What the winner of the first Nobel Prize in Physiology or medicine in 1901 had to say about homeopathy

 Emil Adolf von Behring (1905)

The Father of Immunology

Emil Adolf von Behring (1854–1917) won the first Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1901 for his discovery of the diphtheria antitoxin.

In 1892 Behring actually experimented with serial (homeopathic) dilutions and found paradoxically enhanced immunogenic activity, but he was advised to suppress this experiment due to the aid and comfort it would provide to homeopaths. Only after he won the Nobel Prize did he feel comfortable in making public these experiments

Ref: Coulter, H.L, Divided Legacy: A History of the Schism in Medical Thought, Volume IV: Twentieth-Century Medicine: The Bacteriological Era. The North Atlantic Books, Berkley, 1994, p. 97

Behring broke from orthodox medical tradition by recognizing the value of the homeopathic law of similar in 1905

Ref: Dana Ullman http://bit.ly/HdOryq

He asserted that vaccination is, in part, derived from the homeopathic principle of similars.“In spite of all scientific speculations and experiments regarding smallpox vaccination, Jenner’s discovery remained an erratic blocking medicine, till the biochemically thinking Pasteur, devoid of all medical classroom knowledge, traced the origin of this therapeutic block to a principle which cannot better be characterized than by Hahnemann’s word: homeopathic. Indeed, what else causes the epidemiological immunity in sheep, vaccinated against anthrax than the influence previously exerted by a virus, similar in character to that of the fatal anthrax virus? And by what technical term could we more appropriately speak of this influence, exerted by a similar virus than by Hahnemann’s word “homeopathy”? I am touching here upon a subject anathematized till very recently by medical penalty: but if I am to present these problems in historical illumination, dogmatic imprecations must not deter me.”

Ref: Behring, A. Emil von, Moderne phthisiogenetische und phthisoitherapeutische: Probleme in historischer Beleuchtung. Margurg: Selbsteverlag des Verfassers, 1905