| THE LIGA LETTER - Summer 2001 |
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Election of the Executive Committee Introduction to the Candidates The 56th Congress of LMHI is by meetings of the International Council. The new National Vice Presidents attending the meeting will have been elected by their national association(s); however, the members of the LMHI Executive Committee will be elected in Sibiu. The following individuals have presented themselves as candidates for the respective offices of the Executive Committee. Candidate for President Born on November 5, 1956 in Selva, Mallorca, a village of 1300 in habitants; mountains, blue sky, plants and animals were his world. The second of three children, and the son of Pere Amengual, a general practitioner who specialized in Neurology and Psychiatry, and grandson of Jaume Amengual, a pharmacist, Dr. Carles Amengual has in his family uncles and cousins who are physicians and pharmacists; this is the origin of his early interest in that field. He grew up in this village until the age of 10 years, and then he went to Palma, to the Franciscan college for middle and high school. At the age of 16, he started medicine at the University of Barcelona. It was such a nice time in this wonderful city! During his medical studies, he decided to study acupuncture after knowing of it through a lecture by Felix Mann, who had written a book on the subject. His first contact with homeopathy was through the Masrio Marzetti book, and the philosophy of this old medicine was a great discovery for him, as well as that of medicinal plants, because of the influence of pharmacy on his family. After completing his internship at the Palma Hospital and finishing his medical degree, he went to the China Medical College in Taiwan where he spent three years (1979-1982) studying Chinese Medicine. Then he spent several months at the Department of Botany of Los Baños University (Philippines) with Prof. Ludiyana S. de Padua. When he returned, he licensed in Biological Sciences at the University of the Balearic Islands (1987) and later he obtained the specialty in Pharmaceutical botany at the School of Pharmacy of the University of Pisa, Italy (1989). In 1983 he married Damiana Sastre, a teacher and nurse, and they have three daughters: Damiana, Maria Lara and Maria de Lluc. They live in an old house full of plants and animals. He has been a vegetarian since the age of 23, and his physical-mind (all is one!) activities are martial arts and distance running. After his studies at the Academia Médico Homeopathica de Barcelona, and several stays at the faculty of Homeopathy of London, he spent a year at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Oaxaca, Mexico, with Dr. Proceso Sanchez Ortega and his team. There he did his clinical practice mostly with Dr. Roberto Lobez Hernandez. When he returned to his country, he was elected LMHI National Vice President for Spain in 1988 at the congress in Athens until 1994. In 1990, he was one of the founders of the European Committee for Homeopathy, and he was coordinator of the Subcommittee of Education for three years. In 1990, he served as president of the 45th LMHI Congress in Barcelona, and in 1991, he became the president of the Academia Médico Homeopathica de Barcelona until today. As the Academic Director of the Postgraduate Homeopathic Diploma of the dundacio Bosch I Gimpera/University of Barcelona, he is teaching Materia Medica and Pharmacognosy there since 1992. He has written about several subjects: plants and poetry, minerals and medicine, balearic medicinal plants, pharmacognosy and homeopathic materia medica, and he is doing regular language translations (books and seminars which, he states, is a “nice way of learning!”). In 1991 and 1992, he was with the team of Homeopaths without Borders at the Cholera epidemics in Peru. He has been a medical adviser with Greenpeace for several years. He is a founding member of the group Scientists Against Incineration (because the enormous bad effects on life waste combustion), a movement headed by Dr. Paul Connet (USA), Dr. Barry Commoner (USA) and Dr. Otmar Wasermann (Germany). He has planned to make a non-profit foundation for a Medicinal Botanical Garden and Research Center (he hopes the funds will arrive one day!). A Collection-Museum of Pharmacy is already going on, with three pharmacies from 1868, 1899 and 1950. In his clinical practice he has a great interest in Pediatrics and terminal care patients; the two edges of the never ending circle