DR. CLIFFORD: What strength?.
DR. C.M. BOGER: MM potency.
Now as to this standardization we hear so much about in automobiles and otherwise. Talking about standardizing symptoms is all foolishness. You cant standardize symptoms. The symptom characterizes the patient, and the outstanding symptom is the key to follow, no matter how remote the symptom may be in the pathogenesis.
It is a favorite expression of mine to tell patients they never can see the end of a bad act, the ramifications of a bad act. That is an impossibility. You know what Shakespeare said, that the good that is in men dies with them and the bad goes on fever, something like that.
DR. CLIFFORD: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”.
DR. C.M. BOGER: That is the truth. The evil that has been done in the name of medicine passes beyond the comprehension of any human being in this room, even when it has all been done with the best intentions. Hell is paved with good intentions, and always remember this Latin quotation, Facilis descensus Averno.
DR. IRVING LORD FARR: It seems that Dr. Pulford has started something in the paper which he has put before us to discuss, and as I go over the thoughts that he gave us, it seems to me well nigh impossible to discuss. However, here is a thought that came to me which might answer the query why our dominant school brothers do not see or are not interested in homoeopathy. I think it has been touched on by Dr. Pulford in his paper.
Doctors see a patient when ill. Pathology is presumably present. The dominant school see that and prescribe on it. The young homoeopath sees that and does not see the thing which Dr. Pulford mentioned in his paper, the fact that every homoeopathic symptom is obtained by giving the homoeopathic remedy in potency to a well person. Let that register. Therefore, our list of materia medica symptoms are only those, as said by the essayist, of illness, so-called, produced artificially in a well person.
When a man grasps that fact, then he has something which will distinguish the particular patient in question, the clear case in the patient, the clear, outstanding individual symptom which will eventually lead to the remedy. To my mind that is the thought that I can glean from Dr. Pulfords paper and it looks to me very vital.
DR. C.M. BOGER: I want to take exception to that. For any man who will take the trouble to read over Condons collection of symptoms and diseases with Arsenicum and tell me those symptoms are all produced by high potencies, I have a poor opinion of his judgment. Just read those over, and the authorities are taken from that.
DR. IRVING LORD FARR: Mr. Chairman, I take issue with Dr. Boger. The point I made or attempted to make, which I evidently didnt get across, was that the unimportant symptom as laid down in the repertory may be the keynote to this particular case under discussion, because it is the thing in that particular individual which distinguishes without any pathology what unimportant (so- called) remedy may be his individual remedy.
Understand me, I do not say that we do not find in pathology the clear rendition of many of the symptoms as laid down in our materia medica, but I do say that to my mind Dr. Pulford has touched on a point which many times we do not see, that this unimportant remedy is that particular patients keynote, as it were, symptom which points to him whatever his pathology.
DR. C.M. BOGER: That is good.
DR. C.R. MILLER: I dont believe there is a single solitary healthy or perfect person to take a proving and make an exact proving out of him. You take all humanity, and I never found one that was perfect. How can an imperfect person give a perfect proving of a remedy? Think of that.
Symptomatology and all, there is no perfect person; until you make one perfect, if you can do it, you can do it with your remedies, you can do it with your instruments. Every child born into this world, with very few exceptions, has inherited syphilis. Do you know that? Then it has inherited gonorrhoea or gets syphilis from somebody who has had it, or some dentist fills a tooth and uses an instrument that is not perfectly clean, and we have acquired syphilis again. All those things prove to me that there are no perfect people.
I was, fortunately, born in a family in which we cannot find on either side any inherited syphilis. That might be bragging. how it happened I dont know, but I was fortunate in that, but when I was sixteen I was vaccinated and had bovine syphilis and the things that have followed me all my life have been due to that and nothing else. I dont believe in a vaccination because I dont believe in any glandular products that are made and injected into the human body. Case after case comes up where people have been ruined in health and strength and everything on account of injection for colds.
I know of a fine young lady who has been sick for two years and is at the point of dying from the effects of injecting medicines for colds. They gave her eighty injections for cold, and the condition is pitiable. They think she will go to the asylum.
DR. A.H. GRIMMER: Mr. Chairman, the doctors statement brings us more food for thought. He says there is no perfect individual, which is true, but the provings, remember, do not cause these things. The provings only bring out what is latent and develop what is in the human being and it is because of that fact that they are able to cure them. They bring out underlying syphilis or gonorrhoeal inheritances, and in all these various psoric conditions that Hahnemann speaks about that is shown and that is shown and that is why they are valuable.
If we tabulate these provings and get the symptoms, I dont care whether we get them from the drug or the potency, they are still things that the drug has brought out of the individual and they are valuable if we apply them according to the homoeopathic law for these very conditions that they have brought out in the race.
DR. C.R. MILLER: I will not dispute that point at all. It is one I dont object to at all, but I do believe that science is proving and has proven already that every remedy has its power lying in the strength that it has to overcome all symptomatology in the human body. For instance, if you find thirty or forty different things wrong in a person, which we often do, the right remedy will reduce all the loss that comes out of the body, which is nothing but an electrical discharge, and when you have the remedy that has that power to cover that and stop the leak, and you have the right remedy. Now give us our materia medica and contrivances, everything we can, to find the remedy, but I can show you a simpler one than that.
DR. C.M. BOGER: Reverting to the matter a little, I want to make one more remark which I intended to include in my paper. About three months ago I had sent to me from one of the large colleges in this country a student who had become tubercular and, according to the record of the case, he had received three or four remedies and wasnt getting anywhere. Careful going over of the symptoms showed me that he needed Arsenicum. I gave him a single dose of the M potency of Arsenicum and got a wonderful reaction and the process has subsided entirely. His temperature now is practically normal night and morning. He had, when he came to me, a very loud systolic murmur, right here in the right part of the throat, which is not a very good indication for his tuberculosis.
After he got so much better, I said, “See here, young man, what is the trouble that you dont get better homoeopathic instruction in the school where you are going?” He said, “It is not because the boys dont want it, but we dont get it”.
DR. CHARLES A. DIXON : It seems to me that Dr. Pulford has risen above the fourth dimension. I am still struggling in the second, but the thought comes to me that we specialize and we specialize, and we make finer and finer divisions and finer distinctions.
I can remember when I was a young fellow I saw a company of Japanese soldiers all dressed up in uniform and my mental reaction was that every one of those fellows looked alike. I mingled with them a while and found I could pick out individuals in those Japanese soldiers dressed in uniform just like one, two, three.
Well, to go on with that, put your hand in a pail of flaxseed, and the seeds all look alike unless there is a dead one, but I will bet there are men who could pick them out one from another, specialists in those seeds who could pick them out, even. That is the way with Pulford, and he is picking them out fine.
DR. ALFRED PULFORD: There is a misunderstanding about the primary pathogenesis, the primary pathogenetic group of the drug. You are trying to get away from it by claiming that the least symptoms are the most important. Now the least symptoms may be just as much due to the primary pathogenetic group of the drug as the first ones.
What I mean is the storm of the drug. When you throw a pebble into water, away out go the waves. It is due to the pebble that was thrown in the water. It is not due to those conditions, and when predispositions arise in different individuals, any amount of remedies will arouse them and possibly to a greater degree than they would arouse their own primary pathogenetic group.
