Unnecessary Tonsil Operations
DOCTORS often have things told them by their patients which were never intended to reach their ears. Generally these “repeats” are more comical than serious. Such happened to me last week. But such interference at times has frightened patients, who drift hurriedly away from a further consideration of Homoeopathy, without giving it a fair trial.
A very dear friend told the father of two young patients of mine what he ought to do for his two boys. This kind “free advice” happens all over the world. Their nutrition had been seriously injured by an underlying constitutional defect which had brought about abnormal adenoids and enlarged tonsils, to such an extent that a few months previously a school inspector had “ordered” a 30 dollar operation on each boy (a certain doctor being recommended), otherwise their studies would suffer and they could not be advanced to a higher grade.
The father told my good friend that his boys were under my care, and, moreover, they were nearly well now, and that they had actually gained in weight, to which my friend remarked that I was “very old-fashioned” as I had opposed an operation, which certainly I had done. Nevertheless Baryta carbonica, in 6x and 30th strengths, which I had prescribed for both boys had reduced the abnormal local swellings and had cured their husky nasal voices, etc., by correcting their underlying ill-health, though there is still some body weight to be made up by both boys to bring them to absolute normality.
If adenoids and enlarged tonsils can be cured by treating the constitution producing same in three months by using the necessary Homoeopathic medicine, this not always being Baryta carbonica, why have expensive operations, which can never reach and cure the physical condition which causes such abnormalities?
If by sticking to Homoeopathy which corrects these constitutional weakness, and which medical power has been common practice with every Homoeopath all over the world for 140 years, I plead to being “old-fashioned”, and I glory in these Homoeopathic powers which are able to do such good work.
And what is the alternative to being so “old-fashioned”? Orthodoxy, refusing to test Homoeopathy, says, “Operate at once”, and take out those tonsils, etc., though two orthodox men (Drs. Alison Glover and Joyce Wilson) wrote in the B.M.J., September 10th, 1932, that “the function of the tonsil is still unknown” (!). In Progress To-day, July-September, 1932, we read that in 1927, no less than 14,843 children in the London elementary schools had their tonsils removed, whilst in England and Wales 92,171 underwent this operation in 1928, and 97,518 suffered such losses in 1929 at the hands of orthodox medicine men and their surgeons, in face of the fact that they do not yet know the function of these glands, which surely the Almighty put there for adequate reasons and purposes. Is it more scientific to be “old- fashioned” and cure the constitution producing abnormal tonsils, etc., or to cut them out hurriedly, leaving the body still in its diseased state to break down later in some other more or less remote manner?
The general public have some rights in this matter, and I applaud the work “HEAL THYSELF” is doing in carrying this knowledge to all who may be fortunate enough to read its pages.
These operations carried out by orthodox proclaim their medical weakness, which is emphasized by their admission that these glands are a mystery to them. Their doubtful position is still further articulated by their eternal change in their methods and therapeutics which changes are a groping for some better plan of treatment. Yet they scout or ignore the very thought of testing the stability of Homoeopathy.
On my desk at this moment are five medical journals of this year. Each journal has one-third of its title-page taken up by the medical publishers, W.B. Saunders & Co. of Philadelphia and London, so these five advertised Standard medical works of and for the orthodox school, will be current text and authority in Great Britain and the world over for that matter. Each advertisement is about a different orthodox text book. These large and expensive advertisements prove that orthodox medicine wishes to be so up-to-date that it has evidently been found necessary to scrap practically all their knowledge which was employed by them heretofore.
What are we to think about a medical practice which has to be changed so often and so radically? If what orthodoxy presents now is exact, their late text books, which are actually orthodox treatment for you at this moment, are all absolutely worthless and a fraud on the general public, and so you, the laity, must have suffered from a wrong treatment up to this moment.
Making all due allowances for the flowery verbiage of advertising, it is still apparent that this crop of new and very expensive Standard orthodox guides for your treatment are not vague as to their momentous changes in practice.
For instance we find the following expressions covering these new works and methods-quoting from the advertisements: “re-made from beginning to end”,… “dozens of new treatments which have not yet found their way into current literature,”… “a clinical summary of the year’s new medicine obtainable nowhere else,”… “new treatments covering virtually the entire range of medical practice,”… and still one other gem. If there is boastfulness about anything orthodox it is their treatment of Syphilis. Yet we find that about this up-to-the minute book on this subject the publishers recount that: “the treatment and management of every stage of Syphilis have changed so radically that Dr. — had to re-write and re-make his book from beginning to end.”
“Old-fashioned Homoeopathy” is quite content with the Law of Similia, “let likes be treated by likes” (the identical words of Hippocrates), we taking particular pains to match drug-pictures with each and every individual patient’s case, independent of the diagnosis, which matter we Homoeopaths always take note of, as is the case with the orthodox men.
Homoeopaths do not change their methods with the seasons, which is all to your advantage. We don’t have to do so.
Every few years the orthodox “guide books of practice” are totally changed slowing that all is not well with their treatments. They have been found wanting, which cannot be comforting to any patient of theirs. Old works on Homoeopathy cost more now, if such can be found, than when they were written. So valuable were the close observations of our dead exponents of Homoeopathic practice.
Remember that every British (and European) Homoeopathic doctor was at first an orthodox man, forsaking such because he learned the better value of this Homoeopathy. This being the case, I am glad to be classed as “very old-fashioned”, and so are all workers in Homoeopathy. It is really a compliment.
The MS. of this article having been nearly typed I find to-day that “Tonsils” form the leading feature of the “Medicine” section of Time (the weekly news magazine for Sept. 24th, 1934, p.51). The following condensed extracts are called from the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology Congress (orthodox) (eye, ear, nose and throat specialists) who have lately met at Chicago.
Their findings constitute “the last word” on this subject! One Dr. A. David Kaiser, a professor of Pediatrics (children’s diseases) states that: “Too much is promised by physicians. Now the mother whose first child has his tonsils removed when perhaps unnecessary, is disappointed because the child continues to have colds, and she does not want her second child’s tonsils removed, although they are diseased” (apparently overlooking it is the child’s body which is diseased). To continue the quotation: “Having his tonsils out will make little difference in his susceptibility to colds, and bronchitis occurs more frequently in children so operated on, and the same is true of pneumonia. Nonetheless the fact remains that the function of the tonsils is not understood.”
Time comments thus: “Tonsillectomy (cutting out tonsils) used to be a ‘kitchen chair’ operation. Now in the hands of the throat specialists it entails all the pomp and ceremony of a major operation. They make a pre-operative examination of the patient’s skin, nose, throat, ears, heart, lungs and kidneys. Any case with a temperature above 100.4 has to be re-examined, and any recent illness precludes this operation, besides which no female patient is operated upon five days prior to or during menstruation,” etc.
It would seem that no orthodox man sees any necessity of considering the ailing body, which work and science is seemingly left solely to the Homoeopaths.
Are you, the laity, ready to test Homoeopathy in your own circle? I implore your most earnest study of this matter.
My brother orthodox practitioner! I beg of you to try Homoeopathy whenever you are in a quandary, and perhaps have a case which is slipping – slipping out of your hands, or downwards to death.
