| DR. G. MADAUS, founder of Dr. Madaus and Company, the largest Homoeopathic laboratories in the world, arrived in London at the end of January on his first visit to this country. He was elected honorary member of the Royal Societies Club, St. Jamess Street, and he invited to a dinner at the Club some leading homoeopaths and allopaths. Allopathy was represented by the celebrated surgeon, Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane, Bart., President of the New Health Society, and by Mr. W. K. Finch, Editor of the Pharmaceutical Journal. There were about twenty homoeopathic doctors, among them Dr. George Burford.
After a pleasant meal Dr. Quinton read on Dr. Madaus behalf a very interesting paper on hormones, which, in due course, we hope to put before our readers in full. The author told us that his firm had acquired huge territories covered with every kind of soil, on which every kind of plant used for homoeopathic purposes can best be produced either in the cultivated or in the wild state, and that he had founded a large Experimental Station which had yielded interesting results. Most of the important bodily processes are activated by hormones. Dr. Madaus showed that there is a curious and very close relation between animal and plant hormones. For instance, soil fertilized with the manure of hens and sown with maize will produce a superabundance of female flowers which turn into cobs while male flowers may actually be overwhelmed by the female element and cobs may grow out of male flowers. It follows that animal manure contains hormones of infinite value in the production of food. These hormones are, of course, missing in chemical fertilizers to the disadvantage of our health. Plant hormones seem to act on animals and human beings very much in the same way in which animal hormones and human beings. The healing virtue of many herbs in apparently due to the hormones contained in them which occur only in infinitely small quantity. Isolation will probably never be possible. Dr. Madaus has given us a great intellectual treat and his discoveries may be of very great value to the art of healing. Many of the guests expressed their pleasure at having spent a most enjoyable and instructive evening. Sir Arbuthnot Lane, in a delightful speech, expressed his thanks to Dr. Madaus, and said that in his experience unorthodox men had been the great pace- makers of medical progress, that he had spent a very pleasant evening, that his eyes had been opened to the boundless possibilities of homoeopathy by having read Mr. Ellis Barkers Miracles of Healing, and that he had been greatly impressed by what he had seen and heard. He pleaded for the recognition of homoeopathy by orthodox medicine and for the co-operation of allopaths and homoeopaths, because one section could surely learn from the other section for the benefit of suffering mankind. We hope that Dr. Madaus will enable us to distribute to those interested a reprint of his lecture with illustrations. |
