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A shining light in the homeopathic community has gone out. Joel Shepperd, MD, passed away on September 4th, 2024. Beginning practice in Chicago in 1975 and then continuing it in the western Chicago suburbs from 1996-2024, his clinical practice spanned 50 years, during which he also tirelessly and unselfishly gave of his time to teach innumerable dozens of young homeopathic practitioners. Chicago has always been one of the most productive homeopathic practitioner training grounds in the US. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, there were five different homeopathic medical schools in Chicago. Joel helped to continue that educational tradition from the mid-1970s until today.
Growing up he traveled the country with his family as his father was a military dentist. He attended college at UC Santa Cruz, where he could practically touch the redwood trees from his dorm room. Despite receiving only written evaluations from instructors there, he was able to return to Chicago (where he had been born) to attend the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago. Then Joel completed a oneyear internship at Cook County Hospital. (As an interesting side note, Cook County Hospital used to have a homeopathic ward in the early 1900s.) During medical school, his sense of injustice was tested numerous times. Once, a pediatric lecturer showed slides of deformed children and was disrespectful of those children in his remarks. Joel stood up in class and called the professor out and was nearly expelled from medical school! By the time he finished his internship at Cook County Hospital, he was ready to quit medicine as he could perceive its dangers and arbitrariness.
By then, Joel was on a spiritual path with origins in India, and he had become acquainted with homeopathy. It greatly intrigued him, and he set about learning to practice it. There were very few teachers in the 1970s as homeopathy had practically died out in the US. He met with Rudy Ballentine, a fellow physician associated with the Himalayan Institute, and they studied together. He visited with Maesimund Panos, MD, communicated with George Vithoulkas, and even spent time with Marion Bell Rood, MD, an old master of homeopathy who lived in Lapeer, Michigan. Dr. Rood wanted Joel to take over her practice, but he felt drawn to the Chicagoland area as he had grown up there and his wife, Ileane, was from there. When he began his practice, he inherited patients of Dr. Harvey Farrington and Dr. Grimmer, who were both well known Chicago homeopaths who had recently died. The patients often told him what remedies they needed at first. They would have a cough or pneumonia and the patient would say, Dr. Farrington would always give me Phosphorus for this condition, and so that was what he gave. Eventually, he became deeply knowledgeable about homeopathic materia medica and knew most of the remedies in William Boericke’s Pocket Manual of Homoeopathic Materia Medica by heart it seemed.
I first met Joel in the early to mid-1980s when he was practicing on Western Avenue in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. His kindness, compassion, passion for homeopathy, and professionalism impressed me so much that I started learning homeopathy from him in his practice in 1988. We formed a joint practice together in 1996 called the Center for Integral Health in Lombard, Illinois. We both had an opportunity to teach homeopathy in the then newly created Naturopathic Doctor program at National University of Health Sciences (NUHS), also in Lombard in the early 2000s. Joel had a passion for Hahnemann’s Organon of Medicine, and so he created an Organon class and even wrote his own book, “Hahnemann’s Organon for Students,” which he self-published to support the class. To create that class and book, he obtained and reviewed every available English edition of the Organon and some German editions as well so that he could follow the progression of Hahnemann’s thoughts over time. He truly became a master of the Organon and could recite the paragraph number(s) and the gist of what Hahnemann was saying about any topic pertinent to homeopathy. His course was so inspiring to the ND students that, one of the first years he taught it, he received teacher of the year honors at NUHS. Joel retired after a decade of teaching his course three times a year. One of his first students, Simona Ciobanu, ND, took over teaching the course which continues until today.
