Homeopathy, institutions, government

Homeopathy, Institutions, Government. Who Can, Who Cannot.

The interplay between homeopathy, education, commerce, and politics has never been neutral. From the 19th century to today, the same forces—ownership, access, and visibility—determine who may speak with authority and who remains unseen.

19th- and Early 20th-Century America: Discarding Their Own Repertories
In the early American homeopathic movement, institutions and publishers actively decided which repertories would survive. 
The American Institute of Homeopathy (AIH) and major colleges such as Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia and Boston University’s Homeopathic Medical College sought to establish a distinct American identity. 
By the 1870s and 1880s, Bönninghausen’s and Jahr’s repertories—pillars of European homeopathy—were quietly replaced by new “American” compilations. 

When J. T. Kent’s Repertory (1897) appeared, it was hailed as the “scientific” modernization of the art. Faculty minutes from the AIH Transactions and library inventories of Hahnemann College show that earlier repertories were deaccessioned as obsolete. Some were literally discarded from shelves, a process later mirrored at the American Foundation for Homeopathy Library and the New York Homeopathic Medical College, which by the 1930s reported “obsolete European repertories discarded.” 

Publishers reinforced this shift. Boericke & Tafel, holding exclusive printing rights to Kent’s works, phased out Jahr, Lippe, and Bönninghausen editions by 1915. Their catalogues show how market control masqueraded as scientific progress: what could not be sold was declared outdated. Even Kent’s own rhetoric supported this cleansing—his 1899 essay in The Journal of Homœopathics dismissed Bönninghausen’s approach as “mechanical” and unworthy of the new, doctrinal American method. 

By the 1920s, Kent’s repertory had become the national standard, while its predecessors survived only in private libraries or through the efforts of Boger and a few independent practitioners. The intellectual ecology of American homeopathy had narrowed: a century before the digital era, repertories were already being curated out of existence.

The Modern Parallel
Today, the same pattern persists under new guises. Educational institutions depend on commercial software; governments endorse specific platforms through procurement; and journals reproduce the same selective visibility. Free or discounted student and faculty licenses bind schools to a single ecosystem, and authors dutifully cite the software, while neglecting the repertory that actually drives the data.

The omission is not innocent. It is the digital continuation of an old habit: replacing scholarly lineage with institutional convenience. Just as colleges once tossed the printed repertories of Europe, modern systems hide their sources behind corporate interfaces.

The Commercial and Political Nexus
When governments standardize platforms for teaching, commerce, and bureaucracy merge. Vendors gain national exposure, competitors vanish from curricula, and repertory authors lose credit. What the Boericke presses accomplished in 1900, a software license now achieves in 2025. The political act of endorsement becomes a commercial monopoly wrapped in official language.

International Landscape: Policy and Institutional Gravity
While the United States demonstrated how market and institutional forces could define “acceptable” homeopathy, similar dynamics now appear worldwide, shaped by differing political structures.

- France removed homeopathic medicines from national health reimbursement in 2021, effectively redefining their institutional legitimacy. Once homeopathy lost state support, entire teaching programs contracted, illustrating how governmental decisions can erase an academic field overnight. 
- Brazil, by contrast, integrated homeopathy within its National Policy on Integrative and Complementary Practices (PNPIC) under the SUS public health system. Dedicated government workgroups and pharmacy structures continue to institutionalize homeopathy at a national level. 
- Mexico shows the longest continuous tradition of official recognition, dating to a presidential decree in 1895. The Escuela Nacional de Medicina y Homeopatía (ENMH) under the Instituto Politécnico Nacional remains a state-supported medical school, maintaining homeopathy as part of the country’s medical education framework. 
- Germany illustrates the professionalization of repertory software itself. A 2023 survey revealed that nearly 60% of German-speaking practitioners utilize digital repertory tools, most of whom were trained during their formal education, indicating a deep institutional embedding of software into practice. However, publications still rarely cite specific repertories. 
- India continues to lead in scale and regulation. The Ministry of Ayush and the National Commission for Homoeopathy issue detailed curricula specifying repertories by name—such as Kent, Boenninghausen/Boger, and others—while simultaneously consolidating national teaching hospitals and research centers. India’s strength is also its risk: centralization lends legitimacy to homeopathy, but it also increases vulnerability to the same bureaucratic inertia and vendor dependency seen elsewhere.
- Switzerland presents a unique model of democratic and insurance-driven institutionalization. Following a 2009 national referendum in which 67% of voters supported the inclusion of complementary therapies, the Swiss Interior Ministry confirmed homeopathy as a reimbursable medical service. Since 2016, it has held the same insurance status as conventional medicine under specific conditions. Regulation is further enforced by Swissmedic, which issues strict guidance for homeopathic products, and by professional certification systems for postgraduate diplomas in complementary medicine. While there is no clear evidence of repertory or software dominance in Swiss institutions, the integration of homeopathy into a national insurance and certification framework shows how government-backed systems can both legitimize and standardize a field, defining who can practice, teach, or publish within it.

Together, these examples show that the question of “who can, who cannot” transcends borders. In some states, homeopathy is marginalized by political decree; in others, it is nationalized and absorbed into bureaucratic frameworks that reward conformity over creativity. The repertory—the core of the discipline—remains at risk of invisibility in both extremes.

Who Can, Who Cannot
Across two centuries, the rule remains unchanged: 
- Those who control access—the presses of yesterday, the servers of today—can. 
- Those who create and maintain the repertories, the intellectual backbone of homeopathy, often cannot. 

Transparency, credit, and scientific reproducibility yield to systems of patronage that define progress by ownership. 
If homeopathy is to regain its intellectual independence, it must return to open citation and honest acknowledgment of its sources. 
Otherwise, from the 19th-century printroom to the 21st-century database, the same question will echo: Who can, and who cannot.

Roger van Zandvoort