The statistics given for the mortality in lobar and bronchopneumonia at the London Homoeopathic Hospital are in three instances given for “the last 50 cases”. These figures are of no value either, since there has even been an example of an allopathic physician reporting fifty consecutive cases of pneumonia without a single death.
What I want to bring out is this: that at present we are not able to prove by sufficiently large and reliable hospital statistics that the homoeopathic therapy is in any way superior to the “Old School” methods, and before we are able to do that, I do not think that we can expect the “Old School” to take any special interest in our therapy.
What do we expect an allopathic physician to think, when he hears us boasting about a mortality rate in pneumonia of only 5-6 percent, when he finds that the hospital which is supposed to be the best homoeopathic hospital in the world has mortality of 41 percent in this disease? Must he not think that all our boasting is just bluff? And why should he bother about a therapy which apparently doses not give any better results than his own?.
Now we all know the reasons why the homoeopathic hospitals in the States show such poor results: it is simply because homoeopathic therapy is not used to any large extent in these institutions. But if the staff physicians of these hospitals, in spite of their homoeopathic training, do not have enough confidence in homoeopathy to use it in their hospital work, how can we then expect allopathic physicians to take any interest in this therapy? Does not this fact instead seem to justify the statement so often made by allopathic physicians, that homoeopathy “may be all right for children and nervous ailments, but when it comes to actual diseases, then some real therapy is necessary”?.
As long as the American homoeopathic hospitals have the used as training places for interns graduated from the homoeopathic colleges, conditions will probably remain as they are, since standard therapeutic methods must be employed if these hospitals want to be approved by the medical authorities. But in may opinion a homoeopathic hospital where homoeopathy is not practiced is a hindrance rather than an asset to the progress of homoeopathy. If things cant be arranged in any other way, I think it would be better to close the homoeopathic colleges. The homoeopathic hospitals would then be free to use the Hahnemannian therapy, and they could then serve as teaching centers for postgraduate instructions in homoeopathy.
No other country has so many or so large and well equipped homoeopathic hospitals as the United States. Hence, the homoeopathic profession must rely mostly upon YOU for those hospital statistics which will help to prove the value of homoeopathy: statistics of which we are so badly in need. In order that such statistics might be forthcoming, the following changes in the management of these hospitals are suggested:.
No physician should be appointed, at least on the medical staff of a homoeopathic hospital, unless he can furnish evidence of having been engaged in successful homoeopathic practice for a number of years.
The admission of purely surgical cases, as far as possible, should be restricted to a minimum.
The hospitals should receive local support from every homoeopathic physician.
All modern methods of diagnosis should be employed, in order that every diagnosis made may receive the proper verification. Thus every pneumonia patient admitted should have an x-ray of his lungs; every typhoid case a Widal test, etc. In this way the records will stand the closest scrutiny.
All cases should receive purely homoeopathic treatment, and if for some reasons physiological medication has to be resorted to, such as case should not be counted as one of “mixed treatment” but instead out down as a homoeopathic failure.
I am the first one to admit that it will not be easy to carry out these suggestions, but this will be the only way in which to really PROVE What every homoeopathic physician already knows: that the homoeopathic therapy is by far the best therapeutic method in existence. At present we are not proving this by methods which can be accepted by critically minded physicians.
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN.
