Sensational Seven - Pioneering Women Homeopaths

Homoeopathy, as defined and established by Dr Hahnemann, is a great boon to mankind for more than last two centuries.

Though it was established much earlier and practiced with marvelous success, it achieved newer heights and its perfection during the later years of Hahnemann's life at Paris, after his second marriage to Marie Melanie d'Hervilly Gohier.

Today, in whole world, we see large number of girls getting admission in course for homoeopathy, the number reaching to nearly 40 to 45 percent. They contribute a large percentage even at various seminars and educational events. The scene changes drastically at the point of practice of the same qualified women. We scarcely  witness a woman practitioner practicing and excelling in the practice of Homoeopathic system of medicine.

Sensational Seven, is a compilation of brief life sketches, of seven wonderful souls, their triumph over the intricate circumstances,  their passion for the profession,  their love and care for fellow ailing human being.

This compilation is dedicated to those who are mentioned here and many others who have practiced in anonymity and helped numberless sick persons regaining the health.

With a hope that the woman practitioner would take inspiration from these legendary sources and keenly utilise their education for the most important of human vocation: healing the sick.

Marie Melanie d'Hervilly Gohier Hahnemann

(February 2, 1800 to  May 27, 1878)

Melanie was born in Paris, to one of the oldest French families of nobility. This was the post-revolution Paris of Napoleon. She grew up surrounded by art, music and the liberal aristocratic society of her day. As there was no formal schooling for girls she was educated at home, where she was taught to draw, make music, sew and manage servants; skills needed by a good wife and mother. She was a keen horsewoman and swimmer and practiced pistol shooting and hunted; she painted... She stated later that she "had a vocation for medicine," dissected birds as an eight year old and even saved the life of one of her father's friends. She writes, "I had extraordinary inspiration when I was near a sick person. When I was twelve I saved the life of one of my father's friends who had been involuntarily poisoned by opium. Whilst the doctor, not recognizing the poisoning, had treated him for indigestion and finally threw a cloth over his head declaring that he was dying of cerebral congestion, I was preparing a decoction of lettuce which the patient took, and it gave him back his life in a short time."

In the ensuing years she became an artist and poet of some repute in Paris. She had a studio and taught painting but her classical style became outmoded as the Romantics became the vogue. She was often seen in elegant intellectual circles and had several high-ranking admirers.

In the 1830's a number of her friends died. During these difficult years, Melanie also suffered from abdominal pains later thought to be some kind of neuralgia and she was unable to work for two or three years. A cholera epidemic was killing 800 Parisians a day in 1832, when Melanie heard of the valiant efforts of an English homeopath practicing in Paris named Dr. Quin. She was able to acquire a copy of the French edition of the Organon. Against the advice of friends and family she made a precipitous departure for Kothen to meet Hahnemann and her future.

The mail coach from Paris to Kothen took fifteen days and was a dangerous journey, especially for a young woman travelling alone. So she dressed as a man -something not altogether uncommon for a liberated Parisian woman of her day. Initial consultations for the purpose of treating her disease led to more personal meetings between Samuel and Melanie and he proposed marriage to her three days after they had met. They were married on 18 January, 1835, three months after they had first met. After a short time in Kothen, they moved to Paris where they finally settled in opulent surroundings on the Rue de Milan.

From the beginning of the Paris practice, Melanie was intimately involved in it. According to one account, she sat at the desk, took the case and made prescriptions while Hahnemann sat in a comfortable chair near her, listening and offering advice and encouragement from time to time. It seems that in a very short period of time she had become a competent homeopath. Hahnemann kept journals of all the cases he treated. Forty-four volumes cover the period of 1801-1844 in Germany and 1835-1844 in France. Eighteen volumes alone, represent the notes from their years of practice in France. These French volumes are in both Samuel's and Melanie's hand. Four volumes are almost exclusively Melanie's cases which she managed alone or in the presence of Hahnemann.

