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Dana Ullman behauptet, Charles Darwin wäre ein Anhänger der Homöopathie gewesen. Das ist eine dreiste Fälschung.

Wer ist Dana Ullman?

In seiner Selbstdarstellung schreibt Dana Ullman über sich unter anderem:

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Dana Ullman, M.P.H. (Masters in Public Health, U.C. Berkeley) is "homeopathic.com" and is widely recognized as the foremost spokesperson for homeopathic medicine in the U.S. Besides authoring The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy, Dana Ullman co-authored America's most popular homeopathic guidebook, Everybody's Guide to Homeopathic Medicines (Jeremy Tarcher/Putnam, revised 2004), updated four times since its initial publication in 1984 (and published in eight languages).
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Damit keiner behaupten kann, ich hätte aus dem Zusammenhang gerissen, hier erst mal der miese Pfusch, den Dana Ullman über Charles Darwin zusammengeschmiert hat, als Ganzes:

http://www.homeopathic.com/articles/view,128

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The Surprising Story of Charles Darwin and His Homeopathic Doctor
Despite Darwin's Initial Skeptism, a Homeopathic Doctor Provides Significant Relief to Him

by Dana Ullman, MPH, ©2007

My new book, The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy (North Atlantic Books, 2007) includes many amazing stories about the use of and/or advocacy for homeopathic medicine from many of the most respected cultural heroes of the past 200 years. Even I was surprised to uncover specific stories from 11 American presidents, seven popes, JD Rockefeller, Charles Kettering, and innumerable literary greats, sports superstars, corporate leaders and philanthropists, clergy and spiritual leaders, women’s rights leaders, monarchs from all over the world, and many of the most esteemed physicians and scientists of our time.

One of the most amazing stories came from the life of Charles Darwin. Because so many of Darwin’s personal letters have been maintained and are now available online, there is a veritable treasure-trove of information about his life, illnesses, and his medical treatment. What will be described here is a part of his story, with much greater detail provided in The Homeopathic Revolution.

Darwin’s story is but one story in the chapter on “Physicians and Scientists: Coming out of the Medicine Closet.” Some of the others included in this chapter are: Sir William Osler (the “father of modern medicine”), Emil Adolf von Behring (the “father of immunology”), Sidney Ringer, Charles Frederick Menninger (founder of the Menninger Clinic), August Bier (the “father of spinal anesthesia”), Royal S. Copeland (homeopathic physician and New York Senator), William J. Mayo and Charles H. Mayo (founders of the Mayo Clinic), C. Everett Koop (former Surgeon General, U.S.), and Brian Josephson (modern-day Nobel laureate and Cambridge professor).

During Darwin’s trip to South America in the mid-1830s, he became very ill. Although different historians and physicians have hypothesized on what ailment he had, there is no consensus, except to say that he was seriously ill. Ever since 1837, he suffered from persistent nausea and vomiting, heart palpitations, widespread boils, and trembling, and since 1847, he had fainting spells and spots before his eyes...and his symptoms were getting increasingly worse.

Although Charles Darwin was only 39 years old in November, 1848, he was so ill that he couldn't attend his own father's funeral. In March, 1849, Darwin himself acknowledged that he was unable to work one day in every three, and further, he felt that he was dying. He said this specifically,

"I was not able to do anything one day out of three, & was altogether too dispirited to write to you or to do anything but what I was compelled. I thought I was rapidly going the way of all flesh."

When you consider that Charles Darwin was this sick in 1849 and that he published his seminal book, The Origin of Species, 10 years later in 1859, one cannot help but wonder if he would have even survived that long or if he would have been as productive as a scientist or as an author if he didn’t see Dr. James Manby Gully in March, 1849.

On the advice from one of his cousins as well as from a fellow shipmate from the Beagle, Charles Darwin brought himself and his family to the clinic and “water-cure” spa of Dr. James Manby Gully. They arrived on March 10, 1849.

Although Darwin knows that Dr. Gully is a homeopathic physician and even though Darwin is very skeptical of homeopathy, he wrote on March 19, 1849:

“I grieve to say that Dr Gully gives me homeopathic medicines three times a day, which I take obediently without an atom of faith.”

Despite Darwin’s skepticism about homeopathy, he experienced the power of these medicines.

After just eight days of his arrival, Darwin experienced a skin eruption all over his legs. It is interesting and important to note that patients who receive homeopathic treatment do not always get better immediately. In fact, in around 20-30% of patients with chronic symptoms, patients experience a “healing crisis,” usually an externalization of symptoms to the skin or an excerbation of old symptoms that were previously suppressed with conventional drugging. The fact that Darwin was skeptical of Gully’s treatment and that Darwin experienced this initial worsening of symptoms suggests that Darwin’s reaction was clearly not a placebo effect.Some skeptics assert that Gully’s “water-cure” treatment may have provided the therapeutic result, not homeopathy, though Darwin acknowledged on March 24, 1849, that Dr. Gully had not even begun the sweating process of his treatment, one of the important parts of water-cure treatment. Actually, it was just 2 weeks after arriving that Darwin wrote "I much like and think highly of Dr. Gully" and more.

On March 28, 1849, he had not have any vomiting for 10 days (a rare experience for him):

By April 19, 1849, Darwin wrote,

“I now increase in weight, have escaped sickness for 30 days, which is thrice as long an interval, as I have had for last year; & yesterday in 4 walks I managed seven miles! I am turning into a mere walking and eating machine.”

On May 6, 1849, Darwin writes:

"Dr. G., moreover, (and I hear he rarely speaks confidently) tells me he has little doubt but that he can cure me, in the course of time, time however it will take."

Gully, like many homeopaths and hydrotherapists, do not tend of over-state their confidence. Although Gully seemed to be confident with Darwin, Darwin asserts that Gully rarely expresses confidence, suggesting that Gully didn’t use “confidence” as a strategy to elicit placebo responses.

Antagonists to homeopathy love to excerpt from the next Darwin letter from September 4, 1850, though they always just excerpt the top part of it. They never include the entire quote because Darwin acknowledges in this case that the girl being treated surprisingly recovered. Ironically, some skeptics insist that homeopathy was not the only treatment used. Although this is true, the clairvoyant that they used in this case was known to see inside a person’s body was not described as one who diagnosed with the intuition, not apply treatment. The mesmerist (hypnotist) was only described for the girl to sleep. The girl did receive water-cure treatment by Dr. Gully, as well as homeopathic treatment by Dr. John Chapman (who was Darwin’s teacher of homeopathy). Ultimately, no one knows what ailment this girl had, but it was serious enough for Darwin to write and to express surprise that she was cured, either by water-cure and/or homeopathy.

The entire quote is:

"You speak about Homœopathy; which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clairvoyance: clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one's ordinary faculties are put out of question, but in Homœopathy common sense & common observation come into play, & both these must go to the Dogs, if the infinetesimal doses have any effect whatever. How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet, in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare Homœopathy & all other such things. It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think in my beloved Dr Gully, that he believes in everything when his daughter was very ill, he had a clairvoyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep, an homœopathist, viz Dr. Chapman; & himself as Hydropathist! & the girl recovered.”

One important reason that so many people over the past 200 years become so passionate about homeopathy is that the results are often, though not always, very rapid and very obvious. Further, because many people have tried many other treatments before homeopathy (treatments that might have just as likely to have tried to elicit a placebo effect), the homeopathic treatments often work due to the power of these nanodoses that are beyond that of a placebo effect.

Even after Dr. James Gully retired, Gully hired a homeopathic medical doctor by the name of James Smith Ayerst to take his place.  Although there were many other hydrotherapy spas throughout England at that time, Darwin frequently returned to Malvern where he received water-cure treatments as well as homeopathic medicines.  

One other truly fascinating letter from January 16, 1862, that Darwin wrote is where he acknowledges that he has received a book written by a German homeopathic doctor who had written a book quite similar to Darwin's book on evolution, but he asserts that this book "goes much deeper."

Despite the wide respect that Dr. Gully received from his many illustrious patients, he was disliked greatly by select orthodox physicians. A classic story of Shakespearean porportions played out in England at that time between Dr. Gully and his greatest antagonist. Sir Charles Hastings, a physician who later helped to found the British Medical Association, was Gully’s most vitriolic opponent. Dr. Hastings was so opposed to hydrotherapy that he frequently wrote articles about its “dangers,” while he utilized a wide range of orthodox medical treatments that everyone would soon call simply barbaric.

The additional drama to the lives of Gully and Hastings is that their sons were also antagonists to each other. Gully’s son, William Court Gully, became speaker of the British House of Commons (1895–1905), while Hastings’ son, George Woodyatt Hastings, became a lawyer and politician. Like his father, George Hastings was actively antagonistic to unconventional medical treatments. Ultimately, the younger Hastings’s reputation was severely tarnished when he was sent to prison for stealing money from a client whose will he executed.

Strangely enough, some antagonists to homeopathy have referred to Gully as Charles Darwin's "friend," as though Darwin would have only taken the homeopathic medicines “obediently” if they were prescribed by a “friend” rather than by a homeopathic doctor. For the record, there is no evidence that Gully and Darwin were "friends." They clearly had never met before Darwin sought Gully’s care, and there is no evidence that they socialized.

 
Dr. James Manby Gully:
Water Cure Physician and Homeopathic Doctor

Every biography of Charles Darwin that references his health acknowledges that the one physician who provided the best treatment to him was DR. JAMES MANBY GULLY.  This is not controversial. This is fact.

Dr. Gully became a member of the British Homoeopathic Society in 1848 (this link provides this clear evidence), the year before he began his treatment of Charles Darwin. Gully was also found to be a member many years later in 1870.

Dr. James Manby Gully wrote a book called  The Water Cure in Chronic Disease in 1846, and this popular book went through five editions (this link is to the 5th edition!).  In the first edition to this book he was very articulate in his critique of conventional medicine of his day, though this critique is equally valid for medicine today.  Gully was a strong critique of “polypharmacy,” the use of multiple medicines prescribed for a patient.  Gully was concerned that each medicine causes serious symptoms which required yet another medicine to reduce its side effects.  He wrote:  

“I could show by not a few illustrations how this complex medication, this polypharmacy, necessitates the employment of each of the medicines comprehended in it, to obviate the effects of another; how the effect of the mercurials have to be combated by the opiates; how these, again produce a necessity for the purgatives (drugs that induce vomiting); these, for the remedies for flatulence; and these again, producing heart-burn, call for alkalis and opiates…the whole plan is radically wrong.” (page 46)

Gully poses the question of how can a physician find the “precise stimulus” to a real cure for the patient.  He then asserts that homeopaths provide “a more rational plan.”  Drawing from his own experiences, he affirms that despite the use of infinitesimal doses used in homeopathy, “It is well and wise to observe and investigate these things before laughing at them” (page 47).
 
In 1856 when this book was published in its fifth edition, he added the following strong statements about the value of homeopathic medicines.  He writes that distinct from the use of conventional medicines in the treatment of chronic constipation where drugs do not cure and lead to relapse, it is significantly different with homeopathic care: “In fact, cases abound in which homeopathic treatment alone has effectually and permanently cure habitual costiveness” (page 48).  

In reference to the treatment of headaches, the use of homeopathic medicines is “not only justifiable but desirable.”  

Finally, Gully continues by asserting, “Homeopathic practitioners have observed that patients under the water cure are more susceptible to the action of their remedies than other persons, and that therefore the results may be more accurately calculated.  I have found this assertion to be substantially correct; and it confirms the vivifying influence of the water cure over the bodily functions” (page 48).
Darwin’s Plant Experiments with Homeopathic Doses

It is also fascinating to note that Darwin himself conducted several experiments evaluating the effects of extremely small doses on an insect-eating plant (Drosera rotundifolia, commonly called sundew), a plant that also happens to be a commonly used homeopathic medicine. He found that solutions of certain salts of ammonia stimulated the glands of the plant’s tentacles and caused the plant to turn inward. He made this solution more and more dilute, but the plant still was able to detect the presence of the salt. On July 7, 1874, he wrote to a well-known physiologist, Professor F. C. Donders of Utrecht, Netherlands, that he observed that 1/4,000,000 of a grain had a demonstrable effect upon the Drosera and “the 1/20,000,000th of a grain of the crystallised salt does the same. Now, I am quite unhappy at the thought of having to publish such a statement.” (Darwin, 1903, 498).

