The history of homeopathy in the Russian Empire
until World War I, as compared with other European countries and the USA: similarities and discrepancies

by Alexander Kotok, M.D.
On-line version of the Ph.D. thesis improved and enlarged
due to a special grant of the Pierre Schmidt foundation.

4.2.2 Russian Orthodox clergy in the reformed Russia

Although previous involvement of clergymen in medical affairs further contributed to the collaboration of the homeopaths and of churchmen in Russia, other factors later on also promoted this cooperation. Those factors were at first connected with the internal processes occurring within the Russian Orthodox Church in the last decades of the 19^th century. The reforms which had been undertaken in the church by the government in the 1860's and in the1870's,were evasive and inconsistent³⁰. The Holy Synod was ruled in 1865—1880, by the Chief Procurator Dmitry Tolstoy (1823—1889), who declared that he considered the clergy as a power exclusively subordinate to the government³¹. He not only openly neglected opinions of the highest clergy but also moved bishops every 3-4 years from their dioceses to new ones, establishing thereby an artificial and permanent tension among the clerical dignitaries. This policy was meant to prevent the consolidation of durable connections within the highest clergy, for such progresses, in Tolstoy's opinion, would leave the Church in its subordinate position. At the same time Tolstoy succeeded in improving both the educational level of new clerical graduates of different ranks and the financial status of the ecclesiastical training institutions. New trends appeared with the change of the political situation in Russia around the 1870—1880's, when the government, at grips with terror caused by "Narodnaia volia"³² and because of general social dissatisfaction in the Empire, was forced to stop neglecting its permanent and dependent ally, i.e., the Church. Besides, the involvement of the seminaries graduates in the revolutionary movement on the one hand, and the growing nihilistic tendencies within the common clergy on the other hand, were another reason for the government's anxiety. The appointment as Chief Procurator of Constantine Pobedonostsev (1827—1907), a very religious and conservative man, a former preceptor of the Tsar Alexander III (1845—1894), changed the State's policy toward the Church. The results of a new administration of the Holy Synod together with government's efforts, soon became evident. The number of the priests and deacons increased during the years 1881 to 1894 by 20%, and reached 56, 900. "Black" clergy³³ increased even more significantly (by 64%) — from 27,700 to 45,500. In the 1880's, as many as 250 churches and 10 monasteries opened yearly³⁴. Thus, the government spared neither strength nor resources in order to consolidate the position of the Russian Church.

Together with increasing financial support, the government and the high church authorities attempted a "simplification" of the Church, this is to say, bringing it nearer to the people's needs. A careful clerical training of the future clergymen was considered needless:

Our Russian clergymen originate from the people; they cannot be distinguished from the people neither in their way of life, nor in advantages and even in shortcomings. They stay with the people and fall together with it... God save us from being witnesses to our pastors becoming princes among the simple people...³⁵

This approach was reflected in the permanent decrease of the number of general subjects in the curriculum and of the time allowed for independent scientific work in clerical schools. This was part of the general trend:

The strengthening of [so-called] totalitarian-applied character of the spiritual school restored to life the pattern of the Nicholas I period³⁶. In some seminaries and spiritual schools the teaching of icon-painting, agronomy and medicine was renewed³⁷.

Nevertheless, the Russian Orthodox Church of that period had lost part of its influence, notably in the large cities, where to a certain extent it remained in isolation from the higher educated class. The Church found a favorable social environment among the poorly educated patriarchal rural peasants. The "white" rural clergymen traditionally had a very close relationship with their parishioners. So, Prof. Engelhardt describes in his book the rural priests he had met:

I like to have chats with priests and find these talks to be useful and edifying. First of all, nobody knows the manners of the common people as well as priests do. Indeed, those who wish to know the manners of the people, its habits, customs, conceptions, its bad and good sides [...] should seek among the priests the needed information. The priests are especially invaluable for a given locality for they know in detail the condition of any peasant in their parishes. Second, no person besides the peasants themselves knows so well the local practical economy as the priest. The priests are our best practical economists [...], one may be taught by them to manage the economy in a given place³⁸.

It should be mentioned that the rural clergy did not receive any salaries or fees from the government, earning their income only by their fulfillment of religious rites, like christenings, funerals, marriages and the cultivation of parish lands³⁹. It was not exceptional that "Priests and especially their widows and orphans often found themselves in dire straits"⁴⁰.