Samuel had considered her the finest homeopath in Europe -but the authorities would have none of this and prosecuted her in 1847 for practicing medicine and pharmacy illegally. She was fined a nominal one hundred francs and banned from practice. Subsequently, she continued more discrete practice and also returned to poetry and painting.

On his death-bed Hahnemann had given Melanie sole responsibility over his estate and told her to postpone publishing his writings until the "world was ready for them". Not even Bönninghausen, one of Hahnemann's closest associates, knew with which methods the master had prescribed in the last years. She received proposals from America, England and France to publish Hahnemann's legacy. She suggested that if she were compensated financially for the time she would have to take off from her practice (her sole means of support at that time) to prepare the papers for publication, she would be willing. Her death laid an end to those plans.

After Melanie's death, Sophie and Karl took control of Hahnemann's papers and manuscripts. These remained unseen by the homeopathic community until 1918 when the Bönninghausen family released them for publication. On May 27, 1878, Melanie died in Paris of pulmonary catarrh. She was buried next to Hahnemann in the cemetery at Montmartre.

One of the few comments published in her favour was in the editor's preface to Haehl's biography, English edition in 1922. John Henry Clarke and Francis James Wheeler write:

 "We feel that he (Haehl) hardly realizes the importance of the Paris episode in the spread of homeopathy. Germany had hampered one of the greatest of her sons in every possible way, had driven him from one city and one kingdom to another, and had at last buried him in a sort of hermitage in the small duchy of Anhalt Kothen. From this obscure retreat he was brought into the very centre of European life and intellect, allowed to practice without any of the absurd regulations of which the German countries seemed so fond, he was brought into immediate contact with disciples, not only in France, but from all European countries, England and America.

With all her faults and peculiarities, Madame Melanie Hahnemann's action had this effect; and even the impossible price she put on Hahnemann's literary remains had this good result -it preserved them all intact until the one man in all the world who ever could make proper use of them arrived- Dr. Richard Haehl himself!...Therefore we think that Madame Melanie Hahnemann has a not unworthy place in the history of Hahnemann and his homeopathy and that Paris, which gave him hospitality, freedom and scope, has a very good right to his bones."

History has long overlooked her contribution to homeopathy. Her influence on Hahnemann's work is barely noted. Where would homeopathy have ended up without her uncommon devotion? Who knows what degree her inspiration was to have on the growth and furtherance of homeopathy? Would it have ever grown to the degree of international recognition or even to the degree of scientific achievement that his years in Paris inspired? We cannot know. We can, however, look at the value of a life spent in practicing, preserving, guarding, treasuring, and nurturing this art. Her place in eternity has been reserved by Hahnemann.

 Melanie's diary entries at the time of Hahnemann's death:

"Two days before leaving me he said to me: 'I have chosen you among all my disciples and I leave you my scientific heritage which is of such importance to humanity. Continue to work as we have done for such a long time, carry on my mission; you know homeopathy and you know how to cure as well as I do.' I replied: 'but I am a woman, my body has grown tired, my hair has become white under the strain of this difficult work, I have well earned a little rest.' 'Rest!' said Hahnemann, and raised himself up in his bed, 'Have I ever rested? Forward, ever forward, against the wind, struggle against the strain, always cure and everywhere, and by constantly curing you will compel justice to be done to you; call faithful disciples to your side, teach them all that I could not tell them, what you alone now know; hand on my tradition, and when your hour to leave this earth has arrived, come and join me where I shall await you. Your body will be put in the same coffin as mine, not beside mine, but inside, and they will write on our tomb

 "Heic nostro cineri cinis ossibus osa sepulrco, Miscentur vivos ut sociavit amor."

 (As love united us in life, so does the tomb. Ashes to ashes and bones to bones.)

 I promised all he wanted, then he added: 'God will recompense you,' and five minutes before he departed, he said to me full of tenderness: 'You will be mine in eternity.' These were his last words."

* * *

Dorothy Shepherd 

(1855 - November 15,1952)

Dorothy Shepherd grew up in a homeopathic household in England. She remembered the familiar ritual of little sugar granules dissolved in a glass of water and the thrill of sipping this mixture out of a spoon. What she does not have memories of are wearisome days in bed and doctor's visits. As a child she loved pouring over Hering's Domestic Physician and at the age of ten announced, to the horror of her family, her intention of pursuing medical studies.

