And you studious French youth, you who have not fallen into the old errors and who in your laborious vigils search only the truth, come to me because i bring to you this sought for truth.
It is to the existing facts that I appeal to convince you, but do not try to accomplish those facts yourself until you have had a complete and conscientious study which will assure success. Then, like myself, you will bless the Providence for the immense benefit that has descended upon the earth through my humble medium, because I have only been a feeble instrument of its power before which all must humiliate.
We who treat sick patients who have been given up and left by others, those old asthmatic, those chronic eczematous cases, these arterio-sclerotics in whom remedies have no more action, those suffering from cardiac deficiency, those neurasthenics who have tried everything, and those gastro-enteropathics who have followed all sorts of cures and diet, what bitterness and discouragement we would avoid if we only knew the incontestable possibility of homoeopathy.
Are we curing all these case? No, certainly not, but we assist in curing where the official medicine can do nothing more, we obtain unexpected ameliorations, often sometimes incredible, and almost always bring about a lessening of pains and complaints of the patients who come to consult us. Our results demonstrate the value of this insufficiently known method.
How much more armed we feel in those prodromal stages of the great diathesis and in the beginning of diseases, when the intoxication through drugs, surgery and rays of all kind have not yet exhausted the force of reaction of the organism in distress. How many marvellous cures are there to attest to the superiority of our art!.
You all, do you not hear the daily sad story of these poor sufferers who give you the name of five to ten of the best doctors and bring to you as many difficult prescriptions which have neither cured nor relieved but rather have complicated the case and aggravated the sick! Is it the fault of the physicians themselves? Because between those names, do we not often recognize certain of our comrades of studies, or even the name of our own professors, perfectly serious? No, it is neither the devotedness nor the knowledge of those confreres that is the cause of failure but it is the method that we incriminate. But there, when they say we can do nothing, they commit a crime of ignorance, for how many lives could be saved and alleviated if they only knew the value and possibilities of homoeopathy.
To the allopathies we say then: When we are dealing with a science which is concerned with the saving of life, it is a crime to neglect its study, a crime to be ignorant saying we have not heard, we have not seen. A search among the books of Hahnemann and kent will food your mind with intelligence, joy, zeal, gladness. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth will make you free.”.
If so many uncertainties and difficulties accompany the practice of medicine, a reform is necessary. For you, gentlemen, this reform is accomplished.
Nourished first from the principles of the ruling school, you have acquired the conviction that no true science can exist of the one who came to enlighten us. He has employed his long career to throw the foundations of a science, to the study of which you have consecrated your vigils. His work is the basis of a solid science. It is all experimental, but it has an immutable starting point and is full of future promise of progress.
Such are the memorable words spoken in 1835 by Petroz homoeopath of reputation from Paris.
But gentlemen, the lapidary phrase of Hahnemann has not been pronounced in favour by the allopathies, but is well in the bosom of a homoeopathic society because our founder estimated that our duty was to master thoroughly the new doctrine and not only to apply the so-called homoeopathic remedies to such morbid labels. If we do not make better cures, if we are not satisfied, it is because we know our method insufficiently, the method which is revealed so remarkably in the hands of Hahnemann, Lippe, Hering, Kent and many others.
Homoeopathy, we must not forget, has been practised for 135 years. Have these laws not since been verified? Have they changed? It is only because they have revealed themselves true, absolutely true, that we are assembled here today for this great truth has not only spread in Germany but, like an oil stain,has extended to all Europe and has reached the entire world.
Medicine is too serious, too fundamentally important because of the noble aims that it pursues, not to require of us constant efforts and a continual improvement.
To learn, to learn, to learn more.. but what to learn? Learn from the mouth of our founder all the elements of his doctrine. Do not be satisfied with so-called modern books, with those innovations in some pages which pages which satisfy our laziness and give us only a varnish of knowledge. No it is necessary to study scrupulously, to investigate thoroughly and to form ones opinion only after having experimented and acquired the complete knowledge of this remarkable therapeutic science in all its details.
Homoeopathy demands defiance; it provokes it and it is wires to suspend all judgment till one has studied and applied it. It member this wonderful passage of the master, published in 1813 and found in the Lesser Writings:.
“What no medical doctrine, no system of physic, no so-called therapeutics ever did or could do, it insists upon being judged by the result. take one case of disease after another, note it down according to the directions given in the Organon, especially in respect in respect of all its discernible symptoms, in so exact a manner that the founder of homoeopathy himself shall be unable to find fault with the minuteness of the report (of course, any case selected must be one for which a homoeopathic medicine is to be found amongst those medicines whose peculiar symptoms are known) and administer the most appropriate homoeopathic medicinal substance that can be discovered, pure and unmixed, for the case of disease in question, in a dose as small as this doctrine directs, but, as is expressly insisted on, taking care to remove all other kinds of medicinal influence from the patient, and if it does not give relief, speedy, mild and permanent relief, then, by a publication of the duly attested history of the treatment according to the principle of the homoeopathic system strictly followed out, you will be able to give a public refutation of this doctrine which so seriously threatens the old darkness.
But I pray you to beware of playing false in the matter! All roguery comes to light and leaves an unfavourable stigma behind it as a warning.
If then, following your conscientious example, every other equally conscientious and careful medical experimentalist meets with the same result, if all that the homoeopathic doctrine promises, from being faithfully followed out does not take place, then homoeopathy is as good as lost, it is all up with homoeopathy if it does not show itself efficacious, remarkably efficacious.
Homoeopathy appeals chiefly to the verdict of experience- “repeat the experiments,” it cries aloud, carefully and accurately, and you will find the doctrine confirmed at every step.”.
“Since 40 years i have neither poured a single drop of blood, nor opened a cautery.. but nevertheless I have with such success that even under the eyes of enemies who would not have failed to reveal the least false step, the public confidence brings to me patients from all classes, from countries near as well as from lands far off. Would you obtain the same success? Imitate me frankly and loyally.”.
I advise a deep reading of the Organon, of the Preface of the Chronic Diseases and of the Lesser Writings of Hahnemann, all dating more than a century. These are our bedrock books, lasting foundations as necessary and as needed today as in the past. Can we not hear the cries of the many sick, my dear brothers, the children, the women? God gives us courage and wisdom to choose well this day as soon as shall see Him face to face.
We have nothing to take away from the truths which such a reading brings to us, and before doing better, ladies and gentlemen, we must try to do as well.
Certainly one does not become a Hahnemannian or a homoeopathist as Hahnemann said, from the very first day, and, as i showed you, our training passes through a series of phases, one could almost say a series of metamorphosis, to arrive at the best.
The newness and the paradox that we meet in the beginning of those homoeopathic studies, shock us and we ourselves, are making all the criticisms that are repeated later by our patients, our confreres, or our adversaries. Then all this modifies itself, and meanwhile the therapeutical results come to confirm this doctrine that we esteemed at first absurd. The first results are so unexpected, and certain cases left us so impressed, that we commence only then to discover all the marvellous possibilities which before were absolutely unknown and hidden.
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).