SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT


SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT. Personally, I feel that we have drifted so far down the rapids that there is no chance of our being rescued and all the satisfaction left for me is the poor one of saying, “I told you so”. Now what can we offer the masses attractive enough to lure them from the trap they are headed for in the Wagner-Murray- Dingle bill?.


I was asked to give a paper on Philosophy. I suspect the chairman wanted Homoeopathic Philosophy but he didnt specify, so I have assumed the privilege of talking like a philosopher.

All down through the ages wise men have given good advice and, in a general way, have been disregarded until long after they were dead. Ben Franklin, I am sure, had considerable to do in shaping our destinies in his time; and in our present day Will Rogers gave us plenty to think about in his own quaint way of wise cracking.

It has taken me all this time to build you up to what I really want to talk about. That is the deplorable state of affairs the medical profession is in to-day; not just we homoeopaths, but the whole medical profession at large.

History is about ready to repeat itself in what I like to call “The Boston Tea Party”, meaning Trumans Compulsory Health Insurance.

The medical specialists have “Kited” their fees to a point where the nation is rising up and are determined to get out of the squeeze these pirates have put them in.

When Babylon fell, that wise old prophet, Jeremiah, told the king there was still time to be saved if he would forswear his false gods, but he scorned him. So that was the last of Babylon.

Personally, I feel that we have drifted so far down the rapids that there is no chance of our being rescued and all the satisfaction left for me is the poor one of saying, “I told you so”. Now what can we offer the masses attractive enough to lure them from the trap they are headed for in the Wagner-Murray- Dingle bill?.

I am going to give you something to think about: I practised Obstetrics for about fifty years with as good a mortality rating as the best of the specialists have, and I am sure that less than one percent were in the Hospital. And for the past thirty years I have had only one case of appendicitis operated; maybe I am slipping, because that one case last year, after I had had a clear record for twenty-nine years.

I have a clear record for peptic and duodenal ulcers, and no patient of mine have their tonsils removed by the surgeons.

I am not boasting; plenty of the members here who practice pure Hahnemannian Homoeopathy are doing the same. What I aim to do is to make a contrast of this kind of work and results with what is prevalent in the medical field today.

To summarize briefly, if we were to cut off ninety percent of the surgery, the same amount for obstetrics, there never would be a Wagner-Murray-Dingle bill, there is a Wagner Murray-Dingle bill and the medical profession is to blame for it. AKRON, OHIO.

DISCUSSION.

DR. ALLAN D. SUTHERLAND [Brattleboro, Vermont]: Mr. Chairman, I was glad to hear that Dr. Dixon said his patients still have their tonsils. I dont know what method he uses to keep the tonsils in. [Laughter] I wish he would tell me, because I would like to know it. I proselyte homoeopathy all I can in my practice, and I give patients heart-to-heart talks on the evils of tonsillectomy only to find when I go to the hospital the next day that some little patient of mine is scheduled to have his tonsils out. That happens all the time.

We have a great deal to contend with in the so-called school programs, and so forth. They examine these kids and they look at a tonsil. If it looks a little larger that the end of your thumb, they send to note to the parents that the tonsils have to come out. Some of the parents immediately arrange for the tonsillectomy. Some of them consult me and I give them the “straight dope” on the situation, and the next day the patients are in the hospital! It is quite a difficult proposition. I will have to talk with Dr. Dixon and find out how he works it.

CHAIRMAN WAFFENSMITH: It may be that if you say less about the operation and suggest to the mother that you prepare the patient for the operation, after the preparation is finished, they would probably forget about it.

DR. SUTHERLAND: It is possible.

DR. A. H. GRIMMER [Chicago, Illinois]: I want to say a few words to Dr. Dixons paper. Dr. Dixon always gives us something to think about. That is worthwhile. What he said is largely true. We are drifting down a very dangerous rapids, but I am not quite as pessimistic as he is.

I think that out of this will come good. I think homoeopathy is about to be discovered by the old school people themselves. There are many indications along those lines.

MEMBER: Lord help us!.

