Kapronczay Károly szerk.: Orvostörténeti Közlemények 186-187. (Budapest, 2004)
KÖZLEMÉNYEK — COMMUNICATIONS - KOTOK, Alexander: Homeopathy in Bulgaria: from revolutionaries to professionals. - Homeopátia Bulgáriában: a forradalmároktól a szakemberekig
during the war with Turkey, until 1885, when Bulgaria was left by Russians completely because of the conflict between the Russian Tsar Alexander III and the German Alexander Battenberg, the Prince of Bulgaria. We have also evidences that laypersons practiced homeopathy that time as well. In the Varna Museum of the History of Medicine a homeopathic kit produced in Germany at the factory of Dr. Willmar Schwabe (1839-1917) is kept. This kit belonged to a layperson, namely the school teacher Chushkov, who practiced homeopathy at the end of the 19 th century in the city of Triavna 4 . It is highly regretful that one can find it especially difficult so far to trace even one clearly documented history of the conversion of a Bulgarian doctor or layperson to homeopathy. So, the journal Meditsinski napredek {Medical Advance) informed its readers in 1900, that a graduate of the Würzburg university Dr. Manoilov, who had worked during two previous years in Tyrnovo, Sofia, Pleven and Lukovit, left his service in Sofia in 1898, aiming to study abroad to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology. Instead of this, two years later he returned to Bulgaria, being already, according to the journal, "specialist in homeopathy" and established his practice in Sofia. The readers were informed that Dr. Manoilov inquired the Minister of Interior to allow him self-manufacturing and selfdistributing of homeopathic medicines because of the inability of local pharmacies to prepare the medicines as set by the proper homeopathic science. The Minister passed that inquiry on to the Medical Council and the latter replied that according to the law all doctors are prohibited to deal with medicines in the places where pharmacies and drugstores are available. The pro-allopathic journal added that the Medical Council should take its advice and to solve once and forever the cardinal problem of homeopathic practice in Bulgaria. According to the editor, Dr. Dimitr Mollov (1845-1914), one of the founders of the Bulgarian medicine, who wrote that comment, homeopathy brings nothing but harm; it could not be prohibited in the countries where it has its own institutions and patrons but in Bulgaria, where it has no support, this evil could be effectively eradicated 5 . It should be added here that Dr. Mollov was a graduate of the Moscow University and, of course, inherited there this especially negative attitude toward homeopathy, which was fairly characteristic for the Russian universities. The journal edited by Mollov I cite here, was, in fact, nothing but an exact copy in its style and manners of the flagship of Russian allopathy, journal Vrach (Physician) which repeatedly labeled homeopathy as quackery, charlatanism, denying of science, etc. 6 By the end of the 19 th century, many Bulgarian physicians were graduates of the Russian universities, and the impact of the Russian medical schools on the Bulgarian medical society was enormous. Merely to bring it as an example that by 1900, according to many sources, there were some 500 physicians in Bulgaria, of whom Bulgarians by origin were some 300 people. About a half of them were and Activity of the St. Petersburg Society of the Followers of Homeopathy during the Period from 2 May 1881 to2 May 1891). St. Petersburg, 1892, p. 13 4 Kapincheva 1. Pervi stepki v napisveme istoriiata net homeopatiiata v Bolgariia (First steps in the writing of the history of homeopathy in Bulgaria) Homeopathic Links (Bulgarian edition), 2003, 1-2, pp. 32-33 5 Meditsinski napredek January 1900, I, pp. 75-76 6 For more detail see the chapter Contra homeopathy: anti-homeopathic publications in: Kotok A. The history of homeopathy in the Russian Empire until World War I, as compared with other European countries and the USA: similarities and discrepancies Ph.D. thesis, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1999.
