The Editors assume no responsibility for the opinions expressed in this department.
The Homoeopathic Recorder: January 10, 1930.
The enclosed resolutions were unanimously adopted at the last meeting of the Des Moines Homoeopathic Medical Society in December, 1929.
DR.GEORGE ROYAL AT THE END OF HALF A CENTURY.
When they said to John Huff that he was wrong, he told them they were wayward in their behavior, wayward in their thinking and wayward in their conclusions; and then they built a fire round about him and they erected a memorial above his ashes to tell the world that a vigorous, purposeful, immortal soul had been pushed over the borderline into a passionless eternity.
For a hundred years, they told a virile group of vigorous medical men that their premises were faulty, their experiments inconclusive, their deductions valueless. Dr.George Royal was a frontline tackle in that virile group. In the healing art, he has read extensively, spoken freely, and written much.
From his class room work, many anchored themselves to a secure foundation and caught the inspiration that has carried them successfully through the years.
As a prescriber of remedies, based on the law of similars, there are those of us who have known him well for years, who believe that he has no equal among the living, and that he has no superior in the long list of able men gone to a deserved rest, who worked with an abiding faith in the same law and wrought mightily to relieve their fellow men.
Fifty years ago, Dr.Royal, in Coventry, Connecticut, met Ella J. Kingsbury, loved her and married her. The one daughter is happily married and lives in Des Moines. The three sons turned out to be doctors and lawyers and are all happy and now he is as proud of his five grandchildren as he has always been of his own.
His diploma from New York Homoeopathic Medical College bears the date of 1882 and carries the signatures of Helmuth and Allen and other names which in their day stood across the medical horizon with a brilliance unsurpassed.
Two old wooden bridges across the Des Moines river connected up the thirty thousand who peopled the capital and the metropolis of Iowa when a freshly painted sign over the doorway at five hundred and ten Walnut Street, first announced the name “George Royal, Homoeopathic physician”.
When Dr. Dickinson laid down the labors of half a century, Dr.Royal assumed the toga at Iowa City and for thirty years gave of his time and his ability that the school there might carry on. All over the country there a re able and successful men who will tell you that they are successful in proportion as they have profited by the lectures and the clinics heard while sitting on the benches at Iowa City, at his hands.
The roll call of the Presidents of the A.I.H. would, in measuring success and the rating of that leadership, just as would the roll call of the Presidents of the United States or the Prime Ministers of Great Britain, be a parallel to listing the measures that have meant prosperity or adversity during their incumbency. Dr.Royal was President of the Institute at the very peak of its greatest activities and influence and his helpful leadership was recognized by everyone.
Medical papers of merit have appeared in unbroken succession over his signature for near half a century and publishers have gladly given to the profession, extensively read volumes from his pen. Editing the Iowa Journal for so many years and being connected with the Institute and the Institute journal for so long a period, it is doubtful if, in the long list of able leaders, any other name in all this time is better or more favorably known.
In Iowa there has always been a pardonable pride in the pioneers who fought and won the battle; and when the time shall come for Cogswell and Royal to lay aside the active leadership everywhere recognized, there does not now appear above the horizon any name that bids fair to forestall the oncoming, in our commonwealth of a great void that threatens to be perpetual.
The axiom that a “Man is not without honor save in his own country” is strangely amiss when applied to the subject of this brief outline. At home we have always gladly accorded the respect, seniority and leadership that were long since earned, and in which we have always been uniformly happy.
It is not essential, that with some of us, our grasp and our faith have failed to carry us along lines always parallel to his inclination. No man finds profound satisfaction or commendable pride in blind unbridled endorsement by those who accord him leadership.
We have been favored in a congeniality and a companionship that is commendable and we, as a group, regard our situation as alike fortunate and satisfying.
I am glad to submit this as expressing the feeling which I have long since learned, is uniformly held by all in any way associated through this and our State Association.-A.H.HATCH.
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.