Thomas Watson 1st Baronet

Thomas Watson 1st Baronet was greatly influenced by homeopathy and he read Samuel Hahnemann’s description of the use of Strychnine in homeopathic doses (Henry Turner, The Homeopathic Medical Directory of Great Britain and Ireland, (1872). Page 355).

Thomas Watson 1st Baronet also picked up the connection between Ipecacuana and asthma, first noticed by homeopaths (Anon, Transactions of the … Session of the American Institute of Homeopathy, (American Institute of Homoeopathy, 1854). Page 20).

Thomas Watson 1st Baronet also understod the principles of homeopathy ‘… Herein we are guilty of homeopathy; to prevent bleeding, we draw blood…’ (Thomas Watson, David Francis Condie, Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Physic: Delivered at King’s College, London, (Blanchard and Lea, 1854). Page 167).

On the 2nd July 1869, at a meeting of the Ladies Sanitary Association, Miss Griffiths (wife of John Gibbs (1811-1875)), Thomas Watson 1st Baronet (1792-1882), the Comtesse Helena de Noailles (?1826-1908), Lady Georgiana Tollemache Mount Temple (?-1901), and James John Garth Wilkinson, attended a lecture by Alfred Joseph Haviland (1824-1903) entitled Sea Air and Heart Disease (Anon, The British Medical Journal: Volume 2, No. 446: Sea Air and Heart Disease: A J Haviland, (Assoc, 17.7.1869). Page 70).

In Anon, The North American Journal of Homeopathy, Volume 17, Admission and confessions of a Great Allopathic leader: an address delivered at the opening meeting of the Clinical Society of London. The present state of therapeutics, (American Medical Union, 1869). Pages 233-236 (abridged version = fuller version reported in Various authors, Pamphlets – homoeopathic, Volume 7, (1848 onwards). Page i onwards. ), Thomas Watson despaired at the:

‘… The greatest gap in the science of medicine is to be found in its final and supreme stage – the stage of therapeutics… we want to learn distinctly what is the action of drugs… it is only bu controlling or directing the natural forces of the body that we can reasonably hope to govern or guide its diseased actions. To me it has been a life long wonder how vaguely, how ignorantly, how rashly drugs are often prescribed. we try this, and not succeeding, we try that, and, battled again, we try something else, and it is fortunate if we do no harm in these our tryings. Now this random and haphazard practice, whenever and by whomsoever, is both dangerous in itself and discreditable to medicine as a science. Our profession is continually fluctuating on a sea of doubt about questions of the gravest importance… Full and faithful descriptions [of medicinal substances] …  brought before … [the Clinical Society] … by competent and accurate observers, of the symptoms, circumstances, and progress of disease in the living body, and of its behaviour under treatment by medicines prescribed… must lead at length… to rules… by which our practice should be guided…’

Thomas Watson attached great importance to: ’… the observation of symptoms, circumstances, and progress of disease in the living body; to the singleness and simplicity and the necessity of having a definite aim and object in prescribing he enjoins; the importance he attaches- to employing medicinal forces in the treatment of disease; and the value he places upon trials with medicinal substances inn the healthy body. Dr Ryan [John Ryan] shows that in each particular Sir Thomas advocates methods of study and practice which have always been followed by homeopathic practitioners (Anon, The Homeopathic Medical Directory of Great Britain and Ireland, (1869). Page 165))…’

On his retirement from the Presidency of the Clinical Society in 1869, Thomas Watson 1st Baronet reiterated his advice to study remedies, advice which would be studiously ignored by his allopathic colleagues (Anon, The British Homeopathic Review, Volume 43, (1899). Pages 68-69)!

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Thomas_Watson,_1st_Baronet ‘… He was born in 1792, the son of Joseph Watson, in Kentisbeare, near Honiton, East Devon, and educated at Bury St Edmunds Grammar School. He entered St John’s College, Cambridge, graduating in 1815. He was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1826 and delivered the Gulstonian Lecture in 1827 and the Lumleian lecture in 1831. He studied medicine at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and Edinburgh and graduated M.D. from Cambridge University in 1825. He was appointed physician to the Middlesex hospital in 1827 and was professor of clinical medicine at the University of London for a year before transferring to King’s College as professor of Forensic Medicine and later professor of Principles and Practice of Medicine. In 1833, Dominic Corrigan, a British physician, first described the visible abrupt distention and collapse of carotid arteries in patients with aortic insufficiency. Watson went on to investigate the palpable pulse in these patients and, following his elaboration, the clinical sign is also referred to as Watson’s pulse. He resigned his chair at King’s College in 1840 and his post in the Middlesex hospital in 1843 and in 1859 was appointed physician extraordinary to the queen. He was created a baronet in 1866 and in 1870 was appointed physician in ordinary to the queen. In 1857 he was elected to serve for two years as President of the Pathological Society and in 1859 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1868 he was elected President of the Clinical Society of London.…’

Paulina Jermyn Trevelyan (1816-1866)

In 1850, Paulina Jermyn Trevelyan was a patient of Elizabeth (Eliza) Hetty Hall Wagstaff, and she took homeopathic remedies (John Batchelor, Lady Trevelyan and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, (Random House, 31 Dec 2011). Page 227).

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline,_Lady_Trevelyan ’… Paulina (known as Pauline) Jermyn was the eldest child of George Bitton Jermyn (b. 1789) of Hawkedon Parsonage, who, to ensure the Jermyn surname survived, added it as her second Christian name. Her mother was of Hugenot descendancy.

