“I should like to ask what the medical men and scientists are doing for the sake of the country. One finds them readily going to foreign lands to learn new modes of treating special diseases. I suggest that they should turn their attention towards the seven lacks of villages of India. They should immediately discover that all the qualified men and women are required for village service not after the manner of the West but after the manner of the East. They will then adapt themselves to many indigenous systems.
India does not need imported drugs grown in the villages themselves. But more than drugs they have to teach the people the right mode of living. What shall I say of the scientists? Are they giving their attention to growing more food not again through the aid of artificial manures but through real scientific treatment of the soil and through a wise use of organic manure? In Noakhali I saw the people even making wise use of the terribly destructive water-hyacinth which grows wild and blocks the very necessary water ways. This they will do when they live for the country rather than for themselves.”.
Let us take account of how the foregoing remarks of Mahatmaji reflect on the Homoeopathic system of treatment as practised in Bengal, to wit, all over India, Multitude of drugs are imported from foreign lands, those that grow abundantly in our villages, forests and in the hill-tracts. Many of these are being exported to Europe and the U.S.A. in dessicated or powdered or tincture forms.
Plants, barks, seeds, roots and even cobra venom and dried cockroaches are exported from India and come back here as tinctures and triturations bearing labels of the foreign manufacturers which enhance the prestige and price of such preparations. The hardened slave- mentality and aping propensities of the medical men of this country are redundantly reflected in their proclivity for anything foreign.
The Indian pharmacists fight shy to prepare those medicines locally for uncertainty of support from the profession and the people. We admit there are good and honest pharmacists, and there are bad and dishonest pharmacists. Like men in the Homoeopathic practice there are qualified pharmacists and unqualified pharmacists. But the undesirable ailments may any time be eliminated by keeping rigorous control and making frequent surprise inspections if the General Council care to implement provisions of Statute 10 (e) here and now. This they will do when they live for the country rather than for themselves, says Mahatmaji.
Calcutta
Chief Editor, Homeopathic Herald