Fate has decreed that we make our debut before this association at this time. We therefore do so, but not without some misgivings. Handicapped by an unfinished high school education, a twelve-month stereotyped medical education, and with no one to point the proper course to take, we find ourself in no fit shape to pit our lack of education against the master prescribers we are destined to face here today. Therefore you will get an ignorant mans view of homoeopathy and homoeopaths. Logic, philosophy and intelligence from our viewpoint are nothing more than applied common sense and mean nothing where common sense is lacking.
To gain admission into this association had always been our goal. We are sorry to state, however, that when our hopes were fully realized at Cleveland in 1924 we were due for a rather painful shock as we listened to Dr. George Diensts resolution regarding the holding of office by members of this association. Surely, ladies and gentlemen, you are not at this time beginning to hit the downward toboggan so fatal to the A.I.H.?.
For any physician, who claims to be a homoeopath. to joint an allopathic society, to resort to serum, narcotic or other unnatural methods of treatment or to choose the course of least resistance is to take a decided step backward in medicine as well as being inconsistent, and inconsistency does not belong to the same firm as intelligence, especially a foolish inconsistency.
If we, in all the glory of the denseness of our ignorance, can master homoeopathy sufficiently, in spite of the most pernicious and diabolical opposition and persecution, to build up and maintain as good a practice as any one else without the aid of allopathy in any manner or form (as the late Dr. Hale would say), “it sheds no lustre on the so-called intelligence of the doctor who cannot”.
Sometimes we feel rather proud of our ignorance, for you all know right well there is always a chance to put something useful into an empty vessel, but never into a vessel already filled with useless material, especially such as cannot be dislodged, the very reason so many of our recent graduates fail with homoeopathy.
Hering spoke no idle words when he said: “If we ever give up the strict inductive method of Hahnemann we are lost and deserve to be remembered as mere caricatures in the history of medicine”.
Hahnemann placed no idle stigma when he said: “When we have to do with an art whose end is the saving of human life, any neglect to make ourselves thoroughly master of the same becomes a crime.” Of course in going back to allopathy, in ceasing the unfolding of homoeopathy and in the ceasing of drug provings we are making ourselves thoroughly masters of the art of healing, are we not?.
We have lived long enough and had experience enough to prove the truth of Boenninghausens statement, that: “I consider Hahnemanns doctrine a precious and inalienable jewel which must be carefully cherished and guarded from every impure admixture. Ever more glorious will homoeopathy unfold its banner, ever more brightly will it beam in the firmament of science, ever more full of curative virtues she will show her wonderful powers if she is not decked with false finery or disfigured with borrowed attire or ornaments. Homoeopathy is a natural growth and independent in its nature and every alien admixture is but to her detriment. The germ of its development lies in her own nature, etc”.
The longer we study medicine and the more closely we practice homoeopathy the more and more we are convinced that the modern medical profession is the most ignorant of all the ignorant professions, even though a prominent attorney-at-law said, “If it is more ignorant than the legal profession it has got to go some.” Modern medicine had its origin in a false error, conceived in superstition, born of ignorance and raised on a foundation of quicksand, hence the constant need of change, proving itself valueless, dependent and unreliable.
On the other hand we have homoeopathy, whose origin is truth, conceived in wisdom, born of intelligence and raised on the firm rock of natural law, a foundation which man finds impossible to change. The man who can change either a natural law or Homoeopathy has never yet been born. Natural law can neither be bent, improved, abridged, nor annulled. All that man can do to either the natural law or Homoeopathy is to extend their usefulness, and this can only be done for homoeopathy in continuing its unfolding and above all in practicing it. All our propaganda for homoeopathy will fall flat if we do not deliver the goods, and we cannot deliver the goods if we have not got them.
Homoeopathy is all that Boenninghausen said it is. Unlike allopathy, it is valuably independent and will contain within its own range all that is necessary for prevention, cure and palliation when its unfolding is completed, and it is reliable, the lengthy articles of the surgeons of our school as to its limitations to the contrary notwithstanding. The limitation of its consistency solely in ratio to our ignorance of the vast amount of remedial agents yet unproved.
None will deny that homoeopathy cannot renew life to dead tissue, but it will, if given time and a chance, remove that dead tissue in a far neater and more economical and effectual manner than the surgeon can, and do what the surgeons cannot do, i.e., remove the cause and prevent its return, as the following case will illustrate:.
Early in 1923, George W., a lad of seventeen, was brought to us. Four years previous had developed what was stated to be a malignant growth on the right maxilla, which was extremely painful and caused the boys health to gradually fail. For two years he received constant but ineffectual treatment at the hands of modern allopaths and homoeopaths. He was then turned over to the surgeons, who diagnosed his case cancer. The teeth were extracted, the tumor and part of the bone excised. This brought temporary relief for six months. Then in turn the X-ray, then radium were pressed into service, but to no purpose. In desperation and as a last resort the father turned to us and promised to stick, and did.
As to history, we found nothing to bear on the case if their statements were true. With the old wood-choppers words still ringing in our ears, “Any fool can split a straight stick, but it takes a wood-chopper to split a knot,” we went to work to prove which we were. We found the following: The lump stood out as though drawn tightly over a baseball, the under surface in the mouth looked like the root base of a hyacinth bulb, the face red, changing color, circumscribed, often in spots, the periosteum inflamed, the pain burning and pressing, > rubbing, > sleep, parts indurated, appetite ravenous with an ardent desire for cold food, cold drinks and ice cream, which satisfied and made him feel better together with the cancerous affection.
These symptoms and conditions we found covered in the highest degree by one remedy – Phosphorus – which was given in seven powders of the 30x, one each night at bedtime, and placebo for the balance of the month. The first sign of improvements was this return to natural appetite. He was then given dose of the 1m. and placebo, the remedy being repeated only when it ceased to act and the potency not changed until it would cause no more reaction. Thus the boy gained in health constitutionally for nearly two years when the 1 m. had failed to act longer and had produced no impression on the growth.
The potency was then raised to the 10 m., when in a very short time the growth began to slough away. It required a second dose of the 10 m. to complete the sloughing and permanently heal the wound. The boy is now nearly six feet tall, in the best of health, a law student in the Toledo University, and his mouth inside over the site of the late growth looks as natural as the surrounding tissue.
Our greatest failings are the lack of acute powers of observation and an ardent desire to repeat too quickly after the cure once starts. The frequent repetition does not speed up the cure; it merely mounts up to a physiological action and a consequent suppression. Nature does the real curing and works just so fast. If the above were truly a case of cancer, then we have proved conclusively that the indicated remedy will rid one of cancer when the symptoms agree. If it were not a case of cancer, the surgeon would display better taste in writing of the limitations of surgery rather than of homoeopathy.
The above case illustrates homoeopathy in chronic conditions. Now, for one acute: About 4 A.M. on a real balmy August day we were called to the bedside of a retired farmer, age sixty. On arrival at his bedside the first thing that struck our eye was a real Hahnemannian prescription left by a predecessor who claimed to be a real homoeopath; it lay on a stand near the bed. On the extreme left was a box of active cathartic pills, on the right a number of 4 grain morphine tablets, and in between these two were three glasses partially filled by a liquid colored with the medicine, these being taken in rotation. We turned to the patient, who was sobbing, moaning and almost frantic from pain and loss of sleep. He had been in this predicament for three days and three nights, and the disease was ungrateful enough not to succumb to that wonderful array of dope.
