THE IOWA SITUATION ONCE AGAIN.- Believing that what has happened in Iowa is of vital concern to homoeopathic physicians everywhere, we herewith publish, in part, an editorial by Dr.George Royal, in the April issue of the Iowa Homoeopathic Journal. The italics are our own and are used to emphasize the truly deplorable attitude of homoeopathic physicians toward the school and its interests. Thus speaks Doctor Royal, who, as is well known, is not given to the habit of making ill-advised or unsupportable statements:
“The legislature, as we predict it would, passed the bill for providing dollar 2,500,000 to be added to a similar amount for the purpose of making the State University of Iowa at Iowa City, through its College of Medicine, a medical center for the middle west. As we understand it the greater part of the two and a half million appropriated by the state will be used for the purpose of erecting buildings, especially hospital facilities, where research work of all kinds along medical lines may be conducted; while the money given by the Rockefeller will be used to pay salaries, furnish equipment and supply material for the work.
In our interview with President Jessup and other officials of S.U.I. reported in last months Journal we were given to understand that a laboratory for homoeopathic research work would be established and maintained should the bill pass. We have no doubt now about that part of the program. There is little doubt either in our mind about the legislature passing the appropriation bill for the dollar 30,000 for the Department of Homoeopathic Materia Medica and Therapeutics to enable the Board of Education to employ a competent head of that department with a competent corps of assistants.
“With this opportunity given to the Homoeopaths of Iowa a most important, in fact a vital question, will confront every one of us who claim to be Homoeopaths. That question is: What will be our attitude towards the Department? Upon our reaction to this question will, in a large measure, depend the future of Homoeopathy in Iowa, and to a lesser degree of the nation.
As was told us of the legislative committee, not only this year, but in former years, was the fact that at first our College, and later our Department, was not supported by the homoeopathic profession of the state as it should have been. The fact was acknowledged that the College and Department had not been supported by the University officials as they should have been, but on the other hand it was also a fact that Homoeopaths , some of them state officials, other high in our state association, sent their sons to the other college. This act on the part of these Homoeopaths influenced the authorities to a certain extent.
“To be sure, what has been true of the Homoeopaths of Iowa has been true of them elsewhere. A former dean of a homoeopathic college sent his son to an old school college. The excuse given by one was that he wanted to make an insurance examiner of his son and that his chances were better if he graduated from an old school. An Iowa homoeopathist told us that with him it was simply a matter of dollars and cents, that his son was going to be a specialist and that he had been promised a position with a prominent firm of specialists if he would go and graduate in the other school. This man closed his interview with this statement: You know I can teach him his homoeopathic materia medica”.
The story told has a familiar, if unsavoury ring, and is an illuminating commentary upon the status homoeopathic as we have come to know it, during the past few years especially. We now understand that-
“On Thursday, April 12th, the legislature, in cutting the appropriation which had been asked for by the board of education for the state schools, included the dollar 30,000 a year for the department of Homoeopathic Materia Medica and Therapeutics”.
Thus passes homoeopathy in Iowa, thanks to its own supposedly friendly supporters, who, by their own vacillating, uncertain and lukewarm conduct, have permitted a great opportunity for the future development of the science of homoeopathy to be lost, perhaps forever. Will homoeopaths ever learn that God helps those who help themselves and that they cannot expect their old-school confreres to respect a cause which they themselves are evidently ashamed of.
If organized homoeopathy continues to fail, as it has so palpably failed within recent years, it had better disband entirely and leave to individuals of strength and enthusiasm a task for which it is manifestly unfitted.
HOMOEOPATHY ON THE PACIFIC COAST-
We print in its entirety the editorial from the May issue of the Pacific Coast Journal of Homoeopathy. The italics are our own.
