Personal Experience of a Physician | Page 6

I spent a winter East and visited New York, making the Acquaintance of Homoeopathic physicians, and conversing with them about the new system of treating disease, attending medical lectures and clinics at the two Allopathic colleges. I remember very well attending a clinic at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, held by the late Prof. Willard Parker, when a little child was brought in suffering from whooping cough. Prof. Parker, looking around upon the students, said: "Here, gentlemen, is a case of disease which, like the small-pox, measles, and scarlet fever, runs a definite course; if you will let the patients alone they will generally get well, but if you commence dosing them you will often bring on complications and they will die." This statement, coming from a medical man of his prominence, surely was worthy of consideration.
After spending the winter at the East I went to Detroit, Mich., and opened an office in connection with Dr. P. M. Wheaton. I practiced in Detroit for fifteen years, excepting that during the last six years of that time I spent a part of each year at Cleveland, giving a course of lectures on the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Western Homoeopathic Medical College, of Cleveland, Ohio.
When I went to Detroit the prejudice against homoeopathy was very strong, especially among physicians. An attempt was made to pass a bill through the Legislature of Michigan which would virtually prohibit the practice in the State. The bill passed the Senate, but, owing to the prompt action of the friends of homoeopathy in exposing the design of the advocates of the bill, it was defeated in the House of Representatives. The presence of the Asiatic cholera in 1849 in the city, and the success which attended the homoeopathic treatment of that disease, was instrumental in calling the attention of large numbers of the most intelligent and influential citizens to the new practice and establishing it upon a firm basis. When the disease first appeared in the city, we furnished the families which we were accustomed to attend, and all others who desired them, with Veratrum album and Cuprum metallicum, which had been earnestly recommended by Homoeopathic physicians elsewhere, who had had experience in treating the disease, as preventive remedies, a dose or two of each to be taken daily. As a result, very few among the families which we were accustomed to attend were attacked with the disease, and in such cases as occurred the disease was generally readily controlled. As a rule, the most troublesome cases which we had to treat were those in which Opium or morphine in some form had been administered before we were called. In such cases it was exceedingly difficult to get a satisfactory response from our remedies, however carefully we selected them.
The Asiatic cholera is a violent disease and rapid in its progress, and if severe cases of this disease are to be treated successfully, it must be by remedies which are prompt in their action. It is here that homoeopathic remedies show their superiority over all other remedies or methods of treatment, for they act upon the diseased organs in the direction of the disease, and thus excite a prompt reaction. Homoeopathic remedies, when properly used, do not benumb, nor do they seriously aggravate existing diseased action; and they neither cause diseased action in well organs, nor reduce the quantity of blood, nor lessen the vitality of the organism and the ability to react against the encroachment of diseased action, as does the allopathic treatment; and, consequently, if a patient dies the physician and his friends have the consolation, at least, of knowing that he did not die from the treatment.
I well remember, while practicing in Detroit, attending a prominent citizen, a lawyer, who had a severe attack of pneumonia; and, while recovering from it, he went one night into a cold room to sleep, and this brought on a relapse which involved both lungs, and my patient became very sick. One day on visiting him I found an Allopathic physician sitting by his bedside. I was told that he simply called as a friend. As I entered he arose and walked out into the hall. I followed him, and asked him what he thought of my patient. He replied very promptly: "He will die! he will die, sir!! He ought to have been bled, blistered, and physicked long ago, but it is too late now." I replied: "He will not die, sir, for the very reason that he has not had the treatment you name; he has his blood and vital energies, unimpaired by the treatment, to sustain him." And he did not die, but recovered, and was appointed Governor of one of the Western Territories long after that.
After having practiced medicine for fifteen