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Durham E-Theses How medicine could have developed dierently: A Tory historiographical analysis of the conict between allopathic and homoeopathic medicine in America and Britain from 1870 to 1920. Brierley-Jones, Lynda Karen How to cite: Brierley-Jones, Lynda Karen (2007) How medicine could have developed dierently: A Tory historiographical analysis of the conict between allopathic and homoeopathic medicine in America and Britain from 1870 to 1920., Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/2608/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 How Medicine Could Have Developed Differently: A Tory Historiographical Analysis of the Conflict Between Allopathic and Homoeopathic Medicine in America and Britain from 1870 to 1920. Lynda Karen Brierley-Jones M.A. Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD School of Applied Social Sciences University of Durham The copyright of this thesis rests with the autho_r or the university to which it was ~ubnutte~. No quotation from it, or mfo~atton ?erived from it may be published Without the prior written cons_ent of ~e au~or or university, and December 2007 any mformatton denved from it should be acknowledged. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following for their assistance in completing this thesis: The Wellcome Trust for generously funding my archival research; the Wellcome Library, London; the London Metropolitan Archive; Leeds University and Newcastle University Medical Libraries; Glasgow Homoeopathic Library; the Robert Bosch Institute for the History of Medicine, Stuttgart, Germany; the Library of the Northern College of Homoeopathic Medicine, Gateshead; and the West Sussex Record Office, all of which supplied me with primary documents. Thanks also to Francis Treuherz for various book loans from his private library and email exchanges. Finally I would like to thank my supervisors Sue Scott, Steve Fuller, for his unbridled enthusiasm regarding anything remotely revisionist, and Tiago Moreira, who assisted me greatly in the final writing up. On a personal level I would like to thank the following: my parents for their encouragement; my sisters, Helen and Kathryn, for helping me retain a sense of humour amid the chaos; my former husband Philip for his financial support despite our differences; to my fellow PhD colleagues and closest friends; Lauren Brooks, James Hardie-Bick, Philip Hadfield, Andrew Smith, George Anderson and Emma Uprichard as well as my homoeopath and friend Joy Nancarrow, who have all helped me through some really tough times. A special thank you to Simon for being there at the end of the line, just like he promised. Finally, I would like to thank my children, Beth and Elise for their understanding thoughout such a long project, for often putting my needs before their own; and my son Haydn, whose birth set me on this journey in the first place. It is to him that I dedicate this work. 11 Contents Title Page pI Acknowledgements pn Contents pm List of Tables p IV Abstract pv Introduction pl Chapter One- The Nature of the Field p 25 Chapter Two- Homoeopathy as Science p45 Chapter Three- Taming the Beast- How Homoeopaths and Allopaths Handled Error in the Last Quarter of the 19th Century p 90 Chapter Four- Masters of the Universe: Allopaths' Conceptual Nihilation of Homoeopathy and Homoeopathy's Missing Explanation p 131 Chapter Five- Talking Therapy: Allopathic Nihilation Through a New Language p 158 Chapter Six -The End of Medical Progress: The Battle Between American Corporations and the State and the Decline of Homoeopathy in the Progressive Era p 186 Conclusion p 246 Bibliography p 265 lll . List of Tables Figure 1 -The Elective Affinities of White's Modes of Emplotment, Argument and Ideological Implication p7 Figure 2- Mortality Rates for 1890-5 in Twelve U.S. Cities for five Diseases. p 85 Figure 3 -Grid/Group Configurations, Social Forms and Error Responses p 101 Figure 4- The Range of American Homoeopathic Responses to the Perception of Error in the Materia Medica in the 1870s. p 106 Figure 5- Spheres of Action of Differential Drug Doses. p 157 Figure 6- Medical Synonyms in Use by Homoeopaths and Allopaths in their Treatment of Tuberculosis around 1910. p 179 Figure 7 - The Two Variables Testable in Homoeopathic Randomised Controlled Drug Trials p 261 Figure 8 - The Sixteen Possible Combinations of the Four Variables in Figure 7. p 262 lV Abstract After its formulation by Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) at the end of the 18th century, homoeopathy spread to Britain and America in the 1820s. Based upon the principle or law of "similia similibus curentur"- let like be cured by like-homoeopathy presented a serious challenge to allopathic medicine. By the 1870s