To avoid impoverishment and to be secure in old age, rural priests adopted a system of parishes' transfer "... to their sons or their sons-in-law; by accepting the parish, the new priest also accepted responsibility for supporting his predecessor in his old age and all of his dependents"⁴¹.

In contrast to this, the "black" and "white" clergy in urban areas enjoyed increasing governmental support, getting high state salaries, from 1,000 to 5,700 rubles per year, while the poorest rural priests had incomes of only 100-180 rubles per year and even this modest income was completely dependent on their parishioners.

In my opinion, these peculiar conditions of life of the rural clergy were instrumental in calling forth its great interest in practical homeopathy; whereas the urban clergy sought to increase its influence in society by participation in the activities of homeopathic organizations.

Returning for a moment to the rural clergymen, I think that together with purely practical interest in homeopathy as means of becoming closer to the parishioners and providing thereby their support and sympathy, other factors also played an important role. Homeopathy was not the only thing the rural clergymen had a passion for. So, in the second part of the 19^th century the rural priests were very active in dealing with local historical and economical lore. Victor Berdianskikh writes:

In the Russian province of the second part of the 19^th century the rural clergy was a significant cultural power. The figure of a village priest being a lay historian and ethnographer, a member of the provincial statistical committee, was rather characteristic⁴².

Analyzing this phenomenon, the author speculates that

The education based on the humanities, the enthusiasm of the 1860s, the presence of such permanent centers for local lore like provincial statistical committees, [...] the influence of the progressive literature - these are the main reasons for the conversion of many dozens of rural priests in the second part of the 19^th century to studies of the history and ethnography of the localities⁴³.

No doubt that many of the fields of interests described above may be seen also as preconditions for the interest of the rural clergymen in homeopathy.

4.3 Russian Orthodox Church and homeopathy

4.3.1 Collaboration and its preconditions

Until the Soviet period there were many rural regions in Russia where qualified medical help could not be obtained because of the absence of physicians or feldshers⁴⁴, or because they both were overworked. The local population was forced to turn for help to educated men, usually local priests or teachers⁴⁵. Although the medical establishment always strongly resisted this phenomenon, in reality the rural intelligentsia was involved in medical affairs, especially during epidemics. The involvement of laypeople in the field monopolized by regular medicine's representatives, led to sharp conflicts within local rural communities and zemstvos. These are confirmed in numerous contemporary medical and common periodicals⁴⁶.

Nevertheless, there were sometimes also examples of cooperation. In looking for help from locally educated people, the zemstvo physicians could not always neglect the rural clergy. It was thus recorded at the 5th meeting of Russian physicians, that in their struggle against gonorrhoeic inflammations of the newborn's eyes, physicians resorted to the help of rural clergymen. The latter received from physicians nitric-acid silver solutions in order to administer the drug during christening. It was stressed also at the meeting, that the priests carried out this instruction readily and,

...Taking into account that hygiene had been introduced into the curriculum of seminaries, one should sometimes even prefer clergymen to feldshers and midwives⁴⁷.

But examples of this kind could only rarely be found in the contemporary allopathic periodicals and literature. Generally speaking, allopaths preferred to limit the rural clergy's help in medical affairs to managing some simple prophylactic procedures and care of the sick. However, in reality, drawing a line between "treatment" and "care" is indistinct enough. Moreover, the clergymen themselves had been asked for centuries by the peasants for medical help. Accordingly, some medical experience had been accumulated and transferred from generation to generation within the rural part of the clerical estate. Thus, the rural priests were not prepared to consider themselves exclusively as simple servants of the lowest rank of physicians.

In fact, homeopaths were the only educated Russian medical practitioners who stressed constantly that the rural clergy may and even must, maintain medical affairs in their local parishes (meaning, naturally, that the only way these non-surgical medical affairs were to be maintained, was the homeopathic one). Moreover, the homeopathic practitioners openly claimed that the Orthodox clergy in general and the rural clergy especially, were genuine supporters and allies, and therefore issued homeopathic literature for the clergymen. No doubt, such a relationship flattered the clergymen and encouraged further collaboration between homeopaths and the clergy. Additionally, as we saw in the previous sections, social and political changes carried out in Russian society and the Russian Orthodox Church, particularly in the last decades of the 19^th century, enforced this collaboration and caused emergence of the clerical-homeopathic symbiosis in Russia.

