In praise of Montague Richard Leverson (1830-1925): Part 5

Did he become "a homeopathic doctor who wrote many tedious articles and even published a book"?

Esther Rantzen on 'Who Do You Think You Are?' 2008 said that

“having tinkered with his CV a little, he took a medical degree and became a homeopathic doctor. Forgetting the small matter of embezzlement for which he was still a wanted man, he wrote many tedious articles, and even dared to publish a book".

See Part 1

Montague Richard Leverson did indeed move on to a third career. In 1893, at the age of 63, he qualified in Medicine in Baltimore, USA. In February 1900 he gave a speech “In the Name of Liberty” at a two-day Anti-Imperialistic Conference in Philadelphia. The Anti-Imperialist League denounced the U.S. counter-insurgency in the Philippines from 1899 to 1902, during which American troops killed between 250,000 and 600,000 - and possibly as many as a million - Filipinos. But having qualified in Medicine Leverson’s primary interest was now homeopathy, and in 1901 he published an article in “The Homeopathic Recorder”.

By 1908 Leverson (aged 78) was prominent in the anti-vaccination movement and when the leading opponent of Pasteurism, Antoine Béchamp, lay dying in Paris, Leverson (who had already corresponded with him for several years) travelled from the US and remained taking notes at his bedside until Béchamp’s death 14 days later, in April 1908.

In 1911 Leverson published “Inoculations and the germ theory of disease: The suppressed memoir”, and in the same year delivered a lecture “Pasteur the plagiarist: The debt of sciences to Béchamp” in London for the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection.

The book “Béchamp or Pasteur? A lost chapter in the history of biology”, by E. Douglas Hume; founded upon ms. by Montague R. Leverson, Covici-McGee, Chicago, was eventually published in 1923. It was discussed 30 years later in “The Medical Mischief You Say! (Degerminating the Germ Theory)” by Nell & Guy Rogers, 1951, Health Research Books, California:

Dr. Montague R. Leverson, M.D., M.A., Ph.D., of Baltimore, chanced upon some of Béchamp’s writings in 1907 …. In several months of close association, Dr. Leverson had from the savant Béchamp first hand criticisms of science, and a personal account of Béchamp’s amazing discoveries in chemistry and biology. Himself too old to research with the vigor and clarity his new power-packed notes demanded, Dr. Leverson enlisted the help of Ethel Douglas Hume.

Dr. Leverson on several occasions rescued deserving causes from threatened oblivion, among them Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty”. George had been turned down by every publisher he tried to interest, and had started to set the type for his book by hand, when Dr. Leverson learned of the case and came to the assistance of the man, now among the world’s great. George and Béchamp; Dr. Leverson carried their torches, and our gratitude to George and Béchamp may be but the back-drop for the intense, close-up emotion Dr. Leverson’s grand unselfish service floodlights into our lives. God bless such people!

In 1912 Montague Richard Leverson, aged 82, married Ethel May Charlton; she was also English, a teacher aged 43. In 1913 they left the U.S.A. to travel in France and Italy; at the outbreak of War in 1914 they returned to England and settled in Bournemouth. In 1922 he successfully (re-)applied for British naturalization at the age of 92. On 26th September 1925 he died, aged 95, at 79 Irving Road, Southbourne (Bournemouth), Hampshire. An obituary of Leverson in the local Bournemouth newspaper said:

…. As to Pasteurism it was he who chiefly pointed out the debt civilisation owes to Professor Antoine Béchamp of Montpellier, whose discoveries were the foundation of the work carried on by the Pasteur Institute…. [He] was also specially interested in the subject of vivisection and vaccination and fearlessly expressed his views…. The funeral took place at the Boscombe Cemetery … and was conducted by the … Vicar of St. James, West Southbourne, which church the deceased had attended when his health permitted.

The composer Gerald Finzi was a grandson of Montague Richard Leverson and admired him enough to make notes on his life (Diana McVeagh, “Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music”, Boydell Press, 2005, p5). In 1931 Finzi shared these notes and a collection of newspaper articles with his cousin William Donald Schwabacher; this material is now in the possession of William Donald’s son, Kai Schwabacher, who kindly made it available to me (including translations from German).