother, who, knowing what he had taken and realizing a hypersensitivity to1his drug, looked up the antidote to give him and stop the reaction. But he never studied homeopathy, Dr. Clark 3 although he had felt its force and was greatly eased by it. So I had grown up with a feeling of confidence in homeopathy, and a respect for its gentleness in working with sickness. There was also a kind of rapport with the homeopathic physician which is, I think unusual. Except under unusual circumstances, the general physician does not develop this individualistic personal psychosomatic empathetic relation­ ship--sympatioo. It is a quality that some physicians and some surgeons have to a very high degree, and some obstetricians. The general practitioner does not always know his patients personally or seem to understand their state of health, that I felt did exist in the homeopathic physicians. D.- I think that the people I have talked to--Dr. Sutherland, and Dr. Baker, and Dr. Weaver, and there are a number of others--Dr. Stephenson--who did impress me as men with a 2 • very keen interest, and as you say, have this sympat~co-- this feeling of a real understanding of the patient. I think this is true of the homeopaths I have encountered. c.- Well, this is interesting. I think it grows out of the homeopathic concept of the picture of disease. Dr. Green used to have evening picnics one Sunday a month for her patients, at her bouse. As a family we went to them. She would talk to the patients, and told them how important it was to her in helping them 1n disease to know them 1n health as well. So that these parties, in a way, were a way of getting to know the patients better in a relaxed Dr. Clark 4 atmosphere. She lectured on what were homeopathic symptoms, and how they were graded, and what was disease; and how the homeopathic rrateria medica were provings of medicines, and the physician attempted to rnatoh the disease picture and the drug-proving picture, according to the basic principles of homeopathic sim111a. These talks left a deep mark on me from many points of view, the personal, but also the fact that disease and its cure, could have an orderly picture to it. D.- Let me ask you--you came into contact with Dr. Green before your medical education, or afterwards? D.- Before. I was about eighteen at the ti11E, and this relationship helped influence me toward medical school. And then my mother's illness and Dr. Green's care of her, staying with my mother two to four hours at a time to observe in the acut.e phases of her heart condition how the remedies were acting. I have never known a physician to ever do this before or since. She and Dr. Louise Ross did this for my mother. 1ihen again, this 1s perhaps unfair because women physicians tend to bring a nurturing aspect to medicine, and I have seen this personal care in some women allopathic physicians; a deep personal regard for their patients, a mothering instinct, almost that builds a rapport with the patient that is almost, I think, necessary for the best psychiatric work at times. But, with the homeopath it is a necessary adjunct to appraise remedy action Dr. Clark 5 and patient response. D.- Let me go back. You took, of course, a regular orthodox medical training? c.- Oh yes, Dr. Green insisted on this. D.- Right. And then you took the postgraduate work under Dr. Green ••• C.- I took postgraduate work with Dr. Green and in the Homeopathic Foundation Summer School. I went three summers for part of each term. D.- Yes. Then from Washington, D. c. you went to Ohio, or ••• ("f Ve - I interned at :auron Road Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio and met some of the good old homeopaths there: Dr. Carl Rust was about the last, and Dr. Wilfred E. Allyn, Sr. How about Dr. Goldberg, Dr. Young, or some of those? 3 D.- c.- They were in Cincinnati and I didn't get to know them or .of them until much later. In my talks with Dr. Rust, watching him work, and with Dr. Allyn, again my interest in homeopathy was being furthered, because, of course, one begins to question at certain ages of life that which they have taken for grant~d, and I think this is good. I went througp this questioning stage. I also learned great respect for general medicine. Surgery in particular, has made such marvelous progress; and pathology; the identification of the functions and tissues, and the changes in tissues; it is all part of understanding the total picture of disease. Homeopathy, to me, is a specialty in internal medicine. It is not a separate school at all. It is more specific and orderly Dr. Clark 6 than allopathic medicine, for general care of sick people. D.- One question I would like to ask you. I am glad you mentioned that. After interning where did you start practicing? c.- I next took a residency in pediatricsat Flower Fifth Avenue r·, Hospital in New York, and gq_,t to know Dr. William Gutmann, and Dr. Elizabeth Wright Hubbard. So I saw more work of homeopathy. Dr. Gutmann really cured my husband of asthma which he had bad all his life. When we were married he used to ·take nshots 11 three or four times a day, for ~sthma relief and for de-sensitizing. D.- I am not familiar with Dr. Gutmann--how is that spelled-­ G-u-t or •• ? C.- G-u-t-m-a-n-n. He was from Vienna and came over, I think, in the thirties, from Europe. D.- I had an interesting interview with Dr. Guttentag on the IJest coast. 4 C .- Yes. When at Huron Road Hospital I had been awarded the Fellowship in Homeopathy under Dr. Guttentag at the University of California, but at the time my father was not well and it was felt that I should stay on the Eastern coast. So then I went to New York, and that was a very interesting experience, I must say. I, of course, with my homeopathic background of pleasant medication, to see the children being given shots and they would cry always--and the reactions to sulfanilimide at that time--were quite frightening ••• D.- The early forties, or the mid-forties? Dr. Clark 7 c.- July of 1940 to July, 1941. Again I thought back how homeopathy brought us through so many illnesses so easily, so gently. And Dr. Gutmann helped show me, too, with a very sick child, how he could be helped with homeopathy. But here again, it was not that the hospital was attempting to teach homeopathy--I think quite the contrary, but for those who were willing or wanted to learn, it was there; if only as I was doing to contrast it with allopatbic medicine. Then in New York I was married, and we moved to Ohio. I had taken the licensing examinations in Ohio, so I had my license and practiced there. D.- Where were you in Ohio? C.- Columbus, and later Cleveland. D.- Cleveland, Ohio. And then you stayed in Cleveland ••• v.- ("I Until last year, 1967. D.- And then you moved on down to Texas? Yes. D.- You have more or less given up your practice temporarily? C.- Yes. Until we were sure we would be permanently in Texas or until I felt more settled, I didn't feel like going ahead with Texas-Ohio reciprocity at that time. So I have retired. D.- Yes, well, I can understand that--and oh, let's see, there are a couple of questions. I know that you may think I am being repetitious because I have asked this of a number of people, but how do you think of homeopathy as being differentiated, say, from regular medicine, or just what Dr. Clark 8 are your views on homeopathy? C .- First, there are certain basic laws that can be observed in the use of homeopathy. E.g., Hering, as well as Hahnemann, 5 formulated certain points to appraise remedy reaction and prognosis. There is a basic picture of disease that depends upon a little different concept of disease than general medicine uses, and there is a different pcinciple in the use of drugs, th~ principle of s1mil1a similibus· curantur. There 1s the Arndt-Schulz Law which explains the phase action of drugs--a larger dose of a drug will depress, and a smaller dose will stimulate. This was proven to me in anaesthesia. With a small amount of the anaesthesia, before the person is nunder, u they may be quite stimulated and have to be held, or strapped down, on the operating table, for their own safety. And then as the anaesthesia gets deeper, there is the depression of all of the reactions. So that in a way this illustrates this particular homeopathic law •.• D.- Let me ask you--I am not familiar with that~ Is that A-r-n-d-t Schulz? C.- Arndt Scbulz--A-r-n-d-t and S-c-h-u-1-z, the Arndt-Schulz 6 law. D.- S-c-h-u-1-z, that is what I thought. C.- So that this differing reaction to different sizes of dosage or amounts of a drug is something tha.t general medicine now recognized. We have the highly minute doses of all the drugs used. But this has long been one of the cornerstones of Dr. Clark 9 homeopathic use of drugs. Now in the picture of disease, Dr. Rust brought this out to me very strongly in the picture of a child who was in the hospital with "running earsu, draining ears, of a very foul yellowish thick material that the mother said would come on every time the child had a cold. There were nsnufflesn all the time. Dr. Rust would sit there and observe this child sleeping and breathing. He always slept in the knee-chest position, would pull his knees up, and he asked the mother about it; she said, u Yes, he always slept this way. 11 n And were the discharges always rather foul and thick and yellow? Did they ever seem to burn the skin?n 11 No, it was a bland discharge. 