An Open Letter to the Members and Trustees of the American Institute of Homeopathy

I would like to thank the AIH Board of Trustees for awarding me an Honorary Membership.

When Dr. Irene Sebastian, AIH President, called me last fall to announce the Board’s recent decision, I was pleased and surprised, because as a naturopathic physician, I had never expected to receive such an honor.

I discovered homeopathy and naturopathic medicine on the same day, and at once I knew that naturopathic medicine would be my profession and homeopathy my specialty.

In the fall of 1976, I requested application forms from the only school of naturopathic medicine then in existence in North America—the National College of Naturopathic Medicine (NCNM) in Portland, Oregon. My father, who was an M.D. specializing in alternative medicine, thought that I should first complete the chiropractic training I had already begun, and second, go to a regular medical school before pursuing any further a career in alternative medicine, as my sister and brother had already done.

However, when we discussed my decision with one of my father’s friends, Dr. Leo Roy, M.D., N.D., he thought I was actually making the right decision since I would have a unique opportunity to study with Dr. John Bastyr, NCNM co-founder and president, whom they both knew personally and held in high esteem.

I knew very well that by choosing homeopathy as my specialty in medicine, I was inviting, likely for the rest of my life, derision and ostracism from the more orthodox medical and scientific circles. I also knew that by choosing to become a naturopathic physician I would be excluded from active membership in many professional homeopathic organizations.

However, the call was too strong and the path too clear to be questioned. Dr. Samuel A. Jones had expressed this profound conviction of mine in his poem that appears in the preface of his book, The Grounds of a Homoeopath’s Faith:

Stand for the truth though all the world deride, Firm as a rock though all the world ignore thee: As thou art true what need’st thou ask beside?

For a number of reasons, I decided to delay switching schools and to complete my chiropractic training. While studying the art and science of physical medicine and manipulation, I delved into the study of nutrition and natural hygiene (the science of health), and began studying homeopathy under Dr. Joseph Bonyun, who was a Kentian third-generation homeopath. Those among other things helped me resist a little longer the very compelling call that the NCNM president had made in the 1978 college Bulletin that I had received from the registrar during this waiting time:

What an exciting time to be a part of the National College of Naturopathic Medicine!

It’s been said that no army on Earth is as powerful as an idea whose time has come. Naturopathic medicine is such an idea, and now is the time. We’ve struggled for years to keep the spark of naturopathic medicine alive, and now the torch of vis medicatrix naturae burns brightly, lighting the path to tomorrow’s health care.

1978 marks the beginning of a new era for NCNM—a period of rapid change and growth, enabling us to satisfy the ever-increasing demand for physicians trained in preventive medicine and natural therapeutics.

It takes a special kind of person to meet the challenges of naturopathic education and practice—one who is dedicated to the service of others through healing and health education, remembering always that he or she is merely a channel for the healing power of Nature. That is the kind of student we hope will find a place at NCNM.

The new struggle is really just beginning. I sincerely hope that everyone who reads this Bulletin will find both information and inspiration. Please consider ways in which you can contribute to the natural health care movement. It means better health for all!

Yours in health,

John B. Bastyr, N.D.⁽¹⁾

Soon after I graduated from chiropractic college and was about to leave for NCNM, Dr. Roy told me to be sure to study with John Bastyr, whom he considered to be one of the greatest physicians of our time. When I arrived on campus, I was disappointed to learn that Dr. Bastyr was no longer teaching at the college.

However, one day, nine months into my training, Dr. Bastyr, who had by then become NCNM President Emeritus, came down from Seattle to present an all-school three-hour lecture on endocrinology. I knew right away that he was my man. After the lecture, I offered Dr. Bastyr my father’s and Dr. Roy’s best wishes, and his face lit up on hearing their names. I invited him to go for lunch, and that was the beginning of a long-lasting friendship.

For the next four and half years, I would regularly drive up to Seattle very early on Thursday mornings to meet him at 8:30 a.m. at his office at 735 10th Avenue E on Capitol Hill. All day I would shadow him with his patients. After the last patient of the day had gone, we would usually sit and talk in his office until late in the evening. Very patiently, he would answer all my questions, particularly the ones I had about homeopathy.

