The largest best known international firm is Dr.Wilmar Schwabes, Leipzig, which in 1926 can celebrate its sixtieth anniversary. The fine new buildings of the firm with their excellent equipment are, in their clean and exact arrangement, an example for factories of homoeopathic medicine. In many places are to be found large homoeopathic central pharmacies, for instance, Hofrat Mayers house in Stuttgart-Constant. The firm Madaus & Co., Radeburg, has added medical branch to its factory and does a vary active business in literary publication.
In south Germany, especially in Stuttgart, condition are very favorable; there are numerous and well managed homoeopathic departments in allopathic pharmacies as well as purely homoeopathic ones, so that the different parts of the city are well provided for. The pharmacists in Wurttemberg are under the firm control of a homoeopathic physician and a pharmacist, and are carefully examined in every detail.
Another recent occurrence is the chair of homoeopathy which was opened in the University of Berlin in the beginning of 1928. Prof. Fassbender has worded for a long time stubbornly with petitions in the Prussian Landtag for its approval. Much ink was used on both sides. Dr.E.Bastanier of Berlin, the present chief editor of the Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Homoopathie, was chosen as teacher and has undertaken this office. He began his lectures on homoeopathy within the year. The University of Frankfurt a. M. also has chair of homoeopathy. These things are received with varying sentiments. The teaching without a clinic, using only the theory of the teacher, is not the ultimate aim of homoeopathic endeavor.
Experience will show how this new arrangement will work out and whether homoeopathy can do its work practically in this theoretical manner. These new homoeopathic teachers can expect in the beginning the opposition of many teachers and pupils. This is already seen in numerous instances especially in the press. Here and there are movements for new homoeopathic hospitals, as in Dresden, but many of them, carried on for years, have not reached practical results.
The homoeopathic physician is no longer in the same situation as formerly and here and there he is not even the infant terrible among his colleagues. In certain cases it has come about that homoeopathic and allopathic physicians work very well together. In the large professional organization the reception of homoeopathic tradition is not refused. The German Central Organization of Homoeopathic Physicians requires that its members shall join the local professional organization. The university, with a few exceptions, maintains its old reserve rather than an open opposition toward problems of homoeopathy.
There is still only a very modest number of scientific people among them, however, some very distinguished ones, who take a much more just attitude toward homoeopathy than was the case ten years ago. The fundamental claim to an unprejudiced examination of the teaching of Hahnemann in theory and practice, in the laboratory, at the bedside, in experiments with both well and sick people, is not a matter which receives the amount of attention in medicine that it used to demand, but many of the questions of science seem still to avoid the word homoeopathy, and many a scientist gives the impression of being hindered by the bad reputation which it had in the last century, and from which homoeopathy today will suffers.
Physical examination, biology, the modern conception of the patient as a personally, the teaching of the latest psychology, the discoveries of chemistry and physics and of pharmacology, as well as of normal and pathological physiology, are of great aid in judging criticism and valuing despised homoeopathy, in a better and more practical manner. Fanatics in the homoeopathic camp dreamed of a victory of homoeopathy and the breaking down of scientific medicine without realizing that homoeopathy is not the last word in the art of healing and never can be. To show homoeopathy its appropriate place in the art of healing, to recognize in Hahnemann the great physician of his time and of all time, those are results which we are waiting to realize and which can be realized.
Standing today in the evolution of the entire art of healing, one sees the way clearer than ever, but to travel it is difficult. In order to maintain and to carry on the teaching that has come to us from Hahnemann as our heritage we must develop a homoeopathy which is grounded on science. The path we have to travel includes homoeopathic departments in hospitals, our own hospitals, institutions for research, laboratories, examining, confirming and broadening the teaching of Hahnemann, educational institutions for physicians, opportunities for further study: On these the fate of homoeopathic depends.
The development of medicine as a whole in Germany appears to be on the way to a more profound and vitalistic art of healing. Whether it will render to the great man who lies dead in the Pere Lachaise the honor which has been kept from him for over a century, the future alone can well.
“I DO NOT ASK DURING MY LIFETIME ANY RECOGNITION OF THE BENEFICENT TRUTH, WHICH I, WITHOUT ANY THOUGHT OF MYSELF, OFFER. WHAT I HAVE DONE I DID FROM HIGHER MOTIVES FOR THE WORLD, NON INUTILIS VIXI”.- S. HAHNEMANN.
STUTTGART, GERMANY.