Astonished by his observation, Darwin likened this exceedingly small dose to a dog that perceives the odor of an animal a quarter of a mile distant. He said: “Yet these particles must be infinitely smaller than the one twenty millionth of a grain of phosphate of ammonia” (Darwin, 1875, 173). Darwin said about this spectacular phenomenon:

“The reader will best realize this degree of dilution by remembering that 5,000 ounces would more than fill a thirty-one gallon cask [barrel]; and that to this large body of water one grain of the salt was added; only half a drachm, or thirty minims, of the solution being poured over a leaf. Yet this amount sufficed to cause the inflection of almost every tentacle, and often the blade of the leaf. … My results were for a long time incredible, even to myself, and I anxiously sought for every source of error. … The observations were repeated during several years. Two of my sons, who were as incredulous as myself, compared several lots of leaves simultaneously immersed in the weaker solutions and in water, and declared that there could be no doubt about the difference in their appearance. … In fact every time that we perceive an odor, we have evidence that infinitely smaller particles act on our nerves.” (Darwin, 1875, 170)

In Darwin’s book on his experiments with Drosera, he expressed complete amazement at the hypersensitivity of a plant to extremely small doses of certain chemicals: “Moreover, this extreme sensitiveness, exceeding that of the most delicate part of the human body, as well as the power of transmitting various impulses from one part of the leaf to another, have been acquired without the intervention of any nervous system” (Darwin, 1875, 272).

Yet, Darwin also discovered that Drosera is not sensitive to every substance. He tested various alkaloids and other substances that act powerfully on humans and animals who have a nervous system but produced no effect on Drosera. He concluded that the “power of transmitting an influence to other parts of the leaf, causing movement, or modified secretion, or aggregation, does not depend on the presence of a diffused element, allied to nerve-tissue” (Darwin, 1875, 274).

Darwin confirmed an important homeopathic observation that living systems are hypersensitive to only certain substances. Sadly and strangely, conventional scientists have attacked homeopaths for using extremely small doses of substances without any appreciation for the homeopaths’ credo that living systems—whether human, animal, or plant—will be hypersensitive to a limited number of substances (and the homeopathic method of individualizing treatment is a refined method to find this substance or substances).

The important point about living organisms is that each living thing has certain hypersensitivities to what it needs for its very survival. It seems that homeopaths have discovered a method to finding the substance to which a person or animal is hypersensitive, and they have developed a pharmacological method to apply this medicine to augment immune response.

Despite the efforts of the antagonists to homeopathy to continually provide mis-information about the plausibility of the extremely small doses that homeopaths use, they rarely acknowledge the impressive website of Professor Martin Chaplin of London South Bank University (or as is typical, the skeptics delete references to his important work on http://www.wikipedia.org/). Professor Chaplin is a world-renowned expert on water, and he confirms the real plausibility on homeopathic medicines here and here even if there is not yet consensus from everyone on how these nanodoses precisely work (please note that the mechanism for understand how aspirin worked was only discovered 20 or so years ago, and not a single physician questioned its value or didn’t use it simply because we didn’t know how it worked).

NOTE: If this story about Charles Darwin intrigued you at all, you might also want to read about the hundreds of other cultural heroes over the past 200 years who used and/or advocated for homeopathy. Another sample chapter from this book (the chapter on “Literary Greats: Write On Homeopathy” is available here and additional information about the book is here.

REFERENCES:

-- Darwin, C. Insectivorous Plants. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1875. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5765

-- Darwin, F., ed. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1903.

 

Readers are encouraged to read the entire book The Homeopathic Revolution.  Consider ordering it through your local bookstore, through various online bookstores, or through homeopathic booksellers.

 
About the Author:

Dana Ullman, M.P.H. (Masters in Public Health, U.C. Berkeley) is "homeopathic.com" and is widely recognized as the foremost spokesperson for homeopathic medicine in the U.S. Besides authoring The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy, Dana Ullman co-authored America's most popular homeopathic guidebook, Everybody's Guide to Homeopathic Medicines (Jeremy Tarcher/Putnam, revised 2004), updated four times since its initial publication in 1984 (and published in eight languages).

He has authored five other homeopathic books, including:
Essential Homeopathy (New World Library, 2002)
Homeopathy A-Z (Hay House, 1999)
Consumer's Guide to Homeopathy (Tarcher/Putnam, 1996),
Discovering Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21st Century (North Atlantic, 1991) (this book includes a foreword by Dr. R.W. Davey, Physician to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II).
Homeopathic Medicines for Children and Infants (Jeremy Tarcher/Putnam, 1992)

Dana founded Homeopathic Educational Services, America's largest publisher and distributor of homeopathic books, tapes, software, and medicine kits. For 10 years he served as formulator and spokesperson for a line of homeopathic medicine manufactured by Nature's Way, one of America's leading natural products companies.

Dana Ullman co-taught a ten-week course on homeopathy at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine from 1993 to 1995 and again in 1998. He also has served or has been asked to serve as an advisory board member to alternative medicine institutes at Harvard, Columbia, and University of Alaska schools of medicine. Dr. Andrew Weil's Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona asked Dana to develop their curriculum in homeopathy for their physician associate fellows.

Ullman lectures regularly at medical schools (UCSF, UC Davis, Stanford), and he has authored or co-authored chapters on homeopathy in medical textbooks, including:

• Homeopathic Medicine: Principles and Research, in Complementary and Alternative Veterinary Medicine: Principles and Practice, edited by Allen M. Schoen, DVM, and Susan G. Wynn, DVM, PhD, New York: Mosby, 1998.

• Homeopathy (co-authored with Michael Loes, MD), in Weiner’s Pain Management: A Practical Guide for Clinicians, edited by M. V. Boswell and B. E. Cole, 7th edition, New York: Taylor and Francis, 2006 (a leading textbook for physicians who specialize in pain management).

• Homeopathy for Primary and Adjunctive Cancer Therapy (co-authored with Menacham Oberbaum, MD, Iris Bell, MD, PhD, and Shepherd Roee Singer, MD), in Integrative Oncology, edited by Andrew Weil, MD and Donald Abrams, MD, forthcoming in 2008 from Oxford University Press. For additional biographical information about Dana Ullman, MPH, click on this name.



 
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DANA ULLMAN, MPH, is one of America's leading advocates for homeopathy. He has authored 10 books, including The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy, Homeopathy A-Z, The Consumer's Guide to Homeopathy, Homeopathic Medicines for Children and Infants, Discovering Homeopathy, and (the best-selling) Everybody's Guide to Homeopathic Medicines (with Stephen Cummings, MD). He is the founder of Homeopathic Educational Services, America's leading resource center for homeopathic books, tapes, medicines, software, and correspondence courses. Homeopathic Educational Services has co-published over 35 books on homeopathy with North Atlantic Books.
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Der Text ist sehr schwer zu lesen. Hauptgrund ist - außer dem ekligen Geseiere -, daß Ullman ständig Dinge in die Buchstabensuppe rührt, die mit der Sache überhaupt nichts zu tun haben.

So schreibt er ellenlang über Gully und eben NICHT über Darwin.

Die positiven Zitate, die er bringt, sind NICHT von Darwin!


Glücklicherweise gibt es ein Archiv mit Briefen von Charles Darwin. Die Briefe sind ausführlich mit Hinweisen versehen.

Im einzelnen handelt es sich um diese Quellen aus dem Nachlaß von Charles Darwin und dessen Briefpartnern:

http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1234.html
http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1235.html
http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1236.html

http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1240.html
http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1241.html

http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1352.html

http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-3391.html



Ernst Peter Fischer (er studierte Mathematik, Physik und Biologie und ist heute Professor für Wissenschaftsgeschichte an der Universität in Konstanz) schreibt in seinem Weblog

http://www.scienceblogs.de/wissenschaftsfeuilleton/2009/02/darwins-weisheit.php

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08.02.09 · 18:47 Uhr
Darwins Weisheit

Ich bin für das Studium der Originale. Das geht bei den Naturwissenschaften furchtbar schlecht. Wo, bitte schön, ist eine gute Ausgabe von Texten von Max Born? Zur Zeit gibt es eine Ausnahme - Darwin. Und kaum liest man in seinen Briefen, wird man belohnt, wie es sich bei Klassikern gehört. Hier ein Zitat aus einem Brief vom 4. 9. 1850, wobei man wissen muss, daß Darwin zeitlebens ein kranker Mann war:

"Du spricht von Homöopathie, ein Gegenstand, der mich sogar noch wütender macht als Hellseherei. Hellseherei liegt so jenseits aller Glaubwürdigkeit, daß normale Fähigkeiten dabei ohnehin keine Rolle spielen, aber bei der Homöopathie kommen gesunder Menscherverstand und Beobachtung ins Spiel, und beides würde vor die Hunde gehen, wenn die unendlich winzigen Dosen irgendeine Wirkung hätten. Wie wahr ist doch eine Bemerkung ..., die ich neulich las, über die Nachweisbarkeit von Heilprozessen. [Es hieß], niemand weiß, was das Ergebnis wäre, wenn eine Erkrankung gar nicht behandelt würde. Das ist der Maßstab, am dem die Homöopathie" zu messen ist."
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Ernst Peter Fischer und ich teilen eine Leidenschaft: die für Originale. Aber leider ist sein Text NICHT das Original von Charles Darwin, sondern ein TEIL einer Übersetzung.

Im Original lautet Charles Darwins Brief so:

http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1352.html

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Letter 1352 — Darwin, C. R. to Fox, W. D., 4 Sept [1850]


Down Farnborough Kent

Sept. 4th—

My dear Fox

I was much pleased to get your very agreeable letter with all its curious facts on the female sex & their hereditariness. Undoubtedly the periodical shedding of the nails almost by itself wd have convinced any naturalist that the individual was specifically distinct. I wonder whether the queries addressed to about the specific distinctions of the races of man are a reflexion from Agassiz's Lectures in the U.S. in which he has been maintaining the doctrine of several species,f1 —much, I daresay, to the comfort of the slave-holding Southerns.—

Your aphorism that “any remedy will cure any malady” contains, I do believe, profound truth,—whether applicable or not to the wondrous Water Cure I am not very sure.—

The Water-Cure, however, keeps in high favour, & I go regularly on with douching &c &c:f2 I am much in the same state as I have been for the last nine months, & not quite so brilliantly well as I was in the dead of last winter.f3 To be as I am, though I never have my stomach right for 24 hours, is, compared to my state two years ago, of inestimable value.

My wife & all my children are well; & they, the children, are now seven in number; to what I am to bring up my four Boys, even already sorely perplexes me. My eldest boyf4 is showing the hereditary principle, by a passion for collecting Lepidoptera.

We are at present very full of the subject of schools; I cannot endure to think of sending my Boys to waste 7 or 8 years in making miserable Latin verses, & we have heard some good of Bruce Castle School, near Tottenhamf5 which is partly on the Fellenberg System,f6 & is kept by a Brother of Rowland Hill of the Post-office, so that on Friday we are going to inspect it & the Boys.f7 I feel that it is an awful experiment to depart from the usual course, however bad that course may be.— Have you, who have something of an omniscient tendency in you, ever heard anything of this school?—

You speak about Homœopathy; which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clair-voyance: clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one's ordinary faculties are put out of question, but in Homœopathy common sense & common observation come into play, & both these must go to the Dogs, if the infinetesimal doses have any effect whatever. How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet, in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare Homœopathy & all other such things.f8 It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think in my beloved Dr Gully, that he believes in everything— when his daughter was very ill, he had a clair-voyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep—an homœopathist, viz Dr Chapman;f9 & himself as Hydropathist!f10 & the girl recovered.—

My dear Fox, I do hope we shall sometime see you here again. Your affectionate friend | C. Darwin

By pure accident a bundle of Athenæums have been much delayed.