11 Dr. Rust was differentiating and building a symptom-picture of this child. He then gave it a remedy on the basis of the position that it slept in, the kind of discharge, bland, thiok, yellow, foul, its prevalence whenever there was a oold; his remedy in twenty-four hours cleared it all up. He felt that if he could have had the child for chronic treatment over a period of time, (because the nosode remedy he had used, treated an inherited tendency) he could have really built into that child's constitution a very firm foundation for good health the rest of its life. This is sort of jumping a bit, but three different times when I have had autopsies on long-term homeopathic patients, the pathology report is--th1s in the case of a ninety-two year old woman, was: Did not appear her age; could have been in the early seventies; the organs were in the condition of a Dr. Clark 10 much younger person. She had died of the affects of a stroke. So it was with the father of one of my patients, on whom .I had ha the son ask for an autopsy. I never f~ot a copy of it • But the same kind of a report was given of the body and organs in very good condition of a much younger person. This person had died, as I rec~ll it, of massive hemorrhage from a gastric ulcer. So that I do believe homeopathy offers a way of building up the body through the pictures of disease, and matching this with the appropriate remedies, that can build a better state of organic health than the individual might have ordinarily had. Now this is sort of vague, isn't it? I am trying to be a little more concrete. D.- I think what you are saying is well within the tradition of medicine, itself, because after all medicine started and has been quite empirical. It has observed symptoms and treated diseases in these terms. I think homeopathy is continuing an old tradition in doing this. There are certain aspects of homeopathy I would like to ask you about. For example, how do you feel about succussion, and the value of succussion, high potency versus low potency drugs, c.- Here I have very limited experience. But I know from a case of a very severe sore throat; I was using Mercurius biniodide in the two hundred potency and had no result; I was sure it was the kind of a sore throat which indicated the Mercurius biniod~. So I asked one of the older homeopstthic doctors and he said: "Try it in the lOM." The throat cleared within Dr. Clark 11 two hours. So this is a personal experience with potency, and repeated with other remedies, several times. The succussion act itself if one 1s going to believe in conserva­ tion of energy--the act of succussion does involve some transfer of energy from the very act of it, to the remedy, in breaking it down and prolonging or transmitting some other form of energy to it. I can only explain it that way. D.- I asked this because ••• C.- It is different from dilution, succussion is. D.- I am well aware of that. But there is, I think, some disagreement ••• c.- I'm sure there is ••• D.- Dr. Guttentag does not think too much of succussion, but you may know he has done some work in molecular chemistry 11oping to demonstrate precisely what does occur. C.- It still needs to be demonstrated in the accepted scientific way. But I think that the observation of symptoms under one potency and under another is still possible. Yet this is also open to subjective criticism, without careful observation. D.- Yes. One of the criticisms of homeopathy is that the homeopathic remedies have never been tested under complete clinical conditions. But it may be the fault of the orthodox medical profession. What is your feeling about that? v.- (1 rhey were beginning this at Hahnemann Medical School, I think 1 7 under .Dr. Garth Boericke;• quite a few drugs were re-proven with laboratory tests and controls. These--oh, I think Dr. Clark 12 probably a dozen drugs were done--these bore out and confirmed provings and their clinical use. However, this merely furthered understanding of their clinical use with the laboratory checks and controls, in addition to clinical history. D.- I think one of the problems with homeopathy is that too frequently homeopaths cry out success and cite personal experiences, and this can be ••• C.- This is questionable, yes. D.- Yes. I mentioned this because you may be familiar with Dr. Benjamin Hush who came up with blood-letting, bleed, bleed, and bleed again; Dr. Rush, using caloTiel and blood-letting in the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, was convinced he had saved-a lot of lives. Well, some of his contemporaries and a number of historians feel he killed a lot of people in the process, but there was a man who was convinced that he was doing right, you see, and 1 think this is the problem of subjective ••• c.- Yes, this is the problem. Yes, the subjective thing of citing cases only. But if it can be demonstrated again and again and again, under the same medical laws working and the same homeopathic principles, it can be accepted. If there are isolated instances, one has to question whether they are working according to the laws of homeopathy, and compare with similar cases of other physicians. D.- And you see, I think you have touched on another problem that has cast doubt on the success of homeopathy: that 1s Dr. (.;lark 13 the very empathy that homeopathic physicians do develop and the confidence that the patients have in them, and the nature--the very complex nature of illness itself which makes it very difficult to say that it was strictly the remedy, or all of the emotional factors involved in all of these things. They share a factor of support, which I think is a key one. c.- I think this is very true, but I also feel that this is homeopathic, too, in a way. ·rhe need is to treat the pa t1ent, not just on the physical plane, but giving mental support and emotional support, and spiritual, if you like. I read an article once of a physician who was treating American Indians in general medicine; one Indian girl with tuberculosis was given a short ~erm of life. She wanted to go back to her home and her people on the reservation, and he said: 11 Why not? She knew how to take care of herself. n So she did. Several years later this doctor was going by the reservation and wanted to see how she was. There she was living in the bloom of health. So be was curious about this. And his concept of disease then was changed for himself. If he could not establish a rapport in which the patient would be confident and happy, he would not be able to help that patient, and as he looked back over his practise, he felt this was true. So that in a way this is a recognition of the homeopathic principle that a patient, his body, mind, emotions, and spirit needs to be treated on all those planes. Therefore, treating just their emotional life in which some Dr. Clark 14 homeopaths believe a lot of illness starts before it manifests itself in physical symptoms--I am not convinced of this, myself--but the psychosomatic field cf medicine is beginning to accept this principle. If disease does have its origin in disturbances in the psyche, the emotions, or the libido, the happiness or unhappiness of an individual in their life's circumstances--this is a very important area to be treated. D.- Of course orthodox medicine claims, you know, going back to the Hippocratic tradition that you treat the patient rather than the disease, although frequently these things are honored more in the breech, I am afraid. C.- Yes, modern business pressures tends to make it somewhat that way, I think. And the trend toward conformity. I look on the demise of homeopathy as partly due to the trend to conformity, and partly to the lack of business instincts on the part of many physicians, allopathic and homeopathic, but particularly the homeopathic. And thirdly, the concen­ tration of the homeopathic physician on the patient as a person, and therefore he has not been always as alive and alert as he could be to the confirmations that research and science could give, or to teaching his skills to others. D.- Of course he has certainly not done as well financially, under the circumstances, devoting as much time as some of them do. C.- This is right. This ls a problem. And also, because, as Dr. Green once· said: 11 It takes a great many patients to Dr. Clark 15 support a homeopathic physician, because homeopathy tends to keep patients in a curative stream." D.- I started to say that I think one of the problems with orthodox medicine is that as the successive scientific discoveries have come along, they have tended to over­ emphasize certain aspects. The bacteriological revolution led to treating the disease and forgetting about the patient. I think the pendulum swung around a little bit now that medicine has become more complex, but specialties have developed the tendency to treat an organ or an area •.• c.- The patients are unhappy with this. I wish I had a dime for every patient who says: 11 You are the only one that has listened to me, and how I, myself, feel." D.- I am sure that is true. Let me ask you, when you were practicing, how much of your practice would you say was homeopathic, and how much would be more or less orthodox medicine?• C.- My circumstances were such that I was able to pretty much develop a practice in the direction that I seemed best able to serve ••• D.- Excuse me. Did you have a full-time practice or did you practice part-time? C.- Part-time, always. I worked with the Planned Parenthood Clinics in the slums of Cleveland. I felt that this was a specialty, too, in trying to reach people to give some thought toward planning their families. '11 his was a very rewarding field of work, tho' not financially. The other .or-. Clark 16 part-time was with a homeopathic private practice. If patients were not happy with my medical approaches, or wanted only orthodox allopathy, I felt they would be better off, and I would, too, and my homeopathic patients as well, if I didn't try to mix. Occasionally I felt there was a definite need for an allopathlc medication for an individual, that homeopathy was not for this person. Or I needed a diagnostic work-up. I had very good relations, I felt, with diagnostic clinics and with allopathic physicians who had some knowledge and respect for homeopathy. But I always referred where I felt it was in the patient's best interest to do so. D.- Yes. I would assume most homeopAths--there are certain conditions where surgery would be indicated, or •.