Medical treatment of Genital Passion


I am now going to expose here, the treatment of genital passion, which is, after alcoholism, the cause of more crimes. About thirty years ago, I began to make known the treatment of the genital passion in the vol I, of my Causeries cliniques homoeopathiques….


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.

This medical treatment of alcoholism might have diminished the mortality in France almost fifty times more than what have done the Institute Pasteur, as regards rabies and diphtheria.

In fact, the antirabic treatment saves from death about 200 Frenchmen who died annually out of rabies. Out of 5000 Frenchmen who die every year out of diphtheria, the treatment of Dr. Roux can cure 80 Percent, i.e. about 4000. The 460,000 cabarets in France furnished in an average each two drunkards i.e.about a total of 900,000 drunkards. It is not an exaggeration to presume that out of 18 drunkards, one die prematurely every year, about 50,000 a year; but the medical treatment may save these alcoholics from death, and therefore can save annually almost 50,000 Frenchmen more than the two above mentioned treatment of Institute Pasteur.

This chapter in not, to be sure a digression which is not useful because it explains and proves in advance that the medical treatment of genital passion will not be rejected but by men who are making wrong judgment. It will be, on the contrary accepted by men who are disposed to observation and experiment, would like to utilise this treatment in the great interest of public and private morality. This new application of Homoeopathy which I have explained further on will show that it is an important contribution to the moral and intellectual civilisation, while the other discoveries in medicine, constitute only one contribution to the material civilisation.

II

Medical Treatment of Genital Passion

Up till now the doctors, even the most learned, have only practised a kind of veterinary medicine applied to man, because they have only treated in man, the animal the material being; I have done the same thing during the first twenty years on my practice following the teaching and the example of my professors, but, during these last twenty years I have treated besides in man, the moral and the intellectual being and I have found that one may thus ameliorate his character and develop his intelligence. It is surely not the only means to obtain this double result, because I have recognised according to Galen and more explicitly than him, that there are six agents for moral and intellectual culture: Three immaterial: Religion, Education, Instruction and three material: Medicine, Food, Climate. But experience has proved to me that one can apply only two of them daily: Religion and medicine.

In fact, the instruction and the education have only an effective value if they can be completed by the religion (Alcoholism and Criminality). (Medical treatment of alcoholism and mental derangement, in-12 of 226 pages, 1889, page 17, tr. philadelphia in 1890). Food may be very useful in similar case, out men have generally too much ignorance, greediness, prejudices and routine for utilising that which will suit them better. As regards climate, there are very few who be able to take the benefit of it.

Moreover the two above mentioned agents of moral and intellectual culture-religion and medicine-are daily useful even for the somatic diseases. This is what told a learned Isrealitic doctor Prof. Bernheim of the Faculty of Nancy, about the cure done at Lourdes. He does not contest the authenticity of it, but only the interpretation. In fact, he says that such cure were effected by some religious suggestion. But the truth forces him to accept the superiority which he calls the religious suggestions. “But he says among all the causes that, appealing to the memory, put to function the cerebral mechanism for possible cures, nothing is more efficacious than the religious faith. To it are due certainly, number of cures authentically verified (De la suggestion et de son application a la therapeutique in 12 of 428 pages, p.214=218-Librairie Octave Doin. Paris, 1886).

In his book, Less Passions (the vices), which should be read by the doctors, the moralists, the father of a family, the learned Dr. of Louis Veuillot, the Dr. Fredault, accepted also the utility of the simultaneous action of religion and of the medicine. Speaking about the medicine of then middle age, he says: “It is only the priests who cultivated if for many centuries and engaged for its perfection their whole ardour. They understood that there is the necessity for it at every instant of the life, and that, to many moral dispositions it is necessary as the advices on the morality and the helps of the religion. The body does not want only to be nourished, it should be kept up in order and taken care of. While, what is done to the horses and to the machines, one does not do it for himself. One forgets that, to be well guided, at first there is the necessity of a machine, which works, well, and one should not wait for repairing until its mechanism has become weak and out of service. The truth is that the medicine is as much useful as the cooking, the medicine as necessary as the food, and that man should also take care of himself as well as of his food,” (p.357).

Jean Pierre Gallavardin
Jean Pierre Gallavardin (1825 – 1898) was a French orthodox physician who converted to homeopathy to gain international renown. Gallavardin was a Physician at the Homeopathic Hospital in Lyons.
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.