Footnotes

f1
At a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Charleston, South Carolina, 15 March 1850, Louis Agassiz stated that, viewed zoologically, ‘the several races of man were well marked and distinct’ and that ‘these races did not originate from a common centre, nor from a single pair’ (Lurie 1960, p. 260). See also Lurie 1954.

f2
George Howard Darwin recounted in his reminiscences of CD (DAR 112: 20) how his father continued the water cure at home: He erected a douche which was shaped something like a very diminutive church & stood close to the well. About noon every day he used to take a douche even in the coldest weather. I remember well one bitter cold day with the snow covering everything waiting about outside until he had finished & that he came out almost blue with cold & we trotted away at a good brisk pace over the snow to the Sandwalk.

f3
According to Emma Darwin's diary, ‘Mr Fox’ had visited Down on 2 November 1849.

f4
William Erasmus Darwin, nearly eleven years old.

f5
Bruce Castle School in Tottenham was a continuation of the famous Hazelwood School, founded by Rowland Hill (originator of the penny post) and his brothers, Arthur and Matthew. Its innovative programme included student self-government and a curriculum that laid emphasis on modern languages and science, while allowing for flexibility in the development of the interests and abilities of the individual. See M. D. Hill 1825 and A. Hill 1833 for accounts of the educational philosophy of the two schools, and also Stewart and McCann 1967–8, 1: 98–123.

f6
Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg. His theory focussed upon the development of the child but placed emphasis upon rigid discipline. He considered class distinctions to be inevitable and in consequence favoured different types of education for each class: that for the upper classes should aim at producing wise, moral leaders; that for the lower classes should stress agricultural education (Stewart and McCann 1967–8, 1: 141–6).

f7
According to Emma Darwin's diary, she and CD visited Bruce Castle on 6 September 1850.

f8
CD refers to Quetelet 1849, pp. 228–36, in which Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet discussed medical statistics. Quetelet pointed out that the efficacy of a treatment for a particular condition could not be judged without comparing the resulting mortality with the mortality that followed if there was no treatment of the condition. There is no reference in CD's reading notebook (DAR 119) that indicates he may have read Quetelet 1849; it is, however, possible that he read John Frederick William Herschel's review of the book in the Edinburgh Review (1850) 92: 1–57, in which the views described above are quoted on pp. 54–5.

f9
John Chapman.

f10
For CD's opinion of James Manby Gully's use of homoeopathic treatments, see letter to Susan Darwin, [19 March 1849]. George Howard Darwin recalled (DAR 112: 49): Dr Gully was a spiritualist & believer in clairvoyance. He bothered my father for some time to have a consultation with a clairvoyante, who was staying at Malvern, and was reputed to be able to see the insides of people & discover the real nature of their ailments. At last he consented to pacify Dr Gully, but on condition that he should be allowed to test the clairvoyante's powers for himself. Accordingly, in going to the interview he put a banknote in a sealed envelope. After being introduced to the lady he said ‘I have heard a great deal of your powers of reading concealed writings & I should like to have evidence myself: now in this envelope there is a banknote—if you will read the number I shall be happy to present it to you.’ The clairvoyante answered scornfully ‘I have a maid-servant at home who can do that.’ But she had her revenge for on proceeding to the diagnosis of my father's illness, she gave a most appalling picture of the horrors which she saw in his inside.
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Wie man sieht, hat schon Charles Darwin sich ernste Sorgen um die geistige Gesundheit seiner Kinder gemacht, wenn er sie der Unbill einer "Erziehung" einer "Lehranstalt" aussetzt...


Dies ist die kritische Passage, in der Charles Darwin mehrere Dinge gegen Homöopathie aufführt:

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You speak about Homœopathy; which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clair-voyance: clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one's ordinary faculties are put out of question, but in Homœopathy common sense & common observation come into play, & both these must go to the Dogs, if the infinetesimal doses have any effect whatever.

How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet, in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare Homœopathy & all other such things.f8

It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think in my beloved Dr Gully, that he believes in everything — when his daughter was very ill, he had a clair-voyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep—an homœopathist, viz Dr Chapman;f9 & himself as Hydropathist!f10 & the girl recovered.[/b]
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[*/QUOTE*]


Zu Charles Darwins Lebzeit war Medizinerei noch ein Abenteuer und heute bekannte Dinge wie Placebos oder Doppelblindversuch bei der Suche nach der Wirksamkeit einer medizinischen Methode unbekannt. Folgender Hinweis ist aber interessant:

[*QUOTE*]
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"that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done",
as a standard with which to compare ...
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[*/QUOTE*]

Das stammt aber nicht von Charles Darwin, sondern ist:

[*QUOTE*]
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How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet,
in respect to evidence of curative processes,

that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done,
as a standard with which to compare ...
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[*/QUOTE*]

Darwin stimmt Quetelet eindeutig zu.

Eben diese Dinge, denen Charles Darwin zustimmt NACH seiner Wasserkur bei Gully, sind jene Dinge, die die Homöopathen und andere Esotter schlimmer fürchten als der Teufel das Weihwasser.


Um es noch einmal hervorzuheben: Der folgende Passus ist das, was Charles Darwin über Homöopathie geschrieben hat.

[*QUOTE*]
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You speak about Homœopathy; which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clair-voyance: clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one's ordinary faculties are put out of question, but in Homœopathy common sense & common observation come into play, & both these must go to the Dogs, if the infinetesimal doses have any effect whatever.
How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet, in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare Homœopathy & all other such things.
It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think in my beloved Dr Gully, that he believes in everything — when his daughter was very ill, he had a clair-voyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep—an homœopathist, viz Dr Chapman; & himself as Hydropathist! & the girl recovered.
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Nur wenige Zeilen. Was macht Dana Ullman? Antwort: Er schreibt ein geradezu logorrhoisches Desaster, in dem er hier und da auf Charles Darwin hinweist, ja, er macht sogar Links zu Darwins Briefen im Darwin-Archiv. Und am Ende ist Darwins Aussage ins glatte Gegenteil verdreht. Ullman ist nichts als ein mieser Demagoge.


Wie in den Hinweisen im Briefe-Archiv richtig vermerkt ist: die Darstellung "beloved Dr. Gully" ist deutlich übertrieben. Es scheint eine Eigenheit jener Epoche gewesen zu sein, einer Epoche, die weißgott nicht mit Freundlichkeit gesegnet war, sondern von übelstem Sozialdarwinismus und Betrug und obendrein einer miesen Regierung und miesen Justiz geprägt ist, sich mit verbaler Höflichkeit (durchaus mit übertriebenen Worten) das Wohlwollen des Anderen zu versichern.

Der letzte Satz über Dr. Gully enthält sowohl Trauer als auch Ironie:

[*QUOTE*]
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It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think in my beloved Dr Gully, that he believes in everything — when his daughter was very ill, he had a clair-voyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep—an homœopathist, viz Dr Chapman; & himself as Hydropathist! & the girl recovered.
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[*/QUOTE*]

Frei übersetzt:

[*QUOTE*]
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Es ist eine traurige Tatsache, ich kann nicht anders denken als an (meinen lieben) Dr. Gully, daß er wirklich ALLES glaubt:
Als seine Tochter sehr krank war, hat er
- ein hellsichtiges Mädchen über die Änderungen im Innern berichten lassen,
- sie von einem Mesmeristen (ein Hypnotiseur) in Schlaf versetzen lassen,
- einen Homöopathen, nämlich Dr. Chapman geholt,
- und er selbst als Wassertherapeut mitgemacht
und das Mädchen hat sich erholt.
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[*/QUOTE*]

Es waren VIER verschiedene Dinge zuwerke. Gully war nicht als Homöopath, sondern als Wassertherapeut dabei!

Charles Darwin ist zu Gully wegen dessen WASSERKUR gegangen. Und er erwähnt auch immer wieder nur die "water cure". Zitat aus

http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1352.html

[*QUOTE*]
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Your aphorism that “any remedy will cure any malady” contains, I do believe, profound truth,—whether applicable or not to the wondrous Water Cure I am not very sure.— The Water-Cure, however, keeps in high favour, & I go regularly on with douching &c &c:
I am much in the same state as I have been for the last nine months, & not quite so brilliantly well as I was in the dead of last winter. To be as I am, though I never have my stomach right for 24 hours, is, compared to my state two years ago, of inestimable value.
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[*/QUOTE*]

Darwin hatte ernste Störungen der Verdauung. Kein Wunder, daß er durch das ständige Erbrechen schwach war: sein Elektrolythaushalt war ruiniert. Insofern ist es sehr wahrscheinlich, daß es durch die geänderte und restriktrive Ernährung zu einer Änderung der Verdauung und damit zeitweise zu einer Verbesserung kam.

Teil der Behandlung war KALTES WASSER. Unter anderem anscheinend zum Duschen:

[*QUOTE*]
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I go regularly on with douching
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[*/QUOTE*]

Also selbst bei der Anwendung von Wasser liefen mehrere Methoden parallel. Die Erfolge DIESER Methoden schreibt Dana Ullman der Homöopathie zugute. Was für eine dreiste Fälschung, und obendrein so typisch für Homöopathen.


Charles Darwin war KEIN Anhänger der Homöopathie.

.

[ama]

Schade, daß ich diese Blog-Beiträge nicht vorher gesehen hatte:

Charles Darwin and Homeopathy
Sunday, August 26, 2007
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2007/08/charles-darwin-and-homeopathy.html


https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=25805659&postID=8388690156612094437

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/12/the_return_of_dana_ullman_clueless.php


Von Asbjørn Dyrendal * bekamen wir einen Hinweis, daß im Quackometer etwas über Ullmans Fälschungen und Verdrehungen stünde. Danke!



*
   Velkommen til de nye nettsidene til Skepsis.
   http://www.skepsis.no

.

[ama]

Das Portal www.darwin-jahr.de wird betrieben vom "Darwin-Jahr-Komitee" der Giordano Bruno Stiftung und der AG Evolutionsbiologie im Verband Biologie, Biowissenschaften & Biomedizin.

Leitender Redakteur
Andreas Müller (a.mueller(at)darwin-jahr.de)

Darwin-Jahr-Komitee
Prof. Dr. Christoph Antweiler, Helmut Debelius, Prof. Dr. Thomas Junker, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Kutschera, Prof. Dr. Axel Meyer, Dipl. Ing. Martin Neukamm, Dr. Sabine Paul, Dr. Michael Schmidt-Salomon, Prof. Dr. Volker Sommer, Prof. Dr. Beda M. Stadler, Rüdiger Vaas, Prof. Dr. Eckart Voland, Prof. Dr. Gerhard Vollmer, Prof. Dr. Franz M. Wuketits


mehr:
http://www.darwin-jahr.de/

.

[ama]

Dana Ullmanns Kaspertheater geht weiter.

Andy Lewis hat wieder etwas über Dana Ullman ausgegraben. Diesmal antwortet Dana Ullman im Blog.

(Die Zitate sind im Moment noch nicht vollständig gekennzeichnet. Das kommt demnächst. Deswegen bitte im Originlal bei m Quackometer lesen. Da funktionieren die eingebetteten Links.) 

http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2010/10/the-curious-case-of-oxford-university-press-homeopathy-and-charles-darwin.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheQuackometerBlog+%28the+quackometer+blog%29

[*QUOTE*]
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The Quackometer has been developed by Andy Lewis.

The Curious Case of Oxford University Press, Homeopathy and Charles Darwin
October 15, 2010
By Le Canard Noir

A paper on Darwin and Homeopathy was outright rejected by reviewers. It was published anyway. Such is CAM 'research'.


Science is a human activity. And as such, it is subject to the full range of fallibilities of thought and action that people are capable of. Within science you will find sloppy and wishful thinking, error and even fraud. But science, rather uniquely, has methods designed explicitly to minimise human biases, reduce error and correct mistakes when they are found. It is this inherent error correction that makes science a reliable source of knowledge about the world.

Peer Review

One of the mechanisms that aims to increase the reliability of the published results of science is peer review. Scientists are required to fully disclose their results and the methods by which they came by those results so that others can criticise, replicate and confirm – or otherwise. But before a paper is published, a journal will ask some other specialists in suitable fields to ensure the results are valid, significant and original. The reviewers check the paper to ensure that a minimum standards of quality is met. This ensures that what we read is a valid contribution to scientific debate.

But peer review itself is not a perfect process. The reviewers can be subject to their own biases – accepting papers that fit their preconceptions or rejection those that might conflict with their own work. Journals have a pecking order of credibility, with the best journals enjoying a reputation for thorough and impartial peer review, whereas those at the bottom can just be seen as promoting special and commercial interests. The process of peer review in these journals is a charade with little real meaning.
At the heart of peer review is trust. We have to assume that editors and reviewers have properly undertaken thorough peer review.