She reached her goal and began training at Edinburgh University as well as Heidelberg and other continental schools. There was no reference to homeopathy in her training; it was a dim memory from childhood. She specialized in midwifery and surgery in women's diseases. Her residency was spent in a "homeopathic" hospital where she spent most of her time in surgery and none learning homeopathy. The doctors at this hospital prescribed many remedies at once and patients usually left the dispensary with four or five bottles of colorless water in them. When Dorothy asked one of the doctors "why not put it all in one bottle?" she was frowned upon. Some years later these doctors finally gave up the pretence of calling themselves homeopaths but by this time she had tired of their mumbo-jumbo and taken a new post as a surgeon, disgusted with so-called homeopathy.

She said, " then by some good chance I heard about the Hering college in Chicago. The name Hering conjured up memories of a tattered old book, a long legged child reaming over its contents. I must go and find out the truth which so long have evaded me." she was still skeptical. It took the following experience to convince her. She developed excruciating sinusitis from the boat passage from England to America. A physician at the college prescribed Nux Vomica CM. He told her to expect an aggravation and then improvement. "It was all double-Dutch to me. I smiled in a superior fashion and thanked him. I could not believe that such a microscopic dose could make any difference let alone give me more pain." But of course, she did have a rapid cure of the sinusitis and subsequently threw herself into her new studies with enthusiasm.

In 1906 she travelled to Chicago and studied at Hering medical college. Her teachers were Tom Hagen and Dienst, both pupils of Kent.

'since my return I have tried to apply the lessons. I must admit that homoeopathy has never let me down; I have failed when I did not have sufficient facts. Homoeopathy is a life-long study; it requires the burning of the midnight oil, but it is worthwhile."

During her schooling in Chicago, she had trouble concentrating and her memory was not as strong as it used to be. On the recommendation of a fellow student, she took Tuberculinum 1M which restored her mental acuity and near-photographic memory. From then on she was converted to high potencies.

Publication:

Homeopathy for the 1st  Aider. (1945)
Magic of the Minimum Dose. (1937)
More Magic of the Minimum Dose. (1949)
Physician's Posy. (1951)
Homoeopathy in Epidemic Diseases. (posthumous 1967)

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Margaret Lucy Tyler, MD

(1857 -  June 21, 1943)

Margaret Tyler, Circa 1930

A graduate of both Edinburgh and Brussels, Margaret Tyler was instrumental in using money given by her father Sir Henry Tyler, to fund the physician's scholarship to go to Chicago to study with Kent. Although she maintained a long correspondence with Dr. Kent, she never personally studied with him.

A close associate of J.H. Clarke, she worked at the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital for forty years. Her specialty was treating mentally backward children. Her Homoeopathic Drug Pictures, published in 1942, remains a standard today. In it, she brings the idea of presenting the symptoms of a remedy as a personalized picture far beyond that of Kent in his materia medica lectures. She wrote The Correspondence Course on Homoeopathy, designed for those who could not attend the lecture at the Faculty of Homeopathy in person. At 86, she was on duty at the hospital the day before she died.

Julia Green wrote of Tyler in the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy in 1962:

"I think you all know something about this wonderful woman. The only child of a Peer in England, she became heir to much money at her father's death. Being by that time in the practice of the homeopathy that she loved and wished to share, she picked perhaps a dozen young men and sent them to Chicago where Dr. J. T. Kent was teaching students in the best of homeopathy. These youths took their knowledge back to England and scattered through the country...With the passing of Dr. Margaret L. Tyler Homeopathy loses one of its outstanding personalities. She owed much to her parents, Sir Henry and Lady Tyler, who early on imbued her with the family characteristics of enterprise, thoroughness, and selflessness in service for others. Dr. Tyler's homeopathic interest was early aroused by her mother's skilful care of a large family. She took up the study of medicine in order to be able to help the poor patients at the London Homeopathic Hospital. There she worked for over forty years, in various departments, and was appointed to the Staff of the hospital in 1914. When due to retire a special appointment was made to retain her services, and she carried on to the end."

