WHY EVERY PHYSICIAN SHOULD EXAMINE AND TEST HOMOEOPATHY.
I was born in the year 1815, and on the 26th of November, 1891, was 76
years of age. I have not practiced medicine as a business for many years,
and I never expect to practice again. As to money, my present business
gives me all I need, and money to spare for benevolent purposes. I do not
expect, nor do I desire, to receive one cent, directly or indirectly, for
the writing of this pamphlet, or for the money which I expect to spend for
paper, printing, binding, and sending it, post paid, to every physician and
clergyman in the United States and Canada whose name I can get. I do it
because I believe and hope it will be a useful work and instrumental in
doing good, and that many who are willing and waiting will find useful
suggestions contained in its pages, and that through their instrumentality
humanity may be benefited.
A few years after I became a convert to Homoeopathy I met in a railroad car
a venerable professor from the college where I graduated. We were mutually
pleased to see each other, and after our congratulations were over I
remarked to him that, so far as the administration of remedies was
concerned, I had departed somewhat from the "general principles" which he
used to inculcate, and that I had become a Homoeopathist. The Professor
looked up with astonishment and exclaimed most earnestly: "I am sorry to
hear that! I am sorry to hear that!" He manifested not the slightest desire
to know why I had made the change, but was ready to denounce and condemn.
It would be useless to talk to such a man. Before one can see a new truth,
however plain it may be, he must be willing to either examine the question
carefully himself, or to heed the testimony of those who have examined it.
Fortunately, all physicians have not been like the above Professor; for
there have been thousands who were educated in and graduated from
Allopathic schools, some of them gray-haired men, who, like myself, have
carefully studied Homoeopathy and cautiously tested the remedies upon the
sick, who have become converts to the new practice, and who have ever after
relied upon its remedies in the treatment of the sick. No intelligent
physician of any other school has ever carefully read the Homoeopathic
works, and has to any considerable extent cautiously used the remedies in
the treatment of severe cases of various diseases, without being able to
see the vast superiority of the Homoeopathic over the Allopathic treatment
of disease; and no one, without prejudice, and willing to see the truth,
will ever do so without being convinced. Can a man, with eyes open, on a
clear day, go out at noon time and declare that the sun does not shine? He
may make such a declaration while shut up in a cellar or cavern, or if he
never opens his eyes. As one who has patiently and diligently studied and
practiced both systems, I say without the slightest hesitation that
Homoeopathy, as a system of practice, is as superior to Allopathy as the
direct light of the sun is to the reflected light of the moon; in fact,
much of the allopathic practice of to-day is but a reflection of the
homoeopathic light. What intelligent physician to-day bleeds, blisters,
salivates, or vomits his patients, as students were taught to do by
preceptors, professors, and books fifty years ago? And why is such
treatment so frequently, to say the least, discarded now by Allopathic
physicians? Is it not largely because the success which results from the
Homoeopathic treatment of diseases, has convinced Allopathic physicians and
their patients that such violent disease-creating measures and remedies are
unnecessary?
Homoeopathy is strictly a scientific system of medicine. It is based upon a
law of nature--"_Similia similibus curantur_," or the law that
remedies will cure symptoms and diseases similar to those which they will
cause when taken by healthy persons. It is wonderful with what care, skill,
and perseverance the new Materia Medica has been developed, mostly by
intelligent physicians, commencing with Hahnemann, taking the different
remedies in varying doses, and carefully and patiently watching the
symptoms that follow, and writing them down day after day; and then, when
similar symptoms occur in case of disease, giving the remedies and
carefully watching and writing down the results. Allopathic physicians, as
a rule, have not the slightest conception of the vast amount of patient and
persevering labor in this direction which has been done by physicians as
well educated as they are, and most of whom have graduated in the same
schools, who have devoted their lives to this work. Are not these facts
worthy of the consideration of every physician in the world who desires the
highest good of his fellow men? It is well known to every intelligent
physician that there is some truth in the homoeopathic law of cure, and
that it has to some extent been recognized from the earliest periods of
medical history. A cathartic remedy, even in Allopathic doses, will
sometimes cure a diarrhoea, and an emetic will sometimes cure a nauseated
stomach; but such remedies when given in large doses do not always cure, or
they would generally be used by Allopathists; they sometimes seriously and
even dangerously aggravate the disease, so that the vital forces do not
react and thus effect a cure. Nitrate of silver and acetate of zinc, which
applied to well eyes will cause irritation and inflammation, are often
applied to inflamed eyes. The kine pox, which is a similar disease, is well
known to either prevent or materially modify smallpox; and so I could go on
enumerating cases where Allopathic physicians treat their patients in
accordance with the Homoeopathic law of cure. The great discovery of
Hahnemann was not so much the Homoeopathic law of cure, for some knowledge
of that was possessed before his day, but the practical application of that
law to the cure of disease. He found by careful experiments that diseases
can be cured by remedies, which when given to the well will produce similar
symptoms or diseases, in doses so small as not to seriously aggravate the
existing disease or symptoms; and that all diseases may be thus treated
with a success hitherto unknown. This discovery was accompanied by the most
careful experiments by him and his followers upon themselves, to ascertain
with the greatest possible care the effects of various remedies upon the
healthy, so as to be able to make accurate prescriptions for the sick. Here
you have most careful scientific investigation and experiments as to the
action of remedies upon the well and sick, made, not by pretenders or
quacks, but by well educated physicians, that should command the admiration
and respect of every intelligent man and educated physician.