of life. He was elected General Secretary of LMHI in New Delhi in 1995, and has served as its Prime Vice President since 1998. Candidate for Prime Vice President Dr. Corrado Bruno was born August 23, 1954, in Genoa, Italy. He attended the Medical School at Santa Casa de Misericordia de Sao Paulo where he specialized in pediatrics. He has been a teacher at the Association Paulista de Homeopatia in Sao Paulo since 1982, and taught at the Association Medica Homeopatia de Paran from 1984 to 1992. He was a coordinator of the Advanced Course on Homeopathy taught by Prof. Alfonso Masi Elizalde from the Centro Internacional de Estudos Homeopaticos James Tyler Kent in Sao Paulo in 1986-87. He also served as a coordinator of the courses offered by the Escuela Medica Homeopatica Argentina in Sao Paulo, 1986-1987; of the International Recycling Courses on Homeopathic Medicine in Sao Paulo, 1988-1990; of the Recycling in Homeopathic Pharmacy Courses Sao Paulo, 1988-1990; and of the Recycling in Homeopathic Medicine Course in Bahia, 1988-1992. He was responsible for one of the Teaching Ambulatories of the Association Paulista de Homeopatia and Vice-President responsible for the teaching of the Association He has held the following positions:
Candidate for General Secretary Ulrich D. Fischer, MD, was born on 14 July 1954 in a small village near Stuttgart, Germany. Due to his homeopathic veterinarian father, he was early in touch with Principles of Homeopathy. Growing up between horses, cows, pigs and dogs, holding bottles of Nux vomica, Pulsatilla and Sulphur. There did not exist any other type of medicine either for his brothers and sisters, or his father’s patients. After finishing high school at the International Boarding School of Salem, he decided to study medicine. During the time he had to wait for the registration at the medical university, he started studying Homeopathy with Dr. Voegell of Switzerland, Prof. Dr. Dorcsi of Vienna, and Dr. Eichelberger of Munich. Due to the unsatisfactory conditions at the Medical Universities in Germany at that time, he decided to learn Spanish and traveled to Mexico. Here he applied and was accepted, then studied and earned his degree in Medicine at the Universidad Metropolitana in Mexico City (1978-83). Also, during the same time, he studied several years at the postgraduate school Homeopatia de Mexico of Dr. P. Sanchez Ortega. Thereafter, he stayed on as a teacher at Homeopatia de Mexico, while balancing his private family practice and his work in the slum projects “women’s self help health program,” in Mexico City. Hahnemann once proclaimed after his clinical studies in Vienna, that everything he could call doctor in himself was due to his teachers in Vienna. Like Hahnemann, Dr. Fischer, too, holds great respect and enduring ties to his teachers, mentors and friends in Mexico. His years in Mexico, not only included extensive exchange and studies there, but also gave opportunities to get to know other very important teachers in South America, like P. Paschero, F. Risquez, A. Masi and Eizayaga. Since his return from Mexico, he has a homeopathic family practice in Freiburg. Since 1984, he has been a teacher in the 3 year program in homeopathy for medical doctors. For 10 years, he has had the official teaching position for homeopathy at the Pharmaceutical Institute at the University in Freiburg. S. Hahnemann’s studies about the chronic miasms and their later analysis or interpretation by authors like J. T. Kent, J. H. Allen and C. V. Boenninghausen are of Dr. Fischer’s special interest. With this in mind, he has given several courses in Germany, Austria, India, and Italy. He has also published different articles in the Allgemeine Homöopathische Zeitung and the Zeitschrift für Klassische Homöopathie under these interests. In 1991 he was elected LMHI Vice President for Germany and in 1990 he was one of the founders of the European Committee for Homeopathy and still represents Germany in the Subcommittee for Politics and Education. Since 1997, he has been a member of the board of the German Association of Homeopathic Physicians. The outcome of an International conference with Dr. Ortega and Dr. Dorsel in Mexico 1985 was meeting his wife Anita, an American teaching nurse. They share their house in the Black Forest with their 2 sons, Lukas and Dominik. His other interests are studying philosophy, riding a mountain bike, skiing with his sons and, when time allows, mastering his golf swing. He has served as Prime General Secretary of LMHI