H.C. Kumar, Secretary of the District Homoeopathic Association, Dehra Dun, U.P., India, has been kind enough to furnish The Recorder with an account of the celebration held in Dehra Dun on the occasion of the 199th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Hahnemann. Dr. Kumars account follows:
Under the auspices of the District Homoeopathic Association Dehra Dun, the 199th birthday of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of Homoeopathy, was celebrated with great eclat in the local Town Hall on the 10th of April at 5:30 p.m. under the presidency of the District Magistrate, Mr. V.C. Sharma, I.A.S. While introducing him to a packed house, Dr. B.Krishna, the president was a great believer in and admirer of Homoeopathy. In his presidential speech Mr. Sharma praised very highly this simple method of cure and said that it was wrong to say that it was a quite harmless treatment because that which cannot do any harm can do not good either. If these medicines are placed in the hands of a novice they can work havoc by their injudicious use.
Dr. B. Krishna was then called upon to speak and he said that this system of medicine has now been recognized by the U.P. Government, and the homoeopaths are going to be registered soon, but the help that is being given to this system is too meagre. It should at least be such as would enable them to set up a suitable College and a Hospital. Bengal can, no doubt, boast of getting recognition first of all but the colleges and the hospitals that they have set up are anything but satisfactory. It the same thing is repeated in U.P., it will be nothing short of a calamity for Homoeopathy. He also emphasized the fact that a real cure can only be effected by this method, while others were only palliative treatments, based on wrong conceptions of disease.
Dr. Rastogi then spoke about the scientific approach to diseases and their cure through Homoeopathy which was based upon scientific laws of nature as Newtons Third Law of Motion. He also referred to some recent scientific experiments, mentioned in a recent number of The Homoeopathic Recorder, in which the germ theory of diseases was totally exploded as they were the effects and not the causes of diseases, and their removal was only a temporary cure and only a palliative treatment.
The last and the best speech of the evening was delivered by Mr. Satyabrat Lakhanpal, former Governor and Vice-Chancellor of Gurukul Kangri University. He, with reason and force, said that Homoeopathy struck at the very root of the diseases which lay in the spiritual body rather than in the physical. This spiritual body being above matter required medicines of the same plane to correct its derangements and that is why homoeopaths have to use such infinitesimal doses. Dr. Hahnemann was a great scientist himself and he evolved this system of Homoeopathy on an experimental basis of the highest order.
The meeting came to a close amidst loud cheers after showing some audio-visual films on health and hygiene.
Allan D. Sutherland was born in Northfield, Vermont in 1897, delivered by the local homeopathic physician. The son of a Canadian Episcopalian minister, his father had arrived there to lead the local parish five years earlier and met his mother, who was the daughter of the president of the University of Norwich. Four years after Allan’s birth, ministerial work lead the family first to North Carolina and then to Connecticut a few years afterward.
Starting in 1920, Sutherland began his premedical studies and a year later, he began his medical education at Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia.
Sutherland graduated in 1925 and went on to intern at both Children’s Homeopathic Hospital and St. Luke’s Homeopathic Hospital. He then was appointed the chief resident at Children’s. With the conclusion of his residency and 2 years of clinical experience under his belt, Sutherland opened his own practice in Philadelphia while retaining a position at Children’s in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department.
In 1928, Sutherland decided to set up practice in Brattleboro.