NVP of Czech Republic
MUDr. Tomáš Karhan, CZ
tkarhan@volny.cz





A few words about the history of modern Czech homeopathy and its present state

I met with two Austrian colleagues at one Congress and they said, „We don‘t really know anything about you guys in the Czech Republic“. My answer was, „Well, we know about you, so we need to fix this someday.“ I was on vacation together with Reinhard, Wolfgang and our wives last year. We made many great memories, but there was no time for history. So, ladies and gentlemen, here it is finally:

In January 2018, the International Homeopathic Congress of the new association, the Czech Homeopathic Club (Cesk. Homeopatick. klub), took place in Pruhonice, a town near Prague. It was attended by 136 colleagues and guests from 7 European countries. The leaders of the three Czech homeopathic organizations were also present. The Congress was commenced by a greeting from the general secretary of Liga Medicorum Homeopathica Internationalis (LMHI) Altunay S. Agaoglu, the past president of European Committee for Homeopathy (ECH) Thomas Peinbauer and the coordinator of education Dora Patchova. The president of ECH Hélène Renoux also conveyed a warm welcome. We experienced a beautiful, sparkling homeopathic day.

With a glass of champagne, we celebrated 25 years since the beginning of the Kromeríz courses (1993-2001, renewed between 2004-2007) that until 1997 were led by a foursome of Austrian colleagues. Of the four, Susanne Diez, Leopold Drexler and Bernhard Schmid were all present at the Congress. The fourth, Hans Ziller, repeatedly connected with us on the day of the congress. Our Austrian friends influenced Czech medical homeopathy with a perfect four-layer model of the Austrian homeopathic school and with separate seminars using the suggestopedic method of teaching. We voluntarily re-visited the individual modules I-IV that we studied at Kromeríz many times even after completing them. Up to 250 participants still met at Kromeríz twice a year and the courses were professionally directed by Leopold Drexler.

At the very beginning in 1991, we had the legendary founder‘s weekend training course in Zdislavice. From 1992 a two-year course prepared by the London School of Homeopathy took place in Brno and Prague and the postgraduate year-long course in Brno. It was organized by the Hahnemann Foundation (Hahnemannova nadace) that is based in Brno. The courses were lectured by Peter Chappel, Rob Bannan, Misha Norland and a parade of others. Doctors studying homeopathy befriended the homeopathy students with no medical backgrounds. Some of these friendships have lasted to this day. We attended seminars organized by Jirí Cehovsk., the first, yet pre-revolution pioneer of modern homeopathy in our country. He founded the journal Homeopathy (Homeopatie) and published translations of many classics like Kent, Hahnemann and many more through his publishing house Alternativa right at the beginning of 1990s. Most of us did not understand English at the time, so these translations allowed us to begin the study of this discipline, which was suppressed for 40 years under the totalitarian system in our country more than anywhere else in Central Europe. Surprisingly for us, in communist East Germany during totalitarianism homeopathy worked well (including the preserved production of homeopathic medicines). We didn’t even really know this at the time. We were especially surprised to find out that homeopathy even exists. In the former Soviet Union, homeopathy wasn’t common, but was tolerated. In other countries of the Eastern bloc the situation with homeopathy was something between that of the Czech Republic and East Germany.
In 1991, the Czech-Moravian Homeopathic Association (Ceskomoravská homeopatická spolecnost) was established and subsequently accepted into the professional organization of the Czech Medical Society. Pavel Beleš, Miloš R.c and Jirí Cehovsk. were at its founding.

In 1995, the Czech Medical Homeopathic Association (Ceská lékarská homeopatická spolecnost - CLHS) was founded in reaction to its predecessor (the Homeopathic Association of the Czech Medical Society – Homeopatická spolecnost z Ceské lékarské spolecností – HS CLS) being excluded from the Czech Medical Society that year because of it allegedly not being scientific enough. We took the case to court, all the way to Strasbourg and won, but only morally. The ban remained. An interesting note is that in 1993, the HS CLS had 993 members (for comparison, the Czech Republic has 10 million inhabitants). Galina Krejcová ran the newly formed civic association with an extraordinary drive. She has remained active as a leading role in local homeopathy, organizing interesting seminars.

The Netherlands-Indian School of CLHS brought the first big names in homeopathy to us in 1995. These great teachers included Harry van der Zee, Corrie Hiwat and Jean Pierre Jansen. Their Homeopathic Links journal was published here in a mutated Czech version. The traditional cycle of weekend courses and partially Dutch week-long summer schooling were led by Jan Scholten, Deborah Collins, Ressie Moonen, Annette Sneevliet, Frederic Schroyens, Jeremy Sherr, Chetna Shuckla, Massimo Mangialavori and others. The tradition of the CLHS weekly summer schools has been active for the last 24 years.

Six to eight homeopathic associations in the Czech Republic that have been active for many years have developed summer schools, individual courses and other activities to learn homeopathy. Other nonmedical societies were formed- the Czech Homeopathic Association (CHS), which was founded upon the initiative of Jirí Cehovsky. He later established it as the Homeopathic Association (HS) in Prague, which is now led by Jan Matyáš. The homeopathic academy founded by Jirí Cehovsk. has opened a new 1st grade every year for the past 23 years. Since 1993, the courses have been organized as a collaboration with the London School of Homeopathy and with Malcolm Russell.

