DR. MOORE : In connection with all this, I would just like to have the essayist explain how he, the other night, took care of twenty patients after dinner, in the evening, and gave them a careful case-taking. I want him to explain that. (Laughter).
DR. PULFORD : I have practiced practically all my career on the symptom picture method of taking a case, and I dont think that my record will fail in comparison with any other method.
For quite a while we have tried the amanuensis method of taking long histories, and all that sort of thing, but we did not get the result we got from the drug picture. The method has drawn to our office people from Canada, Mexico, Canal Zone, England, India, and down in Brazil, which we never got under the old method.
DR. DIXON : My paper was very short intentionally. All I wanted to do was to get the audience talking. I am disappointed everybody did not get up and tell at least one instance where they could add to my paper. I am sure everyone here could have done so. It is too big a field to cover in a little thumbnail sketch. My papers are always sketchy.
By the way, I asked to have Dr. Green comment on my paper because, as I know, she is par excellence in taking case reports. She has files of case reports that would do you good to look over.
Dr. Green mentioned vaccination and malaria. She did not mention douches. There has been so much perfect work in the so-called local work on the female in the office, I claim it is not more than bread and butter business. They know they can keep them coming and get some money our of them. I thoroughly disapprove of it. I think it is not the practice with the good, straight homoeopath, and I am glad of it.
We all know what a wonderful prescriber Dr. Pulford is and what wonderful results he gets. I wish I were that good. I wish I could do away with careful case-taking, but, as Hahnemann has indicated, homoeopathy is individualizing, and every individual has got to pick out his own way of getting the best results he knows, how. That is why I have to spend a lot of time getting case reports.
In answering Dr. Moores question, that is just one point I wanted to bring out. After a case is well taken and the patient is on the road to recovery all you have to do is sat, “How are you, John ? How are you feeling?” “Well, I am better”.
Then he gets a dose of placebo and I chase him out. He has not been in there five minutes. I believe that I can take care of as many patients in a good homoeopathic way as anyone else, and not spend over five or ten minutes on the one, when I have got them lined up. Most of my work is chronic work. I certainly take more time than that in the first interview with patients, and that is why I say the busy man need not say he does not have time to do that, because it pays. After the case is started on the up road, you dont have to spend but a minute.
DR. UNDERHILL : Dr. Dixons statement agrees with Dr. Thachers view point. When he (Dr. Thacher) asked me to see his patients at the time of this last illness he said, “Just remember that twenty-four out of twenty-five of them will need Sac. lac”.
Akron, Ohio
President, I.H.A.