• C.- Oh yes, you want the best surgeon around. D.- Hight. And you wouldn't hesitate. How about something like antibiotics? C.- If this seemed necessary, I have given them. But I usually referred, for these cases are generally where there is a high uncentrollable fever and massive infection and anti­ biotics are needed; they usually are h0spital cases. There were very few of them, in my practise. D.- Acute cases, what you would ordinarily use, but if it was a chronic case or there was no pressure, then you would probably use a homeopathic remedy in preference. C.- Yes, bu~ I usually had very good results in acute and chronic. At least the patients seemed to be satisfied, and like most Dr. Clark 17 homeopathic practises, acute conditions are rare, as patients are maintained in this curative stream. D.- That is one thing, you are in a good position, you and the patients can judge best. Let me ask you to expound a little further on your relations as a homeopathic physician with the allopathic. As you are aware, in some areas there have been problems, the hospital facilities,--although I think most of the homeopaths I have talked to seemed to get along very well. c.- I always felt I got along very well. I used Woman's Hospital in Cleveland when necessary, or Huron Road Hospital; if they were in Huron Road Hospital, it was a surgical case, and I had referred the patient. I could sit with an obstetrical case and assist surgical. In Woman's Hospital I could sit with the patients and watch them; I usually talked things over with the Chief of the Service; he under­ stood my approaches and we got along all right. Several doctors in both hospitals had been part-homeopath and part- _allopath and most had had good relations with the earlier homeopaths in Cleveland. There was a kind of mutual respect because each knew their work and its limitations. They could work together. In some areas of the country, and with some individuals,· I knew that this has not been possible. D.- Yes, I think in some areas the homeopaths definitely have been handicapped in terms of hospital facilities and things like that and have felt excluded to some extent. c.- And also felt considerable prejudice. Dr. Clark 18 D.- Yes. Would the fact that you had a part-time practice,rather than a full-time practice, make you more acceptable than if you were, say, a little more competitive? C.- This is probably true, in our modern world, but I also think this was balanced by a feeling that I was not full­ time, that I wasn't one of the crowd, as it were. I was on the fringes. And so I felt it necessary to make an effort to keep in touch and know to whom I would refer patients. I happened to believe that one should not leave their children to servants to raise, and I never have. There are many women physicians who feel this way, and if their husbands are physicians, they are apt to only practice part-time, too. But I was always glad I had a profession that I could turn to from time to time in one way or another, wherever I was. D.- would you say the fact that you are a woman may have facilitated or hindered your progress in medicine? I know this is ••• C.- I think being a woman at Woman's Hospital very definitely helped, because their incorporation required a certain percentage of women doctors, and at Huron Road Hospital, because I was considered a homeopath, which their charter then required, as I understood it. I think in some hospitals where the men were very competitive it could have been more difficult. D.- Yes, I think that is probably true. You know it is one of the ironies of medical history that the admission of women into standard medical schools led in turn to the elimination Dr. Clark 19 of some of the women's colleges ·and had the net effect of reducing the number of women in medicine. c.- Yes. I am not sure they are directly related. Because along with the equalizing of opportunity in medicine there were other areas that became equal and opened doors to women. 'rhe great fervor of the feminist movement had been toward professional status, and it thus lost a great deal of impetus as other areas opened. One aim in maintaining the Woman's Hospital was to try to assist women in medicine. rhis, too, has fallen by the wayside, because women do not 1 feel there is the pressure of prejudice to be overcome. D.- On the other hand, I think women did encounter some problems-­ women medical students ••• c.- I think in the early stages, yes. D.- How about your--did you encounter anything like this in your experience? C.- I wouldn't say so. No, we were a class of about eightY, and ten were women, and I was a class officer for two years; it was more or less traditional that a woman would be a class officer. And I was older than many in the class when I went to medical school. But in many ways there was a sort of curiosity; people wanted to know you, and many doors were opened. I woul6n't say I ever felt any prejudice. D.- I meant to ask you earlier--did you take a four year under­ graduate course, or a ••• C.- Four year college course, A.B., majoring in history, and pre-med; then worked five years in the public library; then Dr. Clark 20 went to medical school for four years followed by two years hospital work, rotating internship and Pediatric residency. D.- Yes, that is an interesting background, isn't it? C. - ~vel 1, my family--I have had people say to me: 0 Your folks have put so much money into your education you must earn a lot of money and take care of them. 11 My parents believed that the more education a person had, the richer their own life would be, and also their capacity to enrich the lives of others, and a certain responsibility to do so, was implied. I w2s not being educated just to make money. So that here again my approach to life itself may be different to many others. D.- What was your father? What did he do? C.- My father was a civil engineer with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in the Interior Department. And my mother was the granddaughter of this homeopathic physician who bad helped bring her up, when her father died. D.- One of the questions I had intended to ask you, but I don't know that you can really help us on this score, is whether you had any information with respect to why homeopathy gradually disappeared from the homeopathic colleges. C.- The American Institute of Homeopathy was the first medical organization by about a year or so--I forget now, but it was organized a short time before the American Medical Association. rhe homeopathic physicians did organize, but 1 the American Medical Association went right ahead much faster Dr. Clark 21 and further with their organization, and established controls over tbe medical schools, much of it needed. As I look back on some of the things I heard, the homeopathic practice had the n carriage trade 11 , the "silver doorknob trade 11 • n.nd I think physicians are endowed with as much envy as any other profession or business ••• D.- It is a highly individualistic profession. C.- Yes. I think it was disturbing to have this highly ind1vidualisti, phase in the medical field. That is one thing. ~ut I also feel that general medicine took hold of the scientific advances and of teaching of the medical sciences much quicker, as in the fields of pathology, surgery and anaesthesia, etc., than did the homeopath. This, too, was one of the things that led to controls of medical education and to the demise of homeopathic teaching. It is a combination of things, really. D.- I think historically your analysis is correct, because medicine had been plagued with theories, particularly in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and there was a revulsion against theories almost at the time that homeopathy was coming into its own. And there was tendency for men physicians to simply attribute homeopathy--feel that 1 t was simply another wild theory ••• C.- So this became another "theory", and was so-labelled without adequate examination. D.- And they were concentrating on scientific medicine. c.- Of course another thing the older physicians used to say, Dr. Clark 22 8 that Dr. Constantine Hering and all of the allopaths who started off making fun of homeopathy, but then seriously examined it, were even greater converts than the original homeopaths! Such as Dr. Constantine Hering and Dr. Wilbur 3ond. o.- Yes, I think homeopathy does appeal and certainly in the nineteenth century it appealed to people of more intellectual tastes, or a more philosophic turn of mind. C.- Yes. You saw Dr. Stephenson's studies, didn't you, on the 9 backgrounds of homeopathic physicians? D. - Yes. c.- I thought that was rather interesting. J.- Hight. But I came to this conclusion from studying nineteenth century homeopathy and nineteenth century medicine long before I met Dr. Stephenson, or even got interested in homeopathy. 10 - The caliber of men, I think, of Dr. Holcombe of Louisiana and some of the other nineteenth century homeopaths, that these were men of, I think, considerable intellectual status and stature ••• We discussed it in general, but I was wondering, do you think that the rise of scientific medicine as such, and specialization in the twentieth century brought an end to ••• C.- These were very definite contributing factors. I previously listed a few such items leading to the demise of homeopathy: 1. The extreme individualism of most of the homeopathic physicians. 2. The lack of a business-like approach in Dr. Clark 23 meeting the scientific advancement, their critics, or in teaching. 3. The lack of a strong central organization dedicated to the teaching and preservation of the basic principles of homeopathy. 