The Millwaukee
adress at the American Institute of Homœopathy.
By Edward W. Berridge, M. D.
Presented by Sylvain Cazalet(Read before I. H. A., annual meeting,
June 1880.)Mr.
President, Ladies and Gentlemen, through the courtesy of our president I
have been invited to address you on some subject connected with our
beloved science and art. I will attempt, however imperfectly, to present
for your kind indulgence and consideration a few thoughts on that
subject we all profess to have at heart, namely, “How can we best
advance homoeopathy?”It
cannot be denied that homoeopathy has not advanced, and is not
advancing, as rapidly as we could desire, nor as rapidly as we once had
just and reasonable grounds for expecting it to advance. In the United
States, where it has taken the firmest root, and where its spreading
branches most widely overshadow the land with healing in their leaves,
the old school is yet triumphant in point of numbers; and to this day
the rules of medical trade unionism, euphemistically called professional
etiquette, are brought to bear upon us by our opponents. In Great
Britain we have but 275 avowed homoeopathic physicians and this number
includes not a few who have not the slightest claims to this honorable
title ; and while there are many colleges and universities
empowered by the State to grant degrees in medicine, we have not one
legally recognized school of homoeopathy. In the Continent, matters are
in the same unsatisfactory condition. More than forty years have elapsed
since Hahnemann penned the fifth edition of his Organon; more than
eighty since he first announced the law of similia, and yet how little
fruit has his life-work borne in comparison with what should have been.
Why is this? To what causes are we to attribute the fact that the
profession and the public have not more universally accepted
homoeopathy?
Dr Samuel HahnemannThere
are those amongst us who have a common answer to this question.
Hahnemann, they say, was too dogmatic, too uncompromising, too
visionary; and as a panacea for all the unbelief which now pervades the
allopathic mind, they recommend that we should give up what they call
our “sectarian attitude”; that we should drop and disavow the
name of homoeopathy; that we should repudiate as untenable that which
they call the extravagances of Hahnemann, such as his doctrine of
chronic disease, etc., and finally, that we should claim for similia
similibus curentur not the position of an universal law, but only that
of a very good and useful rule of practice to which there may be many
exceptions. “Do this,” they say, “and the old school will
advance to meet us half-way; the medical millennium will arrive, and the
lamb will lie down with the lion.” Yes, truly! but the lamb will be
inside the lion. The experiment has been tried both in the United States
and in Great Britain, and with what result ? Fortunately for our
school, there has been no acceptance of the proffered amalgamation. On
the contrary, the old school repulsed these ideas with scorn and
contempt. And so it will ever be. Do not let us be mistaken in this
matter. Our allopathic brethren are not all fools; they can discern the
difference between true gold and its counterfeit; they are honest,
though in error, and they will always reject the overtures of men who
are not true in practice to the principles which they profess, or who
show signs of wavering in the presence of the enemy. If they wish the
old school to amalgamate with our own, it will never be effected by
compromise. Truth and error cannot co-exist. No man can serve two
masters. No man can halt between two opinions without suffering the
natural consequences of his indecision. If homoeopathy be false, let us
at once relinquish our distinctive name, and avow ourselves eclectics;
if it be true, let us stand firm, not yield a single inch of our vantage
ground. Magna est veritas, et praevalebit. Truth has no occasion to
descend from her lofty eminence and ask permission to be heard.I
speak unhesitatingly on this subject, because I speak from experience.
My friend and co-editor of our Anglo-American quarterly, “The
Organon”, was a leading allopathic physician, well versed in all
the science of which the old school boasts. He was one of the bitterest
opponents of homoeopathy, and a strong supporter of that law of the
Liverpool Medical Institution which enacts that no homoeopathist should
be eligible for membership, and that, should any member adopt that
system, he should thereby forfeit his membership. I cannot wonder at it.
He had seen the so-called homoeopathy practiced in that city; he knew
how utterly false were the pretensions of many of its nominal adherents.
Is it to be wondered that he made no distinctions; knowing none, he
classed all under the same category. But when we became acquainted with
each other, and then I explained to him what the true homoeopathy of
Hahnemann was, he listened attentively, put the matter to the practical
test, became convinced of its truth, sent in his resignation of the
Liverpool Medical Institution as he was compelled to do under the law,
and is now, as we all know, one of the most enthusiastic and
uncompromising of Hahnemann’s followers. Long afterwards he said to me,
“If you had not been a Hahnemannian, you could never have converted
me.”
Dr Carroll DunhamSuch
has been the effect of our wavering upon the minds of our allopathic
brethren. What effect has it had on ourselves? Ever since that fatal
error was committed by one whose memory we nevertheless hold in honour,
of proclaiming absolute “liberty in medical opinion and
action”, a change for the worse has taken place in our own ranks.
