The homoeopathic profession is occupying grandstand box seats in the medical three-ring circus which unfolds its performance daily to our interesting and amused gaze. We are amused because we have witnessed in the past so many gigantic therapeutic finds do a sudden and undignified flop, and we await the demise of their latest prodigy. We are interested because their latest performing prodigy, sulfanilamide, is founded on an ancient theory of theirs, that a chemical compound may be used to destroy infective germ life, and still not harm the body tissues of those to whom it is given.
It is indeed a marvelous concept that enables the mind to visualize quantities of this new and powerful germicide floating through the arterial and venous systems of our bodies, and singling our for attack only certain forms of germ life, while blood plasma, blood cells, and all other myriad forms of cell life which go to form mans divine body, is left unscathed.
The brain, heart, liver, spleen, blood, kidneys, muscles and bony system all have good seats as they watch the destroyer sulfanilamide, and its hundreds of derivatives, rush to attack the invading host of streptococcus, as they search out like blood-hounds on the trail every last cranny of the prostate and urethra, that they may come to death grips with the sneaking yet powerful foe, the gonococcus.
How easy and simple the practice of medicine has become for our brethren of the old school. Colds, bronchitis, influenza, pneumonia, empyema, cellulitis, erysipelas, gonorrhoea, are all now so easily cured. Why, we are continually asked, do homoeopaths not use this wonderful new drug? The answer is easily found as our immortal Hahnemann has so aptly stated in the Organon. Two diseases do not run concurrently within the body at the same time. The strongest and most active runs its course while the weaker rests or lies dormant until the stronger has run its course. Then it reasserts itself.
In the case of sulfanilamide it is so powerful a poison that it displaces the offending diseases which remains inactive until the drug disease has run its course. Then the primary disease attempts to reassert itself; but now it has a new field for operations. It has a poisoned body to work upon, and though trying to reestablish itself in the old way, it is met with renewed doses of the drug disease. If must then be the true disease suppressed which is the cause of the long drawn out recurrences of fever which so often follow the use of the drug. The weakness and intense anaemia which follow must be due to the poisonous effect of the drug on the blood stream, blood-forming centers, and heart muscle.
How can we, in any honesty of purpose, administer a drug which is so powerful as to invalid the patient as well as suppress an acute disease? We all know that these acute diseases when properly treated by homoeopathic means, take very little toll from the patient in after life. They are indeed cleansing agents in many cases, and should never be suppressed.
Ask any patient who has recovered from this new medication, and you will find him proud; but they all end by saying they would never it again; proud because they have the inward feeling that their body has been in a battle and has won the fight. They always for get about the disease, and speak of the drug in their conversation, which gives us the impression that they feel they have been battling the drug and not the disease, which in all truth is correct.
If the patients received no treatment at all except rest, proper diet and nursing care, they would at least escape the dire results which follow this much vaunted new cure-all.–K.A.MCL.
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.