I am very sensible of the honor you have done me in electing me President of this International gathering: the more so because it has been, from the first, quite impossible for me to be among you, as I could have wished.
I can never, forget that America is my “spiritual home” in homoeopathy, having been advised to go to Chicago by Dr. Gibson Miller, of Glasgow, to his old teacher, Dr. James Tyler Kent, at Hahnemann College. I desire to acknowledge, with gratitude, what that great teacher did for me. His kindness and enthusiasm are refreshing memories; and I am glad that we still have one of his assistants, Dr. Grimmer, with us, whose patience with a neophyte was remarkable.
Now, it would be presumption on my part to think that I could teach you anything in regard to the practical application of the Doctrines of Hahnemann, and I have had the greatest difficulty in choosing a suitable subject for my Presidential Address.
I am proud to be the first President from across the seas; and it would seem fitting that I should direct your attention to what is transpiring in other countries regarding the position of homoeopathy, and the estimation in which it is held elsewhere at the present moment.
It is pleasing to record that, as regards the medical world in general, we are now finding a readings to examine the teaching or homoeopathy and a willingness to listen, altogether new in the history of medicine; and I think I shall be able to tell you why. Anyway, such is the fact. With us in the British Isles, it is more than a mere willingness to listen-there has arisen a demand for information on the subject of homoeopathy, and for instruction in regard to its principles and practice.
[ Papers on homoeopathy have been delivered at The Royal Society of Medicine, and to the Centenary Meeting of The British Medical Association: and a copy of another Lecture on The Principles of Homoeopathy, read at The Royal Society of Medicine, was sent to several thousands of allopathic doctors]. Again and again, of late, we get requests from the great medical schools to go and lecture to the students on homoeopathy, and from medical societies branches of the British Medical Association-which used to be so utterly inimical, to meet the doctors and tell them what it is all about.
Such meetings are most successful. Invariably the lecturer is kept on for an hour, or a couple of hours, answering the pertinent questions of those who earnestly desire to known. One feels that the seed is thus sown: one finds, later on, that it is germinating. But you will agree with me that homoeopathy must be systematically taught: that the bare acknowledgment of the Law of Healing, without its corollaries, may tend towards a new tolerance and respect, but is not going to lead very far.
Therefore, we are in the act of launching a Post-graduate Correspondence Course, for which we have had many requests, and from which we are hoping great things. The profession at large will be circularised, and no doctor who takes this course, and who applies himself earnestly to its study, fan fail to be at least conversant with the actual teachings-founded, as they were, on experimentation and long experience of Hahnemann. This is a wiser extension of the policy of our journal Homoeopathy, which, under the able editorship of Dr. M.L. Tyler, has for several years constituted itself a new “mouthpiece for Hahnemann” as an enthusiastic reader recently expressed it-and has been striving to provide directions for correct prescribing, in simple acute cases, for those who desire to test and obtain proficiency in the homoeopathic art.
Why is Old School coming to us, at long? Because, whiling being satiated with science and knowledge, it is realising that the one thing it lacks is the one thing it needs-POWER. Knowledge of disease-knowledge of drug-action-what are they? lacking the essential knowledge, how to apply the one for the relief of the other. there must be the coordinating principle-LAW if power is to result, i.e., the power to deal curatively, with assurance, and foreknowledge, with the sick individual. And, after all, this is our very raison detre as doctors!.
Yet, it is passing strange! In an age when everything else is accelerating-while knowledge advances by leaps and bounds-when one considers all the new powers and wonders that science is dangling before our eyes, does it not seem absurd to hark back 100 years for insight into the power to heal?.
In our profession, also, changes are so rapid that it has been said, “If a doctor who dies today should come back in 50 years from now, and attempt to take up his profession, he would have to graduate all over again”.
And yet, as we know, there was one great physician of the past who, were he to come back to earth today, could take up his work as he left it. That is so amazing! He would find new and exciting development-possibilities-confirmations: but the essentials would be absolutely the same because based on LAW. Moreover, he would find hundreds- no, thousands of doctors in all countries of the world, doing precisely what he did-treating their patients as he treated his, and experiencing thereby his astonishing results.
