The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-06-10
HOMEOPATHY.
on, the N. Y. Tribune.

From the N. Y. Tribune.
The National Institute of Homeopathy is
now holding its twenty-eighth anniversary in
Philadelphia. The statement made by this
powerful body of the progress of the homoe-
opathic science is most gratifying to those
who believe in it. The Institute, founded
about a quarter of a century ago in this city,
did not then number twenty five members
all told. Now, they have over 10000 repu-
table physicians and surgeons in this country
and Canada, with numerous colleges, dispen-
saries hospitals, and asylums, all supported
by individual effort. Our friends consumed
a good deal of their time in grumbling
that individual effort was left to do every
thing for them. They not only are still
refused all Government and State aid in
actual funds, but have been most cruelty and
unfairly snubbed since their birth as a medi-
cal body by the Government. No hom9opa-
thic surgeons were allowed to enter the army
except as privates, and consequently the
wounded soldier was forced to accept allo-
pathic boluses and lancets whether he had
faith in them or not In applying for PEN
sion, too, he was obliged sto submit to the
decision of the old-school practitioner. These
were grievances sore enough at the time. no
doubt, but we should think hardly worth
resurrection or bemoaning now.
Their other complaints that Congress yet
refuses to recognize their right to practice in
the District, or to admit them into any medi-
cal offices in its gift have more force and per-
tinenee. Persecution, either of injustice or
ridicule, may have been beneficial to our
medical brethren in giving them zeal, persist
ence, and the cohesion of a certain esprit de
corps, which otherwise they would never pro-
badly have had; but they seem now to prefer
that their virtues should arise from some
other cause. The blood of the martyrs is
very likely the seed of the Church,
but in this case the martyrs evidently
think they have had enough of
it. The great struggle of the present is,
they tell us, "between the spirit of progress
sive medicine on the one hand and conser-
vatism on the other" They do not see, ap-
parently, that in this identical decent garb of
conservatism, the unyielding etiquette, the
grave decorum of the allopathists, lie their
chief strength and secret of popularity. A
man will allow any other man to be radical
but his doctor. He is quite willing that
physicians in Edinburgh or Timbuctoo
should try experiments, but he will have no
tentative tinkering with his own lungs or
liver That the old school of practice is
over-suspicious and tyrannical in excluding
quackery, is their chief accommodation in the
eyes of their disciples. If our homeopathic
friends belonged to that class whom Haw-
thorne calls "the unfortunates that can see
the other side of the question, they would
| perceive that this aristocratic intolerance be-
| longs to and is not an ill-fitting garment for
| any man or sect whose success is sure and
surely founded on just basis. We see, in
fact, side by side with their protests against
! the exclusiveness of their enemy, significant
hints that in their own well-to-do middle age
they are not indisposed to initiate it. They
! wish to ''raise their standard of medical edu-
cation, to admit only the best-qualifed ply
sicians to their ranks, and urgently condemn
all irregular practices" by which last move
ment they will cut off an offensive member,
but an exceedingly strong one. The idea that
any woman with pamphlet and morocco box
of pellets in her pocket could go about among
her neighbOrs a second Abernethy, was one
cause Of the swift, triumphant popularity of
their system. They show the wisdom OF
strength and age in resolving to do away
with it.
They do not, however, show the wisdom OF
either the one or the other in the attack
made upon the pulpit in their annual ad-
dress. A cooler judgment will, we think,
convince them 1t was out of place, aud, to
use the mildest ceRsure, in exceptionally bad
taste. Men of science and men of theology
may be at war as they state, but science and
religion are not; and even if they were, We
connot see what system which deals with
antidotal pellets and the digestive organs has
to do with the doctrine of the creation and
atonement 1t was too, an impolitic move
There has been an odd prejudice for years
among the conservative masses which made