Sue Young Homeopathy

Edmund Beckett, 1st Baron Grimthorpe QC 1816 – 1905 known previously as Sir Edmund Beckett, 5th Baronet and Edmund Beckett Denison was a lawyer, amateur horologist, and architect.

In 1851 he designed the mechanism for the clock of the Palace of Westminster, responsible for the chimes of Big Ben.

Edmund Beckett was an enthusiastic and ardent devotee of homeopathy, and he wrote to The Times in 1888 to protest against the prejudice of the allopathic physicians in dismissing Kenneth William Millican, which resulted in a month long battle of words in The Times, and the whole affair was written up in John Henry Clarke’s Odium medicum and homeopathy.

In 1887, Edmund Becket Lord Grimthorpe, Chairman of the Governing Body, proposed homeopaths and homeopathic supporters as nominees to the Margaret Street Infirmary, and the Board of the Hospital clearly stated that homeopaths were not ineligible, and John Beckett, John Roberson Day, Kenneth William Millican, and Charles Lloyd Tuckey, were duly appointed,

In the 40 years ending 1890 during which homeopathy had been practised in England, the columns of the daily Press had but rarely been opened to discussions upon it.

This prolonged silence with regard to a matter that was so intimately connected with the vital interests of the whole community, was broken by The Times in 1881, at the period when Benjamin Disraeli (who was a patient of homeopath Joseph Kidd) lay dangerously, ill; and again in December, 1887, on account of the high handed action of the committee of a newly established institute called the Queen’s Jubilee Hospital against Kenneth William Millican, who had been duly elected its surgeon for throat diseases.

The only grievance the committee of the Jubilee Hospital had against Kenneth William Millican was that he belonged to an institution where liberty of opinion on therapeutics was accorded to the medical officers.

The committee of the Jubilee Hospital could not find any fault with the practice of Kenneth William Millican, but they, nevertheless expelled him and appointed another in his place. Kenneth William Millican brought all action against the committee for wrongful dismissal and got judgment in his favour, which judgment, however, was reversed on appeal.

Lord Grimthorpe in a letter to The Times called attention to the bigotry of the committee of the Jubilee Hospital in dismissing an able and competent member of their medical staff for no other cause than his acceptance of a post in another institution where liberty of opinion and practice was allowed to its medical officers.

This conduct he characterised as a flagrant instance of the Odium medicum. A considerable number of representatives of allopathy replied to the letter, protesting that Lord Grimthorpe was altogether wrong in attributing to their side and Odium medicum, and unconsciously proving his accusation up to the hilt by the very strong language they used against homeopathy and its adherents.

After the controversy had gone on for ten days the editor of The Times joined in the fray with a leading article in favour of homeopathy.

This elicited an outburst of still more violent denunciations of homeopathy.

When the discussion had raged in the columns of The Times for another fortnight, the editor closed it with another leading article claiming that Lord Grimthorpe had been successful in establishing his original contention.

The good example set by The Times in treating of homeopathy with the respect and deference it merited was followed by many newspapers and periodicals, both at home and abroad.

The subject excited great interest, even in Australia, and the beneficial effect that this prolonged discussion had on the proper understanding of homeopathy by the general community is felt even at the present day.

Our facetious friend Punch published (January 28, 1888) a humorous account of the battle of the rival schools, in which the partisan of the globule was represented as having the best of the fray.

This was accompanied by a cartoon by Edward Linley Sambourne, which by the courtesy of the publishers is here reproduced.

From John Henry Clarke’s Odium medicum and homeopathy: “I will now quote the case of the homeopathic cure of an animal.

“It is taken from The Times of Jan. 6, 1888, being communicated in a letter to the editor in the course of the Odium medicum correspondence, afterwards published in a book from under the title of Odium medicum and homeopathy….

Meissonier’s Testimony in Favour of Homeopathy. To the Editor of The Times:

“Sir, – In the present controversy on this subject, you may, perhaps, in your spirit of fairness, think the enclosed document worth publishing. It has been in my possession for some time.

“I was studying painting a few years ago with Meissonier, whose valuable dog – which had been given to him by his great friend Alexandre Dumas – was stuck with paralysis in its hind quarters; it had also its neck twisted.

“I had long studied Homeopathy for my own use, and my little globules were the subject of much good humoured fun to Meissonier and his friends and family, who did not believe in them at all.

“The dog in question was condemned to death by a great ‘vet.’ In Paris, who attended to Meissonier’s very valuable horses, as will be seen in the enclosed testimony.

“The same evening I was dining with him and his family, and the dog was in the room – a subject of much lamentation – when, in his sudden and animated manner, he challenged me to cure it with ‘my Homeopathy’

“I accepted the challenge and gave the dog at once in their presence a single dose of Rhus tox, of a rather high dilution.

“The Next morning I was at work with him alone in his garden studio before breakfast, when his clever and energetic daughter came rushing into the studio as if the house were on fire, crying out that ‘the dog walked.’

“We ran out of the studio – Meissonier with his brush in his mouth and his large palette on his thumb, in his earnest eagerness about everything that freshly caught his attention- and there was the animal running about on its four legs as strongly as ever.

“It still had its neck twisted, however, and I was much puzzled to know how to proceed with my patient. I then perceived that its coat was rough and staring. Here came in one of the great principles of Homeopathy – that every symptom must be taken into account – and the proper remedy at once suggested itself.

“I gave it two doses of Arsenicum 3X; the dog quite recovered, and is I believe, alive and well to this day. Yours faithfully, A Pupil of Meissonier.”

Lord Grimthorpe was a champion of the recently emerged ‘Homeopathy’ school of thought, and homeopathy is of course a ‘system of complementary medicine in which disease is treated by natural substances – in minute doses – that in a healthy person would produce symptoms of disease’.

Edmund Beckett was a relative of William Thomas Denison, who was also an advocate of homeopathy.

Lord Grimthorpe was also responsible for rebuilding the west front, roof, and transept windows of St Albans Cathedral at his own expense.

Although the building had been in need of repair, popular opinion at the time held that he had changed the cathedral’s character, even inspiring the creation and temporary popularity of the verb “to grimthorpe”, meaning to carry out unsympathetic restorations of ancient buildings.

Part of Beckett’s additions included statues of the four evangelists around the western door; the statue of St Matthew has Beckett’s face. He later turned his attentions to St Peter’s and then to St Michael’s Church, both in the same city.

In 1868 he worked with W H Crossland to design St Chad’s Church, Far Headingley in Leeds.

Edmund Beckett was born at Carlton Hall Nottinghamshire, England, and was the son of Sir Edmund Beckett, 4th Baronet. He studied at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, was made a Queen’s Counsel in 1854, and was created Baron Grimthorpe in 1886.

He is sometimes known as Edmund Beckett Denison; his father had taken the additional name Denison in 1816, but the son dropped it on his father’s death in 1874.

He married Fanny Catherine 1823 – 1901 daughter of John Lonsdale, 89th Bishop of Lichfield.

He died on 29 April 1905 after a fall, and is buried in the grounds of St Albans Cathedral.