On those Thursday nights, I often slept at his office and early the next morning picked him up at his homestead in Kent, Washington, and drove another two and a half hours south to arrive at NCNM for the nine o’clock class. He would then teach there all day. Around 5:30, I would drive him to the airport to catch a flight back to Seattle.

As well as being funny, John was an exceptionally capable, resourceful and knowledgeable physician, who practiced medicine from the depth of his heart and with great wisdom. All around, he had an impressive record. For instance, as an obstetrician, he had attended over 800 home births in his first twenty-five years of practice with almost no complications, and close to half of the babies were delivered under water. A great number of his patients came just to be touched by him because he was gifted with an extraordinary pair of hands.

He had an impressive memory, and any time he was asked, he could draw the Krebs cycle without hesitation. He was a superb diagnostician and knew Cecil Textbook of Medicine almost by heart. Even after fifty years of practice, Dr. Bastyr kept abreast of new discoveries in science and medicine and subscribed to Scientific American and Scientific American Medicine. His great mind was always on the watch for any new knowledge that he could integrate into his comprehension of the whole, a habit which greatly explains his extraordinary, ever-ready resourcefulness in his daily practice.

He advised his students to read at least one article about medicine or study one remedy every night before going to sleep, saying, “Each remedy has its own particular characteristics. You read them over and over, and then you see something you never saw before.”⁽²⁾ Dr. B. fully embodied the first principle of medicine, which is Aude sapere, the battle cry of the Age of Enlightenment: Physician, dare to know, and become a true philosopher and scientist but above all, a true artist. Constant inquiry is the way to knowledge.

He had an amazing knowledge of the materia medica and would prescribe with certainty and without, as a rule, having to refer to any books. Once, on one of these long drives down to Portland, I was consulting him about one of my patients with epilepsy, who had among other things a greatly enlarged and sore testicle. After a brief description of the case, he asked me in what position his testicular pain was worse. I said I didn’t remember whether I had even asked the patient, but I would phone him once we arrived in Portland. The patient told me that, by far, it was worse in the sitting position. When I got back to John later on that morning, he said, “Look up Pulsatilla.” And Pulsatilla was the correct remedy. I was amazed how, of all the patient’s conditions and symptoms, John had honed in on the testicular problem and, even more, on the position modality of the pain, which I had likely considered to be a too common symptom, namely testicular soreness being worse from the pressure of the seat or pants while sitting.

On one of these late Thursday evenings and some time after my graduation from NCNM, the phone rang just past 9 p.m. A re-run of a CBS 60 Minutes episode that featured Dr. Bastyr had just finished airing in eastern Washington, and a man from Walla Walla had phoned Dr. Bastyr to ask if he could see his wife as soon as possible. Since Dr. Bastyr would not be practicing again until the following Tuesday, he asked me if I could see the patient the morning after next at the college clinic in Portland.

Lo and behold, when I was unlocking the clinic doors that Saturday morning, I saw an ambulance with Washington State license plates backing up to the doors. An unconscious woman, who was intermittently retching and vomiting, was rolled into the clinic on a stretcher. I learned then that her husband had been told earlier that week that she had only days to live since she was in the last stage of kidney and heart failure, and earlier that morning she had been taken off life support at the Walla Walla General Hospital. To put it mildly, I was greatly surprised by the severity of the case!

After examining the patient, I called John to describe the case he had so kindly referred to me, and he calmly said that he would guide me through it. He first suggested that I test her serum digoxin level, and, if it was high, to give her retention enemas of a potassium solution. Of course, he was right on, for she had a quite toxic level of digoxin, and under his guidance everything ran relatively smoothly after that. She was treated mainly with hydrotherapy and homeopathy, and, in about two weeks, our patient had sufficiently recovered to return home with her greatly relieved and very thankful husband.

For the next few Christmases, during the time I remained in Oregon, this lovely couple sent me thank-you notes with pictures of her and reports that she had remained in good health. Some years later, when I returned to Oregon for a conference, I visited the college and the clinic to see my old pals and, in the waiting room I happened to meet the patient’s husband, who was there as a patient himself. He was very pleased to tell me that his wife had remained well ever since our last contact, about six years earlier, and that she was actually gardening at home on that day. He again thanked me profusely for what I had done, while I knew very well that he was in fact thanking my mentor, John Bastyr, as well as all the teachers of my teachers. Once I asked John why he had referred a dying person with kidney and heart failure to a recent graduate. He simply said with a witty smile that Walla Walla was closer to Portland than to Seattle. In fact, he was right, but only by a trifling twenty-five miles!

