When I was nine years old, I was stricken with a very malignant attack of diphtheria, combined with a “strep” infection. Two reputable homoeopaths, one of them Dr. Lincoln Phillips whom you all know, pulled me through although they didnt expect to.
But following that, the attack of diphtheria, I had a period of several months when I was afflicted with what they called growing pains. I can remember very distinctly getting out of bed in the morning so stiff and sore that I could hardly get to the bathroom to wash my face. Yet they sent me off to school saying that it was growing pains.
I will says that during my life, approximately every five years, I would have an acute flare-up of a “strep” hemolytic infection of my tonsils and it would come after this fashion. The onset would be very sudden. Within six hours, the infection would have involved both tonsils, traveled up the eustachian tube, broken through the middle ear, the ear drum, and would be draining. That kept up until I was forty-one years old, at which time I came with an ace of developing a brain abscess.
In all this, remember that I had nothing but homoeopathic treatment. I was treated not by myself but by such men as Dr. Waffensmith, Dr. Dienst, Dr. Karl Schultze of Columbus, but there wasnt any of them who ever succeeded in eliminating that focus of infection that remained in my tonsils following that terrific attack of diphtheria.
At the age of forty-two, at the insistence of myself and my wife, I had my tonsils removed. It laid me low for about eight days, But I must say that in the past nine years, since I had that done, I have enjoyed better than I ever enjoyed before.
The principle that I an speaking about is this. Once you have a severe infection in the tonsil, you have the development of a certain amount of scar tissues and that scar tissue acts in the very same manner as the removal of a part of the tonsil as Dr. Morgan has spoken about, and once you get that coating of scar tissue on there, if you have a focus of infection back of that, homoeopathy is not very likely to clear it up.
At least it didnt in my case under the very best Hahnemannian prescribing. In cases of that kind I firmly believe that the removal of the tonsil is a very beneficial thing.
I go on this principle-that when the tonsil has become diseased to the point where it is more of a liability than an asset, then I believe in removal of the tonsils. I would have been benefited very much had I had my tonsils out when I was ten years old. I would have had much better health. As it was, I had a heart that could not take athletics. I could do a reasonable amount of work, but nothing strenuous. I still have the effects of that infection that I carried in my system; but the fact remains that in the past nine years I have had better health than I ever had in my life and I have never had a recurrence of infection in the throat or the ear since I have had my tonsils taken out.
DR. ROYAL E. S. HAYES [Waterbury, Connecticut]: I think there is a tendency for the old school practice to degenerate and there may be an opportunity in the further for more propaganda than we have been using, and propaganda is the thing. All the big corporations use it all the time, with pamphlets and papers and circulars. We get it in our mail with our bills, and so forth.
Here is a clipping that I want to read extracts from. This is from the New Haven Register.
“Immunization by Schick test is not absolute. Survey shows big rise in diphtheria. New England total triples”.
“Schick test figures indicate that immunization against ravages of diphtheria in the United State is not as foolproof as might be, two Harvard medical school professors have reported. They published in the New England Journal of Medicine results of a Schick survey of 18,000 naval recruits conducted from October, 1941, to January, 1942. The test was for the determination of the presence of diphtheria.
“Dr. Jane Worcester and F. S. Cheaver found that in 1945 there were 18,606 cases in the nation, more than at any time since 1939, and this was in spite of a declining trend since 1924. The number of cases reported in New England in 1946 was three times the total for 1943”.
These doctors made this observation: “Active immunization has had little demonstrable, direct effect upon the immunity status of the general population as reflected by the results of the Schick survey. In both the North and South, the present Schick test status appears to be directly related to the amount of clinical disease experienced in the last ten years”.
In waterbury, we have had very little diphtheria since we have had the great improvement in the sanitary service. The last six cases that I have known of-according to neighbors and rumors- those six children had had the preventive, the toxoid.
The discrepancy between the results of the tests and the actual incidence of the disease they found to be not a cause of complacency.
DR. EDWARD C. WHITMONT[New York City, New York]: I would like to say something to the tonsil question. I believe there is one danger in our thinking. We believe very often that homoeopathy has failed, but it is our prescribing that fails. Even the best prescribing fails because there are remedies that are insufficiently proven.
I should like to recall the experience of my own oldest boy who did have the very same thing Dr. Reed did as regards his ears. Dr. Morgan found out by the objective method of prescribing that Ustilago was needed. Has any one of you ever heard of that remedy for tonsils, polyps, or ear conditions? It wasnt mentioned in the Materia Medica. It was exactly the similitude.
Of course, in a practical case, we may be just as badly off as before. Yet we must be aware that by falling back on the destructive old school method, we will not make any headway. Our task is to keep on prescribing and check and improve our knowledge of the insufficiently proven rare remedies.
Another example-I an going to present another case of homoeopathy where it apparently failed. It failed apparently because no polychrest would cover the case, which had a well defined symptom of another remedy which, however, ever had been used for that case.
Scar tissue has been formed by nature. Whatever nature does, nature can undo.
This is, I would say, a precept of thinking. A correct line of thought, if it is correct, must cover the individual incident. If facts seem not to correspond to it, something must be wrong in the management of those facts, and it is better to learn how to handle incidents-better than seeking the escape, a cheap way out of a step that ultimately must be destructive.
DR. JULIA M. GREEN [Washington, D. C.]: I just want to say a few words about people getting pessimistic about homoeopathy. I just want to give a bit of evidence on the other side.
We now have between sixty and seventy graduates of our Foundation post-graduate school. I cant say that they have every one of them stayed in the field of pure homoeopathy. We couldnt expect that. But they do amount to fair numbers now who have stayed in the field, and I want to give evidence that the character of students in this school has been raised as time has gone on. We dont always have big classes but the people who study with us are most enthusiastic.
This year we are carrying on the school at the present moment, and there are nine students in it. There are three foreigners and two osteopathic physicians and four in this country who are M.D.s. Out of these four, two or three of them are graduates of Hahnemann and one is a student in the Cornell Medical school in New York City. We have been trying for a long, long time to break the ice and get in touch with Hahnemann graduates.
The testimony of one of our students this year is that he has been hunting and hunting for good homoeopathy for four years and hasnt found it. Why didnt we let him know that we had such an opportunity as this?.
The Foundation has now opened its door to osteopathic doctors who are really prescribing drugs and licensed to do so in the states where they practise. They have been feeling around, studying homoeopathy themselves, and using and drug methods that they have known, but there is a distinct trend toward trying to find the better homoeopathy, and I think that the osteopathic doctors, the good thinkers of them, are going to make very good homoeopathic prescribers in the future.
All of this looks as if we might be entering phase which is not pessimistic.
DR. DIXON [Closing]: I am glad for this free discussion, and I am not going to comment on the different discussants except for Dr. Morgan calling me a pessimist.
I am going to tell you a little story that happened in our city council in Akron. There was an old Dutchman. He ran a grocery story in the community and he was elected to the Council and some point came up that he discussed and in remarks on his discussion, some body got up and called him a pessimist.
He said, “By God, Mr. President, I want you to know I am not pessimist!” [Laughter].
Akron, Ohio
President, I.H.A.