Pioneering women homeopaths

Marie Melanie d'Hervilly Gohier Hahnemann 
 Melanie was born in Paris on February 2, 1880, to one of the oldest French families of nobility. This was the post-revolution Paris of Napoleon. She grew up surrounded by art, music and the liberal aristocratic society of her day. As there was no formal schooling for girls she was educated at home, where she was taught to draw, make music, sew and manage servants; skills needed by a a good wife and mother. She was a keen horsewoman and swimmer and practiced pistol shooting and hunted; she painted... But Melanie had other ambitions. She stated later that she "had a vocation for medicine," dissected birds as an eight year old and even saved the life of one of her father's friends. She writes, "I had extraordinary inspiration when I was near a sick person. When I was twelve I saved the life of one of my father's friends who had been involuntarily poisoned by opium. Whilst the doctor, not recognizing the
poisoning, had treated him for indigestion and finally threw a cloth over his head declaring that he was dying of cerebral congestion, I was preparing a decoction of lettuce which the patient took, and it gave him back his life in a short time." 
 She was very close to her father, Compte Joseph d'Hervilly, but her relationship with her mother, Marie-Joseph Gertrude Heilrath, was troubled. Melanie writes that her mother, increasingly jealous of her youth and charms finally became openly hostile, attacking and injuring her with a kitchen knife. Melanie's father then arranged for his daughter to live with her painting teacher Lethiere and his family when she was fifteen years old. 
 In the ensuing years she became an artist and poet of some repute in Paris. She had a studio and taught painting but her classical style became outmoded as the Romantics became the vogue. She was often seen in elegant intellectual circles and had several high-ranking admirers. 
 In the 1830's a number of her friends died. During these difficult years, Melanie also suffered from abdominal pains later thought to be some kind of neuralgia and she was unable to work for two or three years. A cholera epidemic was killing 800 Parisians a day in 1832, when Melanie heard of the valiant efforts of an English homeopath practicing in Paris named Dr. Quin. She was able to acquire a copy of the French edition of the Organon. Against the advice of friends and family she made a precipitous departure for Kothen to meet Hahnemann and her future. 
 The mail coach from Paris to Kothen took fifteen days and was a dangerous journey, especially for a young woman traveling alone. So she dressed as a man -something not altogether uncommon for a liberated Parisian woman of her day. This, however, did not go over well in Kothen. Dr. Puhlman wrote years later that "the older inhabitants ...told me many years ago veritably shocking stories of the young French girl who came to Hahnemann as a patient, and who walked about the streets in man's attire." Initial consultations for the purpose of treating her disease led to more personal meetings between Samuel and Melanie and he proposed marriage to her three days after they had met. They were married on 18 January, 1835, three months after they had first met. After a short time in Kothen, they moved to Paris where they finally settled in opulent surroundings on the Rue de Milan. From the beginning of the Paris practice, Melanie was intimately involved in it. According to one account, she sat at the desk, took the case and made prescriptions while Hahnemann sat in a comfortable chair near her, listening and offering advice and encouragement from time to time. It seems that in a very short period of time she had become a competent homeopath. Hahnemann kept journals of all the cases he treated. Forty-four volumes cover the period of 1801-1844 in Germany and 1835-1844 in France. Eighteen volumes alone, represent the notes from their years of practice in France. These French volumes are in both Samuel's and Melanie's hand. Four volumes are almost exclusively Melanie's cases which she managed alone or in the presence of Hahnemann. 
 Because of her youth, her motives for marrying Hahnemann were often questioned. The controversy increased after Hahnemann's death, when she continued their practice and printed business cards calling herself "Madame Hahnemann, Docteur en Medecine Homeopathique". 
 Samuel had considered her the finest homeopath in Europe -but the authorities would have none of this and prosecuted her in 1847 for practicing medicine and pharmacy illegally. She was fined a nominal one hundred francs and banned from practice. Subsequently, she continued more discrete practice and also returned to poetry and painting. 
 In 1851, Sophie Bohrer came to live with Melanie. She became Melanie's adopted daughter. With this new companion, the pall of desolation and loneliness which had been with her since Samuel's death, lifted. Later, Melanie arranged a marriage, a common practice of the time, between Sophie and one of B?nninghausen's sons, Karl. Karl came to live in Paris and Melanie now practiced freely again as her son-in-law, a physician, was granted permission to work in France through Melanie's influence with the Emperor. 
 Throughout this time, Melanie was in full possession of Hahnemann's estate which included the sixth edition of the Organon and his case notes. She was frequently approached for permission to make his work public but she steadfastly refused as per his precise instructions. On his death-bed Hahnemann had given Melanie sole responsibility over his estate and told her to postpone publishing his writings until the "world was ready for them". Not even B?nninghausen, one of Hahnemann's closest associates, knew with which methods the master had prescribed in the last years. She received proposals from America, England and France to publish Hahnemann's legacy. She suggested that if she were compensated financially for the time she would have to take off from her practice (her sole means of support at that time) to prepare the papers for publication, she would be willing. Her death laid an end to those plans. 
 After Melanie's death, Sophie and Karl took control of Hahnemann's papers and manuscripts. These remained unseen by the homeopathic community until 1918 when the B?nninghausen family released them for publication. On May 27, 1878, Melanie died in Paris of pulmonary catarrh. She was buried next to Hahnemann in the cemetery at Montmartre. 
