The Important History of Women’s Rights Leaders and Suffragists in their Advocacy of Homeopathy

An excerpt from The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy, Berkeley:: North Atlantic Books/Random House, 2008.

“Too many wives of conventional physicians are going to homeopathic physicians,” complained one doctor at the 1883 meeting of the American Medical Association. “And to make it worse,” he added, “they are taking their children to homeopaths too” (Coulter, 1973, III, 116)

Ever since the beginning of homeopathy in the early 1800s, women have been attracted to this system of medicine as patients, as home care prescribers for their family, and as professional homeopaths. It is estimated that two-thirds of homeopathic patients in the nineteenth century were women (Kirschmann, 2004). Historians and physicians today assert that nineteenth-century conventional medicine was barbaric. The use of mercury, arsenic, bloodletting, and leeches was common medical practice, and such treatment usually caused considerably more harm than good. The women of that day, therefore, sought safer medical treatment, and they turned to homeopathy in significant numbers.

Women were also attracted to homeopathy because it not only treated their physical complaints but also inquired into and treated various emotional and mental concerns. While the act of listening to patients provided its own therapeutic benefit, the fact is homeopathy became very popular in the U.S. and Europe in…