Allopathy

“ We all know that cures are wrought by all the different, and often opposite, methods employed in the various branches of the healing art. The allopath, who gives a strong dose of a counter-poison, cures his patient; and the homeopath, who gives a diminutive dose of the poison most similar to that [Pg 11] of the disease, also cures it. If allopathy ever cured any given disease, it is certain that homeopathy never cured that disease; and if homeopathy ever cured an ailment, allopathy could not possibly cure that ailment. ”

“ Allopathy means simply 'another suffering,' and Homœopathy 'the same suffering;' from which the ingenious may conclude, that our regular doctors pretend to cure diseases by inducing other diseases, and the new school by inducing symptoms identical with those of the existing disease. ”

“ Allopathy is the name given to the older treatment of disorders, and the name is obtained from the fact, that the drugs given, do not produce symptoms corresponding to those of the disease for whose relief they are administered as in homœopathy. ”

“ Let us set out, then, to learn the two words. The best way is to learn them together. Allopathy means other suffering, homeopathy like suffering. An allopath uses remedies which create within the patient a condition that squarely conflicts with the further progress of the disease. A homeopath prescribes medicines (in small doses) which produce within the patient the same condition that the disease would produce; he "beats the disease to it," so to speak—takes the job himself and leaves the disease nothing to do. ”

“ Homœopathy has saved thousands of cases from surgical operations, and has introduced safety into the lying-in-room of woman. It has been a blessing to children, and to mothers incalculably beneficial. It has been found equally useful in the diseases of animals, and many veterinary institutions have been established for its practice.
Finally, it has shortened the average duration of disease, diminished the expense of treatment enormously, economized the vital resources of the patient, and delivered its friends from the frequently baneful and long-lasting effects of enormous doses of medicine. ”

“ To become in this way a murderer, or an aggravator of the sufferings of mankind, was to me a fearful thought. So fearful and distressing was it, that shortly after my marriage I abandoned the practice, and scarcely treated any one for fear of doing him harm."
In 1789, he settled in Leipzig, and numerous writings and translations, which have been often quoted by the best writers ever since, came from his pen during that period. We come now to the year 1790, in which the first thought of Homœopathy issued from the brain of the great father and founder of the new school of medicine. ”

“ Third. "When attacked, they recover more rapidly than those treated by any other system."
Fourth. "That the mortality in the more fatal forms of disease is small compared with that under Allopathic treatment."
Fifth. "That many diseases, which are incurable under any other system, are curable under Homœopathic treatment."
This statement is followed by a general summary from carefully prepared tables, comprising a large mass of statistics, collected from all parts of the world, and embracing the [pg 28] records of the treatment of some 300,000 cases of disease. ”

“ Homœopathy is a vast and steadily growing power in the medical and scientific world, demanding earnestly the attention of every intelligent man. Its real merit may be partially measured by the strength of obstacles it has had to overcome.
Homœopathy is a reform in the central and main field of medical practice, a reform effected by the discovery of a great and true therapeutic law, and by the construction of a new Materia Medica, which reveals to us the disease-producing properties of drugs. ”

“ It will be to the advantage of the regular medical profession to go carefully over their treatment of the class of physicians who have seen fit to denominate themselves homœopathic, and to observe the effect such treatment has had upon the profession itself, upon the public and upon homœopathy. ”

“ No part is so small or remote that it is not in direct connection with some part or chain of the lymphatics. The doctor of Osteopathy has much to think about when he consults natural remedies, and how they are supplied and administered, and as disease is the effect of tardy deposits in some or all parts of the body, reason would bring us to hunt a solvent of such deposits, which hinder the natural motion of blood and other fluids in functional works, which are to keep the body pure from any substance that would check vital action. ”