The marriage between artist Pauline Jermyn, the penniless daughter of a clergyman and the rich, teetotal, vegetarian Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan was an unlikely, but not surprisingly successful arrangement—their common interest in geology and art ensured their compatibility and the childless marriage allowed them to channel their creativity to other ends. 

William Bell Scott said of her, 

“a true woman, but without vanity, and very likely without the passion of love.”

Shortly before proposing to Pauline, Walter had made his future wife a gift of a box of fossils. Walter had been described as “an intellectual of a dry professional order”. He was the owner of Wallington estate from 1846 until his death . Besides being a distinguished geologist, he had a great interest in botany and was an authority on farming methods, winning awards for his cattle. His strict views on alcohol led to the dumping of his father’s wine collection into a nearby lake.

Pauline had met him in 1833 at a Cambridge conference of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. She had been schooled in Greek, French, Latin, German, and Italian, and her interests were science, literature and the fine arts. She wrote pieces for the Edinburgh Review and The Scotsman. On her first visit to her husband’s family at Wallington, she was inspired by Richard Grainger and John Dobson’s redevelopment of nearby Newcastle.

Walter may have been a respected scientist, but he was eclipsed by Pauline who had become the focal point for an enormous array of poets, painters and writers. It was during this period that the Central Hall evolved. In earlier days the house was surrounded by an unattractive courtyard, until Ruskin suggested that it be roofed, so that in 1855 this was done under his and John Dobson’s supervision. Ruskin is said to have designed the first floor balustrade. William Bell Scott, then an art teacher in Newcastle, with help from Pauline, Ruskin and Arthur Hughes, painted panels in the Hall showing figures and scenes from the history of Northumberland in Pre-Raphaelite style.

Pauline was buried at Neuchatel. Every year, many visitors come to appreciate her contribution to humanity…’

George Frederick D’Arcy Lambton 2nd Earl of Durham

George Frederick D’Arcy Lambton 2nd Earl of Durham was a patient (Thomas Moore, Wilfred S Dowden (Ed.), The Journal of Thomas Moore: 1831-1835, (Associated University Presse, 1 Oct 1987). Page 1663) and advocate of homeopathy,

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lambton,_2nd_Earl_of_Durham ‘… Durham was the eldest surviving son of John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham, and his second wife Lady Louisa Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey. 

Lord Durham served as Lord-Lieutenant of County Durham from 1854 to 1879.

On 19 July 1877, the Earl of Durham signed a document giving an acre of his land to be used for the construction of a church in the newly formed parish of Fatfield.Fatfield, St George’s church, Washington was completed in 1879 and was built in the Early English Gothic style. 

Lord Durham married Lady Beatrix Frances Hamilton, daughter of James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Abercorn, on 23 May 1854. They had thirteen children:

• John George Lambton, 3rd Earl of Durham (19 June 1855 – 18 September 1928)
• Frederick William Lambton, 4th Earl of Durham (19 June 1855 – 31 January 1929)
• Adm. Hon. Sir Hedworth Lambton (later Meux), (5 July 1856 – 20 September 1929) Admiral of the Fleet, married 18 April 1910 Hon. Mildred Cecilia Harriet, Dowager Viscountess Chelsea, daughter of Henry Sturt, 1st Baron Alington. They had no issue.
• Hon. Charles Lambton (3 November 1857 – 5 December 1949), married Lavinia Marion Garforth and had issue.
• Lady Beatrix Louisa Lambton (1859 – 12 March 1944), married Sidney Herbert, 14th Earl of Pembroke and had issue.
• Hon. George Lambton (23 December 1860 – 23 July 1945), married Cicely Margaret Horner and had issue.
• Lady Katherine Frances Lambton (5 September 1862 – 6 December 1952), married George Osborne, 10th Duke of Leeds and had issue.
• Maj.-Gen. Hon. Sir William Lambton (4 December 1863 – 11 October 1936), married (as her 2nd husband) 22 April 1921 Lady Katherine de Vere Somerset, née Beauclerk, daughter of William Beauclerk, 10th Duke of St Albans. They had no issue.
• Hon. Claud Lambton (4 January 1865 – 15 February 1945), married Lettice Wormald and had issue.
• Captain The Hon. D’Arcy Lambton Royal Navy (3 June 1866 – 30 December 1954), married Florence Ethel Sproule and had issue.
• Lady Eleanor Lambton (1868 – 24 April 1959), married Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood.
• Lady Anne Lambton (1869 – 24 February 1922)
• Hon. Francis Lambton (18 January 1871 – 31 October 1914)

The Countess of Durham died in January 1871, aged 35, and just three days after the birth of her youngest child. Lord Durham died in November 1879, aged 51, and was succeeded in the earldom by his eldest twin son John…’

William Francis Cowper Temple 1st Baron Mount Temple

Just before his death on 16^th October 1888, William Francis Cowper Temple, 1st Baron Mount Temple wrote to James John Garth Wilkinson from Broadlands in Romsey: ‘… We shall be too happy to see you whenever you can come and your daughter also… We shall think it a particular compliment of you will appear dressing gowned… as we make now only a nightcap and slippers [present?] but we are all now younger that ever inside are we not?… (Swedenborg Archive K125 [36] letter from Baron Mount Temple to James John Garth Wilkinson 16.10.1888. Unfortunately,  James John Garth Wilkinson never got to see his old friends, simply marking on the invitation ‘… died 16^th October 1888…’)

Lady Georgiana Tollemache Mount Temple (?-1901) was an English noblewoman, who was a friend of John Ruskin (through their joint interest in spiritualism) (John Ruskin, William Francis Cowper Temple Mount Temple (1st Baron), William Francis Cowper Temple Baron Mount Temple, Baroness Georgina Cowper Temple Mount Temple, The Letters of John Ruskin to Lord and Lady Mount Temple, (Ohio State University Press, 1964). Page 9).

