Reviews

“Because of the breadth, and the knowledge of contributors, this collection affords a truly significant milestone in the history of homeopathy…In all, this significant volume, and the cornucopia it presents to the medical historian, is an indication of the rich resources that lie, largely untapped, in the history of homeopathy and its fortunes in the United States and elsewhere.”

Francesco Cordasco, Pharmacy in History 42 (2000): 128-30.

“This book is well worth the purchase by libraries, historians sociologists, social anthropologists, and those interested in complementary medicine. Each of the contributors has given a distinctive edge to the topic…The articles are noteworthy in that they seek to sort out the paradoxes that define the popularity of homeopathy in the age of reductionist science.”

John S. Haller, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 73 (1999): 526-28.

“This volume constitutes a good example of the increasingly nuanced and sophisticated contemporary historiography dealing with health and illness outside of the Western scientific paradigm. In all, we find a collection of essays that allow us an excellent historical view of homeopathy, one of the most important so-called alternative medicines.”

Enrique Perdiguero, Dynamis 20 (2000): 569-72.

“The contributions include some of the ablest contemporary historians working in the field…it is commonly supposed that during the last century, regular medicine simply welded its fortunes more and more to science, while homeopathy remained hostile or indifferent to science. These essays to some extent challenge this viewpoint. They also tend to portray homeopathy a shifting, adaptive and fluid rather than dogmatic and hard-line.”

Peter Morrell, British Homeopathic Journal 88 (1999): 93-95.