Beyond this numeral there exists an electronic state (Designated as M plus 2) which, though it may have disappeared in the thirtieth potency, may be continued as a vibratory energy transmitted in the accompanying menstrum. This may or may not be a plausible explanation of the presence of drug substance in the high potencies. I mention it merely in view of the recent demonstration of Dr. Boyd of the 10m potency of Sulphur with his emanometer before the Royal Society of Medicine.
I do not intend to enter into a discussion of this subject at this time. I wish merely to call attention to the statement made by Granville Hey, president of the British Homoeopathic Society, in his report:
“An epoch had been reached to which all true followers of Hahnemann had looked forward-the time when homoeopathy would be placed on a physical foundation, clinically homoeopathy was there already, but in physical reality it was not. This was the event Hahnemann foresaw and did his utmost to hasten, but was not permitted to see.
Could he have lived to see this event he would have found in it a healing balm and a recompense for all his suffering at the hands of those who claimed to be members of what was called the most liberal profession in the world. . . The tests rendered were made under the strictest conditions that modern science could devise to eliminate error. . . .
The tests showed that Sulphur 10m had an energy which was demonstrable, recognizable and measurable by Boyds machine, so this put an end once and for all to the old statement that there could be nothing in it”.
What there is in it I do not profess to decide.
What I should like to call to mind is the fact that this energy, which Dr. Boyd feels is a heretofore undetected energy, must in all probability belong to that type of aura or atmosphere which in the language of Kent “is present in all entities”.
May it not be therefore that Boyd, by his patient and indefatigable research, has at last been able to detect and measure that “power” described by Hahnemann as “perpetually spreading around, like an exhalation or emanation from such bodies (globules) though they are dry. . . .”
Such a consummation is that which is devoutly to be wished. And should future research demonstrate that this physical energy which science has been forced to acknowledge, has a definitely demonstrable relation to the energy of the potential states of health and disease; the day of Hahnemanns recognition and vindication can not be far distant. So much for the three similitudes.
The Future Outlook.
J. B. S. Haldane, Sir William Dun Reader, in Biochemistry, Cambridge University, in his delightfully written monograph, “Daedalus or Science and the Future,” has made an interesting commentary on medicine:
“The recent history of medicine,” he writes, “is as follows, until about 1870 medicine was largely founded on physiology, or as the Scotch called it, “Institutes of Medicine”. Disease was looked at from the point of view of the patient, as injuries still are. Pasteurs discovery of the nature of infectious disease transformed the whole outlook, and made it possible to abolish one group of diseases. But it also diverted scientific medicine from its former path, and it is probable that, were bacteria unknown, though many more people would die of sepsis and typhoid, we should be better able to cope with kidney disease and cancer.
Certain diseases, such as cancer, are probably not due to specific organisms, whilst others such as phthisis, are due to forms which are fairly harmless to the average person, but attack others for unknown reasons. Eventually on Pasteurs lines we must divert our view from the micro-organisms to the patient. While the Doctor cannot deal with the former he can often keep the patient alive long enough to be able to do so himself, and here he has to rely largely on a knowledge of physiology.” There are two important points here, it seems to me, that are of supreme importance to a correct interpretation of the medicine of the future.
The researches of Pasteur have undoubtedly led to measures which have lessened, as the author indicates, the mortality in infectious diseases, but what a harvest of mental nervous wreckage has been left in its wake, and just so long as we follow the vaccine and serum route, we shall suppress the manifestations of infectious diseases which are unquestionably psoric, and shall the more effectively turn these outward manifestations inward upon the central nervous system.
The reason why cancer and nephritis are so rife and so intangible is that they, too, are psoric, and have to do with various forms of suppression due to lack of understanding of the fundamentals of hygienic living.
The physiology upon which we shall finally have to rely for the cure of these disorders is the dynamic physiology envisaged by Hahnemann in his doctrine of the chronic diseases. Hahnemann was accused by his critics of not having any pathology upon which to base his statements. He had, however, cultivated the power of seeing with the understanding, of perceiving in the outward manifestations the inner hidden disturbances-what more fundamental philosophy than this?.
En Passant.
One hundred years ago in the early springtime, there came to our American shores a young and enthusiastic pupil of Hahnemann, Dr. Hans Burch Gram; in fact later on in the flowering summer and early flush of autumn he reached New York, where, in his earnestness he sought to share with his professional colleagues his new found treasure. He was especially endowed by intellect and had won the highest honors at the University of Denmark.
His career in the old world, at the cultural centre of Copenhagen, had brought him the highest of the three degrees granted in that country. He rose rapidly to a high position at court and was assistant physician to the king.
Touched as he was by the softening and benignant teaching of Hahnemann, his one ambition now was to return to America the land of his birth, to spread the new gospel of healing. Accordingly, in 1825, Hans Burch Gram introduced homoeopathy into America with the publication of Hahnemanns “Spirit of the Homoeopathic Doctrine.”
We have already heard at the centenary exercises of the American Institute of the signal achievements of Gram and his followers. We have been told of his triumphs, his sacrifices and his sorrows. Grams remains rest in the Greenwood Cemetery beside his friend and pupil, Dr. John F. Gray.
If his alter ego, that intangible something that men call the shade-should return again to earth, and pause perhaps beside this erstwhile tomb, would not the spirit of the great Hahnemann himself come to him, as Uriel (here in our very midst), whom Milton has called “the sharpest-sighted spirit of all in heaven- the regent of the sun” appeared to Esdras of old, and say, “I am sent to show thee three ways, and to set forth three similitudes before thee.”
The “three ways” are, as I have explained to thee, the three ways of applying drugs, the most exemplary of which is the homoeopathic way.
The “Three Similitudes” are the Law of Similars, the Single Remedy and the Minimum Dose.
And, in the language of Esdras, he might answer him saying, “Like as the field is so is also the seed; as the flowers be, such are the colors also; such as the workman is, such also is the work; and as the husband man in himself, so is his husbandry also; for it was the time of the world.
“Sorrows are passed, and in the end is showed the treasure of immortality”.
Benjamin Collins Woodbury was born August 13, 1882, at Patten, Maine. He was the son of Dr. Benjamin Collins, a homeopathic physician, and Matidle Albina (Knowles). He attended Patten Academy and received his M.D. from Boston University Medical School in 1906. Following graduation Dr. Woodbury began his practice in Lewiston and Winthrop, Maine, and in 1907 moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he practiced for the next nine years. Dr. Woodbury married Miss Gertrude Fancis O'Neill of Boston at Eliot, Maine on June 18, 1915.
In March, 1919, Dr. Woodbury left the Islands and located in San Francisco where he practiced for two years and then returned to the East and established a practice in Boston. He was a trustee and a member of the staff of the Hahnemann Hospital, Boston, and in 1947 was elected president if the International Hahnemann Institute, Washington, D.C. He also gave many lectures on homeopathy at Boston University and at postgraduate sessions of the American foundation of Homeopathy.
Dr. Woodbury died on January 22, 1948, in Boston at the age of 65.
The doctor was the author of "Materia Medica for Nurses", published in 1922 and of many articles in medical journals in England, India, and the United States. Dr. Woodbury was also a writer of plays and poetry.