March 23, 2026

The Hidden History of Medicine, truth, power and conspiracy

Show Notes
Transcript

There was a time when medicine looked completely different.Before pharmaceuticals dominated healthcare, before symptom-based treatment became the norm, there existed a system built on a radically different belief—that the body was designed to heal, not just be managed. In this episode of the Chasing Eden Podcast, we explore the origins of homeopathic medicine, beginning with Samuel Hahnemann and the rise of a system that once stood at the center of global healthcare during its Golden Age. With dedicated hospitals, medical schools, and millions of patients, homeopathy wasn’t alternative—it was mainstream.But within a single generation, everything changed.We walk through the dramatic shift in the early 1900s that led to the decline of homeopathy and the rise of modern pharmaceutical medicine. From the Flexner Report to the restructuring of medical education, and the widely discussed influence of powerful industrial figures like Rockefeller, this episode examines both the documented history and the controversial perspectives surrounding why natural healing systems were pushed aside. Was it progress… or was something lost in the process?Today, as more people struggle with chronic illness, fatigue, and unresolved health issues, interest in natural and holistic approaches is rising again. This episode doesn’t just revisit history—it challenges how we think about healing, the body, and the systems we trust. Because the real question isn’t just what changed… it’s whether we left something behind that we’re now trying to rediscover.
Keywords

homeopathic medicine history
what is homeopathy
homeopathy vs modern medicine
history of medicine shift
natural healing vs pharmaceuticals
holistic health podcast
alternative medicine history
flexner report explained
rockefeller medicine history
big pharma origins

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Welcome back to the Chasing Eden podcast. I'm your host,

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Carolyn Thompson. This is the place where we slow down,

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think deeper, and ask a question that modern life rarely

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asks anymore. What does true healing actually look like?

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Today?

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We are stepping into one of the most controversial, misunderstood,

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and historically important subjects in the natural health world. Homeopathic medicine.

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Not herbs in general, not broad holistic live but homeopathy specifically.

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Its strange beginnings, its explosive rise, its passionate defenders, its fears, critics,

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its hospitals, its schools, its remedies, its founders, its cell salts,

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its collapse, and now, in our time, its return to

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the conversation. And yes, we are also going to talk

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about the uncomfortable part of this history, the clash between

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homeopathy and conventional medicine, the medical reforms of the early

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twentieth century, the Flexner era, and the Rockefeller connection that

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many natural health advocates believe changed the course of medicine

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in America. Historically, Rockefeller philanthropy and Flexner era reforms really

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did reshape medical education and help elevate laboratory based scientific medicine.

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While several historians also argue those reforms hastened the decline

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of homeopathic schools. At the same time, historians note that

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many of those schools were already struggling financially before nineteen ten,

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so the story is more complex than a one line

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conspiracy slogan. If you have ever wondered why modern medicines

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seem so focused on intervention, suppression, emergency care, and pharmaceutical management,

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while older healing traditions spoke in terms of constitution, terrain, balance,

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and stimulating the body's own healing response, this episode is

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for you, so settle in. This is going to be

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a journey. For most people today, homeopathy is either a mystery,

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a punchline, or a tiny bottle in a health food store.

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But two hundred years ago, it was not fringe, It

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was not an afterthought. It was one of the most

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influential medical movements in Europe and the United States. To

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understand why, we have to begin with the world that

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homeopathy was born into in the late eighteenth and early

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nineteenth centuries. They were not a golden age of medicine.

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In fact, much of conventional medicine at the time was brutal.

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Blood letting was common, purging, was common, and mercury based

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compounds were common. Toxic dosing was common. Physicians often used

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treatments that weakened already sick people, and this matters because

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homeopathy did not rise in a vacuum. It rose partly

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because his people were desperate for something gentler than the

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aggressive medical practices of that day. Historians of medicine note

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that homeopathy spread at a time when mainstream treatments were

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frequently ineffective and sometimes harmful, which made a less invasive

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system look attractive by comparison, and into that world stepped

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a German physician named Samuel Hahnemann. Hahnemann born in seventeen

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fifty five in Miasen, Germany, trained as a physician, but

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became deeply disillusioned with the medicine of his age. According

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to historical accounts, he struggled financially translated medical texts and

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began questioning why treatments so often seemed to hurt people

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more than help them. One turning point came when he

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was translating the work of Scottish physician William Hahnemann experimented

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on himself with Sinchona bark associated with malaria treatment. And

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he concluded that a substance capable of producing symptoms in

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a healthy person could, in carefully prepared form, treat similar

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symptoms in a sick person. From this came the principle

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that's most associated with homeopathy, like cures like. He first

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published the idea in seventeen ninety six and later codified

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it in the eighteen ten organon the Foundational Text of Homeopathy.