The first time that Russian clergymen, especially the rural clergy, were acquainted with homeopathy was during the cholera epidemic of the 1830s, when landowners successfully treated their peasants with homeopathic medicines⁴⁸. Individual homeopathic physicians around 1840—1850, working in provincial cities, joined educated people like teachers and priests in order to provide homeopathic treatment of peasants in villages. For example, Dr. Vladimir Dal' had practiced homeopathy till 1859. Then he left medicine and devoted the rest of his days to studying philology⁴⁹.

[...] By his initiative, not only in the Nizhny Novgorod district hospital [where Dr. Dal' had been appointed Director], but also in the whole district, homeopathic treatment was introduced. This healing method was maintained by the priests and all persons competent to use homeopathic knowledge⁵⁰.

However, the real collaboration between homeopaths and the clergy started in Russia after 1860. There are some explanations for this situation. Firstly, the experience of the Russian homeopaths in the 1860's, as discussed above⁵¹ and especially the unsuccessful attempt to publish a homeopathic periodical for physicians during the years 1861—63, reinforced the conviction of some homeopaths and laymen that it would be impossible to spread homeopathy in Russia by relying only on physicians. Secondly, with the introduction of zemstvo medicine, most homeopathic physicians continued practicing in the large cities, while those who moved to provincial areas in the country, disseminated homeopathy among the educated people living there. As an example I cite the experience of homeopath Dr. Yuly Lukovsky (1833?—1912), who had graduated from Warsaw University in 1857, had practiced in the Kovno (now Klaipeda, Latvia) region and in 1866 started working in the Irkutsk province in Siberia. At first the public treated his methods with distrust but soon after some successful treatments of diseases which were considered by local allopaths incurable (thyroiditis, lupus, carbuncles) Dr. Lukovsky reportedly earned full public confidence. Having a side interest in the natural sciences, Dr. Lukovsky collected stones according to the request of a London museum. Making rounds in the province for this aim, Dr. Lukovsky, along the way, treated successfully the Russian Orthodox missionaries who were working in the area among the native non-Russian Altaian inhabitants. The missionaries very quickly learned the principles of homeopathy and joined homeopathic treatment to their spiritual endeavors. Furthermore, Dr. Lukovsky helped in the recovery of the Archimandrite (later Archbishop) of the Irkutsk Innokenty monastery, priest Veniamin. This priest became a follower of homeopathy and in the 1880s, he joined the St. Petersburg Society of the Followers of Homeopathy. At Veniamin's request, the Archbishop of Irkutsk ordered his clergy to buy homeopathic kits as well as homeopathic manuals and to distribute them among the missionaries. Later, at the meeting of the Viatka Committee of the Orthodox Missionary Society in 1871, it was declared that even though well known for their own achievements in medicine, lamas (Buddhist-Lamaist priests) were startled by the success of the missionaries' treatments; those treatments strongly influenced the decision of the non-Russians to become Christians⁵². One of the local non-Russian rulers, together with his close retainers, became Christians; the ruler himself asked to join the St. Petersburg Society of Homeopathic Physicians as a correspondent member. The Viatka committee decided to buy three homeopathic chests and manuals in order to distribute them among local missionaries⁵³.

Another important reason for collaboration between Russian homeopaths and the Church in the 1860s, should be mentioned. At about that time the influence of German physicians on Russian medicine had significantly weakened. Positions on teaching staffs of the universities had now been occupied more and more by native Russians⁵⁴. An overwhelming number of graduated physicians were Orthodox Russians. This trend of gradual russification of Russian medicine, although less pronounced, existed also in the Russian homeopathic domain⁵⁵. In my opinion, the Russian clergymen (well known for their traditional xenophobic disposition) had never been ready to collaborate with non-Orthodox Christians of any rank and profession, but were ready to learn from homeopathic physicians who were Orthodox Russian. As the most expressive example I can mention a German physician Dr. Fedor (Friedrich) Haas (1780—1853), whose distinguished motto "Hurry up with doing well" has been known to any educated man in Russia. Analyzing his activity (in his capacity of the chief physician of the Moscow jails) which was, in fact, turned exclusively to the welfare of the sick and poor Russian people, Lindenmayer testifies: "As a German and a Catholic, Haas could never receive official recognition from the Orthodox Church"⁵⁶.

