Read before the Homoeopathic Forum, held at Glendale, Calif., Feb. 1, 1943, and sponsored by the Homoeopathic Laymens Association of Southern California. Reprinted from the April, 1943, Pacific Coast Homoeopathic Bulletin.
Mr. Chairman, members of the Southern California Homoeopathic Laymens Association, and friends of homoeopathy:.
I am happy to have the privilege of appearing on this program for a few minutes to tell you something about a fascinatingly simple, yet scientific method of helping you recover your health when you are ill, and, if used as an “ounce of prevention,” to keep you well. I refer to the procedure of medical treatment known as homoeopathy.
Some of you are well acquainted with homoeopathy and what this type of medical treatment, without the use of any strong drugs, has meant to you and your family; but to many others, the name is unfamiliar. In the past twenty-five years many fads have come and gone, and their LACK of permanency is proof that there was nothing worthwhile in them. So it is with many things relating to our health and the preservation of it.
Homoeopathy is not a fad. This year it will celebrate its 163rd anniversary, and physicians all over the world are deeply conscious of the fact that the homoeopathic procedure of treatment is essentially the same as it was when first discovered. The fact that its basic principles have withstood 163 years of usage among the sick of all ages and nationalities is incontrovertible proof that homoeopathy utilizes a natural law of Cure which is as changeless as the law of gravity.
Some may say, “But what isnt enough, I want the latest things in medicine.” Did you ever stop to think what the latest things would be if compared to firmly established facts? For example, is the multiplication table any better today than it was a hundred years ago? Is there a “latest way” of multiplying two times two to get a better answer than a man did a hundred years ago? May I suggest that it would be better to say, “I want only unquestioned medical truths applied to the treatment of my difficulty, because I realize that the latest fad may be a dangerous generalization and cause me more harm than good”.
What is the word “homoeopathy” and what does it mean? In view of the fact that this is called a “Homoeopathic Forum,” it should be doubly fitting that your attention be directed toward its derivation and meaning. It is derived from two words meaning “like” or “similar” and “disease” or “affection.”It means that it is a system of curing human ills with medicine, which when tested, proved to affect the HEALTHY body as if it were already diseased. Hence, the phrase “likes cure likes” was coined, which is really based on the fundamental Law of Cure or Law of Cure or Law of Similars. In other words, only a medicine capable of producing an ARTIFICIAL disease in a HEALTHY person can ever cure a SICK person suffering from a NATURAL disease which affects him in the same way as the medicine did when it was tested on the HEALTHY person.
Homoeopathy works just as dependably today as it did when first discovered and is recognized as a complete system of medical treatment. There is an interesting story surrounding its discovery by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann which runs something like this: Among Dr. Hahnemanns many gifts was that of mastery over languages, including even some of then more or less forgotten ones, such as Sanskrit. Hence, he often would find some priceless discovery in the course of his studies which he would immediately translate into other languages, and so contribute much to sciences of his day. By the way, he was born in 1755, making him twenty-one years of age when the American Declaration of Independence was signed, which will give you an idea of the age in which he lived.
One day, while translating a very fine work on medicine, he was struck by a thought in the chapter dealing with quinine — that since this medicine made anyone sick who carelessly handled it or worked with it, to such a degree that one thought the sufferer had malaria, this must explain why quinine was so often able to cure malaria, since its action on the body was similar to the action of the disease called malaria.
This started Dr. Hahnemann to thinking and planning. What do you suppose he decided the discovery on himself, and so began taking small but definite dose of quinine, though he was perfectly well at the time. The result was to him amazing in that he developed the typical malaria symptoms–though, mind you, not because of becoming infected with malaria, but solely from the testing or proving of the quinine upon himself.
Dont you think it logical for this brilliant-minded pioneer to try this theory on himself first and others later, and what is to my way of thinking at least of equal importance–to test the quinine on a human being in this fashion rather than on dumb animals alone? So it is that when Belladonna, a medicine no doubt well-known to many of you, was proved, it so affected the provers as if they were suffering from scarlet fever, that your well trained homoeopaths today cant help thinking of this medicine whenever they are called to attend a scarlet fever patient.
Another interesting example comes to my mind as I am speaking to you; namely, the effect on sufferers when peeling onions–your eyes water and sometimes sting, the nose waters, and you often sneeze, which, though in a crude fashion, shows you how some things affect us. Well, homoeopathy has studied and proved many of these things, and even onions are often used in treating certain types of head colds–again illustrating how “likes cure likes,” or how the Law of Cure operates. See how simple it is to understand when you are but willing to listen? Remember, mans ideas may change, but natures laws do not, and neither, therefore, do the Laws of Cure as applied by homoeopathy toward human ills.
Your homoeopathic doctor is first, last and always a thoroughly trained doctor of medicine and has taken what one can call post-graduate study in the behaviour of medicines. Hence, he is an expert in the knowledge of medicine and its many uses. Therefore, wouldnt it be logical to seek an expert in the use of medicine, if your problem is such in nature? A mechanism as delicate as a living body should only be placed in the hands of an expert in treatment; and only a homoeopath can claim such a title, based solely upon his many years given over to research in the field of medicine–years sometimes after his regular medical studies are over.
Since homoeopathy is nothing but the knowledge of how medicines affect people when given in the smallest amount needed to produce a result, one is never fearful of taking an overdose, nor is one made sicker by the medicine itself. You see, all any doctor or even surgeon can do for you is to stimulate your body to do its own healing and thus you are cured.
Those of you who are at all familiar with handling an automobile know that the electric starter only serves to turn the motor over fast enough to start in running, and immediately your starter stops turning. Well, so it is with our bodies when they are sick–simply unable to crank themselves up with a starter, and THAT is what homoeopathy can do for you. Dont you think it is silly to keep pouring big doses of medicine into ones body,if it is not only unnecessary, but might even be harmful, and particularly if the medicines simply act as your electric starter does in your car?.
Because homoeopathy now means, to you, my friends, special and minutely scientific understanding of not only what medicines consist of, but what is equally important, how they act inside our bodies–both well and sick, and you readily see why the homoeopathically trained doctor can, depending upon his individual skill and knowledge, successfully undertake the treatment of any and all human ills which are at all curable or possible to relieve, giving as he does, not many medicines mixed up at one time, but one and only one at a time, and choosing that single remedy because his skill and knowledge tell him your condition, at that exact time, needs that particular medicine.
In other words, he selects one particular medicine to fit your present state of health. Yesterday, or maybe tomorrow, some of the conditions may have changed. After all, we have seen how diseases develop into stages one after another, and that being so, is it so strange to expect that each stage may require a separate and distinct choice of medicine, suited ideally to its particular character and nature? I dont think so. Do you? I wonder how many of my listeners have thought the very same thing, many times over.
I hope I have helped you in some measure to share what the homoeopathic doctor feels is to him a rare and distinct privilege; namely, to serve humanity with all the intelligence and integrity he possesses. He believes it is a physicians highest duty and only calling–to restore health to the sick and preserve it among the well! And so, you can be assured that the highest aim of your homoeopathic doctor is to heal you speedily, gently, and to restore your health in the shortest, most reliable, and safest manner ever discovered by man.