4. The increase in conformity within our society, and the increase in conformity in medical thinking, with disparagement, instead of investigation, of so-called theories. For instance, {a digression on theories) when I was in medical school there was great debate whether the teachers should be practicing physicians or whether they should be pure science and research men. Most of the students felt that if a physician-teacher had practiced or was practicing, they got a great deal more practical information from him. 5. Then, there has been an increase in malpractice suits which has served to curb some of the individualism in medicine, and add pressure to conformity. 6. ·rhere is the growing isolation of homeopathic physicians. It is not easy to be different in itself, and it is not easy to be different when you are alone with it. Two minds are always better than one; there 1s a definite loss of consultation possibilities. Dr. Clark 24 Very often in a difficult case a homeopath wants to follow it through but is unable to because his training or confidence hasn't gone that far, perhaps. 7. Then the public medical education via the TV ads, magazine articles, and the black-out on anything which is not A.M.A. approved, permits no public discussion of homeopathy, or other medical ideas. 8. ·rhere is the small size of hospitals which have been devoted to homeopathy, and they have become economically impossible. A notice from England recently showed trat the English homeo­ pathic hospitals may have to be olosed if there are less than two hundred and fifty beds. Yet nursing care for a very sick person is apt to be of a personal quality in a smaller hospital than in a large one. The intensive care units in the large hospitals are an attempt to meet this need, but basically if one has known a small country hospital, they have known the care there to be much more personal and individual­ istic. 9. Also I feel there 1s a general loss of the-­ what I referred to before as the psychosomatic approach of syrnpatico-objectivity toward persons as individuals. The physician has to be Dr. Clark 25 object_ive, but he has to also have enough empathy to be subjective and know how the patient feels, especially the homeopathic physician. But I do feel that the lack of teaching facilities and the lack of clinical facilities has ••• D.- And yet the Hahnemann Medical Schools and Hospitals were fairly strong at the turn of the century, in 1910, even as late as ••• C.- Yes. I heard from graduates from Hahnemann in the JO's that there was one popular teacher there, I never knew his name, who in his classes made fun of homeopathy; he tended to curb any serious inquiries through ridicule, which these doctors quoted. So that successive classes of students came out of Hahnemann with a decreased interest in or respect for homeopathy, and no knowledge of its basis. D.- You know--but it took more than just, say, one school. There was a general decline. And as you say, it may well be that this tendency was conformism and the pressure, subtle and not so subtle, of the A. N. A. c.- The homeopathic physicians did not return to their colleges to be teachers by and large, as did the general medicine people. It is much easier to obtain a faculty of allopathic physicians than I believe it ever was of homeopathic physicians. D.- I think this may be true. The fact that the homeopathic physicians are interested in dealing with the patients rather than, say, abstract inquiry or research as such. Dr. Clark 26 c.- There was something in their make-up that was self-defeating in this area of teaching and modern research. It 1s interest- 11 ing that Dr. Panos was a teacher, a trained teacher. Her husband and father were physicians, and then she became a physician. But she has retained a great deal of this dynamic force of a born and trained teacher, in her work, and in the Postgraduate school. D.- Dr. Julia Green, I gather, obviously had it, too. C. - Yes, Dr. Green had 1 t. I think Dr. Hubbard had it. Dr. 12 Sutherland and Dr. Roberts, too. They were great teachers. D.- Let me ask you--how do you feel about the American Foundation for Homoeopathy and its various programs, the Layman's League, etc.? Do you think it ••• c.- I think it was a very necessary step in the homeopathic picture. It did provide this approach to the laymen that Dr. Green, as I have mentioned, demonstrated in getting to know her patients in good health, and it gave the laymen a feeling of a stake in the future of homeopathy, which the British, I believe, always had through the British Homeopathic Association. D.- Do you feel that the laymen's associations as they are constituted now are effective? I know this is a difficult question. C.- Well, I have not·1been in touch with any of them for many, many years. I think they were effective largely as an educational field, but I don't feel they were really ever effective in the medical world--but this was not their basic Dr. Clark 27 or original intention. D.- They certainly have not so far enabled homeopathy to revive in any sense. C.- That 1s right. Yet they are requesting homeopathic physicians in their communities, and trying to keep it alive. D.- What about the postgraduate course the Foundation offers? Do you think this 1s beneficial or do you thlnk some other approach should be used? c.- It happens to be the only approach at present, and the only one I dealt with. It was very, very good. There were two things I felt were missing that the older physicians had. They had training in the pathology of the drugs; how they could alter pathology or create it; and also the lack of clinical facilities. This was attempted by bringing in patients from time to time, tal<:1ng a history, prescribe, and then at the end of the two weeks or six weeks to re-take and evaluate the progress. I remember the chronic case of a child that I took. I don't remember what it was about, but I remember being struck with the remarkable progress toward health in two week's time, on one prescription. D.- I was going to ask you--do you feel that there is any better method by which it would be possible to revive homeopathy, or to train people in homeopathic--in other words, do you feel that there is any other approach that could be used? c.- I think perhaps the idea of the Foundation being a research center with a small hospital, or out-patient department connected with it, with full laboratory and teaching facilities Dr. Clark 28 is perhaps an ideal way, but the staffing of it--I do not see how this can be done, especially as I think we both recognized that the averag~ homeopathic physician is not teacher-oriented. He is patient-oriented. D.- Nor is he research-oriented. C.- Nor is he particularly research-oriented. Dr. Stephenson and Dr. Guttentag are rare exceptions in modern times. Dr. Green did keep her records in such a manner that they could be left to a medical library, and I believe they were to have been left to the National Medical Library. So that the careful going over of her medical records, with knowledge of the basic laws of homeopathy in prescribing, would be a great proof. She had one case that she reported of a child with muscular dystrophy who was discharged from Johns Hopkins as incurable, could not even turn over in bed. I believe the father committed suicide on this; and it was a very poor family-inheritance picture. Well, in about a year's time she had the child on the road to recovery, and then reported twenty-three or four years later, that this child was married and had a child of her own. D.- That is interesting, isn't it? C.- Iihis is in the homeopathic literature. 1 She sent the records to Johns Hopkins, and they--so far as I recall the instances-­ I don't remember the details now--but this is in the records, 13. too--there was no acknowledgement. Dr. Griggs of Philadelphia reported a few similar cases of muscular dystrophy at the second meeting. Dr. Clark 29 D.- Now if they were to do research, do you think that it ought to be conducted along two lines? One would be clinical testing, the blind, double-blind testing, and do you think the sort of thing Dr. Stephenson 1s doing is valuable? C.- Yes, I think both are valuable. I think homeopathy needs to be proved for some types of minds in the electronic and the ultra-scientific sphere, but I think the clinical proof can also exist, with careful record keeping and observation of the various laws of homeopathy, in patient response to medicines. D.- I think you already mentioned that you feel that homeopathy, in a sense, should be considered a specialty within internal medicine. C. - Yes. D.- Do you see any way that they 'might revive or bring back the teaching of homeopathy in the orthodox schools? Do you think there is any possibility for this? C.- I think much that homeopathy originally espoused has come into general medicine: 1. Hahnemann, for instance, developed the Schema used in the physical examination. The repertories are printed in this format, as both Doctors Kent and Boeninghausen put it together,· starting with the head and going to the feet and then the various systems, including mental symptoms. The regular physical exam now done uses this schema. Dr. Clark 30 The further analyses of the systems through the laboratory, has been added onto it, which is good. 2. The custom of adjust~ng the dose to the patient and in trying to treat the patient as a whole has more relevance now. It used to be; "What disease do they have and let's treat that." There is still some of that in medicine. rhe 1 need for a diagnosis has never been as important to homeopaths as it is to patients or to allopaths. '::Che homeopath was matching the disease picture of the patient with the disease picture of the drug. And this kind of incessant study is what many physicians shy away from. They want a 11 miracle drugn and life is much simpler. D.- True. People do look for simple answers. C.- Yes, we all do, instinctively. D.- Panaceas are age-old, I guess. Let me ask you, are you familiar with the strife or controversy between the International Hahnemannian Association and the American Institute of Homeopathy on the issue of pure versus ••• C.