What a wonderful field of endeavour the homoeopathic physician has who is actively engaged in obstetrics. None other has the opportunity to do so much for the child to be as the doctor who has charge of the mother during the period of gestation.
The three miasms are all cumulative from generation to generation, and it is easy to see that a nervous, hysterical mother is very apt to beget a nervous baby, but if the father is also nervous or is carrying around the effects of a suppressed gonorrhoea or syphilis, it is a foregone conclusion that the baby, under these circumstances, will have an heritage that supplies the background for a multitude of diseases all too often, such as hydrocephalus, idiocy, feeble-mindedness, blindness, etc.
These conditions are on the increase to an alarming extent, and are directly traceable to two big causes, suppressive medicine and improper marriages. If you are skeptical about gonorrhoea being a factor, just watch the transformation that takes place under the properly selected antisycotic remedy in a selected case of pelvic inflammation in the female, or a rheumatic fever in the male who has been treated by the “injection” method for a gonorrhoea of perhaps twenty years previous. if you think that the treatment given the syphilitic by the boards of health and civic health clinics are not suppressive, acquaint yourselves with the constant stream of paretics that is crowding out insane hospitals.
There is overcrowding of all state institutions, all over the country, but especially in Ohio. Last year, after an analysis of conditions had been arrived at, the legislature was asked to provide a fund of forty-three million dollars for a building program covering expansion for the next five years, and an increase of nine million dollars a year for maintenance.
In our state there are some fifteen thousand feeble-minded cases on the waiting list because there is no room for them in the hospitals. It costs the taxpayers four hundred and eighty six dollars a year plus sixty dollars for clothes for each case where there is no support from the relatives.
Our own Summit county is paying three thousand six hundred and sixteen dollars a year for the keeping of the feeble-minded children of one family. This man and woman shout not have been allowed to marry, but they did. My reaction to this conclusion is, that if some supervision is not brought about to prevent these misfit marriages, and if suppressive medical measures are not abrogated, the state must furnish protection from the degenerates, the feeble-minded, and the insane, who are the natural consequences of such criminal negligence.
Forty-one states have passed laws got sterilize the unfit, but I am sorry to say that this measures has been defeated in Ohio. Careful selection is found necessary to improve or even maintain the strain in al stock breeding and in horticulture. Breeding proceeds under well defined laws of selectively, and results are sure and certain. Breeders are well aware that carelessness in selection will soon show deterioration in offspring.
Carelessness in selectivity is the reason for the crowded conditions in all our penal, and other, institutions. Suppressive medications does not and cannot meet the requirements satisfactorily. Pure homoeopathy is the only real cure for a situation that is world wide and steadily progressing to a place where it is arousing an interest that will bring many theories to the front. The government is now launching the National Institute of Health; let us see to it that homoeopathy has a chance to demonstrate its true worth.
AKRON, OHIO.
DISCUSSION.
DR.D.T.PULFORD: I want to thank Dr.Dixon for his paper. As a taxpayer of Ohio I agree with him from the standpoint of taxes, but I am inclined to disagree with him in allowing the state to arbitrarily say who shall or shall not be sterilized, for this reason: We have watched a good many of these political reforms going through, not only watched some directly but have read the histories of others. No matter now careful your are, you will have corrupt Boards of Health who will use such a law for ulterior motives. These same health boards will prescribe the wrong treatment of venereal diseases. I should hate to have such a board dictate to me as to whom I should marry, or what kind of treatment I should have.
DR. E.UNDERHILL, JR.: This universe appears to be governed by law and order and hot by chance as far as I can make out, and if a child coming into life is, you might say, a candidate to be an idiot, it ought to be privileged to be one. If ought also to be the privilege of the parents to go through that necessary training, perhaps and experience of having an idiotic child. The danger of medically interfering by law, I think, is the same as obtains in a incurable case. It would undoubtedly be abused as time goes on. As Dr. Pulford pointed out, corrupted would creep in almost inevitably. There are plenty of criminal cases.
I had one case just recently. It was the first child, and the labor was normal. I didnt take care of the mother in delivery, but I have taken care right until about six months of age. Then the mother failed to bring the child in and I failed to have her bring it in. Anyway, one day when I happened to be out of the city the child took a convulsion, and when they were unable to reach me they called the nearest doctor. They were convulsions such as children often have from teething. I found out later that when the father was a baby he had had 40 or 50 convulsions during teething time and he is still alive.
When the doctor was called he said, “What you must do is take this child to be specialist. Whom have you been doctoring with?” “Oh,” they said, “a homoeopathist.”.
“Nobody but a baby specialist ought to handle that case.” They took it seriously,and they took the baby to a specialist on Walnut street, and the baby specialist said, “The only place for a baby like that is in a hospital.” So they took the baby to a hospital, and when they got out there it happened to be that the Schick test, toxin-antitoxin ritual was on. So they gave it the toxin-antitoxin immunization, and being a little puzzled by the reaction they did a lumbar puncture. The baby dies, all in the name of science. So you may have a perfect child or you may have an idiotic child on your hands from modern treatment. Personally I think a state law to sterilize criminals and defectives is a dangerous ground on which to tread.
DR. B.C.WOODBURY: I cant help feeling that Dr.Underhill is right. I know there is a distinct trend in the world today towards the legalization of defectives and criminals but I think that as long as we have sociological conditions that breed these things it is up to us to take care of them. I dont care if we have to spend all of the money in the treasury. It isnt a question of taking away the right of such people to propagate, but civilization must be protected against itself. They are the offspring of ourselves.
Those things which we foster and breed I feel we must take care of properly. Merely to eradicate them is like plucking worms off a tree. If you dont get at the conditions that make the worms how are you going to eradicate them merely by cutting off the limb of the tree? By and by your limbs will all be gone, and that will be the end; so I feel that it is a dangerous procedure.
DR. W.W.WILSON: Two years ago, as President of the International Hahnemannian Association, I brought up the question of birth control. Dr.Presidents address. I made one great mistake in not insisting that one of the women members of our Association be put on that committee. Dr. Olds, Dr. Becker and DR. Underhill came forward and said that this Association is for the promulgation of homoeopathy and for nothing else; therefore, you couldnt make any advance in science other than homoeopathy.
DR. Olds has read a paper here today that may possibly touch on homoeopathy, but it was an awfully long-winded paper, and every one has confessed it was over his head. But that is beside the question. I dont agree with Dr.Woodbury. I do believe in birth control. I think every physician should have the privilege of teaching his patient birth control if necessary. Further in any any over-step his privilege we certainly ought to bounce him out of the practice of medicine, out of our society, and out of everything else. I think in that way we have control over the situation. I certainly believe in birth control.
Dr. Dixon cites a case, a family in his own community. We have a large population of Italians. Necessarily most of them are Catholic. We know the attitude of the Pope on this question. It has been advertised broadcast. Dr. Dixon talks about some thousands of dollars spent taking care of this one family. We have to employ hundreds of teachers in our public schools just to take care of defectives, and for nothing else. We have schools and schools in Montclair, New Jersey, for nothing but defectives. Then we see the accounts in the newspapers of the holdups. Who are they? They are certainly not effective; they are certainly defectives. I certainly take the attitude that we should have legalized privileges in these matters, and if any of our members over-step the bounds we ought to see to it that they are ejected.
Akron, Ohio
President, I.H.A.