The most valuable earthly possession an individual can possibly have is HEALTH. Personal and public health is of greater moment than all the other issues before the world today, for without it there can be no ambition, no progress, no wealth, no happiness. Life would become, not only burdensome, but loathsome. Millionaires, with all else that heart could wish, have committed suicide because of permanently impaired health. So we see how necessary it is to guard and preserve so priceless a possession.
Now, the question naturally arises, how can health be best protected medically? Let us look at a few startling facts, not apparently understood by the laity or even by many in the profession. These tragedies could either have been avoided entirely or materially decreased had homoeopathy been in control.
Recently I was handed a copy of The Womens Home Companion for August 1932 containing an article by Walter Lippman on Demands of Veterans. Mr. Lippman in his handling of the subject and in his attitude toward the veterans who did not face the German guns and bayonets, shows that he was not thoroughly conversant with the situation he felt called upon to criticize.
I take it, from what I read, that the veteran who did not leave the United States or who did not face the Germans had no right to apply to his Government for a bonus. Such an attitude arises from ignorance of the real facts. Let us briefly analyze them.
Were all these men, who either volunteered or were drafted, of the highest physical type and in the very best of health? If they were not then it was the medical inspectors fault for passing them a fault for which our Government was fully responsible. Through Government compulsion the veterans were compelled to face and endure two serious dangers the German bayonets and the doctors hypodermic needles.
Now just why did so many of those men who did not leave their home barracks or even the United States become so broken in health? Just why did the pick of the country die like flies from the “flu” while those unfit for army service almost entirely escaped death? Who is responsible for all this? Was not out Government lax in not investigating all methods of treatment and in not choosing the best? The Government forced upon those men a medical method totally inefficient. Why, then, should it not compensate them all on a basis of equality?.
I have brought this up as a serious and conspicuous example of “modern medical methods” and a good and sufficient reason why the laity and the profession should support homoeopathy. The hypodermic needle has proved more terrible and destructive than all the German guns and bayonets and is and will continue to be infinitely more costly than the casualties of the World War. Had homoeopathy been in the saddle instead of “modern medical science” nearly all of that extra cost could have been avoided.
Then again, there are the fearful epidemics of infantile paralysis, of sleeping sickness, etc., the awful serum catastrophies of Luebeck, Germany, of Sydney, Australia, of Texas and numerous others, all of which homoeopathy had no part in, and which never would have happened under homoeopathic methods of treatment. All of the above have caused untold misery, untold suffering and loss of time at a cost of millions of dollars.
Homoeopathy has cut down the death rate in pneumonia from as high as ninety per cent in some epidemics to as low as two per cent and has cut down the death rate of such diseases as small- pox, measles, chicken-pox, etc., to a fraction of one percent, and all other curable diseases in like proportion.
Why bring all this up? Simply to show that the public is its own worst enemy and ignorance of the real facts its greatest curse.
You who have enjoyed homoeopathys many and varied blessings, you who have seen the lives of loved ones saved from an untimely grave after all other methods have failed, are surely not going to be selfish and deny the children of this and future generations the continued enjoyment of those selfsame blessings.
Millions on millions have been given for the perpetuation of inferior medical methods that have always proved worthless and helpless at the critical moment. Why not stop and ponder over these things? Why not invest in something of real and lasting value, something that will rarely fail at the crisis when human life hangs in the balance. Can any intelligent person really afford to do otherwise?.
Because of indifference and neglect of interest in homoeopathy our journals in the United States have dwindled down almost to the vanishing point. The Homoeopathic Recorder is the outstanding journal in the homoeopathic field at the present time and is not only a valuable but an indispensable medium. No system or method can exist long without provision for the free interchange and circulation of ideas.
THE RECORDER SHOULD BE PERPETUALLY ENDOWED.
Any sacrifice made, any sum given to help The Recorder, will help homoeopathy.
Homoeopathy has a method of research purely its own and one which causes no harm to man or beast to gain its end. Animals are unable to furnish the necessary indications for the exact application of drugs to the human being.
A homoeopathic research laboratory endowed in perpetuity would truly benefit mankind for all time and be a worthy monument to the endower or endowers.
Homoeopathy needs institutions in which to teach, demonstrate and perpetuate its principles untrammeled and free from meddlesome interference from outsiders and unbelievers.
Therefore, if you are interested in and wish to perpetuate these principles for the benefit of yourself, your family and for humanity why not now endow or help to endow a first class college and hospital wherein these principles can be taught and demonstrated, and where an anxious, waiting public can receive real help and relief from sickness and suffering.
Homoeopathic literature is voluminous but widely scattered, much of it out of print and some of the most valuable works are almost unobtainable. These works should be made available to all physicians. Many of them are valuable aids to successful practice. Endowment should be provided now for the preservation and reprinting of all worthwhile material. This is an obligation we cannot afford to ignore.
Homoeopathy must by no means be allowed to perish from the face of the earth nor must misery and suffering be allowed to replace health.
The International Hahnemannian Association and The Homoeopathic Recorder must be supported and adequately endowed. In the name of suffering humanity and with all the manhood within me I appeal to physicians and laymen alike, to all who have money to give or bequeath, to invest it in homoeopathy and in homoeopathic institutions. TOLEDO, OHIO.
On the other hand however, practice teaches us that a single one of these smallest doses will, perhaps, in some very light cases of disease, especially in small children and delicate and very susceptible adults, be sufficient to do all that medicine so far can do; that, however, in other cases, indeed in most cases of continued as well as too far progressed, often by previous drugging complicated, as also in grave acute diseases, plainly such a minimum dose of a remedy, even in our highly dynamized potency, is insufficient to produce all the curative effects which we can possibly expect to be produced by this same remedy; for here it is undoubtedly necessary to give several of such small doses, so that the life-force may be pathogenetically changed to be enabled to eradicate all of the original disease, which the well-selected homoeopathic remedy has the power to eradicate and completely obliterate the same through its counter- action. The best selected remedy in so small a dose, given once only, would give in such cases some relief, but not by far enough.
To repeat the same dose of the same remedy soon again and again, the homoeopathic physician would not dare to, since he has learned from careful observation that he did not derive any benefit therefrom, but that it resulted, on the contrary, oftenest in a great deal of positive injury. He generally noticed an aggravation when, after giving today even the smallest dose of the suitable remedy, he repeated the same tomorrow and again the day after.- SAMUEL HAHNEMANN.
