In a New York England city, In May, 1848, a young wife lay upon a sick-bed covered with the characteristic eruption of measles in its most intense form from head to foot, and expecting hourly the advent of her first-born. The husband was informed he could not expect the preservation of either. Promptly on times a girl appeared as roseate hued as the parent.
The daughter fell a victim to Allopathic medication three months prior to the completion of her twenty-third year. The mother is still living. Now, if it was possible for morbific gems or their products to enter that uterus and produce upon its inmate the same phenomena exhibited upon its possessor, with equal rapidity, and at the same time it can be no less possible for our finely comminuted preparations to penetrate equally deep and perform their appropriate functions.
But, again, we knew that growth and development depend upon that intangible something, for convenience denominated nerve force; that variation in then quality or intensity produce corresponding variation of result; that even maternal mental emotion leaves its impress on the offspring. We also know that we have power to produce variations in the nerve force at will; that we can produce mental impression at will. Failure, then, to apply this knowledge can only be ascribed to indifference to the new- born or to professional incapacity.
Regarding the particular attenuations recommended it need only be said that too many observations have been made and recorded of physiological phenomena and drug aggravations produced by Homoeopathic preparations above the twelfth decimal to permit any doubt of its efficiency to be considered reasonable. It may be added that the physician who prescribes even occasionally any preparation above the twelfth decimal attenuation unwittingly adds his endorsement of that statement, and I am inclined to count in with them all those who prescribe above the sixth decimal.
I cordially and fully endorse Dr. Chapman’s paper, including the reference to the importance of paternal medication. “Whatsoever a man (or woman) sow that shall he (she) also reap!”.
PHOEBE J.B. WAITE, M.D.: I would like to have heard Dr. Chapman’s paper before beginning my speech. I would like to have had a copy of it and committed it to memory. It is too valuable to lose any part of it. The father of medicine, Esculapius, lived, we are told, I think, somewhere about nine hundred years before Christ. He had five children, three sons and two daughters, and all these children, admiring the skill of their father in medicine, took to medicine, the whole five, the sons and the daughters. From the three sons have descended all the doctors of the world, that is, men doctors.
There weren’t women doctors then. And while these doctors in medicine were a long time getting around, you see the woman has got there just the same. So here we are descended from these two beautiful daughters of Esculapius; the one believed in preventive medicine, and the other in curative medicine. I did not read that these sisters ever came into collision in their practice, but their fame has come down to us. Hygeia, the beautiful daughter of Esculapius, advocated the use of a medicine which I would like to advocate for pre-natal medication. It is the blessed sunshine, the fresh home, the clean heart, and the loving kindness and tender mercy which should be shown for wife and expected mother.
These are things which tell upon the children. If we believe in the transmission to the child of the mother’s qualities shall we not also believe in the healthy organization of the mother and the healthy organization of the father as well, because the father has something to do with these things. Very little, you may say; however, we will give him credit for what he has to do in the matter. Do we believe in tobacco blindness, in tobacco neurasthenia? Shall we not believe that these diseases are transmitted to the child, and shall we say that any wife has her husband’s full share of kindness who is brought up in the air of the vile perfumes of tobacco? It is poisoning not only the husbands, but the wives, and the children of this land.
Do we believe in tea and coffee neurasthenia? Then shall we believe that the mothers who are sipping tea and coffee, who do not take their food, and who cannot get through the day without a cup of strong coffee in the morning can not be expected to rear children strong, vigorous and healthy. Shall we not expect them to be “bundles of nerves?” I have looked at mothers, and have seen them so proud over their children, beautifully dressed, and they say, “My little girl is such a nervous little thing that I hardly know what to do with her”.
