Medizin, Gesellschaft, und Geschichte : Jahrbuch des Instituts für Geschichte der Medizin der Robert Bosch Stiftung
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This article traces the relatively early and successful establishment, institutionalization and professionalization of homoeopathy in the kingdom of Bavaria. Prevailing antirationalist and antimaterialist tendencies in "romantic" Bavaria made homoeopathy a particularly attractive option among parts of the clerical-conservative and aristocratic ruling elites. ⋯ The first (honorary) German professorship for homoeopathy was established in Munich and a homoeopathic hospital prospered. In contrast to other German states, however, a homoeopathic mass movement failed to develop, presumably due to the relative weakness of bourgeois culture and to the enduring predominance of traditional "folk"-medicine as the major alternative to academic medicine among wide sectors of the population.
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The processes leading to doctors becomming professional were not until recently compared on an international scale. There is, however, still no such comparison for doctors practicing alternative medicine. The national homoeopathic doctors' association of Germany and that of the United states of America are taken here as examples to examine the similarities and differences on the road to recognition and influence. The respective institutional frameworks of these two medical markets have a considerable effect on the possibilities of homeopathy and for those practicing homeopathy to organize themselves as a recognized profession.