Lady Georgiana Tollemache Mount Temple and Comtesse Helena de Noailles (?1826-1908), were founders of the Ladies Sanitary Association, and both wormen were responsible for converting James John Garth Wilkinson to the Anti Compulsory Vaccination League in 1865 (http://www.whale.to/vaccines/smallpox19.html James John Garth Wilkinson, Letter to The Vaccination Inquirer Volume 5, from 76, Wimpole Street, London, 4th September 1883. See also William White, The Story of a great delusion in a series of matter-of-fact chapters, (E.W. Allen, 1885). Page 546-549. See also Stanley Williamson, The Vaccination Controversy: The Rise, Reign, and Fall of Compulsory Vaccination for Smallpox, (Liverpool University Press, 2007). Page 185 (but also note that Stanley Williamson has conflated Comtesse Helena de Noailles and Lady Georgiana Tollemache Mount Temple into one personage)).

James Keir Hardie senior

Anon, The Parliamentary Debates (official Report).: House of Commons,Contains the 4th session of the 28th Parliament through the 1st session of the 48th Parliament, (H.M. Stationery Office, 6 Feb 1912). Pages 495-496. ‘… KEIR HARDIE asked the Secretary to the Treasury whether any arrangements have been made whereby doctors on the panel who are homeopaths… the drugs prescribed as part of medical benefit by a homeopathic doctor on the panel…’

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keir_Hardie James Keir Hardie senior (1856-1915) ’… was born 15 August 1856 in a one-roomed cottage on the western edge of Newhouse, North Lanarkshire, near Holytown, a small town close to Motherwell in Scotland. His mother, Mary Keir, was a domestic servantand his father, David Hardie, was a ship’s carpenter. The growing family soon moved to the shipbuilding burgh of Govan near Glasgow, where they made a life in a very difficult financial situation, with his father attempting to maintain continuous employment in the shipyards rather than practicing his trade at sea — never an easy proposition given the boom-and-bust cycle of the industry. 

Hardie’s first job came at the early age of 7, when he was put to work as a message boy for the Anchor Line Steamship Company. Formal schooling henceforth became impossible, but his parents spent evenings teaching him to read and write, skills which proved essential for future self-education. A series of low-paying entry-level jobs followed for the boy, including work as an apprentice in a brass-fitting shop, work for a lithographer, employment in the shipyards heating rivets, and time spent as a message boy for a baker for which he earned 4½ shillings a week.

A great lockout of the Clydeside shipworkers took place in which the unionised workers were sent home for a period of six months. With its main source of support terminated, the family was forced to sell all its possessions for food, with James’ meagre earnings the only remaining cash income. One sibling took ill and died in the miserable conditions which followed, while the pregnancy of his mother limited her ability to work. Making matters worse, young James lost his job for twice going tardy. In sheer desperation, his father returned to work at sea, while his mother moved from Glasgow to Newarthill, where her mother still lived. 

At 10 years old Hardie immediately went to work in the mines as a “trapper” — opening and closing a door for a 10-hour shift in order to maintain the air supply for miners in a given section. Hardie also began to attend night school in Holytown at this time. 

Hardie’s father returned from sea and went to work on a railway line being constructed between Edinburgh and Glasgow. When this work was completed, the family moved to the village of Quarter, where the boy went to work as a pony driver at the mines, later working his way into the pits as a hewer. He also worked for two years above ground in the quarries. By the time he was 20, the boy had become a skilled practical miner. 

“Keir,” as he was by now called, longed for a life outside the mines. To that end, encouraged by his mother, he had learned to read and write in shorthand. He also began to associate with the Evangelical Union becoming a member of the Evangelical Union Church, Park Street, Hamilton – now the United Reformed Church, Hamilton (which also incorporates St. James’ Congregational Church, attended by the young David Livingstone, the future famous missionary explorer), and to participate in the Temperance movement. Hardie’s avocation of preaching put him before crowds of his fellows, helping him to learn the art of public speaking. Before long, Hardie was looked to by other miners as a logical chairman for their meetings and spokesman for their grievances. Mine owners began to see him as an agitator and in fairly short order he and two younger brothers were blacklisted from working in the local mining industry. 

If Scottish mine owners had hoped to remove a potential labour agitator from their midst by blacklisting Hardie from work in the mines, their action proved to be a major miscalculation. The 23-year old Keir Hardie moved seamlessly from the coal mines to union organisation work. In May 1879, Scottish mine leaders combined to force a reduction of wages. This, rather unsurprisingly, had the effect of spurring the demand for unionisation. Huge meetings were held weekly at Hamilton as mine workers joined together to vent their grievances.

On 3 July 1879, Keir Hardie was appointed Corresponding Secretary of the miners, a post which gave him opportunity to get in touch with other representatives of the mine workers throughout southern Scotland. Three weeks later, Hardie was chosen by the miners as their delegate to a National Conference of Miners to be held in Glasgow. He was appointed Miners’ Agent in August 1879 and his new career as a trade union organiser and functionary was launched. 

