Dr James Compton Burnett
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British Homeopathy During Two Centuries
Dr James Compton Burnett
by Peter Morrell
Dr. Burnett trained in Europe [3 years in Vienna] and then in
Glasgow where he graduated in 1876. He studied homeopathy in Liverpool
under Drs Drysdale and Berridge [see Nisbet, 1913, p.65], at first
very secretively for fear of reprisals from allopathic colleagues.
Dr. John Drysdale [c.1816-c.1890] was then in his late fifties,
had qualified at Edinburgh and spent several years in the great
continental medical schools before settling in Liverpool, where his
successes in the cholera epidemic of 1849 had so 'roused the envy of
his allopathic colleagues' that he was forthwith 'expelled from the
Liverpool Medical Institute' [Clarke's Life of Burnett, 1902].
Dr. Burnett was born July 20th 1840, near Salisbury, Wiltshire.
He qualified with honours from Vienna [orthodox medical school] 1869;
and then from Glasgow in 1876. He was awarded the Gold Medal in
Anatomy upon graduation:
"Passing through a brilliant examination in anatomy, lasting one hour
and a half, the professor shook hands with him, saying that he had
never examined a student with so brilliant and thorough a knowledge of
anatomy." [from Clarke, 1902, The Life and Times of Dr. Burnett.]
Dr Margery Blackie
Burnett was a great-uncle of Dr. Margery Blackie, and a great
stimulator of interest in homeopathy, He was also an 'Organ
prescriber' and supporter of Rademacher.
"..James Compton Burnett died suddenly of heart failure at his hotel
in London during the night of Monday, April 1st 1901, two months
before Ivy's seventeenth birthday...' [Obituary, BJH, 1901]
It was Dr. Richard Hughes' book, A Manual of Pharmacodynamics,
the first authoritative homeopathic textbook published in English,
which had recruited Burnett himself and practically the whole of
Burnett's generation of rising young homeopaths in Britain. But Hughes
was severely puritanical by temperament, a fundamentalist and a
purist, resenting on the one hand all attempts to tamper with his own
interpretations of what he regarded as revealed truth laid down Samuel
Hahnemann, and detesting, on the other, an ad hoc, empirical or
individual approach to clinical symptoms.
"About 1888 [he] had deservedly made his way in medical circles as a
well-known London practitioner with the appointment as Physician to
the London Homeopathic Hospital . . . " [Preface to "50 Reasons For
Being a Homeopath"]
Dr. Burnett ran two busy medical practices in London. He
introduced many nosodes: Bacillinum testium [Allen, 1909, p.559],
Coqueluchinum [ibid., p.559], Carcinosinum [ibid., p.560],
Epihysterinum [ibid., p.560, Ergotinum [ibid., p.561], Morbillinum
[ibid., pp.565-6], and also Schirrinum [ibid., p.568, Allen, 1909] and
possibly Influenzinum [ibid., p.565];
"James Compton Burnett died suddenly of heart failure at his hotel in
London during the night of Monday, April 1st 1901." [Obituary,
Homeopathic World, May 1st 1901]
Burnett was a prolific writer and wrote numerous books and small
pamphlets about diverse aspects of homeopathy. These included:
26 books in all... from 1878-1901, the most famous being:
Natrum mur as a Test of the Doctrine of Drug Dynamization [1878]
Curability of Cataract by Medicines [1880]
Tumours of the Breast and their Cure [1888]
Fifty reasons for Being a Homeopath 1888
The New Cure of Consumption [1890]
Curability of Tumours with Medicine [1898, 1932],
"But it should be remembered that, if homeopathy in the 'eighties and
'nineties was under constant fire from without, it was torn
simultaneously by civil war within. Dr. Burnett had to contend not
simply with crypto-homeopaths like Joseph Kidd, who had attended
Disraeli in his last illness, publicly renounced his homeopathic
allegiance and became the object of a blistering, often libellous
onslaught in the Homeopathic World for eight months thereafter; or
allopaths like Robert Koch who, as the first to isolate the drug
tuberculin which ultimately eradicated consumption, won a renown in
the early 'nineties which Burnett [who claimed to have pioneered the
same methods five years before Koch] held to be rightfully his.
Homeopathy itself was meanwhile split into two warring factions, the
one led by Burnett and a group of his friends [among them his future
biographer, John Clarke], the other by the immensely influential
Richard Hughes." [ibid.]
Dr Joseph Kidd
Regarding Dr Kidd, who was Disraeli's physician in his last
illness, see Treuherz, 1995, and the Kidd Obituaries in The Times and
The Lancet [Kidd, 1918].
Burnett's approach to homeopathy was richly informed by reviving
earlier heresies like Paracelsus, Rademacher and Fludd. He accepted
that a person could be treated through the organs ['organopathy'] and
on this basis he mainly used the low potencies and tinctures. He also
employed what came to be called 'the ladder of remedies', zigzagging
his way through the symptoms of a case taking out a single symptom at
a time. The 'ladder' consisted of:
'...a series of different medicines prescribed at different potencies
and subtly adjusted to the needs of a particular case. The trickiest
problems pleased him most, and the quirkier the solution, the better
it suited him...' [Clarke, 1902]
Like most of his contemporaries, he also made extensive use of
the newly introduced nosodes, like his own Bacillinum, prepared from
tuberculous sputum [Allen, 1909, pp.559-576]. These were used in the
30, 200 and 1M potencies, widely spaced. He swiftly became famous as a
doctor who could cure tumours and was reckoned to have, at his death
in 1901, the largest consulting practice in London [Obituary,
Westminster Gazette, 1901]
His surprisingly 'unclassical' approach also echoes the work of
Hahnemann in his final years in Paris:
'Hahnemann would then select his remedy on the basis of any important
or prominent symptoms... he had to be content to move through the
case, eliminating symptoms serially...as he removed each symptom, so
he tuned each note until eventually the whole instrument might be
restored to harmony....there is extreme example of this in Mr Robert
Lyster's case, where Hahnemann worked his way serially through all
five remedies...until some improvement was eventually achieved with
the last one.' [Handley, 1997, pp.65-6]
Burnett also resorted to old herbal Drugs like Acorns,
Bruisewort, Walnuts, Nettles, Couchgrass and Daisy [Clarke, 1902]. His
whole approach was remarkable for its very wide grasp of homeopathy as
a system of natural healing wholly without dogma and a wide
eclecticism with regard to herbs and 'organ remedies'.
The London Homeopathic Hospital
He seemed as happy with high potencies and nosodes as he was with
tinctures and herbal preparations derived from 'old wives tales'. This
was in marked contrast to many of his contemporaries within the
movement, who were deeply dogmatic purists, strongly opposed to such
experimentation [e.g. Drs Hughes and Kent]. Burnett was so well-
regarded that a Chair of Materia Medica was named after him within the
BHS, at the London Homeopathic Hospital, and often called the 'Burnett
Professorship of Homeopathic Practice'.
Copyright (c) Peter Morrell 2000
.
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