The Czech Chamber of Classical Homeopathy (CKKH) originated from the Hahnemann Foundation. It is currently led by Roman Lariš. After these the Homeopathic faculty was established through the clinic of Aleš Sušicky, which has a 25 year tradition, and subsequently Uroboros was founded by Iva Valentová, all in Brno. The Homeopathic Institute of Václav Hrabák and the Prague College of Classical Homeopathy of Petr Zachariáš are in Prague, and the Czech Schools of Classical Homeopathy led by Pavel Opelka are in both cities. There are also small, but very functional workgroups. There were also magazines, one called Homeopathy by Jirí Cehovsky, Arnica by Jitka Studnicná, Regulacní medicína by Kveta Vtípilová and Homeopatické listy CLHS by Tomáš Karhan.

The company Rhodon headed by Miloš Ryc has led trainings for doctors and pharmacists in clinical homeopathy from 1992, later that was taken over by the homeopathic pharmaceutical company Boiron CZ. It supports HLA which was founded in 2007. It is a guild that has a wide reach in promoting the field of clinical homeopathy through print. They publish the Homeopatic review (Homeopatické revui) and they organize clinical homeopathic trainings according to the C.E.D.H. model. The HLA used to be led by Hana Vánová and now is headed by Ilona Ludvíková. In Ostrava, the medical and pharmaceutical Academy of Classical Homeopathy (Akademie Klasického Homeopatie -AKH) led by Alexander Fesik has been developing its educational activities along with its commercial activities since 1994.

In 2004, the CLHS systematic course led by the American CLHS school of Will Taylor started. It was the second cornerstone of teaching classical homeopathy in CLHS. The shorter Israeli school, Chaima Rosenthal, ran in parallel. Thanks goes to Zuzana Škodová the former chairwoman, for the organization and implementation of the program. Between 2001-2006, under her head, the organization functioned brilliantly. In 2004, the second run of the Kromeríz courses began. Pavel Beleš and Josef Kreml were the organizers. The systematic three-year course of basic homeopathy in the CLHS school, started its first cycle in 1996 and it is currently in its seventh cycle. It has the prized ECH accreditation and it is the only organization in the Czech Republic that works in accordance to EU and Swiss homeopathic standards. The magazine Homeopatické listy was established in 1999. Up until 2007 it was headed up by Tomáš Karhan, and a total of 26 volumes were published. After the handover to Karhan’s successors, the magazine has only been published three times. The Czech-Slovak and Slovak-Czech congresses took place alternating every year. The CLHS library was created, gradually collecting up to 120 volumes. The third stage of CLHS activities started in 2007 and has been running under the leadership of Ladislav Fiala. At the beginning of CLHS welcomed well-known lecturers like Farokh Master, Louis Klein and Will Taylor, but after 2010, there was a certain loss of interest in furthering education and the group’s work. CLHS continues to host summer schools. The third cornerstone of the education in CLHS is the work of our lecturer in our summer schools. The German physician Klaus Hör has been our lecturer for over six years. Courses are fundamentally oriented toward therapeutic practice.

In 2017, the Czech Homeopathic Club (Cesk. homeopatick. klub, z.s.- CHK) was established and Tomáš Karhan took on the leadership role. The aim of CHK is to restart homeopathic activity even in the form of art and culture. Homeopathy can also be pleasurable. The club does not want to compete with other homeopathic societies. The first event was the aforementioned 2018 International Congress. We included works of composers who have been treated with homeopathic medicines:Beethoven, Wagner, Paganini, Strauss, and Schumann. Only Bach missed out on it. The works were played by a top symphony quartet. Soon after the Congress came the first edition of the electronic magazine Homeopathic horizons (Homeopatické obzory).

A lecture on The history of the beginnings of Czech homeopathy in 19th century was followed by a ceremonial organ concert held in the Jubilee Synagogue in Prague. When looking at it holistically, then why not with music, butterflies and provings. We continued with thematic excursions in the butterfly house and then in the Fata Morgana greenhouse in May of 2018. The colorful topic of butterflies as well as the rest of the electronic edition of the Homeopathic Horizons 1-2018 can be found atwww.homeoklub.cz. It includes the proving of the drug Inachis io (red admiral), which was done in cooperation with the Uroboros Association. We‘ll still continue to explore butterflies. After all, flying is so easy! For technical reasons, a seminar on the topic of ADHD has been postponed.

On the international scale CHK has been participating in the work of ECH, first, in November 2017 at a meeting in Prague and then in April 2018 in Athens. We were present at the nice Congress and at all the sessions in Sofia in November 2018. We are in contact with other societies in our country and in Europe. Currently, a seminar is prepared for the members of the club about the last things in a person’s life led by the therapist of Prague’s Jewish community Zuzana Peterová. The second Organ Concerto for CHK, now also thematic, is being organized by Václav Peter, an organ musician and teacher at AMU again in the Jubilee synagogue.

We are now considering another project -
a seminar on the current topic of the magazine. It will be to be open to the public for anyone interested in the topic. A number of contributors have met on the pages of the magazine. They would like to meet in person with other authors and inspired readers of our magazine. CHK, through its website and partly through its mailing list, is dedicated to keeping the local homeopathic community informed.