“ The disease was successively styled rheumatic gout, inflammatory and gangrenous rheumatism; science employed in combating it, baths, shower baths, poultices, liniments of all sort, vain remedies which only aggravated the evil and varied the suffering. Sometimes amputation was spoken of: 'Would to God, Mademoiselle, you had but one arm!' said the physician, not concealing his anxiety and fears of her death, as spring approached, for the diseased arm was pale, livid, and frightful to behold. ”

“ NATURE'S CHEMISTRY.
Osteopathy believes that all parts of the human body do work on chemical compounds, and from the general supply manufacture for local wants; thus the liver builds for itself of the material that [Pg 41] is prepared in its own division laboratory. The same of heart and brain. No disturbing or hindering causes will be tolerated to stay if an Osteopath can find and remove it. We must reason that to withhold the supply from a limb, to wither away would be natural. We suffer from two causes. ”

“ He sees vessels leaving the heart to form brain, lungs, liver, trunk and limbs, and with each and all he can see the nerves of motion, sensation, nutrition, the voluntary and involuntary—all working in perfect harmony and content to do their part in the economy of life. Without that union in action a confusion will show in form of abnormality which is known as disease. On its work all nerves do depend for force and strength to build and renovate the body in all its bones, muscles and nerves—thus all channels to and from the heart must be cleared from all hindrance. ”

“ The formation of new bone by the osteoblasts may be defective as a result of physiological conditions, such as old age and disease of a part, and defective formation is often associated with atrophy, or more strictly speaking, absorption, of the existing bone, as is well seen in the edentulous jaw and in the neck of the femur of a person advanced in years. Defective formation associated with atrophy is also illustrated in the bones of the lower limbs of persons who are unable to stand or walk, and in the distal portion of a bone which is the seat of an ununited fracture. ”

“ If a disease should destroy life by withholding all fluids, we can trace such cause in the beginning to a time when there was watery swelling of the centers of nerves of nutrition, to such amount as to cut off nerve supply until sensation ceased to renovate and keep off accumulating fluids so long that fermentation did the work of heating till all fluids had dried up, and the channels of supply closed by adhesive inflammation, and death follows by the law of general atrophy. ”

“ The latter term is derived from a Greek word, meaning to make dead, to mortify, and is a disease which attacks bony tissues, as gangrene effects the soft parts. “The acid fumes thrown off from phosphorus in the various processes of making matches, frequently cause among the people employed a terrible disease, which attacks the teeth and jaws.... Its natural course is to rot the entire jaw bone away.”
P. 190.—“Al-lŏtˈro-pĭsm.” Dana says allotropism is “the property of existing in two or more conditions which are distinct in their physical or chemical relations. ”

“ But the specimens of disease most frequently met with in the internal lining of the heart, consist in an entire change of its natural structure, and in the formation of new products upon it or within it. Many of these, from the analogy of morbid actions in other parts of the body, must be considered to result from chronic inflammation.
In any of those situations which have been stated as especially liable to disease, the membrane will become thick, tough, inelastic, puckered and shrivelled; and cartilage or gristle, and bone, will enter into its structure ”

“ It is ignorance and inattention to the arteries to supply and the veins to carry away all deposits before they form tumors in lungs, abdomen or any part of the system. Thus man's ignorance of how [Pg 154] and why the blood renovates and why tumors are formed, has allowed the knife to be found in the belts of so many doctors to-day. On this law Osteopathy has successfully stood and cured more than any school of cures, and has sustained all its diplomates financially and otherwise. I write this article on blood for the student of Osteopathy. ”

“ Only a part of the organ—namely, the smaller vessels—may be involved in the degeneration, and this may be restricted to patches or parts of the organ. With the amyloid change there may be associated syphilitic gummata, or the liver may be more or less advanced in fatty degeneration or in cirrhosis. Those parts of the organ not invaded by the disease are not often entirely normal; they are more or less darkened in color by venous congestion, distinctly softer, etc. The amyloid change is not limited to the liver, but extends to the kidneys, lymphatic glands, the intestinal mucous membrane, etc. ”