Margery Grace Blackie 
 Margery Grace Blackie grew up surrounded by homeopathy. She was routinely treated homeopathically as a child and her uncle (who died when she was three) was Dr. James Compton Burnett, a great proponent of homeopathy. The youngest of ten children, she was born on February 4, 1898, in Redbourn, Hertfordshire. 
 In 1911 she and her family moved to London and she spent her teenage years growing up in the city. When she was sixteen, the war was declared and even though she was busily preparing to enter the matriculation form in preparation for medical school, she and all her classmates spent the school days knitting socks, mufflers and mittens for the soldiers. In 1916, she passed the London University exam. The five year old Margery's wish to become a doctor was soon to be realized. At the age of nineteen, in 1917, she began her general medicine training at the School of Medicine for Women at London University -the only medical school in London at the time offering complete training for women. 
 In 1923 she sat for, and failed, the final tests in Medicine, Surgery and Obstetrics. She tried again and again and finally passed in 1926. Two years prior to this, she had started working as a resident at the London Homeopathic Hospital. Despite the years at orthodox medical school, she was strongly inclined towards homeopathy and said on one occasion: "In my teaching hospital, when I saw patients dying, I didn't have the satisfaction that the others had of believing that everything possible had been done. I felt they hadn't had the only thing that might have cured them." 
 Another story which affords us a glimpse into her convictions and personality goes as follows: One day on rounds at the allopathic teaching hospital with the Chief, Blackie was asked what she would prescribe for a patient. "Whether I forgot where I was or whether it was bravado, I know not; but I replied Nux vomica. My friends grew pale with fright but nothing happened. Passing in the corridor later he stopped me and said, 'a very good idea. I always carry it', and pulled from his waistcoat pocket two small bottles of pills -one Nux vomica and the other Carbo veg. 
 At the age of twenty-six she became House Physician at the London Homeopathic Hospital. The hospital was staffed almost entirely by men. She worked with Drs. J.H.  Clarke (who had joined the staff in 1881), Charles Wheeler and her mentor, Douglas Borland. In 1926 she opened a private practice and at the age of thirty she attained senior status in the medical profession by becoming a Doctor of Medicine. She was the only woman candidate at the University of London in 1928 to be awarded this distinction. 
 There now followed twenty years of successful private general practice. However, she also continued to work at the LHH, especially in the children's department and the out-patient department. It was here that she worked with Margaret Tyler, who was a dominant figure in the hospital at this time. In 1949 she was elected president of the British Homeopathic Society and held this post for three successive years. In the mid-1950s she was the editor of the British Homeopathic Journal for one year, and also served in the LHH on the Committee for Research and Drug Provings and the Committee for Education. 
 Her crowning achievement in these later years was succeeding Sir John Weir as Royal Physician. This took place in 1969. She continued working at the newly named Royal London Homeopathic Hospital until the age of sixty-nine at which time she became an honorary consultant there (1965). In 1964 she was elected Dean of the Faculty of Homeopathy, a post that she held until her resignation at the age of 81. She died on August 24, 1981. 
Frederica E Gladwin 
 Frederica was born in 1856 in rural Connecticut. She initially trained to be a teacher and taught high-school in Chester, Pennsylvania for many years. She came across homeopathy and studied medicine, graduating from the University of Missouri. She continued her studies under Kent and was one of his greatest followers. She helped him in putting part of his repertory together and corrected some mistakes in earlier editions. 
 She was one of the first students to graduate from the Philadelphia Post-Graduate School of Homeopathy and served at the school as Clinician, Professor of Children's Diseases and Professor of Repertory. She taught from 1933 until her health failed. She also taught Pierre Schmidt how to use the repertory. 
 She was handicapped by extreme deafness but this did not stop her. H. A. Roberts writes, "characteristic of her interest in homeopathy and her determination to let pass no opportunity for furthering the cause she loved, she picked up a penny [she found outside of her classroom] with the remark that she was going to potentize it for the students of homeopathy. Through her manipulations of that one cent, and seeking contributions towards that end ...she was able to create a loan scholarship fund of about $800 for the use of the students. This was to a large extent done by the odd change in the pocketbooks of her own patients." 
 She was very actively involved in homeopathy until the end of her life. Her accomplishments include being one of the founders of the American Foundation of Homeopathy and a Trustee of that foundation. She was a frequent contributor of articles, many of which are printed in the Homeopathic Recorder. In this journal, she was one of the doctors who answered questions posed by other doctors. Her feistiness and humor shine through in her responses, some of which are quoted here. She died on May 7, 1931. 
Margaret L Tyler 
 Julia Green and Sir John Weir both wrote biographical sketches of Margaret Tyler on the occasion of her death. They are reprinted here. Julia Green wrote of Tyler in the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy in 1962: "I think you all know something about this wonderful woman. The only child of a Peer in England, she became heir to much money at her father's death. Being by that time in the practice of the homeopathy that she loved and wished to share, she picked perhaps a dozen young men and sent them to Chicago where Dr. J. T. Kent was teaching students in the best of homeopathy. These youths took their knowledge back to England and scattered through the country. The best known one is still living, Sir John Weir, physician to the royal family in London." Sir John Weir writes a much lengthier article in The British Homeopathic Journal. 
