In connection with more comprehensive instruction in the principles of homoeopathy, Dr. Elizabeth Wright Hubbard of New York a few years ago wrote an admirable series of papers for the Homoeopathic Recorder on the fundamental elements of homoeopathy, which I have always felt should be published in book form as an aid to the beginner in homoeopathic art.
Dr. Rudolph Arndt’s leaflets, Homoeopathy: What It Is, and Homoeopathy: What It Is Not, was another valued, though brief, outline at one time distributed by the American Institute of Homoeopathy. Larger works, as for example Sharp’s Tracts on Homoeopathy; some of Burnett’s works; Dr. John H. Clarke’s Homoeopathy Explained; Dr. Dishington’s The Patient’s Dilemma, and Mr. Arthur Green’s outstanding Atlantic Monthly essay entitled An Engineer Talks on Medicine, which was reprinted in The Homoeopathic Survey a few years ago; The Bulletin, published weekly by the American Foundation for Homoeopathy, and the courses of instruction given by the British Homoeopathic Association, in the form of the Post-Graduate Correspondence School; and the courses given under the direction of the Missionary School of Medicine, represent some of the most up-to date instruction in lay homoeopathy now obtainable.
I am told by Lieut. Esther Creighton, of the WAC, now of Fort Sill, Okla., that during her twelve years’ sojourn in the Belgian Congo, she frequently came in contact with this type of “medical missionaries,” who were very competent in this direction of service, using with great precision their boxes and their books in prescribing for a multiplicity of complaints that yielded so readily to homoeopathic measures that they drew the attention of large groups of similar workers hitherto unaccustomed to or unacquainted with the efficacy of homoeopathic treatment. Furthermore it most be recalled that it is my humble opinion that its renaissance lies exactly along this same line in our present era.
In connection with the programs of laymen’s groups in this country, we may call to mind a series of lectures prepared for the members of the Laymen’s League of New York, under the auspices of Dr. Gustave A. Almfelt, on The Basic Principles of Homoeopathy, These papers are now being published in the Journal of the American Institute of Homoeopathy. Dr. Almfelt writers of these lectures:.
My object in presenting the subject in the manner I have was largely that of teaching the lay people a scientific base or foundation for homoeopathy …. If homoeopathy is going to survive …. it must be sold to the laity mostly by other lay people; but a subject like homoeopathy cannot be sold by the basis of a certain remedy being curative in certain disease. It is a science and must be presented …. on a scientific basis.
When we come to the armamentarium of the lay prescriber, we may assume that we have arrived at the relative place of “the box,” or “the box of homoeopathic remedies,” as these domestic chests were commonly called. It is a regrettable fact that, while homoeopathic remedies such as Humphrey’s and Hilton’s “specifics” have for a good many years been before the public, these remedies can scarcely be recommended to thoughtfully minded individuals, owing to the fact that they are, for the most part, compound prescriptions, thereby violating one of the first principles of homoeopathy, that of the single remedy.
However, such medicines are to be preferred to the usual first aid such as laxatives, purgatives, aspirin, luminal, codeine, phenobarbital, etc., not to mention the modern use of the sulfa drugs. But a good deal of this laxity in the use of crude drugs and compound prescriptions has come about through lack of education of our own patients in the basic principles of homoeopathy, the Law of Similars, the single remedy, and the minimum dose. Herein lies the value of properly written lay treatises on homoeopathy.
Here reference may with confidence be made to a small booklet compiled by the Boenninghausen Club of Boston many years ago, and said to have been edited by the later Dr. Rufus L. Thurston, entitled Homoeopathy: A Pamphlet for the People. This booklet was republished not so long ago by the Bureau of Publication of the American Foundation for Homoeopathy, and copies may still be obtained at headquarters.
There have been several different ways of introducing these domestic boxes or cases to the public. Some of them have been put out with the names of the medicines (trusting to the proper use of an, accompanying booklet, or larger work on domestic practice); some of them with merely the numbers, the names being withheld and the physician being consulted before the remedies were to be taken; in other instances, some families have been given a few well chosen medicines, for use in the common complaints such as colds, coughs, indigestion, etc. In such instances the names of the drugs may or may not be given, according to the discretion of the physician. An excellent way, if used in connection with a domestic practice, such as Hering’s, may be to follow in his footsteps. Let us see for ourselves what the great author of the Domestic Physician advises. Dr. Hering thus writes (Homoeopathic Boxes of Home Remedies, vide Knerr’s life of Hering):.
