[ Presidential address at the Geneva 1931 Congress of the International Homoeopathic League].
PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL HOMOEOPATHIC LEAGUE.
“When we are dealing with a science which is concerned with the saving of life, it is a crime to neglect its study.”.
We, born and coming from different lands, trained in different schools of medicine, whose opinions vary as much as our professors, moulded in practice which is more or less rational, more or less empirical, according to the circles in which we find ourselves, we each have come to the work with thoughts, customs and prejudices, which are different, and few are the men who can entirely abandon prejudices and preconceived ideas.
Only a few are they who know when they must observe, verify or reproduce a fact to put themselves in a state of perfect poise and abstraction to say to themselves: Here I am, presenting myself with my sole faculty of seeing and comparing. Until this moment I have recognized nothing within myself, I have seen nothing, I have heard nothing, I know nothing; I am a child facing the east reaching out for all things and longing to accept and to perceive the thoughts that my faculties and sensations can perceive and suggest to me.
This difficulty of stripping oneself of the old man and of being born in the morning of all new things, worthy without hesitation and procrastination, was always one of the principal stumbling and procrastination, was always one of the principal stumbling blocks of new truths, discoveries and highest attainments. The rewards for our forbears were terrible persecutions for the truths they tried to advance.
In this bright morning of the 20th century, things are different, we are at liberty to think and free to promulgate those truths, framed in laws that are eternal and blessed. Nevertheless, the influence of preconceived ideas, and prejudices, I regret to state, is far from being destroyed even in our day.
With Dufresne, the pioneer of homoeopathy in Switzerland, the unequaled President of the former Gallican Homoeopathic Society, we can repeat that we must have the same spirit in our Congress, we must equal this spirit of homoeopathy. It must be a spirit of kindness, conciliation, perfect understanding.
It must be a spirit of exact observation, a faithful exposition of facts, but not a spirit of sophism, unkindness and hair-splitting over unknown causes impossible to determine; it must be a spirit of constant study and humility before the immensity of the art and the facts, but not a spirit of arrogance, of contemptuousness with which we whip others by science to satisfy our selfish selves and thus neglect the true and unique purpose of our high calling, that is to cure; it must be spirit of wisdom, probity and rigorous impartiality in the examination or control of facts advanced by others, not the spirit of remoteness, disdain and negation by others, not the spirit of remoteness, disdain and negation the formerly the corporations have opposed to all who have not been of their making.
Ladies and gentlemen, the spirit of our Congress must be a spirit of benevolence, of reciprocity and mutual teaching. A science built only on facts. The man who can best instruct others finds many precious and useful lessons in the conversations and practical communications of his confreres. Assembled here in good faith and frank cordiality, all physicians must feel like saying: I am grateful for the many things you have given me.
Let us strive to be supermen of his 20th century. If details, nevertheless, please do not criticise those who do not think just as you think, but expose your point of view and motive by an impeccable logic through precise facts which are laws. We shall avid absolutely at this Congress the frequent danger of having controversies without purpose, and our purpose should be to show facts in all simplicity, justifying the procedures which have conducted us to obtain, to provoke or to modify them. It is only in this spirit of reciprocal esteem that we will make our work excellent, useful, choice, complete.
But it is not only in a Congress, that one can make homoeopathy prosper. There is a stronger way than this one, the only one able to show all its value, the only one ready to gain the entire confidence of the public and to attract the consideration of physicians who practise it. It is to never wander from the road that homoeopathy outlines, it is to never apply any remedy except according to the principles of homoeopathy.
Dr. Schmidt was introduced to the results of homeopathic treatment during the 1918 flu epidemic while living in London. There he met both J. H. Clarke and John Weir.
In 1922 he came to the United States and began his studies with Alonzo Austin and Frederica Gladwin, who had been a pupil of Kent's. He became the first graduate of the American Foundation for Homeopathy course for doctors. Returning to his native land he set up practice in Geneva, Switzerland. He was responsible for reintroducing classical homeopathy into Europe, teaching several generations of physicians, including Elizabeth Wright Hubbard.
Dr. Schmidt helped edit the "Final General Repertory" of Kent, and translated the Organon into French. In 1925, he was one of the main founders of the Liga Medicorum Homoeopathic Internationalis (LIGA).