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That principle, similia similibus coriner, became the heartbeat of the system.

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The basic idea was simple but radical. If a substance

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can provoke a symptom picture in a healthy person, then

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a specially prepared version of that same substance may help

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the body respond to similar symptoms in a suffering person.

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Now to modern ears, that sounds odd, and it gets

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even stranger when you move into the second major principle

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of homeopathy, the minimum dose. Hahnemann believed that remedies became

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not weaker in a practical sense, but more potent in

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a dynamic sense through repeated dilution and shaking, a process

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called succussion. Modern scientific critics argue that many homeopathic dilutions

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go so far beyond Appogadro's limit that no molecule of

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the starting substance is likely to remain, and public health

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agencies say there is no good quality evidence that homeopathy

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effectively treats health conditions. That scientific criticism is real and

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should be stated plainly. But historically, the homeopathic system was

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never built merely as chemistry. It was built as a

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philosophy of stimulating the body's healing response with a subtle

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medicinal signal rather than a forceful pharmacologic dose. And this

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is where we need to pause.

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Will be right back.

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Whether one agrees with homeopathy or not, the deeper divide

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was never just about pill size. It was about worldview.

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One worldview said disease should be attacked, subdued, and suppressed.

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The other said the organism should be observed, understood, and

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gently stimulated towards self correction. That tension has never really

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gone away in the homeopathic world. The patient was not

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just a diagnosis. The practitioner looked at sleep, appetite, fears,

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weather sensitivity, emotional states, digestive tendencies, energy patterns, and strange

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little details that conventional medicine often considered irrelevant. The person

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mattered the constitution mattered, the exact symptom picture mattered. This

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individualized approach became one reason so many patients felt deeply

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seen within the homeopathic system, even as scientific critics remained

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unconvinced by its mechanism or efficacy. And that patient centered

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style still has power today, not because every claim made

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in homeopathy has been scientifically validated. It has not, but

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because people are hungry for a form of care that

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does not reduce them to a code, a lab number,

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a rushed visit, and a prescription. That hunger is real,

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and it helps explain why homeopathy spread so widely in

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the first place. By the nineteenth century, homeopathy had become

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a serious movement across Europe and then in the United States.

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In America, homeopathy developed in parallel with conventional medicine in

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the early eighteen hundreds. In eighteen thirty five, Constantine Hering

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helped found the first homeopathic school in the United States,

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and later the Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania, eventually linked

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to what became Hanumann Medical College and Hospital in Village, Delphia,

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which grew into one of the movement's flagship into institutions.

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By nineteen hundred, homeopathy had become institutionally significant enough that

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historians describe a network of colleges, hospitals, journals, and physicians

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across the country. Think about that this was not just

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an eccentric sideline.

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It had schools, it had hospitals.

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It had publishing houses, it had formularies, it had culture,

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and it had heroes. After Hahnemann, one of the towering

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figures in early homeopathy was Constantine Herring, often called the

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father of American homeopathy. Another major figure was James Tyler Kent,

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whose repertories and philosophical writings shaped homeopathic education for generations.

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William Bowick became famous for his Materia medica, cataloging remedy

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pictures that are still referenced today. These were not random hobbyists.

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They were builders of a system. Archive and library collections

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preserve their books and teaching materials as evidence of how

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extensive the movement became. And then there were the remedies themselves.

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Homeopathy built an entire therapeutic language around remedy profiles Arnica

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for bruising and soreness, nux vomica for digestive upset irritability,

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and the overworked constitution Belladonna for sudden intense states with

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heat and throbbing Aconite for shock fright and the first

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rush of inflammatory symptoms, pulsatilla, russ talks, the chodendron, bryonia, galcemium, sulfur,

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calcarea carbonica. These names became almost like characters in a

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healing drama. The way homeopaths thought was not what disease

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label does this person have? It was what exact remedy

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picture does this person match? That is an entirely different

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method of clinical thinking. Still, historically, the homeopathic materia medica

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expanded because practitioners believed that nearly every naturally derived substance

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had a unique symptom profile that could be matched to

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a suffering person. This was not simply take this for

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a headache. It was more like a map of human

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reaction patterns. And alongside classic homeopathy arosa related but somewhat

