Marianne Harling 13 August 1923–28 June 2008

With the death of Marianne Harling, a Fellow of the Faculty of Homeopathy, British homeopathy has lost a true gentlewoman. Above all else, Marianne epitomised serenity and stillness in medicine, a quality espoused by Osler in his famous address to medical students – Aequanimitas.

Marianne Harling trained in medicine at Oxford, was an early environmentalist and found herself naturally drawn to homeopathy. Besides a private practice at her home, she ran a clinic on the Isle of Wight and was a founder member of the Wessex Healthy Living Foundation which offered holistic medicine and homeopathy to those who otherwise would not have been able to afford it.

Although a modest, quiet woman by nature, she offered her services as a teacher to the Faculty and taught students on the Faculty of Homeopathy’s ‘Long Course’ for many years and this was where I encountered her teaching for the first time, in 1982. She brought a reassuring peace with her into the old library at the original Hahnemann House in Powis Place; all who encountered her learned a lot more from her than merely how to practise homeopathy.

I was honoured to be invited to co-edit D. M. Gibson's Studies of Homoeopathic Remedies with her in 1987. She also translated Leon Vannier's Typology in Homoeopathy from French into English in 1992. However, she told me that she thought her best homeopathic writing was a play written in verse which was performed at the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital in honour of Sir John Weir. She had some original views on homeopathy one of which was that the mineral remedies resonated in some way with the natural elements and salts of the body and thus were deeper acting than the plant and animal medicines.

Marianne was a woman of quiet faith and dedication to humanity. Only at her funeral did I learn that the Catholic Handicapped Society had awarded her the Barenti Medal for many decades of tireless service.

She is survived by three sons and a daughter who is a doctor.