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Dr. Ledermann is interviewed by Dr. Brian Kaplan: BK: Hello. My name's Dr. Brian Kaplan and I'm now going to interview my teacher
and mentor, Dr. Eric Ledermann.
Dr. Ledermann, can you just tell me when you were born?
EL: 16 May 1908.
BK: Dr. Ledermann tell me, when did you first
decided to become a doctor?
EL: My father was a general
practitioner and he gave me an example of an excellent doctor, and when
I left school
my mother said, "Don't
think of being a teacher!" But
I said:” My teacher thinks I would be a good teacher as I was a good
pupil”.
But my mother said: "You look at your daddy." And I said, "You're
right." I went to Freiburg, it was my first university. You have to write
down your main subject. I wrote "Medicine". Second subject, I wrote "Philosophy".
Now that was quite difficult. I did read philosophy but there was
plenty to do with medicine of course.
BK: Was your time at school
a classical education? You were studying
Latin, Greek…
EL: Well, our school had Latin and Greek as main subjects,
English was optional. Science was done very badly.
BK: And so was
there a philosophical enquiry? I mean, in the Berlin of that era, was
philosophical enquiry something fairly cultural
at that time or was
it quite
unusual?
EL: Well, we all had to read
a certain book on physiology which was written by Professor Hoeber
and I was asked to report on
the first
chapter. The
first chapter
says: “Before you understand the functions of various organs, let's
ask one question: Is there a vital force behind all this?”
BK: A
vital force?
EL: What lies behind all these
manifestations of the functions of the heart, lungs, kidneys, etc? The
answer is a Vital
Force. So I went
to the library and
said: "May I borrow a book please on the vital force?" The librarian
said, "Here it is. It's a book by Hans Driesch, ‘The Philosophy of
Organic Life‘.
BK: When he says vital force,
that sounds to me like a homeopathic term, is it ‘Vitalism?
Is that what is meant ?
EL: Yes, Hahnemann was also convinced that
there is a vital force which accounts for the efficacy of homeopathic
treatment
BK: So how does this Vital Force manifest itself?
EL:
In a holistic way... Jan Smuts coined the term Holism
BK: That was in 1926
in his book ”Holism and Evolution”
EL: Smuts saw holism as a feature
in the world, in the universe, in the crystal, in the organised cell,
in the multi-cellular
organism. However I differ
with
Smuts here. I concur with Kant who saw wholeness
not in the universe but in the mind. It's your mind that looks upon
some phenomena as wholes. And it's
absolutely
essential not to interpret holism as something
in the
universe
because it's in the mind. This is the way we
understand living organisms.
BK: But this is saying almost that a holistic
philosophy is subjective and not objective.
EL: But what does 'subjective'
mean? Kant said that the mind’s judgement
is objective. You cannot build a philosophy
of holism without including the influence of the mind. You cannot understand
human beings without the
Idea of
wholeness.
BK: And so that was already
happening at the time you were in medical school?
EL: Yes,
holism was of great interest to philosophers and scientists
at that time.
BK: So this whole philosophy of vitalism
and holism was still around,
and very much on the way when you picked up
this
book?
EL: Well I still have
a copy .. A friend of my father
said to him, "Your
son should not read these
books, he won't be a proper doctor."
BK: What, the books on
vitalism?
EL : Yes, he was
a was a prophet.
BK: So what now? Seventy
years later you realise
he was right?
EL: No,
he was utterly wrong, a proper doctor
ought to understand
the principles which underlie medicine.
Unfortunately such
understanding is not taught to
medical students.
BK:
Okay, so what happened? This happened soon after
having entered
you medical school, Which
year ?
EL: 1928.
BK: So then, how
did you get
on with the scientific medical approach
which is
mechanistic and not holistic ?
EL: I just repeated
what was
expected of me.
BK: But you
knew that
there was another
agenda for
you?
EL: But I
knew it was
wrong and
I told my medical friends. They wouldn't
listen. "Ledermann,
we have lots
of things
to learn in medicine, we have no time for your holism."
BK:
So you learnt
to shut up about
holism?
EL:
Yes,
BK: So you
tolerated
this
but did you feel
that
treating your own
patients
the Idea of holism
will
guide you ?
EL: Yes
BK: You
thought
this all along?
EL: Yes,
and
in those
days
a holistic approach was already
practiced
as
natural therapy
in
Germany and I had heard about it before
I
went to Edinburgh in 1933.
BK:
But
let's not
jump
too far ahead… So you finished medical school
basically.