Dr. B. used to tell us never to forget that we were fourth in line from Lippe and fifth in line from Hahnemann, for he had learned homeopathy directly from Dr. C. P. Bryant, a well-known Seattle surgeon and obstetrician. Dr. Bryant was a graduate of Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, and when his wife was dying, he was persuaded by her family to consult Dr. Walter James, Dr. Adolph Lippe’s most dedicated student and collaborator. Dr. Bryant wrote, “Feeling that all help known to modern science had been given her, I was prevailed upon to call in Dr. Walter James, a homeopathic physician of very high standing in Philadelphia. While this was most humiliating to me as an allopathic physician, I did it solely to satisfy the demands of my wife’s family, not because I felt it would be of any avail.

“Dr. James, after taking a careful history asked for a third of a glass of water and a spoon. He proceeded to pour into this what looked to me like a few grains of granulated sugar. This served only to further my prejudice. However, I was determined to proceed with him for the satisfaction of the family. There was an immediate response for the better. Feeling that these infinitesimal doses could be of no value, I decided to discontinue the treatment in favor of a control (placebo). The patient took a turn for the worse. This I repeated several times until the truth of the value of the treatment was forced upon me.

“At this point I decided to swallow my pride and pay a visit to the Hahnemann College on Broad Street in Philadelphia. That day is memorable to me as I recall how ashamed I was to be seen entering this building. Looking hurriedly in both directions I ran up the steps rapidly into the college building. I was told at the information desk that a lecture on Pulsatilla was in progress and decided to listen. I heard the lecturer state that this remedy is of value in a blonde patient, blue eyes and of mild and yielding disposition. At that point it seemed obvious to me there could be no foundation in science for the prescribing by Similia.

“I then decided to pay a visit to Dr. Walter James in his office. There I requested the loan of a book on homeopathic philosophy. After browsing through its pages I returned to Dr. James with the statement that it was ‘all Greek to me.’ He replied, ‘There is a key to the intelligent reading of this book, but I wanted you to know that there is something in the great field of medical learning that was not given you at Jefferson Medical College.’

“Dr. James then offered to give me instruction but added that he was only willing to do this if I were in a receptive mood for he was too old and too tired to argue with me. I agreed to the program and received regular lectures three times weekly during the winters of 1906 and 1907. Not one word of instruction was given me during this entire time in materia medica. The wisdom of this, in order to prevent any argument, was only realized by me later. The further he progressed in homeopathic philosophy, the more I realized that all of my misunderstanding of homeopathy was answered, and the full truth of its superiority was evident.

“During the two winters that I studied with Dr. James I had the pleasure and honor of visiting his many patients, many of whom were the most outstanding citizens of the city of Philadelphia. The brilliant cures he made were so superior to anything I had seen in Jefferson Medical College hospital that my conversion was complete.

“The only instruction ever given me by Dr. James in materia medica was a most scholarly lecture on Aconite. He gave this to me without notes and it covered more than two hour’s description. This will give you some conception of the magnitude of the mind of this great man, whom you all know served nineteen years with Adolph Lippe.

“Finishing his instruction in the latter part of 1907 I inquired of him how I might repay him for the invaluable training he had given me. His reply was, ‘If you never make any use of homeopathic treatment other than in your own family, it will be the greatest blessing that has ever come to you.’ He further added, ‘The only recompense I wish is that when the opportunity presents itself to you to pass this knowledge on to others, I will be repaid.’ “⁽³⁾

In 1908, Dr. Bryant moved west to Seattle. He became one of the staunchest homeopaths of his time, and later became president of the International Hahnemannian Association (IHA), the very organization that Lippe had first conceived and, ten years later, in 1880, co-founded for the preservation and promotion of genuine homeopathy.

In the early 1930s, when Bryant was head surgeon at Grace Hospital in Seattle, he took a special liking to a new resident, whom he later made his favorite surgical assistant, and to whom he taught obstetrics. He also taught him homeopathy in private three-hour sessions at his home every Sunday morning. Bryant could not know that he was helping to change the course of naturopathic medicine forever by introducing genuine homeopathy to the man who would eventually lead the naturopathic profession toward new horizons in the second half of the twentieth century.

