EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS



Try as we may, we fail too often to find the open sesame; we catechize and cross-examine, split hairs and thumb the repertory, while the devilish cough goes blissfully on its way; eventually, the lack of success becomes an obsession with us; we dread to see the patient come into our presence; that infernal cough haunts us and makes us wish that we might consign our patient to Kamchatka or any other equally remote region. Even the thought of homicide comes into our distressed minds, anything would be better than listening to this diabolical, mocking cough.

Of course, some one will say, as we ourselves are wont to say it, treat the patient and never mind his cough! True, beautifully true, but unfortunately not always possible, for reasons unnecessary to state. To us it seems as though much useful work could and should be done, in the revision of that part of our wonderful materia medica, which relates to coughs. There is at present too much confusion, of remedies listed under the rubric cough, too many things stated that aint so.

Simplification is necessary, if the combination tablet and the suppressive heroin are to be driven from their illegal intrusion upon the sanctity of the homoeopathic field. We must be helped to pick the needful remedies more rapidly, as well as unerringly. We all know the joy of making a bulls-eye prescription, the glamour of it far outweighs any consideration of the fee; but the humiliation of repeated failures, is apt to arouse in us a consciousness of an inferiority complex, that bodies no good to anyone and is fatal to future success.

Allan D. Sutherland
Dr. Sutherland graduated from the Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia and was editor of the Homeopathic Recorder and the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy.
Allan D. Sutherland was born in Northfield, Vermont in 1897, delivered by the local homeopathic physician. The son of a Canadian Episcopalian minister, his father had arrived there to lead the local parish five years earlier and met his mother, who was the daughter of the president of the University of Norwich. Four years after Allan’s birth, ministerial work lead the family first to North Carolina and then to Connecticut a few years afterward.
Starting in 1920, Sutherland began his premedical studies and a year later, he began his medical education at Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia.
Sutherland graduated in 1925 and went on to intern at both Children’s Homeopathic Hospital and St. Luke’s Homeopathic Hospital. He then was appointed the chief resident at Children’s. With the conclusion of his residency and 2 years of clinical experience under his belt, Sutherland opened his own practice in Philadelphia while retaining a position at Children’s in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department.
In 1928, Sutherland decided to set up practice in Brattleboro.