Copeland's Cure: Homeopathy and the War Between Conventional and Alternative Medicine

by Natalie Robins

Book Overview

Today, one out of every three Americans uses some form of alternative medicine, either along with their conventional ( standard, traditional ) medications or in place of them. One of the most... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375410902
• ISBN13: 9780375410901
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.6" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

I LOVED THIS BOOK!!!

The main reason I bought this book was because it is about my Grandfather. He died when I was very young, and I don't remember him. I have read alot about him, but Natalie made him "come to life" for me in so many ways, as well as my great grandfather! I love the book for all the biographical information I got out of it. I really appreciate her doing all the research she did to write it! Thanks Natalie! You did a great job!!! Ginger

Is less more?

Natalie Robins gives us (at what must have been , judging from her bibliography, an enormous cost in sweated research) three books for the price of one. The first is a biography of Royal Copeland; the second a history of the relationships between a variety of ancillary health professionals and regular MD's; the third is an investigation of the current standing of homeopathy. I enjoyed the biography best. Some of the life goes out of the book when Copeland dies (on page 218, in 1938). He was a figure straight out of Sinclair Lewis, naïve in some ways but able to manipulate people and get ahead. He qualified as a homeopathic physician from a mid-western diploma mill. His energy and chutzpah brought him to make it big in New York City and rise to the United States Senate, founding New York Medical College and writing a medical advice column for William Randolph Hearst. Much about his pronouncements and statements was unintentionally comic. Robins cleverly lets him speak for himself. The text is peppered with his wondrous medical claims and hilarious pictures. (The descriptions of his ophthalmic procedures are messed up - it's needling not "kneedling" that was done for cataracts). The explanation of the varying relationships over the years between doctors of medicine, homeopaths, osteopaths, naturopaths, chiropractors, podiatrists, optometrists, herbalists, acupuncturists, etcetera, and of their different qualifications was the clearest I've ever seen. Evaluating the claims of these various practitioners obviously treads on touchy ground, and whether she does a fair job of it will be a matter of the reader's opinion, but she is able to make it entertaining as well as instructive.

Attempted Balance in the History of American Homeopathy

We are greatly interested in our health, and are eager to spend huge sums of money on pills to improve it (though we are less eager, it seems, to change our habits of diet and exercise). If there was ever a need to fill, as in "Find a need and fill it," medical treatment holds enormous potential for enriching practitioners. This has always been true, and has been true before medicine was on a strong scientific basis, and is true for "alternative" treatments that have no scientific basis. These days, there is standard medical practice, the usual thing that graduates of medical schools are engaged in, and there are many alternatives: acupuncture, chiropractic, herbal remedies, naturopathy, aromatherapy, and many more. Alternative medicine, to the disgust of many doctors and skeptics, has gotten some official level of approval; there's the Office of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the National Institutes of Health, and financial approval shown by coverage from many insurance companies. Among the most famous of such therapies is homeopathy, so it is timely to read _Copeland's Cure: Homeopathy and the War between Conventional and Alternative Medicine_ (Knopf) by Natalie Robins. It is mostly a biography of Royal Samuel Copeland, a homeopath, conventional doctor, eye surgeon, Health Commissioner of New York City, and U.S. Senator, but Copeland's constant efforts for his beloved homeopathy encompassed the practice's heyday. The controversies he battled are the same ones that alternative medicines are experiencing today, making Robins's detailed look at Copeland's life useful background for current clashes. Robins starts with a history of homeopathy, which was invented in 1796 by the German doctor Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann, who was horrified by the high doses of medicine that doctors used at the time. He developed a system of curing by giving highly dilute solutions of medicines, so that only the tiniest amount, or even no amount, of the original drug remained in solution. Copeland, born in 1868, took up homeopathy, was president of the American Institute for Homeopathy, and translated his leadership into the civic arena, always promoting homeopathic treatments without shouting that he was doing so. He was busy promoting homeopathy during the time when medicine really did become scientific and really made cures such as those with penicillin, while homeopathic schools folded. He had frequent battles with the American Medical Association. Copeland died in 1938; he probably simply worked himself to death. Robins says that she has tried to give both sides of the argument about homeopathy, but admits that "scientific proof is only a distant possibility." Homeopathic claims include that water not only has a memory for teensy amounts of solutes, but that such a memory can be captured, digitized, and sent over the internet to be instilled into another water sample. The claims cannot make logical, scientific sense; if such tiny