HOMOEOPATHY AS A SPECIALTY


The first impressions are the lasting ones among the majority of us and if the students of homoeopathy get their first impressions from real homoeopaths in real homoeopathic institutions we shall have no trouble in laying and maintaining a firm foundation for homoeopathy.


Many physicians have advocated homoeopathy as a specialty instead of as a separate school of medicine. We note also that the latest propagandistic literature from The Homoeopathic Foundation at Washington, D.C., advocates this also. Against this, for the real good of homoeopathy, we most vigorously protest, and here are our reasons.

With no disrespect to either Catholic or Protestant, we wish to use them to illustrate our reasons for taking the stand we do.

The Catholics have the right idea. If they can have the child the first five or six years of its life, the impressionable age, you may take the child and welcome. No one realizes the truth of this fact more vividly than the A.M.A.

Now, if the A.M.A. is given control of the medical student during the impressionable period of his medical education you can have him and welcome. This accounts for the lukewarm homoeopathic graduates of today. They have become accustomed to and enamoured of the allopathys easy ways of guess and resent the harder study required of homoeopathy.

How far would Protestantism have progressed had it waited to rejuvenate or increase its ranks from dissatisfied Catholics or vice versa?.

If the numerical strength of the representatives of the homoeopathic system of medicine is to increase and homoeopathy is to have a strong and adhesive, faithful following, we must take our students through the medically impressionable age in our own institutions and teach them homoeopathy and not a hybrid substitute, as has been done for a number of years past, especially in such institutions as have been proud to become sideshows of so-called universities.

Let me warn you right now that homoeopathy as a specialty will never be a success. a trailer never becomes a leader. It would always be subservient to the specialties, when all specialties should be subservient to homoeopathy. What the late T.F. Allen accomplished for homoeopathy in the turning over the of New York Ophthalmic Hospital could never have been accomplished had homoeopathy been a mere specialty.

Homoeopathy still has a root in this country. We admit the tree is in a delapidated condition. But if that root is properly fertilized with “gray matter” and the tree unsparingly pruned of its rotten branches, the tree will again grow vigorously, blossom profusely and bear abundant good fruit, for that root is planted in the most fertile ground. Then, for Gods sake, brethren, do not destroy that root by making the only rational, scientific system of medicine known a mere specialty grafted on t a lemon, a mere side-show of allopathy.

Many student have gone to our present-day colleges with the avowed intention of becoming real homoeopaths, only to have that intention dispelled by the old-school methods, or by the gibes and taunts of old-school students, or by the sneering remarks of ignorant, half-baked, old-school professors.

The first impressions are the lasting ones among the majority of us and if the students of homoeopathy get their first impressions from real homoeopaths in real homoeopathic institutions we shall have no trouble in laying and maintaining a firm foundation for homoeopathy.

Just what reason can real homoeopaths give for allowing Judases who use homoeopathy for political purposes only to head our national and state societies? Or hybrids to man our colleges? We believe in politics when subservient to our cause, but when our cause must become subservient to politics our cause is lost. Real homoeopaths do not educate their sons in allopathic colleges. Men who profess homoeopathy merely for political reasons are traitors to our cause.

To continue to exist, for homoeopathy is useless if we are to be enjoined from using it, we must establish real homoeopathic colleges, teach real homoeopathy, and pledge all graduates therefrom to practice real homoeopathy and hold steadfast to the cause, making politics subservient thereto. It is childish for us to think that Boenninghausen, Hering, Dunhams, etc., are growing profusely on allopathic bushes, simply waiting for homoeopathy to come and pick them off.

If homoeopathy is to have a healthy growth it must produce its own timber and not wait until it can occasionally steal a good board from the allopathic forest, for these opportunities will be few and far between.

Alfred Pulford
Alfred Pulford, M.D., M.H.S., F.A.C.T.S. 1863-1948 – American Homeopath and author who carried out provings of new remedies. Author of Key to the Homeopathic Materia Medica, Repertoroy of the Symptoms of Rheumatism, Sciatica etc., Homeopathic Materia Medica of Graphic Drug Pictures.