On 16 October 1879, Hardie attended a National Conference of miners at Dunfermline, at which he was selected as National Secretary, a high-sounding title which actually preceded the establishment of a coherent national organisation by several years. Hardie was active in the strike wave which swept the region in 1880, including a generalised strike of the mines of Lanarkshire that summer which lasted six weeks. The fledgling union had no money, but worked to gather foodstuffs for striking mine families, as Hardie and other union agents got local merchants to supply goods upon promise of future payment. A soup kitchen was kept running in Hardie’s home during the course of the strike, manned by his new wife, the former Lillie Wilson. 

While the Lanarkshire mine strike was a failure, Hardie’s energy and activity shone and he accepted a call from Ayrshire to relocate there to organise the local miners. The young couple moved to the town of Cumnock, where Keir set to work organising a union of local miners, a process which occupied nearly a year. In August 1881, Ayrshire miners put forward the demand for a 10 percent increase in wages, a proposition summarily refused by the region’s mine owners. Despite the lack of funds for strike pay, a stoppage was called and a 10-week shutdown of the region’s mines ensued. This strike also was formally a failure, with miners returning to work before their demands had been met, but not long after the return wages were escalated across the board by the mine owners, fearful of future labor actions. 

To make ends meet, Hardie turned to journalism, starting to write for the local newspaper, the Cumnock News, a paper loyal to the pro-labour Liberal Party. As part of the natural order of things, Hardie joined the Liberal Association, in which he was active. He also continued his temperance work as an active member of the local Good Templar’s Lodge. 

In August 1886 Hardie’s ongoing efforts to build a powerful union of Scottish miners were rewarded when there was formed the Ayrshire Miners Union. Hardie was named Organising Secretary of the new union, drawing a salary of £75 per year. In 1887, Hardie launched a new publication called The Miner. 

Despite his early support of the Liberal Party, Hardie became disillusioned by William Ewart Gladstone’s [William Ewert Gladstone] economic policies and began to feel that the Liberals neither would nor could ever adequately represent the working classes. Hardie concluded that the Liberal Party merely wanted the votes of the workers but that it would never in return offer the radical reform he believed to be crucial — and decided to run for Parliament. 

In April 1888, Hardie stood as an independent labour candidate in Mid Lanark. He finished last but he was not deterred and believed he would enjoy more success in the future. At a public meeting in Glasgow on 25 August 1888 the Scottish Labour Party (not the same party as the modern Scottish Labour Party) was formed, with Hardie becoming the party’s first secretary. The party’s president was Robert Cunninghame-Graham, the first socialist MP, and later founder of the National Party of Scotland, forerunner to the Scottish National Party. 

Hardie was invited to stand in West Ham South in 1892, a working class seat in Essex (now Greater London). The Liberals decided not to field a candidate, but at the same time not to offer Hardie any assistance. Competing against the Conservative Party candidate, Hardie won by 5,268 votes to 4,036. On taking his seat on 3 August 1892 Hardie refused to wear the ‘parliamentary uniform’ of black frock coat, black silk top hat and starched wing collar that other working class MPs wore. Instead, Hardie wore a plain tweed suit, a red tie and a deerstalker. Although the deerstalker hat was the correct and matching apparel for his suit, he was nevertheless lambasted in the press, and was accused of wearing a flat cap, headgear associated with the common working man – “cloth cap in Parliament”. In Parliament he advocated a graduated income tax, free schooling, pensions, the abolition of the House of Lords and the women’s right to vote. 

In 1893, Hardie and others formed the Independent Labour Party, an action that worried the Liberals, who were afraid that the ILP might, at some point in the future, win the working-class votes that they traditionally received.

Hardie hit the headlines in 1894 when, after an explosion at a colliery in Pontypridd which killed 251 miners, he asked that a message of condolence to the relatives of the victims be added to an address of congratulations on the birth of a royal heir (the future Edward VIII). The request was refused and Hardie made a speech attacking the monarchy, which resulted in uproar in the House of Commons and helped contribute to the loss of his seat in 1895…

Hardie spent the next five years of his life building up the Labour movement and speaking at various public meetings; he was arrested at a woman’s suffrage meeting in London, but the Home Secretary, concerned about arresting the leader of the ILP, ordered his release. In 1900, Hardie, representing Labour, was elected as the junior MP for the dual-member constituency of Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare in the South Wales Valleys, which he would represent for the remainder of his life. Only one other Labour MP was elected that year, but from these small beginnings the party continued to grow, winning power in 1924.

In 1900, Hardie organised a meeting of various trade unions and socialist groups and they agreed to form a Labour Representation Committee and so the Labour Party was born. In 1900, Hardie, representing Labour, was elected as the junior MP for the dual-member constituency of Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare in the South Wales Valleys, which he would represent for the remainder of his life. Only one other Labour MP was elected that year, but from these small beginnings the party continued to grow, winning power in 1924. 

Meanwhile the Conservative Unionist government became deeply unpopular and Liberal leader Henry Campbell-Bannerman was worried about possible vote-splitting across the Labour and Liberal parties in the next election. A deal was struck in 1903, which became known as the Lib-Lab pact. It was engineered by Ramsay MacDonald and Herbert Gladstone (son of William Ewart Gladstone): the Liberals would not stand against Labour in 30 constituencies in the next election, in order to avoid splitting the anti-Conservative vote. 

In 1906, the LRC changed its name to the “Labour Party”. That year, the newly established Liberal government of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman

[Henry Campbell Bannerman]

called a General Election — resulting in the demolition of the Conservative party (now in Opposition) and the landslide affirmation of the Liberals.

The election result was one of the biggest landslide victories in British history: the Liberals swept the Conservatives (and their Liberal Unionist allies) out of previously safe seats. Conservative leader and former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour

[Arthur James Balfour]

himself lost his seat, Manchester East, on a swing of over 20 percent. However, what would later turn out to be even more significant was the election of 29 Labour MPs.

