MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
I feel greatly honoured in addressing this meeting, and I hope that I am able to tell you something that may prove to you of interest and of practical utility. I am going to speak to you about the new art of healing called Homoeopathy, and you may ask, “Why bring in a new art of healing ? Surely the orthodox science and art of healing has made the most wonderful progress in recent times and there is no need for anything new. In any case there can be nothing better”.
At all ages medical men have treated with the utmost contempt the medical practices of the past, and have proclaimed that the art and science of medicine had advanced immeasurably in recent times and was now at the highest pinnacle. One might write a book entitled “The unjustified Boastings of Medical Men of All Ages”. A century ago the most scientific medical men who proclaimed that the practice of medicine had arrived at the highest perfection mercilessly bled, purged, and salivated their patients. Kinds, emperors, presidents and popes were frequently bled to death by their incompetent medical advisers.
It is about a century ago that an important medical journal was founded in London which was called The Lancet, because bleeding was the solid rock upon which medical practice of the time was built. Bleeding, cupping, leeching, etc., have gone completely out of practice. A century ago a doctor would have been considered a quack who refused to bleed his patients. Now a doctor is considered a quack if he dares to bleed his patients, even if bleeding is advantageous or necessary, for instance in the case of high blood pressure or a threatened apoplectic stroke.
Medicine is ruled by fashion not by sense or by science. A century ago it was the fashion to “bleed profusely” even people who were dying of lack of blood or who had lost much blood from injury. Without any sense bleeding and leeching have been abandoned, and now every doctor uses the subcutaneous syringe. The journal, The Lancet, should be re-christened.
We have been told by thousands of doctors that medicine is now “most scientific”. Unfortunately, medicine is not a science but is an art, and modern medicine is not scientific. Those practices which are called most scientific are all most unnatural. It is far more “scientific” to give a subcutaneous injection of Iron and Quinine than to give Iron and Quinine by the mouth. Hence the former is done as frequently as possible, notwithstanding the very grave risk involved in all subcutaneous treatments.
The body is provided with the most wonderful protective arrangements with regard to substances which enter it by the natural entrances, mouth, nose, etc. If we swallow a dirty fly while motoring it does not matter in the least. The filth is promptly neutralised by the Hydrochloric acid of the stomach. If a small quantity of fly dirt is scientifically placed under the skin, the individual may die of it. Many people have died of injections of substances such as Quinine and Iron which are harmless when taken by the mouth. An unfortunate woman came to me. She had been living in India, was anaemic, and the doctor prescribed Iron and Quinine for her and gave her injections accordingly.
Immediately afterwards huge swellings developed around the spot injected, they became enormous; swellings developed in every direction, and a surgeon was called in to cut away these growths. Then they appeared all over the body, and the poor woman was told that she suffered from incurable Hodgkins disease and was sent away to England to die.
Modern medicine is not scientific but pretends to be scientific. It is dominated by laboratories, partly scientific laboratories, and partly commercial laboratories. Both are equally dangerous. If a doctor has a case which he finds difficult to handle, he sends the excretions and secretions to a laboratory for investigation and advice. The laboratory man, who has never seen the patient, will advise him to inject this or that serum or other substance.
The patient may suffer from a trouble which was caused by faulty feeding, chronic constipation, overstrain, under-consumption of liquid, abuse of laxatives, faulty posture, abuse of condiments, use of aluminium utensils in the kitchen, dry rot in the wall, etc., and he may be cured by leaving off mustard, taking exercise, taking sufficient liquid, etc. Instead of this he is given injections.
The position is still more undesirable when you study the influence of the laboratories run for profit. During the last few decades innumerable wealthy drug houses have arisen. They are run for profit, and they are making enormous profits. These drug houses cannot make much profit by selling simple substances such as Sulphur, Vegetable Charcoal, Epsom Salts, Bicarbonate of Potash and simple herbs which everyone can provide. They can make huge profits only by furnishing the public and the medical profession with new and rare substances of which no one has heard before and which can be sold at fancy prices.
