As a corollary may I remind you of a well-known fact which you have no hesitancy in admitting: Many good diagnosticians are poor therapeutists and vice versa.
Returning to the immense mass of material in our materia medica what can be done with it? Progressiveness and advancement demands that it shall be properly placed. The clinic of a hundred years has done much to solve the problem. Permit me to use your honored president as an example. He is well and widely known ad a firm believer and practitioner of homoeopathy. He is a most fascinating teacher and expander of the sciences in which he so firmly believes. It has been by good fortune to hear him speak on many occasions.
He deals with general principles, and he speaks of special application of remedies, and with it all, I note with approval that he uses but few remedies, and makes practical use of comparatively few symptoms of those remedies. His clinical experience has enabled him to draw unto himself and for the use of his patients a certain reliable symptomatology. And what the finished artist is doing is but the practice of he rank and file. Thus there has come to us a practical line of symptoms in which we all have more or less faith-and from the clinic. Unfortunately the demands of modern medicine seem to be oblivious of the fact that most of the great discoveries in our art had been presaged by the clinic before confirmation by the laboratory.
Now this brings up the important question “can the laboratory aid therapeutic advancement and purify the materia medica?” Yes, it can do so, but mainly by observation of drug effects on human being. Studies on animals are all right within their sphere. but must be properly evaluated for the lower animals are not possessed of the same physiology as human being. The value of animal experimentation lies in the elimination of psychic influences and our ability to push drug effects to an extreme not permissible on man. Its limitations are made very impressive when we recall that some animals cannot vomit; some cannot sweat; and some exhibit peculiarities of function, thus the cat sweats only on the parts of its feet not covered by hair. And probably each and every species has its peculiarities which demand a complete study before we can transfer observations made on them to their proper place in the clinic.
Animal experimentation is all right in its way, but as conducted, indeed I might almost say as it possibly can be conducted, it can afford us information as to terminal phenomena or anatomical changes only.
There are great opportunities for modernization. We admit without hesitation that we have a cumbersome materia medica; but we also know that the real clinician is able to use it successfully. It is to be modernized first by literary research and analysis. The value is there, but we must subject the mass to modern methods to develop that which is of value. With that work completed, we are ready to begin with the laboratory, and by laboratory we mean the work shop, including the hospital bed and college laboratories as well. For the practical physician, these are inseparable.
Above all let us avoid polemics. True science does not recognize abuse as opposed to logic. Abuse may be aggressive, but it is not a good thing with which to make converts. If we cannot prosper by plain statement of facts and logic,then we are not fit to exist. The old adage says: “If you have no case, abuse the plaintiffs attorney.” Departure from fundamental principles displays weakness.
Homoeopathy needs no such defence. As evidence of this we note the active interest taken in it by many clinicians and scientists of modern times. What is more, this interest seems to be of a fair character. One of our most loyal homoeopaths has been so impressed with the value of their work and the sincerity as to motive, that he has become a tentative advocate of letting them do the work which we should do for ourselves, mainly, however, because of their greater facilities. And yet he is a strong organization man.
Gentlemen, in closing, permit me to say that there is every reason for maintaining an allegiance to out school of medicine, and doing our individual work to keep it up with the times. Hahnemann was progressive and aggressive, and why not we?.
Nor can I see how it can be utilized in any way excepting to confirm or interpret the findings in the observations on human beings. Even with this restriction, it is invaluable, but the results must be interpreted with judgment, and must not be accepted as the entire knowledge of drug action. Homoeopathy must be aggressive in assuming a proper attitude towards laboratory investigation.
Our aggressiveness must be directed to the protection of our institutions, which at one time represented the investment of probably dollar 75,000,000 over the entire country, but through lapses has dwindled to some extent. This money was contributed by the charitable for a definite subject. The wishes of the contributors must be respected as far as our initiative, ability, and industry will permit.
All evidence demonstrates that Hahnemann was a great medical reformer, and as such to be respected. To drop his name from an institution is catering to prejudice which is worse than that which in bygone years led to the persecution of Hahnemann, Hunter, Harvey, Semmelweiss and Jenner, and the ignoring of Auenbrugger and many others. I say worse, because we are living in an enlightened age which is teaching us liberality and tolerance, and which is fraught with many new things which confirm and enlarge the teachings of bygone eras. Please remember that there is much truth in many “discards”, The “junk heaps” of the scientific world are worth the labor of the scientific scavenger. Many of them contain material waiting only to be rediscovered. Let us be liberal.