The out-patient department, she declared, was the happiest place in her life, and she always looked forward to meeting her friends, as she termed the patients. Her clinic was large, and the patients appreciated her devotion to them.

She was a great teacher and many sought the post of clinical assistant with her, to get wise and refreshing help. She could draw deeply from a storehouse of homeopathic knowledge... She read a drug each night before retiring, in different books to feel the spirit of the remedy...

About 1907 her great anxiety was for the future supply of homeopathic physicians, as there was no definite post-graduate training, though much had been done by individuals. She was a great believer of going to the fountainhead, as she termed Hahnemann, and feared that much of the homeopathic practice was getting away from her ideal. She then, with her mother, instituted the Sir Henry Tyler Scholarship Fund to help doctors go to the U.S. A. to study under Dr. James Tyler Kent, a keen Hahnemannian in practice. This created a stir and much controversy, but Dr. Tyler carried on with her efforts, and many of the physicians of today studied under Dr. Kent between 1908 and 1913.

Her Drug Pictures of homeopathic remedies, culled from every possible source, are a storehouse of information; she consulted freely and deeply with the giants of the past; her references were meticulous, and she went to great pains for verification. She felt that the information was essential for others, and that was enough to stimulate her to further endeavor.

The Correspondence Course on Homeopathy, for those who could not attend lectures, has been of great help to many... Dr. Tyler spent years over its production. But perhaps her greatest field of usefulness was through her Editorship of the journal Homeopathy, for the eleven years from 1932 to 1942. Its influence was world-wide, and has been described by a contemporary as "one of the best journals of pure Homeopathy published." One American Society took it as a text-book for its studies...

Despite her failing health, she worked to the very end, and died in service. It is typical that one of her last quotations was: "At the end of life we shall not be asked how much pleasure we have had in it, but how much of service we gave in it; not how full of success, but how full of sacrifice; not how happy we were, but how helpful we were...Dr. Tyler's memory and influence will live in the hearts of many, having 'served her generation, by the will of God."

Publications:

         Card Repertory

Drug Pictures of homeopathic remedies

Drosera :A paper read to the British Homoeopathic Society, January 5, 1927.

          Acute conditions, injuries

          Hahnemann's conception of chronic diseases, as caused by parasitic micro-organism

          Pointers to the common remedies

          Repertorising (co-author Sir John Weir)

          Romance of Homoeopathy       

Different ways of finding remedies.

How not to it

* * *

Julia Minerva GREEN, MD

(March 24, 1871- December 11,1963)

Green's life spanned the time from the beginning of the decline of homoeopathy almost through to its resurgence. Born in Malden, Massachusetts, she moved to Washington, DC, aged six. She graduated from Wellesley college in 1893 (she was the only one of her class attending the 70^th reunion in 1963!) and Boston university in 1898.

Green began her medical practice in Washington, DC, in 1900, using a bicycle to make her rounds, with fishing weights sewn in the hem of her dress to keep it down while she pedalled. In 1907, she bought a car - the second one in Washington. The first was the President's!

The beginning years of practice were difficult for a woman. She says, "the doorbell rang and the maid answered. 'is the doctor in?' 'yes. I'll call her.' 'oh. Is he a she?' 'yes sir.' "oh, I thought she was a he. You needn't call her.' And he fled as if the devil were after him!"

Green recalled: " In all this striving I had to dead with the greatest shyness one could imagine. It haunted me, held me back, made me appear tongue tied and very awkward.

That was my number one enemy, fought valiantly but very often without success until I was 50 when the American foundation for homeopathy was founded by one other woman doctor and my self (and several male doctors). The fight for that ever since has helped my morale  wonderfully in fighting the timidity.