This new resident was John Bastyr. After his very first lesson on materia medica, which was on Sepia out of Farrington’s Clinical Materia Medica, Bryant’s favorite materia medica, John went to do the deliveries for his father, who was a pharmacist and representative of Boericke and Tafel in Seattle. When John entered the pharmacy, his father asked him if he could do something for a young woman who was sitting cross-legged and leaning over the wood stove that was in the middle of the pharmacy. It took no time for the young John to find out that she was having bladder trouble with bearing-down pains. He told us that he gave her Sepia, which was his very first homeopathic prescription. The lady came back the next day saying, “She couldn’t believe it. What ever you gave me was like a miracle.” He said after telling this story, “So that’s how I really began to get serious about homeopathy.”⁽⁴⁾

On another one of these late Thursday evenings when John was telling me about his beginnings in homeopathy, he pointed to Farrington’s book, which was on a shelf in his office. It was Bryant’s own copy, which John had received from him. Full of annotations written in the margins of the pages and on interleaved scratch papers, it can today be found in the Friedhelm Kirchfeld Rare Book Collection of the NCNM Library.

At NCNM, I studied homeopathy mainly under Drs. Robin Murphy and Steve Albin. It was always a great pleasure to sit and hear Robin tell us stories of incredible recoveries and many of the unusual intricacies of homeopathy. Robin made the learning of homeopathy interesting and lively. Steve would come every week with a pile of his own cases that he would present in class, each one as interesting and inspiring as the next. I received most of my clinical supervision from them and from Dr. Michael Traub, who was then completing his residency in homeopathy. I was fortunately permitted to complete up to 75 percent of my 1,700-plus required hours of externship by practicing homeopathy under supervision as I was already a chiropractor.

NCNM library provided an extraordinary environment for learning homeopathy because it had an impressive collection of homeopathic books and journals. In late 1979, NCNM received the library of Dr. Alvin R. Hedges (1886-1979), an early-twentieth-century naturopathic physician who practiced in Medford, Oregon. His library contained most of the classic books in the homeopathic literature, and the NCNM library had an almost complete series of the best homeopathic journals, including the Proceedings of the International Hahnemannian Association, the Organon, the Homoeopathic Physician, the Medical Advance, the American Homeopathic Review, the Hahnemannian Monthly and the Homoeopathic Recorder.

During the summer holidays, I would practice with my father in his clinic in Montreal where, with my sister, brother and five nurses, he treated over 150 patients a day, of whom the great majority were suffering from autoimmune diseases. Patients would stay at the clinic for one to three hours a day to receive treatment, in particular, apitherapy and electrotherapy. In addition, they would all receive lifestyle counseling. My father, Dr. Joseph Saine, was an extraordinarily clever and capable clinician, who was recognized as the world specialist in the clinical use of bee venom. He also used unique and effective methods of electrotherapy, such as the bioccular transcerebral iontophoresis, which I believe was used only by him and today is used only at our clinic.⁽⁵⁾ Physicians from all around the world came to learn his methods. The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research was interested in my father’s methods and conducted research to verify some of them, which were found to be highly effective.^{(6, 7, 8)},

My teacher, Dr. Robin Murphy, spent most of one of these summer holidays supervising me at my father’s clinic. He would sit beside me and read the notes I wrote in English of what the patients were saying in French. I still remember that the last day before returning to Portland for class, we worked from early morning until late in the evening, conducting close to fifty follow-ups, the great majority of whom were doing very well, even though most of them were suffering from serious conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, multiple sclerosis or cancer.⁽⁹⁾

In hindsight, I realize that I could not have had a better education at that time than I received at NCNM. It was like a dream come true because I never had to go through orthodox medical training and learn the antithesis of what I wanted to practice. Instead, I bathed in a sea of totally relevant knowledge among many old-timers who were a link to the pioneers of our profession.

I never wanted to study for the prestige of a degree or position, but to learn as much as I could that would enable me to help sick people recover their health. Clearly, becoming a naturopathic physician has permitted me to become a better, well-round physician by putting the entire book of Nature at my disposal, and in particular, I found myself in a very rich environment for learning homeopathy.