 "With the passing of Dr. Margaret L. Tyler Homeopathy loses one of its outstanding personalities. She owed much to her parents, Sir Henry and Lady Tyler, who early on imbued her with the family characteristics of enterprise, thoroughness, and selflessness in service for others. Dr. Tyler's homeopathic interest was early aroused by her mother's skillful care of a large family. She took up the study of medicine in order to be able to help the poor patients at the London Homeopathic Hospital. There she worked for over forty years, in various departments, and was appointed to the Staff of the hospital in 1914. When due to retire a special appointment was made to retain her services, and she carried on to the end." 
 The out-patient department, she declared, was the happiest place in her life, and she always looked forward to meeting her friends, as she termed the patients. Her clinic was large, and the patients appreciated her devotion to them. 
 She was a great teacher and many sought the post of clinical assistant with her, to get wise and refreshing help. She could draw deeply from a storehouse of homeopathic knowledge... She read a drug each night before retiring, in different books to feel the spirit of the remedy... 
 About 1907 her great anxiety was for the future supply of homeopathic physicians, as there was no definite post-graduate training, though much had been done by individuals. She was a great believer of going to the fountainhead, as she termed Hahnemann, and feared that much of the homeopathic practice was getting away from her ideal. She then, with her mother, instituted the Sir Henry Tyler Scholarship Fund to help doctors go to the U.S. A. to study under Dr. James Tyler Kent, a keen Hahnemannian in practice. This created a stir and much controversy, but Dr. Tyler carried on with her efforts, and many of the physicians of today studied under Dr. Kent between 1908 and 1913. 
 Dr. Tyler remained a learner all her life, hence her freshness of outlook, as shown in her many pamphlets on the various subjects of Homeopathy. She loved to dip into the past, and to recall the triumphs of the early believers. 
 We owe much to her writings. The study of Drosera awoke a new and deep appreciation of this drug, and for the last few years she had developed an interest in the nosodes, finding confidence by her results in the exhibition of these remedies. Indeed, she often said that her usefulness as a physician was greatly enhanced by her knowledge of these apt-to-be-forgotten remedies... 
 Her Drug Pictures of homeopathic remedies, culled from every possible source, are a storehouse of information; she consulted freely and deeply with the giants of the past; her references were meticulous, and she went to great pains for verification. She felt that the information was essential for others, and that was enough to stimulate her to further endeavor. 
 The Correspondence Course on Homeopathy, for those who could not attend lectures, has been of great help to many... Dr. Tyler spent years over its production. 
 But perhaps her greatest field of usefulness was through her Editorship of the journal Homeopathy, for the eleven years from 1932 to 1942. Its influence was world-wide, and has been described by a contemporary as "one of the best journals of pure Homeopathy published." One American Society took it as a text-book for its studies... 
 Behind the physician was a woman who was deeply imbued with the ultimate religious value of life. In that spirit she did her work. She was trusted and respected by many, for her fine character, personal integrity, and complete lack of all selfish ambition. One of her admirers has written: "I am convinced that Margaret Tyler will be recognized as a very great woman and homeopathic pioneer in the future. She will rank with that good Victorian company in which we honour the names of the many richly endowed adventurous souls who saw the future in the instant and clung to their faith, and, for right of wrong, brooked no interference in their concept." 
 Despite her failing health, she worked to the very end, and died in service. It is typical that one of her last quotations was: "At the end of life we shall not be asked how much pleasure we have had in it, but how much of service we gave in it; not how full of success, but how full of sacrifice; not how happy we were, but how helpful we were." 
 Dr. Tyler's memory and influence will live in the hearts of many. She died on 21 June, 1943, having "served her generation, by the will of God." 
Elisabeth Wright Hubbard 
 In July 1959, when Elisabeth Wright Hubbard was elected to be the president of the American Institute of Homeopathy, she wrote this short biography for the journal, which encapsulates her life as a homeopath better than anything I could have pieced together. 
 "Greetings from your new President who was born into Homeopathy, having been brought into the world by Dr. Byron G. Clark, mutton-chop whiskers, pearl square Derby, frock coat, span of gray horses to his brougham! He cured me of tubercular cervical adenitis with Tub. bov. 30 malaria with Natrum muriaticum 1M, severe measles with Pulsatilla, rheumatic fever at 9 with Rhus toxicodendron 6x for all of which I forgave his calling me "Bub"! During my internship at Bellevue I was cured of a violent delirious scarlet fever by Dr. Rudolf Rabe with a single dose of Ammonium carbonicum 10M. Dr. Clark gave me my first copy of The Organon, C.E.  Wheeler's edition. Small wonder that I respected and believed in Homeopathy which had served me so well. 
 After Graduating from Barnard College, during which time I determined to become a doctor, my father advised that I go to the best of traditional medical schools. I graduated from Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, Class of 1921, the first class that took women. Two years' internship in Bellevue followed, including six months' pathology where I autopsied 65 Coroner's cases. One vacation during medical school was an Asiatic trip; another (my first real job) working at Woodside Sanitarium for Nervous and Mental Diseases under the Swedenborgian homeopath, Dr. Frank Wallace Patch, in Framingham Centre, Massachusetts. He told me to study Homeopathy in Geneva, Switzerland, with Dr. Pierre Schmidt and after graduation I went to Europe, working in the Allgemeine Krankenhaus in Vienna under the younger Von Pirquet, and in Stuttgart under Dr. Adolf Stiegele. After a trip to Greece, Egypt and the Holy Land, I was privileged to study pure Homeopathy for nine months under Dr. Schmidt and, thereafter, under the great Paracelsian student, Dr. Emil Schlegel, in Tubingen. 