“In this issue will be found a very interesting symposium on Eczema, its pathology, symptomatology, electrical and X-Ray treatment. But why no Homoeopathic treatment, for it we cant treat eczema homoeopathically we may as well give up. Ah! the homoeopathic treatment was given in the symposium as presented before the Los Angeles Society, but the essayist failed to write out his notes for publication, and no one has been able to get him to do it, so we present the incomplete symposium.
“We are also publishing Dr.F.H.Cookinhams paper on Appendicitis in Children, given one year ago before the State Society. This is an excellent paper and deserved to be published months ago, but we have held it back waiting for its companion paper-Homoeopathic Remedies in Appendicitis, but one year has not sufficed to accomplish it.
“How can we publish a homoeopathic journal without homoeopathic papers? By all means turn in the homoeopathic papers for publication even at the expense of leaving the others out.
“For many years John D. Rockefeller has had a homoeopath as his personal physician; yet have any homoeopathic institutions received financial aid from the Rockefeller Foundation? The President of the United States has a homoeopath as his personal physician; has anything been done to modify the Volstead act so as to allow the homoeopathic laity to purchase a dram of aconite 3x at the pharmacy? And when the Presidents wife was carried successfully through a severe illness, did homoeopathy get any applause? No! Her recovery was credited to the prayers of the people. Hide not your light under a bushel. If homoeopathy is to get anywhere, it had better begin soon to toot its own horn”.
A familiar lament indeed and one likely to be repeated, so long as the homoeopathic school of medicine is ashamed of its homoeopathic character. So many of our physicians have become so ultra-scientific that they have lost sight of the only really scientific law of cure, similia similibus curantur. Why physicians who ought to and really do know better, will eternally pursue the fleeting and every-changing mirage of old-school therapy, is beyond our comprehension, unless it is that these men have a sneaking suspicion that in concerning themselves with homoeopathy they are reverting to an outworn, no-longer-popular cause.
To us it seems, and the remark is based upon abundant observation, that homoeopathy is no longer “good form.” To follow the crowd is easy and remunerative as well; perhaps the rub is really here and the whole question resolves itself into an economic one. But is there not a higher, altruistic aim which should govern us? Do we really obtain satisfactory by “doping” our patients from one disease into another?
How many homoeopaths treat skin diseases in accordance with Hahnemannian principles? Very few dermatologists do, at all events! Is the homoeopathic conception of psora purely mythical? Is there no such thing as the suppression of disease? If Hahnemann was all wrong about these matters, if his faithful followers are also wrong, is it not about time that they were set right and that our misconceptions were corrected?.
Why have no homoeopathic institutions received aid from the Rockefeller Foundation? An explanation would make interesting reading and among other things would reveal the lamentable fact that homoeopaths have never been united on any question of importance. Small wonder then that they cannot enlist the support of well-meaning but bewildered lay friends, who finally turn in utter disgust to some other cause which at least gives promise of harmonious advancement.
The good old ship “Homoeopathy” is floundering hard in greatly troubled seas and the crew seems unfamiliar with the rigging. The Union Jack is flying upside down, but as yet no friendly vessel is hastening to give aid. The officers of the ship are apparently paying more attention to the brightness of their uniforms and are basking in the reflected dazzling light of brass buttons, when in reality they should be setting an example to the crew by manning the pumps.
By all means let us “toot our own horn,” but before we begin the sonata, let us make sure that the instruments are fit to play upon, for otherwise the resultant discordant jangle will continue to be confusion worse confounded.
HOMOEOPATHY IN ENGLAND.-
The last quarterly number of The British Homoeopathic Journal contains several valuable and interesting articles upon practical subjects dealing with materia medica and therapeutics. Of particular interest are the exhaustive discussions of homoeopathic remedies in surgical conditions, and it is most refreshing, as well as encouraging, to read the frank testimony of our British colleagues regarding the use of phosphorus before operation, as a prophylactic of chloroform sickness, or to hear the praises of rhus tox. in abdominal operations sung, or to learn that calendula is relied upon as a pain reliever and healing agent, following tonsillectomy.
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.