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distinct stream the cell salts, also called tissue salts. These

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are important because many people who have never studied classic

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homeopathy have still encountered cell salts at some point. Cell

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salts are closely associated with Wilhelm Heinrich Schusler, a German

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physician born in eighteen twenty one, Schusler developed a system

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called bioshemy pronounced like bioshemi in German, but it looks

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more like biochmi, centered on the idea that mineral imbalances

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at the cellular level contributed to illness. He identified twelve

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tissue salts, including Calcarea florica, Calcarea for phosphorica, Errem phosphoricum,

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Cali mariaticum, Cali phosphoricum, and others as foundational mineral These

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were foundational mineral remedies. Historians note that Schusler's work drew

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on physiological and biochemical ideas of his time, though he

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had also been educated in homeopathy and increasingly blended more

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dynamic explanations into the system. Now, later on they would

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discover more cell salts. And if you look Schusler up,

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Wilhelm Heinrich Schusler up, you might find a story about

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the way that he discovered these tissue salts through the

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ashes of a dead person. And he studied them and

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he said, okay, this is what the bones are made

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up of, this in the person. So these are obviously

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things that we need in our body to sustain us. Now,

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cell salts, they became popular partly because they were simpler.

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Classical homeopathy could be complex and highly individualized, and cell

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salts felt more accessible. They seemed to bridge the mystical

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and the practical. They spoke the language of minerals, tissues, deficiencies,

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and support. For many families. They became kind of a

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natural household medical kit. And you can still purchase a

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cell salt kit. I have one in my home. I

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have the twelve cell salts I purchased on Amazon. And

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if you get them like the way that I got

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them in the kit, you pay less, so you end

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up paying more if you buy them individually. I also

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have some that I use individually, and they are numbered

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one to twelve. They'll give you there's like a number

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on them.

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If you go to like.

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Whole Foods or Sprouts or a health food store, oftentimes

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you're going to find a section of remedies and the

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cell salts are there, and you might not have realized

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these little numbered salts are actually they originated through Schusler.

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Doctor Schusler, so mode.

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One of my favorite numbers is number eight because it's

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magnesium phosphate and it's really fantastic.

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For helping you sleep. At night.

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But it's also fantastic for ages and pains. So if

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you worked out really hard and you're just kind of achey,

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or maybe you're starting to come down with a headache,

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then you take this and it really really helps you.

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It's like a little sugar tablet you can dissolve under

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your tongue. Some people choose to put them in a

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glass of water and sip it, and oftentimes they will

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recommend you do that. I have a website that I

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go to, Dave's healingnotes dot Com, and he gives you

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all kinds of ways of using the cell salts for

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different remedies, and you could actually type in the search

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and oftentimes he'll give you other remedies, but he'll give

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you like some of the salts as well, so if

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you have those on hand, then you can help yourself

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right away.

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Now the kit I do recommend, but.

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There's also a product called Bioplasma, and it actually has

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all twelve of the cell salts in one tablet, So

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that's a really good one too. And that brings us

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to one of the reasons homeopathy spreads so successfully in

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the nineteenth century, the home and it fit the family,

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It fit the slower rhythms of ordinary people caring for

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ordinary ailments, for common complaints like minor injuries, digestive troubles,

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seasonal discomforts, restless children, teething colds, headaches. Many families wanted

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something that felt gentler than the aggressive medicine of the age.

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Homeopathy offered a.

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Philosophy that suggested the body could be nudged rather than overpowered,

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and that was deeply appealing, and today it still is.

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If you listen to many modern natural health voices, you

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can hear echoes of that same instinct. Doctor Barbara O'Neil's

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official platforms repeatedly center the idea that the body is

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designed to heal when given the right conditions, and her

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public messaging consistently consistently emphasizes natural self healing, supportive conditions,

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and also working with the body rather than against the body.

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Biohacker Dave Asbury, while not a traditional homeopathic teacher, has

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spoken publicly about his past skepticism toward homeopathy and alternative

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energetic approaches. Then he described that he's actually reconsidered them

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after seeing outcomes from practitioners that he trusted. Doctor ax Is,

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writing on homeopathy, presents as a low dose natural therapeutic

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system intended to stimulate the body's healing abilities while also

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acknowledging the debate around it. These voices, they're not identical,

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but they share a broad suspicion of reductionist medicine and

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a preference for working upstream environment, nutrition, constitution, stress, and

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terrain rather than only suppressing downstream symptoms. Now, whether every

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claim made by these influencers is correct is another question,

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but their popularity tells us something important. People are not

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merely looking for products, are looking for a healing philosophy.

