LAURENCE SOCIETY OF HOLISTIC MEDICINE - Key Persons
As a Chartered Engineer working for over 35 years in the petrochemical industry Allan has perhaps an unlikely background for someone with an interest in holistic medicine, but research into some family health issues, and recollection of childhood visits to the doctor (a member of the faculty of homeopathy), brought him into contact with Dr Gordon Flint and what has now become the Laurence Society. Since then he has met a number of physicians specialising in Homeopathy using various diagnostic methods. He considers Homeopathy to be a subtle and powerful system of medicine that maximises the self-healing capacity of the body; and despite its gainsayers continues to have potential in the 21st century.
Dominic has been professionally involved in the homeopathic community for more than 35 years, the first ten or so working closely with the late John Ainsworth, founder of Ainsworths Homeopathic Pharmacy. A full-time registered practitioner with the Society of Homeopaths, he gained his Diploma from the School of Homeopathy. Son of the late Carl Upton, who along with Dr's Laurence and Westlake founded the Psionic Medical Society (now LSHM) in 1969, Dominic lives and practices in Surrey where, before entering into full-time homeopathic practice, he ran his award-winning health food store in Haslemere for 21 years.
George Laurence qualified from St George's Hospital, London in 1904, having previously studied at Liverpool University. It was while at Liverpool that he was influenced by Sir Oliver Lodge, the Professor of Physics, at the time one of the foremost researchers into the properties of electromagnetic waves.
After a series of hospital appointments, in 1915 he passed his Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (Edinburgh), then a year later bought a third share of a practice in Chippenham, Wiltshire. Almost immediately his two senior partners were called up for war service and he was left to carry on the practice alone, which involved a number of hospital and consultative appointments which continued for nearly 40 years. These included Medical Officer of the Red Cross Hospital and Workhouse, Surgeon of the Cottage Hospital, Medical Superintendent of the Isolation Hospital, Factory Surgeon and Public Vaccinator.
During this time, however, he became increasingly dissatisfied with the orthodox preoccupation with symptoms and drugs. In his own words:
‘I had a growing conviction that I did not always know what I was really doing - or rather why I was doing it. In other words, I did not know why people were ill. It was fairly easy to treat ordinary infectious diseases and acute ailments, but when it came to the chronic disorders such as malignant diseases, rheumatism, degenerate nervous troubles and other so-called incurable maladies, we did not know the "why", and so were reduced to treating names and labels, signs and symptoms, without a clue as to causation; hence the temporary alleviation of symptoms was the best that I, or any of my contemporaries, could do.'
In his attempt to make sense of the causation of illness, Laurence read widely and felt that the work of three men seemed to offer keys. First was Samuel Hahnemann and his homoeopathic method. Second was Rudolf Steiner especially in his conception of the formative forces of nature. And third was J. E. R. McDonagh and his Unitary Theory of Disease.
At this time, by one of life's chances, he came into contact with Dr Guyon Richards and was introduced to the idea of medical dowsing. This proved to be the key he had been seeking, for he had long been convinced that the physical body is only part of a much larger structure, which is not recognisable by the ordinary senses. He believed that it was within this unmanifest realm that the vital energies operated, and he fund that by the use of the pendulum he was able to detect derangements of these energies responsible for the physical and psychological disturbances, which produced the clinical symptoms.
He then found that by an extension of the technique he was able to determine appropriate treatment - usually, but not necessarily, by homoeopathic medication - and so for the first time was able to formulate a scientific method of diagnosis and treatment of the basic causes of illness. This he developed with patience and assiduity over the years, to develop a system of medicine which has proved to be highly successful over the past 50 years, often disclosing the hidden causes and directing practitioners to the appropriate treatment of many chronic and supposedly incurable disease.
The system depends essentially on the exercise of the paranormal senses, of which existence is now scientifically accepted; and, because of convention the Greek letter psi had come to be associated in this connotation, Laurence called his system Psionic Medicine.
McDonagh's ideas were ahead of their time, unacceptable to orthodox materialism which found his detailed formulations difficult and even fanciful. Yet his basic concept is entirely compatible with modern scientific thought which regards matter as a local condensation of an all-pervading energy pattern.
McDonagh believed the vital energies to be responsible for the formation of proteins, which are the essential building blocks of all living matter, so that any disturbance of the vital harmony caused a corresponding aberration in the protein production. Hence he maintained that there was only one basic disease, which arose from some imbalance in the protein structure. The extent of this aberration would determine the seriousness of the disorder.
This was the idea that he endeavoured to develop in support of his Unitary Theory of Disease. He formulated the concept in considerable detail, notably in a series of writings on the nature of disease, but, because this involved new directions of thought in advance of accepted ideas, his theories met with little recognition. The essential simplicity of his vision was that it was possible for the ordered processes to become deranged and it was these aberrations from the norm which produced the symptoms of disease.
It was this aspect of the idea which Laurence intuitively recognised as providing the integrating factor in his study of the imbalance of vital energy and which he was then able to apply to provide a practical system of therapy.
A Veterinary Surgeon since 1989, Mark qualified as a Homeopath through the Faculty of Homeopathy in 1996. In 1999 he completed his training in Psionic Medicine. He founded the Centre for Integrated and Holistic Medicine (2001/2), which then took Homeopathy back into a new ‘first opinion' practice at Oving in West Sussex (2010). This practice evolved in 2020 to become Elliott and Bulbeck, an integrated modern practice with traditional values. Elected three times to the role of Council Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, and a Past-President of the British Association of Homeopathic Veterinary Surgeons, Mark has written six small books on Homeopathy and Holistic care of animals.
In May of this year, Mark was awarded a prestigious Fellowship (Vet FFHom) of the Faculty of Homeopathy.
Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian philosopher, artist, scientist and educationalist, had been developing his own ideas about the spiritual nature of man, partly through his clairvoyant experiences and his ability to access the Akashic records, when he first came to the attention of the theosophists. His lectures proved to be very popular, and in 1902 he founded a German branch of the Theosophical Society.