A darker shade of green: Medical botany, homeopathy, and cultural politics in interwar Germany

Social History of Medicine

Volumn 15, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 481-504

  Kenny, Michael G ^a  

^a SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

Bioethics; Dieffenbachia seguine; Ethnobotany; Eugenics; German medicine; Homeopathy; Nuremberg trials

Indexed keywords

ABORTION; ARTICLE; CONTRACEPTION; CRIME; DRUG SCREENING; GERMANY; HISTORY; HOMEOPATHY; POLITICAL SYSTEM; POLITICS;

ABORTION, EUGENIC; DRUG EVALUATION, PRECLINICAL; GERMANY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HOMEOPATHY; NATIONAL SOCIALISM; POLITICS; STERILIZATION, INVOLUNTARY; WAR CRIMES;

EID: 0036985009     PISSN: 0951631X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/shm/15.3.481     Document Type: Review

References (207)

1. This article is based on the available literature rather than primary archival research. However, Gert Dietrichkeit's dissertation on Madaus and the Madaus Company (see below) is partly based on the Madaus Co. archives, to which the author appears to have had free access. They have also been consulted by Dr Timmermann who informs me that much seems to have been lost when the Company moved from Dresden to its present location near Köln shortly after the war, and that they now comprise only a couple of filing-cabinet drawers of no great relevance to the present discussion (personal communication, 26 March 2002).
2. My source for transcripts of the 'Doctors Trial' is the Mazal Library, which has scanned the original record verbatim into its database and made it available for public use through the Library website at: http://www.mazal.org/ NMT-HOME.htm. I will refer to this record as Doctors Trial, and employ the original page numbers, in this case, p. 712.
3. Pokorny's principal inspiration for the Himmler letter is certainly G. Madaus and F. E. Koch, 'Tierexperimentelle Studien zur Frage der medikamentlösen Sterilisierung (durch Caladium seguinum [Dieffenbachia seguina])', Zeitschrift für gesamte experimentelle Medizin, 109 (1941), 68-87.
4. The other article was possibly the section on Caladium s, in G. Madaus, Lehrbuch der Biologischen Heilmittel, vol. I (Leipzig, 1938), 766-9. The Madaus-Koch paper cites the Lehrbuch entry as the only pertinent work emanating from their own establishment.
5. Doctors Trial p. 717.
6. Ibid., pp. 710-11.
7. Ibid., pp. 695, 703.
8. One of the earliest reports was by Dr Carlos Blacker, General Secretary of the British Eugenics Society, who as early as the 1930s had condemned Nazi eugenic policy; C. P. Blacker, ' "Eugenic" Experiments Conducted by the Nazis on Human Subjects', Eugenics Review, 44 (1952), 9-19;
9. see also M. Dvorjetski, 'La plante stérilisante caladium seguinum et ses propriétés pharmacodynamiques', Revue Française de Gynecologie et d'Obstetrique, 53 (1958), 139-51;
10. R. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago, 1961), pp. 604-5;
11. R. J. Lifton, The Nazi Doctors (New York, 1986), pp. 275-6;
12. see also A. Mitscherlich and F. Mielke, The Death Doctors (London, 1962).
13. Another local term for Dieffenbachia s, is 'Cimmaron [i.e. Maroon] radish'.
14. N. J. Jacquin, Enumeratio Systematica Plantarum (Zug, 1967), p. 31;
15. David Frodin, personal communication (7 February and 11 August 2001).
