Description
The author, Richard Moskowitz, MD, was the former President of the National Center for Homeopathy, and has practiced homeopathic medicine for almost 50 years. He was one of the very early critics of vaccines and has been a long-time advocate of using safer therapeutics before using more risky medical treatments.
This book is both an autobiography and the story of the evolution of a medical doctor becoming a real healer.
Those of us active in women’s health already know about Dr. Moskowitz’ success in treating problems of the female reproductive cycle. In this marvelous memoir, he reflects on 50+ years of family doctoring and his whole-person approach to medicine. He faces the difficulties of homeopathy alongside its benefits, explores the mind-body dimension in healing, and advances sound reasons for questioning authority, respecting our intuition, and upholding qualitative, human values in our decision-making.
Judy Norsigian, Co-Founder, former Executive Director, and Co-Author, Our Bodies, Ourselves
What is remarkable about Dr. Moskowitz is his compassion and sensitivity to others’ needs. His book is full of stories ranging from tragic to comic, and of moral choices like prolonging life or letting people die with dignity. There are beautiful stories of his first home birth, and of the healing power of homeopathic medicines, which he used for decades. And there’s his plea for a science that can see and make use of what randomized control trials overlook. We should all be so lucky as to have a GP like him!
Bernardo Merizalde, MD, ABIHM, Professor, Thomas Jefferson University, Vice-President, International League of Homeopathic Physicians
This lovely book will strike a chord with many doctors who are troubled by our medical system. Richard’s questions and doubts made him look deeper, attending home births to empower his patients, and practicing homeopathy as a gentler method of healing them. Based on that experience, and the science to back it up, he examines vaccination and other standard practices of our profession. Writing with intelligence and integrity, he should be read far and wide, and taken to heart.
Cammy Benton, MD, ABIHM, IFMCP, Functional and Integrative Medicine
Richard’s new book begins with a memoir of his training and early years in practice that warms the soul, with stories of home birth that brought tears to my eyes. He celebrates homeopathy with lovely case histories, and fits it into the fabric of the larger medical system, exposing the dark side of vaccination, and tying it all together as an integrated whole. There’s much to learn here from his long experience. His message couldn’t be more timely, his vision clearer, or his writing more delightful.
Ronald Whitmont, MD, ABIM, ABIHM, Professor, New York Medical College, Past President, American Institute of Homeopathy
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I. Early Years
Chapter 1. Med School and Internship
Chapter 2. On My Own
Chapter 3. Opening an Office
Part II. Homeopathic Medicine
Chapter 4. Basic Principles
Chapter 5. Medicines and Cases
Part III. The Medical System
Chapter 6. Diagnosis and Treatment
Chapter 7. Healing the System
Part IV. Vaccination
Chapter 8. The Vaccination Process
Chapter 9. Safety and Efficacy
Chapter 10. The Chronic State
Part V. Summing Up
Chapter 11. Plain Doctoring
Notes
Bibliography
Introduction
Written since my retirement in 2020, this book is a retrospective on my 53 years as a family doctor. It begins with a memoir of my background, training, and early years in practice, full of questions, doubts, and scruples. Then it carefully examines three main subjects and broad areas of interest that took shape in response to them, namely,
1) the theory and practice of homeopathic medicine, my principal form of
treatment for the last 46 years;
2) the orthodox medical system I was trained in, my questions about which led
me to study philosophy before interning and going into practice; and
3) the scientific concept of vaccination, which my experience with vaccine-injured
children revealed to be a major cause of chronic disease, one almost entirely
ignored by doctors and the general public.
A brief concluding chapter outlines the common themes running through these various elements and phases of my personal story.
At first, the book will probably attract health professionals and laypeople with experience of or curiosity about midwifery, pediatrics, homeopathy, and various forms of natural medicine, many of whom already face similar dilemmas. But its main focus is the more broadly philosophical mission of thinking clearly, systematically, and accurately about health, illness, and doctoring in general, matters of practical concern to everyone; so it seeks open-minded readers of every description. With that wider audience in view, I’ve tried as much as possible to keep it within the frame of my own experience as the primary source for what I’ve learned, illustrating with my own cases, and disclaiming any pretense to irrefutable truth or final answers in the opinions, hypotheses, and speculations expressed here, for which I take full responsibility.
Book Review: Conscientious Objector: Why I Became a Homeopath by Richard Moskowitz, MD
Richard Moskowitz, MD, is a hero of mine, so this review may not be entirely unbiased! I was a dozen years behind him in discovering midwifery and then homeopathy, and so reading his books over the years has been a wonderful validation of my own path and a shared experience with someone who arrived at these insights from within and then beyond the conventional system of medicine.
