THE LITERARY ARMAMENTARIUM OF THE HOMOEOPATHIC PHYSICIAN, OR BOOKS THAT THE HOMOEOPATHIC PHYSICIAN CANNOT DO WITHOUT, AND SOMETHING ABOUT THEM.
The request of the Executive Committee of the Connecticut Homoeopathic Medical Society for me to present a paper on the subject of Books That the Homoeopathic Physician Cannot Do Without, and Something About Them, reminds me that there is after all no subject that is more important from the standpoint of the homoeopathic physician than his literary equipment.
What is meant, briefly, by this literary armamentarium? In the first place, it must be taken for, granted that the homoeopathic physician, must have had at the outset of his career, a well-rounded, training in the classics of their equivalent, one or more modern languages, a good knowledge of the general sciences, of chemistry and physics particularly, and, if he destined to succeed, a certain inborn or indwelling love of his fellowmen and the innate desire to become to the fullest extent in his power, a healer of the sick.
He must, either consciously or unconsciously, embody in his cosmos. or more specifically perhaps within his ego, that divine purpose so well set forth by our immortal Hahnemann in the first paragraph of the Organon, namely: “The first and sole duty of the physician is to restore health to the sick. This is the true art of healing.” The edition just quoted is the First American, from the British Translation of the Fourth German Edition, by Stratten, of Dublin.
There is another version by Dudgeon that is much better known, that reads thus: “The physicians highest and only mission is to restore the sick to health, to cure, as it is termed.” The late Conrad Wesselhoeft of Boston renders it thus: “The physicians highest and only calling is to restore health to the sick, which is called healing.” And Fincke, one of the most profound thinkers of the Hahnemannian wind of the profession, in an unpublished translation of the Fifth edition, transcribes this same passage as fellows: “The physicians highest and only calling is to make sick people well, which is called healing”.
However we may translate this remarkable aphorism of Hahnemanns, we are brought face to face with the dignity of the physician, his superior worth in the world of men, an the high calling to which the God, All-Heal has called him.
I am reminded here of the story of a small boy who was asked by someone who had called at his fathers office and was about to turn away in disappointment, if he knew where his father, who was a physician, could be found. “I do not know,” replied the sturdy little fellow, “where my daddy can be just now, but wherever he is, I am sure he is helping somebody.” If this be the end and aim of the student of medicine, and of the homoeopathic physician, I am sure his future career will be a successful one. Thus to heal the sick, to make sick folk well, is the be-all and the end-all of the physician.
It is to the wisdom of Bacon that we are indebted for the observation that of the making of many books there is no end; and John Milton has remarked that “a good book is the precious life blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”
Richard le Gallienne has said in one of his exquisite romances that “books are the good Samaritans that find us robbed of all our dreams by the roadside of life, bleeding and weeping and desolate; and such is their skill and wealth and goodness of heart, that they not only heal up our wounds, but restore to us the lost property of our dreams.”…and “a library is a better world, built by the brains and hearts of poets and dreamers, as a refuge from the real world outside; and in it alone is to be found the land of milk and honey which it promises.” If this sort of works obtains in the secular, why should it not apply likewise to the scientific or medical shelves?
I believe there is a world of romance hidden within the mighty tomes of all ages, and who shall say that there is not a divine afflatus in the man of science or the man of medical learning, as well as in the poet or the dilettante?
Before entering into more details respecting our subject, let me call your attention to the general opinions of some literary minds concerning books. If we are, first of all, interested in books for their own sake as the late Dr. Crothers Old Librarian (Among Friends, p 96) we can never allow them to suffer from lack of care. For there is much neglect that may befall a book, especially an old one.
But here again modern ingenuity has devised ways and means for the permanent preservation of a library of books that are well worthy of the collectors notice. In the antiquarians “convention of books” cited by Dr. Crothers the books themselves assume the responsibility for the care not of themselves but of their readers, and arrange them carefully in order and groupings, and decide upon their various merits. For books in their own way set great store by their readers, and when a book misplaces its readers, or loses them, it is looked upon as a n especial faux pas.
It is no small achievement for a work to look after a large collection of miscellaneous readers, and to select those that are worthy of cultivation. It has not perhaps occurred to some of us that there is a specificity among readers as well as among books.
