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