We must use our own clinical spade, and we cannot answer for what will turn up. If some of the old roots of error, tradition, envy and unreason are thrown out of the medical field altogether, so much the better for the coming doctors and their patients, for our literature, and for the general reputation of what used to be styled, and should really become a liberal profession.
The position of Homoeopathy in our charitable institutions is not what it would have been but for the opposition that it has encountered from those who assume to monopolize all medical knowledge. Nor is it what it will become if we are fit and worthy for the places and the responsibilities that are rapidly falling into our hands as a simple matter of right and of justice.
From those who will follow me with special reports, you will have the detailed proof of this growing freedom of medical opinion. You will gather the most encouraging facts, showing that those who had drug a most around our school of medicine to shut it in to itself, and to shut it off from all practical relation to the public health, have signally failed.
The whole world of thought and action is permeated, but not saturated, with the principle of tolerance, and if we continue to watch and pray, to work and wait, a full share of recognition will yet be accorded to us. For it is a lucky thing that the universal law of change can so modify our views of liberty and of justice that the right may finally triumph. The powers that be are a shifting quantity, and this is an age of progress.
The repression of thought and the stifling of medical investigation, except on certain prescribed lines, is an antiquated abuse again which the spirit of this age is in open revolt. There is no tolerance in holding those who differ from us in contempt; but there is an under-current of sympathy with what is new and noble, magnanimous and merciful, of which we can take advantage.
We have had a cycle, or better, perhaps, a cyclone, of that intellectual agitation which is the first step towards reform; and now, if our professional views are not twisted, or too narrow, if we do not in turn become intolerant and egotistical; if we can learn to forget all but the ultimate end of our mission to mankind, and take advantage of the ripening harvest, there is no reason why all that is good and true in Homoeopathy, should not be fully appreciated by the public at large as well as by the profession.
The three factors in the stupendous reform that Homoeopathy has wrought were its intrinsic and relative utility; the faith and fidelity of its early apostles; and the persistent political intrigue of its opponents, which was the daily bread of the inquisition. It is enough to say that from the foundation of the world these are the precise conditions upon which every reform that was worthy of the name has depended for its evolution and establishment.
Although the persecution that we have suffered in times past has been a grievous burden, and has sometimes put us at a great disadvantage, it really has been a blessing in disguise. For while, as every Christian must know, the professional disabilities to which we have been subjected were indefensible at the bar of the Golden Rule, they were indispensable to our study growth and development.
The winds of opposition have rooted our tree of knowledge. Left to our own resources, we are compelled to do our best for our patients, and for our branch of the healing art, at all points of the medical compass. Hence the all around growth of our school and the impossibility, except here and there, that we should becomes and remain mere fanciful and fractional doctors.
Show us a form of quackery that can stand the clinical test of object lessons in all the practical branches of medicine and surgery, every day in the year, and before thousand of earnest and intelligent pupils and physicians; or one that has ever done first-class work in surgery, or in any of the specialities. They have not even given the world that modern products of spontaneous generation, a decent gynecologist!.
But this Congress in which we are met comprises a host of representative men and women, who in many lands work as teachers, a cases and practitioners in every department of the medical calling; whose scientific attainments and professional probity, scope, popularity and usefulness are equal to those of a like number of physicians from any other school of practice. Judged by this standard and by the fruit of their labor, as it is preserved on our literature and noted by the Recording Angel, we surely do not deserve to be classed as outlaws and charlatans.
Twenty-three years ago, and within a stone;s throw of this spot, an address was made before our National Society which, in the light of recent development, reads like a prophecy. It sounded a clear note from the warm and royal spirit of our dear, departed friend, Dr. Carroll Dunham. Liberty of medical opinion and action; a vital necessity and a great responsibility, was a theme that was worthy of the speaker and of his cause.
As the one man among us best fitted to appreciate the peculiar position in which we were about to be placed; whose love for humanity and for his own calling was boundless; whose loyalty could not be questioned; whose regard for the opinions of others was always respectful and generous, giving every one credit for the good that was in him; whose faith was firm and steady, not fickle and foolish; whose opinion was worth more than anybody else’s argument; whose writings are neither fierce and feeble, nor shallow and worthless. The text of that discourse reads like the Sermon on the Mount.
“The time, then, is passed which called for defenses and expositions of Homoeopathy, appeals for equal privileges and protests against oppression. We stand henceforth on equal ground as members of the great body of the medical profession, in which we shall take rank according to the worth of our work in the bread field of medical science.”.
After a clear statement of his individual position on points of doctrine that were mooted then, are now, and always will be, he says:.
“Notwithstanding this belief, I advocate entire liberty of opinion and practice. Nay, because of this belief, I plead for liberty; for I am sure that perfect liberty will the sooner bring knowledge of the truth and that purity of practice which we all desire.
“So long as we are a body of physicians characterized by a distinctive name derived from the law of cure which we profess, I suppose that none will seek membership in the Institute who do not substantially accept the law. This granted, I would have no exclusive creed, no restrictions relating to theory and practice, but would receive into membership of the Institute every applicant of suitable educations and moral standing. I deprecate any attempt to regulate or prescribe the opinion practice of members of our school, for two principal reasons. We cannot if we would, and ought not if we could.
“We cannot. We are no a body claiming to possess infallibility. It belongs not to us utter denunciations of what we may believe to be errors of faith and practice; nor to put forth an index of the allowed and the forbidden. We are a voluntary association of laborers, simply from the love of knowledge, as is the case with all workers in science; and we have no power to enforce any restrictions upon which we might determine.
“We ought not. Not until we have reached the absolute truth should we be justified in establishing a standard of faith and practice. How far we are from that position need not be argued here. Let us remember the wise course of the Bureau of the Paris Hospitals, when, in 1850, Tessier of St. Marguerite, made known his conversion to Homoeopathy, and it was proposed to deprive him, on that account, of his position as hospital physician.
The wise Chomel opposed the proposition, saying that every physician, who is thoroughly qualified to practice has the right to select his own made of treatment and to judge what is best for his patients, and may not be interfered, with, unless his results are notoriously bad or he commit some act of unquestionable malpractice. ‘For; said he, ‘It is only by the exercise of this freedom that changes and improvements. Tessier, in practicing Homoeopathy, has only exercised the same freedom of selection which Bouilland and Rayer and Louis and I have enjoyed and, as his results are as good as cures, we may not interfere with him;…
“Do we demand liberty of opinion? Then must we take care that our opinion rest on a foundation of study and acquirement which embraces the entire circuit of medical knowledge, and takes in and honesty estimates every new contribution to it, no prejudice of place or person giving a bias to our reason. Then must we act in the spirit of Hahnemann’s noble admonition: ‘In a science in which the welfare of mankind is concerned, any neglect to make ourselves masters of it becomes a crime;…..
“But touching the open questions of medical opinion and practice-while each of us earnestly proclaims the opinions he has expressed, and zealously puts them in practice, let us cultivate the catholic and noble spirit of Chillingworth: ‘I will take no man’s liberty of judgment from him, nor shall any man take mine from me. I will think no man the worse man’….. I will love no man the less for differing in opinion from me, and what measure I mete to others I expect from them again.”.
