This paper provides a new perspective on controversies between orthodox and unorthodox medicine. While most researches focused on the interactions between the two sides, this paper examines the perspectives of the practitioners of unorthodox medicine combining the theoretical framework of the Social Identity Theory (SIT) in social psychology and Gieryn's Boundary Work. This paper argues that the idea of science and internal conflicts between group members played significant parts on how practitioners of unorthodox medicine define their relationship with orthodox medicine and their own practice.

Homoeopathy was an important unorthodox medicine flourished throughout the nineteenth century and declined at the end of the century in Britain. Previous researches interpret the decline as a consequence either of the triumph of biomedicine, or the competition over clients with orthodox practitioners, or the process of professionalisation. Most researches see homoeopathy as a homogeneous group and define the practice anachronically.

The historical case under analysis is how a particular group of homoeopaths, the professionally qualified British homoeopaths, used the rhetoric of science to justify and adapt their social identity in relation to other medical practitioners, including both homoeopaths and non-homoeopaths, during the reform of the London School of Homoeopathy. This was done to meet the challenges they believed homoeopathy was going through within and without between 1875 and 1883. There were three main concerns: to whom homoeopathy should be taught, the curriculum, and whether a separate license should be obtained for homoeopathy. The School was established as a blend of different opinions and had very few students in the end. Many professional British homoeopathy considered it irrelevant since what they pursued a scientific medicine and hence a separate existence of homoeopathic education was unnecessary.

This paper concludes that the distinctions between orthodox and unorthodox medicine as devised by later historians do not fit into professional British homoeopaths' social identity. The homoeopaths reckoned that the ''decline'' of homoeopathy was a natural progression of scientific medicine since they believed in practising ''scientifically,’’ rather than ‘’homoeopathically.’’

The primary sources are journals and articles published by professional British homoeopaths to state their beliefs either to other homoeopaths or to the lay public.