Heartbeat, Heart Failure, and Homeopathy

Abstract

Homeopaths occupy a place in the growth of cardiovascular medicine and physiology. Constantine Hering introduced the drug nitroglycerin into medicine. At the time, the drug was considered too dangerous to use, but Hering's provings demonstrated its safety and therapeutic potential at very low doses. Although Hering showed that symptoms of angina pectoris would respond to nitroglycerin, he did not emphasize this particular use of the drug, which came about from the work of allopathic physicians in the United Kingdom several decades later. Without Hering's initial work, one can only wonder whether nitroglycerin would have been introduced into medicine. Hering was probably the first to systematically investigate the effects of snake venoms, some of which have subsequently found application in heart disease, and his work in this respect was followed by other homeopaths in Great Britain, such as Adrian Stokes, John Rutherford Russell, and John W. Hayward. Breakthroughs were made at the Hahnemann Cardiovascular Institute by George Geckeler and William Likoff. The twentieth-century cardiologist, Milton Raisbeck, is described for his clinical and philanthropic work. Nineteenth-century innovators in cardiovascular physiology include Robert Ellis Dudgeon and Arthur Weysse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]