INTRODUCTORY
I HAVE thought it desirable to put on record the experience described in this brochure for several reasons. In the first place, it is well that merit should be ascribed where merit is due- that the discoverer of the method of treating cases of disease with a remedy derived from the infectious principle of the disease itself, should have the credit of his discovery.
This discovery was made by Hahnemann and his contemporary disciples- Pasteur, Koch, von Behring and Roux, as the two last named have had the candour to admit, have only trodden in Hahnemann’s footsteps. “There is truth in the Hahnemann method of curing like by like” are the words of Dr. Roux. Further, it should be known that in imitating Hahnemann, the later investigators have not improved on Hahnemann’s methods. They have quite unnecessarily introduced vivisectional experiments, and they have adopted a dosage, and a method of subcutaneous injection, which are fraught with no little danger. This danger is admittedly so great, that in the case of Dr. Koch’s treatment of tuberculosis the method has been abandoned by all but a very few practitioners. The homoeopathic preparations are made in such a way that no cruelty to animals is involved, and no danger to patients is run. Disease-viruses are treated in the same way as serpent venoms, and the homoeopathic preparations of both retain all the therapeutic properties of the original sources without any of their dangers.
This is the first of my reasons for putting my experience with the nosode of whooping-cough into print- in order to show that to Homoeopathy and its founder is due the credit of the discovery that disease-viruses, like other poisons, may with safety be converted into remedies; and that the late incursion of old-school medicine into the fields of seropathy and vaccinations is simply- whether wittingly or not- an invasion of the homoeopathic domain.
My second reason is, that homoeopaths themselves have been all too slow to take advantage of the enormous power which this department of their art puts into their hands. The single example which I here present will be sufficient for the thoughtful reader. Given one, all the rest may be known. I therefore urge on my homoeopathic confreres to cultivate assiduously this new field, and not leave it to the so-called “orthodox” practitioners to exploit in their own crude fashion; or, still worse, to adopt the crude methods of orthodoxy in place of the scientific and enlightened method of Hahnemann.
Yet another purpose may be served by this book. It is necessary that the public should be made acquainted with the power and possibilities of homoeopathic therapeutics. Now, whooping-cough is a malady which is known to everybody, and of which the treatment can be intelligently observed by any mater- families. It is a disease which is generally abandoned by old- school doctors as beyond the reach of remedies other than sedatives to calm the violence of the attacks of coughing. “Whatever time of the year the attack commences, it is bound to last till the following May” is a tradition which is not without some authoritative backing. This book may therefore serve in a certain degree as a popular educator. As a rule, the general public care little or nothing about systems of treatment; but they do care about getting cured as expeditiously as possible. But, in order to secure the latter, the public will have to give some thought to the former. It is the public who are interest in having successful treatment, much more than it is the profession who are interested in administering it. The party in power in medical circles to-day is an obscurantist party, whose interest it is to keep students and public in the dark as to possible therapeutic reforms. I give here an instance of successful treatment by a method which is scouted in the orthodox schools-except so fat as it is presented under another name, in the crude methods of serum-injections and vaccinations. If the public wish to be treated in a civilised and scientific manner they must bestir themselves, to understand something about methods of treatment, and combine to demand that their medical men shall learn the method which answers best. For the public should realise that it is they who are the masters of the situation, and that the medical profession are their servants. But servants of all classes need looking after; and if the public is neglectful in this particular, the public must not be surprised if it has to pay the penalty. I have said above that what I have here recorded of whooping-cough is only an example of what may be accomplished in the case of any disease of which there is an infective principle that may be converted into a homoeopathic remedy. The late Dr. Compton Burnett has shown to what potent curative use the nosode of Tubercle had been put, long before Koch’s Tuberculinum appeared on the scene. I hope at no distant date to show, in the same way, what may be accomplished in homoeopathic hands, with the various nosodes of cancer.
