I said to myself, this is the case upon which to test Hahnemanns 30th potency. So i fixed up some of the Podophyllum 30 and put it on the childs tongue, and sent the mother home, fearing that the child would soon die, as it was very ill, face pinched and drawn, cadaveric, and had a dreadful odor about it.
Next morning, when making my rounds I had to pass the house. I expected to see crape on the door. I did not dare to call, though I was very much worried about it, so I drove past; but there was no crape on the door. I drove home again that way, although it was quite a distance out of the way, and still there was not crape on the door; but standing in the doorway was the grandmother, who said: “Doctor, the baby is all right this morning.”.
Then I began to feel better, thinking I had not killed the child. (Perhaps some of you have been in the same state of mind).
That little child did not need any more medicine. After that I had quite a number of Podophyllum cases, and the 30th did the work to my astonishment. It was different from anything I had ever seen; the cures were almost instantaneous, it seemed as if there would be no more stool after the first dose of medicine.
I used the 30th all the season, and then made up my mind that if the 30th of Podophyllum was good other 30th would be also, and I ought to have as many of them as possible. I made a good many 30ths by hand, and finally succeeded in making up one hundred and twenty-six remedies, some of them in the 200th potency, and these I used. Then I produced a set of 200th and higher and practised with then. I followed on in this way and in a few year I discovered that by giving higher and higher potencies the remedies seemed to operate more and more interiorly.
I found that a chronic case that would be relieved by moderately high potencies would only improve for a matter of weeks, but on the administration of much higher potencies the work would be taken up, and in that way the same patient could be carried on from one potency to another.
After repeated and renewed experiments with the greatest care, Kent elaborated his Law of Series and Degrees.
These experiences of Kent are most interesting. We all have passed or will pass through similar experience, if our aim is to progress, and if we have the ambition to be able to do as well as such masters.
It is only later, moved by the desire for a deeper and better knowledge for the desire to taste the joys felt by our founder, that we search, in the period that I called adult, to copy him in his method in the must faithful possible way: to give only one remedy at a time, to give it in the most minute dose, and not to base our prescription upon the diagnostic or pathological symptoms but upon the symptoms which reveal the patient himself, his desired and aversions, his character, his subjective reactions and all the precious modalities which so well characterizes the thinking and living human being, but not that morbid label, theoretical, impersonal and dead entity that one calls malady! Then only we feel the value of this way of practising by the results which it brings to us, we know by the reactions observed if the effect produced is really the natural progress of the morbid affection.
We feel the same satisfaction as the sportsman from whom we, as sons of William Tell, try to model, not like those gunners who use a shotgun and therefore take by hazard their prey, but we must be like the good marksman using prudently and slowly his rifle which makes him sure of his marksmanship as only one bullet hits. Here is the reward of the unique prescription according to Hahnemann, here is the goal which we shall try to attain.
This goal is perfectly possible, and can, by this exact way of doing, truly authorize us to seriously interpret our results, because, as says our Master Hahnemann apropos of the necessity of the unique remedy in the paragraphs 273 and 274 of the Organon:.
The true physician never thinks of giving as a remedy any but a single, simple medicinal substance; for these reasons also, because even though the simple medicines were thoroughly proved with respect to their pure peculiar effects on the unimpaired healthy state of man, it is yet impossible to foresee how two or more medicinal substances might, when compounded, hinder and alter each others actions on the human body.
But we must respect each of these phases, low, middle and high dilution, eclectism complex homoeopathy, alternating then pure, as we are all passing through these transition stage and these are necessary according for our upbuilding.
Therapeutics phases to schools, said Dufresne of Geneve, 100 years ago, is a vast unequal plane, hilly and uneven, cultivated in few areas, cleared up only in some others, and in the most pat rough and uncultivated, travelled over all its points, it everywhere presents evidence of man. But nobody before Hahnemann was able to stake out a grand road. Without fixed points, without assured landmarks, the greatest physicians have only been able to trace successively some footpaths, which were more or less rapidly effected by time, according as their directions were more or less good. Hahnemann has done better.
He has effected a complete and regular outline and pattern, and furthermore he has cut his road on many points; but one cannot dissimulate that, in spite of the force of his genius and his indefatigable activity, despite the aid and cooperation of his learned and zealous disciples the road remains still difficult and laborious to travel. The difficulty is positive; it is the principal cause of the length of our progress. But does the difficulty rebuff the man of science and purpose? Does he abandon a sure way to err in all directions without means of orientation, and leaving everything to hazard? Should he act like that when the result of his conduct can be the death of his brothers?.
Attention, please, to what was said by the philosopher Dufresne, who so well pictured your institutions and customs, during the solemn session of the Gallican Homoeopathic Society in 1835 when Hahnemann, then 80 years old, sat in the middle of this imposing assembly, numbering more than 500 person, who had come to contemplate and to render homage to the illustrious and learned old man:.
Hark, lend me ears, please, ladies and gentlemen, especially you from Paris.
When shall come the generous and enlightened man who will open again the temples of old Aesculapius, who will break the dangerous lancet of the surgeon, who will close the apothecary shops and who will destroy this conjectural medicine accompanied by drugs, fasting and diet? What friend of man will at last announce a new medicine, since the ancient kills and depopulates.? [ Tableau de Paris de 1886, Soc. de Med].
This man is here, he presides over your Society, his name impose silence, he is above all praise, it is our master, Samuel Hahnemann! Upon the provision of the French Minister, he receives the royal authorization to practise in France. Ladies and gentlemen, it is because of him, and because of him alone that we are all here today. His torch has lost no brightness in one hundred years.
Let it lead us to higher ideals in our daily lives work. A system of empty and queer thoughts, a method without serious bases, a doctrine which affects the imagination only and has no foundations, not constructed has won the love of all nations, but if homoeopathy is to live, if it has continued to cure since 1796 in all countries of the world, if it saves cases where regular medicine has been revealed impotent and worthless, if it has great success in veterinary art, it is because it possesses imperishable foundations, because it is based upon a natural law. And its veritable force, its real secret is its cures, its golden key is not death but health, not pain and sorrow but jay and relief.
During this session of welcome, when the homoeopaths of Paris honoured the coming of the master who had definitely left Germany, his country, the address of Hahnemann was of such merit that it should be remembered, at least in part:.
I came to France for the propagation of homoeopathy. In the name of all the homoeopaths, I thank the French Government for the liberty that it accords to our reunions and to our works. in a writing which very soon will be published, I will speak to the public of homoeopathy. I will tell them what one must be to be a homoeopathist and which virtues one must bring in the practice of such a beneficent act. I only recognize as disciples those who practise pure homoeopathy and whose medication is absolutely exempt of all mixture, with the means used until the present time by the old medicine. Regarding the Society of Paris, if it was till now, save some exceptions that I am pleased to recognize, possible to find that it left to desire a more deep and thorough instruction of our art, the fault is due, without doubt, to the innovation of the appearance of homoeopathy in Paris.
By exhorting the members of this society to an indispensable redoubling of this study. I would make them observe as well as all that: When we are dealing with a science which is concerned with the saving of life, it is a crime to neglect its study. Also, I am convinced that this reproach would never apply to you, because, animated as you are for the love of humanity, you will neglect nothing to attain the goal that we propose to you and to which you certainly will reach, if as I very much hope, you remain united in heart and doctrine.
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).