(First article).
“HOMOEOPATHIC PHYSICIAN”- what meaning should this title convey ? The physician who to the complete equipment of his university studies in medicine and surgery, adds also a thorough acquaintance with homoeopathy and puts its principle into practice, only he has the right to the title “homoeopathic physician”. He will have made himself especially familiar with the work of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, founder of homoeopathy, with the Materia Medica, with repertories, and the laws relative to administration of remedies to the sick.
The study of homoeopathy exacts of the neophyte a definite effort ; for he must lay aside prejudices acquired during his university studies. But the method of considering any given case proves to be so different from that which he has hitherto known, that he soon sees the importance of this new method. Now he sees in the “case” who come to consults him, not merely diseases which he must diagnose, but individuals sick, for whom he must find the similar remedy for each, individually.
Also, he must avoid routine ; he may not remember other cases resembling this one, which he has already treated ; he must isolate the distinctive difference in the sick person whom he now consider, must find out his peculiarities, his individual characteristic.
This is a theory essentially and indispensably homoeopathic. Among the tangle of symptoms resulting from his examination, he must distinguish with care those which pertain to the sick one himself, as a thinking and suffering human being, because of which he is burdened with illness, from those others which concern only a portion of his physical organism- a single organ, or group of organs.
The practical results is fully inherent in this great secret on nature, discovered by Samuel Hahnemann : To determine the symptoms representative of the Individual himself who is ill ; and not make the blunder of noting alarming who symptoms to any organ which is the point of least resistance where the illness finds for itself an exit, through which it utters its cry of pain.
A true homoeopath finds his task to consist first in establishing a therapeutic diagnosis according to the fundamental laws of homoeopathy discovered by Hahnemann and developed by Lippe, Hering, Allen, Kent, Nash and so many others.
This it is which makes homoeopathy a method not to be surpassed, this “therapeutic diagnosis”, I may call it, or “homoeopathic diagnosis”, which leads to the remedy immediately without waiting for a “morbid diagnosis”; which treats a patient without having to determine his exact sickness ! Observe that I say “exact sickness”, for such general terms as hysteria, nervousness, rheumatism, dyscrasic or cryptogenic state, idiopathic, and what not-these do not deserve the noble term “diagnosis”. This fine and learned terminology readily covers the ignorance of the doctor giving treatment, an ignorance not as to his science, but as to the case he deals with- a very different matter.
The word “diagnosis” alone, connotes a pathological diagnosis, with a verdict of morbidity. It is time to show to those who have not yet learned the fact, that there is a far more practical diagnosis : that is, one indicating from the very outset the necessary remedy. This is what Adolf Lippe meant when he said, “Here is a person of the phosphorus type ; here, one of the arsenic type ; here of Pulsatilla.” And he uses the terms consecrated to these meanings by Hahnemann in the Organon, 1811.
Kent also tells in his Lectures on Homoeopathic Philosophy, of a patient who asked him : “Doctor, what is the matter with me ?” and he replied : “Why, you have Nux vomica,” that being his remedy. Whereupon the old man said : “Well, I did think I had some wonderful disease or other!” That is therapeutic, a homoeopathic diagnosis.
I do not enlarge further upon the point ; such diagnosis is clearly the first duty of the homoeopathic physician. Frequently it leads to a prompt, mild and permanent improvement, to a cure of the patient.
But we are not at the end of our task ; we face two other heavy responsibilities ; one of these concerns the patient, and the other, the future of medical science. Upon us rest both of these responsibilities.
As to the patient-our task is not only to relieve, but to CURE. Now, a true cure rests not solely on a disappearance of existing symptoms, but equally on advice given the patient, that he need not again fall into such a state. Such counsels, of hygiene, of directing work and time, of morale, of reading, of the whole attitude, and control of life-these also presuppose a diagnosis. And here, at this point, the disease diagnosis becomes not only serviceable but indispensable to the doctor. (See Kent, Lectures on Homoeopathic Philosophy, 1919, page 143).
Dr. Schmidt was introduced to the results of homeopathic treatment during the 1918 flu epidemic while living in London. There he met both J. H. Clarke and John Weir.
In 1922 he came to the United States and began his studies with Alonzo Austin and Frederica Gladwin, who had been a pupil of Kent's. He became the first graduate of the American Foundation for Homeopathy course for doctors. Returning to his native land he set up practice in Geneva, Switzerland. He was responsible for reintroducing classical homeopathy into Europe, teaching several generations of physicians, including Elizabeth Wright Hubbard.
Dr. Schmidt helped edit the "Final General Repertory" of Kent, and translated the Organon into French. In 1925, he was one of the main founders of the Liga Medicorum Homoeopathic Internationalis (LIGA).