 To start my practice I was invited by Dr. Alice H. Bassett of Boston, then partially retiring, to do her acute work, and was placed in charge of the Homeopathic Clinic at the Massachusetts Memorial Hospital, and was one of four attending medical chiefs at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Roxbury, Mass. After a year I opened my own office and had my own laboratory. During this time I edited The Homeopathic Recorder for three years, abstracting homeopathic literature in five languages and making an index of that homeopathic literature. 
 In 1930 I married Benjamin A. Hubbard, who had two children, gave up my Boston practice and began general practice in New York City, where he was on the faculty of Columbia University for a third of a century. I am on the Courtesy Staff of the Flower-Fifth Avenue Hospital here. We have three more children. 
 Dr. Lawrence M. Stanton was my mentor and physician here until his death. I had the privilege of being President of the I.H. A. for two years, and served many years on the Board of Trustees of the American Foundation for Homeopathy and, recently, as Trustee of the Institute. 
 In addition to Dr. Schmidt's magnificent groundwork in Homeopathy, I was myself a student for two years at the Post-Graduate School of the Foundation, under such men as Dr. Cyrus Boger, Dr. George A. Dienst, Dr. H.A.  Roberts, Dr. Eugene Underhill and Dr. Fredericka Gladwin (sic), and have since taught Homeopathy in the Summer School. I have been privileged to know and learn from such homeopaths as Sir John Weir of London, the late Dr. Margaret Tyler, Dr. Douglas, Dr. Fergie Woods, Dr. Arthur, Dr. J.H.  Clarke and Dr. C.E.  Wheeler. 
 Thirty-six years of almost strictly homeopathic practice have convinced me that, magnificent as are the achievements of modern medicine in diagnosis, laboratory work and sanitation, Homeopathy, were it to be judged only by its results, if properly practiced, is the mainstay of healing." 
Dorothy Shepherd 
 Like Margaret Tyler and Margery Blackie, Dorothy Shepherd grew up in a homeopathic household in England. She remembered the familiar ritual of little sugar granules dissolved in a glass of water and the thrill of sipping this mixture out of a spoon. What she does not have memories of are wearisome days in bed and doctor's visits. As a child she loved pouring over Hering's Domestic Physician and at the age of ten announced, to the horror of her family, her intention of pursuing medical studies. 
 She reached her goal and began training at Edinburgh University as well as Heidelberg and other continental schools. There was no reference to homeopathy in her training; it was a dim memory from childhood. She specialized in midwifery and surgery in women's diseases. Her residency was spent in a "homeopathic" hospital where she spent most of her time in surgery and none learning homeopathy. The doctors at this hospital prescribed many remedies at once and patients usually left the dispensary with four or five bottles of colorless water in them. When Dorothy asked one of the doctors "why not put it all in one bottle?" she was frowned upon. Some years later these doctors finally gave up the pretense of calling themselves homeopaths but by this time she had tired of their mumbo-jumbo and taken a new post as a surgeon, disgusted with so-called homeopathy. 
 Shortly thereafter, she heard about the Hering College in Chicago and Dr. Kent. But she was still skeptical. It took the following experience to convince her. She developed excruciating sinusitis from the boat passage from England to America. A physician at the college prescribed Nux Vomica CM. He told her to expect an aggravation and then improvement. "It was all double-Dutch to me. I smiled in a superior fashion and thanked him. I could not believe that such a microscopic dose could make any difference let alone give me more pain." But of course, she did have a rapid cure of the sinusitis and subsequently threw herself into her new studies with enthusiasm. 
 During her schooling in Chicago, she had trouble concentrating and her memory was not as strong as it used to be. On the recommendation of a fellow student, she took Tuberculinum 1M which restored her mental acuity and near-photographic memory. From then on she was converted to high potencies. 
 She died on 15 November, 1952. 
 Sara Nielsen, RN, is a graduate of the Pacific Academy of Homeopathy in Oakland, California, works part time at the Hahnemann Pharmacy and practices aboard S/V Delphyn, in Sausalito. 
Julia Minerva Green 
 Julia M. Green graduated in 1898 from the Boston University School of Medicine. At that time it was still a homeopathic school. She was one of 15 women in the class. She was a member of the International Hahnemannian Association, and was a regular at all the meetings. In 1922, with the closing of all the homeopathic schools, she realized that homeopathy might be lost. With a group of like-minded physicians she formed the American Foundation for Homeopathy. The AFH had several "bureaus" -those of investigation (education), research, publication, and publicity. The education was offered as a six-week postgraduate course taught, initially, by Drs. Dienst, Gladwin, Woodbury, Green, and Boger. The AFH course was responsible for training the generation of homeopaths before and during WWII -Dixon, Spalding, Shupis, Neiswander, Wright-Hubbard, and the generation after -Williams, Panos, Clark. Julia Green held a tight reign in the running of the AFH as her archived correspondence makes clear. She had a solid vision of what homeopathy was and how its business should be conducted. 
 She practiced in Washington DC. She is said to have made house calls on a bicycle -having lead weights sewn into the hem of her skirt to keep it in place while she pedaled. Julia Green was a soft-spoken woman who loomed larger than life. Her practice was taken over by Dr. Maesimund Panos, who had preceptored with her, but she continued to see patients almost until she died. Dr. Julia Green died December 11, 1963 at the age of 92. 