His latest book: Conscientious Objector: Why I Became a Homeopath takes the reader on a journey through a life well-lived with honesty and integrity, following the whisperings of his own “vital force.” (Homeopaths assess the attunement of the “life force,” which is an expression of the patient’s health in body, mind and spirit.) He started out as a shy and “bookish” kid with “scruples.” Later these scruples would be sculpted into a high degree of ethics, which he articulates with elegant clarity in his writing.
He went through the rigors of studying philosophy and medicine, and he became a doctor. He practiced Family Medicine for 53 years: in Boulder, CO from 1967-1973; in Santa Fe, NM from 1974–1982; in Boston, MA from 1982-2020. Beginning his career in Boulder, he was invited to attend homebirths, where he would begin to see “the vital force” at work. At the first birth he attended he says he learned to sit down, be quiet and pay attention. He said this birthing woman “…taught me pretty much the whole course of that day, without saying a word.” We can see that Dick was ever refining his ability to be observant and listen respectfully to people he worked with. This was an ethos he carried and refined through all the years of practice.
He attended homebirths for 12 years (in Boulder and Santa Fe) and wrote a book on the use of homeopathy during pregnancy and childbirth, which is a wonderful resource (and how I came to know about his work).
In his work as a family doctor, he came upon the limits of conventional medicine, but was also confronted with its dangers. He realized he’d been trained as a soldier to fight “in the front lines of the endless war against disease, armed with the most advanced chemical and surgical weapons to kill, shoot down, or at least correct and remove all symptoms and abnormalities whenever, wherever, and however they showed themselves.” Jarred by this realization, he began to see himself as a guide to help people through the medical system in ways that would keep them from getting hurt too badly.
He was to discover homeopathy after he moved to Santa Fe. Finally, he would find a coherent system of theory and practice of medicine that “would work well in his hands.” Homeopathy offered a coherent, systematic body of thought, with principled assumptions that rang true to his own intellectual development, and it provided a careful methodology that followed logically from them. With wonder he realized that this system of healing came into the world fully formed from the brain of one extraordinary man, Samuel Hahnemann, M.D. (1755-1843), based on the ancient Hippocratic idea that the manifestations of illness and disease are the attempt of the organism to heal itself, rather than something wholly bad or abnormal, to be arrested, corrected, or eliminated by any means necessary.
He shares cases and remedies with us, and we share in his delight as we read about how these principles of healing, articulated by Hahnemann, work! Dick practiced homeopathy for 46 years with ever growing depth of appreciation for its power and efficacy.
The book also outlines why he became even more convinced that his observations regarding the “modern medical enterprise” were true and important to share. He takes us through a careful analysis based on his experience and insights. Reading the chapters on “The Medical System” was surprisingly reassuring, since they are logical and clear, allowing non-medical and medical people to consider the tenants of healing and the dangers of over-riding these innate healing powers and natural processes with a panoply of powerful drugs and procedures.
The book also takes us through his analysis of vaccination. Because he practiced medicine for over 5 decades, and because he is an astute observer, Dr. Moskowitz began to notice the long-term effects of vaccines on people. This became a grave concern to him, and he writes about this forcefully in this book. Because of his long experience, he is able to see patterns of chronic disease emerge that should be of grave concern to us all.
Finally, with elegance he sums up his understanding of the true “medical enterprise” in the following 3 aphorisms, which he took from Paracelsus, a great philosopher/physician of the Renaissance:
- Healing implies wholeness
- All healing is self-healing
- Healing pertains solely to individuals
To these, he adds a fourth aphorism made clear to him by his own experience:
- Health, illness, birth and death are inalienable life experience belonging wholly to those undergoing them, such that no one else has the right to manipulate or control them without their explicit request.
In addition to serving people through his practice, Dr. Moskowitz has used his voice on behalf of homeopathy by teaching, lecturing around the world, and also serving on the Boards of homeopathy associations, like the NCH and the AIH. He has written 5 books, over 120 articles, published in various journals, on homeopathy, natural medicine, midwifery, vaccination, and the philosophy of medicine.
This book is informative and inspiring—this is what a life well lived looks like! Clearly the vital force spoke loudly to him all along, and he listened.
With respect and admiration,
Patricia Kay, CPM (Certified Profession Midwife, retired), CCH (Certified Classical Homeopath)
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