- ·well, only by hearsay. I wouldn't say I had been involved 1 in that. ~ hat was before my time. The Institute had a certain prestige, and membership in it gave to the staffs of certain so-called homeopathic hospitals control of the hospital through their charters. Therefore whether the doctor was a homeopath or not, he had to belong to the Dr. Clark 31 Institute in order to be on the hospital staff; he was never really interested in homeopathy. To protect genuine homeo­ pathy, it became necessary to set up the International Hahnemannian Association. But I think this is pretty much gone now, and the union of the Institute and the International indicates that the membership is primarily interested in homeopathy, of various sorts, shall we say. D.- Yes. ro 1 all intents and purposes they have merged. But there were--I know in the older days there was a period when there was quite a bit of disagreement as to precisely the extent of homeopathic treatment, and how much one could deviate from it. C.- Yes, I don't think the changes in the Institute Constitution have really protected this status of homeopathy of various degrees, but it should prevent the same situation arising again as once it did before. D.- But primarily because of the decrease in number of the homeopaths. c.- That 1s it. D.- It may not be as significant as it was then. well, you may be glad to know that you are one of the youngest persons I have interviewed. v.- ~ Oh, dear, that is sad. D.- Dr. Stephenson--the majority of them, of course, have been in the sixties and seventies. Dr. Griggs, I think, was ninety-four. C.- Isn't he amazing? Dr. Clark 32 D.- Oh, he is. C.- Dr. Green. vihat was she? Ninety-some? And still going strong, up to her death almost. D.- I never met her, but Dr. Griggs was amazingly active and alert. I spent the afternoon with him, and he could talk so clearly. In fact· my typist was commenting on this fact. How alert he was, strong in his voice, and ••• C.- Yes, a marvelous person. D.- Yes, incredible. Well, there is no point to my asking you about the events leading to the merger of the two groups because I assume you are not in on the inner politics of this at all. ~vhat about some of the efforts to gain ~ecialty status for homeopathy in the A.M.A. Now I know there were some suggestions as to the route that homeopathy should follow. C.- Yes. Dr. £isfelder said if he could get a hundred people to sign up for the specialty board, and ask for specialty. status, the D.H.T. (Doctor of Homeotherapeutics) would be recognized by the A.N.A.~ don't know the details of this, really. I did not sign up for it because I felt that some of those on the list were not really interested in good homeopathy and were not practicing it, and it was another area of activity that required more work than at the time I had to give to it. I fully sympathized with Dr. Eisfelder in trying to do this, that it should have been done years before, and I felt it was important, but I couldn't cooperate at the time. Dr. Clark 33 D.- What about the efforts to get homeopathy taught in the state medical colleges? I think Washington. Are you familiar with those? I think this was in the 1950's. c.- No, I am not familiar with that. D.- You haven't anything ••• c.- I think unless the hospital or the medical school can have a certain number of beds assigned for homeopathic treatment as had Dr. Guttentag in California, merely to teach homeo­ pathy verbatum, is not ade~uate. I think it needs the visible clinical proof and dedication to its principles by teachers who understand them. D.- Let me turn this tape over ••• (End Tape 1 - Side 1) (Begin Tape 1 - Side 2) D.- Let me ask you about Dr. Panos. You mentioned her name in connection with Washington. Can you tell me something about her? C .- She is the daughter and widow of homeopathic physicians. After her husband's death, she made up pre-medic requirements - and went to medical school. She went to Ohio State but was also accepted at Western Reserve University. Then when she finished her internship in Florida, Dr. Green was looking for an assistant and a number of us urged Dr. Panos to seriously consider it, because we felt that she would then be getting her homeopathic training from a msster. And this she did. She has stayed on there since. She worked with Dr. Green in the Foundation and for the Foundation, and is a Dr. Clark 34 teacher in the postgTaduate teaching school. She was trained as a teacher and taught for a number of years. She· has two daughters, and is a very presentable, young, and capable woman, who is liked by everyone. She kept herself free of any kind of nside-takingu in any of the disturbances that have come along. She tried to keep her eye right on the principle of genuine homeopathy, the teaching of it, the dispensing of it. D.- Let me ask you, and this is going back to where we were before. Are you familiar with some of the political activities of the homeopaths in connection with the A.M.A.? For example, in the role of Medicare? C.- No, I am not. D.- You haven't kept up with it. Well, of course you are pretty well removed in a sense from the main societies. What is your feeling about the efforts by chiropractors and osteopaths and others to come into the fold, more or less. Some of them I would say are trying to get under the fold of the ••• C.- I wish I knew more about them in order to make what I feel would be an unprejudiced or more intelligent judgment. The fact that people go back to them for treatment indicates to me that they are giving some kind of service that 1s helpful. I had an uncle who was very badly crippled from polio. He had been to many physicians, to osteopaths and chiropractors and gotten no help; but one chiropractor was Dr. Clark 35 able to help him. The others didn't. And so he told me: "When you go through medical school, don't blind yourself to all the various phases of cure or help available to people--that it isn't all in one fold." So I have tried to remember a _kind of tolerance toward a11 ideas, yet examine them to be sure they are not harmful. One homeopath did report a case in which he felt the co-administered osteopathic ~reatment was harming the action of the homeopathic remedy. I don't know about this question, of admission of chiropractors into the homeopathic medical societies, but it would be impossible to prescribe the remedies without medical training, so I am sure I would not endorse or approve their admission. I feel that certain areas could be understood better and a more fair judgment made by a careful evaluation than just to say: u~vell, they are outside. ·rhey don't have our training; therefore they are Q.Q. good. 11 ~-/hat are they good for? D.- Well, I can speak as a layman on this topic, too. I have never gone to a chiropractor, although, as a historian, I would say that the chiropractor arose because of the necessity. He arose simply because the orthopedic surgeons were simply not doing anything about lower back problems in particular. In fact, it is not until World War II that the orthodox profession has really even attempted to do anything. And I am not so sure that they may not have some empirical techniques that may be useful. c.- One of the ball teams, I was told, employed a chiropractor, said to have been trained by 11 Bonesetter 11 Reese, of Ohio. Dr. Clark 36 'rbis person was highly recommended to me when I had a sore knee, for which injections were prescribed to control pain. As I could hardly wal 1-~ I went to him fearfully. He said the knee cap had slipped out of place; and took x-rays of the area. I could feel him adjust it into place. Though I wore an Ace bandage for a few days, since then I have had no pain in that knee, no trouble. Now, I don't know what it was. But I was helped; I felt the cap slip into place. D.- I think what you are saying is the reasonable approach. rhat 1 is my own feeling. c.- It is a matter of ethics with the A.M.A. that no M.D. refers patients to chiropractors, and in some states to osteopaths. If I were ever to recommend a patient to anyone, I would certainly want to know something about him personally, and his work, first. But I was recommended to this person by a friend who had gone to him with bursitis, and was greatly helped when the x-ray treatments and injections had not helped her, and this chiropractor had. She is not a woman given to any kind of experimenting. She is a very objective, sensible person. D.- I have an older brother who is a very pragmatic type, an intelligent individual who had some back problems for which he had been treated for some time with no success, and then he, too, was talked into going to the chiropractor, and he said that he had one treatment and he walked out of the place feeling a hundred per cent better. Again, I think you and I both realize that one swallow does not make a Dr. Clark 37 spring, but I do think that the medical profession should be a little more--let's say be willing to investigate. I do not think that they have done enough investigation of some of these. C.- I think this is true. D.- Well, I think you would agree thst chiropractors should not be admitted, say, to a homeopathic organization as such, in terms of their training. The osteopaths, I think, are in another category. They do have ,formal training. You mentioned drugs and that reminded me of a question I wanted to ask you. Did you have any problem getting homeopathic drugs when you were practicing? Did you have access to ••• C.- No, I never did, because I ordered from the homeopathic pharmacists; Ehrhart and Karl in Chicago, or Mr. Furr in Washington, D. c., the Washington Homeopathic Pharmacy, or Boericke and T~fel in Philadelphia. And some homeopathic medicines can be gotten at the regular drugstores. Tincture of Arnica, and nux vomica, are medicines that go well on ,. ,.,.. ~ .. - ..., .. ,.,. ...-.riv any household medical shelf. D.