DR. JAMES, of Philadelphia: Mr. Chairman. This papers covers the ground so thoroughly that if I only said that I approve of all the views expressed therein, I think I might rest my discussion there. But I will say that I agree with him in several points, and yet there are other points on which he might have touched in which I think the future of our system in its development will be grand and progressive. I agree that it has nothing in opposition to other principles of medicine-other true principles of medicine-that will conflict with it in its progress.
That its rise and the discovery of the law was peculiar-and its progress is peculiar simply because in past centuries there was no known scientific law, I might say of permanency in the Old School, which could guide every physician in the application of his remedy to every known set of symptoms or to any known disease, and we know that whenever an epidemic occurs we care not for the man; we care simply for the symptoms, and we treat these symptoms by the law of similars scientifically, and I believe that the application of these remedies in diminutive doses is the proper mode, the only one, that will ever be demonstrated physiologically to be the true one.
Anatomists and histologists tell us that the different organs are made up of tissues, and these tissues are sub-divided into minute forms, and these are built up of cells microscopically small, and that these minute cells have a special and definite action, not only in the formation of those tissues but in their ability to carry through these tissues the principle of life, removing the waste and supplying new material; and when there is a disturbance in these minute microscopic cells we have disease. How are those cells to be brought again into harmony?
I believe that remedies must be so diluted, or made so fine, that they must reach these microscopic cells, and that the method which came in along with the law of similars is the one which divides the remedy so that it can reach the cells. But beyond all that, these cells each have their own respective spheres of action, and you take the cell of the liver, and of the salivary gland, and each will carry its own product. It will have the food which makes its impression upon the others individually and separately; and I believe that such is the action of remedies in the provings upon a healthy body.
Each remedy selects certain tissues, just as the nitrations principles do, and there is the need of the provings of our remedies upon the healthy system as Dr. Dake has state. The proving of these remedies upon the healthy tissues points the definite ultimate cells upon which each remedy acts. Thus we know that some remedies act upon the nervous system; some upon another part.
The scientific application of a remedy to these cells, and structures, and organs, must be upon some definite plan such as we have found out through Hahnemann’s law of similars, and the proving of drugs. But I will call your attention to the indelible nature of the impress which Homoeopathy has made upon the world. It has been made not only upon the profession, but upon the laity and I believe it will be permanent.
Difficulties have arisen along the pathway of Homoeopathy but they have been all overcome; and the future difficulties, as they may arise, will all be surrounding and our system in the future will grow and strengthen throughout the ages.
THE CHAIRMAN: This paper will be further discussed by Dr. Lizzie Gultherz, of St. Louis, Mo.
DR. GUTHERZ: Mr. President, Ladies and Gentleman: A mother in India once said to me: “My dear, when the bread is not properly beaked and the meat is not thoroughly done, don’t call the attention of your guests to it for they will probably never find it out.” And yet, after listening to the essayist saying that thirty-six years ago in this city he read a paper before a convention, I hesitate to discuss a paper written by so able and gifted a man as Dr. J.P. Dake, and on a subject so far reaching, so vast, so pregnant with interest to all as the future of Homoeopathy. The essayist takes the ground that Homoeopathy will be more clearly defined in the future, yet the principle of similia similibus curantur, taught by the immortal Hahnemann is the same to-day as it was in the past.
He tells us that the governing principle will survive all the ages, only it will be more clearly defined and more strongly established in human experience. In this free land of ours the great future of Homoeopathy is to be placed before the world, and in our city the pharmacists and druggists tell us that where Homoeopathy has most thrived it modified the healing art of the Old School, that they don’t give their poisonous doses in the same heavy way that they once did.
It is through the colleges and their high standards that our cause will be benefited further. Examining boards, when composed of only one school, are political machines and ought to be abolished from the face of the earth. The educated people of the country are coming to the front and accepting our school in a way that never would have been acknowledged had it not been for this association. The intellectual men who compose this body, through their intellectual ability, purity and truth, have placed a gem in Homoeopathy that no other school have ever known.
THE CHAIRMAN: Dr. I. T. Talbot, of Boston, will now discuss homoeopathy in the medical colleges and hospitals of the United states.
