Homeopathy 2014; 103(03): 213
DOI: 10.1016/j.homp.2014.02.002
Book Review
Copyright © The Faculty of Homeopathy 2014

Plain Doctoring

David Owen
Further Information

Publication History

Publication Date:
09 December 2017 (online)

Richard Moskowitz MD.
408 pages, in: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, June 21, 2013. Language: English, ISBN-10: 1482338017, ISBN-13: 978-1482338010.

This book is an edited collection of one homeopathic doctor's writing over his career. It mixes historical, biographical and philosophical styles with liberal inclusion of patient anecdotes and extracts from key homeopathic thinkers in three main areas.

Firstly a section about childbirth that includes something of a narrative through his professional journey from hero doctor to empathic carer and insightful writing on vaccination.

Secondly a section on a few key homeopathic methodological questions (addressing the nature of healing), where the author uses an enquiring, perceptive and sensitive process of deduction to address the questions that homeopathy posses for more reductionist doctors. This underlies some of the methodological clashes that have always dogged our profession; most recently manifest by the schism within homeopathy that sensation methodologies raise but before that were raised by those that dared to talk about essences.

Thirdly he offers some thoughts on what homeopathic thinking can offer to the dilemmas facing medicine today such as malpractice, the erosion of the personal relationship between doctor and patients and the impact of increased screening and vaccination. He develops his theme of the holistic physician offering ‘Plain Doctoring’ as opposed to the pill for every ill (and potential ill).

Almost all of the writing has been published elsewhere, either as chapters of books or in articles of homeopathic journals (mainly American). I was surprised how little I had read already and how well the essays complemented each other. Each of the three areas Richard Moskowitz addresses have had a profound effect on not only how homeopathy is practised over the last fifty years but also provides insight into the paradox of how medicine has both changed but is also stuck. Childbirth articulates the tension between supporting normal physiological processes such as childbirth (or perhaps even responding to a viral infection) and ‘fighting disease’.

The profound challenge of change - on the one hand the shifting sands of the latest discovery or drug (so often tied up with profit), versus the reluctance of accommodating new thinking and explorations that risk challenging the dogma (so often tied up with status), and the tensions between a thoughtful development of principles of practice and responding to the latest developments and trials that create new diseases and treatments which so often leave the suffering patient untouched.

The final chapters draw out the principles central to plain doctoring that healing is moving to wholeness, that all healing is self-healing and is always an Individual and unique process. He addresses the flaws behind some aspects of conventional medicine, while not belittling or demeaning doctors who often have no choice but to work in these realm or voice to work in any other way.

Richard (I can use his first name as I feel I know something of the personal man from his book) is obviously a caring, compassionate and thoughtful man. I am sure I would like him and had he asked, I would have told him that the breadth and diversity of his writing means this book is not targeted to any particular reader. But then he and I might agree that you really only ever write a book yourself, as a way of showing yourself or being seen more clearly, or I like to think he could, in the great ‘Sulphur’ tradition, convince me that he wrote it just for me!