Then tell us the story that you told me some time ago. Was it in
your internship when
the Nazis came to visit the hospital ?
EL:
I
was
a
doctor in the
children's
hospital.
BK:
And
this
was
early,
what in
your
first job as a
doctor?
EL:
No,
the
first
job
was
in
Dermatology. I was
offered
a job in
the
Department of Dermatology and Venereology, they
went
together.
BK:
They
were
combined?
EL:
Yes.
It
wasn't
a
very
happy
job
because
they were prostitutes
there,
and after
two
months the chief
of
the hospital said, "Dr. Ledermann, we have
to
transfer you to the Medical Department because the professor there
has got another
vacancy that must be filled." I met the professor and he said, "Dr.
Ledermann,
I want you to resign, because I’ve promised this job to somebody
else." I said, "Sir, I haven't got anything else
,but
I
would like to be an assistant at the children's hospital." "I
have
influence.
Secretary, please write a letter, this Dr. Ledermann is an
excellent candidate
for
Professor
Finkelstein's
hospital for sick children." I
got
the
job.
It
was
a
marvelous job, until Hitler came. Do you know what happened
then? I've told you this before.
BK: Tell
me
though,
it's
good
to
have
this
on
record.
EL:
All
the
doctors
had
to
go
to
the
porter's
lodge and the
Nazis
were there. And on
that
night I had
accepted
an invitation
from
a great friend who had invited me for
supper.
In this tense situation I couldn't remember his telephone
number.
There was a telephone directory. I picked it
up
pushed away a small book that was
lying
on the telephone directory ,and made the call: "Fritz, I'm late,
please
understand." The Nazi officer immediately grasped my arm. "You’re
under
arrest, you touched my book. And the chief, non-Jewish, doctor said, "Leave
him
alone, he hasn't done anything, let him go." He saved my life.
This
Nazi had the power to arrest people, you could go to prison for whatever
reason. You couldn't go to court and be accused
of
having touched a man's book.
BK:
So
at
that
moment
what
happened?
You
went
home
and?
EL:
I
said
to
my
father, "I've had enough." And a friend of mine,
another
doctor, had already been in England looking for opportunities
and
he wrote and said, "Eric, if you come now, if you re-register
in Edinburgh, in one year you can be registered a medical
practitioner." I
did
that.
BK: So
when
you
left,
what
did
you
say
to
your
parents?
Did
they
encourage you
to
do this?
EL: "You've got a very wonderful job in the children's
hospital here. Are you going to give that up? Hitler won't last much longer." I
said, "I'm
going", and I'm still getting a pension from Germany
which is equivalent to that of a consultant.
BK:
So that
was the
start? Okay,
so what
did you
do, get
on a boat
or did you go by train
or what did you do?
EL:
I got
on a
train and
a boat.
BK:
Soon after
that? Weeks?
EL:
A few
weeks. And
there was
a gentleman
on on
the boat,
I thought he was
English, and I said, "Tomorrow I shall have to find a place for breakfast" and
he said, "Do you know the ABC?" : "Of course I know the
ABC. I went to a very good school in Germany." ABC was a chain
of cheap restaurants all over London. So this man
thought I was crazy. He was
talking about restaurants and I was talking about
the ABC
alphabet.
BK:
So where
did you
go? Where
was this
happening?
EL:
On a
boat, crossing
the Channel.
BK:
So you
crossed the
Channel and
you were
heading for
Scotland now,
is that what happened?
EL:
I made
my way
to Edinburgh
where my
friend helped
me to
register as a
medical student.
BK:
And what
did you
do, another
year of
study ?
EL:
The examination
was after
three months
in pathology,
followed by
pharmacology then
medical jurisprudence and
the final subjects at
the end of the year
medicine surgery
and gynaecology, I managed
them all. and I was
registered as a medical
practitioner
BK:
With the
General Medical
Council.
BK: And so at that point, having got your qualifications,
now you're a doctor, what was your move now?
EL: I disappointed my father.
My friend got a job as a GP. I said, "I'm going to study Natural Therapy
under a man in Edinburgh who's got a College of Natural Therapy."
BK: He was not a doctor?
EL: No. Mr Thompson. I had
one Jewish doctor friend in Edinburgh who said: "Ledermann, you have betrayed
your profession. You've got yourself involved with Mr Thompson."
BK: But was this part of your plan in the sense that
you knew you were going to do something holistic ?
