There is one thing about our remedies we should remember, and that is that potentization doesnt destroy any of their material; it is still just as much material as it was in the first place, only it is in a different state. When remedies are in the potentized state they take on a different quality and can affect some of the reflexes of the body at a distance. This fact is leading to some important experimenting that will lead eventually to a better understanding of our remedies. It also makes possible the use of remedies that have never been proved and the enlargement of our materia medica indefinitely.
DR. ALFRED PULFORD: The drug, as I understand it, and as Paracelsus understood it, is unseeable. What we see is not the drug, but the container of the drug; and potentization does not change the drug, as Dr. Stearns aptly states, but is so applicable that we can accept it and use it from the potentized stage where we could not otherwise. The higher the potency you get, the nearer the cell is destroyed and the sooner the cure. The cure is instantaneous. The long acting drugs depend a great deal on the ability of the system to respond immediately and the depth of the condition to which the drug is applied before we notice it at the surface, and we think it is a long acting drug when it isnt.
No potentized drug can remain in the system. If you give a teaspoonful of charcoal or a large portion of mercury, which we have found already in the bones in different parts of the body, then the system keeps acting on it. Consequently, that kind of a drug will act indefinitely, but your homoeopathic potentized drug acts that quick, and it is done.
DR. UNDERHILL, JR.: The work that Dr. Stearns is doing and has been doing for years over in New York is in many ways along the line suggested in the paper that I read. I think some mechanical or mechanistic means will ultimately the evolved whereby remedy selection will become a matter of real precision and less a matter of guess-work than it is today.
Take some of the nosodes that Dr. Stearns is working out and studying; they have a tremendous range and depth of action. We have a lot of remedies in the materia medica that are so narrow or else we know so little about them they are really not very usable. Of course if they were thoroughly proven, we would know more about them and could see a vast field for their use. All the vitamins should certainly be proven as they are isolated in crystallized form. Practically all our food substances, staple articles of diets, should be proven. Of course they are vast, complex substance; nevertheless, we are using them and become sensitive to them, and, therefore, they should be proved.
I am not very enthusiastic about the solo provings we have talked about. So many drugs have just been proven by one or two people, and on one or two doses.
Eugene passed away at his country home on Spring Hill, Tuscarora Township, Bradford County, PA. He had been in ill health for several months. His wife, the former Caroline Davis, whom he had married in Philadelphia in 1910, had passed away in 1961. They spent most of their marriage lives in Swarthmore, PA.
Dr. Underhill was a member of the United Lodge of Theosophy, a member of the Philadelphia County Medical Society, and the Pennsylvania Medical Society. He was also the editor of the Homœopathic Recorder.