Sisters and brothers of the profession, Ladies and Gentleman,.
I am deeply conscious of the honour you have done me in asking me to preside at a Homoeopathic Conference of such high standing as this. The honour lies in the fact that a man like myself happens to be, by training, profession and by right, a fully qualified member of the Allopathic School of Medicine.
And yet, if I have been granted the honour to be present among a body of homoeopathic practitioners, it surely must have a meaning. And it is this: In the eyes of many of my allopathic brethren, those who go over to, or advocate any system of medicine other than allopathy, are considered renegades and traitors to scientific medicine. They assume that there is only one medical science and that is allopathic medicine. They forget that there are many aspects to scientific medicine and that their view alone need not be the sole and only correct aspect.
To become narrow and dogmatic in ones scientific approach to phenomena leads to dogmatism, and that leads to prejudice and ignorance and intolerance. it ceases to be scientific. If to refuse to be dogmatic and doctrinaire is equivalent to becoming renegades, then very likely we are renegades. But, in reality, a renegade is a man who sells his convictions and his principles for some material reward or gain. He does not do so out of a sincere belief that what he is going over to is something better. His sole motive is financial and other material gain and not the grandeur of a principle that has won him over to its side.
But take the example of many of us allopaths, and their numbers are increasing day by day. We have openly embraced Homoeopathy with a full consciousness of the consequences of our action. Many of us have thrown up our allopathic profession at the height of our careers. Our incomes were good; we were considered quite efficient in our own line, and we had still further prospects of advancement in wealth and position if only we stuck on to our ropes.
Many of our professional brethren thought we were mad to throw up our profession and to take to something which was “Quackery”; especially when you consider that many of us, like the great Mahendra Lal Sircar and Hahnemann himself had to face financial collapse, starvation, humiliation, misunderstanding, derision, even the loss of former friends, leave alone income.
And if we have patiently borne all these disasters and proclaimed at considerable risks our burning faith, then I want to know how any honest, reasonable man can call such of us as renegades. It should occur to them that when men are willing to undergo sacrifices and loss, something very strong, something very worthwhile sacrificing for, must have inspired many of us to take the steps we have taken, as many had taken before.
As a former allopath, I can openly declare that a homoeopath, if he is a sincere worker, a true devotee of the ethics laid down by Hahnemann, can never hope to earn those large sums that even the average allopath earns with ease. Homoeopathy, if it is to be properly practised, must be genuinely and sincerely practised. It needs a great deal of industry, devotion, much searching of the heart, much devotion to an ideal, and a great sense of responsibility for human life.
In terms of payment, the work of a genuine Homoeopath can never be adequately compensated. Those who wish to come into the fold of Homoeopathy must be prepared for service, self-sacrifice, privation; and they must turn their back on the quest for wealth, ease, comfort and the acquisition of name and fame by the easy road. Homoeopathy has no changing fashions and fads to offer. There is no room for the expensive specialist and the high class society doctor that ponders to whims and moods of his wealthy patients.
At any rate not in homoeopathy. In Homoeopathy there is room only for the devoted and sincere worker who at the same time understands the philosophy of life. Yet, if knowing all these things some of us allopaths have chosen to take the hard and thorny road of Homoeopathy, then logically, must there not be something of undeniably convincing and majestic a quality in Homoeopathy that has drawn us allopaths to it?.
It is quite possible that we have mistaken in our choice. It very often happens that our emotions lead us astray, that we get lost in the maze of intellectual illusions which is Maya. But ten and twenty years should constitute enough time for scientists to realise their mistakes. Allopathy claims to teach us, who have studied it, the scientific attitude towards all scientific problems. We shall not be real scientists if we do not openly admit our mistakes. So would Homoeopathy be unscientific if it did not study and realise its own limitations and deficiencies.
Had we allopaths, who have accepted Homoeopathy, any clear and scientific reason to conclude that we had made a mistake in coming to Homoeopathy, we would have returned to our original calling, allopathy, long ago; for, the way back is always open to us. As a scientist, to the best of my conscience, I am here to declare, that after ten years of sincere and critical study of Homoeopathy, I have no reason, whatsoever, to abandon it today or in the future. And the fact that we have not done so, and very likely shall not do in the future, must indicate that Homoeopathy must have some value superior to the one we gave up.
No allopath who comes to investigate Homoeopathy with an open mind ever goes back to Allopathy. So tremendous is its hold on us. Constantine Hering, the ablest assistant to the great German allopath Hufeland, was sent by Hufeland to investigate into the claims of Homoeopathy; and he never came back. Neither did the prize scholar, Jousset, sent by the great French clinician Charcot. Neither did I, nor will anyone. I came because I was charged by my father to study ways and means to evolve the simplest scheme for medical aid to the villages. I found that allopathy could never solve the problems I was facing.
And the more I thought over it the more hopeless I became and the more I came to the inescapable conclusion that for the poverty-stricken villages of our country we shall have to employ any other system of medicine, it may be homoeopathy, it may be Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, anything but allopathy; and I shall have to investigate into their strengths and defects. As far as Homoeopathy is concerned, I can only say what Sir John Wier, physician to the King of England, said: “We have all been sceptics, but facts have been too strong for us. Over and over again doctors have been commissioned to look into it, in order to expose it, only to become its most enthusiastic exponents and adherents”.
But I believe that I shall be wasting your time if I talked to you about the strong points of Homoeopathy. On the contrary as a scientist I believe it is my duty to point out to you its limitations and its weaknesses which it is our duty to study and rectify; because our art, our profession must have one and only one purpose behind it and that is service of the country and its people. If we fail in that, if our art is unsuitable for that single purpose, if our science is too costly, if we ourselves are inefficient and incapable, then Homoeopathy is of no use to our country, no matter how useful it may be to the individual.
I have therefore not come to you, today, as a new convert, filled with the passionate reverence, awe and unbounded enthusiasm of a newly found faith, but as a scientist to discuss with you something of the stupendous problems that our country is facing, not only in matters of National Health but in every aspect of its national welfare. For twelve years I have been trying to study the almost hopeless and terrifying problems of the health of our unfortunate country which has been brought to the verge of ruin, altered into a barren desert and a festering cess-pool of a humanity uprooted by one hundred and fifty years of British rule over us.
Today a new India is rising out of the desolate ruins of the India that once was, India which was humiliated, enslaved, robbed of all its finer values. Let us be clear about one thing. I am by profession a physician. But more than that, I happen to be also a competent economist; and I tell you that a new India is in the throes of a new birth, in pain, blood and tears in the suicidal fratricidal wars of its misguided children. It is our own stupidity that we are waging wars against each other and drenching our precious land with our blood.
It may be that we shall return to sanity after a senseless orgy of mutual carnage, destruction and desolation of all finer values that was the tradition and common heritage of the children of this soil. But the destiny of our country does not depend upon our individual whims and fancies but on deep factors shaping world history. We can at most retard by our stupid actions its achievement. And this new India rising before our eyes is burdened with hundreds of problems old and new; and it will need great courage, faith and a new clear vision to face and solve those problems.
