Rudolf Hess (Hitler’s deputy) on alternative medicine

I would have never thought that someone would be able to identify the author of the text I quoted in the previous post:

It is known that not just novel therapies but also traditional ones, such as homeopathy, suffer opposition and rejection by some doctors without having ever been subjected to serious tests. The doctor is in charge of medical treatment; he is thus responsible foremost for making sure all knowledge and all methods are employed for the benefit of public health…I ask the medical profession to consider even previously excluded therapies with an open mind. It is necessary that an unbiased evaluation takes place, not just of the theories but also of the clinical effectiveness of alternative medicine.

More often than once has science, when it relied on theory alone, arrived at verdicts which later had to be overturned – frequently this occurred only after long periods of time, after progress had been hindered and most acclaimed pioneers had suffered serious injustice. I do not need to remind you of the doctor who, more than 100 years ago, in fighting puerperal fever, discovered sepsis and asepsis but was laughed at and ousted by his colleagues throughout his lifetime. Yet nobody would today deny that this knowledge is most relevant to medicine and that it belongs to the basis of medicine. Insightful doctors, some of whom famous, have, during the recent years, spoken openly about the crisis in medicine and the dead end that health care has maneuvered itself into. It seems obvious that the solution is going in directions which embrace nature. Hardly any other form of science is so tightly bound to nature as is the science occupied with healing living creatures. The demand for holism is getting stronger and stronger, a general demand which has already been fruitful on the political level. For medicine, the challenge is to treat more than previously by influencing the whole organism when we aim to heal a diseased organ.

It is from the opening speech by Rudolf Hess on the occasion of the WORLD CONFERENCE ON HOMEOPATHY 1937, in Berlin. Hess, at the time Hitler’s deputy, was not the only Nazi-leader. I knew of the opening speech because, a few years ago, DER SPIEGEL published a theme issue on homeopathy, and they published a photo of the opening ceremony of this meeting. It shows many men in SS-uniform and, in the first row of the auditorium, we see Hess (as well as Himmler) ready to spring into action.

Hess in particular was besotted with alternative medicine which the Nazis elected to call NEUE DEUTSCHE HEILKUNDE. Somewhat to the dismay of today’s alternative medicine enthusiasts, I have repeatedly published on this aspect of alternative medicine’s past, and it also is an important part of my new book A SCIENTIST IN WONDERLAND which the lucky winner (my congratulations!) of my little competition to identify the author has won. The abstract of an 2001 article explains this history succinctly:

The aim of this article is to discuss complementary/alternative medicine (CAM) in the Third Reich. Based on a general movement towards all things natural, a powerful trend towards natural ways of healing had developed in the 19(th)century. By 1930 this had led to a situation where roughly as many lay practitioners of CAM existed in Germany as doctors. To re-unify German medicine under the banner of ‘Neue Deutsche Heilkunde’, the Nazi officials created the ‘Heilpraktiker’ – a profession which was meant to become extinct within one generation. The ‘flag ship’ of the ‘Neue Deutsche Heilkunde’ was the ‘Rudolf Hess Krankenhaus’ in Dresden. It represented a full integration of CAM and orthodox medicine. An example of systematic research into CAM is the Nazi government’s project to validate homoeopathy. Even though the data are now lost, the results of this research seem to have been negative. Even though there are some striking similarities between today’s CAM and yesterday’s ‘Neue Deutsche Heilkunde’ there are important differences. Most importantly, perhaps, today’s CAM is concerned with the welfare of the individual, whereas the ‘Neue Deutsche Heilkunde’ was aimed at ensuring the dominance of the Aryan race.

One fascinating aspect of this past is the fact that the NEUE DEUTSCHE HEILKUNDE was de facto the invention of what we today call ‘integrated medicine’. Then it was more like a ‘shot-gun marriage’, while today it seems to be driven more by political correctness and sloppy thinking. It did not work 70 years ago for the same reason that it will fail today: the integration of bogus (non-evidence based) treatments into conventional medicine must inevitably render health care not better but worse!

One does not need to be a rocket scientist to understand that, and Hess as well as other proponents of alternative medicine of his time had certainly got the idea. So they initiated the largest ever series of scientific tests of homeopathy. This research program was not just left to the homeopaths, who never had a reputation of being either rigorous or unbiased, but some of the best scientists of the era were recruited for it. The results vanished in the hands of the homeopaths during the turmoil of the war. But one eye-witness report of a homeopaths, Fritz Donner, makes it very clear: as it turned out, there was not a jot of evidence in favour of homeopathy.

And this, I think, is the other fascinating aspect of the story: homeopaths did not give up their plight to popularise homeopathy. On the contrary, they re-doubled their efforts to fool us all and to convince us with dodgy results (see recent posts on this blog) that homeopathy somehow does defy the laws of nature and is, in effect, very effective for all sorts of diseases.

My readers suggested all sorts of potential authors for the Hess speech; and they are right! It could have been written by any proponent of alternative medicine. This fact is amusing and depressing at the same time. Amusing because it discloses the lack of new ideas and arguments (even the same fallacies are being used). Depressing because it suggests that progress in alternative medicine is almost totally absent.