Donald McDonald Foubister M.B. Ch.B. BSc F.F.Hom. (31 October 1902 – 31 January 1988) was Physician and Consultant Paediatrician at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital and at the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.

In 1948, Foubister became a Fellow of the Faculty of Homeopathy. In 1960, he served as the Dean and, from 1970-72, as President of the Faculty.

Donald Foubister taught homeopathy to Malcolm Rae, Elvia Bury, John DaMonte, Brian Kaplan and Ian Watson, and he knew George MacLeod, John and Nick Churchill, He also knew Belgian Liga Medicorum Homeopathica Internationalis President Jacques Pierre Joseph Arthur Louis Imberechts, who Foubister met at the British Homeopathic Congress in Stirling, Scotland, in 1975. They worked together on several occasions each year until Foubister’s death in 1988.

Donald Foubister was born in Kirkwall, Orkney on 31 October 1902, but he lived for much of his life in Hertfordshire.

Foubister’s early career interest was in forestry, and to that end he read Botany, Geology and Zoology at the University of Aberdeen, graduating with his BSc in 1924. He moved to Canada to work but was unable to find forestry work and took a variety of agricultural jobs, including seed salesman.

After suffering a back injury that was successfully cured by osteopathy, Foubister decided to become an osteopath and enrolled at the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. Whilst there, he was introduced to homeopathy by a fellow student.

Foubister graduated M.B and Ch.B. from Edinburgh in 1936. He practiced as a locum for a time in Scotland and England, before being appointed House Surgeon at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. He would become House Physician and, later, Registrar at the hospital, where he worked under Margaret Lucy Tyler and Douglas Morris Borland. In 1956, he was appointed Consultant Paediatrician at the hospital.

In 1939, Foubister married Joan P. Laws (1916), a State Registered Nurse. They had a daughter, Sandra Periam Foubister (1947 – 2001).

Foubister was one of the hospital medical staff who taught at the Missionary School of Medicine:

Donald Foubister lectured on Children’s Diseases, as did Kathleen Priestman (who was President of the Missionary School of Medicine between 1981 and 1991); Alva Benjamin taught on skin diseases, Charles Edwin Wheeler, John MacKillop and Muriel Francis Adams on general medicine; William Eldon Tucker and Philip Norman Cutner on surgery and H. Dodd, who was the vascular surgeon and later became President of the Missionary School of Medicine in 1952.

N. E. Gillham taught dentistry and J. N. LeRossignol chiropody. Three doctors on the teaching staff were later appointed Royal physicians: Sir John Weir, Dr. Marjorie Blackie and Dr. R. W. Davey. Dr. Llewelyn Ralph Twentyman remains the doyen of them all, surviving to tell the tale of the lectures often given in the Hospital Board Room, which were much enjoyed by everyone.

Donald Foubister was responsible for identifying and describing Carcinosinum, the Cancer miasm, in 1958, and he was also the first person to use Folliculinum.

Donald McDonald Foubister practised homeopathy from 1937 until his death in 1988. During his retirement he gave tutorials on this subject to many doctors from Britain and overseas..

… Originally appointed as house physician at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, Foubister went on to serve as a medical officer during World War II, where he practised homeopathy, despite official disapproval.

Foubister contributed articles for the British Journal of Homeopathy, and translated The Homeopathic Treatment of Alcoholism by Jean Pierre Gallavardin.

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