since 1998. Secretary for Archives Dr. Jose Matuk Kanan presents himself as a candidate, wishing us to regard him as a friend, one homeopathic doctor who wants to work for the Liga, and to continue working for its membership. Born in Mexico City on January 3, 1957, he studied medicine in the Faculty of Medicine in the National Autonomous University of Mexico UNAM. He is happily married to his wife, Norma, and they have four children. His postgraduate homeopathic studies occurred through Homeopathia de Mexico with official registration for homeopathy. During these studies he was President, Director of the School, and Treasurer. He also taught different classes there in Doctrine, Materia Medica, Repertory and History until 1996. His history in the Liga is well known as he has served as Assistant of the General Secretary, Assistant for the National Vice President for Mexico, and for the past 6 years as Secretary for Public Relations. Dr. Matuk understands that the position of General Secretary for Archives involves much work, including the enormous responsibility to disseminate to all Liga members the information we keep in our archives. The history of the Archives is interesting, but this must be useful for everybody. Working with the files that we have, he wishes to recompile all of the contemporary works in homeopathy made for the Liga, such as updating the records of the different Congresses. This work is important to him and of great interest. Secretary for Pharmacy Karen Berenice Denez lives in Florianopolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil. She attended the Federal University of Santa Catarina in florianopolis and graduated with a degree in Pharmacy in 1990. She specialized in homeopathic pharmacy in Curitiba, Brazil, in 1991 through the Association Medica Homoepathica do Paran, achieved the Homeopathic Pharmacist Title in 1994 through the Brasilian Association of Homeopathic Pharmacists, and qualified in Manipulation Pharmacy in 1996 at the University of Vale o Itajai. She is currently finishing her mastership as production engineer through the Federal University of Santa Catarina. She has attained the following professional achievements: Participated in the ABFH Conference about Pharmacists’ Education, May 2001, Pharmacist Federal Council, Curitiba, Brazil Presented "The Skyline of Homeopathic Teaching in the Brazilian Graduation” and "The Skyline of Homeophatic Teaching in the Brazilian Specialization" at the II Teaching Homeopathic Pharmacists meeting in august 2000. She participated in the Liga Congress in New Delhi, India, in 1995 and in Amsterdam in 1998. PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES: Partner in a Dermus Allopathic and Homeopathic Pharmacy PROPOSITION: I would like to thank Amarylis Cesar for her invitation for my partipation in the Executive Committee, for the office of Secretary of Pharmacy. For me, it is very important to have somebody from Brazil in this office because of the work that has been initiated here in Brazil . Secretary for Public Relations Dr. Cremonini was a physician at the Cordoba National University 1963-1969 with the degree of Medical Doctor with the specialty of surgery. For 5 years he was in clinical practice at the Catedra of Semiology San Roque’s Hospital, Cordoba, Argentina. He studied homeopathy 12 years with his father who practiced over 60 years (50 years as a homeopathic physician). Dr. Cremonini took the three year course from 1975-1978 (600 hours) on Unicyst Homeopathy delivered in Cordoba (CEMHHC) by D. Tomas Pablo Paschero, Dr. Alfonzo Masi Elizalde, Dr. Eugenio Candegabe and other professors of the Escuela Medica Homeopatica Argentina. He also took a homeopathic Medical course delivered by Dr. Proceso Sanchez Ortega in Mexico City in 1976 (30 hours), and the 120 hour International Homeopathic course LUIMO Roma 1977 delivered by Dr. Tomas Paschero, Dr. Proceso Sanchez Ortega and Dr. Antonio Negro. He completed a postgraduate homeopathic course at the University of Rio de Janeiro in 1979 and an intensive course of Materia Medica Homeopatica AMHA in Buenos Aires in 1979. In 1982 he participated in a 30 hour intensive workshop on Homeopathic Materia Medica EMHA, and a homeopathic postgraduate course in theory and practice at the University of Tucuman in 1984. In May 1968 he participated in the Assistant Course Medical Emergencies, National University of Cordoba, Argentina. He served as Assistant to the 26th Congress of LMHI in November, 1971, in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Assistant