This issue brings a change of format to Homœopathica. Thanks to developments in computer technology, particularly optical character recognition programs, it is much easier to reproduce valuable material from other publications.
Homœopathica has the rights to use articles from several current journals, and the society’s reference library is a treasure vault of gems of homœopathic writings of the past that are still of immense value today.The society’s constitution emphasises that its aim is to promote especially the practice of pure homœopathy - which I understand to mean Hahnemannian homœopathy. What do I mean by Hahnemannian homœopathy? I mean prescribing a medicine made according to the directions of an official homœopathic pharmacopœia selected after considering all the symptoms in the case created by disease, with almost exclusive emphasis on its cause and those symptoms which are striking, unusual and exceptional.
The justification for this interpretation is Articles 5 and 153 of Hahnemann’s Organon of Medicine. While it is true that the society sells books conveying the views of diverse schools and approaches to homœopathic prescribing, its primary focus is on the promotion of the system set out in the Organon and is only prepared to support financially and otherwise anything conducive to this aim.
The society has no wish to be forever looking backward and to be unprogressive, but its aim is to promote a system of medicine based on clearly perceivable rational principles, and material furthering this objective may be found in abundance in the past.
Contributions from readers are very welcome. A piece by Sue Muller in this issue illustrates the kind of thing that is wanted.
The two major articles illustrate aspects of the treatment of cancer. John Henry Clarke (1853-1931) reports on a talk by Arthur Hill Grimmer (1874-1967) on the use of cadmium and its compounds. Grimmer wrote in 1929 that in the previous four years he had treated 225 cancer cases, and 175 were still alive.
The other author, Emil Schlegel (1852-1934), is one of the now-ignored figures of Continental homœopathy. It is said that contact with him stirred Rudolf Steiner to employ potentised remedies in Anthroposophical medicine. (The articles by Clarke, Schlegel and Berridge first appeared in The Homœopathic World or Heal Thyself in the 1930s).
Bruce Barwell