It is often refreshing to read and re-read certain transactions and writings of the past. Much that is read is not worth reading, much more is not worth reading twice, but here and there we find something that is worthy of repetition.
On the 22nd of February, 1871, Dr. D.N. Foster, delivered the Valedictory to the Graduating Class of Hahnemann Medical College, chicago. This address was heartily received and made a strong impression upon students and people. I would like to give a few extracts from this address to show the difference in the teaching of homoeopathy then and now, for among the many things Dr. Foster said, here are a few:
“You have studied homoeopathic therapeutics. Your attention has been called therefore, to the finer activities of the human organism in morbid conditions, to its more exquisite sensibilities and susceptibilities, to its minute and specific reactions-not alone to the grosser feculent products, but also, and rather, to the earlier symptoms, the more delicate sign, the passing lights and shadows of disease. The body is an organ of expression. It is all language. Should a poet know this, and a physician, who holds the welfare of the body in his keeping, be ignorant of it? Should he have an ear for its shrieks, and none for its whispers?
The faintest sign should be to him full of meaning. He should seek to interpret a right the first flush of fever, and be on the alert to catch the earliest intelligence of pain. For whether he discriminates nicely or not, the suffering body, with all its countless voices, will certainly speak with discrimination, and will have a new tone and another gesture for every change in its condition, an exact expression for every want. And, furthermore, homoeopathy has taught us that the body, with exactly equal precision. . . it must be so, with exactly equal precision. . . will respond to the specific medicinal influences that are brought to bear upon it.
In this matter the physician may make many mistakes. . . the body never makes one. Even careful druggists have been known in moments of abstraction to mistake a poisonous for a harmless drug; but the body invariably discovers the error. It stands in definite and unalterable relation to each specific thing or drug in the universe, and whether in health or in disease, only let these substances be brought within the sphere of its sensibilities, and it will at once declare to each its minutest parts.
What one part will not have on any terms, another must have at whatever cost. There is little use in mixing drugs; the body will certainly analyze them accurately before it is through with them, and send each atom to its proper place. It is also as sensitive to quantity as to quality. Too much it indignantly expels; too little it quietly ignores. To the precise elements required, the promptness of its response is oftentimes as surprising as a charm.
“Into the study of the bodily organization, its functions and sensibilities, on this exquisite plan, homoeopathy leads us, and brings us face to face with the very poetry of therapeutics. For there is poetry in it, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. Just as there is poetry in mathematics, poetry in astronomy, or in chemistry, or in every commonest thing for that matter, if we have but the eyes to see and the good taste to appreciate it. Now, the careful conscientious, thorough study of any thing, always brings to view this latent poetry of its existence. Were it otherwise, no great scientist could ever have lived, for none of them could ever be happy in his work.
There must be something in the study, or the work, that wins, and fascinates, and rewards, or we shall cease to pursue it; and this something we never find in the alphabets, but in the grandeur and beauty of the thought of which they ultimately become the translucent embodiment. And in the alphabet of medicine, which calls this drug a carthartic, and that an emetic, and another a narcotic, or in the theory and practice of the physician who uses drugs according to this exhaustive and brilliant analysis; and who studies the human organism after the same exalted plan; there is not much visible poetry; nor is there anything involved except the fee, that could possibly tempt such a man to persevere in his labors.
Now, homoeopathy is the last advanced step of therapeutics, a step which demands a finer and more thorough analysis of disease and its cure, a closer questioning therefore of the living, sentient organism itself, which leads, as we have said before to the very poetry of therapeutics, and makes the physician an artist. The moral of all this is, that if a physician would succeed, he must have a love for his art and work, and that he will have this almost of necessity, if he has anything like a true and large comprehension of them. Any success not founded upon this basis is neither honorable nor desirable; it is either a rare stroke of luck, or the result of pretence and quackery.
“To the physician, therapeutics. . . the art of healing. . . is every thing. Anatomy, physiology, pathology chemistry, materia medica, and so forth. . . all these he calls branches of medicine-but therapeutics is the main trunk that unites and supports them all, and for its increase, sustenance and strength, they all elaborate their products. Not one of these branches has any real value whatsoever, except what it derives form its relation to therapeutics; and when the physician enters into actual practice, he is for the first time in a position to realize adequately this fact. To enable us first to understand, and then to end or alleviate the sufferings of the sick, is the one exclusive value of Gray and Dalton and Gross and Hahnemann, and all the rest of them. In medical science everything is for therapeutics.
That is all the physician need care for in it, as it, as it is certainly all for which his patients will care. You may understand your patients anatomy to the smallest bone of his body; you may describe to him the exact condition of his nauseated stomach, and trace before him with ever so much professional rapture all the convolutions of his tortured intestines; you may make the results of post-mortem investigation, in such cases as his, stand forth almost palpably to his senses;l but the one vital interest to him after all is Can your cure him? If not, your physic, and your learning,to the dogs. He will none of it. This point is a very essential one for the physician. He who would be a successful practitioner must never lose sight of it.
Therapeutics is not only the trunk of medical sciences, it is a science sui generis; so that one might possibly be a good anatomist, a good chemist, a good physiologist, and withal an exceedingly bad doctor. In studying the anatomy of his patient, he overlooks his health. Thus it is that the development of a doctor is like the growth of a tree. Watching either of them closely, you will first notice the appearance above ground of two or three rather timid looking, half-unfolded, and very green leaves.
The next thing to become visible is the central branch, then another, and so on, until the full complement is attained. Now, a superficial observer might readily be lead to suppose that these rather prominent upshots constituted the entire tree. But a further developments corrects this illusion. In due time the main trunk is his therapeutics. And it existed all the time, though hidden beneath the soil. Appearing last, it nevertheless is first”.
The editor of the United States Medical and Surgical Journal for that year said that it sounded the “keynote” of homoeopathic success, past and future, and we frankly confess that among the many things that we have heard or read during the past many years, we have found nothing more pointed and instructive than this.
I trust that these excerpts may not only be read-but studied.
