Guy Beckley Stearns



Guy Beckley Stearns, M.D. (16 September 1870 - 1947) was an American physician specializing in homeopathic medicine and the developer of autonomic reflex testing in the study of homeopathic remedies. He also was the founder of the Foundation for Homeopathic Research. Stearns conducted early research with very highly potentized remedies first with fruit flies and later with the Emanometer, a tuning device made by Dr. William E. Boyd of Glasgow, Scotland.

Childhood and education
He was born in Wilmot, New Hampshire, a son of Minot Stearns and his wife, the former Sara J. Hazeltine.

Stearns was a graduate of the Homeopathic Medical College in New York City and a 1900 graduate of New York Medical College

Early career scandal
In 1907, when Stearns was a resident at Metropolitan Hospital (the located on Blackwell's Island in New York City), as well as Flower Free Surgical Hospital, he was arrested for performing an unspecified private operation on a nurse and longtime friend named Susan T. Greene (a.k.a. Mrs. Graham), who then died of septic peritonitis. Given the evasiveness of the New York Times article about the case in terms of specifics, as well as considering that the nurse used the false name Mrs. Graham when she checked into Stearns's office and that she travelled from Boston to New York solely to be operated on by Stearns, with whom the paper reported she had worked in a resort hotel when they were teenagers, indicates that the doctor may have been arrested for performing an illegal abortion.

Experiments
In The Homeopathic Recorder (Vol XLVII, Nov. 15, 1932, No. 11), Stearns published an article called Body Reflexes as a Means of Selecting a Remedy. "This is a seminal article of this genre. It is a report of a committee," wrote Jack Prince in "The Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients". "They found that if a remedy in a vial was placed on the skin or brought close to a patient, measurable autonomic reactions occurred if it was the simillimum. The study included 1,200 remedies measured on a patient, 100 per day for 12 days. The study included many patients. The two most reliable reactions for remedy selection were changes on the pupil and the pulse. Other changes include color change in the iris and the tone of chest percussion. Many changes were recorded including alteration in the amplitude of heart pulsations observed by fluoroscope. If an individual is touched with a homeopathic vial, a dielectric rod is impeded when rubbed on the skin. The remedies were always in glass containers for this study. No contact with the physical material was made. The conclusion was that reactions were due to energy acting on the autonomic nervous system."

The Physical Basis of Homeopathy and the New Synthesis
For Laurie's Domestic Medicine, a medical guide published in 1942, Stearns and his research assistant, Edgar D. Evia, contributed an essay called "The New Synthesis", which that same year was expanded into a book called "The Physical Basis of Homeopathy and the New Synthesis". In the New England Journal of Homeopathy (Spring/Summer 2001, Vol. 10, No. 1.), Richard Moskowitz, MD, called the Stearns-Evia article "a cutting-edge essay into homeopathic research that prophesied and actually began the development of kinesiology, made original contributions to radionics, and dared to sketch out a philosophy of these still esoteric frontiers of homeopathy at a time when such matters were a lot further beyond the pale of respectable science even than they are today."

The Physical Basis of Homeopathy and the New Synthesis has been described as "a fascinating synthesis of various ideas about potency, the biology of reaction in organisms and techniques for measuring nervous system responses to a remedy. The book discusses pulse testing and pupillary reaction as a method of testing sensitivity to homeopathic substances." The book remains in print, published by B. Jain Ltd. of New Delhi.

Stearns and Evia also contributed, from March until June 1942, a column entitled "The New Synthesis" to the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy. The pair also published, in the February 1942 issue of the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy, an article entitled "The Physical Basis of Homeopathy.

Marriage
Stearns married Ada King prior to 21 April 1912. She died in 1956.

Collections
Stearns was a well-known collector of rare books, including a 1479 edition of the works of Horace, a partial autograph manuscript of Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad, and a first edition of Ben Jonson's Q Horatius Flaccus.

Association with Edgar Cayce
His name is given in an Edgar Cayce reading 254-97 on file at the ARE in Virginia Beach, Virginia.