16. For Jacquiri's background and work, see H. W. Lack, A Garden for Eternity: The Codex Liechtenstein (Berne, 2000), pp. 50-69.
17. Madaus, Lehrbuch, p. 766.
18. F. W. Fochtman, J. E. Marino, C. L. Winek, and J. A. Cooper, "Toxicity of the Genus Dieffenbachia', Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, 15 (1969), 38-45;
19. W. G. Walter and P. N. Khanna, '"Chemistry of the Aroids". Dieffenbachia seguine, atnoena and picta', Economic Botany, 26 (1972), 364-72;
20. J. Arditti and E. Rodriguez, 'Dieffenbachia: Uses, Abuses and Toxic Constituents: A Review', Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 5 (1982), 293-302.
21. Doctors Trial, p. 705.
22. B. A. Barnes and L. E. Fox, 'Poisoning with Dieffenbachia', Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 10 (1955), 173-81.
23. N. Z. Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (Cambridge, MA, 1995), pp. 140-202.
24. J. T. Roig y Mesa, Plantas medicinales, aromáticas o venenosas de Cuba (Havana, 1974), p. 342.
25. Panhuy's painting of Dieffenbachia s. is reproduced on p. 126
26. of H. Burkhardt, Reise nach Surinam: Pflanzen- und Landschafts Bilder der Louise von Panhuys 1763-1844 (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), which includes a biographical sketch of von Panhuys and an outline of Dieffenbachia's pharmacological properties, p. 127.
27. J. G. Stedman, Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (Baltimore, 1988), p. 263.
28. R. Jütte, Geschichte der Alternativen Medizin: Von der Volksmedizin zu den unkonventionellen Therapien von Heute (München, 1996), pp. 23-7 and passim.
29. M. Kaufmam, Homeopathy in America: The Rise and Fall of a Medical Heresy (Baltimore, 1971);
30. M. G. Kenny, 'The Democratic Medicine of Dr Elias Smith', Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife (1990), 133-41;
31. idem, M. G. Kenny, The Perfect Law of Liberty: Elias Smith and the Providential History of America (Washington, DC, 1994);
32. J. S. Haller, The People's Doctors: Samuel Thomson mid the American Botanical Movement, 1790-1860 (Carbondale, 2000).
33. th Century', in R. Jütte, G. B. Risse, and J. Woodward (eds), Culture, Knowledge, and Healing: Historical Perspectives of Homeopathic Medicine in Europe and North America (Sheffield, 1998), 64-88.
34. S. Hahnemann, Organon of the Medical Art (Redmond, 1996), p. 4.
35. C. B. Knerr, Life of Hering (Philadelphia, 1940), p. 213.
36. C. Hering, The Domestic Physician, 5th American edn (Philadelphia, 1851), p. 494.
37. C. Hering, 'Caladium seguinum', Archiv für homöopathische Heilkunst, 2 (1832), 160-70.
38. Ibid., p. 166.
39. N. Rogers, An Alternative Path: The Making and Remaking of Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital of Philadelphia (New Brunswick, 1998);
40. Kaufman, Homeopathy in America, passim.
41. 'Erfahrung ist das sicherst Richtmass echten Werth zu erkennen'; C. Hering, Homöopathischer Hausartz (Jena, 1860).
42. Caladium symptom lists based on additional 'provings' are found in Hering, The Guiding Symptoms of our Materia Medica, vol. I (Philadelphia, 1879), pp. 104-21;
43. idem, Condensed Materia Medica (New York and Philadelphia, 1877), pp. 200-3;
44. see Barnes arid Fox, 'Poisoning with Dieffenbachia', p. 178.
45. Knerr, Life of Hering, p. 141; original emphasis.