Joel taught us all so many things. First, he taught us how to practice homeopathy successfully. For my first 2-3 years with him, he reviewed every case with me and gave suggestions. But by the end of that period, he encouraged me to prescribe on my own. His guidance allowed me and many others to grow into the homeopaths that we are today. He was always available for consultation when we got stuck with a case. For example, I had a difficult patient who was fainting and also had a dry mouth and was thirstless. Joel pointed out that Nux moschata fit this patient’s symptoms. She responded wonderfully to it and her fainting and dry mouth went away. Over time he slowly helped me and so many other students and practitioners to see the beauty, elegance and power of homeopathic medicines when properly given. He was a staunch defender of Hahnemann, just like Adolph Lippe in the past and, more recently, Andre Saine, ND. Yet his compassion and kindness allowed him to accept other methods of practice and he was always interested if these methods could lead to better results. He touched so many lives in his 50-some years of practice. On the top of the bookcase in his office, he collected small wizard and doctor statuettes that patients gave him to thank him for the amazing results they were seeing. By applying Hahnemann’s homeopathy, the positive results that patients would report often seemed magical.
He treated people throughout the Midwest and in all parts of the US and occasionally took international calls from patients in India, Europe or some other part of the world. He taught us many invaluable things about treating patients homeopathically. He recently told me that with very difficult to help patients, that he would keep trying as long as the patient kept trying. He never gave up! One patient whom he treated till he died at over 100 years old was a Swedenborgian and had formerly been a patient of Dr. Farrington or Dr. Grimmer. This patient never took an allopathic medicine until the very end of his life, and Joel treated him almost exclusively with Silicea in various potencies for over 40 years. The patient always responded well to it until the end. One time, Joel had me look at the patient’s feet as he had developed thick, white, soft calluses, possibly as a reaction to the leather shoes he was wearing. I was horrified by what I saw, but he quickly prescribed Silicea and it all resolved. Just like magic.
Joel also taught me perhaps the most valuable lesson of all for a homeopathic practitioner; namely, to put in your best efforts with the patient but not to be attached to the results. This is a skill he developed over the years and I’m so grateful to have learned this mindset from Joel. We can only do our best, but the final outcome is dependent on many other factors besides our efforts. But we keep on trying!
Since 1996, when we formed the Center for Integral Health, Joel was the best business partner that anyone could have. Since he had run his own office in Chicago for a couple decades by that time, he allowed me and my wife, Janice, to manage the practice as best we could. He was always available for consultation if there was a problem. If something arose in the practice that was new to us, he would explain that he had dealt with that several times and suggest next steps.
Joel was also a researcher on other topics like philosophy and liked to relate them to homeopathy. I think part of this interest arose because his son, Joshua, got his bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and has since become a tenured professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Joel became interested in using Chaos Theory and non-linear dynamics to explain homeopathy and how it might work. After he presented this topic to a research meeting in Chicago one year, one of the participants who had published homeopathic research (Ted Chapman, MD) slammed his hand on the table and said, “Thank God someone’s thinking!” Joel also later ventured into Goethe’s works and phenomenology and related them to homeopathy and Hahnemann. The readers of this journal may be familiar with some of his publications in our Journal on these topics. When he presented on these topics at the Illinois Homeopathic Medical Association meetings, we would all mentally struggle to grasp the beauty and simplicity of what he was saying. Now, phenomenology and non-linear dynamics are commonly talked about in homeopathic circles. However, Joel was one of the first to connect these topics to homeopathy and helped us all understand the importance of these connections. As an interesting side note, his brother Michael Shepperd, who lives in Monterey, California, not far from where Joel went to college at UC Santa Cruz, and worked as a robotics engineer at Intuitive Surgical, the company that produces the DaVinci surgical robot, also became interested in Chaos Theory and non-linear dynamics about the same time as Joel. In one of their phone conversations, they discovered this connection years ago, and I’m sure had many high-level conversations about the topic.
The grief and loss is still fresh and raw, but the feeling of privilege and respect for having known such an amazingly talented person and master homeopath will linger on and on in our lives. I would encourage others to share their own stories about Joel with the editor of AJHM or with me at doctimf@gmail.com. There’s so much more that could be said and written, but unfortunately time and life are limited. It is my firm belief that Joel is now in a place where his spirit is no longer encumbered by such limitations.