 By Julian Winston 

Interview with Sheilagh Creasy

Many regard Sheilagh Creasy as the preeminent woman homeopath in the world today. She is not a doctor and has no medical certification, yet she is in demand, worldwide, as a finely-tuned classical homeopathic practitioner, lecturer, and scholar. She has been in practice for over forty-five years as a professional homeopath and remembers George Vithoulkas as a young engineer when he came to study homeopathy alongside her in South Africa. First influenced by her Irish homeopathist-grandmother, she has lived and practiced in England, India, and parts of Africa where she lived for a time in the remote bush, treating severe pathologies the likes of which many of us have never even heard. She is truly a world-class homeopath, having treated generations of families from South Africa to India, from the United Kingdom and Western and Eastern Europe (Chernobyl disaster victims) to America. Sheilagh is the consummate classical homeopath and as is the right of anyone who holds to time-honored principles, she feels obligated to defend her Hahnemannian
inheritance. Sheilagh's school in Marin County, California -The Institute of Classical Homeopathy, is considered by many to be the "most Hahnemannian" in the U.S. , and students are expected to honor the precise teachings of the early masters, before going out on their own. 
 I met with Sheilagh in early spring in Tiburon, California, in a stunningly beautiful setting (her school) overlooking San Francisco Bay. I arrived early and was introduced to Sheilagh by her devoted staff and we sat down together in her lecture hall. Here in front of me was a shy grandmotherly personage, dressed in a knit suit and scarf with a tiny antique-gold Indian gurkha-knife pinned to her lapel. When she spoke, I was surprised at how youthful her voice sounded, juxtaposed to the wisdom of years reflected in her deep brown eyes. 
 AH: Please, tell us about yourself, we know so little about your beginnings. 
 Creasy: Well, my grandmother was a homeopathic doctor in Ireland and my grandfather a medical doctor. I was always intrigued listening to her stories. She just practiced her homeopathy and her husband practiced his orthodox doctoring. It was a rather unusual relationship in that way. 
 AH: What was it about homeopathy that most appealed to you? 
 Creasy: At age five months, my daughter had a bout of gastroenteritis; the Second World War was on and we were living in India at the time. The orthodox doctors couldn't control it and she went into a coma and we were advised that we should take her immediately to the local jail. 
 AH: The doctors advised you to take your gravely ill daughter to an Indian jail? 
 Creasy: Yes, (laughs) you see, the jail-house doctor was a homeopath. I remember knocking at the door and entering this vast place, (laughs) and there was this Indian homeopath who had been given this little room, and he came and felt her head and her tummy, and asked a few questions, and he prescribed. And that was it -she got better! When I saw that happen I thought: "This is my second opportunity -first my grandmother's influence, now this, and who am I not to start investigating?" 
 AH: What were you doing at that time, if not homeopathy? 
 Creasy: Well, I was in the Army at that time, in British Intelligence, doing cipher. The signals coming back from Burma had to be deciphered and transcribed and that's what I did. My husband was in the Burma campaign fighting the Japanese. I had been asked to visit various hospital wards. 
 AH: When did your actual studies of homeopathy begin? 
 Creasy: I started serious investigations of it after my daughter was cured. It was in about 1949 that I began treating whatever I could from the usual box of remedies and fortunately I laid my hands on Kent, the Organon, and Boericke for my studies. And then after the war, we found ourselves on a troop ship to Shanghai to relieve my husband's company of those who had been imprisoned. We remained in Shanghai and I continued to study and treat wherever I could but it was really just small stuff. 
 AH:Were you studying on your own? 
 Creasy: Yes, and after that it was England because then the communists came down the mainland -which takes us to 1951. We had to leave in a hurry, leaving all our possessions behind -everything, including my grandmother's homeopathic books. So we lost all that and my husband's firm had us in England for a year and a half while they were trying to figure out how not to loose the Chinese market in general trade. The communists took control of that as well, you see. 
 AH: So then you landed in Britain... 
 Creasy: Yes, and that's when I met Noel Puddephatt who was a teacher in England of classical homeopathy, something which was very hard to find at that time. He was taught by (John Henry) Clarke. Phyllis Speight was his colleague. There were other domains that started but they were mostly druids and this meant that 'homeopathy' was of a different type and kind all together, starting their own line of organization. That is the line that's the problem. I believe the other line -the classical line that I followed -was started by Quin, then on to Clarke, and so on. 
 AH: I know Quin was a very remarkable man, celebrated almost as much as Hahnemann in Paris. He is credited with bringing homeopathy to Britain as well as single-handedly keeping the doors open to lay practice in the United Kingdom. Is the other group that you mentioned the one that started the Society of Homeopaths in Britain? 
 Creasy: Predominately, that's right. They were the druids, most of them, and they included John DaMonte and Thomas Maughan, Robert Davidson, Peter Chappell, and others. 
 AH: What happened next? 
 Creasy: I corresponded with Puddephatt. We were posted out to South Africa which is where I met a young man named George Vithoulkas -who was also a student of Noel Puddephatts -and Noel contacted me to say that George was coming out to South Africa as an engineer. George came every Saturday for the whole day and we studied with the group we had established by then, and Noel came out of South Africa and joined the group and taught us. A lot of good teaching was going on then. We were trying to organize the Organon -as if we could, but we tried, just to modernize it. And Kent as well; we were going through Kent, trying to modernize things. This was in the mid-1950's and I had been practicing for four or five years when George came. 