When I counsel young people, North Americans in particular, who want to achieve real mastery in homeopathy, I point out the dilemma that Samuel Jones expressed so eloquently in his poem. At the end of the discussion, I generally direct them to the naturopathic medical colleges that have the best programs in homeopathy, for the following reasons:

1. I firmly believe they will have a much better chance to learn homeopathy thoroughly through a systematic four-year undergraduate training program.
2. They will receive direct clinical supervision, which is fundamental to any thorough homeopathic training, and which is, as a rule, not possible in the better North American postgraduate programs in homeopathy.
3. They will also learn other disciplines that are necessary for becoming well-rounded physicians, and that, as a rule, are inaccessible in most other medical programs, such as clinical nutrition (par. 208), psychology and lifestyle counseling (par. 150), hydrotherapy (par. 291), electrotherapy (par. 286-287), manipulation (par. 288-289), natural obstetrics and childbirth at home, etc.
4. They will also not have to go though an unnecessary antithetical training, which they have no intention of ever practicing.

I advise young graduates of naturopathic medical colleges who intend to specialize in homeopathy to continue their studies in an established postgraduate program in homeopathy or to develop their own postgraduate study program. From the clinical point of view, I ask them to spend the first two years of their practice as if they were pursuing a residency program, but without having the burden of any of the time-consuming administrative and academic duties common to institutional residency programs. Instead, I suggest that they invest their energy, time and attention in assiduously studying every case and its corresponding materia medica, until they can prescribe with certainty, and that they commit themselves to fully understanding the spirit and all the practical rules and intricacies of genuine homeopathy. On the whole, that is not very different from the advice Hahnemann gave in 1835 to the French students of homeopathy he had met soon after his arrival in Paris: “And you, studious French youth, who are not yet affected by the old errors, and who are endlessly seeking only the truth as you burn the midnight oil, come to me! For I am imparting to you this much sought-after truth, the divine revelation of a principle of eternal nature. It is to the results already obtained that I am appealing in order to convince you; but do not try to obtain such results yourselves until you have been assured of success by conscientious and thorough study; then, like me, you will bless Providence for the immense gift that it has brought the world through my humble person, for I have been nothing but a feeble instrument of its power, before which all must bow.”⁽¹⁰⁾

I also tell students always to pay particular attention to all the causes of disease and to learn how to prevent them and how best to remedy their effects, while I remind them what Pierre Schmidt would say to his students: “If you are only, you are not.” In other words, if you only study homeopathy you will never be a good homeopath.

One of the greatest lessons I learned from Dr. Bastyr is that Nature is generous and bountiful, and as physicians, it is our duty never to stop learning in order to make the wisest and best use of its limitless resources. He would repeatedly tell us in the best spirit of the Hippocratic and Hahnemannian traditions, “There is always something we can do,” even in the most difficult cases and direst of circumstances.

Above all, Bastyr will be remembered as a man with a vision who never stopped searching for truth in health and medicine, and who became the torchbearer of an entire profession and inspired generations of young people to delve into the medicine of the future, “naturally,” as he would often say with his large and kind smile. He encouraged us never to stop learning and to constantly integrate new knowledge in an organized manner. He wanted us to develop and stick to a clear, coherent and practical philosophy of health, disease, healing and medicine.

In her book, Dr. John Bastyr: Philosophy and Practice Including Bastyr’s Homeopathic Materia Medica, Melanie Grimes writes about her teacher and doctor: “When I was a first year naturopathic student, eager to learn as much as I could, I approached Dr. B. asking for additional study materials. He graciously offered to loan me some books and to talk with me after I finished reading. He loaned me his copy of Hahnemann’s Organon. … After six months, I returned the book, not yet ready to take him up on his offer of discussing it. This book loan began a lifelong trajectory for me. I still strain to comprehend the enormity of Hahnemann’s primary vision. In writing this chapter [on homeopathy], I marveled that of all the books in Bastyr’s library, he chose this one to loan out. I venture to guess that this was not an individualized ‘prescription,’ but rather his typical response to students. I never heard him lecture on the Organon, but his gesture is louder than words. … His joy in homeopathy was spread to generations of students. He carried a link from Hahnemann to the present. He investigated new ideas but kept his focus on the classical and most importantly, the treatments that brought about clinical success using the smallest doses to promote the most ‘rapid, gentle, permanent restoration of health.’ “⁽¹¹⁾