- You would not have encountered any problem with druggists or with the other profession on this question of prescription? You know the fact that the homeopaths do not prescribe expensive drugs has brought some friction with the pharmacists. C.- Oh yes. Well, the pharmaceutical industry is one of the large lobbying blocks in Congress I have been told, and it is .r 11 big business. 11 urrhe Changing World of the Pharmacist,!'-;) in Dr. Clark 38 this article from a regular medical journal: 11 An analysis of a large sample of prescriptions filled in the United States between January 1, 1956 and 1957, showed that ninety­ four per cent were dispensed as drugs prepared by the pharmaceutical company rather than compounded at the drugstore. Fifteen leading companied provided seventy-one per cent of the specialties prescribed. The average price per prescription was .~2. 74. n This is a study made by .Rutgers University College of Pharmacy. So that in a way the pharma­ ceutical industry has stood to lose more through homeopathic pharmacy than even the A. M.A. has, and as there are doctors in pharmaceutical businesses, homeopathic pharmacy is a double-edged sword in a way. The foreign doctors have told me that our expensive laboratory diagnostic facilities are simply impossible in their countries. So they are trained in careful patient observation which is a cardinal principle of homeopathy. They are also unable to afford the high cost of drugs through the pharmaceutical houses, so that the international control of medicine that is growing up through the World Health Organization is going to make for further medical conformity, regardless of socio-economic conditions of a country, or patient needs. Homeopathy has an appeal in India and South America because of its low cost. D.- Yes, I think that ls true. I think that a number of homeopaths have suggested that India, or places like this, may be the areas where homeopathy can survive, and re-influence, say, America• again. Dr. Clark 39 C.- There have been studies in England where homeopathy was used in industry, which showed fewer days loss of work, and quicker healing, etc., so that it was a more economical form of medical care for industry to utilize and make available to workers. D.- While we were on the subject of chiropractors, I meant to ask you how you feel about lay practitioners in homeopathy. People like Mr. Green up in Boston, Massachusetts? J¥r C. - Here again, it is a very mixed kettle of fish. I think some lay practitioners can have a mixed sense about the use of drugs and patient illness. Also here there is no professional confidentiality required of the doctor. For the patient's own safety and for the layman, this can be a very dangerous area. Of course anyone can give first-aid to the best of their ability. You give an aspirin and nobody asks any questions. Put on a tourniquet; carry your snake-bite kit, etc., this is fine. If it is carried one step further, as in an intestinal distress, perhaps, using pyrogen or arsenicum; or in car-sickness to give cocculus--this, I would say, is Just a little more specialization than first-aid. Yet it is still not really medical care in the full sense. But I have a strong feeling against the laity getting into any kind of genuine medical practice. First-aid and temporary help--fine, we all need it at some time. D.- In other words, what you are suggesting, I think, is that the lay practitioner may be tempted to move into areas in which he can do some real damage. Dr. Clark 40 C.- Hight. D.- I guess that is the danger. You would agree ••• C.- Even chiropractors, the so-called "good ones", I am told, will not touch you until they have had x-rays made, for instance. D.- Yes. Let me ask you a question a little closer to home, and again I suddenly realize you probably can't answer it. Do you know much about the survival of homeopathy in Texas? c.- No, I don't. D.- I was wondering what its status is. C.- I don't know anything about it. I wish I knew something. D.- In fact, I don't recall hearing of any organizations in Texas from any of the other homeopathic practitioners. In Louisiana as far as I know it is more or less dead completely. I don•t recall ••• Well, what about Ohio? Was there a homeopathic society? C.- There was a state society in Ohio, and I belonged to that when I was there. The homeopathy included was largely due to the efforts of Dr. Allen C. Neiswander, the elder,. of Pandora, and Drs. Pulford, father and son, of Toledo when they were living, and Dr. Charles A. Dixon, of Akron. Dr. W.W. Young is keeping it going with Dr. Benjamin Goldberg of Cincinnati. D.- Yes. I didn't get a chance to see those two. But i"Ir. Kaufman interviewed Dr. Young and Dr. Goldberg. I did see Dr. Neiswander out in California. c.- The son of the doctor from Pandora, Ohio. Dr. Clark 41 D. - Yes. C.- His father was a very good practitioner. D.- Ob you were talking about the old Dr. Neiswander. C.- Old Dr. Neiswander, yes. D.- I think the present .Or. Neiswander must be about sixty. C.- I guess he is getting up there, too. D.- He is in Los Angeles. C.- Yes, he is very fine. He made an interesting study comparing the age of death of allopathic physicians and homeopathic physicians, as reported in the A.M.A. Journal and the AIH Journal. As I recall it--this is in the literature, too-­ the homeopathic physician lived about twenty years longer than the allopathic in general, and kept his faculties usually to the end. D.- ;rhat speaks well for homeopathy, doesn't it? C.- Well, for constitutional chronic care, he felt it did, and I think it is true. D.- Let me ask you, what do you feel is the future of homeopathy? Do you think that it can survive, or will it survive? C .- It won't survive perhaps under that name, or within this present organization, but I am congenitally against think_ing that anything which has value can really disappear completely. It may go out for awhile, but it will be rediscovered, perhaps in a different form--under a different name. However, history being what it is, and the fact that the principle of homeopathy goes back to a discovery of Hippocrates, which sent Hahnemann off on his study, would indicate that it will Dr. Clark 42 not be lost forever. D.- It has been suggested to me by various individuals that modern medicine has already adopted much of homeopathy. c.- l think this is true. We touched on this, and went off on something else. D.- I think in terms of immunology which could be interpreted ••• C.- It could be interpreted as a form of homeopathy. It is attempting to use one of the laws of homeopathy, but backwards I might say. D.- Yes, in fact I think vaccination was started by FJ.Cihnemann himself, was it not? If I remember correctly. C.- But in a different form. I have forgotten the details of it, but it was more that the correct homeopathic rem~dy builds the antibodies at the time of need, and it does not build them through a false disease first. Therefore, it is not necessary to go through the false disease produced by the vaccination to stimulate antibody production. But if the disease does attack and resistance has been built up prior to this time, then the disease can usually be controlled homeopathically. Children who get violent coughs that hang on after colds--1t 1s almost like an abortive whooping cough--the homeopathic whooping cough remedy will clear these up. Now they don't get a full whooping. cough. Maybe they would have been better had they had the whooping cough. The older homeopathic physicians felt that childhood diseases were a way of throwing off inherited weaknesses, especially through the exzematosis, e.g., measles, etc. Dr. Clark 43 But I feel that though injections in babyhood may abort the disease, it does not always prevent them from having it. What it does to their systems in aborting a childhood disease I am not sure. All I know is that these coughs wovld only clear up under the homeopathic Pertussin or Drosera, the main whooping cough remedies. D.- It is true that we are replacing the natural immunity-­ maybe substituting artificial immunity for it. And this conceivably could have disastrous results in the. long ·run. Certainly if we should have a break-down in society, we would be in a very difficult situation. C.- The human organisms have to adjust to so many chemicals and additives and pollutants in the atmosphere and the water, and the chemicals of medicines, one wonders how much the human system can adapt to without, shall we say, mutations of one sort or another. D.- There is no question that the human organism can take an awful beating. C.- It has to. D.- But as you say, just look around at the tremendous pollution, and the chemicals, and the additives. c.- We have a great many more mental cases in hospitals than we used to, for instance. D.- Well, it is one of the axioms--at least up until tranquilizers came along--that the number of mental patients bore a direct ratio to the number of beds. Literally for a hundred years-- 1850 to 1950--as :nore and more beds came into operation, Dr. Clark 44 more and more cases were diagnosed. And we do have the problem that frequently--it is not that we necessarily have an increase particularly, but we have better diagnosis. c.- This is true. D.- And a more complex society. A person can probably function fairly well ••• C.- And the community Knew how far he could function, and then protected him ••• D.- He had a role. They knew him, and made allowances for him, etc. Whereas in an urban society, this is not quite so easy. c.- No, but even in a complex society some of the older physicians used to say they could walk down the street and spot the people who had some nervous disability. The tics, the ex­ pressions on their faces, and certainly it is true going from large cities to small towns this variation is noticed. You can notice a great change in the way people move, or push each other around. The tensions are much greater in a heavy populated area, and this may account as well as our improved diagnostic procedures. D.