In 1922, with the closing of all the homeopathic schools, she realized that homeopathy might be lost. With a group of like-minded physicians she formed the American Foundation for Homeopathy. The AFH had several "bureaus" -those of investigation (education), research, publication, and publicity. The education was offered as a six-week postgraduate course taught, initially, by Drs. Dienst, Gladwin, Woodbury, Green, and Boger. The AFH course was responsible for training the generation of homeopaths before and during WWII -Dixon, Spalding, Shupis, Neiswander, Wright-Hubbard, and the generation after -Williams, Panos, Clark. Julia Green held a tight reign in the running of the AFH as her archived correspondence makes clear. She had a solid vision of what homeopathy was and how its business should be conducted.

Julia Green was a soft-spoken woman who loomed larger than life. Her practice was taken over by Dr. Maesimund Panos, who had preceptored with her, but she continued to see patients almost until she died.

Publication:

A case of myxoma and lymphatic leukaemia, Homoeopathic Recorder, June 1937

Zinc suppression in children, Homoeopathic Recorder, 1939

Method of studying materia medica, Homoeopathic Recorder, April 1947                

Relationship of the behaviour of children to homoeopathic prescribing, Homoeopathic Recorder, September, 1950.

* * *

Elisabeth Wright Hubbard, MD

(February 18, 1896 - May 22, 1967)

Elizabeth Wright Hubbard, MD, First vice president, I.H.A.
 

In July 1959, when Elisabeth Wright Hubbard was elected to be the president of the American Institute of Homeopathy, she wrote this short biography for the journal, which encapsulates her life as a homeopath better than anything I could have pieced together.

"Greetings from your new President who was born into Homeopathy, having been brought into the world by Dr. Byron G. Clark, mutton-chop whiskers, pearl square Derby, frock coat, span of gray horses to his brougham! He cured me of tubercular cervical adenitis with Tub. bov. 30 malaria with Natrum muriaticum 1M, severe measles with Pulsatilla, rheumatic fever at 9 with Rhus toxicodendron 6x for all of which I forgave his calling me "Bub"! During my internship at Bellevue I was cured of a violent delirious scarlet fever by Dr. Rudolf Rabe with a single dose of Ammonium carbonicum 10M. Dr. Clark gave me my first copy of The Organon, C.E.  Wheeler's edition. Small wonder that I respected and believed in Homeopathy which had served me so well.

After Graduating from Barnard College, during which time I determined to become a doctor, my father advised that I go to the best of traditional medical schools. I graduated from Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, Class of 1921, the first class that took women. Two years' internship in Bellevue followed, including six months' pathology where I autopsied 65 Coroner's cases. One vacation during medical school was an Asiatic trip; another (my first real job) working at Woodside Sanatorium for Nervous and Mental Diseases under the Swedenborgian homeopath, Dr. Frank Wallace Patch, in Framingham Centre, Massachusetts. He told me to study Homeopathy in Geneva, Switzerland, with Dr. Pierre Schmidt and after graduation I went to Europe, working in the Allgemeine Krankenhaus in Vienna under the younger Von Pirquet, and in Stuttgart under Dr. Adolf Stiegele. After a trip to Greece, Egypt and the Holy Land, I was privileged to study pure Homeopathy for nine months under Dr. Schmidt and, thereafter, under the great Paracelsian student, Dr. Emil Schlegel, in Tubingen.

To start my practice I was invited by Dr. Alice H. Bassett of Boston, then partially retiring, to do her acute work, and was placed in charge of the Homeopathic Clinic at the Massachusetts Memorial Hospital, and was one of four attending medical chiefs at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Roxbury, Mass. After a year I opened my own office and had my own laboratory. During this time I edited The Homeopathic Recorder for three years, abstracting homeopathic literature in five languages and making an index of that homeopathic literature.

In 1930 I married Benjamin A. Hubbard, who had two children, gave up my Boston practice and began general practice in New York City, where he was on the faculty of Columbia University for a third of a century. I am on the Courtesy Staff of the Flower-Fifth Avenue Hospital here. We have three more children.

Dr. Lawrence M. Stanton was my mentor and physician here until his death. I had the privilege of being President of the I.H. A. for two years, and served many years on the Board of Trustees of the American Foundation for Homeopathy and, recently, as Trustee of the Institute.

