Hospitals and dispensaries extending the benefits of our practice to the poor are seen in nearly all parts of the enlightened globe. Fortunately boards of censors cannot always intervene between the people and the desired means of physical relief even in despotic countries.
In its relations to other principles that have to do with the art of healing, I desire to say that Homoeopathy has no antagonism whatever. What surgery can and should do or chemistry or mechanics, to remove useless or burdensome tissues and products, or destructive parasites or poisons; and what palliatives should do to save life or mitigate useless suffering we are agreed that they shall do. We are prepared to hail with pleasure every discovery and improvement in the ways and means of preventing or removing disease. If we hesitate and take time to consider, when the inventions of Brown-Sequard and Koch are heralded over the world, it is for the want of more affirmative profits of their value.
The Future. -I come now to the point where I must ask you turn your gaze from the past and present of Homoeopathy to future. Many and various have been the predictions made as to destiny, some saying: “Like other popular delusions it will have its day and pass away.” And others: “It will be the prevailing and exclusive mode of practice.”.
Applying analogy to the facts hurriedly passed in review, and reasoning from cause to effect, what do we really see before us? Let us consider:.
Unquestionably the future has in store more exact methods of observation and clearer lines of reasoning, which must lead to a more definite understanding of the cases of disease amenable to the Homoeopathic remedy.
1. Taking this view, my first proposition is, that the true field or sphere of the Homoeopathic law will be more clearly defined.
The first and one of the most important questions presented to the physician in assuming the care of a patient, is as to the particular department of the healing art from which help must come. Is it a case for surgery, for chemical antidotes, for anti- parasitics, for change of residence, or occupation, or diet, or one admitting of palliatives only; or is it one requiring the Homoeopathic remedy?.
It is possible for a case to require help from two or more of these departments at one and the same time. In that case the agencies employed must be such as to co-operate with and not antagonize each other. But in determining the question whether a Homoeopathic remedy is required, the physician must very definitely and clearly understand what affections come under the Homoeopathic law or within its domain. It is a childish view to suppose that the physician calling himself a Homoeopath is, in all cases, bound only to search his own Materia Medica for the needed remedy; and it is criminal for him to shut his eyes to other means where the Homoeopathic remedy is not required and can do no good.
Diseases, according to the help required, very readily fall into classes; and the Homoeopathic class is made up of all such as are similar to those producible by pathogenic means, existing in organisms having the integrity of tissue and reactive means, existing in organisms having the integrity of tissue and reactive power necessary to recovery, the essential cause having been removed or having ceased to be operative in the case.
For this class the Homoeopathic law is supreme and universal, while for all others it has no application and no meaning. Years two, while lecturing upon the principles and practice of medicine in Philadelphia, for convenience I divided the great field of therapeutics only as call for the Homoeopathic remedy, and the former in clouding all others. The special I also denominated the pathogenic, inasmuch as the curative agency in the sick was also the sick-making power in the healthy.
In truth, the different principles presiding over the several measures concerned in the restoration of the sick and the injured are complementary and not antagonistic to each other. The ardent Homoeopath, conscious of the transcendent value of his method, need have no fear that a strict construction of the law he rests upon, and proper recognition of its limitations, will belittle it is importance and weaken its hold upon the world. Confide to its legitimate sphere it covers ground enough and calls upon its ministers for enough work employ the brightest intellect and most stalwart energies of a man for a very long life-time.
2. In regard to the future of Homoeopathy, my second proposition is, that its basis and governing principle will survive all changes that may come, only clearly defined and strongly established by human experience.
It cannot in future, more than now, supply to the physician faculties to observe and note the symptoms of a case of disease on the one side nor of drugs on the other; nor can it furnish him with reasoning faculties rightly to compare them; but it most unmistakably points out the relationship between the two sets of symptoms which must be present when cures result. I can conceive of no discoveries possible in any department of medicine that can supersede or invalidate the truth arrived at by Hahnemann’s generalization of facts, and over and over again confirmed in the treatment of the sick.
So long as the human organism is what it is, and the impressions of morbific causes and the resisting efforts of the vital forces what they are, there is an everlasting necessity that the medicinal influence that proves curative similar to that of the morbific. That medicines acting otherwise may prove palliative or remove the causa morbi and thus be needed at times, we do not doubt, but most cheerfully acknowledge.
The whole order of man’s physical nature must be reversed so that reaction does not follow action, and so that the continuing lasting functional condition is not opposite to that directly inducted by pathogenic agencies, if a time ever comes when the Homoeopathy method fails. Terms may be changed, and explanatory theories be different, but the essential relationship between the disease and the remedy will ever be Homoeopathic; and, I may add, that such must be the case, however the curative impression is made, whether by a single drug or a combination of drugs, by heat or cold, by electricity or massage.
3. My third proposition as to the future is, that the pathogenesy, or drug symptomatology constituting the Homoeopathic Materia Medica, will be more thoroughly obtained and carefully displayed. When Hahnemann came to understand the requirements of the Homoeopathic law, and saw the necessity of true drug pictures, for comparison with the various disease-pictures presented to the physician, he soon realized how poorly adapted to his purpose were the current works on materia medica. The most be could there learn of the remedies related to their cathartic, emetic, antispasmodic, and other such general effects on the sick.
Experimentation, to ascertain their physiological or positive influence on the healthy human organism, had not then been started. He soon announced the necessity of proving drugs upon the healthy instead of the sick, and himself became a prover. But, poorly supplied with means, and assisted at times by students of his method, he worked on with one drug after another, adding to the symptoms thus obtained what he could gather from reported cases of poisoning, till he was able to form a new Materia Medica, which he published in 1805 with the modest title Fragmenta de Viribus Medicomentorum Positivis.
Good as were the results of his work, compared with the collections of the old Materia Medica, they yet came short of the demand of similia. It must ever be regretted that he allowed symptoms taken from the sick, while using remedies, to be recorded as drug symptoms. And his neglect to preserve and publish the records of each proving in the narrative form has been a lamentable defect. His publication of drug symptoms in schematic form, disconnecting and putting them out of their natural order, left them less useful to the practitioner and the writer of Materia Medica than they would or should have been.
In following the Homoeopathic principle, it is often quite as important to have a similarity in the order as in the other qualities of the symptoms compared. With regret I mention the fact, that subsequent provers, with few exceptions, possessed superior advantages for the undertaking, have allowed the same inflects to mar their work. Only of late has there been an attempt to gather and publish our drug provings in narrative form.
The British Homoeopathic Medical Society and the American Institute of Homoeopathy, a few years ago, together secured the publication of the Cyclopaedia of Drug Pathogenesis, under the lead of the great Materia Medica scholar, Dr. Richard Hughes. The four large volumes contain all known records of reliable provings, except those embraced in the Materia Medica Para and Chronic Disease of Hahnemann, which it was thought best to let stand by themselves. Valuable as the Cyclopaedia is, it would have been yet more valuable had all the provings detailed been made, and the symptoms recorded, in a more through and discriminating manner. While it is the best we have, it is not equal to the future best.