At the heart of peer review is trust. We cannot escape it. We have to assume that, at least in publishing houses and journals that we rate highly, editors and reviewers have properly undertaken thorough peer review, without grace nor favour, and only allowed through the academic work that merits publication. Of course, subsequent errors can be found in peer reviewed work and that is inevitable. Reviewers themselves have to trust that procedures were carried out as described and that mistakes were not made. Peer review is just the first independent layer of checking of results. But the badge of peer review on an article allows the results to be discussed with an authority that could not be achieved prior to publication.
No credence should be placed in the results of CAM journals because of the total lack of effective peer review

Failure of peer review happens across all areas of science, but the publication record with complementary and alternative medicine is especially troubled. So much so, that Professor Barker Bausell, who ran the American National Institute of Health Complementary and Alternative Medicine Specialized Research Center, has written that no credence should be placed in the results of CAM journals because of the total lack of effective peer review. That is not to say that all CAM results are unreliable, but that those published in specialist CAM journals lack rigorous review and, for example, positive results are published regardless of merit and negative results ignored.

Oxford University Press and eCAM

Oxford University Press is a publishing house that deserves a good reputation. However, it has been publishing its own CAM journal, eCAM.

Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine(eCAM) is an international, peer-reviewed journal that seeks to understand the sources and to encourage rigorous research in this new, yet ancient world of complementary and alternative medicine.
Surprisingly, and contrary to what you might think given its stance on evidence, this journal is not really thin.

Surprisingly, and contrary to what you might think given its stance on evidence, this journal is not really thin. The journal is filled with all sorts of weird and wonderful papers, a couple of my own recent favourites include, “Clowns Benefit Children Hospitalized for Respiratory Pathologies” (which I am sure they do), and “How Far Can Ki-energy Reach?—A Hypothetical Mechanism for the Generation and Transmission of Ki-energy” (which I am sure is utter nonsense).

One paper that was published earlier this year, caught my eye. Written by America’s chief homeopathic apologist, Dana Ullman, it was entitled “The Curious Case of Charles Darwin and Homeopathy”. Now this surprised me because Ullman had written a book making all sorts of daft claims about Darwin and Homeopathy. I wrote about how Darwin’s own letters allow you to see that he thought homeopathy was absurd and “a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clairvoyance”.

A Dismal Paper

Despite this, Ullman used the peer reviewed journal to repeat nonsense about Darwin and homeopathy. In the paper, he makes several claims, the worst being.

1. Firstly, Ullman claims that Darwin might not have lived unless he had been ‘cured’ by homeopathy. It is true that Darwin did take some homeopathy pills (which he said he did “without an atom of faith”) but this was while undergoing other treatments at a hospital in Malvern. Darwin had an undiagnosed disease that came and went throughout his life. Ullman attributes a certain remission to his sugar pill taking – and indeed claims that he only lived because of homeopathy.

2. Ullman writes “After just a month of treatment, Charles had to admit that Gully’s treatments were not quackery after all.”, trying to suggest Darwin had become a convert (not true). There is nothing in his letters to suggest such a thing. To overcome this obvious deficiency in Ullman’s argument, he makes up a fantasy world,

Despite Darwin’s greatly improved health, he never publicly attributed any benefits directly to homeopathy. However, one must also realize that even though homeopathy achieved impressive popularity among British royalty, numerous literary greats, and many of the rich and powerful at that time, there was incredible animosity to it from orthodox physicians and scientists. Because Darwin was just beginning to propose his own new ideas about evolution, it would have been professional suicide to broadcast his positive experiences with homeopathy. Having to defend homeopathy would have damaged his credibility among his colleagues who were extremely antagonistic to this emerging medical specialty.

Given Darwin published one of the most audacious books on science for all time, it is a massive slur to suggest he was a coward when it came to his views on medicine. This passage is nothing short of disgraceful.

3. Ullman claims that Darwin experimented on homeopathic dilutions. Again, this is absurd. Darwin did do groundbreaking research on dilute solutions of ammonia salts on sundew plants, but they clearly were not homeopathic preparations. And Darwin never suggested or believed they were. Ullman desperately wriggles to try to suggest that Darwin was in awe of the power of homeopathy.

In all, the paper is confused and desperate in its attempts to suggest that science history should be rewritten to include Darwin’s so-called experiences and experiments with homeopathy.

A Failure of Peer Review

Why was it published, and why did peer review not stop such obvious drivel from being put in the scientific record?

Well, the paper was peer reviewed and it would appear that it was outright rejected by at least two reviewers. Nonetheless, the paper got published. This is nothing short of a complete breakdown in trust that ought to exist between journal readers and it editorial process.

In fact, I had a discussion with one of the reviewers. He said, “I pointed out the many gaping holes in the narrative – historically inaccurate, factually misleading etc – and recommended outright rejection. Needless to say they asked him to revise and re-submit.”

The reviewer did not expect to have a second chance at reviewing the revised submission. Indeed, he then told me, he had been taken off the list of reviewers at the journal, and was given no reason as to why he was not asked to re-review. Concerns were raised with the editor, Edwin Cooper, but apparently, ‘he did not want to know.’  The reviewer also says that he found out a second reviewer had also advised outright rejection.

Consequences

So, a junk piece of work has been published on the history of Charles Darwin. Does this matter? Ullman’s book, which he has been heavily promoting and using Darwin as one of its central characters is based on the premise that so many ‘cultural heroes’ have used homeopathy that it ought to be taken seriously. It is nothing but quack propaganda – but it may be compelling to many. The fact that Ullman can now boast that his ideas have been published in peer reviewed journals gives his stance an authority that it does not deserve. It is now taken ‘as fact’ that  Darwin was cured by homeopathy and did important experiments on it. Other ‘peer reviewed’ papers reference Ullman’s to back this up. (e.g. see here). Quacks, of course embellish even further. For example, a homeopath called Karivaj writes, “He discovered that however much he reduced the dose of the substance he used, salt of ammonia – prepared according to the homoeopathic method with dilution and succussion – the effects were always visible in the plant.”. This is simply not true.

Ullman himself now boasts of this paper’s peer reviewed status. On an online discussion, he taunted me,

I have published in peer-review journals on Darwin and his homeopathic doctor. Please enlighten me where your writings on this subject have appeared. Oh, in your own blog! Wow, now THAT is high quality pee-review. Yeah, that typo is purposeful. You’re good a yellow journalism.[sic]

All this does is add to the fog of intentional confusion and dishonesty that surrounds alternative medicine. There is indeed an important need for sound research to be published about CAM. We need to understand why people are drawn to superstitious treatments, what are the potential harms – and what benefits, if any, might be expected. But CAM research is so full of propaganda masquerading as serious academic research that it is a constant battle to have to point out why so many conclusions in the field are not worth anything. This can only harm people – it actually risks people’s health and life. And that is why failures of peer review are not just a breach of trust but of deep moral concern.

Fortunately, it is possible that Oxford University Press have seen good sense and decided that they do not want such a journal sullying their reputation. It has now been sold to Indian publisher Hindawi.


Related posts:
A Footnote to Darwin and Homeopathy The homeopaths, like Dana Ullman, treat original scientific works like scripture – as a source of truth. Their own Hahnemannian scriptures trump scientific knowledge and evidence at all turns. This...
Charles Darwin and Homeopathy The Internet is a wonderful thing. It allows you check stuff, like the claims of quacks, in a way that was not possible just a few years ago. This...
UK Hospital HR Manager in ‘Near Death Experience’ Let’s recap – ‘Cellular Memory’ – the alleged ability for every cell to retain some sort of energy memory about us that can get passed on through organ transplants to...
The Homeopathic Revolution by Dana Ullman: A Review There can be few comment-enabled web pages left in the world that do not testify to the fact that Dana Ullman has published his latest book: The Homeopathic Revolution:...
The Two Most Dangerous Words in Medicine are "Studies Show." Jerry Addler has published his New Year’s resolution in Newsweek, I will not report on any amazing new treatments for anything, unless they were tested in large, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind...

Tags: dana ullman, homeopathy

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25 Responses to “ The Curious Case of Oxford University Press, Homeopathy and Charles Darwin ”

Dr Aust on October 15, 2010 at 4:30 pm

Waiting….

…..for DUllman….
Reply

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Rocko on October 15, 2010 at 5:14 pm

Excellent article.

The fact is that Ullman knows that there is zero evidence that Darwin was a homeopathy convert; this has been pointed out to him on numerous occasions. And yet he repeats the claim constantly regardless.

Of course the same is true of all his claims, but the Darwin one is so transparently false I cannot believe he believes it himself. One may take a view on what this says about his motives for his ceaseless pushing of homeopathy.
Reply

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Dana Ullman on October 15, 2010 at 10:17 pm

Hey Rocko and Mr. Duck,

Show me (and the rest of us) where I wrote that Darwin was a “convert” to homeopathy. Whooops…you cannot do that because you’re making things up (again).
Reply
Vicky on October 15, 2010 at 10:44 pm

Where did Andy write that you said he was a convert? Or is there a chance you’re making that up? Here’s what I read (copied from above):

Ullman writes “After just a month of treatment, Charles had to admit that Gully’s treatments were not quackery after all.”, trying to suggest Darwin had become a convert (not true).

(emphasis added)
You did write that, didn’t you?
Rocko on October 16, 2010 at 1:11 pm

Transparent weasel words as ever, Dana. You’ve constructed this elaborate scenario (albeit one completely unencumbered by evidence) where Darwin went from being “scathing” about homeopathy to only not speaking up for it because:

“Having to defend homeopathy would have damaged his credibility among his colleagues”

A conversion, in other words.
Dana Ullman on October 15, 2010 at 6:17 pm

It might help if Mr. Duck actually read my peer-review article rather than make-up things out of thin air.

Actually, I acknowledged in my article that Darwin was a skeptic of homeopathy…and I gave appropriate references to this…and THAT is also what makes Darwin’s story so compelling. He proves that belief is NOT necessary to get real benefits from homeopathic treatment and hydrotherapy (water-cure). Are you ACTUALLY saying that Darwin did not get therapeutic benefits from Dr. Gully’s treatment? Are you actually re-writing history?

Is it a “coincidence” that wrote that he was dying just prior to going to Dr. Gully and that he was unable to work 1 in every 3 days…and yet, within a couple of weeks, he was able to walk 7 miles in a day and he called himself “an eating and walking machine.” Oh, and what happened to the symptoms that he was experiencing for 2 to 12 (!) years, including heart palpitations, fainting spells, spots before his eyes, body-wide boils, and extreme fatigue? Darwin never again mentioned ANY of these symptoms after the first couple of weeks under Gully’s treatment.

Mr. Duck, you’re good at leaving out information…but I do want to thank you for reference my comment about your yellow journalism. At least I have a sense of humor…

As for Darwin’s experiments with the Drosera plant…can you, Mr. Duck, tell me if Darwin was or wasn’t surprised at the significant effects that he observed from exceedingly small doses of ammonia salts? Tell me, Mr. Duck, why did he have BOTH of his sons repeat his experiments and continue to express amazement? Oh…and tell me, did Darwin express concern that he would then have to report about these experiments that shocked him so much? C’mon…man up and say what is true.

I provide references to my information. You provide a thin review that is full of misinformation. I encourage readers to actually read my article and not blindly accept Mr. Duck’s weak summary of it.
Reply
Daniel Rendall on October 15, 2010 at 8:34 pm

How small were the exceedingly small doses of ammonia salts?
Reply

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Dana Ullman on October 15, 2010 at 10:15 pm

Thanx for your interest, Daniel, but I hope you understand that this AND other information about this issue are in my peer-review article at:
http://ecam.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/7/1/33

Quoting from da man (Darwin), he wrote:
“The reader will best realize this degree of dilution by remembering that 5,000 ounces would more than fill a thirty-one gallon cask [barrel]; and that to this large body of water one grain of the salt was added; only half a drachm, or thirty minims, of the solution being poured over a leaf. Yet this amount sufficed to cause the inflection of almost every tentacle, and often the blade of the leaf. … My results were for a long time incredible, even to myself, and I anxiously sought for every source of error. … The observations were repeated during several years. Two of my sons, who were as incredulous as myself, compared several lots of leaves simultaneously immersed in the weaker solutions and in water, and declared that there could be no doubt about the difference in their appearance. … In fact every time that we perceive an odor, we have evidence that infinitely smaller particles act on our nerves.” (p. 170)
Malcolm Armsteen on October 15, 2010 at 6:39 pm

Am I convinced by Ms Ullman’s riposte? Only 10^23 much.