to the 29th Congress of the LMHI in May 1974 in Washington, DC. In July 1976 he was Organizer of the first Congress of the EMHA where he also presented a paper. He also presented a paper in November 1977 at the 2nd Congress of EMHA in Mar del Plata, Argentina, where he served as an assistant. In August 1978 he was named as a representative to the 8th Assembly of Homeopathy of Mexico and presented a paper. He presented papers and served as an assistant at the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th Congresses of EMHA, the 34th and 35th and 36th Congresses of LMHI and the Homeopathic Panamerican Congress in Rio de Janeiro. At the 36th congress of LMHI in Rome, Dr. Cremonini was a member of a round table discussion. In 1983 he was Assistant to the 1st Journeys on Medical Heterodoxias organized by the Medicas Council of Cordoba and Assistant, Member of a round Table and presented a paper Iberoamerican Congress of Homeopathy AMHA in Buenos Aires. He would like to continue to support the Liga as he has in the past. Years ago, at the LMHI Congress in Athens, Dr. Cremonini presented a plan to give greater emphasis to Public Relations, not only in the area of informing the members, which is very important, but also to improve public relations with other institutions of academic or alternative medicines in order to fulfill the needs of patients and our medical science. Secretary for Education Leopold Drexler, born on June 3, 1949, in Vienna, studied medicine from 1969 to 1976, together with sociology, from 1974 to 1976 at University of Vienna. In 1980 he became a specialist in General Medicine at the Poliklinik in Vienna. Until 1982 he worked at a rehabilitation center for cardiology. His first contact with homeopathy in was 1973. In 1976, he participated at the homeopathic outpatients’ department at the Poliklinik under guidance of Mathias Dorcsi, with whom he had cooperated since 1977. He first lectured on homeopathy in 1979 and has given regular lectures since 1980. Since then he has managed the courses concerning the training of doctors in Baden near to Vienna. He has conducted lectures and seminars in Austria, Germany and Italy. From 1991 to 1998, he organized and conducted the regular training for MD’s in the Czech Republic and from 1992 to 1999 in Slovakia. He has had diverse publications on homeopathic history and therapeutical topics. He has lectured at the Liga Congresses in Vienna, Washington, Cologne and Cordoba, Argentina. His has been in private homeopathic practice in Feldkirch (Vorarlberg) since 1982. He is married and has five children. Secretary for Research Maria L. Lara-Marquez, MD, PhD, native of New York City, was reared and educated most of her life in Caracas, Venezuela. She graduated from Medical School in 1983 in the Medical School J. M. Vargas, of the Universidad Central de Venezuela, which ranks first in that country. She became a homeopathic practitioner in 1985, after a two-year theoretical-clinical post-graduate program directed by the Fundacion Venezolana de Medicina Homeopathica (FVMH). The faculty of this program was constituted of prominent teachers from the Latin American Schools of Homeopathy from Venezuela, Mexico and Argentina. Because of her interest of developing research in homeopathy linked to basic and clinical sciences, she completed a Master of Sciences in Immunology (1987-90) in a research institute of Venezuela (IVIC). Afterwards she completed a Clinical Residency Program in Allergy and Clinical Immunology in a major military hospital in Venezuela in 1992. She taught in the post-graduate course of Homeopathy of the FVMH in Caracas Venezuela between 1990-1993. In the summer of 1993 she moved to Boston and is now based in USA. Dr. Lara-Marquez spent three years as a visiting scientist and then as a research fellow in Harvard Medical School in the Department of Pathology and Department of Internal Medicine, doing advance post-doctoral training in the immunology and genetics of asthma. In 1996, she moved to Ohio to join a post-doctoral training program in Psychoneuro-immunology and at the same time completed a doctoral program in the field of neuro-immunology in the Department of Molecular Virology, Immunology and Medical Genetics of the Ohio State University. Dr. Lara-Marquez is expanding her area of research and, in addition to homeopathic therapy of asthma, she is also interested in investigating the applications of homeopathy in wound healing. She is author of several publications