WHICH SHALL IT BE


Then why be stampeded? Why all the hysteria? Why the instillation of Satanic fear in the heart of the student or the doctor in embryo? Fear is the child of ignorance. It belongs, in medicine, to allopathy. An acquaintance and association with allopathy breeds and fosters fear, while the same with homoeopathy breeds and fosters courage and confidence.


“Tis hard to say if greater want of skill appear in writing or in judging ill, but of the two less dangerous is the offense to live our reason than mislead our sense.” And while it is sometimes “best our censure to restrain and let the charitably dull be vain.” it would be all right were there no principle at stake. Principle is all that is worth fighting for; that makes for civilization; that makes us desirable and acceptable to each other.

As we read the various medical journals labeled “Homoeopathic,” we cannot quite make out as to whether we are being allowed to practice homoeopathy by the grace of the A.M.A. or by the State charters granted up to this end.

It seems that to satisfy morbid medical ignorance, and through its propaganda, morbid lay ignorance, it is better that one thousand cases of appendicitis or of diphtheria die by the operation route or the antitoxin route, respectively, than that one case should die from internal medicines. Why? The welfare of the patients or their friends? The desire to prevent future suffering? By no means. On the contrary, from our experience with these disease, we can discover but two motives-financial and down right laziness.

This laziness is mirrored in our so-called health departments, especially in regard to diagnosis. If you have a case that has taken cold and you cannot diagnose it, it is “flu mania”; if an eruption and the victim is over ten it is small- pox, if under ten it may be chicken-pox if it is a sore throat it is diphtheria. Easy, isnt it? Our boys are spending six years in so-called medical colleges in order to be fitted to get away that kind of rot. Shades of Hippocrates and Hahnemann, what are we coming to? And we meekly endorse it.

Pope said: “All fools have an itching to deride and fain would be upon the laughing side.” Fools laugh, wise men investigate. it requires no gray matter to reject a thing, but it does require gray matter to prove or disprove it. Is this, then, the reason why we “average homoeopaths” delight to be upon the laughing side and to deride our real homoeopathic brethren because they refuse to jump aboard the “fools” bandwagon merely for the sake of being able to laugh?

We note that in the july issue of J.A.I.H. our good friend Clifford Mitchell, M.D., has jumped aboard the wagon and joined the army of “vociferous exponents” that love to hang crepe on homoeopathy in favor of antitoxin and allopathy.

It surely is time for all believes in homoeopathy to sit up and take notice when most of our journals and textbooks urge us to, and condemn us if we do not, abandon the internal remedy in favor of vaccines, serums and antitoxins. Just why, gentlemen? Has the INDICATED remedy failed? Taking remedy out of a homoeopathic (?) textbook that was NOT indicated and failing with it is the fault of the prescriber, not the system. Has the cruder method proven a greater success than the INDICATED remedy? Have our good friends, Raisbeck, Mitchell, Harkness and Raue, proven the superiority of the injection and the scarification methods of hit-and-miss prevention and cure side by side with THE INDICATED remedy and found the former a success and the latter a failure?

If so, where can one scan the result of their findings? Dr. Lois Villani (France) is reported to have, in an epidemic, proven that the internal administration of the same remedy was over 800 per cent. more effective than the hypodermic method, and he did not hesitate to make his findings public. This then is the first step in the proof that the internal method is the real and only way to cure or prevent disease. That man is uncompromisingly individual requires the INDICATED, not a remedy to cure his troubles, which constitutes the second step. The last step is the potency, the higher the better.

Then why be stampeded? Why all the hysteria? Why the instillation of Satanic fear in the heart of the student or the doctor in embryo? Fear is the child of ignorance. It belongs, in medicine, to allopathy. An acquaintance and association with allopathy breeds and fosters fear, while the same with homoeopathy breeds and fosters courage and confidence. If there is any place on earth where courage, confidence and heroism should be displayed, it is in the sickroom.

Just what can a young doctor accomplish in that sickroom when he is already defeated by fear and doubt? We can readily understand why an allopathic textbook should class smallpox and diphtheria, as Raue does, “The most serious and the most dreaded of all diseases.” But when one says, as Raue does, this to a real homoeopathic, we cannot enthuse over his homoeopathy or his authority, for my experience with both is that they respond as readily as any other disease to the indicated remedy.