homoeopaths were part of science, performing the first single blind clinical trial, establishing the action of drugs upon the body by experimentation and investigating the nature of matter. Institutionally established, especially in the U.S., they regularly published statistics demonstrating the superiority of homoeopathic treatment in both general practice and in hospitals. Allopaths responded by "nihilating" homoeopathic theory and practice on several levels. Through the language of bacteriology they absorbed key homoeopathic tenets into their own symbolic universe. During the Progressive Era allopaths' ideological resonance with the corporations enabled them to finally vanquish homoeopaths and define medical science along new lines. Homoeopathy's decline in the 1920s was precipitated by its inability to handle experimental error effectively. Yet homoeopaths had raised important epistemological questions about the nature of the relationship between drugs and the human organism. These were never resolved but became repressed along with homoeopathy's scientific history. Since Tory historiography claims that the past informs the future, my aim in recovering homoeopathy's history is to highlight the contemporary importance of these issues for medicine. Only by explicitly addressing these unresolved dilemmas will the Hegelian outworking of Reason be accomplished. v Introduction This chapter will outline my historiographical approach to homoeopathy' s history in the U.S and U.K. in the 19th century. First, I will explain the conceptual schema of Hayden White (1975) which I draw upon extensively to reveal the irreducible ideological component of the historical narratives I will review in chapter one. Secondly, I will outline the differences between Whig, Prig and Tory historiographies, detailing the political stance of each. Thirdly, I will show how homoeopathy currently has three socio-political and five historiographic problems to contend with. Finally, I shall outline the narrative structure of my own account and argue that only such an Hegelian inspired approach can adequately recover homoeopathy's past. Such an historiographical approach enables me to argue that homoeopathy' s decline at the turn of the 20th century was not inevitable and that homoeopathy represents an abandoned historical trajectory that merits further investigation, one which can inform the current epistemological crisis in medicine. Hayden White's "Metahistory" In 1975 Hayden White produced a highly influential account of the narrative styles used by historians, emphasising particularly those modes which predominated in 19th century Europe. White showed there are (at least) three modes of explanation in the historical field- explanation by emplotment, explanation by formal argument and explanation by ideological implication. Emplotment converts a chronicle into a narrative, argument attempts to explain what it all adds up to, and ideological implication denotes the historians ethical position on the nature of historical knowledge and its contemporary significance. I will take each of these explanatory styles in turn. Explanation by Emplotment. White reminds us that, whilst a chronicle is merely a record of events perceived as significant by the chronicler presented in the order of their appearance, an historical narrative, such as that produced by professional historians, attempts to tell a story. White points out that there are different kinds of stories that can be told and that these 1 narrative effects are achieved by the employment of several literary devices. One of these is in the "motifing" of events. Every historical narrative has events which the narrator "motifs", or selects as significant. These events are either typified as inaugural-the significant beginning of something- transitional- mediating an historical process already under way- or terminating- representing the end of some process, conflict or series of events. Often, historians will motif different events in the historical field as significant but even when the same events are motifed those events can be threaded together, or emplotted, to tell quite different stories. White distinguishes between four modes of emplotting an historical narrative. Explanation by emplotment can be cast either in Romantic, Comic, Tragic or Satirical mode. Each of these modes represents the historian's perception of Man's capacity to shape his world. In a Romantic emplotment, the hero, (or heroes) transcends the world of experience in a triumphant resolution. This is the story where good vanquishes evil, light transcends darkness, and virtue overcomes vice. By contrast, both the Tragic and Comic modes of emplotment permit only a partial resolution of tension and conflict and of Man's ability to shape his own destiny.