in asthma and immunology published in international journals and conducted the first placebo controlled clinical immunological trial of homeopathic treatment for asthma done in the Americas. Immediate Past President On August 7, 1930, Dr. Imberechts was born in Gembloux, Belgium, a small town of 7,000 inhabitants at that time. He is the oldest of nine children of Arthur Constant Joseph Imberechts, a general practitioner, who specialized in Dentistry and Stomatology, and during WWII, shifted his practice and specialized in General Surgery. In the 50’s, the senior Imberechts eventually founded a clinic in Gembloux, a small one, with only 40 beds including the maternity. At that time, the general practitioners were delivering the babies at home and had started to go to a maternity for it. His mother, Therese Grootaers, is the daughter of Ludovic Grootaers, a Germanic philologist who made a Dutch-French dictionary. Having attended a Jesuit college in Godinne and Basse-Wavre College, he studied Medicine at the Catholic University of Louvain from 1956 until 1966. there he dedicated his free time to Anatomo-Pathology, politics, founded the International Center for Foreign Students, studied philosophy and learned different languages. In 1966 he married Simonne Van Binst, a teacher in French and Philosophy. She died from a brain cancer in 1988. Dr. Imberechts was preparing an internship in Biology and Anatomo-Pathology when he was hired by Parke-Davis and Co., as parttime medical director of their Benelux branch and was also in charge of the phase IV trials in clinical investigation for the new products, which explains his interest in Pharmacology. Meanwhile, he was parttime assistant in Anatomo-Pathology at the Brugmann Hospital of the University of Brussels. But he had already met Dr. Jean Mouffe and helped him with the dissections of calf’s embryos that he was using for treatments of cellulotherapy, the technique started by Dr. Niehans in Montreu, Switzerland. Dr. Mouffe was also a homeopathic physician and from him he received his first information about homeopathy in 1965. Since then, he followed the teaching of the Belgian School for Homeopathy and he presented a dissertation on the Snake Venoms to become a member of the Royal Society for Homeopathy in 1968. In 1970 in Vichy he met Dr. Pierre Schmidt at a Liga Congress. Thereafter he spent one weekend a month in Geneva until 1977. It was at Dr. Schmidt’s surgery that he met Dr. Tomas Paschero and in 1972, during the congress of the Liga in Brussels he met Dr. Proceso Sanchez Ortega. Dr. Imberechts was almost the only one of the participants who was fluent in Spanish. Dr. Charles Kennedy and Dr. Imberechts met in the 70’s and have met several times a year since, with the courses at the Faculty of Homeopathy in London and in the British study group and in the annual multigroup meetings of the Homeopathia Europea and Internationalis. From 1972-82 he spent several weeks in Mexico every year working with Dr. Ortega and his team. With Dr. Albert Pladys from La Panne, Belgium, he founded in 1973, the first study group that later developed into several study groups in Europe and USA and South American, becoming Homeopathia Europea and in 1984, Homeopathia Internationalis. Dr. Imberechts met Dr. Donald Foubister in the British Congress in Stirling, Scotland, in 1975 and worked with him in several meetings a year until the latter’s death in 1987. In the Liga Congress in New Delhi, 1977, Dr. Imberechts was nominated Secretary for Education after Dr. Spiros Garzonis, and he stayed in that job until 1982 (Brighton Congress). He became Deputy National Vice President for Belgium in Athens 1976 and Belgium National Vice President in 1979 (Hamburg congress). In 1978 he became a member of Academia Medico-Homeopathica de Barcelona. In London he became a member of the Homeopathic Faculty of the United Kingdom and in 1986 he was nominated a Fellow of the Faculty of Homeopathy. Then, in 1984, he became a corresponding member of the American Institute of Homeopathy. In 1990, Dr. Imberechts was one of the founders of the European Committee for Homeopathy, he was a general coordinator of its different subcommittees and has served as President of LMHI since 1998. Candidate for Secretary of the Newsletter Incorporated in 1881 in Washington, D.C., the National Homœopathic Hospital in Washington, DC, was the site of the birth of baby girl Chase to John Edward and Julia Dobromilska Chase. Thus, a little unusual for American homeopathic physicians