In addition to Dr. Schmidt's magnificent groundwork in Homeopathy, I was myself a student for two years at the Post-Graduate School of the Foundation, under such men as Dr. Cyrus Boger, Dr. George A. Dienst, Dr. H.A.  Roberts, Dr. Eugene Underhill and Dr. Fredericka Gladwin (sic), and have since taught Homeopathy in the Summer School. I have been privileged to know and learn from such homeopaths as Sir John Weir of London, the late Dr. Margaret Tyler, Dr. Douglas, Dr. Fergie Woods, Dr. Arthur, Dr. J.H.  Clarke and Dr. C.E.  Wheeler.

Thirty-six years of almost strictly homeopathic practice have convinced me that, magnificent as are the achievements of modern medicine in diagnosis, laboratory work and sanitation, Homeopathy, were it to be judged only by its results, if properly practiced, is the mainstay of healing."

Wright took further studies in homeopathy during two years in Geneva, Switzerland with dr. Pierre Schmidt ('she was one of the most intelligent and gifted of my pupils," said Schmidt). On returning to the United states, she opened her first practice in Boston. While living with her aunt, Mrs. Theodore Chickering Williams, a venerable Boston maron, Wright scandalized the staid community by making house calls in a 1913 Rolls Royce roadster she named "Rosalie."

It was said that the Hubbard used to keep baloney sandwiches in her desk so she didn't have to miss lunch during a long patient consultation.

Hubbard died "in harness." She was in the middle of a consultation, seeing the mother of Dr. Alexander Klein, a New York homoeopath, when she had a stroke. Dr Klein was present with his mother that day. Hubbard never regained consciousness and died two days later.

* * *

Margery Grace Blackie, MD
(February 4, 1898, -  August 24, 1981)

Her Majesty with homoeopath Dr Margery Blackie, the Queen's first woman physician.

Margery Grace Blackie grew up surrounded by homeopathy. She was routinely treated homoeopathically as a child and her uncle (who died when she was three) was Dr. James Compton Burnett, a great proponent of homeopathy. The youngest of ten children, she was born on February 4, 1898, in Redbourn, Hertfordshire.

In 1911 she and her family moved to London and she spent her teenage years growing up in the city. When she was sixteen, the war was declared and even though she was busily preparing to enter the matriculation form in preparation for medical school, she and all her classmates spent the school days knitting socks, mufflers and mittens for the soldiers. In 1916, she passed the London University exam. The five year old Margery's wish to become a doctor was soon to be realized. At the age of nineteen, in 1917, she began her general medicine training at the School of Medicine for Women at London University -the only medical school in London at the time offering complete training for women.

In 1923 she sat for, and failed, the final tests in Medicine, Surgery and Obstetrics. She tried again and again and finally passed in 1926. Two years prior to this, she had started working as a resident at the London Homeopathic Hospital. Despite the years at orthodox medical school, she was strongly inclined towards homeopathy and said on one occasion: "In my teaching hospital, when I saw patients dying, I didn't have the satisfaction that the others had of believing that everything possible had been done. I felt they hadn't had the only thing that might have cured them."

Another story which affords us a glimpse into her convictions and personality goes as follows: One day on rounds at the allopathic teaching hospital with the Chief, Blackie was asked what she would prescribe for a patient. "Whether I forgot where I was or whether it was bravado, I know not; but I replied Nux vomica. My friends grew pale with fright but nothing happened. Passing in the corridor later he stopped me and said, 'a very good idea. I always carry it', and pulled from his waistcoat pocket two small bottles of pills -one Nux vomica and the other Carbo veg.

At the age of twenty-six she became House Physician at the London Homeopathic Hospital. The hospital was staffed almost entirely by men. She worked with Drs. J.H.  Clarke (who had joined the staff in 1881), Charles Wheeler and her mentor, Douglas Borland. In 1926 she opened a private practice and at the age of thirty she attained senior status in the medical profession by becoming a Doctor of Medicine. She was the only woman candidate at the University of London in 1928 to be awarded this distinction.