In 1908, Hardie resigned as leader of the Labour Party and was replaced by Arthur Henderson. Hardie spent the rest of his life campaigning for votes for women and developing a closer relationship with Sylvia Pankhurst. He also campaigned for self-rule for India and an end to segregation in South Africa. During a visit to the United States in 1909, his criticism of sectarianism among American radicals caused intensified debate regarding the American Socialist Party possibly joining with the unions in a labor party.

A pacifist, Hardie was appalled by the First World War and along with socialists in other countries he tried to organise an international general strike to stop the war. His stance was not popular, even within the Labour Party, but he continued to address anti-war demonstrations across the country and to support conscientious objectors. After a series of strokes Hardie died in hospital in Glasgow on 26 September 1915, aged 59. His friend and fellow pacifist Thomas Evan Nicholas (Niclas y Glais) delivered the funeral service. He is buried in Cumnock New Cemetery, Cumnock, Ayrshire, Scotland…’

Henri Boiron (1906-1994)

Jean Boiron (1906-1996)

From http://boiron.ca/en/about-boiron/who-are-we/ ‘… Boiron was founded by twin brothers Jean and Henri Boiron, both pharmacists with keen scientific minds and an indomitable entrepreneurial spirit. Here are a few milestones that have shaped Boiron’s history over the years: In June 1932, René Baudry [Rene Baudry], a highly respected pharmacist specializing in the manufacture of homeopathic medicines and founder of the Laboratoire Central Homéopathique de France in Paris, hired Jean and Henri upon their graduation from university. One year later, René and Henri started working on developing the Paris laboratory, renaming it Les Laboratoires Homéopathiques Modernes (LHM), while Jean took over development operations at the company in Lyon, known as the Pharmacie Homéopathique Rhodanienne (PHR). The three laboratories merged in 1967 to form the group of Boiron Laboratories. The 1970s saw the creation of several regional establishments throughout France. 

In 1979, Boiron’s first foreign facility was set up in Italy, placing Boiron firmly on the international stage. Although Boiron has grown in leaps and bounds, we have never strayed from our founding principles and our dedication to developing and constantly fine-tuning a wide range of homeopathic medicines. Today, there are 4,000 people on the Boiron team. We have 23 foreign subsidiaries, operate 5 production facilities and distribute our products in more than 100 countries… The adventure continues… Boiron Canada was established in 1988 in order to better cater to the needs of Canadian health care professionals and patients who choose homeopathic care...’

Christopher Williams (1835-1881)

‘… We regret to have to announce the sudden death at a comparatively early age of another colleague,Mr Williams, of Belfast. Mr Williams was born in 1835. His medical studies were pursued at Guy’s hospital and in 1860, he was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and he received the licence of the Apothecaries Company. 

About 1868 or 1869 he commenced the study of homeopathy and in the latter year succeeded Dr Edward Blake in his practice in Wolverhampton. Here he remained until 1876 when he removed to Belfast. Homeopathy had few friends there at this time but Mr Williams had succeeded in overcoming many difficulties and laying the foundation of a practice which gave promise of being of considerable extent.

For some three years he has had occasional attacks of cystitis, which have caused him both suffering and anxiety. Five days before his death he had to go late at night some miles into the country to attend a midwifery case. Walking home appeared to bring on an attack when complete retention occurred, followed by uraemic poisoning. 

The British/Monthly Homeopathic Review, December 1881, p786 [Obituary]. Is he the C J B Williams MD, FRS, of Upper Brook Street whose eldest daughter, Sophia Janet, married the Rev Samuel Christopher Morgan as announced in The Lancet, August 1862? This Rev. Morgan was the elder brother of Francis Augustine Morgan, both sons to Rev Samuel Francis Morgan. The Registers of Wadham College Oxford, vol 2, p35 (4th entry from top of page). 

The Belfast/Ulster Street Directory for 1877 has this entry: ‘Christopher Williams, Surgeon (homeopathic), 92 Gt Victoria St’. And immediately following it: ‘Dispensary, Church St (homeopathic)’. This is the same dispensary where James B McGregor (between c1845 and until at least 1861) and George Stevenson Knowles, MD previously worked…’

Henry “Harry” Hamilton Johnston

Henry Hamilton Johnston was an advocate of homeopathy ‘… the homeopathic doctor who usually attended us was on a holiday; his inept young assistant would not recognize the fever as typhoid, and gave a diametrically wrong treatment…’ (Harry Hamilton Johnston, The Story of My Life, (Bobbs-Merrill, 1923). Page 42).

Harry Johnston also wrote novels, and in The Gay Dombeys he penned ‘… I have had palpitations lately that have perturbed me not a little. Harry writes recommending a cordial, but [naturally replied that being a firm believer in homeopathy I should be content to take pillules of Digitalis…’ (Harry Hamilton Johnston, The Gay Dombeys, (1919, reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, 30 June 2005). Page 99).

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Johnston ‘… Born at Kennington Park, south London, he attended Stockwell grammar school and then King’s College London, followed by four years studying painting at the Royal Academy. In connection with his study he traveled to Europe and North Africa, visiting the little-known (by Europeans) interior of Tunisia. 

In 1882 he visited southern Angola with the Earl of Mayo, and in the following year met Henry Morton Stanley in the Congo, becoming one of the first Europeans after Stanley to see the river above the Stanley Pool. His developing reputation led the Royal Geographical Society and the British Association to appoint him leader of an 1884 scientific expedition to Mount Kilimanjaro. On this expedition he concluded treaties with local chiefs (which were then transferred to the British East Africa Company), in competition with German efforts to do likewise. 