EL: Yes
BK: And what did you hear here that you hadn't heard
before?
EL: The patients were instructed in the use of hydrotherapy,
of exercises, diets including fasting which I had never heard before.
BK: But did you see this as a different philosophy of
medicine?
EL: Of course I could see they were not treating illnesses,
they were treating whole human beings.
When I had been in the children's hospital in Berlin we already had very
good results, babies being treated with cold water, they breathed in fresh air
. We attended to their diets and they got much better. That was natural therapy.
It wasn't called that, but the children's hospital in Berlin hadn't any drugs
for these children but why did they get better? Because they were treated with
natural therapy. So that was quite holistic. Then Hitler was very keen on it,
and his deputy Rudolph Hess, was a patron of a hospital where both orthodox
and holistic methods were used.
BK: And how long did you stay with Mr. Thompson in Edinburgh?
EL: About five or six months.
Then a doctor came to see me from Glasgow, and said: "Dr. Ledermann, we've got a homeopathic hospital
in Glasgow and a vacancy for a house physician. Would you like to apply?" I
said, "Yes."I was appointed house physician for six months .
BK: This was the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital?
EL: Yes, it practised very good. homeopathic medicine
.
BK: In the meantime you were learning English all along,
your English was getting better and better?
EL: I had lessons when I arrived in Edinburgh. ,
BK: So where's your Scottish accent?
EL: I had a Scottish accent too,
BK: Okay, so you entered The
Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital. This will be of great interest to the people
reading this? Who was there? Tell
me some of the names …
EL: Henderson Patrick was
the main consultant, a great friend of Sir John Weir. W. Boyd,Hamish
Boyd’s father , did scientific
work on a machine, the Emanometer, which tested the patient’s suitability
for a homeopathic remedy.The doctors were Scots, and they were very open-minded,
extremely friendly. I went to all the outpatients departments, We had a big
outpatient department, we had a small inpatient department. And nobody in
the inpatient section was under anybody else but a homeopath. If you had
a surgical operation, the surgeons cooperated with the homeopathic physicians.
BK: And this homeopathic medicine was of a nature that
you felt comfortable with. Was it holistic?
EL: I could see that the similimum
treats a whole patient …
BK: So some time during this
period you must have picked up Hahnemann’s Organon?
EL: Yes…
BK: Had you heard of Hahnemann's thinking when you were
in Germany?
EL: Yes, I'd heard of Hahnemann.
BK: And so you worked as a homeopathic physician. .
EL: I was
house physician
at the Glasgow
Homeopathic
Hospital.
BK: Okay. And then, how long
did that last for?
EL: For six months. I left Berlin in '33. I re-qualified
in Edinburgh in '34. In '35, I was at the School of Natural Therapy ,then
at the Homeopathic Hospital in Glasgow, and at the end of '35 I came to London
to
start my own practice. .
As a German subject and ‘enemy alien’ I needed support to be able
to practice in London. Sir John Weir [of the London Homeopathic
Hospital] provided me with this support.
BK: You needed the support of an influential doctor?
EL: Yes, I was an alien .My
passport had a swastika on
it! (when Marjorie [Dr Ledermann’s late wife] married me, she became an
enemy alien. Later she became a naturalised British subject although having
been born in London).
BK: So where did you start working?
EL: In Gloucester Terrace
and I was a appointed to the Children's Homeopathic Dispensary in
Shepherd's Bush for one session weekly in 1936 . When the Dispensary closed
in 1956, I was
appointed at the Royal London
Homeopathic Hospital where I rose to the position of Consultant in 1965.
EL: I joined the Nature Cure Clinic in 1936 and remained
there for over fifty years.
With regard to starting a private practice ,doctors would buy one and often
had to borrow money from the Bank which would mean paying back the loan for
about
twenty yeas. I decided to put up a plate and wait for patients.
BK: This was all private practice?
EL: In those days patients
who were working belonged to an insurance that would pay medical fees
but their families were not covered.
If you see a child and the child's not very well, how much do you charge?
Two and sixpence. They don't come in tomorrow with another two and sixpence.
BK: So you carried on doing that for a while?
EL: I had a small insurance
practice. A patient came once and said, "Dr. Ledermann, I want you send me to a throat specialist." "Can
I look at your throat, please?" "No, I don't want you to look at my
throat, I want you to send me to a throat specialist." "Don't come
back to me", I said.
BK: And so you were mainly using the stuff that you'd
learned at the Homeopathic Hospital and with Mr Thompson, mainly that?
