Si vis esse sanctus, Esto sanus, Sanit Jerome.
Preface
I have long time hesitated. I admit, before exposing the medical treatment of genital passion. I decided to do so only after having been strongly incited by some priests and particularly by one of them, professor in one of our catholic faculties. The latter, following the example of many other priests, having assisted to the consultations of my Polyclinic of Wednesday morning for the treatment of vices, have seen the moralising effects; also they have insisted several times that I make it known to them; this is what I do to-day with the end of public and private moralising.
This publication is, since then, addressed exclusively to men who may contribute to that double moralisation, i.e. to say to doctors, to moralists and to the heads of families. It should not be given to the hands of adolescents, no more and no less than the books of anatomy, physiology, pathology and therapeutics, because it is a medical book by its method and is not a book of moral by by its results.
I would surely be criticised by the people who reason, while they would observe and experiment, it is the fate which any innovator in science cannot escape, specially in experimental sciences. But, in compensation, many fathers and mothers of families will be glad that I have taught them one of the means to keep away adultery and the divorce from their family and to prevent their children from the vicious habits and from debauchery.
For the people who are preoccupied, not with the question of morality, but alone with the economic question, I would express in figures the advantages of this treatment, and this saying that they will be able to economise in such and such a family 200, 400, 600 francs (Francs-1896) and more which, without it, would be spent to pay the cost of debauchery of the husband or of the son.
I
But inspite of its urgency, the treatment will be, with difficulty, and lately accepted in France and in the countries where reigns the monopoly of education, because the latter fashions and, so to say, congeals the intelligences in the same mould, whence they cannot come out for being developed.
There are two kinds of truths: The truth out of reason that one discovers and controls by reasoning: the truths from facts that one discovers and controls by observation and experiments.
“While the Europeans, specially the educated men, see the ideas in things, says Paul Bourget, the Americans see directly the thing, directly the fact. It is thus they are prepared by their eminently utilitary education (Outer-Mer, t.II, p.27).
In France and in Europe, the people resemble in this case to the Americans and like them, see directly the fact. Also as for example, when they follow a medical treatment, they do not reason but they experiment conforming to the advices of the doctor and, since then, obtain some better results than the rich and educated patients. Here are three very demonstrating examples:
After having treated by the electricity many patients of all the classes, a doctor of Lyon said to me: “There are only the poors who are cured well; they are docile and persevering”.
Since ten years I have founded my polyclinic where I have given more than nine thousands of consultations for the treatment of alcoholism and of other vices and defects of character and of intelligence, I have made the same observation as that of my above mentioned colleague. On this account, I will recall the cure of a case of alcoholism which was very much difficult to cure as it was hereditary and had already lasted twenty eight years. It was a husband of 41 years who used to drink from the age: of 13. His wife came to me in my polyclinic every three weeks for one year, at the end of which her husband was completely cured. Since twenty years, I have never seen a woman of leading classes to have that perseverance for the treatment of her husband for alcoholism or for any other vice; thus the results are consequential.
I reported what precedes to the charitable president of the administration of hospitals of Lyon M. Nermann Sabran who replied to me in the following words: “You recall to me what said Dr. Michel Rambaud your old professor of medical clinic. Let them send to me some carpenters I will cure them; but if they send me some mechanics I will not be able to cure them’ they reason instead of experimenting. They are not docile”.
To these mechanics resemble all the educated men who wish to control by the reasoning the value of a truth, which in fact they cannot control by observation and experimentation. Thus there are some members of the Academie de Medicine who have not accepted the magnetism under the name of hypnotism after having rejected it for a century.
Gallavardin set up a homeopathic Dispensary for the cure of alcoholics, often working in conjunction with priests, and he wrote several books on this subject.
Jean Pierre Gallavardin wrote Psychism and Homeopathy, The Homoeopathic Treatment of Alcoholism, How to Cure Alcoholism the Non-toxic Homoeopathic Way, Repertory of Psychic Medicines with Materia Medica, Plastic Medicine, and articles for The British Journal of Homeopathy, On Phosphoric Paralysis, and he collated the statistics on pneumonia and other cases for the United States Journal of Homeopathy, and he contributed widely to homeopathic publications.