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524 Book Reviews Book Reviews (Manchester University Press, 2002). Now, with through Dowbiggin’s history is the tension this new book by Ian Dowbiggin, we have a between public authority and personal companion volume that charts the history of the autonomy, between paternalism and individual euthanasia movement in modern America. freedom. He ends with the new issues posed Opening with the Jack Kevorkian case, by September 11, and concludes that the question Dowbiggin’s book has six short chapters. The of ‘‘where does the freedom to die end and the first charts the history of euthanasia as a concept duty to die begin’’ remains unanswered (p. 177). and a practice from classical Antiquity to the One of the difficulties faced by Dowbiggin is Progressive era. The next, entitled that he has to contend with a large cast of ‘Breakthrough’, covers the period 1920–40, and individuals (Felix Adler; William J Robinson; the establishment of the Euthanasia Society of Charles Francis Potter; Charles Killick Millard; America (ESA) in 1938. The third chapter, called Inez Celia Philbrick; Eleanor Dwight Jones; ‘Stalemate’, surveys the struggles of the ESA Joseph Fletcher; and Olive Ruth Russell among with the Roman Catholic church in the years others). Similarly, by the 1970s the picture 1940–60. Chapter four, ‘Riding a great wave’, becomes very complex as the movement deals with the period between 1960 and 1975, fractured into numerous smaller organizations including the reinvention of the ESA with the with frequent name changes (the Society for the idea of passive euthanasia in the 1960s. The Right to Die; Concern for Dying; the Hemlock following chapter, ‘Not that simple’, covers the Society; Choice in Dying; Partnership for Caring, splits that characterized the 1970s, and the and so on). Nevertheless Dowbiggin has coped emergence of new populist right to die admirably with these problems to produce a organizations in the 1990s. The conclusion deals thoroughly researched and well-written history with the 1990s and beyond, a period when many that convincingly explains the reasons for the ebb Americans have come to believe that euthanasia and flow of support for euthanasia, locating these or assisted suicide would be bad public policy, movements within wider national and and when no conclusive outcome is in sight. international contexts. Dowbiggin is unable here Dowbiggin has had privileged access to the to engage with the recently published Kemp files of the euthanasia movement, and he is keen volume. However, comparative studies of Britain to explode the myths that euthanasia only began and America (and elsewhere) would seem one in the 1960s and 1970s, and that it should be obvious way to provide new perspectives on seen as a triumphalist struggle. Other important ‘‘society’s long struggle to deal with the grim themes that emerge from his admirably brief but reality of human disintegration that we call wide-ranging study include the way that death’’ (p. xiv). euthanasia intersected with other progressive social causes, such as birth control, abortion, and John Welshman, eugenics. Euthanasia was seen ‘‘as a critical Lancaster University component of a broad reform agenda designed to emancipate American society from anachronistic Martin Dinges (ed.), Patients in the history of and ultimately unhealthy ideas about sex, birth, homoeopathy, Network Series 5, Sheffield, and death’’ (p. 30), but also was bedevilled by European Association for the History of perennial fears that mercy killing would be Medicine and Health Publications, 2002, pp. xiii, extended to people with disabilities. Dowbiggin 434, UK £39.95, Europe £43.33, USA £52.10, shows that support for euthanasia in the 1900s elsewhere £47.82 (hardback 0-9536522-4-6). was due more to shifting ideas, attitudes, and social forces than to changes in medical practice Using an array of sources from the eighteenth and technology. Equally important have been the to the twentieth century, this volume addresses interchangeable social, biological, economic, the question ‘‘Why did and why do patients come and humanitarian justifications that have been to homoeopathy?’’ The answer is framed in advanced in its support. A final theme running market model terms in four sections: patients in 524 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.34.90, on 01 Oct 2021 at 23:11:31, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300008103 Book Reviews Samuel Hahnemann’s (1755–1843) practice, self-prescribing as well as leniency in licensing homoeopathy in the medical market, homoeopathic physicians. patients’ choices and lobbying work. Olivier Faure reveals how the twentieth- Martin Dinges and Robert Juutte€ emphasize the century practice of a Paris homoeopath attracted ‘‘modern’’ nature of Hahnemann’s practice, ‘‘medical shoppers’’, rather than firm adherents whereas Iris Ritzmann highlights to homoeopathy. This is confirmed by Marijke Hahnemann’s eighteenth-century idealism. Gijswift-Hofstra, Anna Hilde van Baal and His professionalization of the physician’s role, Osamu Hatorri. Gijswift-Hofstra explains the Dinges notes, was achieved by resisting house successful, but illegal, homoeopathic practice of calls, expecting patient compliance, and the Haverhoeks in the Netherlands in terms of portraying the doctor as an ‘‘expert’’. Similarly, their appeal to a middle market ignored by Juutte€ notes Hahnemann’s grading of fees, philanthropists and e´lite practitioners. payment up front and refusal of treatment This contrasts with the contemporary scene on non-payment represented a break with the outlined by Martina Guunther€ and Hans patronage system of the period. Ritzmann Ro¨mermann in Germany and Lore Fortes and disdains Hahnemann’s formulation and selling of Ipojucan Calixto Fraiz in Brazil. Both studies a scarlet fever children’s vaccine as shameless reveal contemporary homoeopathic patients to be profiteering, whilst Kathrin Schreiber questions highly motivated, educated and young. Belief in Hahnemann’s persecution in Leipzig, claiming homoeopathy’s efficacy and self-responsibility he left for new patients and subsequently appear to be the primary motives for seeking constructed conflict for publicity. treatment in both countries, with Brazilian Construction was also involved in patients’ patients viewing homoeopathy as a separate perceptions of their illnesses, according to medical specialism. The bi-polarizing term Michael Stolberg and Martin Dinges. Through ‘‘alternative’’ should thus be dropped in doctor/patient correspondence, patient reference to homoeopathy, Fortez and Fraiz interpretations were translated from humoral to claim. Gunnar Stollberg, describing the homoeopathic theory. Dinges notes male homoeopathic doctor/patient relationship as both conceptions of the body were constructed out of pre- and post-modern, disagrees, adopting humoral pathology, dietetics, hygiene and ‘‘heterodox’’ to describe homoeopathy as distinct morality. Anna-Elisabeth Brade cautions from ‘‘normal science’’, but this is based on the homoeopathy’s efficacy cannot be evaluated dubious claim that the homoeopathic from patient letters, but that such reveal consultation remained unchanged throughout consumption patterns. Letters to Jensen, a the nineteenth century. Danish homoeopath, thus show a mainly male, Whilst Anna Hilde Van Baal finds lay support lower middle-class clientele that remained absent in nineteenth-century Flanders, Bernard unconcerned by the lack of government backing Leary claims such backing was vital in the for homoeopathy. establishment of homoeopathy in nineteenth- Patient choice is found to be socially century Britain, the e´lite defending it in structured along class, status and gender lines by parliament and lay groups establishing and both Phillip Nicholls and Alexander Kotok. supporting institutions. Hatorri also finds lay Nicholls finds homoeopathy in nineteenth- groups influential in Wuurttemberg€ but shows century Britain was used by the aristocracy, the how these brought them into conflict with poor and women. In Russia, Kotok finds e´lite professional homoeopaths. Anne Taylor endorsement led to use of homoeopathy in the Kirschmann claims lay support in America from army, whilst a shortage of doctors led to the American Foundation for Homeopathy widespread lay domestic use. Sigrı´ður Svana (1924) succeeded in preserving homoeopathy Pe´tursdo´ttir shows how, as in Russia, Iceland’s during the twentieth century, providing a vital shortage of physicians for its scattered link between its late-nineteenth- and early population fostered homoeopathic twenty-first-century incarnations. American 525 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.34.90, on 01 Oct 2021 at 23:11:31, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300008103 Book Reviews homoeopathy also continued to enjoy e´lite Ellison’s anthropological investigation of tribal support in America from 1900–40 according to memory in Tanzania pick up oral history which Naomi Rogers, such not declining with the is skewed towards parallel, but equally discoveries of Pasteur and Koch. This overturns devastating events of famine and plague. The Kaufman’s ‘‘medical heresy’’ thesis, Rogers 1919 influenza pandemic in Africa persists in the claiming homoeopathy declined rather through margins of colonial history, variously identified educational reforms and marginalization
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