EL: Yes, and I had an education as a doctor. I qualified
in Germany and then in Edinburgh.
BK: And the main therapeutic interventions you were making
were either homeopathic or naturopathic?
EL: Yes but if necessary I would ask a surgeon to come
in to see a patient
BK: And so then, staying a little bit with homeopathy,
as you were studying homeopathy , what were the people reading at this time?
Were they reading the British writers like Dudgeon, or was it the Americans
like Kent or the Organon? What did they talk about?
EL: Kent was still very powerful in those days. He had
started high potencies, you see. Tyler was very popular. She was great friends
with John Weir.
BK: I'm quite interested in homeopathic terms, if there
were people like Tyler and Sir John Weir. These are very Kentian people,, determined
to try to find the homeopathic remedy that suited the whole person in every
case.
EL: I kept doing natural therapy
as well, you see. And when I joined his ward round Sir John Weir
said, "This
man here knows something about diet.”
BK: Right. So just a little more, staying with homeopathy,
the thing that puzzles me a little bit, in principle, we should match the patient's
symptoms to symptoms that are produced by provers, healthy people taking the
medicines, but the truth about much of what has been written about the homeopathic
medicines is not based on the provings, it's based on clinical observation of
patients.
EL: Both the method of proving remedies on volunteers
and the method of discovering the pharmacological effects of medicines lead
to the same result , the similimum , a picture of a whole person...
But Hanemann wrote a further book after the Organon, a book on chronic diseases
and that book became now the main link with scientific conventional medicine.
When you prescribe a nosode, (a product of the disease) in potency, for instance
influensinum to prevent the symptoms of influenza or a potentised pollen extract
for hayfever this illustrates the link with scientific medicine.
BK: What I would say in homeopathy today is that there
is quite a lot of focus on finding a medicine that suits the whole person.
EL: As a homeopath you can
find the simillimum which relates the patient, to a type of a whole person,
for instance Pulsatilla is
a remedy for sensitive people who want fresh air, are better for sympathy,
suffer from secretions of their mucous membranes,are thirstless, unable
to tolerate
rich food, having changeable bowel symptoms, in a woman you find scanty painful
periods. You always treat a type of a person, not the individual “Mr.
James Brown” or “Mrs. Jane Smith.”
BK: Well, the ones who have a scientific attitude like
Peter Fisher, are doing studies to prove the efficacy of homeopathic treatment
for diseases.
EL: This idea is mistaken because the homeopathic remedy
involves a matching of bodily, mental and spiritual characteristics of real
people, whereas the disease is as a scientific concept connot include the freedom
of spiritual ethics which distinguishes man from the animals.
BK: Is it not still necessary to prove that it is the
actual homeopathic treatment that is working?
EL: Yes, when I was at the
London Homeopathic Hospital I did attempt to provide this proof and I
was helped by my colleague, Dr. Golomb.
The method was as follows: The dispenser at the hospital would, in certain
cases, replace the name of the medicine on the prescription sheet by
sugar .as instructed
by the Medical Research Council . When seeing a patient for whom we had prescribed
the 30. potency of a certain remedy .we decided that the patient was better
, worse or unchanged . Then we found out whether he had received the medicine
or the placebo.
When asking . "How are you this morning?" He might say “much
better”. " When looking up his case, we may find that he was a placebo
case – which does not prove that homeopathy is ineffective , only that
people make spontaneous recoveries Unfortunately the experiment was abandoned
when Dr. Gollomb was killed in that plane crash... We never had sufficient
material for a statistical evaluation.
BK: A proper double blind study, yes. But you shouldn't
restrict the practitioner to one medicine or one disease.
EL: I agree that this type
of investigation doesn’t
use classification of diseases which may in our skin department involve patients
who have either psoriasis or eczema. or other dermatological conditions.
But we would exclude diseases which are malignant such as melanoma. The
acne patient
for instance is for the homeopath a sufferer from a bodily, mental and spiritual
condition and if he were suicidal, he would need a homeopathic remedy which
takes into consideration this spiritual characteristic apart from the bodily
lesions on his face.
BK: You began to realise that some people have great
problems that require the studying of psychiatry by their doctor.
EL: I realised when I was working in a Berlin hospital
before my medical qualification how important the spiritual dimension in medical
practice is.
