No one seems to known when the idea of homoeopathy started. Hippocrates, a fine old gentlemen, 400 B.C. wrote book on “ancient medicine.” He expressed the best thought of the then modern, out ancient, medicine. His contributions earned for him the title, Father of Medicine.
He tells of two methods of treating disease, Contraria contraribus curantur, and Similia similibus curantur. He left two case recorders of the latter. (1) Mandrake in a very much smaller dose than would produce its mania, curing a case of suicidal mania in a dear friend. (2) Cure of diarrhoea by aloe in a small dose. Aloe in large dose produces diarrhoea of the type it cures in diminutive dose.
Contraria contraribus curantur, practised down through the ages to our time, leaves much to be desired, and is, to say the least, lawless. Similia similibus curantur doggedly hung on, persisting in many nations, again and again challenging Hahnemanns attention in the different languages he was translating into German. Finally testing it out on himself with large doses of cinchona bark, he produced symptoms of the type of malaria which he frequently had seen relieved by cinchona.
That might have been the end of the story had Hahnemann been an ordinary mortal. Being what he was, master chemist, thorough going scientist and interested above all in cure of the sick, this brilliant man repeated the experiment, verifying it again and again. He set about developing, always through painstaking, exacting experiment until finally with the help of many others, he worked out not only the curative reaction of the body to drugs and the obstacles to the reckoned with but also the limits of its field of activity.
Repeated trial through the hundred years since his time only confirms his results to further establish the laws of drug application in disease. There are others, but his is the outstanding contribution. Details of technique worked out by Hahnemann and others rival that of the marvelous developments in electricity in its many forms. No simple task.
The way is open to general medicine for more POWER, working with natural LAW. But let them beware. Thorough trial will never fail to convince, never has, and if conscientious, he will be compelled to practise medicine for the best interest of his patients under the oath of Hippocrates, and become a heretic, a homoeopath.
Today homoeopathy stands with Christianity awaiting practical application on a large scale to lift man up to a higher level physically, mentally and spiritually.
Allan D. Sutherland was born in Northfield, Vermont in 1897, delivered by the local homeopathic physician. The son of a Canadian Episcopalian minister, his father had arrived there to lead the local parish five years earlier and met his mother, who was the daughter of the president of the University of Norwich. Four years after Allan’s birth, ministerial work lead the family first to North Carolina and then to Connecticut a few years afterward.
Starting in 1920, Sutherland began his premedical studies and a year later, he began his medical education at Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia.
Sutherland graduated in 1925 and went on to intern at both Children’s Homeopathic Hospital and St. Luke’s Homeopathic Hospital. He then was appointed the chief resident at Children’s. With the conclusion of his residency and 2 years of clinical experience under his belt, Sutherland opened his own practice in Philadelphia while retaining a position at Children’s in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department.
In 1928, Sutherland decided to set up practice in Brattleboro.