When we have studied the pathological end result all that we can possibly learn is what has happened, but get no clue whatever to its exact origin, how to combat it in others or how to prevent a similar occurrence in others. If the study of pathology had or did give us these clues, then, allopathy, with all its years of pathological investigation, research and study to its credit, would have succeeded beyond all expectation and have reached the goal years ago and there would have been no homoeopathy today. But has it? Allopathy is no nearer the goal, in even a single instance, then it was in the beginning from the standpoint of prescribing. Then why not, in introducing the allopathic student into the homoeopathy bears no relation whatever to the method he is about to leave?.
Diagnostically, both pathology and morphology are not to be ignored, but they, in themselves, are of minor importance in homoeopathic prescribing, for they, in themselves, furnish no clue whatever to the individual constitutional remedy. It simply avails us nothing to merely know that one has cancer, tuberculosis or is deformed. The cause or origin is what we must seek, and as disease, which is as invisible as life itself, expressed itself in symptoms only, it is that language that is the most important for us to be able to read and understand. The homoeopaths truths, which are but too often regarded as per prejudice have never yet been successfully attacked.
To successfully teach the young idea how to shoot, we must teach him true homoeopathy and distinctly impress upon him that there is no relation between homoeopathy and modern medicine; that homoeopathy is as yet incomplete and that it must not be judged as in its entirety; that it is ignorance of unproven remedies that is the sole cause of our having to resort of temporary expedients, as well as of a lock of acquaintance with those remedies already proven.
We are convinced, from over 16 years of exclusive experience with it, that homoeopathy is right; that it is logical; that it is philosophical; that it is scientific; that it is the only complete system of curative medicine known, but there will never be unity of through, action and agreement among homoeopathic physicians until its unfolding is completed, until it is taught in its purity and until it is entirely divorced from modern medicine.
We are allowing our contact with modern scientific medicine to so addle our brains that we are fast losing sight of the very object for which we are gathered here to discuss, teach and preserve. We cannot expect our students to rise above our own level if they are to adhere strictly to our teachings. It therefore behoves us to teach them homoeopathy in all its purity. More students will fall below this standard than will rise above it. Therefore the higher the example set the better homoeopath the student will remain.
TOLEDO, OHIO.
DISCUSSION.
DR. C.L.OLDS: I would like to take issue with one statement of Dr.Pulfords. If I understand him correctly he said something about curing- I dont remember the exact exact statement-and that then we would be immune to disease. I should like to ask Dr.Pulford if he known whether there ever was a person, is now, or ever will be one is absolutely immune to disease; that is, as I understand it, one who has no chronic miasms? To my mind, it is simply an impossibility that there should be a person who has been so cured that al miasmatic trouble is annihilated and he is absolutely immune to disease.
DR. A PULFORD: I will answer that by a living example. I have never yet hesitated to go into any disease no matter what it was. I have been into practically all the diseases.
DR. W.W WILSON: That doesnt make you immune.
DR. A.PULFORD: Wouldnt I get one or more of those diseases if I were not immune?.
DR. W.W.WILSON: Not necessarily.
DR. A. PULFORD: Then what does immunity mean?.
DR. C.L.OLDS: I should like to ask if you know of any person who would dare inject syphilitic virus into himself?.
DR. A. PULFORD: That is another question.
DR. C.L.OLDS: Well, it is a disease.
DR. A. PULFORD: It bears no relation to this.
DR. POWERS: What is meant by “disease”? I dont think it s possible to make a human foolproof. You can cure him and put him in good condition, but what in the world is going to prevent him from eating a plum cake and drinking a glass of cider on top of it, which will probably lead to his death? You talk about making people immune. You would have to make them all foolproof to do that.
DR. I. FARR: This is an excellent paper on the matter of teaching pure homoeopathy, if you have the proper environment. In other words, if we had a homoeopathic globe or sphere or this new planet with homoeopathy, I think the plan would work very well. But, lying all joking aside, we are here with those who are followers or children of followers of all methods of therapy, and if we are to succeed in converting the world to homoeopathy it seems that it would be better to proceed from the known to the related unknown.
Most prospective physicians know something of disease from hearsay and most disease have some pathology. Therefore, if we are to convert them to homoeopathy it seems that we must show them that the remedy is not in fighting the disease, but that the individual is sometimes recognized through the pathology.
DR. C.M.BOGER: The factors which go to make up the mind in choosing the most similar remedy are innumerable. Materia medica doesnt contain all of them. Pathology contains some of them. General science contains some of them. We never can know too much. We never can know enough to make an exact similimum, to make a prescription of an exact similimum. In keeping up with general science, every once in awhile you read something which enlightens you very much on some remedy about which you really known very little. Just the other day I was reading an article in Popular Science on some toad poison used in China and what it was used for. I took up Mills Encyclopaedia and read part of the article on Agaricus and found many of the symptoms that this article contained in that pathogenesis, but not all of them. And those that were not in allen, helped to illuminate those that were already there. That is the way we have to know our remedies. That is the way you know your diseases.
CHAIRMAN J.W.WAFFENSMITH: Dr.Pulford has a remarkable crusading spirit, and he may say some things that we dont like. I am thankful that we do find men who get out of the stereotyped way of doing things, who get away from the standardization and give us a jar once in awhile, knock us down, because we need waking up. We need to get away from this satiated standardization that we have today. In all avenues of thought and in all lines of organization, they are becoming tired of it, and I for one most heartily thank Dr. Pulford for giving us his paper.
DR. A PULFORD: I should like the privilege of giving the allopathic side of pathological prescribing, taken from Modern Surgery. I think it ought to be published for the benefit of all of our fellows:
“Cellular pathology entices the students but is a false lure. It destroys the efficiently of the physician for it leaves the needed explanation of the mysteries of the well untold.
We need a new approach and until we have it all these viral phenomena which basically we do not understand shall not be understood.
“As real clinicians we must still be empiricists, using drugs, clinically learning to know their effects, using them helpfully, but not actually fundamentally understanding how or why they act as they do.
“The physician, the healer can divorce the pathologist and the researcher. These students may follow their fancies as far as they like. They are not physicians. They have not materially helped the clinicians. They have far to go and much useless lumbar to abandon before they will actually help clinicians greatly by their activities”. From first to last Hahnemann teaches that the totality of the symptoms must be considered in making a prescription; this applies no less to the specialities than to general practice, but the specialist the temptation to get rid of that condition of which the patient complains, and on account of which he applies, is great, and must be resisted if he wishes to heal the sick, which as Hahnemann declares, is the sole duty of the physician; to suppress leucorrhoea at the expenses of the various, to suppress gonorrhoea at the expenses of not only all sexual organs, not only the whole being of the patient, but also and worst of all, of generations of be born, to suppress catarrh in the upper passages at the expense of the lower, to suppress a so- called skin disease at the expense of the whole or some special internal part, in short to do anything in the way of suppression of special symptoms without regard to the general system is not homoeopathic and therefore not scientific.-CHAS. B.GILBERT, M.D., 1895.
I mention a final difficulty in curative treatment, namely, the early repetition or change of the remedy. If the study has been carefully worked out, an the prescription made for the patient in accord with the perverted vital action, a remedy should be given time to act before thinking of repetition or change. No interference should be made until improvement ceases. Remember, the patient himself reestablished the natural order, which is one of balanced vital force and health.-RAY W. SPALDING, M.D., before the Eastern, 1929.