DR. GRIMMER: Well, yes, it may be true at first, but I think eventually they will get into the right way. There are a lot of them that are taking up even the smallest doses and we are not opposed to some of these men. And you take the psychosomatic branch of the old school and they are getting on pretty close to the Hahnemannian idea about the mental and emotional states producing sickness.

It may not be our idea but nevertheless they are approaching us in many lines. All we need to do is stand on our own grounds and stand by our guns because we have something and the world has got to come to us for it, if we will stand together and get these things out and give them to public. That is what we need to do. That is what we have failed to do.

The laity should be instructed and educated and I think we can do it if we go at it the right way. I know we can do it and not too expensively either. Just flood them with pamphlets. We cant get on the radio; they will shut us off. We cant get into the newspaper; the American Medical Association shuts us off there. They have an agreement with the world press that no medical knowledge should be given to the public except that they first endorse it. We can get around that; some of us can write some very interesting novels and bring in homoeopathy in a very good way. Incidentally, we can show the assassinations that have taken place under the old school method.

DR. WILBUR K BOND. [Greensfork, Indiana]: I know a lot of men who profess to be homoeopathy, good homoeopaths, who, when the tonsil question comes up to them, flatly come out and say, “Well, if I dont take the tonsils out, somebody else will”.

I have felt like telling them I didnt believe I needed the money quite that bad.

DR. HARVEY FARRINGTON [Chicago, Illinois]: Mr. Chairman, I have been doing some thinking. [Laughter and applause] I recall several things that have come to my notice. One of them is that even the specialist is beginning to weaken and that he is not taking as much as he used to because he believes that the tonsil, especially in young children, is of some use. That is a new one!.

Now, of course, we believe that the Lord made no mistake and every part of our anatomy has been put there for some use, and incidentally the specialists-at least two of them in my district- have come to realize that the suppression of eczema will cause asthma in children.

DR. FRED B. MORGAN [Clinton, Iowa]: I cannot share Dr. Dixons pessimism in regard to homoeopathy. It may be true in so far as our organizational work goes, but it is not true, so far as I see it, with a great many of the people or doctors who are not homoeopaths.

You heard Dr. Weiss yesterday morning. In Detroit, he has a class of four young men. Men of thirty-eight or forty who are graduates of reputable “old school” colleges who are disgusted with the practice of medicine as it has been taught them, and they say so. I have talked with them. They meet once a week in his office and get from two to three hours drill in homoeopathy, and it is, real homoeopathy, too.

That is not a beer and smoking party and so on. It is a drill in homoeopathy. When it is over with, they are tired but they are enthusiastic. I never saw such enthusiasm among our own men. Even more enthusiastic those young fellows are than you are, Dr. Dixon, for homoeopathy. While we are talking post-graduate work, he is doing it.

About tonsils, I took some work in St. Petersburg under a man who is doing biological work, and much to my surprise he sends about fifty different cases up to New York City to be operated on after they have had their tonsils removed.

He would examine them and find out that there was an inflammation of the jugular vein. They had symptoms they were complaining about. He has a test which is very simple but which will spot that inflammation of the jugular vein. He says that is due to part of the tonsils being left in. He doesnt believe in removing tonsils, but after they have been operated on, there is a scar there that shuts in a toxic area and that scar has to be got rid of before the patient will become free of his symptoms. The man is opposed to tonsillectomy, but after they have been operated on, he says that scar has to be removed.

DR. H. E. REED [Dover, Ohio]: Would you mind a word from just a common, ordinary, garden variety of general practitioner? Many of you know that I am second generation physician. My father practiced here in Cincinnati for many years, a very firm homoeopath, and he instilled into me from the start the ground work in the beliefs of homoeopathy; and I have consistently endeavored to practice them throughout my life. I want to take a controversial attitude on this matter of the tonsil, as a result of personal experience, if you will excuse the personal angle. I am now fifty-one years old. I have never in my life grains of any sulfa drug in my system. I have never had any penicillin. I have never had any of the miracle drugs used on me at all. I have had only homoeopathy.

Charles A. Dixon
Dr Charles A. DIXON (1870-1959), M.D.
Akron, Ohio
President, I.H.A.