46. J. H. Clarke, A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica, vol. I (London, 1900), pp. 332-4;
47. A. C. Cowperthwaite, A Text-Book of Materia Medica and Therapeutics (Philadelphia, 1927), pp. 166-9;
48. J. C. Burnett, The Change of Life in Women (Philadelphia, 1898), p. 64.
49. See Madaus, Lehrbuch, p. 768.
50. Union Pharmaceutique, no. 19 (1878), 291-2;
51. see Madaus, Lehrbuch, p. 768.
52. Hering, Guiding Symptoms, p. 111;
53. see Condensed Mate ria Medica, p. 202.
54. T. Johnson, CRC Ethnobotany Desk Reference (Boca Raton, 1999);
55. H. Burkhardt, Reise nach Surinam;
56. T. B. Croat, 'The Use of the New World Araceae as Drug Plants', Journal of Japanese Botany, 69 (1994), 185-203;
57. E. Ayensu, Medicinal Plants of the West Indies (Algonac, 1981), p. 45;
58. T. Plowman, 'Folk Uses of New World Aroids', Economic Botany, 23 (1969), 97-121;
59. Barnes and Fox, 'Poisoning';
60. see also the NAPRALERT (Natural Products Alert database) entry for Caladium s. via http://www.ag.uiuc.edu/~ffh/napra.html
61. W. H. Hodge and D. Taylor, 'The Ethnobotany of the Island Caribs of Dominica', Webbia, 12 (1957), 536.
62. See Doctors Trial, p. 711.
63. G. Dragendorff, Die Hielpflanzen der verschiedenen Völker und Zeiten (Stuttgart, 1898).
64. Ibid., p. 100;
65. Madaus, Lehrbuch, p. 56.
66. i b i d.
67. Ibid., p. 22.
68. Ibid., p. 4.
69. Ibid., p. 21.
70. Doctors Trial, pp. 717-18.
71. P. Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 489-564;
72. R. N. Proctor, The Nazi War on Cancer (Princeton, 1999), passim.
73. Ibid., p. 8;
74. R. N. Proctor, Racial Hygiene, pp. 229-30 and passim.
75. C. Timmermann, 'Constitutional Medicine, Neoromanticism, and the Politics of Antimechanism in Interwar Germany', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 75 (2001), 717-39, pp. 728-9 and passim.
76. C. Lawrence and G. Weisz, 'Medical Holism: The Context', in C. Lawrence arid G. Weisz (eds), Greater than the Parts: Holism in Biomedicine, 1920-1950 (New York, 1998), 1-24, p. 5.
77. This was a widespread and international phenomenon in a range of medical disciplines from gynaecology to serology. See N. Oudshoorn, Beyond the Natural Body: An Archeology of Sex Hormones (London, 1994), passim;
78. K. Wailoo, '"A Disease Sui Generis": The Origins of Sickle Cell Anemia arid the Emergence of Modern Clinical Research, 1904-1924', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 65 (1991), 158-208.
79. See A. Labisch, 'From Traditional Individualism to Collective Professionalism: State, Patient, Compulsory Health Insurance, and the Panel Doctor Question in Germany, 1883-1931', in M. Berg arid G. Cocks (eds), Medicine and Modernity: Public Health and Medical Care in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany (Cambridge, 1997), 35-54, p. 52 and passim;
80. R. Spree, Health and Social Class in Imperial Germany: A Social History of Mortality, Morbidity and Inequality (Oxford, 1988);
81. Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics;
82. M. H. Kater, 'Physicians in Crisis at the End of the Weimar Republic', in P. D. Stachura (ed.), Unemployment and the Great Depression in Weimar Germany (Houndmills, 1986), 49-77.
83. C. Timmermann, 'Weimar Medical Culture: Doctors, Healers, and the Crisis of Medicine in Interwar Germany, 1918-1933' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, 1999), p. 5.