~ Timothy Fior, MD, DABHM
Timothy Fior, MD, DABHM, is adjunct faculty at National University of Health Sciences in Lombard Illinois, founding member and current President of the Illinois Homeopathic Medical Association, current Secretary of the American Board of Homeopathic Medicine (formerly the American Board of Homeotherapeutics) and has been in private practice in family practice and homeopathy for over 35 years. Since 1996 he has maintained a practice at the Center for Integral Health in Lombard, Illinois. He has published a book entitled “Essentials of Homeopathic Medicine,” which is available on Amazon.
Dr. Shepperd, sadly passed away on September 4, 2024. His loss is profoundly felt by friends and family, those throughout the homeopathic community, the students of NUHS, and certainly, by the multitude of patients he treated over his five decades of practice.
I was lucky enough to be one of those patients. As a young girl, I can remember the brown carpeting of Dr. Shepperd’s Chicago clinic and his exclamation as he looked in my ear—“No tadpoles in that one!” As the years went by my family had annual visits and endless calls, many at night when the high fevers or painful ears would inevitably hit. We kept spiral notebooks ready with the strange symptoms that nobody else seemed to care about. I still remember my sister exclaiming, “My right big toe always falls asleep.” “Well, I’ll have to look that one up!” he’d say, and turn to the computer to repertorize, giving such a symptom its due diligence and concerned attention. He had a quiet countenance, but admirable presence and patience. One patient joked at a gettogether, “It’s like he was saying, here’s this incredible, lifesaving medicine, and it’s called, Lyckjfkljhj’”, whispering the remedy under his breath, attempting to illustrate Dr. Shepperd’s unassuming and humble nature. He would accomplish the incredible with homeopathic medicine, yet, with such humility, greeting you in his white coat and moccasins and saying, “I’ll be right with you.”
Not only was Dr. Shepperd a great physician, but he was also a scholar. He translated every word of the Organon directly from the German to truly understand and teach from Hahnemann’s voice. Ultimately, I had the honor of learning homeopathy from the very physician who treated my family all those years. As our professor, at National University of Health Sciences (NUHS), where he taught for over a decade, he would place a small statue of Hahnemann on the desk next to him, playfully telling us Hahnemann was listening, judging whether our discussion was true to the Organon.
In his book, Hahnemann’s Organon for Students, he broke down each aphorism, defining every term, ensuring we would practice according to the original meaning.
In true Shepperd and Hahnemannian style, the class became as much about how to practice medicine—the qualities of a physician, the classification of diseases—as it was about homeopathy and how to apply it. He used modern day articles and journals to illustrate Hahnemann’s points. He could quote aphorisms by heart, and he would reference them by number in conversation. Accordingly, he taught and practiced one constitutional remedy at a time, with the caveat that the remedy could change. Rarely ever was a person one constitution for their every illness throughout life. True constitutional prescribing was giving a remedy for the picture that presented, and giving it as needed, whether that was every 5 minutes, every day, or once every 3 weeks. And of course he would stress, every remedy, every potency, always was to be individualized.
His treatment of my grandmother took place as I went through school. Phosphorus, her chronic remedy, cleared the infection with Clostridioides difficile, which had been the result of chronic antibiotic use for UTI’s. We had the honor of turning away the nurses in hazmat suits, saying they were no longer needed as she was cured. When her allopathic physicians said there was nothing else that could be done for the UTI’s, homeopathic Benzoic acid, based on the urine odor, cleared them completely. When her congestive heart failure progressed, Belladonna atropa cleared the red, hot, painful cellulitis that resulted from the edema, and finally with Graphites, the fluid in her legs simply poured out of her. It didn’t matter how difficult the case was, he always persevered; he never gave up on a patient and practiced with complete patience, with steadfast certainty in the Law of Similars, without judgment, and with incredible generosity.
