Eight years ago, when I renounced my thriving allopathic practice to openly accept Homoeopathy, there was an uproar. My professional brethren thought I had gone crazy and openly laughed at me. May father, the doyen and senior most leader in the profession felt greatly hurt, felt that all the money he had spent on my education was wasted, that I was deliberately treading the road to failure and suicide. He attributed the freakishness and eccentricity in my nature as inherited from my mothers side, from my maternal grand-father, the late Dr. Aghorenath Chattopadhaya, who taught and did the most unconventional things and died a poor but great man as any compatriot from Bengal will know.
I just could not help the strength of my convictions. I saw case after case fail in spite of all elaborate diagnosis and heavy expenditure that Allopathy entails. What is more, most of my teachers, Goldscheider, Krehl, Bergmann, Bier, Lewin, Schulz, Meyer, in the Autumn of their lives doubted the efficacy of their own teachings. One evening, the aged Goldscheider, greatly respected as a clinician, told me, “You come from India, when you go back, study the medicinal system of your own people. You find most of what I have taught will be of no use to you.” Bier has said that the “future medical science must be built upon the experiences of the peoples and their physicians and not on opinions.”
I had either to give up a profession in which I had lost all faith, or look for a new field of therapy. My knowledge of HOmoeopathy when I threw up Allopathy practically overnight was nil. But probably a Fate or “Beginners Luck” came to my rescue, which gave me some courage to face starvation from the loss of a lucrative Allopathic practice. In eight years some seven thousand successful cases have passed through my hands. It is difficult now to choose from them what would interest the reader and what, though interesting, may be in reality homoeopathically commonplace.
What is significant, however, is the fact that as a complete beginner and totally self-taught under the king encouragement and guidance of a fatherly friend, Dr. Dhawale, I was able to push myself through and defend a science hitherto totally unknown in my parts against the mockery, jeers and later veiled and sometimes open enmity born of consternation of my erstwhile professional brethren in Allopathy. Significant is the fact that, even as a beginner, I saw able to work “Miracles” in curing those cases in which the champions of “Scientific Medicine” had conspicuously failed, and the secret of it was my adherence to the laws of cure as taught by Homoeopathy whether, at that time, I believed in them or not.
Looking back today, all the cases I had cured “Miraculously” are commonplace, because Homoeopaths all over the world are daily effecting similar cures (as long as they adhere to the law of similars) without noise, publicity and breath-taking announcements. But the few cases I have taken at ramdom as illustrations severe only to demonstrate the enormous superiority of the such maligned Homoeopathic therapy over this “Scientific Medicine” Allopathy of which I was for twenty years a student and practitioner.
My cases became “famous” overnight, and I with them, just as on the race course a rank out-sider, against all expectations, romps home first leaving all the favorites far behind. Human suffering will look to anyone who has a cure to offer, and the multitudinous failure of the followers of “Scientific Medicine” produces the flourishing “Quack”, who sometimes brings about a brilliant cure; because, like the Lieutenant in Bernard Shaws “Man and Superman”, who flouting all traditional rules and science of war strategy, does exactly the opposite things and takes the enemy by surprise.
FAMOUS” CASE NO. 1.
One of my earliest surprise cures was with Aconite, probably my fifth homoeopathic case. A physicians wife developed acute Pneumonia. That physician, though allopath, had studied Homoeopathy for 14 years and believed in it without practicing it. Both lungs were acutely congested. Both he and I agreed it was acute Broncho-Pneumonia, first stage. Very shakily I suggested Aconite, 6 since it was one of the first drugs I had studied in Allens Key Notes, the only book I had. As an Allopath I could never accept Aconite as useful in Pneumonia. The lady complained of “Molten lead being poured down her chest”, high dry fever, great restlessness and fear. Key Note exactness. I was leaving town next morning for two days, and my father, whose pupil this physician was twenty-five years previously, kindly agreed to look her up in my absence.