In October 1886 the British government appointed him vice-consul in Cameroon and the Niger River delta area, where a protectorate had been declared in 1885, and he became acting consul in 1887, deposing and banishing the local chief Jaja. On leave in England in 1888, he met with Lord Salisbury and apparently helped formulate the Cape to Cairo plan to acquire a continuous band of territory down Africa, which he then leaked (with Salisbury’s approval) to the Times in an anonymous article “by an African Explorer”.

In 1889 Johnston was sent to Lisbon to negotiate the Portuguese and British spheres of influence in southeastern Africa, then went to Mozambique as consul. From there he went to Lake Nyasa to resolve the war between Arab slave-traders and theAfrican Lakes Trading Company. Alarm over the presence of the Portuguese Serpa Pinto triggered the Anglo-Portuguese Crisis, which ended with Johnston having Nyasaland (today’s Malawi) declared the British Central Africa Protectorate, and he was made its first commissioner in 1891.

In 1890 acting for Cecil Rhodes and the British South Africa Company (BSAC), Johnston sent Alfred Sharpe (who would become his successor in Nyasaland) to obtain a treaty with Msiri, King of Garanganze in Katanga. This territory was in the sphere of influence of Belgian King Leopold II’s Congo Free State, and though the Berlin Conference’s Principle of Effectivityallowed such a move, it had the potential to precipitate an Anglo-Belgian crisis. Sharpe failed with Msiri, though he obtained treaties with Mwata Kazembe covering the eastern side of the Luapula River and Lake Mweru, and with other chiefs covering the southern end of Lake Tanganyika. In 1891 Leopold sent the Stairs Expedition to Katanga. Johnston dissuaded it from accessing Katanga through Nyasaland, but it went through German East Africa instead, and took Katanga after killing Msiri.

Johnston realised the strategic importance of Lake Tanganyika to the British, especially since the territory between the lake and the coast had become German East Africa forming a break of nearly 900 km in the chain of British colonies in the Cape to Cairo dream. However the north end of Lake Tanganyika was only 230 km from British-controlled Uganda, and so a British presence at the south end of the lake was a priority.

With Belgian, German and Portuguese frontiers to contend with, Johnston ensured that British bomas were established (in addition to those in Nyasaland) east of Luapula-Mweru at Chiengi and the Kalungwishi River, at the south end of Lake Tanganyika at Abercorn, and at Fort Jameson between Mozambique and the Luangwa valley. At these bomas he helped set up and oversee the British South Africa Company’s administration in the territory which became North-Eastern Rhodesia (the north-eastern half of today’s Zambia). Although he missed out in Katanga, altogether he helped to consolidate an area of nearly half a million square kilometres – say nearly 200,000 square miles (520,000 km²), or twice the area of the United Kingdom in 2009 – lying between the lower Luangwa River valley and lakes Nyasa,Tanganyika, and Mweru into the British Empire.

In 1896 in recognition of this achievement he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB), but afflicted by tropical fevers, transferred to Tunis asconsul-general. In the same year, he had married the Hon. Winifred Mary Irby, daughter of Florance George Henry Irby, fifth Baron Boston.

In 1899 Sir Harry was sent to Uganda as special commissioner to end an ongoing war. He improved the colonial administration, and in 1900 concluded the Buganda Agreement dividing the land between the UK and the chiefs.

In 1902 his wife gave birth prematurely to twin boys, but neither survived more than a few hours, and they had no more children. His sister, Mabel Johnston, married Arnold Dolmetsch, an instrument maker and member of the Bloomsbury set, in 1903.

In 1903 and in 1906 he stood for parliament for the Liberal Party, but was unsuccessful on both occasions. In 1906, the Johnstons moved to the hamlet of Poling, near Arundel in West Sussex, where Harry Johnston largely concentrated on his literary endeavours. He took to writing novels, which were frequently short-lived, while his accounts of his own voyages through central Africa were rather more enduring. Some have put forward the unlikely theory that he was the principal model for ‘The Man who loved Dickens’ in the novel A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh.

Harry Johnston suffered two strokes in 1925, from which he became partially paralysed and never recovered, dying two years later in 1927 at Woodsetts House near Worksop in Nottinghamshire. He was buried in the churchyard of St Nicholas, Poling, where there is a commemorative wall plaque within the nave of the church designed and cut by the Arts and Crafts sculptor and typeface designer, Eric Gill - who lived in nearby Ditchling. The main typeface used on the plaque appears to be Gill’s contemporaneously-designed Perpetua - designed in 1925, but not released until 1929 – while the lower-case typeface used for the Latin quote below is not presently recognised.

Harry Johnston was the very model of the multi-talented African explorer; he exhibited paintings, collected flora and fauna (he was instrumental in bringing the okapi to the attention of science), climbed mountains, wrote books, signed treaties, and ruled colonial governments. Like his fellow imperialists he believed in British and European superiority over Africans, though he tended towards paternalistic governance rather than the use of brute force. These attitudes, which seem patronising today, were outlined in his book The Backward Peoples and Our Relations with Them (1920), but included his view that colonial rulers should try to understand the culture of the subjugated peoples. Consequently he was considered (by white settlers) as being unusually favourable towards the native peoples (for instance his administration was one of the first in British African colonies to train and employ Africans in the colonial service as clerks and skilled staff), and he had eventually fallen out with Cecil Rhodes as a result.