His teaching and his work as a physician were extraordinary, but I think his greatest legacy will be the mentoring he did for the next generation of homeopaths. He gave many hours to the multitude of observing physicians, students, and assistants who worked with him in practice. I feel so blessed to have been one among them for seven years. I learned nuances of the remedies buried in the literature, and I applied remedies I had never heard of. It was such a joy and challenge to help carry out this meaningful, life-changing work.
Thanks to Dr. Shepperd and his mentoring, homeopathy survived, and continues to thrive in Chicago, and throughout the US. When Farrington and Grimmer passed sway in Chicago, they left a large patient population looking for a homeopathic physician to work with. Fortunately, Dr. Shepperd was that physician. According to Dr. Shepperd’s wife, his friend Olga Donenberg was a patient of Dr. Grimmer, and the one who originally encouraged him to look into homeopathy, giving him his first homeopathic books and having him seek out remedies while traveling in India.
In the early days, he was often learning from the patients themselves. One of his great mentors, though, was Marion Rood, MD, in Michigan. She graduated from the New York Homeopathic Medical College in 1932, under the tutelage of Harvey Farrington. Dr. Shepperd recounted several stories from his time observing at her home clinic. He described how she grew comfrey in the yard, and when her cat broke its leg, she wrapped it with it, leading to a swift recovery. He recalled how they dropped everything one day to go to the library to look up one specific part of the Krebs cycle that might have been the key to a patient’s case, abandoning the droves of patients that would arrive daily from the world over.
He also talked about the early, humble beginnings of his own home clinic, which quickly expanded into multiple sites, and ultimately the Center for Integral Health in Lombard, Illinois. As the years went on, countless medical doctors, chiropractors and naturopaths before me all studied under him. He took on incredible homeopathic talent such as Connie Batelli, his assistant of 44 years, as well as his longtime partner in practice, and fellow scholar, Tim Fior, MD. Later, many others joined him and continue his work at the Center for Integral Health and elsewhere. His contribution to the homeopathic community is immeasurable. He inspires us all to stand firmly on the very foundation of homeopathy and to hold steadfast to these principles, whatever the obstacles may be. I am so grateful to have been part of that, and although this is a great loss, I am comforted by the fact that we, as a homeopathic community, are doing whatever is possible to continue this great work.
– Lisa Glowiak, ND
Lisa Glowiak, ND, is on the Clinical Sciences faculty at National University of Health Sciences in Lombard, Illinois, where she teaches Advanced Homeopathic Case Taking and Materia Medica. She is a member of the Illinois Homeopathic Medical Association and serves on the Board of Directors for the Illinois Association of Naturopathic Physicians.
The impetus to write this letter was the result of seeing the title of an article Joel wrote in 2006—“A Visit to Flatland: The Periodic Table in Homeopathy.”
Please indulge me while I write about other things before I explain why this title had such a visceral impact on me and what it must have meant to Joel. Also, I apologize for lack of detail and the abrupt transitions.
So … How do I describe Joel? Can I summarize him? I can hear Joel’s voice objecting to the idea. He would say, “How can you do that? I am so much more than anything that could be reduced to a description on paper.” And he was right about that; however, I will take the liberty of doing it anyway and chalk it up to the fact I am his annoying little brother.
Joel was…
Joel was a brilliant Renaissance man
Occasionally someone would make the mistake of thinking he was narrow-minded because of his lifelong belief in his spiritual community. Nothing could be more wrong! His knowledge and interests were extraordinarily broad. He was equally at home with a dazzling array of sciences: (quantum physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, medicine, etc.) as he was with history, philosophy, religion, and on and on.
Joel was a doctor
An extraordinarily good doctor. He committed his life to helping others and embodied the dictum “First do no harm.” To Joel, homeopathy was the only way to ensure that he did no harm. He believed that homeopathy was the most effective healing modality he could use to help people attain overall well-being.
Joel was a Homeopath
It was an integral part of who and what he was. The fundamental basis of homeopathy provided Joel a lens that he used as he observed the universe around him. All of the knowledge he acquired was filtered through this lens in order to help him expand and grow the scientific basis of homeopathy.