- I have spent a lot of time in New York, and I am really conscious there of the pressure. You can sense it. The aggressiveness. C.- And some people can't take it. D.- I think it is a fine illustration of that study which was made recently on rats, which demonstrated they can be crowded together even under perfect conditions and still become aggressive. Dr. Clark c.- Yes, the Scientific American of 1961 or 1962 by John B. Calhoun. It was a marvelous study, and it has been quoted over and over in Planned Parentho8d circles. D.- New York is a fine illustration of these people who just get irritable with each other, but of course New Yorkers scarcely meet under ideal conditions. Going back, I think you said in effect that you did feel, or you certainly hoped, and you felt that homeopathy or the ideals of it would survive, although you were not sure it would necessarily survive as homeopathy--let's say under the name of homeopathy. Do you think the name itself has fallen into disrepute, and that it might be better for homeopaths to pick up some other name. C.- Well, I haven't thought of this particularly, because labels don't bother me very much. I want to know what is behind the label. D.- But in society ·they are important, are they not? C.- In society they are important, and it could be that a different name would be helpful. Homeopathy would almost have to come in, as a new discovery with a great deal of fanfare, and its new name. 0.- Nearly all of the homeopaths with whom I have talked have been, as I said, well into the sixties or beyond. I am thinking of Dr. Weaver, Dr. Sutherland, Dr. Guttentag, Dr. Smith--A. Dwight Smith,lhand I could go on--Dr. Griggs-­ and it is true that one gets the feeling that homeopathy, as such, is dying out. Now it is still quite strong in Dr. Clark 46 Pennyslvania and some of the other Eastern states, and to some extent in California, but there are many areas where it literally has died out. And I was wondering do you have any ideas or any suggestions as to what might save it or could be done, what should be done? C.- When on the Foundation Board I proposed that doctors be urged to leave their libraries to the Foundation and their medical supplies. It is in my will, and it is in nearly all homeopathic physician's wills, something to this effect. Otherwise, the libraries become disorganized and disintegrate, and the medicines disappear. Some preservation of these things should be done. I also feel that where it is possible, homeopathic funds must be kept for homeopathy, because millions have disappeared into other areas that were originally set up for homeopathy. I also ••• D.- This is particularly true, I think, with hospitals and medical schools. C.- Particularly true. One question is what happened to the Hering Laboratory, or to the funds of homeopathy for hospitals that once existed? D.- I am not familiar with the Hering Laboratory. What ••• where was this? C.- This was a part of Hahnemann Medical College, I understood for research work in homeopathy. D.- In fhiladelphia? C.- In fhiladelphia. And ••• D.- How do you spell that, H-e-r ••• Dr. Clark C.- H-e-r-i-n-g. Constantine Hering. Dr. Hubbard knew more about this than anyone else I have known. Dr. Stephenson probably knows about it. Then the homeopathic organizations in this country should have in their charter that when they reach a certain size of diminution, all assets become the property of the British Homeopathic Association, because this exists under an Act of Parliament, and therefore it is apt to stand as long as there are any homeopaths there. But to see the funds dissipated in one country where another country is needing help, 1s something homeopaths should be willing to examine. Now our fine old homeopaths who really had all this very close to heart are dying off, and I don't suppose anything will be done to preserve their art. The doctor's records should be kept in such a manner that they could be useful to a medical library, which would analyze them according to homeopathic principles, as well as allopathic. A doctor's homeopathic library and medical supplies could be left to some central authority, even the National Medical Library, if they were interested in this matter; they could at least rest there for further investigation, and be used again under whatever name was deemed appropriate. D.- Of course, the problem is that a good part of homeopathy is a matter of practice and experience and this ••• C.- This is the sad part. When a great tree falls, nothing takes its place. D.- Right. This 1s not shown by the records, and you can only look at the patient and study the patient, and realize .•• Dr. Clark 48 c.- Dr. Dixon's long-time patients used to tell me that he would sit in bis window and watch them come up the walk, and then he would say: nr saw you walk up. I know just what remedy to give you." He would listen to them a little while, and then he would give it to them. Then he would say: "Now I am bus,y today. You go on. Come back in one month (or three months)." He was a dutch-uncle to them. He oould yell and scream at them, but he let them lean and weep on his shoulder. Now, ten years later, after his death, his patients still miss h~m, quote him, and love him. D.- But as I said, after all, medicine is an art and always will be an art, and obviously homeopathic physicians I think are practitioners of an art--the ability to size up the patient and to know the patient. C.- Yes, and some doctors will have this quality and some never will. D.- And the records themselves will not show this. As you said, the records are complete, that you know the types of medicines, prescri9t1ons ••• c.- Symptoms ••• D.- And you get a complete case history, and these could be useflll. c.- I think Dr. Green's were definitely made out for thirty or more years to be that way--a case history and progress reports, following prescription reactions carefully and closely, according to Bering's rules of the curative process (the Dr. Constantine Hering above). Dr. Clark D. - .-Jell, I know the National Library of Medicine is very much 1 interested in keeping any records, and I am sure that if homeopaths will indicate an interest, I know they would be ••• C.- I will write Dr. Panos about this because she would have inherited these records. And what her plans are about them, I don't know • .dut she, too, I know, keeps very careful records, having been trained by Dr. Green. I would be glad to check on that. D.- Yes, because I know the National Medical Library is catholic in its approach--that they are interested in the history of medicine and health, not restricted to any particular group. C .- Yes, well, this is good. All medicine needs some agency of this sort. D.- Yes. They have facilities, and I am sure that if they were approached about this they would be very happy to do it. Well, let's see, I think I have covered most of the main topics that I wanted to bring up with you. Unfortunately you haven't really been too active in the organization as such. We were interested in the organizational problems, and internal problems within homeopathy. c.- Yes. I knew some of it. My mother was more in it than I was, I guess. Mrs. Peebles 1~was involved in it somewhat. D.- ·when did you know Mrs. Peebles? c.- I have known her a good long while. She lives next door to my sister, so I have known her very well for a long time. And I have known Mr. Green 1 through Dr. Green. I was aware of some of the personal difficulties, but I felt they arose Dr. Clark 50 not from any disloyalty to homeopathy, per se, but to ••• D.- Personality clashes. C.- Personality and approaches to life. And like Dr. Panos-­ we loved them all, and felt it was unfortunate. Dr. Green used to have homeopathic physicians--she started a school in her home in the summers; the doctors were boarded with her patients around town. 1'he lecturers were doctors from 18 around the country, and one of them was Dr. Austin. He was John D. Rockefeller's doctor. And I remember--I must have been about twelve or thirteen at the time--he said that one day he gave Mr. Rockefeller a remedy, but he said: 0 This is for your grandfather, not for you." 11 his idea that life is a continuity and homeopathy attempts to treat the individual constitution, as a continuous life process from their inherited background on through, seemed very sound. These doctors--they were interested in everything-­ even in exercise. I went on a trip with Dr. Green once, and every morning and evening she exercised every joint in her body for fifteen minutes up until she was about ninety. And Dr. Waffensmith in Connecticut was a believer in benefits of regular exercise. T'bey were strong believers in a simple diet. Seldom did they use coffee or tea to excess, and smoking--oh, a couple of the doqtors smoked quite a bit and all the other doctors would frown on them for it. 0.- It is interesting how many doctors today have given up smoking. One time the medical profession is taking the ••• C.- Yes, and then some of the chronic treatment remedies--during Dr. Clark 51 the time of treatment, any chemicals and some foods were frowned upon. Vinegar, spices, herbs, tea, coffee, cocoa, lipstick, deodorants--Dr. Dixon was adamant about any of these things. If you were using them, don't waste his time or the patient's money, was his idea. D .- Well, this, I think, wa.s one of th:t p~oblems of homeopathy, that it did tend to become--at least unon some of its foes-­ almost a cult. C.- Yes, it seems cult-ish, but more in the way it was handled, perhaps. But what they were trying to do was to cleanse the system, which would allow the remedy to work in a clear field; that when treating on the high potency level, the dynamic life force of the individual and trying to bring changes in .that for the person's own good health, and good order--he couldn't have it messed up with other chemicals or certain foods inhibiting remedy action. I never felt that I knew enough homeopathy or understood its pathology this deeply, but I am quite sure that Dr. Dixon did and Dr. Green did. They had been taught in their generation, what in my generation was not taught. Therefore, I see your point. 