Dr. Steven Coward wrote in his review of Grimes’s book in Homeopathy Today, “Melanie Grimes’ book is a tribute to a man whom she obviously greatly admired—and rightly so. Dr. Bastyr was a tireless healer, teacher, lobbyist, student, and more. He saw patients all day, taught classes at night, attended to the business of running a school, lobbied for health care policy, and maintained a homestead. He was larger than life.”⁽¹²⁾

Dr. Eva Urbaniak, one of Bastyr’s former patients and students, captured the man in these few words: “He was a man of unsurpassed integrity, kindness, compassion, and intelligence; but most importantly, he embodied the true sense of the word ‘HEALER;’ ” he stood out “as an exemplary physician.”⁽¹³⁾

Dr. Bill Mitchell, co-founder of Bastyr University, wrote about his mentor twenty-six years after having graduated from NCNM, expressing his thanks “to Dr. John Bastyr, who selflessly shared his knowledge and experience with his students. In the practice of naturopathic medicine, he was, simply the best. … To this day, … it seems that we dig up more memories of those wonderful years when we had the privilege of being taught by Dr. Bastyr and some of the other truly great masters of naturopathic medicine. … When one walked in to see him, the healing began immediately. Dr. Bastyr was what pure goodness would look like if it could walk on two legs.”⁽¹⁴⁾

It is a great pity that a physician of the caliber of John Bastyr could not have become a member of the AIH or IHA. Perhaps the IHA would not have folded in 1959 from lack of participating members, if it had had an infusion of new blood from bright, dynamic, capable and learned physicians such as John Bastyr. I can easily picture doctors like John Bastyr presenting and discussing papers and cases in meetings with, for example, Harvey Farrington, Herbert Roberts, Royal Hayes or Elizabeth Wright Hubbard.

For the following reasons, I believe that to better ensure a stronger and more dynamic membership and a richer future, the time has come for the AIH to seriously reconsider its policy of excluding naturopathic physicians from active membership:

1. The North American physicians who have taken the best and most direct route to becoming well-rounded physicians while specializing in homeopathy are the naturopathic physicians.
2. Many of the naturopathic physicians who have specialized in homeopathy are among its leaders in the North America.
3. The demand for naturopathic physicians and the number of accredited naturopathic medical colleges have been growing continually in the last few decades, and is likely to do so for many decades to come.
4. Naturopathic physicians can practice homeopathy legally in all the jurisdictions that regulate naturopathic medicine because it is part of their standards of practice; except in a few jurisdictions, that is not case for MDs.
5. Naturopathic medicine is being regulated by an increasing number of governments in North America (it is currently regulated in twenty American states and territories, and will very soon be regulated in seven of the ten Canadian provinces).
6. Orthodox medical training is becoming more demanding and hermetic and is therefore not conducive to the acceptance of homeopathy. Moreover, the majority of newly graduated MDs have large debts and have been depleted of much of their capacity to pursue another discipline, especially one as demanding as genuine homeopathy.
7. For over half a century, no undergraduate or graduate program in homeopathy has been offered to medical students or doctors in the medical schools of North America.
8. The number of new AIH members has been needlessly low for many decades.

The first two of these points should be sufficient reasons to invite your naturopathic colleagues who hold a license to practice naturopathic medicine in any North American jurisdiction or have graduated from an accredited naturopathic medical college to join the ranks of active membership in the AIH. Since only graduates of accredited naturopathic medical colleges can write national, state and provincial exams in order to be licensed, the AIH would be opening its door only to very well educated physicians. Let us recognize that times have changed and that newly trained and coming generations of allopathic physicians would not likely be able to found or even perhaps maintain a deeply inspired movement like the one that led to the creation of the AIH.

Such a union of forces would greatly promote the growth and strength of homeopathy in North America, a goal not unlike that of the AIH, which was formed for “the benefit to be derived from a mutual cultivation of the art by the various members of our school.”

Finally, I would suggest that members of the AIH encourage students who are interested in homeopathy to first become naturopathic physicians, because they have a much greater opportunity to fulfill the definition of the ideal physician from the truest Hahnemannian perspective.

Yours truly,
André Saine, N.D.

