THE POTENCY QUESTION


THE RECORDER, like its esteemed friends, is also liberal; in fact, if patient and doctor agree we are willing that the former should receive the eleven millionth, which, we believe, is the highest potency achieved, the tincture, big doses of calomel and mercury, have all sorts of stuff jabbed in hypodermically, or have Christian Science, faith, hoodoo, or any other old treatment. In fact, we only become illiberal when one sect is allowed to call in the police to enforce its treatment and shoulder its rivals out. That isnt playing the game on the square-on merit.


That was rather an interesting discussion at Pittsburgh, reported in the December issue of the Journal A. I. H. All those taking part were, perforce, liberal, as, indeed, is inevitable for, unlike the allopaths, we havent the police and the courts back of us. You know they have, at various times, called in these powers to force their practice on the recalcitrant. What the rest of the medical world (including the homoeopaths) would do if it had the power is a dark problem, but not having it liberality prevails-as it should. The discussion ranged from advocated of the millionth potency on down the line to the tincture and beyond into the uncharted region of vaccines and all that sort of things.

THE RECORDER, like its esteemed friends, is also liberal; in fact, if patient and doctor agree we are willing that the former should receive the eleven millionth, which, we believe, is the highest potency achieved, the tincture, big doses of calomel and mercury, have all sorts of stuff jabbed in hypodermically, or have Christian Science, faith, hoodoo, or any other old treatment. In fact, we only become illiberal when one sect is allowed to call in the police to enforce its treatment and shoulder its rivals out. That isnt playing the game on the square-on merit.

If called for a preference in potency it would be from the IX to the 30th. Why? Well, because the Institute, the colleges, hospitals and everything homoeopathic were built up on these. When Dr. Gramm, the first homoeopathic physician who ever set foot on these shores, landed in 1825, he faced a medical wilderness which was later conquered largely by the little domestic books and medicine cases stoked with 3d and 6th potencies.

These convinced the people and thereby made the institutions named above possible, for, after all is said, you cannot do anything unless the people believe in you and come to you. The police and courts are not back of you. The 3d and the 6th conquered the wilderness and we cannot see the wisdom of greatly departing from them either way, unless by so doing you can convince the people, which, so far has not been the case

There ought to be some where a haven of medical rest, but it certainly is not in what is termed Scientific Medicine, which to- day is spouting fire and smoke like Vesuvius, but the fire and smoke of to-day will be blown away by that of to-morrow even as yesterdays has become mere tradition, the dust and ashes of old medical libraries.

The scientists of the yesterday looked about them with pity on the old doctors of their day, while today they have changed, or else they are looked upon as veritable old moss-back curiosities by the men of today who, in turn, will go down and out as poor, old, out-of-dates when the men of the to-morrow arise and play their brief part. The curious feature of it all is that the restless ones are ever furiously racing around in a circle. To-day the Rockefeller Institute is careering over the old ground of the Alchemists and Ponce de Leon, hunting for the elixir of life, and for life itself, possessed by the idea that these are untrodden fields, whereas they are as old as Egypt, and probably the men of to-day are not as “advanced” in that mysterious realm as were the Egyptians of Pharaohs day.

There must be medical truth somewhere and when found it is a rational proposition to believe that you cannot depart from it without tumbling into error. To us, medical truth in the domain of practice, theory and therapeutics lies in the old Homoeopathy that conquered the medical wilderness of calomel and bleeding in the face of many foes. But, with due respect to the brilliant, scintillating, sputtering of the Rockefeller Institute, man is mortal, and, in the light of the teaching of Malthus (to say nothing of those higher up) it is well he is.

NO one to-day can name a single thing in the host of modern therapeutic agencies that is doing as good work for the sick as does old Homoeopathy. As for the numberless so-called prophylactics that are injected into humanity no one can deny that they may be the means of the physical degeneration of the race. In surgery alone have there been real advances-enormous advances-so great, indeed, that may ultra moderns thinks that aside from it all else in medicine is vanity and vexation of spirit.

But in spite of surgery and the Rockefeller Institute and other theorists, like the Christian Scientists, man is mortal; Homoeopathy can help him over the rough places in his allotted span, but sooner or later the silver cord will be loosed or the golden bowl be broken “then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit-” but, then, the Rockefeller Institute says the spirit (with it endless aspiration, ambitions, loves and passions) is but a “chemical reaction!” Be that as it may the body of the mightiest scientist waxes old and in time returns to dust, while his spirit, or “chemical reaction”, goes the way of all the countless millions of mortals who have preceded him.

And old Homoeopathy, a section of truth, will remain to aid his successors over the physical ills of their journey if they care to seek its aid. Here we rest, quite undisturbed by the flaring headlines in the Sunday newspapers–or in more stately garb in medical and other magazines–announcing a “new discovery that will revolutionize the practice of medicine, ” for, indeed, the old art has been “revolutionized” so often that no one but those with the bloom of youth on them get excited any longer about a new revolution with its “advertising campaign.”

The paper, “Killing and Curing,” which immediately follows this, sent us by Dr. E. Petrie Hoyle, taken from London Truth, seems to show that even old Homoeopathy has at last a chance to come in for recognition. If it ever becomes general practice it will stay.

E.P. Anshutz
Edward Pollock Anshutz – 1846-1918. Editor - Homeopathic Recorder and author of New Old and Forgotten Remedies. Held an Hon. Doctor of Medicine from Hering Medical College.