To the Editor of the HOMOEOPATHIC RECORDER:
Just a day or so ago I received from Mr. Titherington, editor of Munseys Magazine, the following communication:
“Dear Sir:-
“We thank you for your letter of January 6, as we are always glad to receive comments and criticisms from our readers. What you say is interesting and your criticism of Mr. Wellivers article may be justified, but we trust that you will excuse us from entering into a discussion of so controversial a subject.”
In other words, Munseys Magazine is lined up with McClures the Cosmopolitan, the New York American, the Philadelphia North American and a whole lot of other members of the progressive family that-in fact-are distinctly reactionary and to the exclusion of absolutely everything in medicine and the science of disease that is progressive. They are open to reason, sometimes, but dare not go against the allopaths that are not.
I have among my papers a half dozen just such letters as that from Mr. Titherington.
In justice, let me say there are exceptions. In all my life I have found no man more broad or more open to logic than Mr. John Ames Mitchell, of Life.
Life published over my signature in the issue of April 25, last, a 200-word squib for which I asked nothing, But for which I received a nice check. Along with it was a 3,500 word article upon small-pox, which they also purchased in which I agreed with many students that small-pox is undoubtedly of syphilitic origin, by showing that when the earliest epidemics of that illness broke out in Europe they followed by periods of from 60 to 90 years the return to European armies from syphilis-ridden nations to the east.
I also put forth in that paper that an anti-toxin, so- called, does not neutralize the taint in the blood in the strictest sense, but alters it so that if an man is tainted with syphilitic miasm in the small-pox phase and be given a “prophylatic” that the action of that will be simple; i. e., it will change the present taint into one of heavier phase.
Consequently, it was pointed out, if Nature did her work in the usual even way, and the bacteria removed little by little, then it would not be long before the man needed re-vaccination to “protect,” while if the bacteria did not properly perform their function the toxin would most probably manifest itself in some chronic trouble, paralysis, cancer or insanity, for instance, to name some of the possibilities.
That paper, showing the inter-relationship of facts to the satisfaction of Mr. Mitchell, has undoubtedly been of assistance in the fight of that magazine against vaccination.
In striking contrast is the manner in which the New York American recently sustained Nathan Straus against his critics.
They permitted the publication in their “Editorials by the People” column of a communication in which Straus offered to give Dollar 1,000 to anyone that could show that the feeding of infants on sterilized milk results in scurvy and rickets.
I replied, sending a letter to Mr. Straus and a copy to the American. In that letter I made the assertion that it was illogical that anything else should occur as the result of such infant feeding and offered to debate the subject with Mr. Straus in Carnegie Hall or anywhere else that he might choose. I never heard from the letter and the New York American did not publish
it.
Realizing the crass unfairness of that, but recalling that I had addressed it to Mr. Straus, I wrote another letter for the “Editorials by the People” column. The letter was, I think, a statement of fact and showed that the number of bacteria in a sample of milk indicated the amount of the opsonins, or toxins, in the milk and that the killing of the bacteria does nothing whatever to remove the opsonins from the milk. Consequently, the baby is up against the proposition as the Arctic traveller; there are no bacteria to carry off the poison and it stays there. When it begins to undermine the health too severely the scurvy and rickets ensue.
Of course, they would not publish anything like that- allopath medicine claims that the opsonins are one of the natural protections.
In November, 1911, Dr. Henry Smith Williams published in Harpers Magazine a very concise summing-up of all the bigoted rot that has grown out of the germ-theory.
In an article which they never published, but which they did hold two weeks and return with the reply that my deductions could not help but impress them I advanced the following explanation of the place of the “germ”
The “germ,” so-called, is not a germ, but a scavenger whose duty is merely to feed upon and take from the tainted (or opsonized) system the toxic poisons which would limit it if permitted to remain. In order words, the bacteria stand between the apparently healthy and the chronic invalid.
That there is nothing particularly wonderful in the process was shown very clearly, I believe.
Sir Almroth Wrights theory that the opsonins are chemical “somethings” placed by Nature in the blood to kill the bacteria (the bacteria which Nature sent to generate poisons in blood mind you) was attacked on the ground that bacteria show preference of taste and do not devour the opsonins indiscriminately.
The self-limitation of these so-called infections diseases, the future immunity when Nature has been permitted to take her course and the reason why the typhoid bacilli will show no interest in blood from one individual while the diphtheritic will, or vice versa, were shown to unfold naturally under the theory given above, while those things were admitted to be “riddles” and “puzzles” by Dr. Williams, who signs himself “M. D.; LL. D.
In a letter to the Philadelphia North America I tried two years ago to get before the people in that city some facts which should, I believed, aid in the fight against tuberculosis.
If I remember rightly, I held that tuberculosis is a manifestation of the psoric taint, which is not new, of course, to the homoeopathist, and that the taint in question may be inherited or brought about by combination of sycosis inherited and small-pox vaccine injected (or syphilinum administered), or by injected typhoid vaccine (gonorrhoeal) and small-pox vaccine or syphilinum (syphilitic).
To state it differently, that psora is a combination of syphilis and sycosis.
Of course, no attention whatever was paid my communication, although supported by the results of empiricism and research, as well as the government reports upon some conditions in the far East.
As far as I can ascertain the Chinese, unsanitary and poverty-stricken as they are in the interior, and flat-chested, do not know what tuberculosis if and the only section of that empire in which it is known are those along the Manchurian border and the big cities, where gonorrhoea has been introduced and spread by the Aryanean peoples.
In truth the people are being stuffed, crammed to the neck with the marvels of the only “science” in the world founded upon theory,–unproven theory; theory that presents “riddles” and “puzzles” that tax and re-tax and then leave exhausted and in despair the profoundness of the LL. D.s.
It might be added that I have been greatly aided and encouraged by Dr. A. K. Kline, of New Jersey; Dr. Louis Crutcher, of Kansas City: Dr. Williams, of Spring Lake, N.J.; Dr. Mullin, of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia; Dr. Charles E. Page, of Boston; Dr. Phillips, of Pensacola, and others, with one exception, of the homoeopathic fraternity.
HUBERT R. KROH.
Pensacola, Fla., Jan. 18, 1913.