Moreover, were Hahnemann to come back today, he would discover that what he had foretold 100 years ago was becoming true: that science was rediscovering and emphasising his most disputed facts and teachings. For instance, in regard to the small dose, that ancient bugbear, as Hahnemann foresaw, even for his own
followers; and, for others, a subject of endless witticisms. No need to apologise for the small dose now! Radium-vitamins- ferments-ions-colloids-even mineral waters have done that, and have demonstrated, to some extent, the immense potentiality of the infinitely little.
A few facts, which I have already put forth elsewhere, will bear repetition.
Recent research on enzyme action and the standardisation of such agents as Thyroxin and Pituitrin had emphasised the action of minute quantities of all kinds of agents, from minerals to complex organic substances.
Romeis states that Thyroxin influences growth and development of tadpoles in dilutions of I in 5,000,000,000.
Jacoby shows that Potassium Cyanide activates the ferment urease in a dilution 1 in 1,000,000.
Macht has shown that the uterus of a virgin guinea-pig responds to such a dilute concentration of Histamine is could not be demonstrated by the most refined micro-chemical methods.
Cobra venom has been shown to haemolyse red blood corpuscles in a dilution of 1 in 10,000,000.
The addition of 4 parts i 10,000 of copper doubles the rate of toxin production from a culture of diphtheria bacilli. (Locke and Main).
These are merely random selections exemplifying the action of micro-doses in living cells-bacterial, amphibian and mammalian.
Hahnemann tells us that the smallest possible dose of a homoeopathic medicine will operate chiefly upon the diseased parts of the body, which have become extremely susceptible of a stimulus so similar “to their own disease”.
This increased sensitiveness of diseased parts is stressed by Bier also, who talks of the “extraordinarily sensitive disease threshold”, and who quotes Hufeland, “There is a reagent which is more delicate than the most delicate chemical reagent, and that is the reagent within the living organism.
As a crude instance of this increased sensitiveness in disease, Bier states that “it requires 250,000 times as much formic acid to produce symptoms in the healthy than in the gouty”.
Hahnemann, when applying to hypersensitive diseased tissues the one stimulus to which they were most sensitive, viz: the drug of like symptoms-that is to say, the drug that was proved to irritate those particular tissues-was forced, again and again, to reduce his doses.
The modern practice is towards smaller and smaller doses.
Sir William Willcox told me the other day that he was diminishing his doses in vaccine treatment, and thereby obtaining better results.
When using X-rays as a therapeutic measure, the Professor of RAdiology in London informed me that, since he had had perforce to reduce his dosage, the patients seemed to derive greater benefit, and there was less chance of risk.
Sir Langdon Brown, who was Regius Professor of Physic in the University of Cambridge, said in regard to “How do drugs act?”: “These therapeutic effects of vitamins and hormones illustrate another point-the potency of the minute dose.” (Observe that he uses Hahnemanns actual expression, The potency of the minute dose. Science is now expressing itself in the actual terms of Hahnemann.) He says,
When someone asked me how, I imagined I could produce any influence on the body by giving 5 grs. of a drug I replied that the body itself worked with fractions of a milligram. The potency of a hormone is enormous. Abels extract of the posterior lobe of the pituitary can produce contraction of the uterus when one part is dissolved in 15,000 million parts of water-one grain in 1,000 tons of fluid.
He went on,
This might be claimed as a point for homoeopathy. There is no doubt that Hahnemann had some valuable ideas, even is some of his premises were faulty; the symptoms as an expression of something that needed to be assisted rather than repressed: the value of expectant treatment: the efficacy of small doses-all these were progressive conceptions.
Weir received his medical education first at Glasgow University MB ChB 1907, and then on a sabbatical year in Chicago under the tutelage of Dr James Tyler Kent of Hering Medical College during 1908-9. Weir reputedly first learned of homeopathy through his contact with Dr Robert Gibson Miller.
John Weir wrote- Some of the Outstanding Homeopathic Remedies for Acute Conditions with Margaret Tyler, Homeopathy and its Importance in Treatment of Chronic Disease, The Trend of Modern Medicine, The Science and Art of Homeopathy, Brit Homeo Jnl, The Present Day Attitude of the Medical Profession Towards Homeopathy, Brit Homeo Jnl XVI, 1926, p.212ff, Homeopathy: a System of Therapeutics, The Hahnemann Convalescent Home, Bournemouth, Brit Homeo Jnl 20, 1931, 200-201, Homeopathy an Explanation of its Principles, British Homeopathy During the Last 100 Years, Brit Homeo Jnl 23, 1932: etc