 AH: How did you get posted to South Africa? 
 Creasy: My husband was in British wool; through his work he was transferred to South Africa. And it was in South Africa that I began my studies and practice very much in earnest. When you are out someplace more than a hundred miles from a doctor, you soon find that you must get on with it, and that's what happened to me. It taught me many very good lessons. 
 AH: So, you were out in the bush treating the natives? 
 Creasy: Yes, I treated anybody. It was then that I really saw what Yaws was like. It's of syphilitic origin -big sores all over the legs. I saw diseases I had never seen or even heard of in any part of the world before. In India I had seen different diseases but in South Africa there were more poisonous bites and sepsis and much more of that type of problem. I was dealing with sepsis far faster than I had ever done before. I saw worms coming out of children's nostrils, pouring out. You don't see that kind of thing normally, and if you take on one farm you take on one hundred laborers and all their families. So even treating one farm was a huge practice. 
 I stayed there for about 15 years, into the mid 1960's. We left the Transvaal and moved to the Cape with its still different types of illness. The predominant miasms I saw in South Africa were Tubercular and Syphilitic. 
 AH: You moved from Johannesburg to the Cape and started up another practice? 
 Creasy: Yes, I had left behind a group of homeopathic students in Johannesburg, in the Transvaal, in which I was very much involved. At the Cape I became involved in another smaller group of homeopaths but our paths were different. I was very much interested in Hahnemannianism and they were going into mongrelism; I didn't name it that, Hahnemann had, but I too could not stand it. The local homeopaths had begun to prescribe compound remedies which I felt was madness. Some of the bottles contained Syphilinum, Psorinum, and Medorrhinum, taken three times a day. 
 I was horrified but I held on in order to try to teach the classical method. I had received my degree for the specific reason of teaching mentally deranged cases. I was teaching a lot of mentally disturbed people. It was most interesting to see their mental pathology coming through in a way which corroborated my homeopathic experience. My plan was to specialize in using their art to understand their dark and depressive sides when I finally returned to England. It had landed in my lap, in the way of opportunity. I often pursue this 'art-reading' when I treat children. One can read the developing state of their minds, as homeopathy takes effect. 
 AH: Very interesting, then what happened? 
 Creasy: I left for Bedfordshire, England. I came in on the remnants of the 1960's scene in England and I was horrified. I thought "What have I let myself in for, am I to be a loner all my life, am I not to find somebody who can think classically?" I came in on the tail end of the 1960's where many of the leading British homeopaths had been experimenting with drugs and had suffered states of amnesia for years following. One college had been formed; the Society had been formed. I was first introduced to teaching at Robert Davidson's college; other students started their own colleges up north and in the Midlands. 
 AH: What about the infamous plane crash in 1972? 
 Creasy: There was a director from Nelson's pharmacy and one or two homeopaths I knew on that plane, including one I had known in South Africa. The plane was full of homeopaths going to a conference in Brussels. They were all killed. I have just recently learned that the pilot had a heart attack and the second in command couldn't take over quick enough and the plane crashed. Now that left a big hole, as you can imagine, in the homeopathic scene. Drysdale was lost in that crash. Years later, Mrs. Drysdale married Ralph Twentyman. Nelson's director was killed so they had a quick meeting and one of them left and started Ainsworths pharmacy. 
 I came in one day to the college, this is around 1978, and there were about 70 students per class. The auditorium was abuzz with chatter. Someone had said that the college was teaching an impure homeopathy. There was a smallish group of homeopaths there and one said to the students "What you need to do is follow George Vithoulkas and give the single high-potency and wait. You go for the simillimum and there it is." These people had gone off to Greece -Peter Chappell, Martin Miles, Murray Feldman, David Mundy, Ann Saunders. At that time it became essences for every case. Psychological interpretations were now titillating every imagination. I could barely recognize the remedies from the provings! 
 AH: Has the fact that you have no medical license been a problem for you? 
 Creasy: No, not at all. In fact it is working the opposite way. There are the younger MD's who see what orthodox medicine is doing and they do not like it. They have taken their medical degrees but what can they do with them? If they have the boldness or the means to move into homeopathy, they will. So we get many requests for doctors to sit in on my homeopathic lectures. In England we are allowed to practice under the legislation called common law which allows anybody to provide a service and you do not have to be qualified to do it. That law only exists in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Germany has some similar freedom but not France. Most European countries have formed their own alternative medicine societies. 
 I was then asked to be a director of the Society. I was reluctant as I had been through this before. I said that they needed principles. In homeopathy the principles are a complete unit of eight, beginning with the Law of Similars. The members were asking "What are the guidelines?" and the Society kept holding back on these guidelines, calling it this and that and making political issues of it, trying to make everyone happy which is all fine and good but we had been warned by the medical profession to get our house in order. This meant setting a standard and you can't set standards unless you know what you are talking about and are willing to be firm on principle. And after the standard comes registration. But none of this can happen until you say, as a unified voice, "This is what we believe in." And to get that across was one of the biggest problems. I was wearing myself out; I was loosing energy and so one day I just handed in my resignation. I wanted a standard in the colleges and a register but it just wasn't happening at that time. 
 AH: What happened next? 