These money-making institutions naturally advise not the use of ordinary Sulphur by the mouth, which is sold, I believe, at 2d. per lb., but they advise the use of Colloidal Sulphur by hypodermic syringe, and their scientific retainers or employees, or dupes proclaim in articles, pamphlets and books that Colloidal Sulphur used with a hypodermic syringe is infinitely better and more scientific than the old-fashioned Sulphur taken safely by the mouth.
A doctor gets a kind of nimbus when he uses the subcutaneous syringe and rare drugs. Instead of using Sulphur at 2d. per lb. he uses Colloidal Sulphur squirted under the skin, and gives injections at 10s. 6d., a guinea, or more a time. Thus he enables the manufacturer of these substances to make huge profits and he makes a large profit himself.
Formerly, a doctor prescribed a 80z. bottle of medicine, a teaspoonful or a tablespoonful to be taken three times a day. He gave a prescription, and the medicine could be renewed indefinitely. His profit was small. Now the doctor is taught to replace the bottle of medicine by a dozen or two dozen or three dozen injections which may bring in a score of pounds or more.
There is an extremely strenuous competition among the drug houses. Every one of them brings out in hot haste numerous scientific medicines, serums, etc., which are recommended to the doctors ion the professional press, partly in huge advertisements, and partly in articles which may have been written on behalf of the drug houses and which are merely a disguised form of advertisement.
The busy doctor who has a serious case of rheumatoid arthritis, or pernicious anaemia, or asthma or cancer, glances through his medical journal and finds a full-page advertisement of a new substance which promises to cure his apparently incurable cases. If the patient is a cancer patient he may be given lead injections, which may add lead poisoning to cancer poisoning. Thus the “scientific doctor” is, as a rule, merely the selling agent of the great drug houses. He is the dupe of the great drug houses and of the scientific laboratories.
In any case, the art of healing has never been at a lower level than it is now. Modern medicine is a disgrace and a danger. It is based partly on the evidence of the dead house. Modern serum treatment and drug treatment are bases as well on animal experiments, although animals re-act very differently from human beings. The drug houses and scientific laboratories try a new substance on a number of laboratory animals and similar experiments on human beings are tried soon after by doctors, often with the most disastrous results. After vivisection of animals we get vivisection of human beings.
For every case of disease, disease which may be due to faulty living, the laboratory man immediately produces diseased material derived from some animal or other, horse, rabbit, etc., and the disease matter derived from such animals is injected into the blood stream of some unfortunate patient.
Modern medicine is not based on science and common-sense, but it is an outrage on commonsense and an outrage on logical thinking. The laboratory man at the one end and the pathologist at the other end rule modern medical practice. In every medical textbook we have lengthy descriptions of the appearance of diseased bodies and tissues after death, and upon their appearance treatments are based — a ludicrous absurdity.
The laboratory men with their animal experiments have completely lost sense of realities. For more than half a century laboratory workers have studied the causation and cure of cancer. The cancer research laboratories are filled with cages of unfortunate animals who are slowly tortured to death, and if these scientific laboratories succeed in producing cancer in rats and rabbits by rubbing tar in their fur or by inserting glass beads into their gall bladders, etc., they consider it a triumph of science, and read long papers on these developments. The study of cancer as a human problem has been completely lost sight of.
James Ellis Barker wrote a very large number of books, both under the name James Ellis Barker and under his real German name Otto Julius Eltzbacher, The Truth about Homœopathy; Rough Notes on Remedies with William Murray; Chronic Constipation; The Story of My Eyes; Miracles Of Healing and How They are Done; Good Health and Happiness; New Lives for Old: How to Cure the Incurable; My Testament of Healing; Cancer, the Surgeon and the Researcher; Cancer, how it is Caused, how it Can be Prevented with a foreward by William Arbuthnot Lane; Cancer and the Black Man etc.