84. Ibid., p. 44;
85. see T. Lenoir, The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German Biology (Dordrecht, 1982);
86. Lawrence arid Weisz, 'Medical Holism'.
87. Timmermann, 'Weimar Medical Culture', passim;
88. D. Bothe, 'Neue Deutsche Heilkunde 1933-1945', Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, vol. 62 (Husum, 1991), pp. 16-37 and passim;
89. A. Haug, 'Die Reicharbeitsgemeinschaft für eine Neue Deutsche Heilkunde', Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, vol. 50 (Husum, 1985), 29-38 and passim.
90. Bothe is particularly concerned with the foundation and nature of the journal Hippokrates, which served as a vehicle for those critical of the overly analytical style of modern medicine, and later for proponents of Nazi public health policy. Haug examines an organization created under Nazi auspices to bring about a unification of official medicine, racial hygiene, and the wide variety of alternative practitioners then active on the German medical scene.
91. C. Timmermann, 'A Model for the New Physician: Hippocrates in Intel-war Germany', in D. Cantor (ed.), Reinventing Hippocrates (Aldershot, 2002), 302-24;
92. Haug, 'Die Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft', p. 67.
93. S. Sturdy, 'Hippocrates and State Medicine: George Newman Outlines the Founding Policy of the Ministry of Health', in Lawrence and Weisz (eds), Greater than the Parts, 112-34, p. 129;
94. A. Harrington, 'Metaphoric Connections: Holistic Science in the Shadow of the Third Reich', Social Research, 62 (1995), 357-85, p. 365.
95. R. N. Proctor, Racial Hygiene;
96. G. Cocks, 'The Old as New: The Nuremberg Doctors' Trial and Medicine in Modern Germany', in Berg and Cocks, Medicine and Modernity, 173-91.
97. G. Dietrichkeit, 'Gerhard Madaus (1890-1942): Ein Beitrag zu Leben und Werk' (Marburg, 1991), a dissertation written for a Doctorate in Natural Sciences (pharmacy arid nutritional chemistry) at the University of Marburg.
98. C. Timmermann, 'Rationalizing "Folk Medicine" in Interwar Germany: Faith, Business, and Science at "Dr Madaus & Co."', Social History of Medicine, 14 (2001), 459-82;
99. see Timmermann, 'Weimar Medical Culture', pp. 195-214.
100. Dietrichkeit, 'Gerhard Madaus', p. 30.
101. Jütte, Geschichte, pp. 221-6.
102. An abbreviated Madaus Company history may be found at: http://www.madaus.de/deutsch/html/unternehmen/geschicite/geschichte.htm#3;
103. also cf. Dietrichkeit, Leben und Werk, p. 35;
104. Timmermann, 'Weimar Medical Culture', pp. 210-11.
105. Madaus arid Koch, Zur Frage der medikamentlösen Sterilisierung, p. 69.
106. Ibid., p. 83.
107. Ibid., p. 86.
108. R. A. Soloway, 'The "Perfect Contraceptive": Eugenics and Birth Control Research in Britain and America in the Interwar Years', Journal of Contemporary History, 30 (1995), 637-64;
109. M. Borell, 'Biologists and the Promotion of Birth Control Research, 1918-1938', Journal of the History of Biology, 20 (1987), 51-87.
110. V. Marks, Sexual Chemistry: A History of the Contraceptive Pill (New Haven, 2001);
111. Oudshoorn, Beyond the Natural Body. Dr Cad Clauberg, who carried out sterilization experiments at Auschwitz, was a gynaecologist who before the war had developed hormonal treatments for infertility;
112. Lifton, The Nazi Doctors, pp. 269-78.
113. Proctor, Racial Hygiene, pp. 95-117;