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hat_eater on October 15, 2010 at 10:49 pm

Oh, what a magnificent idea. I’m gonna butcher a rich widow with an axe and then proceed to sell the axe to my neighbour. Surely noone will make a connection.
In my eyes, Oxford University Press has tarnisher its reputation for years.
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Nash on October 15, 2010 at 11:26 pm

I take it that Daniel is Dullman’s new sock puppet?
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phayes on October 16, 2010 at 12:07 am

I wonder if this anachronistic revelation that an insectivorous plant’s “nose” is sensitive to very dilute (~10⁻⁹?) but certainly not very homeopathic solutions means that Ullman has at last seen the light as far as homeopathy is concerned and ditched it in favour of aromatherapy (albeit a new and even less plausible version of it)? 
Reply
L I N K S « The Dispersal of Darwin on October 16, 2010 at 1:44 am

[...] The Quackometer: The Curious Case of Oxford University Press, Homeopathy and Charles Darwin [...]
Reply

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Michael5MacKay on October 16, 2010 at 2:59 am

Ullman’s article couldn’t have been peer-reviewed. For unscientific nonsense, he is peerless. In any event, his article is not science and certainly not evidence of the effectiveness of homeopathy.

Ullman’s article is the most mendacious piece of English prose I have ever read. He said, as Vicki already noted:

“After just a month of treatment, Charles had to admit that Gully’s treatments were not quackery after all.” He didn’t have to admit any such thing, and I doubt very much that he did make any such admission. If he had, I’m sure Ullman would have mentioned it.

There is no basis for believing that homeopathy was of any benefit to Darwin. Ullman can’t even identify Darwin’s condition; therefore Ullman didn’t, and can’t, point to any scientific evidence that homeopathy is an effective treatment for it, or indeed any specific non-self limiting condition. Any study he might choose to cite has already been thoroughly debunked.

Ullman has no basis for claiming that homeopathy cured Darwin. How could he know that it wasn’t the hydrotherapy, or, more likely a remission or resolution of a chronic or self-limiting condition? He can’t. The fact that he makes the claim shows that Ullman will say anything to support his belief in homeopathy, the epitome of quack medicine. Ullman is wrong. Homeopathy has had 200 years to prove itself. It hasn’t. There is a growing body of evidence that shows it does not work. The more Ullman attempts to defend the indefensible, the more foolish he reveals himself to be.

Even the NHS now recognizes that homeopathy doesn’t work, as shown by its progressive withdrawal of funding. It is not surprising that Ullman can’t see what more and more people are seeing once they look carefully at the evidence relating to homeopathy. As Uptown Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Reply
Martin on October 16, 2010 at 9:09 am

Just a little reminder to all that abuse diluted by a great deal of reasoning is more potent.
Reply

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Martin on October 16, 2010 at 9:17 am

“Dr Jütte notes that in the introduction to this book (p. xv) Koch explains homeopathy scientifically by including it in a more general ‘Grundgesetz des organischen Lebens’, which could be translated as ‘law of spirality’.” – from the article we are discussing.

Who would translate ‘Grundgesetz’ as ‘Law of spirality’? My native tongue is not German. Anyone?
Reply

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JimR on October 16, 2010 at 11:06 am

“Basic Law of Organic Life” is the Google translation for ‘Grundgesetz des organischen Lebens’. WOW! This would make homeopathy the unknown start of life as we know it. There was a primordial spark that, after it was diluted sufficiently by the water from the early bombardment by icy comets and asteroids, came “alive”? That would be really convincing for the power of dilution.

If one reviews a paper and has the work thrown back at one, it seems it were best to be struck off the list of reviewers. It is a lot of bother to do a good review.
Reply

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Mojo on October 16, 2010 at 11:02 pm

The section of the article about the “German homoeopathic doctor” is a little odd. The quotation from Darwin used to support it is described in the article as “an August 20, 1862, letter to Asa Gray”, but the passage quoted actually describes it as “an example of the odd letters he received” rather than one sent. The reference given is to a 1903 New York edition of Francis Darwin’s Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. I can’t find this particular edition online, but the passage appears in Vol 2 of the original 1887 edition, in the introduction to the letters of 1862 on page 383.

Tracking it down to the letter Darwin’s comments originally appeared in, it turns out to have been a postscript to a letter to Joseph Hooker dated 16 Jan 1862. This makes it even more clear that it is actually a comment on a letter received:

“P.S. The letter with curious address forwarded by Mrs Hooker was from a German Homœopathic Doctor—an ardent admirer of the Origin—had himself published nearly the same sort of book, but goes much deeper—explains the origin of plants & animals on the principles of Homœopathy or by the Law of Spirality— Book fell dead in Germany— Therefore would I translate it & publish it in England &c &c?!”

There is no indication here that Darwin had read the book, or even seen a copy of it; rather he seems to have been commenting on the contents of the “letter with curious address” that had been forwarded to him. There doesn’t seem to be any indication of “admiration” for this German homoeopath either.
Mojo on October 16, 2010 at 11:06 pm

For some reason the link to the Life and Letters of Charles Darwin in my last post doesn’t seem to work. I’ll try posting it again.
John Benneth on October 16, 2010 at 7:41 pm

Ah yes, the wonderful Darwin drosera experiments. Kudos to Dana Ullman for once again succussing the dimwit and making fools of the anti-homeopathy tribe.
Hey, I did video on it:

The mark of pseudoscience is a lack of specificity. Same with liars and Andy Lewis. You ask for details, and they suddenly go blank. And of course the case against homeopathy is just the same. They keep saying that there is a growing body of evidence that disproves it, but you look for the specifics, references, cites, and they aren’t there. Shang refuses to name its references as well, and if that weren’t enough, comes to a somewhat vague conclusion, contradicted by every other major meta analysis.
The Lewis’ of the world can’t even tell you reallywhat a placebo is, much less cite any psychogenic studies for their action. Oh, they say homoeopathy isn’t much better than placebo, then in the net breath are defending placebo as a powerful effect.
Yes, its true, the effects of homeopathics are not stable, but there are effects beyond placebo, and Darwin’s drosera rotund flora proves it, because logically a plant would not be subject to placebo. But Heavens to God, Lewis will never put it to the test with a real homeoapthic dilution of ammonia carbonicum 12c or more, nor will he ever consider trying it on a bean other than his own, which he won‘t do either. But it has been proven on beans, and it has been tried on wheat extensively. Plants make excellent test subjects for demonstrating the action of homeopathic remedies beyond palcebo, numerous, cheap, easily controlled, no ethical considerations, and according to Vaikunthanath das Kaviraj, author of Homeopathy for Farm and Garden, there are over 60 studies now for the action of homeopathics on plants.
Run Andy, run. Run away from this proving, it does nothing but epose you for the fool you are.
Here’s an example of work that has been done at one of the world’s oldest and most respected universities:
“Statistical analysis of the effect of high dilutions of arsenic in a large dataset from a wheat germination model” Brizzi M, Nani D, Peruzzi M, Betti L. Dipartimento di Scienze statistiche, University of Bologna, Italy Br Homeopath J. 2000 Apr;89(2):63-7 This has been rep[eated ad nauseam. Google it!
Of course they’ll rip this one apart because it wasn’t published in THEIR review, it was published in the peer review of the doctrine. Such will always be the reaction of those who replace the opportunity to experience something for themselves with maligning extrapolation of the reports of others who have. But where else would you expect to find it? Nothing so controversial as this is go0ing to easily find it’s way into a general science magazine like Scientific American, and so it speaks volumes that Ullman’s article has been accepted in such a publication, as have, by my count, about two dozen others.
But what will they do when they face the stack of replications?
The evidence for homeopathy is of course concordant, as it would be for any real effect, and that’s why it has withstood two centuries of vicious opposition, like Lewis’ here, because there will always be those like Darwin who, after being totally dismissive, have been dramatically affected by it. Lewis and those like him are doing nothing more than simply using the appearance of what they think is an anomaly as an excuse to malign those who find application for it. They do the same thing to Christianity or any spiritual belief whenever they can sneak it in.
The homeopathy denier, in order to fund his disbelief, has to think that those who report favorably on it must be suffering from gullibility. Such is not the case. The best supporters of homeoapthy are usually those who are the most critical thinkers and who in the beginning of their investiagtion attacked it on the same grounds as Lewiset al does. The difference is that real skeptics put it to the test . . On themselves and other test subjects, like plants. I have. I found Staphyssagria had astounding effects on the growth of oat coleoptiles.
It doesn’t stand to reason, to a thinking man, that extrapolation by a few should trump direct observation by many, even though what is being observed doesn‘t make any sense. But after you see so much thought and effort into indexing its effects by true medical doctors, you have to consider that maybe, just maybe, there is a logical explanation for it. Supramolecualr chemistry provides that, and recent experiments have demonstrated the structure, radiant signal, biochemical and biologicial action of the homeopathic remedy that makes criticism by the likes of Lewis and company seem absolutely puerile and vituperatively ad hominem, as one can read here repeatedly in Lewis’ libel and tortious interference.
Ullman presents a startling array of evidence for homeopathy in his book “The Homeoapthic Revolution,” but most damning to the case against homeopathy is the phytopatholgical illustrated in the Darwin imbroglio, and it reveals the pseudoscience in the criticism against homeoapthy.
Three cheers for Dana Ullman!
John BENNETH 101610
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Vicky on October 16, 2010 at 9:52 pm

Actually, this is a case of tl;dr

However,

Shang refuses to name its references as well, and if that weren’t enough, comes to a somewhat vague conclusion, contradicted by every other major meta analysis.

what are you talking about? The web appendices of Shang et al. cite them and have been available for years now. How do you think Lüdtke&Rutten got them – clairvoyance?
Also, where are those other major meta-analyses that contradict Shang et al.? Only real scientific journals, please.
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John Benneth on October 17, 2010 at 1:26 am

Alright, I concede that “Shang refuses” refers to Shang’s presiding investigator Egger’s initial refusal to name his references, which, as it can be seen, is because Egger didn’t want to name them that his meta analysis was nothing more than another smear job on the field. Like all cirtics of homeopathy, in order to maintain the Placebo Hypothesis, he has to ignore the pre-clinicals and cherry pick the clinicals.
Shang is the only major review to make conclude that homeopathics are no better than placebo, but even Shang contradicts itself to say “there was weak evidence for a specific effect of homoeopathic remedies.”
No other meta or review, mlisted below, concludes placebo.

Here’s a section from my notes, “Science of homeopathy.”

The Truth about Shang

The 2005 Shang meta-analysis in Lancet found homeopathics no different than placebo. But Shang’s flawed on many levels. It eliminated 102 of 110 homeopathic trials, basing its conclusions on only the 8 largest high-quality trials without identifying the criteria by which trials were selected or their identity. Odds ratios did not support their conclusion that homeopathics are no better than placebo. “Where Does Homeopathy Fit in Pharmacy Practice?” Am J Pharm Educ.
Shang A, Huweiler-Muntener K, Nartey L, et al. Are the clinical effects of homeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study of placebo-controlled trials of homeopathy and allopathy. Lancet. 2005;366:726–32. [PubMed]
Fisher P Homeopathy and The Lancet Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2006 March; 3(1): 145–147 [PubMed]
Kiene H, Kienle GS, von Schön-Angerer T. Bias in meta-analysis. Homeopathy. 2006;95:54. [PubMed]
Bell I. All evidence is equal, but some evidence is more equal than others: Can logic prevail over emotion in the homeopathy debate? J Alternative Complement Med. 2005;11:763–9.
Aikin K. The end of biomedical journals: there is madness in their methods. J Alternative Complement Med. 2005;11:755–7.
Swiss Association of Homeopathic Physicians. Open letter to the editor of the Lancet. Forsch Komplementarmed Klass Naturheilkd. 2005;12:352–3. [PubMed] [PDF]
Shah A. Is the Lancet trial really valid? Pharm J. 2005;275:407.
The 2005 Lancet review proved superior quality of homeopathy trials. Lex Rutten Opening lecture at the LMHI congress 2009, Warsaw http://www.dokterrutten.nl/collega/Liga09.pdf

Homeopathy in Meta-analysis
and Review

2009 FISHER: Homeopathy: the Evidence from Basic Research Memorandum submitted to Parliament Goto article
2009 FISHER: Annual Evidence Update on Homeopathy. NHS Goto article
2007 JOHNSON: Where Does Homeopathy Fit in Pharmacy Practice? Am J Pharm Educ. Goto full article
Johnson is a comprhensive review written of homeoapthics by pharmacists for pharmacists, covering both pro and con.
2007 WITT: The in vitro evidence for an effect of high homeopathic potencies–a systematic review of the literature. Complement Ther Med. Goto abstract
In this review Witt uses an established criteria for rating homeoapthy experiments, something of course maligners like Lewis and Egger are incapable of doing. SI different types of biochmeical tests are covered, from the 1930’s to 2007. The most replicated biuochemical test is the basopphil degranulation.

