EDITORIAL


The Recorder does, and should, increasingly come into the hands of allopathic practitioners dissatisfied with their results. Even our masters have novitiates whom they refer with trepidation to the schools where at least some homoeopathy is officially taught, and into whose hands they would gladly put an epitome of intrinsic homoeopathy. To all of these groups, and many unenumerated, a simple yet comprehensive outline of homoeopathy with suggestions for ampler study and, of course, with bibliography, would be a boon.


In our January editorial we mentioned our project of having a brief course in homoeopathy in the 1930 Recorder. Our reasons for this are manifold. Less than one-fifth of the subscribers to our journal are members of the International Hahnemannian Association. A large number are self-taught homoeopaths in countries where strict homoeopathic education is not available; an increasing group are students with varied and frequently inadequate concepts of true Hahnemannianism; many are partial converts in rural communities, isolated from their peers.

The Recorder does, and should, increasingly come into the hands of allopathic practitioners dissatisfied with their results. Even our masters have novitiates whom they refer with trepidation to the schools where at least some homoeopathy is officially taught, and into whose hands they would gladly put an epitome of intrinsic homoeopathy. To all of these groups, and many unenumerated, a simple yet comprehensive outline of homoeopathy with suggestions for ampler study and, of course, with bibliography, would be a boon.

The tentative outline of the course we have in mind would be as follows:

1. The Meaning of Homoeopathy.

a. The inception of homoeopathy.

b. Comparison of homoeopathy and allopathy.

c. The homoeopathic vocabulary.

2. The Epitome of Homoeopathic Philosophy.

3. Know the Patient.

a. Getting the patients story.

b. Individualizing (mentals, generals, modalities,. particulars, “strange, rare and peculiar” symptoms).

c. Thorough scientific physical examination including. laboratory tests.

4. Know the Remedies.

a. How the materia medica is made: Provings.

b. Suggestions for studying the materia medica.

c. Materia medica bibliography.

5. Evaluation of Symptoms.

a. Methods of Kent, Boger, Stearns, Boericke, etc.

6. Repertorizing.

a. Methods of Kent, Boenninghausen, Boger, card systems, etc.

b. Bibliography of repertories.

c. Cases illustrating each method.

7. Prescribing.

a. Potency selection (for acute, subacute, chronic, desperately ill and incurable cases.).

b. Repetition.

1. Single or multiple doses.

2. Second prescription.

3. Duration of action.

4. Placebo.

c. Aggravations.

d. The laws of cure.

8. Remedy Sequence.

a. Relationship of remedies.

b. Antidoting.

9. How the Homoeopathic Remedies Act.

10. Suppression.

11. The Dangers of the Homoeopathic Remedies.

12. The Preparation and Care of Homoeopathic Remedies.

13. A Working Homoeopathic Library.

14. Conclusion.

a. Subsidiary measures.

1. Diet in relation to remedies as well as to disease.

2. Local applications.

3. Etc.

We will welcome criticism, suggestions or amplifications of this schema from our readers and ask especially that any such be sent in immediately as the first article of the series will appear in the next issue.

It is of course distinctly understood that only the most salient high spots which distinguish homoeopathy from other systems of medicine can be touched upon in so brief a series of articles, but the essential framework will, we feel, be erected and it remains in this, as in all other, study for the artisan to complete the structure by his own labor.-E.W.

EDITORIAL.

THE TEN-YEAR PLAN OF THE AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR HOMOEOPATHY.

The annual meeting of the Board of Trustees of the American Foundation for Homoeopathy was held at headquarters in Washington early in December. At that time the Foundation adopted a plan which has in view the development and preservation of homoeopathic teaching through the Bureau of Research, the Bureau of Instruction, the Bureau of Publicity and the Bureau of Publication. This is a tremendously large contract, but it is a looking forward for years to come, and the program which was adopted for the next ten years is a goal toward which it strive.

While maintaining the permanent Headquarters in Washington in keeping with the national concept of the American Foundation for Homoeopathy, this program accentuates the Post-Graduate College and makes it a center around which the whole Foundation plan develops. The Post-Graduate College will have connected with it a hospital, laboratory, research department, out-patient clinics, and a home and hospital for miasmatic children.

A publication department will be maintained for the republication of valuable out-of-print material, as well as for the publication of research bulletins, both for the medical profession and for the laity, and valuable new material. Another department will give suitable publicity to homoeopathic progress throughout the world; and the creation of an endowment sufficiently large to carry out this program.

It is hoped that this extensive and comprehensive program will offer sufficient material to rouse the interest and co- operation of both laymen and physicians, for there will be uncounted opportunities for their co-operation, service and interest in the development of this plan.

The Foundation is to be congratulated upon the scope and thoroughness with which they have seen the vision of the needs for the development of homoeopathy as a post-graduate proposition.

The American Foundation for Homoeopathy is attracting attention all over the world, and its post-graduate course last year had one student from Yugoslavia and one from Sweden. There are already two students registered for the coming session from India, and these students have already secured their passports. This plan as it develops will strengthen the whole homoeopathic profession, and will preserve and promulgate all that is best in homoeopathy, which embraces the only system of the healing art based on scientific principles.-H.A.R.

WHAT DOES THE LAW OF SIMILARS MEAN?.

Hahnemann, while translating articles on materia medica, was so struck with the action of Cinchona that he decided to take large doses of it and note its actions or effects on his own body. He was surprised to find how the symptoms thus produced on his own healthy body corresponded to the symptoms of the intermittent fevers he was recording. His curiosity becoming aroused he concluded to test out other remedies in the same manner only to learn in the end that each and every remedy tested out produced a fixed set of symptoms peculiar to itself.

This persistency of cause and effect caused Hahnemann to prescribe such remedies as had produced a given set of symptoms on the healthy human body to ones who were ill and exhibited a similar set of symptoms. The cures produced by this method were so radical and so consistently persistent that he concluded he had discovered a new law, which from the similarity of the symptoms produced by the drug on the healthy human body to those removed in the sick, he named THE LAW OF SIMILARS and expressed in it the phrase Similia similibus curantur. This law is fixed, accurate and unchangeable. Our translation of it would be, from practical experience with it-likes by like ARE CURED.-A.P.

Allan D. Sutherland
Dr. Sutherland graduated from the Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia and was editor of the Homeopathic Recorder and the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy.
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.