Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentleman, I think I have told you sufficient to bear out my contention that modern medicine is not scientific, and the perfection of perfection, as we are told, but is a disgrace and a danger. The ordinary doctor gives his patient a laxative if he is constipated, or a cough mixture if he has a cough, or a tonic if he is anaemic or feels weak, or he prescribes digitalis if he complains of the heart –digitalis has killed more people than has heart disease– or he prescribes salicylates for rheumatism, which promptly take away the pain but produce heart disease instead etc.
If the modern doctor cannot give prompt relief by remedies such as those mentioned, he will give poisons to abolish pain or to give sleep, or he will brainlessly give injections recommended in the advertisements, and if he has no success he will suggest that the patient should have all his teeth extracted, although they may be perfectly healthy; or he will send him to a surgeon for a useless and probably totally unnecessary operation, such as cutting out more or less healthy tonsils or a more or less healthy appendix.
Such is modern medicine. In these circumstances there is a strong call for something better. As a matter of fact, people in general are disgusted with modern medicine and so are many doctors. Numerous patients refuse to take drugs. I estimate that nine-tenths of the drugs given to panel patients are poured down the sink. Very likely this is an under-estimate. Hundreds of thousands of people refuse to go to ordinary doctors. They will go to homoeopaths, nature curers, osteopaths, faith curers, and try fasts, etc.
Many doctors recognise the signs of the times. In America there are thousands and thousands of drugless doctors, registered doctors who refuse to use drugs, and who try to cure their patients by diet, baths, exercise, massage, etc. There are many drugless doctors in England as well.
Besides, people have a great and justified grievance against the medical profession on account of the surgical mania. There are too many operations. Some of the most eminent surgeons have assured me that the number of unnecessary operations is vastly greater than the number of necessary operations. One of the leading men told me that ninety per cent. of all operations are done for fees, not for the good of the patient. Even some of the most eminent specialists have protested against the mania for cutting out healthy tonsils which surely were given as by the Creator for some object. As a matter of fact, they are valuable organs of elimination.
Surgery is ruled by fashion. Two or three decades ago every women was told that she had a floating kidney which had to be stitched up. All kidneys are floating kidneys. The “Floating Kidneys” operation has gone out of fashion, and so has stitching up of the womb. Now there is a mania for straightening out the septum, the partition of the nose which divides the nose in two. Of the fifty million inhabitants of this country at least forty- nine million have a diverted septum, which calls for surgical re- adjustment, and many specialists make a living out of straightening out the septum, to the great disadvantage of the people.
I think I have told you enough to show that the people in general are justified in their dislike and distrust of orthodox medicine and surgery. There is obviously a need for something better than modern practice, and that something better is homoeopathy.
The new art of healing, called homoeopathy, was discovered about 150 years ago by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, a very eminent physician and chemist, but the principle that “like cures like” which Hahnemann firmly established has been known since the earliest ages. Twenty-three centuries ago Hippocrates, the father of medicine, stated the principle in his writings. He told us that a certain root which causes insanity if taken in large quantities, cures insanity if taken in small quantities, etc.
Every medicine has two opposite actions, in large and in small doses. Strychnine and Arsenic in substantial doses are very dangerous poisons. Strychnine and Arsenic in small doses are extremely valuable tonics, which are taken by millions of people every day with great benefit.
I would like to describe the action of some homoeopathic medicines by practical examples. A wealthy lady came to me in the utmost despair. She told me that she suffered from sleeplessness, that, by doctors orders, she had taken Veronal in ever increasing doses, and that Veronal no longer procured sleep. Enquiry elicited the fact that she did not sleep because of over-activity of the brain. The brain began working like a mill-race as soon as she was in bed. It is well-known fact that a cup of strong coffee keeps people awake because it produces over-activity of the brain.
Guided by the homoeopathic principle of similarity, I gave the lady Coffea tosta — in plain English, roasted coffee– a millionth of a grain a dose, in the form of innocent-looking sugar pills which had been put in a solution containing I grain of coffee per million grains of liquid. After a week the lady wrote to may: “I have taken your medicine for a week, but I am terrified. I have had the best nights I have ever had in my life. Your medicine is far more potent than Veronal, and probably far more dangerous, and therefore I have left it off.” I told her in reply that she could safely take my pills by the ounce and by the pound without harm.
