As members will know, Bruce Barwell took over as Editor of our Journal in 1997 and continued as Editor until his untimely death in May last year.
This extract is from his first editorial in the July 1997 Homoeopathica.
“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.”
This is as relevant today as when it was written.
Monty Firmin