SOME ADVANCES OF HOMOEOPATHIC PRACTICE.
“The attainment of mastery in the practice of homoeopathy is the top of the profession, the quintessence of medical experience.” So wrote this strange, rare and peculiar editor (Selah!) once before. Now, after sixteen more giant trips around the solar cycle he would not only reaffirm that statement but throw a challenge as to unstrained quality of its truth.
But let us explain. By “homoeopathic practice” is to be understood for the purpose of this argument, practice with the homoeopathically prepared and selected single remedy sans manual or physical tactics, sans so-called physiological action of drugs, chemotherapy, biological trickery, sans palliation of any kind except by the homoeopathic method. This means being a homoeopath first and a physician in the common usage of the term afterward, the primary intent being to find that particular remedy which will cure or relieve the patient no matter what else may have to be done. It is the kind of practice the physician will come to do if he persists with this ideal over a period of time.
First of all, it is an exhilarating adventure, especially for the young man starting in practice or those who have escaped from the monitorial limbo of the old school. The young homoeopath will study not only the records of disordered human nature as reflected in our materia medica but he should also delve into homoeopathic history and the rich store of clinical experience and professional contingencies recorded in our amazing literature. There is nothing like it in all the chronicles of man, ancient or modern.
Exploration of the storied romance of our philosophy and the medical miracles performed is not only fascinating in itself but a great help toward becoming familiar with the means and the method in actual use. While treating his juvenile practice “expectantly,” as the allopathic worthies of the nineties used to say, that is, while waiting for practice to grow, this study lays a foundation for future triumphs with disease that are simply confounding in contrast to the blundering practices of empirical medicine. I was reminded of this in a vivid way recently when the thought was expressed by a newcomer to our philosophy. What a satisfaction to be building mastery out of the resources available through coincident limitations! Such reading or study actually pays off the mortgage on the young doctors future!.
One advantage in the first years of Hahnemannian practice is that it is the shortest route to a sustaining income, except, perhaps, being taken under the wing of some specialist or surgeon already in popular favor. One patient successfully treated is certain to bring others and there is no practice in which success is so quick and so obvious to all as the homoeopathic except, to be fair, manual adjustment for certain conditions adaptable to it. If certainly is the quickest way to gain an enduring and profitable reputation. Especially is this true with those chronic ailments which have been dragged through the sophistical expedients of the old school. The writer has sometimes boasted that he could go anywhere with homoeopathy and build a practice in a short time. The potential demand for our kind of work is enormous, practically without limit.
Homoeopathic practice brings economic competence. Even if the homoeopath has no other resources he should be building a reserve during the middle years. The income from a purely homoeopathic practice, excluding obstetrics, surgery, et cetera, should be comparable to that of other specialities. In fact, it should easily have averaged twenty-five or thirty per cent more than the average of specialities tabulated by “Medical Economics” for 1939 through 1943. But as figures may be misleading according to ability with a supposed difficult work, economic, personal requirements, et cetera, we will merely say that the Hahnemannian will have all the patient he wants to care for.
If not, then conditions outside of homoeopathy itself have prevented, and the writer has observed such detriments a plenty. The assertion of some that one cannot do well by homoeopathy alone is almost always a revelation of the reason why. I once heard a “homoeopath” say” “One cannot make a living on homoeopathy alone.” True, no doubt, so far as he was concerned. But right in the same town there was an old doctor living some miles out in the country who had an active practice limited to office and using the single remedy. Furthermore, homoeopathic collections should be ninety-eight ninety-nine per cent or better. There are good reasons for this.
American Homeopathy Doctor.
Rabe graduated from the New York Homeopathic Medical College and trained under Timothy Field Allen and William Tod Helmuth.
Rabe was President of the International Hahnemannian Association, editor in chief of the Homeopathic Recorder, and he wrote Medical Therapeutics for daily reference. Rabe was Dean and Professor of Homeopathic Therapeutics at the New York Homeopathic Medical College.