'l1 he records may be incomplete because they have not this background of pathology. '1he literature will have, but case records alone may not be sufficient. D.- There are many subtle evidences that a doctor, as you, your­ self, know. You look at a patient and consciously, or subconsciously note a number of things which you might not put in tbe case history. They are almost intangible; some Dr. Clark 52 of them. You know how you glance at a patient, and you automatically, I am sure, spot certain things, and yet it would be very difficult to describe these in a case history. C.- I had a patient once, who bad been through all kinds of tests even for polio, because of terrific aching of all her bones. It would come on as the sun went down and _disappear around five o'clock in the morning, so she could sleep. But all night she was miserable with the aching. Well, what are the remedies that have night-time aggravation of symptoms which will clear in the daytime? irhis symptom starts to make a pattern. There are several remedies with this. Her total laboratory testing, and spinal tap, every­ thing was negative; so you have to examine a deeper plane of life: a functional, emotional, or inheritance picture. Remembering a family characteristic as a second symptom lead, I gave the homeopathic Syphilinum lM, a pretty high potency. Next day she told me she had a good night's sleep, free from pain, and everything much improved over the next few weeks. This prescription was made on the basis of a family characteristic, but mainly on the night-time aggravation of her chief complaint. Dr. Rust taught me this remedy. He had a case of asthma which was severe but only at night, never an attack in the day-time. So he gave Syphilinum on this one symptom alone, and cured the asthma. These inherited m1asms and their symptom pictures--which each of us has, which come from the great scourges of the middle ages, present a symptom-picture which the homeopathic "similar" can cure. Dr. Clark .53 This is another field where homeopaths differ. D.- In the nineteenth century••• C. - Yes. wihere the homeopaths differ, is in their acceptance of the chronic disease explanation Hahnemann tried to present, as a sort of mutation in the organism, that result from massive epidemics, one might say, of diseases that affect the health-inheritance syndrome. D.- Of course the original homeopaths were quite successful simply by countervailing the excessive doses which were given by the orthodox physicians in the nineteenth century. C.- Yes. But also they didn't have the many different drug diseases to contend with, and so they could treat the disease. Sometimes just eliminating the drug disease--what is the old standard cure for a cold? Hot bath, whiskey, go to bed for 24 hours? And the whiskey 1s merely to distend the peripheral blood vessels, and quickly counter-effect the chilling. D.- Of course they were dosing excessively with calomel back in the nineteenth century. They provided enough mercurous chloride to give these people acute mercurial poisoning. You know the prescriptions frequently would call for dosing with mercury to touch the patient's gums, so that the homeo­ paths, I th1nk, were fortunate. jI1hey came at a time when there was a great deal of excessive dosing, blood-letting, and blistering, and purging, and so on by the orthodox physicians. C.- How people stood it so long I don't know. I have heard the Dr. Clark 54. poor people in clinics say: "Don't let me go to that hospital, u when they have to go somewhere for medical care. "Don't semd me to that hospital. All they do is cut there. 11 ~ell, it is too bad if a hospital begins to get this reputa­ tion among the poor~ I listened to the babies yelling in the clinics, and I have wondered sometimes if the treatment wasn't worse than the disease. Maybe tbe children would get well with better care, and better food, without the doctor. D.- well I must confess that I feel that we are using highly dangerous drugs, and that there is a too casual use of antibiotics and sulphides. I would like to feel that the profession is aware of this and certainly the better ones are, I am sure of this. C.- Yes, they are. D.- But there is no question that if we acquire a new miracle drug, everybody gets it. This has been true of medicine throughout history. After all, I guess it is human nature. Have you any comments that you would like to make on your own, or you feel you would like to say on behalf of homeo­ pathy, as a homeopathic practitioner. C.- Well, I am very grateful that your University is trying to make this study of one of the arts of cure. It is not the only one, of course, but to round out the whole medical picture requires an objective point of view on all the phases of the art of cure. And this I hope, could include chiro­ practy and osteopathy and almost anything that seems to go into making people feel better. I have wondered about some Dr. Clark 55 of these slenderizing health clubs that are starting up now, that are going to give people a new image of them­ selves. Why is it people require a new image of themselves and what does it do for them? I think this will be an interesting aspect. Having grown up in a homeopathic family and with a homeopathic physician, and we had a few real acute conditions in our family, I feel very confident that homeo­ pathy has a great deal to offer. So I am grateful to you for helping to preserve it a little bit. I don't know as I have contributed very much, but I think some of those you have interviewed have. D.- I think you have been very kind, and I think you have contributed, and you are a very articulate spokesman, I mi£ ht say, for homeopathy. 'l~bank you very much ••• (End Tape 1 - Side 2) Dr. Clark 56 Footnotes 1. Julia Green, M.D., of Washington, D. c., now deceased. 2. Allan Sutherland, M.D., Brattleboro, Vt.; Wyrth Post Baker, M.D., Washington, D. c.; William Weaver, M.D., Bala Cynwyd, Pa.; James Stephenson, M.D., New York City. J. Benjamin Goldberg, M.D., Cincinnati, Ohio; William w. Young, M.D., Chillicothe, Ohio. 4. Otto Guttentag, M.D., San Francisco, Calif. 5. Constantine Hering, German born physician who came to the United States in the 1820's, a founder of homeopathy in this country; Samuel Hahnemann, founder of homeopathy. 6. See, fiomeopathic Principles ,ln Therapeutics, by T. H. McGavack, M.D. 7. Professor'f"homeopathy at Hahnemann, lived in Lansdowne, Penn., now deceased. 8. German born physician who became America•s leading nineteenth century homeopath. 9. James Stephenson, M.D., New York City; Homeopathic Ph1losophx (Chestnut Hill, Mass., 1964); Homeopathic Research (ibid); Homeopathic Pharmacotherapy (ibid.). 10. William H. Holcombe, M.D., early Louisiana homeopath. 11. Maes1mund Panos, M.D., Washington, D. c. 12. Elizabeth Wright Hubbard, M.D., of New York City, died Dr. Clark 57 in 1967; Allen D. Sutherland, M.D., Brattleboro, Vt.; Herbert A. Roberts, M.D., lived in Shelton and practiced in Darby, Connecticut. lJ. William Bentley Griggs, ,C.D., now of Jenkintown, Pa. 14. Henry w. Eisfelder, M.D., Roslyn Heights, New York. 15. Mr. Arthur B. Green, Needham, Mass., editor of The Layman Speaks. 16. A. Dwight Smith, M.D., of Glendale, California. 17. Elinore Peebles, Homeopathic Information Service, Chestnut Hill, Mass. 18. Alonzo E. Austin, M.D., New York City. Dr. Lucy Swanton Clark 58 INDEX Allyn, Dr. Wilfred E., Sr., 5 American Foundation for Homoeopathy, 46 American Institute of Homeopathy, 2, 30 American Institute of Homeopathy Journal, 41 American Medical Association, 32, 34, J6, J8 Arkansas, 2 Arndt-Schulz Law, 8 Arnica, Tincture of, 37 Austin, Dr., 50 Baker, Dr. Wyrth Post, 3 Birdsall, Dr. Gregg Custis, 1 Boericke, Dr. Garth, 11 Boer1cke and Tafel, 37 Boenlnghausen, Dr., 29 Bond, Dr. Wilbur, 22 British Homeopathic Association, 26 Calhoun, John B., 45 Cleveland, Ohio, 7 Columbus, Ohio, 7 Dixon, Dr. Charles A., 40, 48, 51 Drosera, 43 Ehrhart and Karl, 37 E1sfelder, Dr. Henry, 32 D:r. Clark 59 England, 2, 39 Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital, 6 Furr , Mr. , 37 George Washington University Medical College, l Goldberg, Dr. Benjamin, 40 Green, Mr. Arthur B., 39, 49 Green, Dr. Julia, 1, 3, 4, 5, 26, 28, 32-JJ, 48-51 . Griggs, Dr. William B., 28, Jl-32, 45 Gutmann, Dr. William, 6 Guttentag, Dr. Otto E., 6, 11, 33, 45 Hahnemann, Dr. Samuel c., 8, 29, 53 Hahnemann Medical School, 11, 25 Hering, Dr. Constantine, 8, 22, 47 Hering Laboratory, 46 Holcombe, Dr. William H., 22 Homeopathic Foundation Summer School, 5 Homeopathy, theory of, 4, 8 Homeotherapeutics, 32 Hubbard, Dr. Elizabeth Wright, 6, 26, 37 Huron Road Hospital, 5, 17 India, 38 International Hahnemann1an Association, JO, Jl Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Clark 60 Journal .Qf. the American Medical Association 41 Kent, Dr. 1 29 Materia medica, 4 Mercurous biniodide, 10 National Library of Medicine, 28, 49 Neiswander, Dr. Allen c., 40, 41 Nux vomica, 37 Ohio State University, 33 Panos, Dr. Maesimund, 26, J3, 50 Paris, 2 Peebles, Mrs. Waldo c., 49 Pertussin, 4J Planned Parenthood Clinics, 15 Pulford, Drs., 40 Heese, "Bonesetter", 35 Ross, Dr. Louise, l, 4 Rush, Dr. Benjamin, 12 Rust, Dr. Carl, 5, 9, 52 Scientific American, 45 Sharp, Dr. John R., l Smith, Dr. A. Dwight, 45 Spain, 2 Stephenson, Dr. James H., 22, 28, 29, Jl Dr. Clark 61 Succuss1on, 10 Sutherland, Dr. Allan D., J, 26, 45 Syph111num, 52 University of California, 6 Waffensmith, Dr., 50 Washington, D. c., l Washington Homeopathic Pharmacy, 37 Weaver, Dr. William A., Jr., 3, 45 Western Reserve University, 33 Wo~an•s Hospital, 17-19 World Health Organization, 38 Young, Dr. William w., 40