of her post-war generation, Sandra M. Chase, M.D., D.Ht., was born into homeopathy, though neither of her parents were physicians. Her father, John E. Chase, had suffered with a throat condition in youth which did not respond to conventional treatment. His mother took him to distinguished homeopath, Julia Minerva Green, M.D., co-founder of the American Foundation of Homeopathy and creator of the Postgraduate Physicians’ Course that filled the need for classical homeopathic training for graduate physicians in the USA, as most of the nineteenth century established homeopathic medical colleges had closed their doors or become allopathic. Having obtained a Bachelor of Arts in General Science-Pre-Medicine in 1967 from Bridgewater College, Bridgewater, Virginia, Dr. Chase entered Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania to obtain her medical degree. Interestingly, that College, established in 1850 by Quakers for the education of women in medicine, opened its doors in the same house on Arch Street in Philadelphia wherein in 1848 Hahnemann Medical College had begun its operations. Moreover, early on WMC’s Chairman of Pediatrics was homeopath William Griggs, M.D. A 1971 graduate of Women’s which became co-educational in 1969 and merged with Hahnemann in 1993, Dr. Chase then entered an Internship and Residency through the Medical College of Virginia Department of Family Practice. Initially, Board Certified in Family Practice and, later, a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians, she obtained her training in homeopathy through the National Center for Homeopathy National Center for Instruction in Homeopathy and Homeotherapeutics Courses and by preceptorship with Maesimund B. Panos, M.D., D.Ht., who had been a protégé and then a partner of Julia Minerva Green, M.D., until the latter’s death in 1965 at age 92. Dr. Chase has given of her time to various homeopathic organizations over the years, regionally, nationally, and internationally. She started serving on the Board of Directors of the National Center for Homeopathy, a public, non-profit educational information organization, in 1976. She has served as NCH Vice President, NCH President, NCH Director of Publications, and a member of the Faculty of the NCHIHH Postgraduate Course. In 1983, Dr. Chase met the pre-requisites and passed the examination of the American Board of Homeotherapeutics, the homeopathic specialty Board in the USA for medical and osteopathic physicians. She currently serves as that organization’s Secretary. A member of the American Institute of Homeopathy, the oldest national medical professional organization in the USA (1844), since 1975, Dr. Chase served as AIH President from 1997-2000 when she planned the momentous centennial celebration marking the 100th anniversary of the dedication of the Hahnemann Monument in Washington, DC. She continues to serve on the AIH Board as a Trustee. She is the Secretary of the Homeopathic Pharmacopœia Convention of the United States which is charged with the maintenance and publication of the Homœopathic Pharmacopœia of the United States. She is also Secretary-Treasurer of the Southern Homeopathic Medical Association of the United States. In 1983 she became Assistant National Vice President, LMHI, USA, to the late Dr. Frederic Schmid. On his death, it fell to her to Chair the Organizing Committee for the 42nd Congress of LMHI held in Washington, D.C. in 1987. She has served as National Vice President, LMHI, USA; General Secretary for Propaganda, and Prime Vice President. She served as President of the LMHI from 1995-1998 and has been Immediate Past President to the present. She is the author of a popular general introductory pamphlet "Homœopathy, A Brief Overview," as well as numerous articles published in the Homeopathy Today and the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy. "Swelter'd Venom, Sleeping Got: Bufo" was published in the JAIH and Homœopathic Links. Dr. Chase finds osteopathy, particularly cranial osteopathy, helpful in treating many of her patients. She is fortunate to have several excellent such practitioners near her for referral purposes. What spare time Dr. Chase has from her twenty-six year old private family practice in Fairfax, Virginia, and her many organizational activities, she spends camping in her micro motor home “Minimum Dose,” pursuing her interest in wildflower photography, international travel and taking ride-runs with her mountain bicycle and her eight year old Black Labrador Retriever, Sable. |