I wish to consider the scope of the Bureau of Obstetrics and Pediatrics as extending from prior to conception on through the various developmental stages, both as regards parents and child, until at least sixteen years after birth of the child which, at birth, becomes an individual unit.
It is not my purpose to attempt to cope with the various phases of pedagogy or adolescence. In my opinion, based on personal experience and observation, there is no field where homoeopathy can, nor where homoeopathy does, if conscientiously practiced, show a richer harvest for the prevention and relief of suffering humanity.
Thus if perspective parents and later prospective mothers can come under the care of a true homoeopath, this will result in fewer agonizing labors, with no hazardous post partum. And the condition of their children and their childrens children will show a purity and stamina of body and mind, all with the result that there will be developed a citizenship of the highest type.
In these day of extreme tension, when our very souls are being tried, when we are considering ways and means of meeting the ever-present problem of existence, as well as that of doing our best in helping to hasten the glad day of the universal brotherhood of man, is it not worth a little of our thought to stop for a few minutes in our rush and consider ways and means for the best development of the child?.
A child is a man in embryo. We hear much in these days of our rights, the rights of capital and labor, the inalienable rights of man. How about the rights of the embryo? Should not every possible agency, national, State, community and individual, be alert to the right of the embryo, as well as the child, to have its best development, physical, mental and moral?.
The health of our youth is being more and more closely safeguarded and great advancement is being made along the lines of ventilation, diet and exercise.
The ever-increasing army of school inspectors, playground guardians, physical culture instructors as well as school and college educators are all expending their efforts in their endeavor to conserve the rights of our children.
For many years I have been revolving in my mind and endeavoring to formulate, even though very fragmentarily, some ideas and some ideals pertaining to another right of the child, namely, the right of birth; the right of a good heritage.
The right to be well born is what I wish to have you consider with me for a few minutes in the hope that it will act as a little leaven in the interstices of our minds and cause us as individuals as well as a body of homoeopaths to go out and do our duty.
It is a self-evident truth that the unborn child has an inalienable right to be ushered into this world free from disease, from all predisposition to mental and physical defects.
No child ever was or ever will be born into this world in full possession of all the attainments and graces, but every child should have the right of inherent mental and physical ability, which if properly nurtured and developed would enable it to fill its mission in life creditably. This must appeal to every sensible man or woman as the vital question of the hour. What we need is a race of better men and women, mentally and physically superior, free from hereditary ills and defects which burden life.
It means the saving of our country from moral and physical decay and the preservation of its integrity and position among other nations. The scriptural doctrine that the sins of the fathers are visited on the children under the third and fourth generation is literally true. Were there time I could cite many cases from my own observation in confirmation of this doctrine.
Nature hates abnormality and in so far as possible sees to it that the abnormal and degenerate do not propagate indefinitely. The same laws govern man that govern the animal and vegetable kingdom.
The first thing the horse breeder has to learn is that only a few horses out of many which are bred are of any value to improve the breed. In the animal as in the human a great future demands a great past. If our ancestors are not of the best, our family name will soon disappear from the honor roll, unless we mate well and mate our offspring well.
If we are to erect a great building we seek the advice of an architect and an expert master builder. We cannot expect to build a healthy, brainy, enduring family unless we have competent expert advice. What does the average youth either know or care about racial improvement during adolescence? Some day when it is too late he is awakened by the sad results of his own ignorant marriage.
It is the duty of all parents, and much more the duty of medical practitioners, to so thoroughly post themselves as to be able to give expert advice to all parents, and thus enable them to intelligently instruct their children in the fundamental facts and principles of heredity and reproduction.
Some people raise children, a few who know their business, breed them. If the seed of life comes from good healthy parentage, good ancestry and devoid of bad inclinations or tendencies, you may expect a healthy child.
Is any man or woman mentally or physically able to beget healthy offspring after receiving treatment for either syphilis or gonorrhoea in accord with the so termed “modern scientific method”? Does this treatment cure?.
In our bureau today we hope to show how to aid and not combat nature in preserving health and effecting a cure.
Give us clean, pure parents who give intelligent heed to the care of the body and mind, both as regards food for mind and body, good physical and social outlook, suitable climate, food and exercise, inherently sound. “I like to find a man of mind.
His body not forgetting,
Whereby to make a perfect whole.
The priceless jewel of his soul,
May find a worthy setting”.
Defectives should be sterilized while men of great activity of mind and body and strong constitution should be intelligently bred. Laws should be enacted and enforced, or even back of that the public should be so thoroughly educated and drilled that all who have a tendency to heart, kidney, lung, nerve, or blood disease, or any other malady should not form union with those of like tendencies.
The United States expends over one hundred millions of dollars annually for the care of the defective and outcasts from society. The time has come when thinking, patriotic citizens must realize the importance of breeding strong, healthy, brainy and brawny children with patriotism in their hearts.
Grant to the unborn their inalienable right to a sound body, brain and spirit. The laws of heredity apply to man with as much accuracy as they do to animal or plant.
Is there a crime so base as the injury of that vital substance from which springs the men and women of the future–a force not to abuse, but to conserve as a sacred trust and to hand on to our children?.
We all love our country, but she is on the road to decay unless thinking people realize the situation and pass and enforce laws that will prevent it. The until produce the unfit, men of worth come from parentage of worth.
It is just as bad for a man to murder his wife by infecting her with a foul, loathsome disease as it is to murder her with knife, axe, gun or drug.
The time will come when physicians will be required to make a public record of all victims of syphilis. This is already done in some States.
Those contemplating matrimony should know all about each other. If all young men knew that at certain ages they must submit to examination for the use of the public and the report made an official record, there would be less wild oats sown and less disease.
Men who can successfully carry on the industries of our country and defend our nation against the fire, must be men of vigor. Stamina and strength, good constitution and the right ancestry.
The unborn child has the right to come into the world free from mental and physical defects and superior in every respects to their parents. The crying need is for a patriotic statesman of brain and power, educated to the needs of our nation in this respect, who will look into the subject from a scientific standpoint and then, as a pioneer, champion the cause of the American baby.
If men and women would only lead normal lives, they would be free of all diseases and hereditary defects and they would not give birth to defective children.
Are we as homoeopathic physicians honest and square to our own name, as well as that of homoeopathy and to our country?.
The unborn babies stretch out their tiny hands from the mystic future and plead: Let me be well born. Give me my inalienable right–a healthy mind and soul. Let me be an embryonic man created in the image of God, or let me remain unborn.