The falls at Mambidima on the Luapula River were named Johnston Falls by the British in his honour…’

Victor Cecil Froggatt Clark 1908-2006 DSC was a British Navy hero in World War II, Lieutenant-Commander in Singapore in 1941. Victor Clark selflessly rescued many people before the Japanese advance, during a series of daredevil commando raids before being captured and suffering in a Japanese prisoner of war camp until 1945. After the war, he continued with his navy career as a captain and training officer, circumnavigating the Globe between 1953-1939, before finally retiring in 1974.

Victor Cecil Froggatt Clark was a fan of homeopathy, which was helpful to him when he returned home from the Japanese concentration camp, and he brought his remedies from Nelson’s Homeopathic Pharmacy.

With thanks to The Telegraph 13.1.2006:

From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1507671/Lt-Cdr-Victor-Clark.html ’… Lieutenant-Commander Victor Clark, who has died aged 97, played a dashing role in the defence of Singapore as the Japanese closed in on the British garrison in 1941.

After surviving the sinking of the battlecruiser Repulse on December 10, Clark became naval air liaison officer at the combined headquarters in Singapore. Gloomily studying maps showing the enemy’s advance, he and Major Angus Rose of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders proposed commando raids behind enemy lines.

Within a week, Clark was commanding the Straits Steamship Company’s Kudat as well as a flotilla of gunboats, with 40 Royal Marines and 50 Australian volunteers. In their joint Boxing Day raid at Temerloh, on the west coast, Rose ambushed and destroyed a Japanese column, including a staff car containing a general.

Six days later Kudat was sunk, and with his remaining motor launches under mortar fire, Clark moved south to Batu Pahat.

There he volunteered to take the river gunboats Dragonfly and Scorpion to rescue 2,000 Australian, British and Indian troops who were cut off at a swampy inlet overlooked by the encircling Japanese.

For four nights Clark swam and waded to lead his men in hauling native craft through the mud to bring the exhausted soldiers out to waiting ships.

Lt-Gen Arthur Percival, GOC Singapore, described Clark’s feat as “a most difficult operation reflecting the greatest credit on the Royal Navy”, but one of Dragonfly’s seamen was overheard to say, “Too bloody brave for my liking!”

Two days before the surrender of Singapore, Clark was sent to Java in a motor launch with 60 troops to continue guerrilla operations; but at daylight on February 15 he found the Durian Strait, off Sumatra, guarded by a large Japanese destroyer.

Closing the range to 400 yards, he aimed his four-pounder gun and every rifle and Lewis gun at the enemy’s bridge, hoping to kill the captain. But several accurate rounds from the ship soon reduced his launch to a shambles, with fires in the fo’c'sle and engine room.

The gun was knocked off its mounting, and the rudder jammed hard astarboard; the scuppers ran with blood, and she finally sank.

Despite a broken wrist, Clark lashed other survivors to planks, and told those who had not been wounded to swim towards the mangrove. Soon he was alone and, taking an empty ammunition box as support for his useless arm, he started to swim towards a distant lighthouse.

After spending a night in a fishing hut, he went ashore at Sumatra some 36 hours later. He then stole a canoe to go upriver with a small party of other escapees who had rallied to him.

After six weeks in the deep jungle they were betrayed by natives to the Japanese for 40 silver guilders each. By Clark’s own account this did not make “a very heroic story, but I did at least make as big a nuisance of myself as I could for the next three and a half years!”

Clark was awarded a Bar to his earlier DSC, though he found out only when a rare Red Cross parcel arrived from his mother, with his latest decoration underlined on the address label.

Victor Cecil Froggatt Clark was born at Dover on May 24 1908, the son of the vicar of Bromley-by-Bow. He was educated at Haileybury and crewed in Lowestoft fishing smacks without engines during the holidays.

During the 1930s he served in the battleships Valiant and Warspite and the destroyer Anthony in the Mediterranean fleet. Despite being a self-proclaimed mechanical dunce, he owned a succession of motorbikes, including a Norton on which he explored the Holy Land.

In 1938 Clark stood by the Tribal-class destroyer Punjabi, building at Greenock, and was her first lieutenant during the Second Battle of Narvik on April 13 1940, when Warspite and her consorts destroyed eight German warships and a U-boat: Punjabi suffered more casualties than any other British ship, but was repaired in time for the evacuation of troops from St Nazaire. Clark was awarded his first DSC.

A brief period of command of his previous ship, Anthony, ended when she was damaged in rough weather, and Clark was sent to Repulse, which was sunk with the battleship Prince of Wales when they were sent to deter Japanese aggression at Singapore.

Clark’s action station on Repulse was “A” turret, whose 15-in guns were not used. He found himself sucked down from the bridge into the froth several times before managing to swim to a raft, where he helped Repulse’s captain, William Tennant, haul others from the water.

The end to Clark’s prison term was signalled in January 1945 when his camp was overflown during an attack on the oil depots at Palembang: Clark was cheered to see an aircraft with “Royal Navy” emblazoned on its underside. A few weeks later he was transferred to Changi prison, at which he said the food and conditions were luxurious compared to Palembang.

Clark’s postwar command of the frigate Loch Tralaig ended when he ran her aground off the Isle of Arran. Passed over for promotion to commander, he spent five years as chief training officer to the Sea Cadets, all the while reading and planning a circumnavigation, then bought the nine-ton ketch Solace through Captain OM Watts’s chandlery in Albemarle Street.

His 48,000-mile voyage between 1953 and 1959, with his West Indian crewman Stanley Mathurin, included nine months shipwrecked on the coral atoll of Palmerston in the Cook Islands in the empty Pacific.

