THE THIRD MILESTONE.
The third year of the Recorder under its present auspices has been concluded. It is a matter of deep regret to us that many of the projects outlined for the past year have not as yet been fulfiled. Perhaps the most important feature of progress has been the appearance of a series of articles giving an outline of homoeopathy. The conclusion of this A B C course will be given in the current year. Also this year, by way of continuation of this study course, there will be a series of lectures on the homoeopathic remedies for acute diseases. This series was prompted by the fact that a number of students felt a great weakness in their ability for acute prescribing when they could not return to their repertories and materia medicas for leisurely study, as in chronic work.
A second feature for the coming year will be a set of repertory analyses of actual cases showing the method in detail from evaluation of symptoms through finding the corresponding rubrics and the mathematical use of repertory sheets up to the point where only reference to the materia medica can decide between the remedies. Another feature this year is to be a monthly article on materia medica, the remedies being taken up alphabetically, and presented in a concise, pithy form. There has also been a request for veterinary material and there will be something in this department each month during the coming year.
Each year the Recorder becomes a more valuable instrument and each year it becomes a greater burden to those who edit it because of its ramifications. The Recorder is unique in the purity of the homoeopathy it embodies, in the fact that it is now definitely a teaching journal, in the fact that it is now definitely a teaching journal, in the fact that it prints the only extent, complete bibliography of current homoeopathic periodical literature, and in that it is the only homoeopathic journal to publish a complex index.
In order to keep the Recorder up to its present standard, let alone to increase its scope and interest, it will be necessary to have funds available for the editorial end as the work of editing this journal has reached a magnitude incommensurable with voluntary services. What is really needed is an endowment for the Recorder but until such is given or developed it is urgent, if this unique organ is to continue, that the editorial side have a minimum of a thousand dollars a year. If twenty of our subscribers would give a hundred dollars a piece the I.H.A. could then plan the next two years of the Recorder in fruitful security.-E.W.H.
In another column of this issue is an open letter from Dr. Rabe, having as its substance quite enough truth to give the real Hahnemannian homoeopath some anxious thought. However, as we look from this office at the condition of world homoeopathy there are indications which are cheering and cause a feeling of better things to come.
The International Hahnemannian Association was organized in 1880, and the reason for the formation of this group was the anxiety of some of the outstanding homoeopaths that the precious truths which the early fathers in homoeopathy had handed down were being obliterated by a more materialistic school of thought. Since the organization of the I.H.A., the same struggle has been going on, for we realize that the more study the Philosophy of Hahnemann, the more valuable it seems; and we realize the danger in the gross materialism and insistence upon pathology in making the homoeopathic prescription, which is so popular in some minds today. It is disheartening and a source of great disappointment, for the I.H.A. stands preeminently for homoeopathic practice based on the philosophy of the homoeopathic law. The more we study this philosophy, the more it reveals itself as being inexhaustible for all our needs.
Through our official journal, The Homoeopathic Recorder, we are trying to demonstrate the homoeopathic truths that have proved of such inestimable value to so many physicians, and this journal is proving a beacon light in Hahnemannian teaching, for it goes to fifty-two countries to those who are studying and practising according to the laws of similars.
In spite of the discouragement that comes upon us at times, we can be assured that this old world is not going altogether to materialism. In fact, the researches in the immaterial in science in general, outside of medicine, are coming closer and closer to the homoeopathic law; and if we will but persevere, the materialism that is manifested by the study of the pathological action of drugs on the lower animals will be frustrated before it engulfs the dynamic-minded homoeopaths. Every country on the globe is tainted with this materialism; do not think for one minute that it is confined to any one country. Wherever we go , Hahnemannian homoeopaths are in the minority. After all, this is only to be expected. It is much easier for our minds to deal with material things that we can see under the micro-scope than it is for us to reason concerning things on the dynamic plane.
If homoeopathy were not the truth it would not be persecuted. In this country we are comparatively free from state persecution. In many other countries persecution goes to the extent of state antagonism and suppression, as well as individual and personal persecution, even of educated physicians. One of the recent students at the American Foundation for Homoeopathy Post-Graduate School is practising in a country where he is liable to fine and imprisonment if a death occurs under his care, although he is a graduate of an American “grade A” college. Another student in our Post-Graduate School returned to practise in a country where he is liable to fine and imprisonment because he dispenses his own medicines, instead of directing his patients to the licensed chemist.
“Truth ever has been, and so long as this present dispensation lasts, will ever be, in the minority. Magna est veritas et praevalebit.” But however small the minority is, it will never be completely overwhelmed. Truth flourishes best against opposition. “Every generation has its witnesses and its final triumph is assured, for it stands on the rock foundation of God Himself.”.
The wheat and the tares must grow together until the harvest.- H.A.R.
CHARACTERISTICS.
A letter to us this morning, regarding some symptoms registered in a materia medica as not being characteristic of a certain drug caused us to pause long enough to ask ourself if the term characteristic, relating, had not been decidedly over-done. We have several works giving supposed characteristics of our various remedies. Hahnemann spoke of the “rare, strange and peculiar”. To us it seems as if the term characteristic, as commonly applied to the various drugs, is applied to the essentials and not to the characteristic of that drug. That which is common to a number of remedies can hardly be considered characteristic of any single remedy unless, as in the cases of Acon., Bry. and Merc. cor. They have a something peculiar to qualify them.
As we understand it, that which is characteristic is that which is strictly individual, and which is rather the identification mark. It may be a single symptom alone or qualified, or a very small group of symptoms, as: Acon.: Agonized tossing about (single); Merc. cor.: Rectal tenesmus (qualified: greater than any other remedy); and Crot. tig.: (small group: yellow watery stool, coming out like a shot, worse immediately after eating or drinking). Reverting back to our old friend Digitalis. Its leading characteristic has been long known as a slow, weak pulse. How about the other 59 remedies that have that same identical kind of a pulse?
While it is true that a slow, weak pulse is essential to a case requiring Digitalis it is not true that that symptom is characteristic of it, it is an important essential, but does not necessarily indicate the drug. The real characteristic of Digitalis is a profound, atonic, muscular weakness of heart and arteries, of which the slow weak pulse is but an incident. For want to tone and power the muscles of the heart are too weak to throw a sufficient amount of blood into the arteries, and for the same reason the muscles of the arteries are too weak to contract on what little blood is thrown into them, thus the stream flows lazily along the arteries and reaches the radial pulse after the heart has ceased to beat. Thus we get the essential symptom: “Slow weak pulse, slower than the beat of the heart.”.
When we speak of the essentials we speak not of the secondary, but of the primary, symptoms. Many reactionary symptoms steadfastly appear the action of the remedy has passed off that are apt to confuse the indications for the remedy if we do not understand them. Thus Acon. may still be indicated after the storm has passed off and the patient apparently calm, or Bry. in a restless case after the original storm has passed, or Dig. in a case with a rapid, irritable, strong pulse, but while these are foreign to the indications ordinarily conceded to those remedies they are neither essential nor characteristic. The real symptoms that indicate the drug are those produced by the actual storm created by the drug; the essentials, those known as characteristic, and the real characteristic, the individual identification mark.-A. PULFORD.
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.