On my return, my father, for forty years professor of Clinical Medicine, roared at me asking me whether I knew anything of medicine, whether I knew how to diagnose even a Pneumonia. “How can a double Pneumonia disappear in twenty-four hours?” roared my father in indignation. I was speechless with surprise. The ladys husband very tactfully pacified my father and assured him that both he and I had very carefully examined the lungs, that both sides gave the classical signs as he had taught in his lectures and that we were not very mistaken in our diagnosis. “But she had no fever and only a few rales, when I saw her.
How can Pneumonia be aborted in twenty four hours by hour Aconite? I cant believe it.” Neither could I till I saw her myself. Sine them I have seen hundreds of Pneumonias, and it took me five years of hard struggle, demonstrating case after case, to win my father over, who, now 76 years old and the leader of the Allopathic physician, has had the courage of the scientist and the honesty of the real physician to accept Homoeopathy and also me as “respectable” and “scientific.”
To us as Homoeopaths, Pneumonias should cause no terrors as they still do to the Allopaths in spite of the dramatic entry into the Allopathic world of the Sulfa groups and Penicillin. The Homoeopathic mortality figures should not and do not rise above 2-3 p.c. The Allopathic figures, in spite of their Oxygen tents, Penicillin, Sulfa-merazine and newest modifications, are still high above 14-28 p.c. Further, the bacteriostats like Penicillin, Sulfa groups etc. destroy natural immunity and frequently lead to lung abscesses, and do not favour resolution.
And what is more, no Allopathic treatment of Pneumonias can compare without efficiency, safety and confidence of results in treating the Pneumonias of rickety children, which according to Pfaundler and Schlossmann in their “Handbuch der Paediatrie “are extremely fatal in the form of capillary Bronchitis”. I have treated Broncho-Pneumonias of over 400 rickety children with only one death, and the secret is Aviaire, 30, one single dose. It materially influences the entire course of disease and other drugs can be found at leisure according to the similie.
“FAMOUS” CASE NO. 2.
Some years ago I was honoured by a call from one of the biggest men in my province. “Homoeopathy was being put on trial”. I went with fear in my heart because my failure would mean that the “respectable aristocratic class” would say that Homoeopathy was all bosh and fraud. My dear allopathic brethren had primed him up sufficiently to that. The great mans wife was having severe pain in the eyes for 15 days, and a foreign-qualified ophthalmologist had been plugging away at her all the time. No relief. When I came into her big hall, all the blinds were drawn to shut out the light, the good lady was huddled up with a fan playing on her in winter, and it was impossible for her to open the eyes. With great difficulty she was induced to open tenth of an inch so that I saw as good as nothing except a gush of tears.
But what I saw was comedones on a round greasy face, a plump mild woman who wanted plenty of air (the fan), who cannot digest heavy or fatty foods and pastries. I was in a quandary. On what was I to prescribe ? What was wrong with her eye? I did not know because I saw nothing. “So help me, God!” I moaned and sent her three doses of Pulsatilla 30, promising to bring an eye specialist next morning. She fell asleep with the first dose and slept till late in the evening I learnt on the phone. The next morning I took the eye specialist Dr. Phatak, and to his and my surprise the good lady was sitting up with brilliant sunshine pouring into the hall and she willingly opened her eyes. When we came our, Dr. Phatak, well versed in homoeopathy, was amazed.
“But thats a corneal, ulcer healing” he exclaimed. “I didnt know it” I replied truthfully. “Then why did you give Pulsatilla?” “Only on the generals”, I replied. On repertorising with Dr. Phatak with specialised books on eye disease (Norton, Moffat), Pulsatilla came ninth in order and yet it “miraculously” cured the corneal ulcer in 24 hours. As Dr. Phatak admitted, that had I placed more importance on the Particulars and the organ remedy than on the generals. I might have failed. Three days later I was sent for again. Not knowing what for, I went fearing relapse. The great man took me aside and asked me whether the drug I had given could cure also the ladys paralysis.