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And one of my favorite sayings is knowledge is power.

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The more you know. So you don't have to listen

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to every practitioner, every professional, every highly educated person. You

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can consider what they're saying, take it to heart. But

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what I like to do is just consider what is

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my body telling me, because I've had some of them

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really insist, oh, this is going to work or this

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isn't good for you, and the opposite has been true

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when I actually go to apply whatever approach it is

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that they're recommending. So what we're really looking for is

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how our body feels and how are we going to

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heal whatever it is we're looking for how are we

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going to address our needs naturally and taking into consideration

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our bodies design and considering nature and working hand in

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hand with that, rather than turning to a aggressive form

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something that's going to suppress our symptoms and not treat

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the actual core situation that we have or issue that

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we have. When we come back, we're going to go

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deeper into the golden age of homeopathy, the battle between

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homeopathy and the so called allopathic medicine, and why conventional medicine,

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especially in its older forms, earns such distrust In the

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first place, We'll be right back. If you want to

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understand the rise and fall of homeopathy, you have to

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understand the word allopathy. This term is commonly use today

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by natural health communities to describe conventional medicine, but historically

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it was actually coined by Hahnemann as a contrast term.

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He used it somewhat pejoratively for the medicine of his day.

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In the modern period, many conventional physicians do not use

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the term for themselves. Still, the word endured because it

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named something real in the cultural imagination, a style of

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medicine seen as opposing symptoms rather than harmonizing with the

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body's own healing processes. In fairness, nineteenth century conventional medicine

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often was harsh, blood letting, furgatives, mercury compounds, blistering agents.

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Many interventions were rooted in theories and practices that would

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later be discarded. Homeopathy looked merciful beside that historians have

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repaired heatedly noted that one major reason homeopathy seemed to

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succeed was precisely because conventional treatment could itself be dangerous.

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Doing less was sometimes safer than doing more. That history

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matters because a lot of natural health. Criticism of conventional

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medicine is not invented out of thin air. It comes

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from inherited memory. The body remembers what systems do to people.

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Communities remember when medicine felt like assault rather than help.

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Now today's conventional medicine is obviously not the same as

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eighteen twenties but blood letting. It includes antibiotics, anesthesia, trauma, surgery, imaging, sterilization,

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intensive care, and life saving emergency interventions that have changed

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history that should be acknowledged with gratitude. But even many

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defenders of modern medicine admit that its strengths are often

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clearest in acute care, crisis care, infectious disease, emergency surgery,

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and trauma areas where it acts fast, forcefully, and decisively.

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The system that emerged in the twentieth century became especially

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powerful and precisely those domains because it was laboratory driven,

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hospital centered, and intervention focused. And this is why many

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natural health advocates describe modern medicine as having a kind

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of wartime mindset, not literally born only on battlefields, of course,

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but shaped by the logic of crisis identity, threat suppressed threat,

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identify threat, suppress the threat, cut out the damage, stabilize

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the patient, and then survive the event. And to be fair,

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that model is incredible when you're in a car wreck,

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septic bleeding, obstructed, or on the edge of death. But

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what happens when the problem is not a battlefield problem?

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And what happens when the issue is something like chronic inflammation,

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poor sleep, depletion, digestive dysfunction, environmental overload, emotional stress, sedentary living,

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nutritional deficiency, or just years of low grade imbalance. And

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that is the argument that critics make. They say the

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system excels at rescue, but often struggles at restoration. That

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critique is one reason alternative medicine never disappeared. And still

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I want to be careful here because it would be

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misleading to say conventional medicine is simply inferior. It has

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real strengths, but it also has real blind spots. And likewise,

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homeopathy has passionate advocates and a rich history, but public

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health authorities and scientific reviews continue to say the evidence

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based does not support using it as an effective treatment

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for conditions in the way it's strong this proponent's claim,

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and that tension is a part of the honest history.

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But I think you could tell that I obviously am

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a big proponent of homeopathy. Now, during the nineteenth century,

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homeopathy expanded partly because it offered a critique that ordinary

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people could feel. It made them feel like they were

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more than a disease label. Their symptoms did have meaning,

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and that their body was reacting for a reason. Gentler

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made it medicine maybe wiser than violent medicine, and healing

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should strengthen the person, not merely overpower their complaints, and

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that's a very powerful message. Now, it was also attracted

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by a certain type of physician, the physician who liked

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careful observation, pattern recognition, and long patient interviews. This was

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medicine as art as much as science, and for a

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time it did work. Socially. Homeopathic schools multiplied at the time,

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hospitals opened, patients sought out homeopathic physicians.