114. M. Burleigh and W. Wipperman, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 (Cambridge, 1991);
115. D. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Cambridge, MA, 1995), pp. 116-17 and passim.
116. Madaus and Koch, p. 83.
117. Lycopus = Wolfsfoot = Bugleweed = Horehound (a North American plant related to mint, still seen to have an effect on hyperthyroidism; used against dysentery in the USA and included in the nineteenth-century commercial pharmacopoeia of the communal Shaker religious sect); Rubia = Madder, native to southern Europe, which when ingested produces rose-tinted urine; Scilla = Squill = Sea Onion (a plant of the lily family with a wide range of homeopathic uses, some of which are described by Constantin Hering).
118. Madaus, Lehrbuch, p. 768.
119. K. Vogeler, August Bier: Leben und Werk (München, 1941);
120. M. Goerig, D. Agarwal, and J. S. am Esch, 'The Versatile August Bier (1861-1949), Father of Spinal Anesthesia', Journal of Clinical Anesthesia, 12 (2000), 561-9;
121. Timmermann, 'Weimar Medical Culture', pp. 78-85;
122. H.-U. Lammel, 'Chirugie und Nationalsozialismus am Beispiel der Berliner Chirurgischen Universitätsklinik in der Ziegelstgrasse', in W. Fischer et al. (eds), Exodus von Wissenschaften aus Berlin (Berlin, 1994), 568-91.
123. Madaus, Lehrbuch, p. vi;
124. K. Kötschau, quoted in Haug, 'Die Reicharbeitsgemeinschaft', p. 89;
125. see also Bothe, 'Neue Deutsche Heilkunde', p. 83.
126. Ibid., pp. 2, 8.
127. See A. Bier, Homöopathie und harmonische Ordnung der Heilkunde (Stuttgart, 1949), p. 172.
128. H. Schulz, Vorlesungen über Wirkung und Anwendung der deutschen Arzneipflanzen (Leipzig, 1929).
129. Hildegard of Bingen, Ursachen und Behandlung der Krankheiten (causae et curae). Translated by Hugo Schulz (München, 1933).
130. Vogeler, August Bier, p. 255 and passim.
131. C. Timmermann, 'Hippocrates', pp. 305-8.
132. A. Bier, 'Ueber Organhormone und Organtherapie', in A. Bier et al., Über Organhormone und Organtherapie (München, 1929), 5-39.
133. A. Bier, Hyperemia as a Therapeutic Agent (Chicago, 1905), p. 17.
134. H. Schulz, Similia Similibus Curantur (München, 1920), p. 9 and passim.
135. Schulz, Similia 'Die Erfahrung ist die Mutter des theoretischen Wissens!', p. 11.
136. Madaus, Lehrbuch, p. 5.
137. Proctor, Racial Hygiene, pp. 233-4;
138. Proctor, Nazi War on Cancer, pp. 254-5;
139. Harrington, 'Metaphoric Connections', p. 369;
140. Bothe, 'Neue Deutsche Heilkunde', p. 233 arid passim.
141. G. M. Beard, Nervous Exhaustion (neurasthenia) (Baltimore, 1880);
142. idem, G. M. Beard, American Nervousness: Its Causes and Consequences (New York, 1881).
143. Timmermann, 'Weimar Medical Culture', p. 80.
144. H. Schulz, 'Zur Lehre von der Arzneiwirkung', Virchow's Archiv, 108 (1887), 424.
145. 'Schwache Reize fachen sie an, mittelstarke beschleunigen sie, starke hemmen und stärkste heben sie auf, in R. Arndt, Die Neurasthenie (Nervenschwäche): Ihr Wesen, Ihre Bedeutung und Behandlung (Wien and Leipzig, 1885), p. 32.
146. See Schulz, Similia, pp. 33-5.
147. Madaus, Lehrbuch, p. 16.
148. Schulz, Similia, p. 38.
149. See Bier, 'Der Reizverzug', Münchener Medizinische Wochenschrift, 70 (1923), 1006-7. X-rays, it should be noted, were also used in mass sterilization experiments.
150. R. Arndt, Biologische Studien: 1. Das biologische Grundgesetz (Greifswald, 1892), p. 203.
