Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentleman, I think I have told you sufficient to bear out my contention that modern medicine is not scientific, and the perfection, as we are told, but is a disgrace and a danger. The ordinary doctor gives his patient a laxative if he is constipated, or a cough mixture if he has a cough,or a tonic if he is anaemic or feels weak, or he prescribes digitalis if he complaints of the heart-digitalis has killed more people than has heart disease- or he prescribers salicylates for rheumatism, which promptly take away the pain but produce heart disease instead, etc.
If the modern doctor cannot give prompt relief by remedies such as those mentioned, he will give poisons to abolish pain or to give sleep, or he will brainlessly give injections recommended in the advertisements, and if he has no success he will suggest that the patient should have all his teeth extracted, although they may be perfectly healthy; or he will send him to a surgeon for a useless and probably totally unnecessary operation, such as cutting out more or less healthy tonsils or a more or less healthy appendix.
Such is modern medicine. In these circumstances there is a strong call for something better. As a matter of fact, people in general are disgusted with modern medicine and so are many doctors. Numerous patients refuse to take drugs. I estimate that nine-tenths of the drugs given to panel patients are poured down the sink. Very likely this is an under-estimate.
Hundreds of thousands of people refuse to go to ordinary doctors. They will go to homoeopaths, nature curers, osteopaths, faith curers, and try fasts, etc. Many doctors recognise the signs of the times. In America there are thousands of drugless doctors, registered doctors who refuse to use drugs, and who try to cure their patients by diet, baths, exercise, massage, etc. There are many drugless doctors in England as well.
Besides, people have a great and justified grievance against the medical profession on account of the surgical mania. There are too many operations. Some of the most eminent surgeons have assured me that the number of unnecessary operations is vastly greater than the number of necessary operations. One of the leading men told me that ninety per cent. of all operations are done for fees, not for the good of the patient. Even some of the most eminent specialists have protested against the mania for cutting out healthy tonsils which surely were given us by the Creator for some object. As a matter of fact, they are valuable organs of elimination.
Surgery is ruled by fashion. Two or three decades ago every woman was told that she had a floating kidney which had to be stitched up. All kidneys are floating kidneys. The “Floating Kidneys” Operation has gone out of fashion, and so has stitching up of the womb. Now there is mania for straightening out of septum, the partition of the nose which divides the nose in two. Of the fifty million inhabitants of this country at least forty- nine million have a diverted septum, which calls for surgical re- adjustments, and many specialists make a living out of straightening out the septum, to the great disadvantage of the people.
I think I have told you enough to show that the people in general are justified in their dislike and distrust of orthodox medicine and surgery. There is obviously a need for something better than modern practice, and that something better is homoeopathy.
The new art of healing, called homoeopathy, was discovered about 150 years ago by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, a very eminent physician and chemist, but the principle that “like cures like” which Hahnemann firmly established has been known since the earliest ages. Twenty-three centuries ago Hippocrates, the father of medicine, stated the principle in his writings. He told us that a certain root which causes insanity if taken in large quantities, cures insanity if taken in small quantities, etc.
Every medicine has two opposite actions, in large and in small doses. Strychnine and Arsenic in substantial doses are very dangerous poisons. Strychnine and Arsenic in small doses are extremely valuable tonics, which are taken by millions of people every day with great benefit.
James Ellis Barker wrote a very large number of books, both under the name James Ellis Barker and under his real German name Otto Julius Eltzbacher, The Truth about Homœopathy; Rough Notes on Remedies with William Murray; Chronic Constipation; The Story of My Eyes; Miracles Of Healing and How They are Done; Good Health and Happiness; New Lives for Old: How to Cure the Incurable; My Testament of Healing; Cancer, the Surgeon and the Researcher; Cancer, how it is Caused, how it Can be Prevented with a foreward by William Arbuthnot Lane; Cancer and the Black Man etc.