 Creasy: Oh, America! I have been coming to America for about ten years now. It started with Karl Robinson, he invited me to Albuquerque and that was my first. That was very nice indeed; I did enjoy it. Mind you, the American's demands are tough but if you give them what they are asking that's fine. And so I got into the American way of thinking, (laughs) and now this! We are in our fourth year of The Institute of Classical Homeopathy which offers a four year course in Hahnemannian homeopathy. There is a lovely beacon called classical homeopathy, and we hope to keep all the windows here clean for the rays of that beacon to shine through. 
 AH: Where else do you teach? 
 Creasy: I teach a lot in Germany and for the Homeopathic Forum, Munich, Hamburg and Celle, Hanover, and Dresden. For the bi-centennial of Hahnemann, I will be presenting a paper. Finland for three years and Traunstein, in Bavaria. And in Vienna they are all doctors which is an incredible system. They learn medical sciences but because the state pays for it they must give three years work in the hospital. So while they are in the hospital, they are building up their homeopathic practice. I saw their lovely old Schlosse and facilities for their homeopathic practices. And when they leave the hospital their practice has already begun! It is ideal. If I was to name the highest classical homeopaths, as a group, it is them. And the Edinburgh School of Homeopathy is a lovely little school; it is in a coach house with cobble stones. Diane Goodwin does a very good job of teaching classical homeopathy there. She is an American nurse who has lived about 20 years in Edinburgh. 
 AH: Yes, Diane is a fine homeopath, and a good friend, what's next for you? 
 Creasy: I've wanted to write books on my teachings. I've got to go through all my files. It would be based on what a school should teach. Textbooks with cured cases; I'm not interested in writing books for the general public. But the trouble is so many books are falling off the press, some full of untrue homeopathy -opinions really, seemingly designed only to make quick money. We are damaging our own profession. 
 AH: Have you considered self-publishing? Many homeopaths are doing it successfully these days and avoiding problems with publishers and contracts and profits, etc. 
 Creasy: I agree with you, I have heard a lot about this and all the problems. I really must organize my notes and begin writing. I have forty-five years worth of cases and notes to draw from. 
 AH: I can imagine! Sheilagh, why do you think homeopaths stray from classical homeopathy? 
 Creasy: I'm pretty certain I know why, because they do not do enough studying of the old masters, and I mean every one of the old masters; Dunham, Boger, Lippe, Farrington, all of them. 
 Once you have studied those, properly, you cannot deviate. If you apply the central disturbance and evaluate as Hahnemann tells us to evaluate, that remedy will appear, and then after that remedy, the next, etc., as it starts unraveling. And we need to sit and watch that unraveling to see what is going on miasmatically. Few schools teach that -the removal of layers with observational waiting as the miasm unfolds. 
 AH: How do you feel about practitioners treating acutes without thinking about the chronic predisposition? 
 Creasy: If you treat every chronic case like an acute, you are going to get 'quick results' because you are treating the symptoms, not the totality of the patient. Acutes belong to the chronics; if there is an acute exacerbation, you are going to go in with the remedies that belong to the chronic, in most cases. The vital force then presents the chronic state. It is all recorded in these old books. There is nothing original about this, and having practiced like this for so long, I can say it with utmost conviction. The practice informs the philosophy. We do not have to search for the vital force. We see its reaction in every case under treatment. It is up to our knowledge, training and experience to watch this reaction and act accordingly. 
 AH: What do you think about this idea that Hahnemann was experimenting and that his experiments somehow give license to anyone to try to duplicate them without understanding them. 
 Creasy: Well, my feeling on this is that the work that is being translated is in French, not German so we know it has to be Melanie's writing. So the information is as Melanie wrote it down, in her own way, in French. This clearly differs from the way in which Hahnemann typically wrote down his own information. I have some marvelous German scholars who are going deeply into this subject and I have learned a lot from them. The French translation of Melanie's notes -that is currently being translated in England -might be ignoring this fact. What is forgotten is that, as an innovator, Hahnemann had many years of experience in finding new ways, so what he wrote must always be put into context. There are many notes he scribbled on the margins of his casebooks which were often errant thought processes -not remedies he had given -and the casebooks that survived were scattered so that it is somewhat difficult to make clear assumptions as to the organization of his thoughts. 
 AH: So, you think there might be some question as to the accuracy of this new information on Hahnemann's case notes? 
 Creasy: Yes, if it wasn't in Hahnemann's handwriting and language, we can't really attribute this new information to him. 
 AH: Hahnemann repeatedly said that he did not want all of his material published, that some of it was incomplete or inaccurate and could be harmful if put into the wrong hands. In fact, he didn't even let his best friend and colleague von B?nninghausen see his notes. Sadly, the current reality is that we see many practitioners and 'homeopathic educators' claiming these 'unveiled' notes give them the right to do all kinds of bizarre things. 
 Creasy: Yes, Hahnemann was very clear in his language that we are not to take these experimental writings seriously, or at all! I feel it is disrespectful to publish what he asked to be kept unpublished, and clearly a mistake, based on the misinformation it has already generated in pre-publication! 
 AH: Have you ever seen a seriously disrupted case from combination remedies, or damage done? 
 Creasy: Oh, yes, combination remedies are terrible! I have in mind straight away a case where the person had been given polypharmacy for years. She had a very disrupted case and it took me six years to straighten her out. 
 AH: What message would you give homeopaths about using combination remedies. 
