24.11.2011, AT 7 PM

 

Meeting 2: Homeopathy of the crisis. Between science turning points and social changes

 

The series of meetings as a part of the “Art&ScienceMeeting” programme will focus on the relations between science and the development of social and cultural life over the centuries. Guests at the meetings will be scientists examining the history of the idea – scientific ideas under the influence of which societies, philosophical views and the ideas of culture change.

 

Host: Krzysztof Miękus

 

The phenomenon of homeopathy is interesting as far as the history of medicine is concerned. The doctrine and the therapeutic practice connected with it, originated in the era of the crisis of the European medicine at the turn of the 18th and the 19th centuries. It lasted for two centuries with slight changes in its theoretical assumption and almost no correction of its therapeutic procedure. It was accepted by patients but controversial among doctors. Homeopathy used to balance the world of medicine and social circles which did not belong there. It needed both sources to last but with different intensity, depending on the times. Homeopathy did not transform like other medical doctrines, for example mesmerism into bioenergotherapy. It did not disappear like brownism or broussaism. Due to its out-of-academic character its reception met greater barriers. There is no simple explanation of this phenomenon.

 

Jaromir Piotr Jeszke – (born in 1954) historian and culture anthropologist, the historian of science. He has a post-doctoral degree in human sciences. He is the associate professor of UAM (Adam Mickiewicz University) and the associate professor of PAN. He is the member of Zespół i Rada Naukowa Pracowni Pytań Granicznych UAM. He is currently working on a book about the history of homeopathy.