2005 Shang: Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study of placebo-controlled trials of homoeopathy and allopathy. Lancet Goto abstr.

Review of the House of Common’s Evidence Check by Earl Baldwin of Bewdley.

2.1. There have been a number of systematic reviews and meta-analyses in this
field, which as the Committee states are the best sources of evidence. The
most recent review of substance is that by Shang et al in 2005, which it
considered “the most comprehensive to date” and which compared 110
placebo-controlled trials of homoeopathy [authors’ spelling] with 110 trials of
conventional medicine matched for disorder and type of outcome. The
Committee cited a conclusion by the authors [paragraph 69] that “when
analyses were restricted to large trials of higher quality there was no convincing
evidence that homeopathy [sic] was superior to placebo”. They did not
also cite the authors’ interpretation which followed these findings in the
Lancet summary, which stated: “When account was taken for these biases
[common to trials of both homoeopathy and conventional medicine], there
was weak evidence for a specific effect of homoeopathic remedies, but strong
evidence for specific effects of conventional interventions. This finding is
compatible with the notion that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are
placebo effects.”
2.2. This was no endorsement of homeopathy. But it was some way removed
from the Committee’s conclusion in paragraph 70 of their report, “In our view,
the systematic reviews and meta-analyses conclusively demonstrate that
homeopathic products perform no better than placebos.” It also provides
little support for that part of Professor Ernst’s evidence to the Committee
where he “pointed out that: . . . Shang et al very clearly arrived at a
devastatingly negative overall conclusion” [67].
2.3. The exaggeration by the Committee of Shang’s conclusions is worrying. It is
difficult to see how a weakly supported positive effect, for which one
explanation (possibly well-founded) is a placebo effect, can be translated into
a conclusive demonstration of this effect, with a “devastatingly” negative
finding. No such firm claims can be found in Shang, who writes of finding
“no strong” evidence, or “little” evidence, and who ends his paper with
cautions about methodology and about the difficulty of detecting bias in
studies, as well as the role of possible “context effects” in homeopathy.
From Observations on the report Evidence Check 2: Homeopathy by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, February 2010

2003 BECKER-WITT Quality Assessment of Physical Research in Homeopathy. J Alt Comp Med Abstract
In this study Becker-Witt establishes the scoring system for assessing the quality of homeopathic trials, the same as used in the in vitro review. It analyzes six different types of physical expriments used to analyze homeoapthic remedies, the most common being NMR.

2003 JONAS- A Critical Overview of Homeopathy Annals of Internal Medicine http://www.annals.org/content/138/5/393.full

2001 LINDE Systematic reviews of complementary therapies – an annotated bibliography. Part 3: homeopathy. “While the evidence is promising for some topics the findings of the available reviews are unlikely to end the controversy on this therapy.” BMC Complement Altern Med. PUBMED

2000 CUCHERAT: Evidence of clinical efficacy of homeopathy. A meta-analysis of clinical trials. Euro J Clin Pharm Goto review ; PUBMED abstract

1997 LINDE: Are the Clinical Effects of Homeopathy Placebo Effects? A Meta-analysis of Placebo-Controlled Trials The results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are completely due to placebo. Lancet 1997; 350: 834–43 Goto article
This is the most noted and respected meta.

1994 LINDE: Critical Review and Meta-Analysis of Serial Agitated Dilutions in Experimental Toxicology Abstract; PDF

1991 KLEIJNEN: Clinical Trials of Homeopathy Goto full article

1984 SCOFIELD: Experimental research in homœopathy—a critical review Abstract

Scofield is especially good, because whereas it is critcal of methods, it also identifies high quality pre-clinicals up to 1984, most notably Boyd.
The question tht should be asked first is if it can be demonstrated that homeopathics have biological effects, not if it is a “placebo.”

John BENNETH
John Benneth on October 16, 2010 at 7:45 pm

Video on Darwin’s experiments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj82FReWmF0

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Mojo on October 16, 2010 at 9:58 pm

If you actually read Darwin’s accounts of the Drosera experiments in Insectivorous Plants (see Chapter 7 on pp.136-173) you will find no mention of serial dilution or succussion being used in the preparation of the solutions Darwin used.

You will also find that Darwin established something like an orthodox dose-response curve (Note for example the comment on p.171 that “It is to be especially observed that the experiments with the weaker solutions ought to be tried after several days of very warm weather. Those with the weakest solutions should be made on plants which have been kept for a considerable time in a warm greenhouse, or cool hothouse; but this is by no means necessary for trials with solutions of moderate strength”) and a limit beyond which no response was observed. Note also p.170, with the footnote in which Darwin notes that in the detection of dilute substances “the spectroscope has altogether beaten Drosera.”
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JimR on October 17, 2010 at 1:08 am

I worry that the edifice of science is being eroded by the persistent, arrogant, denigrating, knuckle-headed denials of alt-med champions. It has taken centuries to build such an edifice, but so many people seem to be helping tear down such wonderful work. Will we see homeopaths trying to defend their profession against spiritualists claiming that their blessed waters are cures, not the dilutions of the homeopaths? There is potential irony that one system may displace another because systems of proof were discarded. At this rate will we face a declining science based civilization? I hope not.

There doesn’t seem to be any level of embarrassment that an alt-med promoter cannot withstand. Are these people sociopaths, misguided, or driven by greed to delude people to take useless potions and avoid science-based cures? Sure there are no cures for many things, but to unknowingly or worse to knowingly flim-flam people and prey on false hopes is just sick.
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Der erste Treffer bei Google liefert einen langen Text, nicht bloß das wertlose Abstract.

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Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2010 March; 7(1): 33–39.
Published online 2009 October 29. doi: 10.1093/ecam/nep168.   PMCID: PMC2816387

Copyright © The Author(s) 2009. Published by Oxford University Press.

The Curious Case of Charles Darwin and Homeopathy
Dana Ullman
Homeopathic Educational Services, 2124 Kittredge St., Berkeley, CA
For reprints and all correspondence: Dana Ullman, Homeopathic Educational Services, 2124 Kittredge St., Berkeley, CA. Tel: Phone: 510-649-0294; Fax: 510-649-1955; E-mail: mail@homeopathic.com
Received March 11, 2009; Accepted October 4, 2009.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Abstract
In 1849, Charles Darwin was so ill that he was unable to work one out of every 3 days, and after having various troubling symptoms for 2–12 years, he wrote to a friend that he was ‘going the way of all flesh’. He sought treatment from Dr James Manby Gully, a medical doctor who used water cure and homeopathic medicines. Despite being highly skeptical of these treatments, he experienced a dramatic improvement in his health, though some of his digestive and skin symptoms returned various times in his life. He grew to appreciate water cure, but remained skeptical of homeopathy, even though his own experiments on insectivore plants using what can be described as homeopathic doses of ammonia salts surprised and shocked him with their significant biological effect. Darwin even expressed concern that he should publish these results. Two of Darwin's sons were as incredulous as he was, but their observations confirmed the results of his experiments. Darwin was also known to have read a book on evolution written by a homeopathic physician that Darwin described as similar to his own but ‘goes much deeper.'.

Keywords: Charles Darwin, homeopathy, homeopathic, homeopath, James Manby Gully, hydrotherapy, water-cure, naturopathy, naturopathic medicine, history of medicine, history of science, extremely small doses, Drosera rotundifolia, Sir Charles Hastings, William Court Gully

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Introduction

The year 2009 is an auspicious year to the memory of Charles Darwin. It is the 200th birth anniversary of Charles Darwin (1809–1882), and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, On the Origin of Species (1859). And yet few people know that, according to Darwin's own letters, it is uncertain that he would have lived long enough to have written this important scientific work in 1859 if he had not received treatment in 1849 from Dr James Manby Gully, a homeopathic physician who also used water cure, homeopathic medicines and other unorthodox treatments. This remarkable series of experiences changed the history of science.
When Darwin was just 16 years old, he spent a summer as an apprentice to his father, who was a medical doctor. Later, he attended Edinburgh University to study medicine. However, he was repulsed by the brutality of surgery and the primitive medical treatments of his day. He initially studied to be a naturalist, but his father insisted that he attend Cambridge University to become a clergyman (at that time, members of the clergy earned a better living than many other professions). After graduating from Cambridge in 1831, he began what became a 5-year journey on the HMS Beagle surveying the coast of South America. On board the ship, Darwin suffered from seasickness, and in October 1833, he caught fever in Argentina. In July 1834, while returning from the Andes down to the coast of Chile, he fell so ill that he spent a month in bed.
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The Serious Illness and Near Death of Charles Darwin

Since 1837, Darwin was frequently incapacitated with episodes of stomach pains, vomiting, severe boils, heart palpitations, trembling and other symptoms. Today, some physicians have speculated that Darwin caught Chagas disease from insect bites in South America, while others have suggested that he suffered from Ménière's disease, but the orthodox physicians of Darwin's day had no idea what his problem was, and all of their treatments simply made him worse. [Recently, some scientists have speculated that Darwin suffered from systemic lactose intolerance (1), but this remains speculation and may at best represent only one aspect of a more complex disease syndrome.]
In 1847, Darwin's illness worsened. Again he experienced frequent episodes of vomiting and weakness, but now he also experienced fainting spells and seeing spots in front of his eyes. In March, 1849, he was so sick that he thought he was dying. Darwin wrote to his good friend, J.D. Hooker, an English botanist, that he was ‘unable to do anything one day out of three & was altogether too dispirited to write to you or to do anything but what I was compelled. I thought I was rapidly going the way of all flesh’ (2).
It is indeed difficult to say that Charles Darwin would have been healthy enough to live another 10 years, let alone to work as diligently on the body of work that his seminal book required for its publication in 1859 unless some type of effective treatment significantly improved his health. Lucky for all of humanity, Charles Darwin sought out a different type of medical care and experienced a profound improvement in his health.
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Dr James Manby Gully: Homeopath and Hydrotherapist

