By this admission he has placed his trust in laboratory findings rather than diagnostic skill. You have all known physicians and surgeons of great skill as regards their diagnostic abilities and you would accept their judgment ahead of a summation from a laboratory and you would be wise in doing so.
In the years when Homoeopathy flourished there were more practitioners of our art, more homoeopathic journals, more colleges, more enthusiasm and a militant spirit. Only one basic repertory was then in print, that of Boenninghausen. But despite this handicap there were more cured cases published by far than there are now. The obvious answer is that the earlier physicians knew their materia medica much more thoroughly than do their followers of today.
All this intensive study of materia medica was laborious and many physicians tried to create a better repertory than Boenninghausens. It fell to the genius of Dr. James Tyler Kent, with help from others likewise inspired, to compile a practically complete and, for the time, workable repertory. Since that day homoeopathic prescribing has become much simpler and also more mechanical. With it, in a relatively short space of time, one can arrive at a choice of from one to five remedies.
It then remains to choose the correct one from these few. For a student or young homoeopathic physician-and by young I mean not in years but relatively new in the homoeopathic art-this choice is made much more difficult if he lacks a good working knowledge of the materia medica. In fact, the case is very parallel to the physician of the dominant school who reviews the results of the laboratory tests and makes his diagnosis from them. It is too mechanical; the art is missing.
Hahnemann said to look for those strange, rare and peculiar symptoms as an said in remedy selection. How are we to look for, or recognize, these symptoms if they have not been thoroughly drilled into us? If we are making the cures today which were made by the early homoeopathic masters, there would be no decline in our numbers, or our personal enthusiasm. Physicians would be applying in eagerness to take the post-graduate courses in Homoeopathy.
We have no remedies to cure or alleviate many chronic disease states such as multiple sclerosis, pernicious anaemia, diabetes mellitus in the young, and many others even if we get them in their earliest stages. There are, undoubtedly, remedies useful for these conditions.
We have practically stopped proving new remedies. We are using our repertories because it is easier and quicker, and we do not know as much as the old masters of the materia medica.
—K.A. McL. The World Homoeopathic Medical Congress will meet jointly with the Pan American Homoeopathic Medical Congress at Riode Janeiro October 10-21, 1954. This date is now definite and will not be changed.
We have received 108 written reservations, divided into 77 by air, 13 by boat and 18 who state either ship or air but prefer ship.
(Continued from page 219).
In the last while, the role played by mental symptoms has gradually been shown in our practice, quite as brilliant as the action today, demonstrated in an acute abdominal inflammation with severe continuous pain, responding promptly and bringing quiet restful sleep to this harassed man who otherwise in modern practice would have been treated surgically.
SHARON CENTER, OHIO.
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.