Emil Adolf von Behring and Homeopathy
Nobel Prize winner Emil von Behring
Saw the truth behind homeopathy and said he would embrace homeopathy and he credited homeopathy with the origins of immunisation and commended Hahnemann’s word ‘Homeopathy’ as the most appropriate as descriptive of vaccine therapy for what was opsonic treatment if it was not homoeopathic? Von Behring also commented that antitoxine as well as variolin “acts along homeopathic lines.”
Von Behring also said that “only the road of homeopathy led to my goal” for which he was awarded credit by the Chicago Hahnemann Hospital.
Von Behring contrasted Hahnemann’s ideals with those of Louis Pasteur and says that “homeopathy carries all before it” and he tailored his immunising doses along homeopathic lines.
Von Behring also endorsed Hahnemann’s ideas of ‘like cures like‘
The mechanisms of action of my anti-toxin therapy are still unclear, although many authors say that the diphtheria and tetanus anti-toxins can be clearly understood on the basis of Ehrlich’s lateral chain theory. (. . .) Despite all of the scientific speculations and experiments of anti-smallpox vaccinations, Jenner’s discovery remained a relatively isolated episode in medicine until Louis Pasteur connected its origin with a principle that cannot be better characterized than by Hahnemann’s word: homeopathic. What else causes epidemiological immunity in a sheep vaccinated against anthrax, if not the influence previously exercised by a micro-organism having similar characteristics to those of fatal anthrax? And what technical term appropriately defines this influence exercised by a similar micro-organism if not the word of Hahnemann: homeopathy? [Behring, Beitrage zur Experimentellen Therapie, H. 2, 26, 1906, cited in (2), p. 125]
Sue :: Aug.29.2007 :: European History :: No Comments »