WERE HAHNEMANN ALIVE TODAY

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Therefore let us not call homoeopathy a complete system of medicine but rather a most valuable member of a composite system which includes sanitation and hygiene, surgery, orthopaedics, supplying of deficiencies; psychotherapy, diet, and (tell it not in Gath) an occasional excursion into the allopathic use of drugs as when we use digitalis for its physiological action in auricular fibrillation or sedatives where the similar principle fails as it occasionally does, to relieve severe pain.

Hahnemann himself was an enthusiast for surgery (Organon par. 186) and it is ridiculous that homoeopathy should be looked on as inimical to surgery when all we practice is a wise conservatism with regard to it.

Turning now to psychotherapy the master would smile to see how today psychiatrists are doing just what he advocated in the Organon (par. 224, 225 and 226) with regard to mental diseases, anxiety neurosis and hysteria. His amazing insight had so long ago penetrated to the nature of these diseases and divided the psychoneuroses (to be treated by psychological means even if bodily symptoms had developed) from the psychoses (not amenable to psychotherapy and to be treated by the homoeopathic drug). His pioneer work in the treatment of the insane would alone entitle Hahnemann to a place among the great ones of medicine.

I hope that none of the foregoing will be interpreted as showing lukewarmness for homoeopathy. I yield to none in my enthusiasm for Hahnemann and the therapeutic system he discovered, but surely it is permissible to criticize, to improve on some ideas which were the outcome of the relative ignorance of his time, to advance from his position to one where homoeopathy claims not the whole sum of therapeutics but an honored and major place in it. It is only by such wise moderation that we ever shall in my opinion convert the bulk of the medical profession to our view, and so increase a hundred fold the average doctors power over disease.

Homoeopathy is too valuable to be the preserve of only a few enthusiasts.

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND.

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