It’s important for me to start out by stating that I am not a homeopath; however; for over 50 years homeopathy has been an integral part of my life and my family’s life. I was Joel’s first student, admittedly not the most diligent of students and, if it weren’t for the bonds of brotherhood, I seriously doubt he would have continued trying to teach me. Also, my family were among his first patients.
Homeopathy was always part of our family discussions He would talk in general about his practice and then we would talk at great lengths about theory, history and the science. He was deeply troubled by the disagreements, arguments and personal upsets that had become part and parcel of the ongoing discourse within his community, yet, he was hopeful that the struggle would ultimately insure homeopathy’s survival for future generations.
I have spent much of the last 3 weeks reading articles written by Joel and now understand why he developed the reputation as an intransigent traditionalist. I agree he was a traditionalist but wholeheartedly disagree that he was intransigent. Joel and I started discussing how fractals, chaos theory, nonlinear dynamics and quantum concepts could be applied to the science of homeopathy as early as 1990. So I feel compelled to ask how could he be considered as such an intransigent if he was one of the first authors to introduce these concepts to the the world of Homeopathy in 1994?
Yes, Joel was a traditionalist. No question about that. But why? For many years Joel had encountered people that introduced themselves as homeopaths yet knew little about the materia medica or the Organon. When he started teaching at the Naturopathic College, he told me students had been taught/trained without the benefit of knowing the fundamentals of homeopathy. Joel was adamant (intransigent?) that students were required to know the fundamentals before he would allow them to describe themselves as Homeopaths.
Joel also found that it was difficult for students to grasp and absorb the basics. He was very dissatisfied with existing English language texts. He found them problematic due to arcane language, inconsistencies, contradictions and wrong translations. He once exclaimed he wanted to require students to read Hahnemann’s Organon in German. He knew that almost no student could do that. Joel could and did.
Joel spent almost 4 years working towards fixing this problem. His traditionalist goal was to create an accurate and complete text of the fundamentals as defined by the originator of Homeopathy. The result—his book—was not just a translation but a reimaging of the material for a modern audience. It has been very successful.
Joel the traditionalist stopped publishing articles about fractals, chaos theory and the like, but, he never stopped learning about possibilities. He was always looking at and investigating concepts and ideas that would help define and grow the science of homeopathy. Here is a thought experiment he and I discussed over the years.
Is it possible that soliton theory can provide the basis for explaining how the energy of a remedy is distributed throughout the body?
Joel was so much more than whatever I’ve written, but as I wrote at the beginning, I felt compelled because of that title. Actually that is misleading; it’s not the whole title, only the first half of the title—“A Visit to Flatland.”
The title is a reference to a little-known book written in 1884. Joel introduced me to it while he was still at UC Santa Cruz and I was in high school. When I saw the article title, I knew that, in a very obscure Joel kind of way, this was as close to vitriol as Joel would permit himself. The commentary of the article is almost irrelevant compared to the extreme expression of concern about the future of homeopathy embedded in that title.
“Flatland” is a dystopian book about the past colliding with a possible new future. The protagonist discovers a revolutionary concept that has the potential to greatly improve Flatland. The protagonist is very careful to include the past as the basis for the new discovery and tries to convince Flatland of the wonder and value of the new concept. In the end many antagonists defeat the protagonist and the discovery is lost.
Joel identified with the protagonist. His use of the title is a startling statement about what he sees as possible defeat by the antagonists. It’s part of the reason Joel spent so much time creating his version of the Organon for students. It was a way for Joel to pass on fundamentals to a new generation regardless of the outcome of the ongoing disagreements in the world of Homeopathy.
Joel knew without question that homeopathy has to grow and expand. The article he published in AJHM Summer 2017 describing why Hahnemann went to Paris is Joel’s acknowledgement that a modern world presents challenges that require homeopathy to grow and change. Even though Joel knew and acknowledged the need for change and growth, he continued to object to what has been described as “New Homeopathy.” His objection is probably best summarized by the rhetorical question: How can you create “New Homeopathy” if we can’t agree on how to define the basic science of homeopathy?
