George MacLeod (McLeod) M.R.C.V.S. D.V.S.M. Vet.MFHom (30 October 1912 – September 1995) was a homeopathic veterinarian, founder and President of The British Association of Homeopathic Veterinary Surgeons, and Veterinary Consultant to The Homeopathic Development Foundation.

The passing of George Macleod in September 1995 sent shock waves through the entire homeopathic world. He was one of that very select band, a legend in his own time. This fame and recognition he took in his stride in a typically down-to-earth and pragmatic fashion.

George never sought the limelight, never pushed his point of view and I know of no one upon whom he climbed to reach his pinnacle at the top of the veterinary homoeopathic world in the UK.

Many of the greatest homeopaths in Britain were born and educated in Scotland, even though they may have ‘made their mark’ south of the border.

Examples include Robert Ellis Dudgeon, John Weir, William Henderson, Thomas Skinner, George MacLeod, John Paterson, Robert Gibson Miller and William Ernest Boyd, all of whom rank as great homeopaths in world terms.

George MacLeod, a graduate of Glasgow University, is one of the world’s foremost authorities on homeopathic treatment of animals. He is one of the few veterinary surgeons to use homeopathic medicines wholly and exclusively.

His life started in Glasgow and he enrolled in the Veterinary School in that city in the early 1930s, almost as an afterthought. This rather late selection of a career seems a precarious start to a lifetime of pioneering and achievement but such fortuitous events are not unusual. He graduated in 1939 and, in common with so many young men of the time, awaited his country’s call for military service. Veterinary surgeons, however, were considered vital to the country’s agricultural efforts to feed the population in a time of great need and George made his special contribution in Somerset in the summer of 1942, when foot-and-mouth disease had broken out in the area and threatened milk and meat supplies.

He married in 1942 in Bath and started a practice thereafter in the north of Scotland. It was here that homeopathy came into his work. George conducted trial work with nosodes and öther homeopathic medicines on farms in Scotland and later in England when he moved south in the latter half of the 1960s. His work with homoeopathy soon made a mark and a following built up around him. His work in the Herefordshire and Worcestershire area is still revered locally.

In 1978 he moved to West Sussex and set up practice near Haywards Heath. It was here that his reputation was finally built and reinforced. His ability to see the appropriate homoeopathic medicine in animals and restore health to so many animals given no hope by conventional medicine soon became legendary. Patients were brought to him from all over the country and, because there were no others able to provide the service he supplied so well, he was forced to try to help animals by letter or telephone.

He became a real ambassador for homoeopathy in that he lectured far and wide, at home and abroad, both to the animal-loving public and to interested professionals, without much thought for self and for rest. He put his hand to documenting a great deal of his experience in a series of books, the last of which only appeared recently. These books covered the use of homeopathy in cattle, horses, dogs, cats, goats and pigs. He also wrote the only book on veterinary materia medica to be published to date in the English language.

In 1982 George was a founder member of the fledgling British Association of Homoeopathic Veterinary Surgeons and became its first President, an office held with typical dignity and honour until 1992. During his term in office that group grew from an initial eight to 150 members. He had a natural instinct for professionality and gentlemanly conduct, a legacy and example we all hope will linger on long after his passing.

George MacLeod taught in John DaMonte‘s study group, and he knew Thomas Maughan and Donald MacDonald Foubister. MacLeod was a great fan of Edward Bach, and he favoured the flower essences for use with animals.

Mcleod was a prolific writer, and contributed many articles in the Homeopath and the British Homeopathic Journal.

George Macleod died at Haywards Heath, Sussex in 1995.

Select Publications:

Of interest:

A Dr. MacLeod was a subscriber to the monument of Samuel Hanemann in Germany in 1845.

Kenneth MacLeod was a student of William Henderson:

William MacLeod (?1816- ?1879)

William Macleod was a St Andrews graduate of 1843 and became FRCPE the same year. He was a lecturer in the institutes of medicine at the Extra-academical School in Argyll Square, Edinburgh and a physician to the Royal Public Dispensary.

Later he practised in Yorkshire, and as a homeopathist crossed swords with James Young Simpson during the controversies of the 1850s…

Later, the Edinburgh Medico Chirurgical Society approved a motion (proposed by Professor Syme and seconded by James Young Simpson) ‘that William Henderson’s name be deleted from the list of members’. At the same meeting, in a night of the long knives, Dr MacDonald, Dr MacLeod and Charles Ransford were also expelled.