A patient suffering from severe bronchial asthma was successfully treated
by a certain drug that relieves the spasm in the bronchi, but his asthma
came back after his discharge several times. And so I asked him to explain
what brought
on these asthmatic attacks after he had left the hospital. His reply was, “It
is the fault of the scoundrel, my son-in-law. I hate him because he seduced
my daughter whom I love dearly, although he did marry her later. Each time when
we meet now I get one of them attacks of bad breathing.” I said to the
physician in charge, "You know, I'm not very pleased with this case." "Nonsense” said
the physician, “he did very well I said, “But the scoundrel, the
son-in-law wasn't considered and he is the cause of the asthma attacks.” At
that time I had no idea how to deal with such a situation.
Later I realised that my duty had been to try bringing together the patient
and the son-in-law to help my patient to overcome his hatred and rather to use
his spiritual and ethical freedom to make a new and good relationship with his
son-in-law.
BK: So when did you feel drawn to study psychotherapy
and psychiatry? How did that happen, when did it happen?
EL: In 1943 I got a job in Dr. Bierer's psychiatric day
hospital where I rose to Consulant in 1963 .
For my understanding the philosophical foundation of psychiatry and medicine
in general I was helped by lectures given by Professor Liebert who had come
to England from Germany were he had studied Kant’s philosophy... I was
introduced to Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason “., but also
to his “Critique of Practical, Ethical Reason’’ which involves
our spiritual dimension.
BK: Can you explain how the spiritual dimension is so
important in psychiatry?
EL: You first have to realise
that if psychiatry is part of scientific medicine, you may learn of scientific
psychotherapies, whether
formulated by Freud, which is based on the sexual instinct, or by Jung, who
finds archetypes the main unconscious basis, but they are unable to account
for man’s spiritual dimension. Therefore I developed a form of psychotherapy
which I called ‘true-self’ psychotherapy – which meant that
the true self is accepted by the spiritual conscience. And while Freud makes
the unconscious libido conscious and Jung makes the unconscious archetype
conscious, I make the unconscious conscience conscious.
BK: Are there methods in spiritual true-self psychotherapy
which reveal the workings of the spiritual dimension?
EL: Yes, dream analysis, for instance. A woman may be
suffering from a relationship with a man who does no allow her to be her true
self, and in a dream she swims with him in cold water and is being abused by
him at the same time. In the analysis of this dream she realises the coldness
and inappropriateness of the relationship.
BK: What other methods?
EL: Paintings of patients
may reveal their false selves. For instance, a woman painted herself
as a block completely determined by her
mother’s eyes looking down from heaven, and she admitted that this dependency
had made it impossible for her to discover who she really was. She was also
afraid that she would not be able to accept her truly self if it became known
to her. True-self psychotherapy enabled her to resolve this conflict.
BK: You did use LSD as I know, and I would like to hear
the role played by LSD in true-self psychotherapy.
EL: LSD enables some patients
to realise the false relationship enforced by their parents. One woman
in particular was brought up by a mother
who did not allow her to be aware of her own development as a woman. She
was not allowed to use the word ‘breast’, only the word ‘chest’.
She herself reported that through having had LSD, her frozen icy self had become
a warm self receptive of her true- and other true-selves. (Dr. Ledermann stopped
using LSD when the pharmaceutical industry stopped supplying the drug to doctors.
It’s use subsequently became illegal.)
BK: What about Chinese medicine?
EL: In Chinese medicine there
is no separation of bodily, mental and spiritual elements of the human
person. The same energy channel not
only refers to bodily suffering such as pain or mental suffering such as
depression but also refers to the spiritual dimension, for instance,
to make decisions to be free of anxiety in order to be creative. On my web
site (www.wholepersonmedicine.co.uk)
you will find a section which is called “An Appreciation of Chinese Medicine” which
explains the subject more fully.
In my book Medicine for the Whole Person – A Critique of scientific Medicine,
(Chrysalis Books, London, 2002,) the spiritual dimension plays a prominent
part and is considered to be manifest in the ethics of conscience and missing
in
our social-spiritual malaise.
Again in my website the same subject is extensively dealt with in ”Foundations
of Medical Humanities’”
BK: I'm delighted to see you here in yet another new
surgery with diplomas on the wall from the British Acupuncture Society and from
the Chinese Medical Institute.
EL: Can you see there's a piece of paper there?
BK: Amazing. Is this your original doctor diploma?
EL: It enabled me to be requalified in Edinburgh. This
is my doctor's diploma in Latin.
BK: It’s very unique.
I can't see a date which I'd like to see…
EL: It must have been in '32
BK: It's been a great chat. Thank you for your time. |