I’m a high tech Silicon Valley veteran. I’ve been conceptualizing, theorizing, designing and building things for almost 50 years. Joel and I would discuss our approaches:
For me, figuring out how to build something unique.
For Joel, deciding how to determine the unique remedy for an individual.
We compared and contrasted how we used words like ‘objective,’ ‘subjective,’ ‘phenomenology’ and even ‘Gestalt’ and came to realize how similar our paths were. While my work typically began at a very ‘objective’ starting point and Joel’s path would always begin from a very ‘subjective’ starting point, we found that our work ended up at the same place! Our results were considered valid only when proved. It was a very pleasant surprise to discover this common underpinning to both our worlds. My reason for including this information is to suggest that seemingly disparate views, language and ideas may have more in common than is obvious.
I know there are disagreements and differences of opinions among those of you who have been Joel’s colleagues and friends for many years. My small hope is that by providing this bit of personal insight into the worries, concerns and dreams that motivated Joel, a path forward towards reconciliation may reveal itself.
After all, he and all of you want the same the outcome!
~ Michael Shepperd
Joel and I were born under a similar if not the same star, our births being only 5 days apart and our life paths converging not once but twice in our lives. Serendipitously, we became best friends at the age of 12 for a few years while living on Sandia Base (now Kirkland Base in Albuquerque, NM)—Joel an Army ‘brat,’ myself Navy. While my memory of those years is vague, I do recall that we both attended Van Buren Jr. High School, and that, living rather close to one another, enjoyed a close friendship. One memorable evening was spent trick or treating on a Halloween night, committed as we were to hoarding as many treats as possible. That habit came to an embarrassing halt when one gentleman to whom we were appealing for said treats proffered instead scathing words of advice, “Aren’t you a little old to still be trick or treating?!”
After my father, a Navy CWO4, was transferred back to Norfolk, Joel’s and my association ended . . . until decades later when I was attending an NCH conference being held in Chicago. I noticed on the program that a talk was being given by someone named Joel Shepperd and I, my curiosity piqued, decided to attend. It was a great talk, both highly informative and humorous, as when Joel, when asked how homeopathic medicines were dispensed, responded by flinging a handful of loose remedy pellets into the audience. When the talk ended, I approached Joel and, my sense of familiarity growing, asked, “Did you have a friend in New Mexico when you were a kid named George Guess?” His quick reply— “Yes, my best friend!” “Well, put ‘er there,” I said, as I reached out to shake his hand. It was, needless to say, an amazing ‘coincidence.’
Our paths then diverged again, he was practicing in Chicago and I in North Carolina and later Virginia. I did have the great pleasure of editing and publishing his many excellent articles in the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy and, later, the American Journal of Homeopathic Medicine—articles that amply illustrated his brilliance and deep understanding of homeopathic philosophy. We did meet one other time, though, when Joel was travelling and made a brief stop several years ago in Charlottesville to chat me up. We talked about our lives and homeopathy in my office and shared a very pleasant walk in the nearby woods.
I am greatly saddened and surprised by his premature passing. Several of us ‘old timers’ are regrettably retiring, one way or another, these days. Joel, being a brilliant man, exceptional author and thinker, and I’ve no doubt, very skilled physician and homeopath, will be much missed. Yet I’m reassured knowing that his influence, the seeds he has sown among so many young, budding homeopaths, will endure and grow. I wish him well and extend my deepest sympathy to his other friends and family.
– George Guess, MD, DABHM
George Guess, MD, DABHM, is a family physician practicing homeopathy in the Charlottesville, Virginia area. He is an assistant editor of the “American Journal of Homeopathic Medicine,” Vice-President of the American Board of Homeopathic Medicine, and a trustee of the American Institute of Homeopathy. He holds a Diploma in Homeopathy from the Athenian School of Homeopathy (George Vithoulkas’s instructional program in Greece).
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