Undaunted, and with the help of the descendants of William Marsters, a cooper who had colonised the atoll with his three Polynesian wives in the 19th century, Clark rebuilt his boat well enough to continue sailing her for the next 20 years. In return for the islanders’ help he taught navigation, reading and Sunday School.

In 1962 Clark took command of the 160-ton Outward Bound schooner Prince Louis. With Kurt Hahn, five years later he enlisted Prince Philip’s aid in finding sponsorship for a new youth-training ship, the 380-ton topgallant schooner Captain Scott, and then skippered her until 1974. He finished his long sailing career by teaching a new generation of sailors at the Emsworth Sailing School.

Clark wrote two books: an account of his voyage, On the Wings of a Dream (1960); and an outline of his life story, Triumph and Disaster (1994).

He underwent a religious experience while reading Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress in 1941, and was sustained by Christian’s quotation from Isaiah: “When thou passest through the Waters I will be with thee; and through the Rivers, they shall not overflow thee.”

Victor Clark, who died on December 14, married Danae Stileman when he was 67 and she 34: she survives him with their two daughters…’

Muriel Spark 1918 – 2006

Muriel Spark was an advocate of homeopathy, saying ‘… gin and arnica – it’s a homeopathic remedy for shock – God, and a lot of friends… (Anon, The New Yorker, Volume 69, (New Yorker Magazine, Incorporated, 1993). Page 82)’.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriel_Spark She was born Muriel Sarah Camberg in Edinburgh, the daughter of Sarah Elizabeth Maud (née Uezzell) and Bernard Camberg, an engineer. Her father was Jewish and her mother had been raised a Presbyterian, as was Spark. She was educated at James Gillespie’s High School for Girls (1923 – 1935). The family lived in the Bruntsfield area of Edinburgh. In 1934–35 she took a course in “Commercial correspondence and précis writing” at Heriot-Watt College. She taught English for a brief time and then worked as a secretary in a department store.

On 3 September 1937 she married Sidney Oswald Spark, and soon followed him to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Their son Robin was born in July 1938. Within months she discovered that her husband was manic depressive and prone to violent outbursts. In 1940 Muriel left Sidney and Robin. She returned to the United Kingdom in early 1944, taking residence at the Helena Club in London; years later the club would be her inspiration for the fictional May of Teck Club in The Girls of Slender Means. She worked in Intelligence for the remainder of World War II. She provided money at regular intervals to support her son as he toiled unsuccessfully over the years. Spark maintained it was her intention for her family to set up home in England, but Robin returned to Britain with his father later to be brought up by his maternal grandparents in Scotland.

Spark began writing seriously after the war, under her married name, beginning with poetry and literary criticism. In 1947 she became editor of the Poetry Review. In 1954 she decided to join the Roman Catholic Church, which she considered crucial in her development toward becoming a novelist. Penelope Fitzgerald, a fellow novelist and contemporary of Spark, wrote that Spark “had pointed out that it wasn’t until she became a Roman Catholic… that she was able to see human existence as a whole, as a novelist needs to do.” In an interview with John Tusa on BBC Radio 4, she said of her conversion and its effect on her writing: “I was just a little worried, tentative. Would it be right, would it not be right? Can I write a novel about that — would it be foolish, wouldn’t it be? And somehow with my religion — whether one has anything to do with the other, I don’t know — but it does seem so, that I just gained confidence…” Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh supported her in her decision.

Between 1955 and 1965 she lived in a bedsit at 13 Baldwin Crescent, Camberwell, south-east London. Her first novel, The Comforters, was published in 1957. It featured several references to Catholicism and conversion to Catholicism, although its main theme revolved around a young woman who becomes aware that she is a character in a novel.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) was more successful. Spark displayed originality of subject and tone, making extensive use of flashforwards and imagined conversations. It is clear that James Gillespie’s High School was the model for the Marcia Blaine School in the novel.

After living in New York City for some years, she moved to Rome, where she met artist and sculptor Penelope Jardine in 1968. In the early 1970s they settled inTuscany, in the village of Civitella della Chiana, of which in 2005 Spark was made an honorary citizen. She was the subject of frequent rumours of lesbian relationships from her time in New York onwards, although Spark and her friends denied their validity. She left her entire estate to Jardine, taking measures to ensure that her son receive nothing.

Spark refused permission to publish a biography of her written by Martin Stannard. Penelope Jardine now holds publication approval rights, and the book was published in July 2009. On 27 July 2009 Stannard was interviewed on Front Row, the BBC Radio 4 arts programme. According to A. S. Byatt, “She [Jardine] was very upset by the book and had to spend a lot of time going through it, line by line, to try to make it a little bit fairer”.

Spark received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the US Ingersoll Foundation T. S. Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, in recognition of her services to literature. She has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent.^[18] In 1998, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for “a Lifetime’s Distinguished Service to Literature”. In 2010, Spark was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize of 1970 for The Driver’s Seat.

Spark and her son Robin had a strained relationship. They had a falling out when Robin’s Orthodox Judaism prompted him to petition for his late grandmother to be recognized as Jewish (Spark’s maternal grandmother, Adelaide Hyams, had married Spark’s maternal grandfather, Tom Uezzell, in a church; it was unclear whether both of Adelaide’s parents were Jewish). The devout Catholic Spark reacted by accusing him of seeking publicity to further his career as an artist. During one of her last book signings in Edinburgh she responded to an enquiry from a journalist asking if she would see her son by saying ‘I think I know how best to avoid him by now’.