Ever since the name of Carroll Dunham has been held to sanction every
kind of empiricism, forgetting that he himself in his teaching and
practice, was a true Hahnemannian. Men have eagerly caught at his
well-intentioned, though mistaken, perhaps misunderstood, words and even
banded themselves together to overthrow those that remained true to the
teachings of the master. I need not recount the various phases of the
struggle, they are all well known to you; suffice to say that the crisis
is past, and convalescence has commenced. There are indications both
here and in my own country of a desire to return to a purer faith and a
truer practice. How can we best accomplish that great work? How are we
to advance homoeopathy, and render it the sole and universally received
science and art of therapeutics?The
answer is simply this: we must go to the fountain head, and there drink
of the water of life freely. We have neglected this; we have thought we
are wiser than our teacher; we have attempted to run before we are able
to walk, and the usual consequences have ensued. We must undo all this;
we must be willing to begin again like little children and learn the
ABC, and when we have mastered the alphabet, we may try our hand at
reading, and perhaps in time even writing an original work. The great
error of the present race of homoeopathists is their neglect to study
the Organon of Hahnemann, and it is to this great work, the very bible
of homoeopathy, that I especially desire to draw your attention. I do
this with the more earnestness, because I find there are so many who
have never read it, much less studied it. “The Organon”, they
say, “is full of Hahnemann’s theories”. Leave out the theories
then; Hahnemann merely gave them for what they were worth, as the best
explanation he could give of certain facts. His theories were based upon
his facts, not his facts upon theories. To know the true meaning of a
fact is of scientific interest, but it is not essential to the fact
itself. Destroy all Hahnemann’s theories if you choose, you will not
thereby shake one single stone of the temple of homoeopathy. Yet even to
the present day we find men wasting their time in writing against
Hahnemann’s theories. Perhaps they do so because his facts are too
strong for them.“But”,
says another, “we have the law; what more is needed?” Aye, the
law! but of what use is a law unless you know how to apply it? You meet
with a chronic case which is benefited by your remedy; the symptoms
cease, then return in a milder form. What are you going to do now? Will
a mere knowledge of the law help you ? If you have not the rules of
Hahnemann to guide you, you will probably repeat the medicine, and so do
harm, whereas if you have studied his writings, you will know that such
periodical exhibitions are of frequent occurrence, and that the remedy
must be allowed to act without interference. Will the law alone tell you
how long to wait before deciding that the medicine will not act, and is
therefore incorrectly selected? Will the law alone tell you that in all
periodical diseases the best time to give the dose is just after the
paroxysm? You talk of the law of similia, but do you know what is the
“like”? To judge from the prescriptions frequently made, the
sole idea of like in the minds of many appears to be a vague
pathological resemblance, instead of the minute semeiotic correspondence
taught by Hahnemann. Pathology is not without its use, but that use is
not in the problem of selecting the most appropriate remedy. Pathology
does indeed often tell us whether a new symptom is of favorable or
unfavorable import, and hence whether it requires to be treated or not;
but in the actual selection it is not of the slightest value, not only
because it is theoretical and hence more or less uncertain, but because,
even at its best. it can only generalize and not individualize.Were
there only one utterance that I could make during this visit to your
mightly continent, it would be “Study the Organon of
Hahnemann.” Read it again and again. Those who study it the most,
testify that it never wearies them, that it seems ever fresh, that
something new, or something the full force of which they never grasped
before, at each fresh perusal meets their mental eye. Do not be led
astray by the utterances of those who would would have you first study
fallacious manual on pharmacodynamics and therapeutics, or essays
written by men whose object is to glorify themselves at the expense of a
system which they have never comprehended, though they are indebted to
it for the very reputation they possess. Do not be led astray by the
fallacious dictum that the Organon should be placed “for frequent
perusal and as a trusted guide, in the hand not perhaps of the student
but of the educated, earnest practitioner.” On the contrary, I
maintain that the Organon of Hahnemann is the very first book which the
student should read, without which he can really learn nothing of
homoeopathy. The Organon is like the mariner’s compass, without which
the finest ship is in danger of being wrecked. You may know your Materia
Medica by heart, but without a knowledge of the rules by which to apply
it, your success will be imperfect; but with this knowledge, and with a
faithful adherence in actual practice to the teachings of Hahnemann,
your success will be certain.It
is not as a blind bigot, or a fanatical enthusiast, or a mere
heroworshipper, that I urge these matters upon your attention. I am as
ready as any man to worship a hero, but his right to the title must be
first demonstrated to me. Since I first discovered how I was misled in
early days by teachers, and taught to believe implicitly much that
reason and maturer judgment have compelled me to reject as fallacious, I
have become sceptical in all things, and require absolute proof, before
I accept a statement as absolute true. And my absolutely and unwavering
acceptance of the truth of the practical teachings of Hahnemann is based
upon experience. It is now eighteen years since I first commenced the
study of homoeopathy. I have compared it with allopathy and eclecticism.
I have tested it in the most severe acute diseases threatening life, in
the most chronic and inveterate diseases which had baffled all other
treatment, and in incurable cases, when only euthanasia was possible,
and I have never once found Hahnemann’s teaching to be wrong. Nay more,
though Hahnemann’s faithful followers have made many discoveries in the
same field in which he laboured, so vast was his insight and so profound
his genius that there is scarcely a single therapeutic discovery of
modern times of which you will not find at least the germ in his
writings.Hahnemann’s
system is the true, the only science of therapeutics, and if my words
will persuade any of you who may have departed from his standard, to
adopt a purer practice and a truer faith, I shall feel that my visit to
you has not been in vain.June
22, 1880.(The
Homoeopathic Heritage)Copyright © Sylvain
Cazalet 2001
