THE passing of Sir Robert Perks was no ordinary event in the daily being and doing of the world.
Statesman of distinction, man of affairs in all countries of the world, East, West, North, South – the healer of separatisms in the ranks of theological kinship, a bringer-in of finance to give mundane power and position to religious establishments, having also breadth of outlook which, regarding Homoeopathy as first, brought in his own person major surgery as its complement. All these qualities denoted a fearlessness in thought, word and deed, which bore power to all he touched. It may be said of him:.
“Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit”.
To listen to Sir Robert as he amplified the detail of his own biography was an uplifting experience enjoyed by few. In later Victorian days, when his competitors were Gladstone, Morley and Harcourt, Sir Robert played a part as emancipator of graveyards for the dissenting fraternity.
And in later times it is known that this promising Parliamentarian was designated as coming Chancellor of the Roseberry Government had the whirling of politics been a little less ample in its vagaries. His titular honours remained as Knight of the Borough and Baronet of the United Kingdom. He sat in Parliament as Member for Louth in Lincolnshire.
As a man of affairs, he might truly declare that there was not a man of importance of his time he did not know. His acquaintances ranged from Count Witte of Russia, of whom he spoke highly, to President Grover Cleveland of the United States. In this country, he frequently deliberated and planned with Sir Edward Watkin, and the journals of the day were filled with cynical merriment to learn that Watkin came up to Town on Christmas Day, his only spare day, to plan with Perks-a Dissenter-a fresh railway access to London. And it was done.
His novel idea of the Million Shilling Fund in the early days of this century many can still recall. It was this which originated in the mind of the present writer the modus operandi of the financing of that newly created body, the British Homoeopathic Association, which, adopting the hint in broad outline, had in six years secured an income of 2,000 per annum. Of this body Sir Robert and Lady Perks were always energetic supporters.
Then came the Great War, and British Homoeopathy, moved by accounts of the insufficient provision for the sick and wounded, founded an Allied Hospital at Neuilly, near Paris. Sir Malcolm Perks, the present baronet, was one of the first to volunteer for service there, and personally he carried out with a comrade the preparation for the reception of the sick and wounded there.
Doe many years Sir Robert Perks was a regular attendant at the Annual Meetings of the London Homoeopathic Hospital and the British Homoeopathic Association, and few things escaped his vigilant eye and spirit of energy on such occasions. not always, however, was his watchful, inquisition made manifest. “Quis facit per alium, facit per se.” A life so unique as this deserves special notice: and “take him all for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again”.
The first duty of medicine is not to cure disease, but to prevent it. The resistant body of the patient is of no small account in our struggle with the invader, yet it is frequently neglected by the worker in preventive medicine. Ultimately it may prove that the fortification of the host is, in the long run, the best means of defeating the enemy. – SIR GEORGE NEWMAN, An Outline of the Practice of Preventive Medicine.
