For his outstanding contribution to the revival of homeopathic knowledge and the training of homeopaths to the highest standards.
George Vithoulkas is a Greek pioneer in homeopathy, who has established it in Greece as a science respected by the medical profession. He has also made his country one of the leading centres for homeopathy in the western world. After receiving a diploma in India, he went back to Greece to start practising and teaching homeopathy to a reduced number of Greek doctors.
He soon founded the Athenian School of Homeopathic Medicine, then renamed the Center of Homeophatic Medicine. In 1994, Vithoulkas opened the International Academy for Classical Homeopathy on the Greek island of Alonissos, its purpose being to provide post-graduate training for health practitioners from all over the world. His books were translated into twenty languages and have profoundly influenced the acceptance and practice of homeopathy worldwide.
2,500 years after Hippocrates, medical doctors are coming back to a Greek island to be taught what I am convinced to be today the most advanced form of therapy.
George Vithoulkas, 1996 Laureate
George Vithoulkas started studying homeopathy in South Africa in 1960 and continued in India in different homeopathic colleges. He received a diploma from the Indian Institute of Homeopathy in 1966. Returning to Greece the following year, Vithoulkas started practising homeopathy and teaching it to a small group of Greek medical doctors. The therapeutic success of these first doctors soon attracted the attention of others that the Athenian School of Homeopathic Medicine was established in 1970.
Since re-named the Center of Homeopathic Medicine, the school has been devoted exclusively to the teaching of MDs. In 1971, the first Greek Homeopathic Society was established, and a year later, Vithoulkas started the Greek journal Homeopathic Medicine. In 1976, he organised the first International Homeopathic Seminars in Greece. Since then, international seminars have been held every year, attended by health professionals from at least 20 countries.
In 1994, Vithoulkas opened the International Academy for Classical Homeopathy on the Greek island of Alonissos, its purpose being to provide post-graduate training for health practitioners from all over the world. As the Director of the Athens Center, Vithoulkas headed a team of 30 doctors who practise homeopathy while studying under his supervision.
Vithoulkas' books, Homeopathy: Medicine of the New Man (Arco, New York, 1979), written for lay people, and The Science of Homeopathy(Grove Press, New York, 1980), for health professionals, have been translated into twenty languages and have had a profound influence upon the acceptance and practice of homeopathy worldwide. His book A New Model for Health and Disease, published in German and English in 1991, makes a fundamental critique of conventional allopathic medicine and sets out a new paradigm for the science of medicine.
George Vithoulkas' overall vision has been the establishment of homeopathy on a worldwide basis. A primary goal in this vision was the foundation of homeopathic medical colleges in the USA and Europe, where homeopathy can be taught at the highest level. A significant production has been the Vithoulkas Expert System computer programme and a series of video courses made from his lectures. The computer programme has sold over 1,000 copies and has brought classical homeopathy within reach of ordinary homeopathy students.
Vithoulkas has written a new homeopathic Materia Medica Viva, in 16 volumes, including the contemporary knowledge and his own experience from the more than 150,000 cases treated at the Center in Athens. The first six volumes have been published in German and translation into English is planned. Vithoulkas also continues to teach, both in Greece and internationally.
