Nowhere, to my knowledge, is the teaching comparable save in London and Mexico, nor are such well-qualified teachers to be found for the branches offered. It is, like certain places, a veritable refuge of true wisdom, a generous fountain where those who are qualified may come to quench their thirst.
I cannot allow this fortunate opportunity to pass without saying with pride for the first time, that I had the honor of being the first pupil of the American Foundation of Homoeopathy, having received the remarkable instruction of two of its trustees, Dr. Austin and Dr. Gladwin. One may say of this teaching, that no other leaders have been able to bring home to me true wisdom, with such a combination of psychology and pedagogic talent. To know how to adapt oneself to the student, to lead and guide him, while leaving him his own arbiter, to direct him gently into the path of truth, to teach him to think for himself, to oblige him to build new highways, to make him discover, instead of leading him in beaten paths, this is what my two teachers knew how to do.
This teaching, I may say, was veritable initiation for me, for it was not dry science, no mere skeleton which was given me, but a wider and more comprehensive knowledge of the art of analyzing and understanding the human heart, a knowledge so rich in hidden observations requiring perseverance, that show one the most delicate nuances, qualities necessary for the subsequent biological synthesis of the human being whom Providence has entrusted to our hands. Gratitude for such a gift can only find expression in the unceasing toil of a life dedicated to the noble cause to which my two teachers have consecrated their lives.
If only each Hahnemannian practitioner made it a practice to train one new pupil each year, according to his individual capacity, giving much where much can be received, and imparting the qualities needed by one who would make a sacrament of his profession! To imitate the qualities of the great masters, to learn to possess the best of themselves, to become rich personalities, through self-discipline, to attain serenity, that is what the student seek at any cost.
Alas, today one is so far from this atmosphere; sickness and agitation haunt the world, and impede mankind. Nowadays, to live is to squander oneself on maddening detail, in exhausting conversations and contacts, in futile reading and befogging lectures, in thrilling and fundamentally incoherent spectacles; no moment is left to look into oneself, to revise oneself, to till ones inner land.
Refreshment and repose are now matters of flinging meteors at windows, in railroad, in automobile and in airplane, of abandoning oneself to an endless hallucinatory tourism during the winter in the south, rushing to the north in the summer, of gulping down stultifying nourishment, of smoking like a chimney, of over-stimulation by tea, coffee and alcoholic drinks, of living in caravansaries, in contact with a cosmopolitan crowd.
These poor people, drained by a nomadic existence, need to be brought back to the habit of gentle repose, mental, nervous, digestive and muscular–who should know this, if it is not he who calls himself a physician? He must know how to induce in all these agitated beings moments of repose; for instance, before and after meals; to give them light and suitable menus; have them live tranquilly, at least in the morning; and teach them the beauty of a permanent abiding place and privacy, and isolation in silent zones when necessary, the practice of meditation and renunciation, the simplification of life, the mastery of the will… healing measures without which not fortifying recharging of the organism is possible.
The attainment of mental perfection requires a synthetic method. Defects of character should be combatted in a positive manner, by the cultivation of the opposite virtues. Egoism and intellectual pride are to be destroyed by the cultivation of renunciation and humility, which are the essential conditions of cure and progress.
Every practitioner, when he has a breathing space, recalls the teaching that he has had, and says to himself, “Now that I have tested it by experience. what was my education worth? What would I criticize and what amend, if I had a son or pupil to prepare as fully as may be for the battle of medical life?”
Each of us absorbs and retains many qualities of his masters, but adds his personality.
Let me sketch to you what I believe to be the complete preparation, both theoretical and practical, of a student, from a homoeopathic viewpoint. I speak from experience, for during my four years of practice I have been able to train four new disciples of AEsculapius for homoeopathy.
An examiner who has not himself passed the ordeal, would not be able to understand or judge those whom he had examined. And that is why the best training for a homoeopathic student is to take his chronic case and make him answer the series of questions he will later put to his patients. To make the instruction vivid, to test the pupils qualities and weaknesses and point of his prejudices, such is the task of the teacher. A daily conference of a couple of hours during a period of one to two years is a minimum for the proper preparation of the student and he must be taught at the outset to make his mind a “tabula rasa” for the impress of the new doctrine.
Here is the program I have in mind. It comprises six headings.
1. The study of philosophy.
a. A careful study of Kents works, and those of Close, Grauvogl, Sieffert and Jahr.
b. Intensive study of the Organon, including comparison between different editions in the different languages.
c. An outline of homoeopathy from the historical viewpoint, with bibliographical study of the essential works since the time of Hahnemann.
d. The course of the homoeopathic movement in the different countries, together with homoeopathic polemics.
e. Biographical sketches of Hahnemann and his principal disciples.
2. The study of Materia Medica.
I. The remedies themselves.
II. Comparisons and drug relationships.
a. This is in the most vital manner possible, and not in the form of a digest of a simple keynote manual; instead, the study of books like Hering, Allen, Kent, Hahnemann, Clarke, Jahr, Hempel, Cowperthwaite, Teste, Hughes, Wheeler, Farrington, Boger, all of them for each remedy. The method taught me by my teacher of how to enter into the personality of the drug by mimicking the symptoms, is a unique method, the importance of which I cannot sufficiently emphasize.
b. An objective, schematic study of the drug with designs showing the types of action on different parts of the body according to the Inconography of Dr. Balari.
c. The study of the comparative Materia Medica according to Lippe, Gross and Hering, Farrington, Stauffer and Johnson, etc.
d. The study of the relationship of remedies according to Gibson Miller, Clarke, Jahr, Teste, Allen, etc.
3. Pharmacological study.
a. The pharmacopoeias in various languages.
b. The preparation of remedies (trituration and dynamization of drugs to the 200 C. dilution, in accordance with the directions in the sixth edition of the Organon).
c. A knowledge of the different potentizing apparatus.
d. Microscopic examination and trituration, including examination of untriturated and triturated sugar of milk and of an insoluble remedy, with drawings.
e. The compilation of a complete list of homoeopathic remedies and their synonyms.
f. Botanical study.
g. Study of the nosodes.
h. Study of the three main chronic miasms.
4. Repertory study.
a. Different methods of repertorization.
b. Thorough and rapid orientation in Kents repertory with comparison of the different editions.
c. At least a cursory knowledge of the repertories of Lippe, Boericke, Jahr, Boenninghausen, Knerr, Allen, Clarke, Berridge, Holcombe, Clark and Lee, Lafitte, Ruckert, etc., the card index repertories of Allen, Tyler and Field, and the machine repertory of Balari.
d. Classification of various methods.
5. Clinical study.
a. Examination of the patient.
b. Complete semiological examination.
c. Subjective interrogation such as Hahnemann suggested.
d. Applied therapeutics.
6. The study of provings.
This is a comprehensive program. Let us hope that both the physicians and the laity will send us students with keen minds who promise well for the future. Enthuse them about the American Foundation of Homoeopathy, which can make their lives truly useful ones an empower them to cure mankind according to the great laws of life: “curare non sanare.” To achieve this end, which is rewarding to the patient as well as to the doctor, necessitates an analytic research into all the elements and details and a knowledge of the hierarchy of the symptoms and minute individualization.
One can build nothing without assembling all the component parts, without mastering the occult principles which provide the plan and the means of complete execution. One cannot make anything right if one has not stripped it of its past vices, and revealed the archetype within. One cannot hope for any amelioration, any cure, any conversion, if the fundamental laws are not envisaged by patient stages, not evoked by each individuals utmost striving.
Calcutta
Chief Editor, Homeopathic Herald