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Journals circulated.

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Medical identity was contested in public. America did not yet

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have one consolidated medical orthodoxy. There were competing systems homeopathy,

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eclectic medicine, osteopathy, nature pathy, conventional medicine, and others. The

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nineteenth century was a much more pluralistic medical world than

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most people realize.

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You had all these.

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Options and all of these things going on at the

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same time, and today we just have the average person

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just has this narrow view of you know, at least

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the people the people that are older, especially who have

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been okay, this is my opinion, endocrinated into the system

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don't really see outside of the traditional western medicine right now.

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I talk to them and oftentimes they acknowledge, oh, yeah,

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you know, natural, that sounds good, and I'll tell them

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some stuff and next thing I know, they're going to

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the doctor and getting a body part cut out. You know.

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So not everyone wants to give the natural way a chance.

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They're so trusting the current Western medicine that they don't

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even want to try some of these homeopathic methods because

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they don't believe in them, even though they'll acknowledge that

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they do exist. Now, that pluralism would not last. As

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the twentieth century approached, medicine was changing. Laboratory science was advancing,

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bacteriology was transforming infectious disease theory. Hospitals were becoming more centralized.

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Licensing and professional standards were tightening. Universities were asserting more

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control over medical training. Wealthy philanthropists were beginning to shape

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institutions on a national scale. And into that moment came

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the report that changed everything, The Flexner Report of nineteen

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Abraham Flexner's study, issued by the Carnegie Foundation, reviewed medical

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education across the United States in Canada. The report found

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deeply uneven standards, poor facilities, and weak scientific training at

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many schools. Rockefeller linked institutions, especially the General Education Board

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and later the Rockefeller Foundation, helped finance the transformation of

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medical education along the more laboratory based model that Flexner favored.

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Rockefeller Archive materials described this reform effort as a deliberate

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push toward more standardized, university linked hospital based medicine.

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And I'm going to read you a quote from J. D. Rockefeller.

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He said this quote, homeopathy is a progressive and aggressive

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step in medicine. Unquote, he himself appeared to support homeopathy.

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So from one angle this was reform, but from another

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angle it was consolidation. I'm also going to read you

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a quote from this website. It's the National Medical Library,

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I believe, National Library of Medicine, and it says this

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John Davidson Rockefeller eighteen thirty nine to nineteen thirty seven

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arguably had a more significant impact on twentieth century American

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medicine than any other individual, largely due to his full

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philanthropic contributions to medical institutions, which totaled between five hundred

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million and one billion in early twentieth century currency. In

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today's dollars, a billion dollars equals over twenty seven billion dollars.

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So imagine the impact at that time that that kind

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of financial backing had on our medical institutions. When systems consolidate,

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some streams survive and others get pushed out. Historians looking

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at the period say that Fleckner's report and the broader

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reform movement played a major role in hastening the decline

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of sectarian schools, including homeopathic and eclectic institutions. One scholarly

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analysis says the report was key in hastening a pre

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existing decline, which matters because it reminds us the story

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is not as simple as everything was thriving until one

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bad report killed it. Some homeopathic schools were already financially weak,

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okay now, but keep in mind he wasn't supporting homeopathic schools, right,

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So still the report changed public person funding patterns and

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enrollment in ways that we're devastating to those institutions. That

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phrase pre existing decline is important because if we want

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the truth, we should avoid simplistic myths. On both sides.

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It is not historically honest to say homeopathic disappeared only

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because evil elites crushed a flawless system. But it's also

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not honest to say that it declined purely because it

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was nonsense and naturally deserved extinction. History is rarely that tidy,

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And this is coming from a history graduate because my

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degree is in American history, and it really isn't It

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isn't tidy at all. There were multiple forces at work,

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scientific change, professional politics, licensing reform, financial pressure, public relations,

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institutional power, philanthropic money, media luence, and internal weaknesses inside

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alternative schools themselves. All of that mattered. Still, the Rockefeller

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connection is not imaginary. It's not a conspiracy. Recent historical

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scholarship argues that internal reports written for Rockefeller criticized homeopathy

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and helped shape foundation policy in ways that contributed to

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the marginalization of homeopathic institutions, despite the irony that Rockefeller

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himself had personal sympathy toward homeopathy. That same scholarship also

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