Richard Olding Beard

“ Despite the unfortunate action of the American Association, in setting the stamp of their useless disapprobation upon this timely step, a thinking public must needs declare itself in approval of the New York Society. It has but constituted itself the vanguard of a movement which will soon be followed by all liberal men in the profession, and must ere long sweep away those petty obstacles to the progress of medicine, which, causing the disunion of its disciples, have limited its usefulness, weakened its experimental conclusions, and brought upon it the popular reproach of disagreement. ”

“ Not seldom has the reproach been cast upon homœopathy that it possesses no literature worthy of the name; that its followers can boast no valuable discoveries or original research. In the main, the criticism is just. But, in this one department of medical science, the profession has received at its hands an incalculable benefit. It claims, and for the most part rightly, the credit of advancing, directly or indirectly, the study of the physiological action of drugs, as related to the alleviation and cure of disease. ”

“ Many, it may be, of the older generation of physicians—minds which have crystallized unchangeably to the form of early ideas—must "pass away before these things are fulfilled," but they who are stepping forward to take their places in the great struggle with disease and death, will have their hands strengthened by a more conscious unity of work and purpose with their fellows, to which the profession of medicine has long been a stranger. ”

“ Rooted in the professional ignorance and bigotry of almost a century ago, fostered by the bitter rivalries and exclusivism of opposing theorists, these differences have been taken up and fed by popular opinion, until they seriously embarrass the progress of medical knowledge, and tend to destroy all faith in the science and art of healing. ”

“ Homœopathy has, undoubtedly, given to the world the revelation of more than one valuable truth, and the profession and people alike owe to it, in the persons of its advanced thinkers, the gratitude of respect and recognition. In short, as "every student is a debtor to his whole profession," so the schools of medicine are mutually beholden to each other. ”

“ The recent agitation within the ranks of the one school of medicine, of the question of establishing consulting relations with duly qualified members of the other, presents a good opportunity of offering to the general reader a few facts which may serve to illumine existing error, and prepare the way for the appreciation of some generally unrecognized truths. ”

“ Unconsciously receiving the impress of its opponent's teachings, the older school has learned, first, to lessen, and then to minimize its doses; to improve the preparation of its drugs, and to seek for better forms and methods in their administration. If it can boast the direct salvation of no greater number of lives, in consequence, it is at least responsible for fewer deaths. ”

“ Always obstructive to the spirit of progress, it is peculiarly so when related to a subject so closely concerning the interest of the people as the study and treatment of disease. In these physically degenerate days the avoidance or remedy of the thousand "ills which flesh is heir to" is a question of well-nigh universal import. The urgency of this common need offers a partial reason for the adoption and perpetuation, by the public mind, of the differences which are supposed to exist between the two great schools of medicine ”

“ The practical result, as already manifest, is of greater interest to the public than are the steps by which it has been reached. A careful study of the course of treatment commonly pursued by leading practitioners, and recommended by the highest authorities in the two schools, reveals the fact that, in eighty selected forms of disease, representing maladies of every type and every stage, six tenths of the remedies employed by these supposedly rival schools are identically the same in kind, and differ only in respect of dose. ”

“ Does society take the measure of his social standing, or estimate the quality of his moral character and training? Do his prospective patients seek evidence of his professional ability, his special acquirements, or his general scientific culture? ”

“ The unbridged space which lay between them a century ago has been narrowed imperceptibly in their onward march, until men discover with surprise that to-day, across the intervening chasm, they can safely join their hands ”