We note that Raue devote 5 1/4 pages to serums (as against 22 pages to homoeopathic indications in diphtheria) with the usual superior condemnation of those who do not use them, and tells where in one particular case the serums reduced the death rate to four per cent. But he like all the rest tacitly refrains from following up these wonderful cures. While on the other hand he dismisses in a dozen lines the internal remedy used in eighty-one cases with a single death-a rate of less than one and one-quarter per cent., and says nothing of those who fail to use this remedy that proved superior to antitoxin. Why the discrimination against this superior remedy devoid of all evil after-effects, in favor of an interior one?.

Hahnemann tried to lead us out of this sort of ignorance, but like the rescued horse blinded by the smoke, we are determined to rush back into the fire and be consumed. The indicated remedy will do the work effectually and alone; with antitoxin? If so, why does Raue advise Bell. and Kali perm. in conjunction? Again, here are some clear cut indications for a certain remedy in diphtheria:”Nasal obstruction, carbonization of blood, extreme prostration.” Of course, you recognize the remedy at once. There is but ONE remedy having that group. If you do not, is it then any wonder the beginner fails and gladly to the interior and more dangerous method?.

Mr. Proponent of antitoxin, you are at liberty to paw the air all you want to and all the worms on earth can turn, you may call us all the long-eared jackasses you care to for not using antitoxin; but we can afford to smile and calmly tell you, if you wish to see to whom you are speaking, to go and look into the mirror.

In the twenty-three years I have held down my present office I have treated fully 300 cases of throat trouble. Fully 100 of those cases would and could have been pronounced diphtheria. Over 20 of that 100 came to me out of allopathic hands with the label “true diphtheria,” and I think you will have a hard time finding a death certificate for anyone of the 300.

Did you ever hear of a case of diphtheria dropping dead before the doctor could leave the house, immediately after the administration of a dose of the indicated remedy? Well, that is precisely what happened in Toledo just recently after a “shot” of antitoxin. Another one got over the throat trouble only to drop over dead from heart lesion after antitoxin. Did the Health Board make an outcry about those ceases? Not that anyone knows of.

I have yet to see the first case cured by antitoxin that failed to respond to the indicated remedy, but I have saved several cases where antitoxin failed, by the indicated remedy.

In favor of antitoxin and its results in diphtheria as reported to have been so aptly expressed by Dr. Baldwin, recent ex-president O.S.M.S., there are three kinds of lies-“lies, damned lies and statistics”.

Professors and homoeopathic(?) doctors engaged in writing articles, text and other books discrediting homoeopathy and the indicated remedy in favor of allopathy and antitoxin are in questionable business. It has gotten the point where a real homoeopath dare not report a case of sore throat or skin disease any more. A sorry state of affairs, is it not?.

The men who man our colleges, our hospitals and most of our medical journals would like to join hands with the allopaths in trying to cajole the profession and the laity that the allopathic and the homoeopathic treatments are so similar that the difference is quite negligible. Let us cite two cases and see. These occurred just recently.

Case I: Master Forgrave, age five, taken with what his, an old school, doctor diagnosed “black diphtheria.” Antitoxin was immediately given, but there must have been a hitch somewhere, for the boy grew steadily worse. The parents were induced to change to homoeopathy. This is what we found: Pulse rapid, weak; extreme restlessness and anxiety; burning thirst, drinks little and often; great prostration; dry wrinkly membrane in fauces; throat ulcerated; excoriating discharge from nose; great fetor; oozing of blood from under membrane; < at or after midnights; desires warm covering and warm drinks; where membrane peeled off parts looked black. Arsenicum cured and left no lesions.

Alfred Pulford
Alfred Pulford, M.D., M.H.S., F.A.C.T.S. 1863-1948 – American Homeopath and author who carried out provings of new remedies. Author of Key to the Homeopathic Materia Medica, Repertoroy of the Symptoms of Rheumatism, Sciatica etc., Homeopathic Materia Medica of Graphic Drug Pictures.