151. I b i d.
152. Ibid., pp. 47, 52.
153. Ibid., p. 88.
154. Schulz, Zur Lehre von der Arzneiwirkung, pp. 427-8.
155. Quoted in Madaus, Lehrbuch, p. 13.
156. Schulz, 'Lehre von der Arzneiwirkung', p. 445.
157. Published by Julius Lehmann, who used his press as a vehicle for 'the right-wing of the racial hygiene movement', promoted the works of Dr Erwin Liek (see below), and was in general sympathetic to heterodox medical opinions (Weindling, Health, Race, and German Politics, pp. 472-4).
158. Bier, Hornöopathie, p. 169. See A. Bier, 'Beiträge zur Heilkunde aus der chirurgischen Universitätsklinik in Berlin', Münchener medizinischer Wochenschrift, 78 (1931), 540-3.
159. Vogeler, August Bier, pp. 121-8;
160. Timmennann, 'Weimar Medical Culture', pp. 81-5.
161. Madaus, Lehrbuch, p. 17;
162. Dietrichkeit, Gerhard Madaus, pp. 14-21.
163. Madaus, Lehrbuch, p. 34.
164. Schulz, Similia, p. 6 and passim.
165. Madaus, Lehrbuch, p. 47.
166. Bier, Die Seele, pp. 36-42.
167. A. Schopenhauer, On the Will in Nature (New York, 1992), p. 140.
168. Bier, 'Beiträge zur Heilkunde', p. 540.
169. P. Wheelwright, Heraclitus (New York, 1964), passim;
170. see Bier, 'Ueber Organhormone', p. 38 ('Die Gegensätze fügen sich zur Harmonie').
171. Bier, Die Seele, p. 28.
172. Vogeler, p. 248.
173. P. Rostok, 'Lebensbilder: August Bier', Münchener medizinische Wochenschrift, 86 (1939), 521.
174. B. Meyer, 'Der letzte Grosse aus der Ziegelstrasse', http://www.luise- berlin.de/bms/bmstx197/9704proe.htm, p. 6.
175. See Proctor, Racial Hygiene.
176. Jütte, Geschichte, p. 43;
177. Proctor, Nazi War on Cancer, pp. 22-7.
178. Jütte, Geschichte, pp. 42-55;
179. Proctor, Racial Hygiene, pp. 226-35.
180. Ibid., pp. 166, 186.
181. See Timmermann, 'Weimar Medical Culture', pp. 70-8.
182. E. Liek, The Doctor's Mission: Reflections, Reminiscences and Revelations of a Medical Man (London, 1930), p. 184.
183. See Timmermann, 'Constitutional Medicine', pp. 730-2.
184. Timmermann, 'Weimar Medical Culture', p. 72.
185. Bothe, 'Neue Deutsche Heilkunde', p. 45 and passim;
186. Proctor, Nazi War on Cancer, p. 22 and passim;
187. Jütte, Geschichte, pp. 42-7;
188. Timmermann, 'Constitutional Medicine', pp. 736-7;
189. Timmermann, 'A Model for the New Physician', pp. 304-5.
190. Bothe, 'Neue Deutsche Heilkunde', pp. 70-9;
191. Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics, pp. 520-2.
192. Madaus, Lehrbuch, p. 8.
193. Ibid., p. 9.
194. Reprinted also in the journal Hippokrates;
195. Bothe, 'Neue Deutsche Heilkunde', p. 81.
196. Dietrichkeit, Gerhard Madaus, p. 12.
197. Madaus' in-house journal, Biologische Heilkunst, was 'synchronized' by the Nazis who appointed their own editor; Bothe, 'Neue Deutsche Heilkunde', p. 79.
198. Timmermann, 'Rationalizing Folk Medicine', pp. 472-6.
199. Madaus, Lehrbuch, p. 10;
200. C.-R. Prüll, 'Holism arid German Pathology (1914-1933)',
201. in Lawrence and Weisz, Greater than the Parts, 46-67;
202. Bothe, 'Neue Deutsche Heilkunde', p. 303.
203. Ibid., pp. 24-5.
204. D. Eisenberg et al., 'Trends in Alternative Medicine Use in the United States, 1990-1997', Journal of the American Medical Association, 280 (1998), 1569-75.
205. Timmermann, 'Weimar Medical Culture', pp. 226-7;
206. Jütte, Geschichte, passim.
207. Harrington, 'Metaphoric Connections', p. 378.