AJHM Summer 2015 47
Volume 108 Number 2
Sandra Chase, MD, DHt
Paul Bahder, MD, DHt
February 8, 1949—January 7, 2015
Obituary
T
he officers of the American Institute of Homeopathy
(AIH) learned on the weekend of May 9-10, 2015,
of the passing of long-standing AIH
member Paul Bahder, MD, DHt. He
died on January 7, 2015. ADiplomate
of the American Board of Homeother-
apeutics, Paul’s biography was pub-
lished in the electronic ABHt Board
Bulletin, Winter 2013, in our “Meet
the Member” feature. Amodified ver-
sion of that article follows:
Paul Bahder, MD, DHt, became
interested in homeopathy during a
surgical rotation in medical school
in Warsaw, Poland. The surgeon he
was “shadowing” was a butcher-type,
meat-and-potatoes kind of a guy, but
was open-minded and intensely inter-
ested in helping his patients. Reading
the post-op prescriptions, Dr. Bahder
noticed that every one of the patients
was receiving
Arnica montana
. This
was something new to him even
though he had scored highest in his class in pharmacology.
Inquiring about this strange prescription, he was told by the
surgeon, “It’s homeopathic. I have no idea how it works,
but it speeds up their recovery.” That was enough to set Dr.
Bahder on a search to understand this mysterious system of
medicine. That search eventually took him to Greece and
George Vithoulkas, to Borneman and Sons Homeopathic
Pharmacy in Pennsylvania and to Dr. Hank Williams, with
whom he had brief encounters and who was unswervingly
supportive.
He stated, “I was lucky being born in Poland, which
gave me my humanity and love of the ground on which
I walk.” He later graduated from Rutgers University as a
philosophy major and lived in the US during the colorful
and tumultuous 1960’s. Looking for the meaning of life
and for a “better way,” as many from that generation did,
entailed a lot of personal experimentation with orthodox
and unorthodox pharmaceuticals. “All of that helped to
open up my mind and convinced me that it is not just what
is seen that matters, but more importantly that which is not
seen which is of paramount importance. Of course, the
realization that a person is not just his chemistry, not just
his psychology, not even his thoughts or emotions, was
blatantly obvious by that time.”
However, philosophy did not pay
the bills; it did not even pay for basic
subsistence. In 1971, he had completed
his undergraduate work and was already
disillusioned with hallucinogenics. He
had begun experimenting with medita-
tion. He took a year off, going to a town
unknown to him—Windsor, in Ontario,
Canada. That was his “desert” experi-
ence. Focused on nothing other than
a search for meaning, he experienced
many periods of desperation alternat-
ing with occasional euphoria. Living
as a recluse, he found in time that his
consciousness evened out and settled
into a balanced sense of completion. At
that time, the inspiration to go to medi-
cal school came to him and he returned
to Poland. He said, “I owe Poland for
opening its arms to me and giving me a
full scholarship for all the years I was there.”
After a yearlong internship in Warsaw, he returned to
the US and began a rotation in medicine, which changed
to psychiatry. After paying his dues in residency programs
and passing the Flex exam, he received his license to prac-
tice medicine and in 1984 opened up a classical homeo-
pathic practice in the Princeton, New Jersey area.
The early years of practice were challenging for Paul.
Having worked in the socialized medical environments of
Poland and his U.S. residencies, he suddenly found himself
in a wide ocean with few directives. He knew his practice
would be different—that it had to be based on strictly ho-
meopathic principles, on recognizing the holistic aspect in
its depth and not just paying lip service to it and on under-
standing that behind all that is visible there is an underly-
ing foundation of being in which we all participate. He
had much help along the way but found that working with
patients in the spirit of openness, with an intense interest in
their wellbeing and always making sure that he was fully
“present” in the consultation, helped him to develop as a
doctor and as a human being.
