(Read Before the Homoeopathic Medical Society of the state of New.)
Jersey, May 14, 1925. You will pardon me, I trust, if my remarks are prefaced by a few platitudes. You have all heard them, but ever do they bear being kept in mind.
It is the duty of the physician to cure the sick and to relieve human suffering. This is called the art of healing.
The physician must have a knowledge of what is curable in disease in general, and of that which is curable in his patient in particular.
Both of these saying constituted a part of Hahnemanns teachings.
To the above I may add from Broussais: The medical man who does not take into consideration the human element in his clinical work, who confines his activities to the purely scientific aspects of an illness, who does not study the patient per se is a mere naturalist; he certainly is not a physician.
Homoeopathy is the school of therapeutic optimism as opposed to the therapeutic pessimism of medical orthodoxy. It is a school of constructive aims.
My remarks this afternoon will take historical data as their foundation. An effort will be made to place Hahnemann where he belongs, i.e., in a group of medical reformers, to whom humanity to today and tomorrow owes much. Indeed I am not sure that his activities and originalities of therapeutic thought may not have played the most important part in bringing about the renaissance of the nineteenth centuries. Or to put it differently, Hahnemanns activities did much to kill empiricism and to introduce logical methods in the investigation of disease.
Hahnemann was a big man before he announced his therapeutic law. He had previously established a reputation as a chemist. His method for the detection of arsenic and his wine test stand today almost unmodified. Of him the great Berzelius said: “He would have been a great chemist had he not turned out to be a great quack”.
In 1792, Hahnemann published his celebrated essay advocating the benevolent treatment of the insane, thus antedating Pinels unchaining of the lunatics in the Bicetre by six months.
Although numerous names may be placed on the roll of honor of the medicine of the period, this essay will speak only of Auenbrugger, Hahnemann, Jenner and Laennec. Reference will also be made to the experiences of Harvey, and later of Semmelweiss. Auenbrugger published his discovery of percussion as a means of diagnosing disease within the thorax in 1761 in an essay entitled: “Inventum novum ex percussione thoracis humani ut signo, abstrusos interni pectoris morbos detegendi.” This essay received by but little serious consideration. The authoritative works of the day, as those of Van Sweeten and De Haen ignored it entirely, and yet as one of the commentators of medicine of the period remarks: “Their writings are merely of historical interest today, while Auenbruggers volume of ninety-five pages is a classic.
What can be the explanation for the omission of so great a discovery from even a passing notice by these great arbiters of medical thought in Germany?” Auenbruggers discovery was not considered seriously until 1808 when Corvisart translated the “inventum novum” and “yielded unstinted praise to its discoverer.” And this after a lapse of forty-six years. Auenbrugger died in 1809 at the age of eighty nine years. Incidentally it may here by interpolated that he was an accomplished musician and wrote an opera entitled the “Chimney Sweep” which found favor at Court. It is interesting to note that Corvisarts chief fame rests upon his revival of Auenbruggers original work.
In 1796 Hahnemann published his first homoeopathic essay entitled: “On a New Principle for the Selection of a Remedy in the Treatment of the Sick.” In the beginning Hahnemann held that the homoeopathic law was of universal application. To him it was supreme and infallible. Herein he was not different from other originators either in medicine or in other sciences. Jenner contended that vaccination performed but the once, protected against smallpox for all times and we who come after him and who believe in vaccination, do not detract one iota from his fame because of this error.
To come down to recent time less than two decades ago in fact, Ehrlich when introducing the arsenicals as the remedy for syphilis contended that but one administration of salvarsan was necessary to bring about a complete cure, and exposure anew to syphilitic infection would bring about a second attack of the disease. But such is the way of discoverers, and it is right that it should be so. Confidence in the value of their work gives them an enthusiasm that spurs them on to still greater efforts. It was ever thus, and probably it ever will be.
All of these three great men subsequently modified their teaching as experience and facts taught them to do. Hahnemann had no hesitation in specifying types of illness to which the law of similars was not applicable. While deprecating palliation, he admitted its occasional necessity. His contention that palliative treatment masked symptoms-which after all are the sole clinical evidence we have of disturbed function-depriving us of an invaluable guide to treatment, is universally conceded in all modern up-to-date medical practice.
Hahnemann repudiated the pathology of his day as useless because it was inaccurate and therefore misleading. As the same time he announced himself as ready to accept pathology as a basis for diagnosis and treatment when pathology should attain the status of an exact science. In this attitude against the pathological teaching of the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, he has received the hearty support of all physicians of today. The primitive state of that alleged science in Hahnemanns time is appalling to us of the twentieth century. Should any of you care to read for yourselves permit me to refer you to the histories of Radcliffe, Mead and Pitcairn in McMichaels fascinating brochure “The Gold-headed Cane” and “Nosography in Internal Medicine” by Karl Faber.
As students of homoeopathy, it is not necessary for me to take your time with a recounting of the opposition and ostracism Hahnemann encountered. So I proceed to Jenner.
It was on the fourteenth of May, 1796, the same year that Hahnemann published his memorable essay, that Jenner performed his first Vaccination. His experiments were carried on with every attention to scientific accuracy, and his conclusion incontestable.
As his biographer remarked, be converted “a local country tradition into a viable prophylactic principle” how viable did not become fully appreciated until the present century. But Jenner as did others, encountered prejudice. In 1798 the president of the Royal Society (London) advised him that he (Jenner) “should be cautious and prudent, that he had already gained some credit by his reputation by presenting to the learned body anything which appeared to be so at variance with established knowledge and withal so incredible.”
Later he was told that if he persisted in bringing forward his views concerning smallpox he would be asked to resign. Numerous additional statements may be presented illustrative of the persecution to which Jenner was subjected but time forbids. They are matters of history; and Jenner, like Hahnemann lives. Their adversaries are dead in name and fact. Hahnemann became an ardent advocate of vaccination, and considered the new principles a confirmation of his own teachings. This is an important fact that anti-vaccinationists of the homoeopathic school should remember.
The principal stand against homoeopathy today is not its value; it is not that is had not contributed much to health and longevity of humanity, but rather that it is sectarian; that it fosters a schism in the medical profession. Now that it absurd. Sectarianism is not a crime unless it is accompanied by bigotry and intolerance. An Episcopalian can be a Christian: a Republican or Democracy, a loyal American; and a homoeopath a physician in the broadest sense of the term. If I am forced still further to give example of sectarians, I might call Americanism sectarianism, and you smile. But recall that the Bolshevists and extreme internationalists so regard it.
Sectarianism has been of inestimable worth in the world. It has fostered principles, often false, but nevertheless they have been principles sincerely held by their devotees. The spirit of sectarianism held by all of us fosters improvements not only constructively but also by competition. I am rather inclined to think that the definition of sectarianism is much like that of orthodoxy. If you agree with me you are non-sectarian, liberal and orthodox. If you agree with me you are non-sectarian, liberal and orthodox. If your ideas are in disagreement with mine, you are sectarian, bigoted, and heterodox.
One of the unfortunate positions in which homoeopathy has been placed is the tacit consent of the school to permit its competitors to state its platform. Was ever such a peculiar state of affairs noted elsewhere? Some of our members accept the platform forced upon us with all its silliness, while others not sufficiently militant for defence or aggression blush. Let us maintain as part of our aggression that homoeopathy is scientific, that its important principles are recognized as correct by the scientific medicine of the day.
