I am indebted to my friend and colleague, Dr. A. Taylor Smith of Johannesburg, for the following extract from The Proper Study of Mankind: The Rede Lecture for 1953. by A. D. Gardner, Regius Professor of Medicine, Oxford University:
Another strange relic of dogmatic therapeutics is Homoeopathy. This doctrine sprang from the brain of a German physician called Hahnemann at the end of the eighteenth century. Misinterpreting some of his own experiences, he laid it down that a disease should be treated with minute doses of a drug which, when administered to healthy persons, would cause symptoms like those of the disease. Similia similibus curentur is the slogan of the homoeopathists, which being interpreted, prescribes a hair of the dog that bit you. Modern medicine gives no support whatever to this doctrine.
Innumerable discoveries are completely incompatible with it. Although I feel strongly that no educated person should subscribe to such ill-founded creed, homoeopathy does comparatively little harm because it applies its special form of treatment mainly or exclusively to the less important types of disease. In dangerous illnesses homoeopathists have the good sense to make free use of the main modern advances in medicine and surgery, however much they conflict with the teaching of the master.
Notwithstanding Prof. Gardners seniority, his observations obviously are based on conclusions drawn from the actions of some calling themselves “homoeopathists” and not from investigation of the science of Homoeopathy or the work of its founder. Right here, as an homoeopathist and scientist, I say to him, no, I challenge him and his likes to investigate Homoeopathy critically and scientifically, and without the bias of the sectarian, and if they then find it wanting, we can discuss it further or I may revert to their kind of practice!.
In fairness to Homoeopathy, let no one mention it in connection with his practice, unless he has completely understood the tremendous depth and significance of the homoeopathic laws and principles based on experimental science and clinical experience; he has acquired the art of case-taking and judgment; has understood the meaning of symptoms and their precedence in importance and has mastered their correct interpretation; has fathomed the intimate interrelation between psyche and some; and has acquired the art of judging the progress of the prescribed remedy in the vital restoration and has learned not to interfere therewith, except at the optimum moment.
He who acts thus will no longer be blinded by lurid false lights, or be deafened to the voice of truth by the drums of the modern voodoo. He may even become the great and trusted physician who will gain the support of those patients intelligently seeking an alternative to the excesses of modern medicine and surgery, as well as gain the respect of his orthodox colleagues on his own merits, without trying to outdo them in extolling the spurious virtues of their so-called latest discoveries.
Selling some homoeopathic drugs to patients just does not make one an HOMOEOPATHIST!.
23 Regal House
Springs, Transvaal,
Union of South Africa.
