At this point, I beg to be excused for a slight personal mention. Just thirty-six years ago, in this city, I read a paper before the American Institute of Homoeopathy upon the defects of our pathogenesy, and proposed for its improvement a college of drug provers -an institution under competent management, having a body of students, male and female, acting as subjects of drug influence while receiving medical instruction, during the long vacations in the ordinary medical schools; and, while under expert observation, all the means for detection and measurement of abnormalities, useful in diagnosing diseases in the sick, being employed.
I showed the unavoidable defects in provings made, here, there, and everywhere, by busied, wearied, and worried physicians, exposed to the vicissitudes of weather and sick-room influence, with little if any critical observation of their symptoms. Again, and again, in after years, I urged the profession to take hold of the work, and make our Materia Medica more in keeping with our matchless therapeutic law. I am happy, on this great occasion, to say that the tendency is now toward more through and careful drug-experimentation, not only in our school, but in the Old School as well.
Dr. T. Lauder Brunton, one of the brightest of all the orthodox teachers of Materia Medica in England, writing of the therapeutist, not long ago, said:.
“Evidently it is his special province to find out what are the means at command, what the individual drugs in use do when put into the human system. It is seemingly self-evident that the physiological action of a remedy can never be made out by a study of use in disease.”.
The increasing number of liberally educated young upon in the ranks, who are critical and logical, not satisfied with observations casually made and experiments not properly guarded against sources of error and corruption, look with surprise upon the rank and file of the profession apparently satisfied to go on year after year, depending upon a hash and rehash of what was not entirely sure and reliable at the outset. It used not be surprising if, ever and anon, some of them become disgusted with the “Tithing of mint, anise and cummin” in those who are apparently headless of the “weightier matters of the law.” If the plan of a college of provers is Utopian, and if the influence and power of drugs cannot be ascertained by direct and scientific experimentation, wee may as well consider the abandonment of drugs.
One alternative is left, if the present encouraging prospects fails and the physiological laboratories and through drug provings do not come, the trade circulars of the great drug houses, displaying the refreshing romance of clinical experience, that are being showered upon our desks like the leaves of Vallambrosa, may enable us to practice empiricism with some hope if with no satisfactory fruition. But, jesting aside-the healthy vital test will not fail.
I leave its consideration now, with the remark that the great university that shall lead the way by devoting its entire medical department to Original Research in Physiology and Pathogenics will cover its name with glory and bring to its regents and faculty and student-experimenters the gratitude of the world during all time.
4. Looking again to the future of Homoeopathy I remark that some changes are to come in matters of pharmacy and posology. While drug substance will be commuted far enough to render its particles susceptible of absorption and conveyance to the tissues to be impressed, or to expand its surface for more ready contact; and while it will be attenuated and mixed with neutral vehicle enough to render it easy to division into proper doses, it will not be treated by bottle-washing methods in the effort to get rid of the drug altogether and secure only its disembodied spirit.
The unmerited odium that our peerless law of cure has been obliged to bear, these many years, by reason of the unwillingness of some of its adherents to employ the sensible doses with which the law itself was demonstrated and with which its most striking victories were won, will be wiped away.
I have now spoken of the leading changes destined to come in the interior economy of Homoeopathy and its practical applications, namely, as to its legitimate domain, its persistency or permanency, its pathogenesy and its posology.
I must now briefly refer to its future position and relations in the general medical world.
External Relations.-It is a great mistake to suppose that Homoeopathy is found only in the practice of men calling themselves Homoeopaths. Not only has its negative influence wrought changes in the therapeutic measures of the masses of medical men in all enlightened countries causing them to abandon blood letting, blistering and heavy doses of poisonous drugs-it has brought the most intelligent of them to prescribe many of our remedies, as we do, in obedience to the rule of similars, and in small and pleasant doses.
It has caused them to look upon the healthy human test as the proper mode for the study of drug influence in the formation of materia medica. It has also led them to pay a great deal more attention to dietetics and general hygienic measures; and shy, pray, should it not do so, since they have often attributed our undeniable cures altogether to such regulations?
Our success and evident favor among intelligent and influential people have gradually raised us in the esteem of our Old-School brethren, till their society doors are open to us on the simple condition that we drop the qualifying term “Homoeopath” from our list of titles. And we are no longer regarded as beyond the pale of professional recognition and help by reason of our additional acquirements in therapeutic knowledge! But, putting all levity aside, we hail with satisfaction the growing acceptance of our views and adoption of our measures, and would be far from saying one word calculated to prevent so great an improvement in the current medical practice and such positive benefits to the sick under its care.
We do not insist upon their calling themselves “Homoeopaths” in order to enjoy the use of remedies that we know cure Homoeopathically; nor, on the other hand, do we see my occasion for us to drop that title from our institutions because we recognize and employ now, as always, surgical, chemical and mechanical, and other means which are neither Homoeopathic nor Allopathic. I fail to see why we should be any worse for the use of a name that indicates very correctly our confidence in the principle similia, when no medical make can be so ignorant as to suppose that we do not understand and follow other principles and use other measures as occasion demands.
In conclusion, upon our future name and relations, I would say that when the right of every educated physician to choose his method and means of cure becomes generally recognized, and his privilege to candidly state his views and temperately criticise the views of others on the floor of any medical society or in my medical journal, is accorded without reproach or abuse-then, and not before, may it be expected that the societies and institutions of the New School will be disbanded or known by no distinct sectarian title.
It cannot be forgotten that our organizations, our journals, colleges, hospitals and dispensaries were matters of necessity for the maintenance of our freedom to choose and apply the new therapeutic measures and to extend their benefits to suffering humanity. but for them, the most important reform in the art of healing now enjoyed would have been arrested at the start. .
With the freedom existing in associations for scientific research and the promotion of social reforms, where each idea and proposition may have a hearing and due consideration, there would be no excuse for different schools or separate organizations in medicine. The only unity possible among medical men and medical associations will be the kind that consists with diversity and with the liberty on all sides to think and work, with all due respect, each on his own lines. Physicians should be as free to criticise each other’s opinions and measures as are lawyers, whose sharp contests make them none the less personal friends to each other and none the less worthy members of the bar.
As matters stand, the right forward step to secure unity is one of common politeness by one medical man toward another and by one association toward others. It requires no disagreeable concession or damaging compromise for one to treat another with the courtesy due among men equally educated and equally devoted to the same cause. There needs to come among us a “Y.M.M.A.;” a Young Men’s Medical Association, that, like the “Y.M.C.A.” can practically solve the great problem of unity in diversity and secure working relations between medical men and medical organizations, which with a common purpose in view, are now moving forward on different lines.
A special dispensation of mercy alone can save us, if we are more adopted and touchy, or have less of practical sense than the religious has, that the Christian young men are, even now, gradually pulling together.
DISCUSSION.
THE CHAIRMAN: This paper will now be discussed by Dr. B.W. James, of Philadelphia, Pa.
