THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEDICAL SCIENCE THROUGH HOMOEOPATHY



Our school has made wonderful strides of progress on its legitimate line, developing methods by which the fixed and perfect law may be perfectly applied. We have refined and regulated the dose; we have proven new remedies, thus narrowing down the list of incurable diseases. Hundreds of volumes are monuments of the devotion and industry of our pioneers. See Bradford’s Bibliography. These works form a vast pyramid, with Hahnemann’s Organon and Materia Medica Pura as its base, with Jahr and Reckert and Teste and Hempel and Baehr and Carroll Dunham and Farrington and Hughes and Drysdale and Cowperthwaite and Hale and Arndt and Lippe and Burt building upon them, with Allen’s Encyclopedia and the Drug Pathogenesy towering above them all. And now Hughes is fashioning the capstone, his repertory of the Cyclopaedia.

Our literature is a stupendous growth. It embraces whole libraries of volumes which it would require a lifetime to peruse- not only exhaustive treatises upon our therapeutics, but elaborate discussions of every phase of medical science, even dipping deeply into psychology and spiced with poetry. See Holcombe’s, Raue’s and Buck’s classical works and Crawford’s Kalevala and Bushrod Josephe’s Alaskama. Bradford’s Bibliography, itself a notable book, chronicles the long list of authors too numerous for me to mention.

Our growth may be compared to that of a grand oak, Hahnemann the central trunk, Similia the main root, his great followers the spreading branches, and the thousands of twigs the faithful practitioners who are devoting their lives to the application of Materia Medica to disease.

Seventy years ago there was but one Homoeopath physician in the United States; to-day there are twelve thousand. We have sixteen colleges, graduating five hundred students annually. These colleges were the first medical colleges in the country to establish a four years’ course of study and demand a thorough preparatory examination. The American Institute was the first national medical society to demand of the colleges under its control a lengthened course and higher grade of scholarship. These college have adopted the most advanced methods of clinical teaching. They have always been in the front rank of progress. Let me here acknowledge that it was a Homoeopathic college which first opened the doors of medical college to women.

We have seventy-six hospitals and fifty dispensaries. In these hospitals the average mortality is only 3.12, they are in perfect sanitary condition, for Homoeopaths were first to advise strict care in regard to hygiene and diet, and Listerism is nothing more than absolute cleanliness. Our pharmacies have such a reputation for the purity and exactness of their preparations that they are patronized largely by careful physicians in the Old School.

The law of cure is a grand central figure around which revolves lesser lights. Dr. Edwin Hale has discovered and demonstrated a law of dose which he deems a corollary to the law of cure, viz., when the primary symptoms of a drug resemble the primary symptoms of a disease the minimum dose should be used, and when the secondary symptoms resemble the secondary symptoms of disease, large or physiological doses must be used.

The late Dr. Tessier placed on a firm basis the fact that individual attacks of disease owe their explanation to the definite predisposition which exists in the individual.

Dr. Woodbury, of Chicago, has elucidated a system of succession of remedies which is about to be given to the medical world in book form.

Dr. J.S. Mitchell has given us a special treatment for cancer. He is not a cancer specialist, but by scientific investigation has discovered a method of treating this loathsome disease, which has been followed by wonderful results. His treatment is Homoeopathic, his method of applying the remedies only is original. See Medical Era, May, 1889.

Dr. Henry Garey, of Baltimore, Md., has devised a system of massaging the sound-conducting apparatus of the middle, ear, by which treatment he claims to have produced marvelous results in cases of deafness heretofore considered hopeless.-Transaction of American Institute, 1892.

Dr. Pratt is the father of the orificial philosophy for which he claims that it is the discovery of the cause of chronic diseases as a class, and that by the aid of orificial surgery which it implies, it is possible to cure four-fifths of all forms of chronic disease. If this is true, and testimony pours in from every quarter, this marks a marvelous progress in the prevention and cure of disease. Our French contemporaries have stamped out anthrax among cattle and sheep by the use of anthrax.

Our Dr. Dudgeon has devoted much study to optics and written valuable works upon the subject. See British Journal of Homoeopathy, 1882 to 1893.

Our Dr. Blackley, Manchester, Eng., is the highest authority in the world concerning hay fever. .

By gathering atmospherical dust on glass with glycerine he determined the pollen origin of this disease. His work upon the same is classical.

This late Dr. Drysdale, Liverpool, Eng., was one of the most eminent pathologists, biologists and microscopists of the age, as well as one of the most ardent lovers of Homoeopathy and logical expounders of its law (see British Journal of Homoeopathy), during the last thirty-five years, all of which period he was the senior editor, and did a great amount of valuable work in the study of drug action. He made a study of the germ theories of infectious diseases as early as 1878, anticipating much of the work which Pasteur has since developed. He gave eight years of his life to the study of the life histories of monads, now known as saprophytes.

The words of his friend and fellow-student, Dr. Dallinger, give us an idea of this work. “Our work in this inquiry, extending through night and day observations, occupied eight years, and during that time, by use of the most powerful and perfect lenses constructed, we were enabled to study the cycles of life in thee minute forms, and to show that their life history was a definite and prescribed as the life history of a butterfly or a daphnia, although they were so small that a hundred million might revel in the space occupied by a millet seed. And this research proved that abiogenesis, or spontaneous generation, has nothing to hope from a thorough knowledge of saprophytic organisms.”.

To shown the versatility and eminently practical character of his genius, I cite the fact that he made a study of the subject of ventilation, and jointly with Dr. Hayward, a deeply scientific colleague, wrote a most valuable book on Health and Comfort in House Building. No man in our age has added more to the sum of knowledge in medical art and science than John James Drysdale. For a complete study of his work, see the British Homoeopathic Review, September, 1892.

Therapeutics and pharmacy will always be the legitimate field for Homoeopaths. The majority of our ablest men will devote their lives to adapting the Materia Medica to the cure of disease, and this is the height of wisdom, for, given the certain law of cure, close application of methods according to this law will in the majority of cases prevent the necessity for surgical interference, and when the surgeon takes up the scalpel it is an admission of weakness. He practically says I cannot restore the body to health, therefore it is better that it should lose one member than that the whole body should be lost. Surgery should be the dernier resort and Homoeopathy has made it so. It has greatly modified Allopathic surgery. Mortality has greatly decreased under surgery, aided by our therapeutics and in our hospitals which are models of hygienic perfection.

Our surgeons have performed many brilliant operations and have done much original work. Dr. G.D. Beebe was the first surgeon to remove several feet of intestine (58 inches) and get end-to-end union with recovery of patient. -United States Medical and Surgical Journal, 1869.

Dr. I.T. Talbot, of Boston, was the first surgeon in America to successfully perform tracheotomy. Van Lennep of Philadelphia, has done great things for intestinal surgery, experimenting on dogs, making reaction of gut with end-to-end union, using rubber turning as splint instead of decalcified bone, and has tested the method an human cases with the best results. He has improved the operation for fistula in ano and done much good original work.

Dr. Flagg the first President of the American Institute, revolutionized the science of dentistry by his methods of operating and invention of instruments. Dr. Lungren of Toledo, was the first surgeon to bring the peritoneal surface together in the closure of the uterine incision in Caesarean section and published the method several years before Sanger made use of it as the basis of his improved Caesarean operation, which is the approved method at the present time. Dr. Lungren also first ligated the fallopian tubes without removal to produce sterility after having twice performed the Caesarean section upon the same patient.

Martha A Canfield