Hering has this story of domestic practice:.
When making the first boxes for the Domestic Physician I thought it best to use members, in place of names, for the medicines. This was done because I thought, for instance, the name of Ipecac might suggest vomiting, and that of Ferrum, weakness. The medicines at first were put up in quills, for we had neither vials nor corks. Lingen’s advice was to put up the medicine myself, and sell them to make money. I said, “Sooner than do that, I wish that the whole world might go to nothing”.
As an example of the interest being manifest even in the war zones at the present time, we quote from a recent number of Health Through Homoeopathy, entitled In the Abyssinian Campaign (excerpted from Days of Our Years, by Pierre Van Paassen, Foreign Correspondent to various newspapers):.
Because I was not able to pilot the plane, it fell to my lot to try and reach the fighting zone– and so, my belt loaded down with thalers and with two pack-mules laden with a month’s provisions,a small cooking outfit, blankets, rubber sheets, and my old homoeopathic medicine chest, I started out on the 10th January for the Tembien district with five boys and a guide.
As previously stated, there is undoubtedly a great interest manifest at the present time in the spreading of homoeopathy, and an aroused interest in its future. This is noted in the organization of lay societies in North and South America and in Europe and other parts of the world. Since the organization of the American Foundation for Homoeopathy, the Washington League, the New York League, the Philadelphia League, and the Homoeopathic Forum of the Laymen’s Association of Southern California –all of which have sprung up within recent years.
There is also the recently founded Academy of Certified Therapeutic Specialists, which includes A large array of leading Hahnemannians, and this group has in mind the furthering of cooperation between the laity and the profession, in the establishment of education, teaching, and clinical demonstration of homoeopathy and it principles.
Then there is the splendid and soul-stirring work of the British Homoeopathic Association, sponsored by an imposing array of supporters among the British nobility, and already under the patronage of the Royal Family.
There is a note of caution that should be extended in the use of “the little homoeopathic books,” as the late Dr. Tyler calls them in her final work, Homoeopathic Drug Pictures, for some patients (if they are told the name of the drug prescribed for them) not only sometimes criticize your prescriptions… but having found benefit from what you have given them, proceed to abuse it, not realizing that, not only “what a drug can cause, it can cure,’ but also that “what a drug can cure, it can also cause.’ The remedy is not everything in homoeopathy, but the manner of prescribing it”.
There is undoubtedly a great reawakening at hand; and the world of tomorrow will find a prominent place for the homoeopathy of Hahnemann. The movement in England is already being place upon such a basis as will ensure its support during the war, and plans are on foot for its perpetuation in post-war activities, through the mediumship of the Homoeopathic Public Relations Committee.
A few decades ago, Dr. James Compton Burnett wrote an epoch- making book entitled Fifty Reasons for Being a Homoeopath–this at a time when it was no less anathema to be professed follower of Hahnemann than it is today. In this inspiring work there is a clarion call for those of us today who are proud to espouse the immortal cause of homoeopathy. Dr. Burnett writes:.
I often compare the cure of a difficult case of disease to a game of chess in which you have king, queen, bishops, knights, rooks, pawns, the various powers of which you must learn before you can play chess.
Benjamin Collins Woodbury was born August 13, 1882, at Patten, Maine. He was the son of Dr. Benjamin Collins, a homeopathic physician, and Matidle Albina (Knowles). He attended Patten Academy and received his M.D. from Boston University Medical School in 1906. Following graduation Dr. Woodbury began his practice in Lewiston and Winthrop, Maine, and in 1907 moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he practiced for the next nine years. Dr. Woodbury married Miss Gertrude Fancis O'Neill of Boston at Eliot, Maine on June 18, 1915.
In March, 1919, Dr. Woodbury left the Islands and located in San Francisco where he practiced for two years and then returned to the East and established a practice in Boston. He was a trustee and a member of the staff of the Hahnemann Hospital, Boston, and in 1947 was elected president if the International Hahnemann Institute, Washington, D.C. He also gave many lectures on homeopathy at Boston University and at postgraduate sessions of the American foundation of Homeopathy.
Dr. Woodbury died on January 22, 1948, in Boston at the age of 65.
The doctor was the author of "Materia Medica for Nurses", published in 1922 and of many articles in medical journals in England, India, and the United States. Dr. Woodbury was also a writer of plays and poetry.