Joseph Laurie M.D. (13 June 1814 – 10 December 1865) was a British orthodox physician who converted to homeopathy, a member of the Royal College of Surgeons (Edinburgh), graduate of the Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania, Senior Physician to the Westminster and Lambeth Homeopathic Medical Institution and Dispensary, and Consulting Physician to the Hahnemann Hospital at 39 Bloomsbury Square. Joseph Laurie was an early member of the British Homeopathic Society and was also a committee member of the Association for the Protection of Homeopathic Students and Practitioners.
Joseph Laurie was born in Edinburgh but, after qualifying in medicine, moved to England and practiced at 12 Lower Berkeley Street, Portman Square. He graduated in medicine at Giessen in 1840, and in homeopathy in 1851 at the Homoeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania.
Laurie was on the Medical Council of the London Hahnemann Hospital, the Consulting Physician at the Hahnemann Dispensary, Medical Referee to the Scottish Equitable Life Assurance Society (London Branch), a former member of the Hunterian Medical Society Edinburgh, a member of the Hahnemann Medical Society, the Société Gallicane de Médecine Homœopathique, and was a prodigious author.
Joseph Laurie was also a committee member of the Association for the Protection of Homeopathic Practitioners and Students in 1851. He was a colleague of John Epps, Edward Hamilton and William Henry Mayne at the Westminster and Lambeth Homeopathic Medical Institution and Dispensary in 1850.
In September, 1841, Laurie married Anne Reid Callender (1819 – 1899). A miniature portrait by watercolourist Henry F. Tidey entitled “The Lady of Joseph Laurie Esq., M.D.” was listed in The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors in 1906. The Lauries had five children: Robert Hahnemann, Anne, Josephine, Lewis Kossuth, and Edwin Hampden Laurie.
Joseph Laurie was a student of Paul Francois Curie at the Finsbury Circus Free Dispensary for the Poor in 1837.
Joseph Laurie knew all of the early homeopaths in Britain and America, including the staff of the Hahnemann Hospital at 39 Bloomsbury Square which included John Anderson, James Chapman, Edward Charles Chepmell, Paul Francois Curie, Robert Ellis Dudgeon, Thomas Engall, Joseph Hands, Robert Hamilton, Amos Henriques, Charles Hunt, Henry Kelsall, Henry Victor Malan, James John Garth Wilkinson, David Wilson, George Wyld, William Leaf, Christian Karl Josias Bunsen, Thomas Egerton 2nd Earl of Wilton, Robert Grosvenor, Thomas Roupell Everest, Charles Powell Leslie, James More Molyneux, David Wilson, William Henry Ashurst, William Thomas Berger, W. A. Case, J. M. Douglas, G. H. Fletcher, John Fowler, Joseph Glover, Sydney Hanson, Thomas Higgs, T. H. Johnstone, John Miller, Chas Pasley, Mathias Roth, Frederick Sandoz, W. Stephenson, Samuel Sugden, Allan Templeton, Major Tyndale, William Warne, A. Wilkinson, S. Wilson and many others.
Joseph Laurie was a friend of Jean Philibert Berjeau, Joseph Hyppolyte Pulte, and Amos Gerald Hull, who recommended American journalist and poet William Cullen Bryant to consult Joseph Laurie when he was in London in 1849.
Joseph Laurie’s Obituary is in The British Journal of Homeopathy in January 1866.
Select Publications:
- Homeopathic Domestic Medicine (1848)
- The Parent’s Guide: A Treatise on the Method of Rearing Children from Their Earliest Infancy (1849)
- An epitome of the ‘Homeopathic domestic medicine’ (1848)
- Elements of Homeopathic Practice of Physic (1852)
- Cholera and Cholerine, Their Prevention and Treatment (1854)
- The Parent’s Guide: Containing the Diseases of Infancy and Childhood (1854)
Laurie also edited Boenninghausen’s Therapeutics and Jahr’s Pocket Dictionary.
Of interest:
David Crawford Laurie M.D. Edinburgh [1847] LRCS Edinburgh [1847] (1822 – 1905) was a homeopath who practiced at 6 Boyne Terrace, Notting Hill
William Forbes Lawrie M.D. Edinburgh [1838], LRCS Edinburgh [1838] (1813 – 1880) was a homeopath who practiced at Ichnield House, Dunstable, Bedfordshire.
I have a hard back copy of J. Lauri’s Homeopathic Practice Elements Homeoathic Practice of Physic, published 1852 with a note on the back of an old Lincoln National Bank deposit slip out of Cincinnati, Ohio from an Oscar (can’t tell last name), with a date of 1900 saying “This is a valuable medical work out of print and should be taken care of – Many cures have been made from it. Myself refused $50.00 for the book”