Talking therapy: The allopathic nihilation of homoeopathy through conceptual translation and a new medical language

The 19th century saw the development of an eclectic medical marketplace in both United Kingdom and States, with mesmerists, herbalists hydrotherapists amongst plethora ‘sectarians’ offering mainstream (or ‘allopathic’) medicine stiff competition. Foremost these competitors were homoeopaths, a group practitioners who followed Samuel Hahnemann (1982[1810]) prescribing highly dilute doses single-drug substances at infrequent intervals according to ‘law similars’ (like cures like). theoretical sophistication homoeopathy, compared other sectarian systems, alongside its institutional growth after mid-19th-century cholera epidemics, led homoeopathy presenting challenge allopathy that latter could not ignore. Whilst subsequent decline beginning 20th was result multiple factors, including developments within education, Progressive movement, wider socio-economic changes, this article focuses on allopathy’s response homoeopathy’s conceptual challenge. Using framework Berger Luckmann (1991[1966]) taking Tory historiographical approach (Fuller, 2002) recover more fully 19th-century homoeopathic knowledge, demonstrates how increasingly sophisticated ‘nihilative’ strategies ultimately successful neutralising homoeopaths defeated by allopaths (rather than disproven) level. In process, therapeutic use ‘nosodes’ (live disease products) language bacteriology pivotal. For their part, failed mount counter-attack against explanatory available them.