My wife was in her final year at the London College of Classical Homoeopathy, so naturally one of the first things I did on the Net was to search for information on "homeopathy" (as it is known in the United States!). Only one reference was returned, a FAQ written by Bernie Simon and held on a couple of gopher servers.

With our subscription to Dungeon Network Systems came a free personal Web site to use as we wished. Naturally, we created a Homeopathy Home Page, which at that time had but one link - to Bernie's FAQ - and a few addresses I culled from the books and journals. It was a very little acorn indeed, but I ensured an entry in the Yahoo directory, and off we went.

In November, 1994, I was told that Dungeon was installing the software necessary to run a mailing list; we subscribers were invited to use this new capability free of charge. Such a mailing list operates via a server which automatically distributes to subscribers each e-mail posting sent to it by a member. No browsing of a Usenet newsgroup, no missing anything - a copy of everything is sent to your personal address. It can mean thirty posts a day, but there is a way around this with the Digest option - two posts a day, each including an accumulation of messages.

There was no homeopathy list in existence (yes, I decided the American spelling was going to be a lot easier to type every time!), so I took the plunge, and with the help of the good folks at Dungeon, the Homeopathy Mailing List was born on December 1, 1994. Of course the Homeopathy Mailing List was announced on the Home Page, and almost immediately we had about 30 subscribers.

Since then the Homeopathy Mailing List has grown exponentially, now numbering over 500 subscribers. The List has consistently netted 40 new members a month - over one a day! The Homeopathy Mailing List is open to all; if you are interested, details of how to subscribe are on the Home Page. There is a Digest facility for those who prefer only one or two posts a day.

The geographical spread of the Homeopathy Mailing List is remarkable. While half the List members come from the U.S.A., there are significant groups from the U.K., Canada, Australia, Italy and Germany. Good numbers of subscribers also dwell in such divers places as the Netherlands, New Zealand, Finland, Switzerland, Brazil and India, and even Singapore, Greece, South Africa, Russia, Pakistan, Peru, Hungary and Taiwan are represented. Members come from 31 countries in total! In addition to contributing from all corners of the globe, our subscribers range from interested bystanders to experienced professionals. To these latter we owe a special thanks - for the first time in history they are educating and informing on a level never dreamt of by the greats of the past.

We have our archives on the Lyghtforce server in Texas, courtesy of Dan York; every past post is available there, either chronologically or by subject. The latter is due to the hard work of Jean Lambert, who has "catalogued" the pearls of wisdom into a directory structure that enables you to move by topic to the particular subject that interests you. Jean explains his work in The Archives. It's a tremendous advance on the straight archives, which you would otherwise have to download and search yourself.

Also on the Lyghtforce server is a growing archive of articles by experienced homeopaths, placed there with the authors' permission. Their subjects are specific, but there is every chance that this will grow into a real repository of homeopathic knowledge. The best of the articles are also available on the Home Page.

Growing directly from the List comes Homeopathy Online. Thanks in particular to the efforts of Katherine Enos and Chris Kurz, Homeopathy Online will further enhance the presence of homeopathy on the Net, and will also increase that treasury of stored knowledge. A text-only version of Homeopathy Online can be downloaded from the archive server.

It's been a roller coaster ride ensuring everything works smoothly, but it's been enormously gratifying to witness the spread of Homeopathy on the Net, a spread testified to by the numerous links now in place on the Home Page.

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