Dr. Chapman’s paper is very much to the point. The medication, or the teachings of Hygeia, ought to have begun in the mother of the mother of this child one hundred years ago. This is the doctor I am speaking for now. The other daughter of Esculapius-I am ashamed to say I do not remember her name-is immortalized in a tree, the leaves and bark and flowers and fruit of which are for the healing of the nations. I suppose the use of this tree must have been to prevent disease, and it is used by the Homoeopathic school, be necessary; indeed, it is quite necessary, to prescribe remedies for the mothers of unborn children.
Professor Lilienthal says, that cocaine and sulphur will save more children than all other remedies put together. We must not forget these remedies. Silicia, Gelsemium, etc., we will not forget; neither will we forget the remedies for those diseases which are inherited, but will prescribe for every mother the things which we have tried to emphasize to-day; and we would prescribe, if we would prescribe, if we knew enough, the Homoeopathic drug which would remove the sordid condition in a mother and help her. I believe that children are born to live, not to die; and the fact that one-half the children of the world succumb before they are five years of age is a terrible commentary on modern civilization.
R.W. JAMES, M.D.: I am much in favor of this latter daughter of Esculapius, I am very thoroughly in love with the first one that Dr. Waite has spoken of, simply because she was in favor of hygienic measures. If we are going to make a good, healthy future nation, we must begin our hygienic measures in all our surroundings. Sanitary science is doing good work, but it deals with the external world. It gives us good work, but it deals with the external world. It gives us good houses to live in, good air to breathe, good surroundings in every way. That is all very good, but the foundation of health must be laid also by placing good, healthy matter sin the tissues of the human system, and we are not going to do the unless we give the proper medicines. Give the system of a mother good blood; make the cells act in harmony; make the nerves system act properly upon these cells and upon these tissues.
I look forward to the time when diseases may be annihilated; when the human race may reach that point of millennial health that we shall be exempt from disease. We shall do it, if at all, by annihilating one disease after another, and then our missions as physicians will be ended.
W.P. McCRACKEN, M.D.: I am not foolish enough to think I can discuss a paper that I have not read. Henry Ward Beecher once said, when asked for his rules for longevity: “Choose your father and mother;” and I think that is what one would have to do to be very long-lived. I remember a case where the mother, during gestation, shut herself up in her own house and refused to go out upon the street. Now, we cannot alter God’s plan of creation, and the man or woman who sneers at or ridicules a woman on the street or anywhere, who is fulfilling the law of God, is not fit to be upon this earth.
She cannot, probably, bring forth an intellectually nor physically strong man or woman, and be shut up in a house during the nine months before confinement. Then I would make a strong cry against the dress of woman at that time. Many women think that if they are tightly laced around the waist, and keep their waist-measure as usual, that is all that is necessary. I think more can be done by dressing than any one thing, and then plenty of fresh air and bathing and good, common- sense diet, and I don’t believe there would be much need for medication.
G.W. BOWEN, M.D.: The first ten years of a doctor’s life be has to learn what he doesn’t know, and establish his reputation as a physician. In the next ten years he works for pay. I have passed those years, and have spent a great deal of time in learning how we can cure the results of a father’s indiscretion and of a mother’s sensitiveness. If the weakness is below the belt, Sepia will remedy that surely. If there are dyspeptic troubles, Nux vomica and Belladonna will prevent it. Consumption we can obtain benefit from Belladonna and Arsenic, and, perhaps, Calcarea; and so on, though the list of parental ailments.
ALFRED E. HAWKES, M.D., of Liverpool, England: I think this tis one of the most important papers that we have had during the Congress; and I am very glad to have such a thoroughly Homoeopathic paper. Of course, I don’t think that hygeia can be neglected for one moment. What I will say will be chiefly on ante-natal medication. I would like to refer to some five families in as many minutes. One disease has not been referred to this morning-laryngismus stridulus. In one family, three children had died of it, and I was called in to see the fourth child. Cuprum etc., were tried, but the child died. During the fifth pregnancy I had early opportunity of giving Calcarea and Sulphur, and in the sixth pregnancy the same course was followed, and to- day that woman has two healthy children of which she is thoroughly proud.
