I shall only say here that a whole number of colleagues in homoeopathy have achieved really good successes with onkolysin. Let us subject this substance to further experiments, as a valuable part of homoeopathic treatment, and do not let us forget that our colleague Nebel keeps his eyes open also for the old and well-ride remedies, and that be has frequently given indications for them in the case of cancer.
It is an agreeable duty to me to make mention in this place of another closely-related method of therapeutics for cancer, which has also come up during the last twenty-years, and which has a similar isopathic foundation. On the strength of all the author’s publications, and through many German and foreign doctors, as well as through several experiences of my own, I have also great confidence in this experiences of my own, I have also great confidence in this method. I am thinking of the novantimeristem procedure of Dr. W. Schmidt, in Munich. The foundations of this procedure are very similar to ours, and even though that system of treatment did not start from properly homoeopathic viewpoints, yet it is decidedly successful, and it is possible that, practically and theoretically, it will one day end in the sphere of Hahnemann’s work. (See pp. 396 and 407).
Now what do we experience in the homoeopathic treatment of cancer, and wherefrom do we take our justification for cherishing it?
Gentlemen and colleagues, we do not, I am sorry to say, experience in all cases a cure, or even an improvement; many cases, however, become stationary, or there is an improvement, and sometimes even a genuine cure. Frequently we have to reckon with the opposition of influences that deprive us again of a success which has already set in. And, unhappily, the patients are seldom ready to help on the cure with a corresponding dietic abstemiousness. I should wish to draw your attention to this point and incite you to observe and follow up the direction entered upon by Bulkley and others. But there will always be very few only that will be ready to go a way exactly opposite to their former habits of life. If we base our treatment exclusively on the homoeopathic and isopathic methods, we anyhow do not need to give up a certain dietetic approach to those strict prescriptions of the vegetarian doctrine of uncooked food; we shall usually also, which will have been a cause for anxiety, have to put the stools of the cancer patient in order.
And by a homoeopathic choice of medicines in the sense I mentioned and characterized before, we shall in the most cases achieve an alleviation of all the complaints. In the case of carcinomata that have been taken to be such, we sometimes, although seldom, see them form abscesses very quickly and become completely cured. In this way I have four times seen mammary cancerous tumours change into abscesses. Other tumours again diminish in size together with the metastases that may occur, and continue for a long time to exist in a rudimentary form without vanishing completely; others again which were quite in their initial stage, by were all ready to be operated on, vanish without leaving a trace. They return perhaps later again, and vanish a second time, so that one can observe the fight of life with the disease and measure the value of medical aid.
In some cases we do not achieve anything, and often not without the fault of the patient; frequently all the efforts made on both sides are in vain. Bad enough that it is so! But if we consider the successes of a surgical treatment, to which short-sighted people so easily take recourse, we realize that our patients are better off: they suffer less, they live longer, and they retain their organism in an undestroyed connection that often leads, even after long and vain efforts, to a turn for the better in their state of health. That the cancer patients who have not been operated on live longer is a fact that our colleague in homoeopathy, Dr. Aebly, has proved in a statistical inquiry, undertaken on behalf of the Swiss life insurance companies. And besides, nobody prevents us from having those cases of carcinoma that prove to be chronic, treated surgically. We are not neglecting anything if we first treat the patient internally. Apart from the fact that there are cases which are inoperable by the time they come to us, there is no need of such a great hurry, as experience has shown that sometimes just the cancers that have been operated on very early, where the tumours had the size of a pea to a cherry, produced the most rapid and virulent recurrences and led within two or three months to the death of the patient.
Reasons have also been found for this state of affairs: the adaptability and the powers of counteraction of the organism were still too immature; the texture matter, which otherwise only permits of a slow growth. All these circumstances, taken from the sphere of our experience, justify us in keeping to our own method. We leave other kinds of curative experiments to those who find their satisfaction in so doing, and we seek to develop and raise our own therapeutics. We confess that this is still very necessary; and this realization is very salutary for us. It also promotes a feeling of brotherliness towards other schools of thought. To our own comfort we may be convinced of the scientific dignity and the practical value of our homoeopathic conception, but with pleasure we place ourselves in one and the same row with the representatives of other methods in therapeutics that think differently. And with such sentiments we have a right to defend our own position.
Now if we finally put the question, how the propagation of the homoeopathic idea in regard to the treatment of the cancer disease can be furthered, there is this to be said: a gospel must be preached. In this hospitable and broadminded country of yours, you have had a number of excellent cancer doctors, and happily you still have such. Let me mention the names in all respect: Dr. John Henry Clarke, who has done such an extraordinary amount of work for homoeopathic literature, and Dr. George Burford, who alongside with his practice has instituted a special system of propaganda through the instruction of the public and of the nursing staffs, a system we might take as a model. Such work is just that sort of sermon that ought to penetrate from us to the ears of suffering humanity shall find one form of salvation, so to speak. With the scientific and the practical development of our therapeutics, the old bolts of prejudice will one day have to give way.
We all, however, can observe that another and different quality from the purely scientific one is necessary, if the are to stand up for our homoeopathic method of treating cancer. A generation that has already almost passed was conspicuous for this quality. I repeat the names of Pattison, Cooper, and Burnett, and I extol the courage of conviction as a tremendous power in the progress of medical science.
DISCUSSION.
Dr. CLARKE, from the chair, stated that Dr. Schlegel desired him to say that he did not regard carcinoma therapy as an easy thing in homoeopathy. It belonged to progressive and evolutionary homoeopathy. Many cases, from experience, were the practical basis of the lecture they had heard. Dr. Schlegel gave the whole problem in his book on the subject which was in the exhibit room, and anyone who could read German should look at it and buy a copy. Personally, Dr. Clarke hoped that some day this book would be translated into English. Dr. Schlegel had been engaged for many years on the subject, and had done probably more work than anybody else upon the therapeutics of cancer.
