From Our Classic Literature “The Patient, Not the Cure: The Challenge of Homoeopathy” By Margery G. Blackie (edited by Felix Brenner)

1978; ISBN: 978-0912800493 paperback, 247 pages. Language: English.

Nearly 50 years ago a book appeared which inspired many to become homeopaths or, at the very least, to acquire a sound understanding of our treasured art, The Patient, Not the Cure: The Challenge of Homoeopathy.

This book, just shy of 250 pages, could be a homeopathic study course in itself as it covers nearly all the subject's topics.

It is written in a compelling yet easy-to-digest manner interspersed with many anecdotes and cases. In the following one, see how the ‘Physician to Her Majesty, The Queen,’ introduces the reader to the concept of constitution:

‘A boy of eighteen was taken to the Homoeopathic Hospital's out-patients department. His mother described him as cheerful and very good temperamentally. She said he wept very easily but never got angry, in spite of having a rather domineering and bad-tempered sister of ten. The boy could never eat fat, or rich food, but he liked cakes and sweets, almost abnormally. He could not stand hot weather. When he was a baby, he was never able to be left in his pram in the sun He was not ill, but had no energy and wilted in the heat. Even then, with the summer over, he could not seem to pick up. With such a definite history he was given Pulsatilla. The next month, when he returned he looked very much better and stood up as if he had enough energy to meet anything’.

‘The mother was very pleased, but she was even happier about her daughter. Because this cross, irritable little girl, whose extreme irritability caused reactions every day in the family, was quite a different child to live with after having Nux vomica’.

‘When the homoeopathic doctor is prescribing for patients, he tries to find out what is called the constitutional remedy…’-p. 45.

The chapters contained within are ‘Concepts of Homoeopathy’, ‘Hahnemann the Man’, ‘Contemporaries of Hahnemann’, ‘Homoeopathy in Practice’, ‘Taking the Case’, ‘Types of Remedies’, ‘Materia Medica’, ‘Childhood to Old Age’, ‘Homoeopathy in Ear, Nose and Throat Cases’, ‘Homoeopathy on the Farm’, ‘Homoeopathic Teaching’, ‘Twentieth-Century Homoeopaths’, ‘The Contemporary Scene’, ‘Preventive Medicine’, ‘The Homoeopathic Bouquet’ (contains brief, well-thought-out comments on 42 of our friends), Appendices. A list of remedies is included as well as a decent Index.

Do not be tempted to skip Chapter 13, ‘The Contemporary Scene,’ as it holds, like the rest of the book, many gems.

If you haven't as yet enjoyed this precious classic, may I suggest you do so.

Margery Grace Blackie (4 February 1898 • 24 August 1981) became physician to the Queen of England and the royal family in 1969, succeeding Sir John Weir. She served in that capacity until 1978.

She qualified in medicine in 1923 (London School of Medicine for Women) and in the following year joined the staff of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. There, she came under the influence of several homeopathic luminaries, e.g. John Henry Clarke, Charles E. Wheeler, Douglas Borland and James Compton-Burnett who, by the way, was her uncle. She obtained her medical degree from the University of London in 1928.

Dr Blackie was President of the British Homeopathic Society in 1949 and Dean of the Faculty of Homeopathy for 17 years. Constance Babington-Smith wrote a biography of her, Champion of Homoeopathy: The Life of Margery Blackie (1986). For additional biographical material, see 'Homoeopathy-the End of the Beginning: The First Blackie Memorial Lecture', (R.J.F.H. Pinsent, British Homoeopathy Journal, 73:3, pp. 149-158, 1984), two other articles in the British Homoeopathy Journal, 77:3, pp. 155-168, 1988) and the material in Julian Winston's, Faces of Homoeopathy (1999), particularly pages 208, 9.

Publication History

Article published online:
16 May 2024