“ Such disease, when the patient does not soon succumb to its virulence, advances to a frightful extent, affecting a large surface, destroying the whole thickness of the bone, and even exposing the internal parts. In a case of this description, which occurred in the Royal Infirmary under my care, the anterior half of the cranium was totally destroyed, the left orbit contained a putrid mass, consisting of the disorganised eye mixed with pus and bloody fluid; the dura mater was exposed, and sloughed at several points, and the unhealthy discharge from the parts lodged on the surface of the brain. ”

“ Severe malarial infection, syphilis, pregnancy, chronic gastro-intestinal disease, chronic gas-poisoning, are all, in different cases, known to have been causally associated with it, and it is probable that a congenital weakness of the bone-marrow has often to do with its production, as in many cases a family or hereditary history of the disease can be obtained. ”

“ What we meet with in all diseases is dead [Pg 108] blood, stagnant lymph, and albumen in a semi-vital or dead and decomposing condition all through the lymphatics and other parts of the body, brain, lungs, kidneys, liver and fascia. The whole system is loaded with a confused mass of blood, that is mixed with much or little unhealthy substances, that should have been kept washed out by lymph. Stop and view the frog's superficial lymphatic glands; you see all parts move just as regular as the heart does; they are all in motion during life. ”

“ Each splinter of bone becomes the sequestrum of a necrosis, in a similar manner as it is known to occur in the bones of young persons spontaneously affected by that disease, with this essential difference, that in the idiopathic disease there is only one, as if worm eaten, sequestrum, perhaps the length of the shaft of the bone, easily removable by one operation, while there may be in the traumatic disease several dead centers of ossific deposit, each of which requires to be removed by an operation to effect a cure. ”

“ Ulcers form everywhere from the breaking-down of the nodules or from injuries to the insensitive skin. The cervical and inguinal glands, owing to leprous infiltration, swell and perhaps suppurate and become fistulous; the abdomen enlarges from leprous, perhaps combined with amyloid, infiltration of the liver, and there may be diarrhœa from amyloid disease of the intestine. In addition to these troubles, if the patient live, the nerve trunks are attacked, and then the neuralgic, paretic, and trophic lesions of nerve leprosy are superadded. ”

“ Although the tissue elements in this disease resemble those of a new growth arising in the marrow, they differ in their arrangement and in their method of growth; there is no tendency to erupt through the cortex of the bone, to invade the soft parts, or to give rise to secondary growths.
_Clinical Features._--The onset of the disease is insidious, and attention is usually first directed to it by the occurrence of fracture of the shaft of one of the long bones--usually the femur--from violence that would be insufficient to break a healthy bone. ”

“ If he can, then we can hope to be healthy with diseased blood, but if we must have good material in building, then we should form our thoughts to suit the heads of inspectors, and inspect the passage of blood through the diaphragm, pleury, pericardium and the fascia, superficial, deep and universal. Disease is just as liable to begin its work [Pg 130] in the fascia and epithelium as any other place. Thus the necessity of pure blood and healthy fascia, because all functions are equally responsible for good and bad results. ”

“ The primary area of infection is always in the bone marrow. The bony trabeculae and the cortex are destroyed only secondarily. The process nearly always begins in the diaphysis, but then may extend into the epiphysis and produce suppuration of the joint. Once the organisms have gained access to the marrow, they produce a toxin which causes necrosis of the adjacent marrow cells, and this necrosis may extend over a very considerable portion of the bone before marked infiltration with leucocytes occurs. ”

“ In cases of combined endosteal and periosteal thickening, the pain usually disappears under anti-syphilitic treatment but the changes in the bone persist.
Osteomalacia is an acquired disease which causes marked softening and changes in the bones. The disease begins irregularly and often progresses with or without remissions. The progress is more marked during pregnancy. The first sign is pain in the bones, which is increased by pressure, and this is especially true of pressure over the ribs. There are also muscular cramps and contractures.
Osteitis Deformans. ”