There now followed twenty years of successful private general practice. However, she also continued to work at the LHH, especially in the children's department and the out-patient department. It was here that she worked with Margaret Tyler, who was a dominant figure in the hospital at this time. In 1949 she was elected president of the British Homeopathic Society and held this post for three successive years. In the mid-1950s she was the editor of the British Homeopathic Journal for one year, and also served in the LHH on the Committee for Research and Drug Provings and the Committee for Education.

Her crowning achievement in these later years was succeeding Sir John Weir as Royal Physician. This took place in 1969. She continued working at the newly named Royal London Homeopathic Hospital until the age of sixty-nine at which time she became an honorary consultant there (1965). In 1964 she was elected Dean of the Faculty of Homeopathy, a post that she held until her resignation at the age of 81.

Publications :

The Patient Not The Cure.

A Comparison of Arsenicum, Nitric Acid, Hepar Sulph. and Nux-vomica.

Classical Homeopathy.

* * *

Marion Belle Rood, MD

(1899 - December 22, 1995)

Rood was the only woman in her physics masters program at the university of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She worked on the quantum theory during the 1920s. After two years of teaching mathematics in Tennessee, she attended New York Homoeopathic Medical college as the only female student in her class, graduating in 1932.

Rood Received her advanced training in homoeopathy from her family physician, Dr Harriet Knott, who in her later years, while blind, lived with Rood supervising her cases. Rood was invited by Grimmer to join his practice in Chicago, which had been Kent's practice. However Rood wanted to stay in her rural home town of Lapeer, Michigan.

The stories of Rood are legendary. She lived in a house at the end of a dirt road outside of town. She had neither a telephone nor appointments. Her patients would drive up, sit on her porch, and wait. She began at 11 a.m., and would see the patients in the order they had arrived, taking as long as needed for each case. She worked until the last patient was treated, sometimes at 1 a.m. or later. Neighbors often brought snacks for the patients waiting on the porch.

Recalls Andrew Lange, ND: "In Dr. Rood's office in her living room, patients sat amidst piles of books, cats and dogs, dishes covered in lace, and wooden boxes filled with medicines. Records were kept on large file cards. She sat behind a small wooden side table with Kent and Knerr's repertories guiding her. Busts of Hahnemann and Hyphatia watched over her. Hyphatia was a young woman mathematician and astronomer from Alexandria, and a leading proponent of neo-platonic thought. Patients reported that she would leave them with an issue of Scientific American when she went to prepare the remedy, then quiz them about the article when she returned. As a scientist, Dr Rood kept a wide range of journals piles through the living room in which she saw her patients. She would regularly lecture her patients on the relationship between homoeopathy and current developments in science, whether they could appreciate her insights or not."

Through Grimmer, she became interested in the Electronic Reactions of Abrams. She build a room with a copper wire coils to block outside electromagnetic influences, in which she conducted tests. This method was  the basis of a later study led by Guy Beckely Stearns and other members of the International Hahnemannian Association in the 1920s. Lange says: " Dr Rood used this method for over 20 years in some of her most difficult cancer cases. In later years she no longer used the Abrams instrument, relying instead on her experience and the repertories to determine the remedy."

When a local reporter interviewed her after her retirement, he asked her what would her patients do without her to which she replied, "well I hope they're all better. That's what is supposed to happen."

Along with dr. Wyrth Post Baker, she testified before the Senate, to maintain the status of the Pharmacopeia. Rood charged $10 for a visit, raising this to $20, when the pharmacopeia was again reviewed in the 1980s. she raised and contributed $50,000 which funded the updating of the US Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia.

Rood never married.

* * * * * *

Bibliography :

Haehl, Richard, Samuel Hahnemann - His Life and Work

Handley, Rima. Homeopathic Love Story, 1990, North Atlantic Books

Journal of American Institute of Homeopathy, 1997

American Homoeopath, 1997

Julian Winston, Faces of Homoeopathy,1999.