P.S. I would like to take this opportunity to invite serious, capable and experienced physicians to join the Materia Medica Pura Project (MMPP), which my friend Dr. Tim Fior has mentioned in his tribute.⁽¹⁵⁾ We need more dedicated co-workers from every part of the world to index our journals, develop remedy monographs and become permanent editors of our project. Please do not hesitate to contact the coordinator of the MMPP, Dr. Raduan Khalil: [email protected].

P.P.S. Following this open letter, the matter was discussed among the Trustees of the AIH and its members were asked to vote on a motion on whether to accept naturopathic physicians to full memberships.

Dr. Irene Sebastion wrote in her Presisent’s Message in the Autumn 2014 number of American Journal of Homeopathic Medicine, “The other exciting news for A.l.H. is the decision to change our Bylaws so that naturopaths who have graduated from an accredited naturopathic school and are licensed in one of the States of the U.S. are now eligible to become Active Members of A.l.H. This change in Bylaws occurred in response to a request by A.l.H. Honorary Member Andre Saine, ND., FCAH. … Many A.l.H. members have recognized the contributions of the naturopathic community to the practice of homeopathic medicine for many years—some of us, including myself, have been trained in homeopathic medicine and/or greatly influenced by Dr. Saine and other well-known naturopaths. We greally value the medical training including the ability to diagnose and to do physical exams that naturopaths receive during their 4-year naturopathic education, and we appreciate their understanding of the practice of homeopathic medicine as a complete medical system. We acknowledge and respect their additional training in nutrition which most of us who attended allopathic medical schools did not have the opportunity to receive. We believe that by working more closely together, and by recognizing the unique gifts that we bring from our respective traditions, all of us will be enriched in our common pursuit of the promotion of homeopathic medicine. We welcome enthusiastically the integration of naturopaths into our association in every way.”⁽¹⁶⁾

References

(1) National College of Naturopathic Medicine Bulletin—1978-1980. Portland, Oregon.
(2) Grimes M. Dr. John Bastyr: Philosophy and Practice Including Bastyr’s Homeopathic Materia Medica. Althea Book Company, 2005, 35. (The second edition will soon be available at www.melaniegrimes.com)
(3) Bryant CP. Why I became a convert to homoeopathy from the allopathic school of practice. Homoeopathic Recorder 1942; 57: 377-380
(4) Kirchfeld F, Boyle W. Nature Doctors: Pioneers in Naturopathic Medicine. Portland: Medicina Biologica, 1994, 304.
(5) Bioccular transcerebral iontophoresis was developed around 1920 by Georges Bourguignon, M.D., D.Sc., who was a neurologist and neurophysiologist and a member of the French Academy of Medicine. To read more about the extraordinary potential of this simple therapeutic modality see: http://www.homeopathy.ca/pdf/BTI.pdf
(6) Vick JA, Mehlman B, Brooks RB. Effect of bee venom and melittin on plasma cortisol in the unanesthetized monkey. Toxicon 1972; 10: 581–586.
(7) Vick JA, Warren GB, Brooks RB. The effects of whole bee venom on cage activity and plasma cortisol levels in the arthritic dog. Inflammation 1975; 1: 167-174.
(8) Saine J. The effectiveness of bee venom in the treatment of arthritis. Proceedings of the North American Apiotherapy Society 1978; 1: 25-32.
(9) Two amazing cases (cases 2 and 3) that were seen during the summer recess of 1981 were published in the following paper: Saine A. The essential role of homeopathy in wholistic health care: case reports. NCNM Review 1981-1982; 3 (2); 9-20. This paper can be accessed here.
(10) Hahnemann S. Allocution. Bibliothèque Homoeopathique 1836; 6: 29-31.
(11) Grimes M. Dr. John Bastyr: Philosophy and Practice Including Bastyr’s Homeopathic Materia Medica. Althea Book Company, 2005, 53. (The second edition should soon be available at www.melaniegrimes.com)
(12) Coward S. Review of Dr. John Bastyr: Philosophy and Practice by Melanie J. Grimes, RSHom (NA), CCH. Homeopathy Today 2006 (April): 42.
(13) Urbaniak E. Dr. John Bastyr: Biography of a healer. http://www.docevaonline.com/articles/drbastyr.html. Accessed March 12, 2014.
(14) Mitchell WA. Plant Medicine in Practice: Using the Teachings of John Bastyr. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 2003.
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