It was Capt. Sullivan of the HMS Beagle who initially told Darwin about a different type of medical treatment provided by Dr James Manby Gully (1808–1883). One of Darwin's cousins, William Darwin Fox, told him that two friends had benefited greatly from Gully's care. Dr Gully, a medical graduate of the University of Edinburgh, was an unyielding opponent of the use of drugs of that era. Gully was particularly critical of polypharmacy, the common practice of using multiple drugs concurrent for a patient, a practice that continues today (3). Gully's medical practice did not simply provide water cure and dietary advice; he also prescribed homeopathic medicines and recommended medical clairvoyant readings. In 1846, he had authored a popular book entitled Water Cure in Chronic Disease (3) that Darwin was known to have read.
Darwin chose to go to seek care from Dr Gully, and decided to take the entire family with him (wife Emma and their seven children) (4). Dr Gully and his health spa were situated in Malvern (just southwest of Birmingham), around 150 miles from the Darwin's home.
Virtually every biography of Charles Darwin references his health problems and acknowledges that the one physician who provided the effective treatment to him was Dr James Manby Gully. However, most of these biographies make reference to Dr Gully as a ‘hydrotherapist’, and only few mention that he was a homeopathic physician.
After being at Dr Gully's spa for just 9 days, Darwin lamented that Gully had prescribed homeopathic medicine to him: ‘I grieve to say that Dr Gully gives me homeopathic medicines three times a day, which I take obediently without an atom of faith.’ Darwin continued: ‘I like Dr Gully much – he is certainly an able man’ (5). The fact that Darwin saw Gully as being ‘able’ was still not enough to convince him that homeopathic medicines were effective.
The 1846 edition of Dr Gully's book was during his earlier stage of experience in using homeopathic medicines. In this edition of his book, Gully notes his use of homeopathic medicines, though he doubts its efficacy in certain chronic diseases. He wrote in the first edition of his book, ‘although I might be induced to try to subdue a passing but troublesome symptom, I could not trust to remove the essential nature of a chronic malady by homeopathic means’ (p. 83) (3).
However, by 1848, Dr Gully became a formal member of the British Society of Homeopathy (6), and he maintained his membership through at least 1871 (7). In subsequent editions of his book, his favorable experiences with homeopathy led him to change his writings on the subject. In the 5th edition of this book (1856), for instance, he writes that distinct from the use of conventional medicines in the treatment of chronic constipation where drugs do not cure and lead to relapse, it is significantly different with homeopathic care: ‘In fact, cases abound in which homeopathic treatment alone has effectually and permanently cure habitual costiveness’ (p. 48). In reference to the treatment of headaches, the use of homeopathic medicines is ‘not only justifiable but desirable’ (p. 48).
Finally, Gully continues by asserting, ‘Homeopathic practitioners have observed that patients under the water cure are more susceptible to the action of their remedies than other persons, and that therefore the results may be more accurately calculated. I have found this assertion to be substantially correct; and it confirms the vivifying influence of the water cure over the bodily functions’ (p. 48). Gully's observation that the use of concurrent treatment of water cure and homeopathic medicine seems to echo the experiences of naturopathic physicians who have been known to use these treatments together along with nutritional advice since the 19th century.
And even though Darwin was extremely skeptical of water-cure and homeopathic medicine, just two days later (March 30, 1849) Darwin acknowledged, ‘I have already received so much benefit that I really hope my health will be much renovated’ (8). After 8 days a skin eruption broke out all over Darwin's legs, and he was actually pleased to experience this problem because he had previously observed that his physical and mental health improved noticeably after having skin eruptions. He went a month without vomiting, a very rare experience for him, and even gained some weight. One day he surprised himself by being able to walk 7 miles. He wrote to a friend, ‘I am turning into a mere walking & eating machine’ (9).
After just a month of treatment, Charles had to admit that Gully's treatments were not quackery after all. After 16 weeks, he felt like a new man, and by June he was able to go home to resume his important work. Darwin actually wrote that he was ‘of almost perfect health’ (p. 108) (8).
It is worthy to note that homeopaths have consistently observed that treatment with homeopathic medicines often leads to skin rashes, other externalizations of the disease process, or the re-experience of old symptoms prior to significant overall improvement in health. Homeopaths make reference to this healing process as ‘Hering's law of cure’, named by Constantine Hering, MD, the father of American homeopathy, who first wrote about it.
Despite Darwin's greatly improved health, he never publicly attributed any benefits directly to homeopathy. However, one must also realize that even though homeopathy achieved impressive popularity among British royalty, numerous literary greats, and many of the rich and powerful at that time, there was incredible animosity to it from orthodox physicians and scientists. Because Darwin was just beginning to propose his own new ideas about evolution, it would have been professional suicide to broadcast his positive experiences with homeopathy. Having to defend homeopathy would have damaged his credibility among his colleagues who were extremely antagonistic to this emerging medical specialty.
Serious antagonism to Dr John Forbes occurred when he expressed some positive remarks about homeopathy and its founder, Dr Samuel Hahnemann, in a book that he authored that was primarily critical of homeopathy. Even though Forbes was a distinguished Scottish physician, the editor of a leading conventional medical journal, and the Physician to Queen Victoria (1841–1861), Forbes was viciously attacked for his minor praise of homeopathy, and many British physicians withdrew their subscription to his previously popular journal, leading to the fatal demise of this previously successful journal (10).
Eighteen months after first going to Dr Gully, Darwin showed his own skepticism of homeopathy when he wrote in a letter:
You speak about Homeopathy, which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clairvoyance [in reference to clairvoyance, the woman who Gully used was thought to be able to look directly into a person's body]. Clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one's ordinary faculties are put out of the question, but in homeopathy common sense and common observation come into play, and both these must go to the dogs, if the infinitesimal doses have any effect whatever. How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet [a famous statistician of that time], in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz., that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare homoeopathy, and all other such things. It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think, in my beloved Dr. Gully, that he believes in everything. When Miss — was very ill, he had a clairvoyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep, an homeopathist, viz. Dr. —, and himself as hydropathist! and the girl recovered (11).
Along with his skepticism in this letter, he also noted the case of a specific woman who had been cured by Dr Gully and his team. Darwin may have been very skeptical of homeopathy, but he had observed its results on his own health and in that of others, and he remained surprised and unconvinced.
Darwin occasionally experienced relapses of digestive and skin symptoms over the years, so he returned to Dr Gully's clinic for more treatments, staying 2–8 weeks. Although Darwin complained during his first visit that he experienced ‘complete stagnation of the mind’, he did not have similar problems during later visits to Gully's clinic and spa. In fact, he asserted that his mind was alert and that his scientific writing was progressing well (p. 113) (9).
He lived for 33 more years, and it is surprising and confusing that the story of Darwin's successful experiences with hydrotherapy and homeopathy has not become an integral part of the history of science and medicine today. After significant improvement in his persistent nausea and vomiting, frequent fainting spells, spots before his eyes, incapacitating stomach pains, severe fatigue, widespread boils, nerve-wrecking tremors and heart palpitations, he was considerably more able to do his seminal scientific work.
One of Charles Darwin's children, Annie, did not have good results with Dr Gully's treatment. In 1849, the same year in which the Darwin family stayed at Dr Gully's spa for 3 months, Annie contracted scarlet fever at the age of 8 years. There is no record of Dr Gully providing treatment for her at this time, but when she was 10, she became very ill. Dr Gully predicted that his treatment would lead to her recovery, but she died under his care. Although Darwin had experienced dramatically positive results from Gully's combination of treatments, Darwin felt less comfortable having his children receive some of such unorthodox care. There is no record of what treatments she did or did not receive, but in any case, Charles and his entire family were devastated by the loss of Annie.
Some other people of significant notoriety who benefited from Dr Gully's care include Charles Dickens (novelist and writer), Lord Alfred Tennyson (poet), Florence Nightingale (famed nurse), George Eliot (British novelist), Thomas Carlyle (Scottish essayist, satirist and historian), John Ruskin (art critic and social critic), Edward Bulwer-Lytton (British novelist, playwright, and politician), Thomas Babington Macaulay (first Baron Macaulay, poet and politician), and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (12). Furthermore, three prime ministers sought Dr Gully's care, including William Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli and George Hamilton-Gordon, as well as Queen Victoria herself. Hamilton-Gordon described Dr Gully as ‘the most gifted physician of the age’ (13).
Dr Gully was not the only homeopathic physician to provide clinical care to cultural elite of the 19th century. In fact, many of the leading politicians, clergy, literary greats, musical geniuses, royalty and wealthy classes were known patients and even advocates of homeopathy (10,14).
Although there is no evidence that Darwin knew that so many other well-known ‘cultural heroes’ sought the care of Dr Gully, Darwin was pleased to hear when other people he knew received treatment from Gully. When his second cousin, William Darwin Fox, the man who introduced Darwin to entomology and to Dr Gully, had seen the doctor, Darwin expected him to have benefited from water cure and to be much stronger (15). When one considers that Darwin had previously received much medical care without positive results, Darwin's letter to Fox on December 7, 1855, confirmed a different experience with Dr Gully: ‘Dr Gully did me much good’ (his emphasis).
Some of Darwin's biographers never mention the homeopathic treatment he received. Those biographers who mention his longtime health problems tend to emphasize the hydrotherapy that Dr Gully's spa provided and that Charles Darwin followed up on this treatment by regularly self-treating himself with cold baths and self-percussion of his body. A recent acclaimed biography of Darwin suggested the benefits he received were from a placebo effect, despite the inability to experience a similar placebo effect from the many other physicians he saw and the various treatments he attempted. This biography asserted that, ‘he persuaded himself that the water-torture was working’ (p. 112) (9).
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Darwin's Continued Water Cure and Homeopathic Treatment

There is a long history of antagonism to homeopathic medicine from orthodoxy, and also a history of antagonism to water cure (16). While homeopathy has persisted internationally as a minority school of medical thought and practice (17–19), water cure as a medical treatment for chronic ailments has become marginalized or is hardly utilized today except by a minority of naturopathic physicians.
Darwin and many of his biographers have highlighted water cure in part because they simply could not believe that homeopathic medicines could provide any benefit. However, one must wonder if hydrotherapy alone could have provided these significant health benefits, especially in the first week of treatment that Darwin experienced. What is additionally intriguing about this story of Darwin is that it confirms an ultimately essential observation of truly effective healing methods: that they can and will be effective whether or not the person believes they will work.
Hardened skeptics insist that homeopathic treatment could not have helped Darwin (or anyone) and suggest that hydrotherapy must have been the method of therapeutic benefit. And yet, few orthodox physicians of that day or today would even consider using hydrotherapy for people with complex disease processes.
Despite the wide respect that Dr Gully received from his many illustrious patients, he was disliked greatly by select orthodox physicians. Sir Charles Hastings, a physician who later helped to found the British Medical Association, was Gully's most vitriolic antagonist. Dr Hastings was so opposed hydrotherapy that he frequently wrote articles about its ‘dangers’, while he utilized a wide range of orthodox medical treatments that everyone would soon call simply barbaric (16). The additional drama to the lives of Gully and Hastings is that their sons were also antagonists to each other. Gully's son, William Court Gully, became speaker of the British House of Lords (1895–1905), while Hastings’ son, George Woodyatt Hastings, became a lawyer and politician. Like his father, George Hastings was actively antagonistic to unconventional medical treatments.
Darwin's letters also expressed his thoughts about conventional medicine of his time. He said emphatically that he had ‘no faith whatever in ordinary Doctoring’. And yet, after 12 years of persistent nausea and vomiting, Darwin acknowledged in 1856 that Dr Gully's treatment in 1849 was successful enough that ‘never (or almost never) the vomiting returns’ (p. 238) (15).
When Dr Gully retired from his full-time practice in Malvern in the late 1850s, he chose Dr James Smith Ayerst (1824/5–1884) as his replacement. Not surprisingly, Ayerst was also a homeopathic physician. He served as assistant surgeon in the Royal Navy, was physician to Great Malvern, Worcestershire, ran a hydropathic establishment at Old Well House, Malvern Wells in conjunction with that of Dr Gully, and later, practiced homeopathy and hygienics in Torquay, Devon (20).
Darwin's wife Emma wrote to W. Darwin Fox: ‘We like Dr Ayerst, tho’ he has not the influence of Dr Gully. Dr G. it is hopeless to try to see tho’ I must say he has been to see Ch. [Charles] twice & he quite approves of his treatment’ (Vol. XI, p. 643) (15). Darwin visited other hydrotherapy spas as well. In 1857 and 1859, he visited Moor Park, run by Edward Wickstead Lane, MD, a physician and hydrotherapist (not a homeopath). And perhaps not by happenstance, Darwin's famed book On the Origin of Species was at the printing press, while he was at Ilkley Wells, a spa operated by Edmund Smith, MD, another homeopathic physician (Vol. XI, p. 361) (15).
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Darwin's Experiments with Homeopathic Doses

