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Ira M. Rutkow, MD,MPH,DrPH

Arch Surg. 2001;136:1088.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

THE MOST INFLUENTIAL of the late 19th-century American unorthodox medical sects was the homeopathic movement. It grew out of the experimental pharmacologic studies of German physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) and within a few decades had won over numerous converts, primarily in urban middle and upper classes. Among the more interesting yet bizarre clinical schemes to emerge from the practice of homeopathy was orificial surgery. This philosophy, the treatment of chronic disease processes through surgical operations on the rectum, vagina, cervix, urethra, nares, mouth, etc, evolved from the personal practice beliefs of Edwin Hartley Pratt (1849-1930), an Illinois homeopathic general practitioner./PARA>

An advertisement for the 1913 meeting of the American Association of Orificial Surgeons (author's collection).

Pratt obtained his medical degree from Chicago's Hahnemann Medical College in 1873. For the first 10 years of his career, he was engaged in general practice and saw patients in . . . [Full Text of this Article]