ANOTHER SIGN OF THE TIMES.
Harry Beckman, M.D., Professor of Pharmacology at Marquette University, was invited, a short time ago, as guest speaker to San Francisco. He is the author of a book just off the press, Pharmacology in Clinical Practice, published by W.B. Saunders Company and this is the quotation that he puts on the flyleaf: “The true physicians is one who cures; observation which does not teach how to cure is not observation by a physician but rather by a naturalist.” F.J. Broussais (1772-1838). This tells more of the psychology and purpose of the author than a volume of analysis and in this, already, he is unknown to himself, a disciple of Samuel Hahnemann.
The topic of his lecture was The Evolution of a Concept of Cancer. Dr. Beckman is not only a pharmacologist, he is a research man and, what is rarer, he is a thinker. Cancer has been a question that has haunted him-as it has many of us-so he started to investigate, first trying to find a satisfactory definition of cancer, but in vain. One is amazed by the enormous amount of work done all over the world on cancer for the last fifteen years, and yet, when you squeeze it all and try to synthesize a conception of it that would lead to a successful cure, there is an appalling lack of results.
The surgeon, the internist, the pathologist, the biochemist-all have concentrated their attention on the tumor itself, the end products, the ultimates, bringing to light a maze of futile and sterile facts. So Dr. Beckman looked at some of the deep thinkers of the past and discovered this gem in Novum Organum (1620) by Francis Bacon: “NO MAN CAN RIGHTLY AND SUCCESSFULLY INVESTIGATE THE NATURE OF ANYTHING IN THE THING ITSELF.” Bacons contribution to philosophy was his formulation and introduction of the inductive method of modern science and non-Aristotelian semantics-as opposed to the a priori method of scholasticism.
If one observes the behavior of the body reactions to the usual type of bacterial disease, it becomes evident that considerable efforts, based on delicate physiopathological mechanisms, are exerted by the economy to fight, localize, wall off or annihilate the threatening agent. But in cancer there are no such reactions; in fact, it is the opposite that occurs. The neoformation or lesion is not repugnant to the body, there is none of the white cell infiltration that is characteristic of inflammation, no evidence of general mobilization against the deadly foe as in fever and other process.
On the contrary, the nature of cancer is such that it seems to take a priority on foods necessary to its growth. While the patient is starving and in progressing cachexia, the cancer grows and develops. Experiments have shown, for example, that starved rats with the specific features of malnutrition recover quickly when fed with neoplastic or malignant tissue, but do not respond when fed with the liver of the patient who died from that malignancy. The body seems to behave towards cancer as if it was really a part of itself.
These and other considerations have led Dr. Beckman to the following starting definition: “CANCER IS A NORMAL RESPONSE TO AN ALTERED ENVIRONMENT-NOTHING ELSE.” He is going to devote his time to back up his definition and he has the congratulations and best wishes of all concerned with the welfare of humanity. This new concept is another step in the right direction, emphasized 150 years ago by Samuel Hahnemann who insisted that the physician should forget the name of the disease and treat the patient. -R.A.S.
A NEW TRANSLATION OF THE SIXTH EDITION OF THE ORGANON.
How many of the homoeopaths of today ever read the Organon from cover to cover? I would like to meet the one who even took the time and effort to peruse and study the sixth edition.
Hahnemann was eighty-six years old when he prepared his last edition from the fifth, working eighteen months on it. He died at eighty-eight, before its publication. The original was written with the painstaking “grundlichkeit” (thoroughness) of the author, in the classical and ponderous old German language, typical of that time, with interminable, often abstruse phrases, arduous to understand and saturated with notes and parenthesis. No wonder only very few ventured in such an undertaking and the majority were satisfied to read their homoeopathic philosophy from more palatable and modern writers. And yet the Organon is the fundamental, and-for the expert-the unquestioned authority on everything homoeopathic.
The sixth edition was published in German in 1921, acquired by the Americans and well translated in 1921 by Dr.William Boericke and published by Boericke and Tafel in 1921 by Dr.William Boericke and published by Boericke and Tafel in 1922. In 1941. Riccamboni published it in Italian. In all the Organon has been published in sixty editions and translated in twelve languages-an exceptional record.
American Homeopathy Doctor.
Rabe graduated from the New York Homeopathic Medical College and trained under Timothy Field Allen and William Tod Helmuth.
Rabe was President of the International Hahnemannian Association, editor in chief of the Homeopathic Recorder, and he wrote Medical Therapeutics for daily reference. Rabe was Dean and Professor of Homeopathic Therapeutics at the New York Homeopathic Medical College.