It is also fascinating to note that Darwin himself conducted several experiments evaluating the effects of small doses on an insect-eating plant (Drosera rotundifolia, commonly called sundew) that is commonly used in homeopathic medicine. He found that solutions of certain salts of ammonia stimulated the glands of the plant's tentacles and caused the plant to turn inward. He made this solution more and more dilute, but the plant still was able to detect the presence of the salt. On July 7, 1874, he wrote to a well-known physiologist, Professor F. C. Donders of Utrecht, Netherlands, that he observed that 1/4 000 000 of a grain had a demonstrable effect upon the Drosera, and Darwin was shocked and dismayed to write, ‘the 1/20 000 000th of a grain of the crystallised salt does the same. Now, I am quite unhappy at the thought of having to publish such a statement’ (11).
Astonished by his observation, Darwin likened it to a dog that perceives the odor of an animal a quarter of a mile distant. He said: ‘Yet these particles must be infinitely smaller than the one twenty millionth of a grain of phosphate of ammonia’ (21). Darwin said about this spectacular phenomenon:
The reader will best realize this degree of dilution by remembering that 5,000 ounces would more than fill a thirty-one gallon cask [barrel]; and that to this large body of water one grain of the salt was added; only half a drachm, or thirty minims, of the solution being poured over a leaf. Yet this amount sufficed to cause the inflection of almost every tentacle, and often the blade of the leaf. … My results were for a long time incredible, even to myself, and I anxiously sought for every source of error. … The observations were repeated during several years. Two of my sons, who were as incredulous as myself, compared several lots of leaves simultaneously immersed in the weaker solutions and in water, and declared that there could be no doubt about the difference in their appearance. … In fact every time that we perceive an odor, we have evidence that infinitely smaller particles act on our nerves (p. 170) (21).
In Darwin's book on his experiments with Drosera, he expressed complete amazement at the hypersensitivity of a plant to extremely small doses of certain chemicals: ‘Moreover, this extreme sensitiveness, exceeding that of the most delicate part of the human body, as well as the power of transmitting various impulses from one part of the leaf to another, have been acquired without the intervention of any nervous system’ (p. 272) (21).
Darwin also discovered that Drosera is not simply sensitive to every substance. He tested various alkaloids and other substances that act powerfully on humans and animals who have a nervous system but produced no effect on Drosera. He concluded that the ‘power of transmitting an influence to other parts of the leaf, causing movement, or modified secretion, or aggregation, does not depend on the presence of a diffused element, allied to nerve-tissue’ (p. 273) (21).
Darwin confirmed an important homeopathic observation that living systems are hypersensitive to only certain substances. Sadly and strangely, conventional scientists have attacked homeopaths for using extremely small doses of substances without any appreciation for the homeopaths’ credo that living systems—whether human, animal, or plant—will be hypersensitive to a limited number of substances (and the homeopathic method of individualizing treatment is a refined method to find this substance or substances).
The doses in which Darwin tested above are not as dilute as most other homeopathic medicines, some of which are so dilute that, in all probability, they may not have any remaining molecules of the original medicine in the solution. However, a large number of homeopaths and a larger number of the general public use what are called ‘low potencies’, which includes doses of medicines in the range in which Darwin was testing ammonia salts. Furthermore, Darwin noted the remarkable effects that his extremely small doses had on a plant that did not have a nervous system, thereby suggesting that human beings (and other animals) may be sensitive to even smaller doses of certain substances. However, there is no known record of Darwin testing even smaller doses on plants, let alone on humans.
Darwin was so enraptured by his experiments on Drosera that on November 24, 1860, just 1 year after the publication of his seminal book, he wrote ‘at this present moment I care more about Drosera than the origin of all the species in the world’ (22).
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Darwin's Admiration of Another Homeopath

The archive of letters from Darwin includes one other interesting reference to homeopathy in which its significance is obvious but its meaning not perfectly clear. This was in an August 20, 1862, letter to Asa Gray, a professor of botany (of which the first part, shown below in brackets, was probably written by Francis Darwin, his son and assistant, who collated his father's letters):
[The greater number of the letters of 1862 deals with the Orchid work, but the wave of conversion to Evolution was still spreading, and reviews and letters bearing on the subject still came in numbers. As an example of the odd letters he received may be mentioned one which arrived in January of this year] from a German homoeopathic doctor, an ardent admirer of the ‘Origin.’ Had himself published nearly the same sort of book, but goes much deeper. Explains the origin of plants and animals on the principles of homoeopathy or by the law of spirality. Book fell dead in Germany. Therefore would I translate it and publish it in England (p. 175) (11).
What is intriguing about Darwin's statement is that he asserted that this writing by a homeopathic doctor is similar to his own but ‘goes much deeper’.
Robert Jütte, PhD, chief historian at the Robert Bosch Institute in Stuttgart, Germany, where Hahnemann's casebooks reside and which may have the largest homeopathic library in the world, has determined that this German homeopath was probably Augustus Wilhelm Koch (1805–1886) (Jütte, R. Personal Communication, March 29–30, 2006). Koch was a conventionally trained physician, graduated from the University of Tubingen, Germany in 1831. He began to study and practice homeopathy within a couple of years, and at the invitation of some influential families in Stuttgart, he moved there and developed a successful homeopathic practice. In 1846, he wrote a 613-page book called Die Homöopathie, physiologisch, pathologisch und therapeutisch begründet: oder das Gesetz des Lebens im gesunden und kranken (The homeopathic, physiologically, pathologically and therapeutically foundations: or the law of the life in the healthy and ill).
Dr Jütte notes that in the introduction to this book (p. xv) Koch explains homeopathy scientifically by including it in a more general 'Grundgesetz des organischen Lebens', which could be translated as ‘law of spirality’. A whole chapter is devoted to the evolution of crystals, plants, and animals.
A year after Dr Koch published this book he moved to Philadelphia, though before leaving Europe, he was made an honorary member of the Homeopathic Institute of Paris. When in the USA, Koch was an active member of the American Institute of Homeopathy and Pennsylvania state and Philadelphia county homeopathic medical societies. He even served on the board of trustees of Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia (23). A close friend and colleague of America's preeminent teacher of homeopathy, Dr Constantine Hering (1800–1880), Dr Koch was one of his pallbearers.
Although Koch lived in the USA and could speak and write in English, he probably still sought Darwin (or someone else) whose mother tongue was English in order to have the most accurate translation. Sadly, his master work was never published in English.
Despite Darwin's personal experiences and significant successes as a homeopathic patient, he never publicly acknowledged the benefits he received. And despite his own experiments on plants using homeopathic doses, he never used the word ‘homeopathic’ in his public writings. Although these actions may seem surprising, Darwin's decision to avoid reference to homeopathy was an important part of his own survival strategy.
Ultimately, even though Charles Darwin had a long-time skepticism of homeopathic medicine, his life and health seems to have been impacted by it, and he engaged in experimentation that verified the power of extremely small doses on plants. Furthermore, he was found to express appreciation for the contributions to science that select homeopathic physicians were known to provide.
2009 is the year in which we honor Charles Darwin's 200th birth anniversary and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal book, originally published on November 24, 1859. When commemorating the many vital contributions that Charles Darwin made to science, we should not ignore the therapeutic contributions that may have allowed Darwin to live beyond his own life expectations and that seemingly played an important role in improving his physical and mental health.
When physicians and scientists today consider how much resistance Darwin experienced to his new ideas and how much resistance still exists for them, perhaps the same physicians and scientists should also reflect on and learn from the far greater resistance that they themselves have given to homeopathic medicine, hydrotherapy, and other unconventional medical treatments. It is indeed ironic that so many physicians and scientists over the past 150 years have vehemently obstructed the acceptance, the growth and the development of the unconventional medical treatments that seem to have lengthened Darwin's life. Until and unless physicians and scientists learn from history, they (we) will continue to make the same mistakes and simply delay the evolution of a truly healthy medical care system.
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References

1. Campbell AK, Matthews SB. Darwin's illness revealed. Postgrad Med J. 2005;81:248–51. [PMC free article] [PubMed]
2. Darwin correspondence project. [(last accessed October 22, 2009)]. Letter 1236—Darwin, C. R. to Hooke, J. D.., 28 Mar 1849. http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1236.html.
3. Gully JM. Water Cure in Chronic Disease. London: John Churchill; 1846. p. 46.
4. Keynes RD. His Daughter and Human Evolution. New York: Riverhead; 2002.
5. Darwin correspondence project. [(last accessed October 22, 2009)]. Letter 1234—Darwin, C. R. to Darwin, S. E., [19 Mar 1849] http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1234.html.
6. Atkin G. The British and Foreign Homœopathic Medical Directory and Record. London: Aylott; 1853. p. 45.
7. Homoeopathic Directory of Great Britain and Ireland and Annual Abstract of the Homoeopathic Literature. Vol. 55. London: Harry Turner; 1871. [(last accessed October 22, 2009)]. http://books.google.com/books/pdf/ homeopathic_medical_directory_of_great_b.pdf?id=H94NAAAAQAAJ&output=pdf&sig=ACfU3U2vjPFZP4LlTreQpE2HDSkra0mnXw& source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0.
8. Burkhardt F, editor. Charles Darwin's Letters: A Selection (1825–1859) Vol. 107. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1996.
9. Quammen D. The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution. New York: WW Norton; 2006. p. 112.
10. Ullman D. The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy. Berkeley: North Atlantic; 2007. pp. 114–15.
11. Darwin F, editor. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. New York: D. Appleton & Co.; 1903. Letter of September 4, 1850, 341.
12. Desmond A, Moore J. Darwin. New York: Warner; 1992. p. 363.
13. Ruddick J. Death at the Priory: Sex, Love and Murder in Victorian England. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press; 2001. p. 2.
14. Feingold E. Book review: the homeopathic revolution: why famous people and cultural heroes choose homeopathy. eCAM. 2008 doi:10.1093/ecam/nen024.
15. Burkhardt F, Smith S, editors. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. VI. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1985. p. 346.
16. Bradley J, Depree M. A shadow of orthodoxy? An epistemology of British hydropathy, 1840–1858. Medical History. 2003;47:173–94. [PMC free article] [PubMed]
17. Bellavite P, Conforti A, Piasere V, Ortolani R. Immunology and homeopathy. 1. historical background. eCAM. 2005;2:441–52. [PMC free article] [PubMed]
18. Bellavite P, Conforti A, Piasere V, Ortolani R. Immunology and homeopathy. 4. clinical studies – part 1. eCAM. 2006;3:293–301. [PMC free article] [PubMed]
19. Bellavite P, Conforti A, Piasere V, Ortolani R. Immunology and homeopathy. 4. clinical studies – part 2. eCAM. 2006;3:397–409. [PMC free article] [PubMed]
20. Darwin's Correspondence Project. [(last accessed October 22, 2009)]. http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/namedefs/namedef-200.html.
21. Darwin C. Insectivorous Plants. Vol. 173. New York: D. Appleton & Co.; 1875. http://pages.britishlibrary.net/charles.darwin3/insectivorous/insect_fm.htm.
22. Darwin Letter 2996 – Darwin, C. R. to Lyell, Charles, 24 Nov [1860]
23. Rogers N. An Alternative Path: The Making and Remaking of Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital of Philadelphia. Piscataway: Rutgers University Press; 1998. p. 41.
Articles from Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine : eCAM are provided here courtesy of
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
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Koch ist nicht Koch. Dies ist AUGUST KOCH. Ein mir bis dato völlig unbekanntes Exemplar Homöopath.

[*QUOTE*]
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Dr Jütte notes that in the introduction to this book (p. xv) Koch explains homeopathy scientifically by including it in a more general 'Grundgesetz des organischen Lebens', which could be translated as ‘law of spirality’. A whole chapter is devoted to the evolution of crystals, plants, and animals.
A year after Dr Koch published this book he moved to Philadelphia, though before leaving Europe, he was made an honorary member of the Homeopathic Institute of Paris. When in the USA, Koch was an active member of the American Institute of Homeopathy and Pennsylvania state and Philadelphi
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[*/QUOTE*]

"spirality", was ist das? Google ist zu dämlich zum Übersetzen. Das ist seit JAHREN bekannt. Also sucht man besser in einem ECHTEN Wörterbuch.

Weder Encyclopedia Britannica noch Merriam-Wesbster geben die Übersetzung gratis an. Die gibt es nur in der Bezahlversion.

Und http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Spirality sagt auch nur das, was man schon ahnt: "spiralförmig":

[*QUOTE*]
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[Medieval Latin spyralis, of a spiral, from Latin spyra, coil; see spire.]
spi·rali·ty (sp-rl-t) n.
spiral·ly adv.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved
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Spiralförmig, was kann das sein?Antwort: Natürlich die kleinen Strukturen in den Pflanzen und in Algen, was sich mit Mikroskopen sehr leicht erkennen läßt. Mit Homöopathie hat das nicht das mindeste zu tun. Kinder kriegen das schon in den ersten Schuljahren gezeigt. Hat Dana Ullman entweder im Unterricht gefehlt, ein extrem schlechtes Gedächtnis oder ist er zu faul zum Suchen?

Setzen! Sechs!
.

[Thymian]

Marke: 9000