Yet such, Dr. Crothers would have us believe. This gifted author and critic also wrote another easy entitled The Hundred Worst Books in which he says that: “Like all the lower organisms, poor books multiply prodigiously, though the total number is kept down by a corresponding mortality…The worst books sink speedily into the depths of oblivion. It is in these black waters that we must dredge for our specimens”.
Fortunately, homoeopathy boasts of a multitude of good books, and of a comparatively small number of bad ones, even applying all the strictures that the critic of general literature would unfeelingly employ. Certainly the works of Hahnemann, Jahr, Boenninghausen, Hempel, Hering, Kent and Allen, (to mention only a few of the earlier compilers of homoeopathic literature) measure up to a high literary value.
Let us examine some of the treasures to be found in the literary armamentarium of the homoeopathic physician.
First, let us go back to the fountain head, and see what contributions were made by Hahnemann himself that are still worthy of a place in modern times. Hahnemanns chief works include, as is well known. The Organon, The Materia Medica Pura and The Chronic Diseases. There is much, however, in his Lesser Writings that is worthy of the consideration of every physician of whatever method of practice.
In his monumental volumes, Samuel Hahnemann: His Life and Work, Dr. Richard Heahl of Stuttgart has included a list of the Essays and Works of Hahnemann.
By actual count, this list embraces no less than twenty-two extensive volumes of Translations and Revisions of the leading medical writers of the times, from the year 1777 to 1800. Of Hahnemanns own works and essays, there are sixty listed from the year 1779 to 1810 which marks the publication of the first edition of the Organon, and from this time on until 1833 there are various editions of The Materia Medica Pura and The Chronic Diseases, with such epoch-making papers as The Spirit of the Homoeopathic Doctrine of Medicine, which, though imperfectly rendered into English, formed the medium for the introduction of homoeopathy into America by Hans Burch Gram, in the year 1825.
Dissertation on the Helleborism of the Ancients, his thesis and Dispensing of Medicines by Homoeopathic Physicians; Allopathy, a Word of Warning to Sick People; The Cure of Cholera; and his papers on the Antipsorics; and Boenninghausens writings in general.
This list includes some twenty-two or more essays, also introduction by Weber and Lich and Kammerer of Ulm. And finally his sixth and last edition of the Organon, with is own annotations, as presented to the profession through the energies of Drs. James W. Ward and the late William Boericke of San Francisco. What ones of these works can the homoeopathic physician do without? Certainly not the great triad–The Organon, The Materia Medica Pura and The Chronic Diseases.
I have long conceived the idea of formulating a list of homoeopathic works to occupy a similar place in the library of the homoeopathic physician as that so popularly known at one time as Dr. Eliots Five Foot Shelf of Books. This the great educator set forth in his Harvard Classics (Collier, N. Y., 1910). This collection consisted of fifty selected volumes which, when one had carefully familiarized himself with them, would enable him to become a man or a woman of culture. Dr. Crothers naively remarked of this Five Foot Shelf that:
There are little jealousies among books, and it is impossible to please all of them. The Old Librarian was conscious of this when , in a corner of the hall, he saw a number of books chosen for their especial serviceableness being seated on a divan five feet long. Each as his name was called came forward with a look of modest merit, while betraying a momentary surprise at his neighbor. In the above-mentioned essay, Doctor Crothers makes reference to between ninety and one hundred authors.
Benjamin Collins Woodbury was born August 13, 1882, at Patten, Maine. He was the son of Dr. Benjamin Collins, a homeopathic physician, and Matidle Albina (Knowles). He attended Patten Academy and received his M.D. from Boston University Medical School in 1906. Following graduation Dr. Woodbury began his practice in Lewiston and Winthrop, Maine, and in 1907 moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he practiced for the next nine years. Dr. Woodbury married Miss Gertrude Fancis O'Neill of Boston at Eliot, Maine on June 18, 1915.
In March, 1919, Dr. Woodbury left the Islands and located in San Francisco where he practiced for two years and then returned to the East and established a practice in Boston. He was a trustee and a member of the staff of the Hahnemann Hospital, Boston, and in 1947 was elected president if the International Hahnemann Institute, Washington, D.C. He also gave many lectures on homeopathy at Boston University and at postgraduate sessions of the American foundation of Homeopathy.
Dr. Woodbury died on January 22, 1948, in Boston at the age of 65.
The doctor was the author of "Materia Medica for Nurses", published in 1922 and of many articles in medical journals in England, India, and the United States. Dr. Woodbury was also a writer of plays and poetry.