 Creasy: The message is: absolutely DO NOT use combination remedies! Learn the principles through the literature. Once you have absorbed the philosophy, and you have a right mind in your head, you cannot possibly see otherwise. This is where the training and philosophy comes in. Hahnemann says in the Organon, very clearly, do not use more than one remedy, ...which some people seem to be very happily twisting into some self-serving idea or another that does their patients no good. However it has been awfully good for the people who manufacture and sell them... This is almost like preaching the whole time, I really don't like it, I would prefer if there was a general understanding of homeopathy, an alignment in thought and practice. 
 AH: Agreed. What do you see in the near future for homeopathy? 
 Creasy: What I can see in England which I certainly hope will happen here -is the universities. The universities are taking homeopathy on board with full courses. Preston University in Lancaster was first and now other universities are making overtures and at the moment it is a question of external accreditation -that means the college runs somewhat independently of the university and then gradually it becomes more internal and under the wing of the university. Once it is internal and fully accredited there won't be any need for the small colleges. Once it reaches this high standard we will not be a cult any more. It is actually happening right now. 
 AH: Sheilagh, our time is up, unfortunately, as I have many more questions I would like to ask you. Thank you very much for giving us this interview; perhaps we could meet again sometime and further discuss these issues. 
 Creasy: You are welcome, and I would be delighted to do this again; I enjoy your journal very much and feel it is, honestly, the finest available both here and abroad. 
 AH: That's very generous praise. I do feel closely aligned with you in your thoughts and aspirations for classical homeopathy and I have great respect for you and your experience as a homeopath. Thank you. 

Is evidence for homeopathy reproducible?

The above named clinical trial by David Taylor Reilly, et al., was published in the Lancet in December 1994. It appears to have been a scrupulously conducted double-blind study which was carried out according to the current standard of what might be known as the "western scientific method." 
 The study was conducted at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, and it tested the effect of "homeopathically potentized" (to 30CH) allergens on the respiratory symptoms of patients who were diagnosed as suffering from asthma. 
 The briefest summary of the study is this: that substances such as dust mites, animal furs, various pollens, and the Cladosporium fungus, when given in potency to asthmatics who have been shown to have sensitivity to specific allergens (primarily by means of skin and volumetric respiratory testing) had some ameliorating effects beyond those ameliorations produced by placebo alone. This result was similar to that shown in two other trials previously
conducted in the same primary study, on the effects of "homeopathically prepared" substances on the symptoms of asthma. 
 The study, in reality, is one which looked at the effects of a complex of isopathic agents, although all of the substances, even the placebo diluent, had been prepared according to the methodology prescribed by the French Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia (with a new vial at each level {Hahnemannian method}) to the 30th potency. 
 I'm sure that many homeopaths will notice the parameters of the study: that it is about isopathy, that single remedies were not chosen for each individual, that the medicament was an isopathic and complex formula, that the "totality" of symptoms considered were too narrow (indeed, pathological), that the assessment for a result is also too narrow, that the effect of the potentized allergens was at best palliative and at worst directly suppressive and so on. 
 Here we come to a dilemma. Shall we forever try to satisfy conventional science's skeptics by continuing to design and conduct studies that fit the essential premise of science, reductionism, when such a premise is antithetical to the homeopathic approach of synthesism? 
 In anticipation of criticism from concrete scientists and allopaths, Reilly et al. are very careful in their conclusion to emphasize that "homeopathy differs from placebo in an inexplicable, but reproducible way." They also quite rightly assert that it is not good science to reject the results of a study due to a lack of satisfactory explanation of mechanism of action, and that it is rather more important to recognize an effect before demanding an explanation of it. 
 This study is a great success with regard that to the fact that it gives an indication, according to the standard demanded by the orthodox medical and scientific community, that potentized substances have a biological and energetic effect on the symptoms of living organisms, and as such they may be of use in mediating the suffering of the ill. 
 This study, then, is a great success from the standpoint that it provides some strong evidence for the reality that the administration of potentized substances do indeed have the power to cause a change in living organisms. This study may do something to cause at least some physicians and scientists to question Science's assumption that dynamized substances act only by placebo effect. 
 Finally, it seems appropriate to acknowledge that Reilly brought together a great diversity of people and businesses from the homeopathic and allopathic establishment and garnered their support in producing as close to an air-tight study as possible. A great spirit of cooperation and professionalism is apparent as one reads the study and its long list of participants and supporters and the description of the arduous process of planning, executing, and evaluating the results of the study. The cooperative effort among such a large and diverse number of participants is admirable and as much a success as the results of the study itself. 
 Homeopathy is commonly dismissed by its most vociferous critics/skeptics/opponents as being nothing more than quackery which exploits a placebo effect. This study by Reilly, et al. is not about cure; it is about activity, and it should be appreciated in this light. While the study represents something that is neither philosophically nor methodologically homeopathic, it is one bit of good news for all of us because it has been successful in reproducing a result that provides evidence, according to the current scientific standard, that there is indeed something more than nothing in those potentized substances that we use every day. 
 John Melnychuck, RSHom (NA), lives and practices in Menlo Park, California 
 Our Scottish colleagues, Dr. David Reilly, and Morag Taylor, et al. of the Glasgow University Department of Medicine, recently published a trial that finally proves, to the skeptics, that potentized (energetic) medicine, has a quantifiable action. The calculated odds, of twenty-five hundred to one, show that the positive results of the overall study were not due to random fluctuation! While this wasn't a trial of homeopathy per se, it is closely related vis a vis the use of dynamized substances. Its overwhelming success will be a substantial stepping stone to future studies on the efficacy of homeopathy