Martin Miles
Source: HomeoResearch.com

Martin Miles FSHom (29 August 1947 – 27 September 2007) was one of Britain’s most eminent homeopaths. A student of Thomas Lackenby Maughan, Miles began practicing homeopathy in 1974.

Miles was a founder, and first Chairperson, of the Society of Homeopaths. In 1977, he and Robert Davidson co-founded the College of Homeopathy, the first teaching institution for lay/professional practitioners in England. Miles was also a founder of the Kent-based Guild of Homoeopaths.

Miles taught homeopathy in many other institutions, including Purton House School of Homeopathy, the Japanese Academy of Homeopathy, and The South Downs School of Homoeopathy.

His colleagues included Peter Chappell, Robert Davidson, Colin Griffiths, Misha Norland, Rix Pyke, Sarah Richardson, Francis Treuherz, and Jerome Whitney.

Martin Miles was born in Bromley, Kent on 29th August 1947, the son of wealthy business owner Eric Rowland Miles (1914 – 1987) and Gwendoline Ethel Jewell (1909 – 1974).

Miles discovered homeopathy aged 26. Falling sick, a friend suggested he seek medical advice from a well-known London homeopath, Thomas Maughan:

My friend told me to call him straight away so I did. Thomas answered the phone and said come this afternoon at four o’clock. So I did. And that was the beginning of it for me. His cure was quick and dramatic and, of course, I discovered that you didn’t just get homeopathy with Thomas; there was a lot of spiritual teaching and philosophy as well.

Miles immediately connected with Maughan, and soon immersed himself in the practice of homeopathy. He became one of Maughan‘s most diligent students, regularly attending his Saturday evening teaching groups.

In addition to building a thriving private practice and teaching homeopathy, Miles contributed articles to many homeopathic publications, including The Homeopath (The Society of Homeopaths journal) and Prometheus Unbound (The Guild of Homeopaths journal).

In June 2005, Rowena Ronson conducted a candid interview with Martin Miles for her book, Looking Back, Moving Forward:

Martin Miles’ Obituary, by Francis Treuherz FSHom, with the help of Colin Griffiths RSHom and Jerome Whitney. From the Society of Homeopaths website:

Martin Miles taught that homeopathy can create shining spirits. He was a man of modesty, a man who helped countless people with severe pathology, a man who inspired a love of homeopathy, a man with many friends and no enemies.

He started in practice in 1976, and with others in 1978 set up the College of Homeopathy and the Society of Homeopaths, of which he was the first chair. Martin was a quiet yet humorous man – deep thinking, generous, a little mysterious, almost as if steeped in another time. It seems as if this was born out of his extraordinary introduction to homoeopathy through Thomas Maughan who regarded Martin as his amanuensis. Thomas had more or less saved his life by giving him not just remedial treatment but also a discipline and a focus. Their relationship was very much one of master and apprentice and this is how Martin saw homoeopathy being carried forward into the future. He always adhered to the belief that homeopathy should not only be taught, but had to be absorbed through witnessing others at work.

Martin originated from the East End of London where his father had been a travel agent, which was Martin’s occupation when he became involved in homeopathy. Maughan had studied homeopathy probably in the tradition of Clarke, Burnett, Cooper, and later Wheeler and Kenyon. Maughan taught a homeopathy class in South East London which Martin attended, and which Martin then taught for many years after Maughan’s death.

Martin took his Jewish roots very seriously, yet he was remarkably eclectic in his choice of philosophies to plunder for inspiration. He was fascinated by and very knowledgeable about ancient Egypt. He was one of the first to strongly advocate understanding of the chakras as a means to forming a prescribing strategy. His idiosyncratic methodology was, despite apparent complexity, remarkably simple: always support the patient where he is weakest or most vulnerable even while prescribing the indicated remedy. Thus and by dint of his great knowledge of remedy relationships, he developed multi-aspect prescriptions by which his patients received what Martin always regarded as the minimum: the indicated remedy, chakra support and drainage. He is also to be credited with consistently preaching and practising the frequent prescribing of the nosodes to support constitutional treatment, a legacy of Maughan‘s.

In the early 1990s, he formed the Guild of Homeopaths with Janice Micaleff and Colin Griffiths. For a period of ten years, from 1992, the Guild engaged in a systematic programme of provings of new remedies directed toward supporting existing remedies, the endocrine system, and subtle anatomy. Martin was a leader of the Guild graduate course.

To have known Martin as a friend was good, but to have known him as a homeopathic colleague was special. His working life was unique; he turned the work of prescribing homeopathically into an art. He so obviously found homeopathy creative and fulfilling. How he practised homeopathy was unlike anybody else, and those of us who have learnt from him and think of ourselves as erstwhile apprentices, are aware of his achievement of stretching the boundaries of homeopathy a little further in order to cater for all the vastly increased ills that we are asked to consider nowadays. He was fearless in the clinic, unbridled in his contempt for the worst excesses of conventional science, prepared to take responsibility for prescribing in any situation. Yet he always insisted that the great prescribers of the past should be revered as truth-seekers: Hahnemann, Hering, Compton-Burnett, Cooper, Clarke and others, not least Thomas Maughan.

He continued in his thriving practice in the Blackheath and Bexley areas of south east London and teaching in the UK and overseas right until he became ill.

Select Publications:

Homeopathy and Human Evolution (1994)