Ipecacuanha is used to produce vomiting. It produces vomiting rapidly if given in large quantities. The homoeopath gives Ipecacuanha in very small quantities when there is nausea or vomiting accompanied by a clean tongue. Its action is infallible.
The orthodox doctor gives Opium to relieve pain or to give sleep. Patients who have been given Opium fall into a stupor, and the disadvantage of using Opium consists of this, that patients become terribly constipated. Some time ago a lady doctor of the orthodox school came to me and said that her father, who was eighty years old, was dying of heart disease and had been lying in a coma for three weeks. He was also terribly constipated. His doctor had given him large quantities of Digitalis which had affected the heart and possibly produced the coma.
I prescribed Opium by the decillionth of a grain a dose three times a day. a decillion is a one followed by sixty noughts. If one grain of Opium were mixed with a quantity of sugar as large as this earth, a grain taken from the substance would contain about a decillionth of a grain of Opium. Next day, the old gentleman woke up from his coma, washed, dressed, put on his collar and tie, came down to breakfast, read the newspaper, and enquired angrily why people had not given him his correspondence for three weeks, and he had the most wonderful motions.
If a patient has diarrhoea the orthodox doctor is apt to give him Opium, which causes terrible constipation, to the injury of the individual. A homoeopathic doctor carefully enquires into the character of the diarrhoea. If the diarrhoea has a very sour smell and does not give pain, it resembles the diarrhoea produced by Rhubarb. A billionth of a grain of Rhubarb will promptly cure the diarrhoea without causing constipation. If, on the other hand, the diarrhoea is accompanied by violent colicky pain, it resembles diarrhoea produced by aloes. In that case the homoeopath will give the patient a few doses of Aloes in infinitely small quantities, and a cure will promptly follow.
A little while ago my dog, a beautiful red setter, suddenly became very ill. He vomited blood and had bloody diarrhoea. The condition was very dangerous. As the identical symptoms are produced by Arsenic in large doses, I immediately gave him Arsenic in infinitely small quantities, and in a few hours he was perfectly well.
Corrosive sublimate produces bleeding from the kidneys, a very terrible condition. The homoeopath cures bleeding from the kidneys by giving the patient infinitely small quantities of Corrosive sublimate, which cure rapidly.
The homoeopath does not find it necessary to make a pathological diagnosis as is done by the orthodox doctors. The art and science of diagnosis has been developed greatly, and it is no longer possible for a single doctor to make an adequate diagnosis, but a team of experts and laboratory men are needed. All the excretions and secretions of the patient may have to be tested in a laboratory. An X-ray photograph may have to be taken and countless tests may have to be made, which may require several days or even weeks. The homoeopath does not try to diagnose a disease, because what is called a disease is a theoretical abstraction.
People do not suffer from tuberculosis but from the effect of under-feeding, of a bad chill, of insufficient fresh air, etc., mistakes which call for the logical remedies. People do not suffer from cancer, which is an end result, but from twenty or thirty years of faulty feeding, auto-intoxication from the bowel in consequence of chronic constipation, drinking of boiling hot liquids which may have produced cancer in the stomach etc. These so- called diseases recognized by the medical profession of to-day, are entirely different from the diseases described twenty or thirty years ago, and the next generation will laugh at the diseases now mentioned in the textbooks. The conception of disease has constantly changed.
James Ellis Barker wrote a very large number of books, both under the name James Ellis Barker and under his real German name Otto Julius Eltzbacher, The Truth about Homœopathy; Rough Notes on Remedies with William Murray; Chronic Constipation; The Story of My Eyes; Miracles Of Healing and How They are Done; Good Health and Happiness; New Lives for Old: How to Cure the Incurable; My Testament of Healing; Cancer, the Surgeon and the Researcher; Cancer, how it is Caused, how it Can be Prevented with a foreward by William Arbuthnot Lane; Cancer and the Black Man etc.