My Dear Friend: Since I wrote you, telling of the closing of the Homoeopathic College, and the destruction of the library, and the general downfall of Homoeopathy, it has transpired that I was too hasty. Homoeopathy is not dead. Our good genius Justice has come to our aid; we have opened our college, our students have gladly returned from thee hospitals of the lymph Squinters; our patients are returning or us glad to be delivered from the bizarre horrors of “regular and scientific methods.”
Rejoice with me, my friend; there is yet a future for thee slam dared little pill. A most singular fancy seems at present to have taken possession of thee massive minds of the members of the Hippocratian oligarchy. One of this select body has said it in his medical News that we of the Sectarian School of Homoeopathy, according to this fancy, have never made a discovery, nary a bacillus, not one single method of medical treatment; we “take the results of the work of other men and use them selfishly, with hatred and abuse of our benefactors. Spongers all!”
Is it not a queer notion that? Did you fully realize before that the members of the so called regular school of medicine were your “benefactors?” It comes to me quite suddint like. I never had a dreamt it. The oddest part of the thing is that the gentleman is evidently righteously honest in his assertion. Amid his multifarious occupations and researches into the arcane of Nature he must surely have omitted thee study of medical history. Is his assertion correct? Are we. Members of the school of Homoeopathy, really “spongers?”
Do we stand about in a state of mental expectancy waiting until we hear the inevitable cackle from the nest in the haymow of modern medical discovery? Do we as robbers then seize and carry off the valuable egg that has been so noisily laid? No, a thousand times. No; we “do not have to.” For those eggs are mostly addled, the occasional chicken is usually premature. Our benefactors! Think of the pathos (and bathos) in the expression. The allopathic, so called regular, dominant, orthodox, strictly proper school of medicine, this school of impossible chemical mixtures; this school of ten thousand ridiculous prescriptions the limits of which exist but in those of the imagination of the prescriber; this school without certainty or law in its wonderful posology; the members of such a polyglot body the benefactors of the followers of Hahnemann! The idea is very much wilder than any that Hahnemann advanced. I am sure you will with me cry O, please, kind sirs, whatever have we done that we should thus be benefacted?
How odd that we who do prescribe by a law as precise as any in mathematics should be denominated the quacks, while our benefactors, who are as erratic in the motive and method of their prescriptions as the late Mr. Bela’s comet should consider themselves scientists!
But I am told, (the whisper comes indirectly from lips of egotistic wiseness,) that the benefactors are about to bitterly punish our “hatred and abuse” of them. It soon will be set down in the great and dreaded books of the law, that who so of the sect of the followers of Hahnemann is found using any medicine save those that can be distinctly traced to his own pharmacopoeia is to be severely punished. In fact it is to be made a criminal offense for a Homoeopath to use Allopathic medicines. Odd Idea, is it not?
But who will decide the question as to what medicines and medical methods are really the property of the allopath, our aggrieved benefactors? Are they to claim the catnip tea, the tansy, the elecampane of our grandmothers; the opium, the Mercury, the Arsenic, of our grandfathers? Are all their remedial agents copyrighted, with the record duly filed in the archives pharmaceutical of the temple of healing? And is it very certain that there is nothing there recorded that savours of the genius of Hahnemann?
Do you remember, my old chum, how many chemical discoveries Hahnemann made? It is interesting reading, and can be found in “Ameke’s History of Homoeopathy,” pp. 1 to 40. There. Are given thee researches in the detection of drug adulation the test for lead in wine, the new plan for manufacturing soda, his experiments with Mercury, etc. I think it can be proven that Hahnemann discovered several new and important facts. We will not speak of the Law he discovered and developed. Our benefactors only admit the truth of that in the privacy of their own councils. And have we discovered nothing? Has our school been the cause of no medical progress? Of the ancient and the orthodox, the regular school, since the day when a gentleman known as general George Washington, wearied with bleeding and purging, purging and bleeding, turned his head in disgust away from his “regular” physicians and said: “Gentlemen, let me die in peace.”
Is it so very certain that their title deeds to some remedies in constant use do not date back to Father Hahnemann? All the best of their medical preparations are copied from our pharmacotoeia-tablet triturates, minute solutions, convenient pocket cases, smaller doses.
Their school now experiments as ours always did, on the physiological action of drugs. They are constantly announcing remedies to be new in certain disease that Hahnemann recommended for the same disease years ago. Arsenic in consumption, Pulsatilla for colds, Aconite for fever, Belladonna for congestions. No Credit is given to us, however. But betimes, with most bombastic air, comes some leader of the oligarch who informs us that we are spongers, thieves and ingrates. How very odd! But let us hope, my friend. The evil day has been postponed; for that we cannot be truly too grateful. We may still doctor the babies. Our medicines may occasionally reach their tiny ailments.
Is it strange that man will so readily condemn without proper trial?
Still, it may be that the allopath are afraid to fairly test Homoeopathy. Nearly every physician of the old school who has honestly tested the Homoeopathic principle has ended in becoming a practitioner of Homoeopathy. Homoeopathy was really introduced into the United States by members of the old school who were disgusted with its fallacies. Good bye, old chum; let us still hope. Let us still be thankful. T.L. BRADFORD, M.D.