Speaking of the meeting of homeopaths and clergymen, the merits of Vasily Deriker need to be especially recognized. Deriker did not finish his studies of medicine in the Moscow University and never graduated officially, but he dedicated his life to publicizing homeopathy as a translator, writer and editor⁵⁷. He felt that in Russia homeopathy would need the educated people's support. In 1860, he turned to the laymen with the brochure "To the priests and all educated men about domestic treatment within the people"⁵⁸. This brochure was republished 4 times during the 1860s and the 1870s. In 1862, the brochure was published in the social and political periodical "Narodnaia beseda"⁵⁹ as an article. In his writing Deriker emphasized that every educated man living within a rural community, and the priest especially, ought to provide help to the helpless diseased peasants. This help must not only be given by disseminating hygienic knowledge (as was recommended by the regulars), but also by provision of treatment. Because the allopathic drugs could be very dangerous in the hands of laymen, the most appropriate treatment should be homeopathic. Such homeopathic treatment by laymen carried only the danger of an innocent loss of the time of the patient whilst physicians are absent any way. Deriker's article was immediately reprinted in two other public periodicals: in "Severnaia pchela" partially and "Syn Otechestva" in whole⁶⁰. Beyond any doubt, it was Nicholas Grech (whose role in the development of Russian homeopathy will be discussed in the chapter "Homeopathy and zemstvo medicine") who stood behind those publications. The publications led to such broad public resonance that the Medical Department was forced to publish in those same periodicals the caution that "homeopathy had never been supported by medical authorities because it contradicts the findings of the natural sciences"⁶¹. During the 1860s and the 1870s V. Deriker published some 15 books which were really indigenous Russian homeopathic self-treatment books, different both by their attractive language and style from the dry translations of the books by Hartmann, Müller, Constantine Hering and Jahr that had been published earlier. The Russian lay reader finally received the needed comprehensive works on homeopathy written for him in clear Russian language and adapted to his needs⁶².

I have found it difficult to discover any additional published information on the homeopathic activities of the Russian clergy in the 1860s, but this subject appears more frequently in the 1870s. In the 1870s homeopathy became more and more widespread all over provincial Russia, supported by the increasing disappointment from early zemstvo medicine. Homeopathic periodicals often informed their readers of such examples. In the editorial "Homeopathy in the province" in a homeopathic periodical it was written:

We have received from [the city of] Orlov of the Viatka province a message that homeopathic treatment is growing there from day to day. There are homeopathic medicine chests almost in every home [...]. This 'homeopathic fashion' could be explained, according to our correspondent, by the fact that the allopathic physicians are absolutely inaccessible to the wide public. The zemstvo-employed municipal physician does not visit poor sick persons in their homes without a fee of one ruble; otherwise he requires the patient to appear at the hospital (while the patient is unable to rise from his bed!). When the physician receives the required fee, he visits the patient at the time he prefers. By the way, the zemstvo pays the physician 1,250 rubles [yearly] and the city adds 650 rubles [...]. Our correspondent from Viatka cites a selection from "Kazan' Physicians Society's Transactions" about one zemstvo meeting's decision to treat homeopathically in the whole uezd [district]. Due to the absence of any homeopathic physician it was decided to let the regular physician of the uezd treat patients with homeopathy. [Our correspondent] adds: 'Homeopathy has become a domestic medicine [...] among all the estates of Russia. First it spread among landowners, now among the clergy as well. We can count hundreds of priests of the Ufa, Orenburg and Viatka provinces, who carry out this work with great success, helping with their self-treatment books the helpless rural population. The Tula's zemstvo tried hard to introduce homeopathy to the Tula's clergy. It would be worthwhile that Viatka's zemstvo, which is considered to be very progressive, and which has spent 1,256,000 rubles for medicine, should pay attention to homeopathy in order to save money. Or at least not to allow such persecutions like those suffered by feldsher Vassil'ev in Orlov uezd as a result of his treating with homeopathic drugs.'⁶³

Copyright © Alexander Kotok 2001
Mise en page, illustrations Copyright © Sylvain Cazalet 2001