Sectarian identity and the aim of integration

Abstract

Basic information on the history of vaccination and anti-vaccinationism in the US and Germany is followed by discussion of the various opportunities for homeopaths to assess vaccination and the different assessments made in the early history of homoeopathy. Attitudes to vaccination are explored in American homoeopathic publications (books, selected journals, family medical guides). American homoeopathy is shown to have tended toward integration with conventional medicine rather than criticism of and opposition to it. Late 19th century American homoeopathy is shown to have been influenced by non-homoeopathic ideas. It did, however, have some characteristic ways of focusing on diseases, especially chronic diseases and their treatment in a specifically homoeopathic way, with homoeopathic physicians thinking in terms of ‘constitution’ and showing therapeutic optimism.