As to the doses given to the sick, which have been such a stumbling-block
to our Allopathic brethren, their size is simply the result of the most
careful experiments. Everyone can understand that if we give an Allopathic
dose of Ipecac to a patient already sick and vomiting, or of Veratrum album
to a patient suffering from Asiatic cholera or cholera morbus, we will
almost certainly aggravate the disease, perhaps to a fatal extent; for it
is the reaction of the vital forces of the system against the new
excitement caused by the remedy, which overcomes this new excitement and
the diseased action at the same time. Now, if the action of the remedy is
so severe that no reaction follows, then, of course, no cure follows, and
even death may result.
The great beauty and excellence of the Homoeopathic system of medicine
consists in the ability to treat patients successfully thereby, without
making well organs sick, or aggravating existing diseased action, or
creating an opposite diseased state, as you do when you give a cathartic
remedy in a cathartic dose for constipation; in that case the reaction, if
reaction follows, is not in the right direction, consequently the
constipation is often aggravated. I have hardly ever seen, excepting in
cases of mechanical obstruction, a severe and troublesome case of
constipation that had not been caused by the use of cathartic remedies. So
if we give an opiate, or an astringent, for a diarrhoea, we can see that it
is a direct effort to restrain the disease by force, as it were, and we
necessarily have to give large doses; and, if the vital forces react
against this medicinal intrusion, the reaction is not in the direction of
health. It is true that the vital forces sometimes overcome the diseased
action in spite of the medicinal action; but it does not always do this,
and subacute and chronic diarrhoeas are the result of the use of such
remedies in some cases. To create disease of a well organ for the sake of
curing disease in another organ, as is done when blisters are applied to
the skin for diseases of internal organs, and when cathartics are given for
diseases of the head or lungs, every one can see is a roundabout treatment;
and while patients may sometimes be benefited by this calling off, as it
were, the attention of the vital forces from the diseased action in other
organs, still it is not a very satisfactory treatment as a whole; for you
may lessen the vital power of resistance against diseased action, and may
even cause serious disease of the organ assailed. I repeat, one of the
great beauties of Homoeopathy lies in the fact that when remedies are given
in accordance with its law of cure, they do not have to be given in
disease-creating doses.
Hahnemann tells us that a single dose of the 30th dilution of Aconite,
which contains but the decillionth of a drop of the tincture of the remedy,
will cure acute pleurisy in twenty-four hours. I have thus treated patients
suffering from pleurisy with a single dose of that remedy (it should be
given soon after the commencement of the disease), and at the end of
twenty-four hours have found the pain and fever all gone, and the skin
moist and cool; and in one instance within two days the patient was on his
way to California. I have never seen any such satisfactory cures of that
disease from any kind of Allopathic treatment, nor from the low dilutions
of Aconite or any other Homoeopathic remedy.
Hereafter I shall call attention of both physicians and the clergy to the
causes and different methods of restraining or curing both spiritual and
natural diseases; for there is the most beautiful analogy or correspondence
between the methods of treating natural and spiritual diseases, and they
must be considered in connection if we would clearly see the truth.