Produced by Avinash Kothare Tom Allen Juliet Sutherland Charles Franksand the Online Distributed Proofreading TeamPERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF A PHYSICIANWITHAN APPEAL TO THE MEDICAL AND CLERICAL PROFESSIONSANDAN APPENDIXA REVIEW OF CHRIST AND THE TEMPERANCE QUESTIONIN THE CHRISTIAN UNIONBYJOHN ELLIS MDCONTENTSCHAPTER IPERSONAL MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OK A PHYSICIANCHAPTER IIWHY EVERY PHYSICIAN SHOULD EXAMINE HOMOEOPATHYCHAPTER IIIDANGERS THAT RESULT FROM THE ALLOPATHIC TREATMENT OF DISEASESCHAPTER IVPERSONAL RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE OF A PHYSICIANCHAPTER VTHE DAWN OF A NEW DISPENSATIONCHAPTER VIA NEW DAY TO OUR EARTHCHAPTER VIITHE WANTS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHCHAPTER VIIIRESTRAINING AND CURING SPIRITUAL AND NATURAL DISEASESCHAPTER IXPERSONAL EXPERIENCE CONTINUED AND EFFORTSCHAPTER XFINAL APPEAL TO THE CLERGYADDENDUMA REVIEW OF CHRIST AND THE TEMPERANCE QUESTIONIN THE CHRISTIAN UNIONPERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF A PHYSICIANCHAPTER IWe all admit that every one who attempts to act as a physician shouldstrive to qualify himself or herself for the work by obtaining the besteducation which our medical schools afford for to physicians areintrusted not simply the property or money but the very lives of theirfellowcitizens As the responsibility is great so the duty of preparingones self before commencing practice and of keeping fully abreast of allnew and valuable discoveries in the art of healing is equally great Aphysician should not be led blindly by his teachers and prominent medicalwriters and so strongly confirm himself in the theories and views whichthey proclaim that he cannot without prejudice examine new views andtheories with due care It has been said that when Harvey discovered thetrue course of the circulation of the blood there was not a singleprofessor in the medical colleges of England over fifty years of age whoever believed the heresy as his discovery was called However this mayhave been it is certain that professors and prominent medical writers arenot always the first to see and recognize the truth even when it isclearly presented to their noticeA native of western Massachusetts I studied medicine with an intelligentand worthy physician in my native town and attended two and onehalfcourses of medical lectures at the Berkshire Medical College atPittsfield Mass and graduated in 1841 and during the following winter Iattended the Medical College at Albany N Y devoting a large portion ofmy time to dissecting After finishing at Albany I visited various placesin western and central Massachusetts and operated on eyes for strabismusor crosseyesan operation which had then been recently introduced forthat deformity after which I settled at Chesterfield Mass andcommenced practicing medicine where I remained about one yearOne day I visited Northampton and calling on a physician with whom I wasacquainted I found upon his table a homoeopathic book Why I exclaimedwith astonishment you are not studying homoeopathy are you Yes hereplied I am studying it and trying the remedies cautiously and hewent on to describe cases which he had treated satisfactorily by the use ofthe remedies and among them a case of pleurisy and one of intermittentfever and he wound up by saying Now if you will go down the street to abookstore and purchase Hulls Jahr in two volumes I will give you halfa dozen homoeopathic remedies and you can try them for yourselfHere was a dilemma Never until that hour had I ever heard homoeopathyspoken of by either a medical professor or one of my professionalbrethren except with contempt and ridicule But I said to myself ifthere is any truth in homoeopathy I ought to know it and I cannot treatthis physicians testimony with contempt and it is a duty which I owe tomy fellowmen and especially to my patients to investigate the new systemcarefully I immediately went and purchased the books and he give me sixbottles of medicine and I took them back with me to Chesterfield Iremember making but one Homoeopathic prescription before leavingChesterfield and that was for a case of uterine hemorrhage which I hadtreated unsuccessfully for some time with allopathic remedies I lookedover my Homoeopathic books carefully and found that China cinchona wasindicated As that remedy was not among the bottles of medicated pelletswhich my medical friend had given me I directed that one drop of theordinary tincture of Peruvian bark should be dropped into a glass of waterand that after stirring it well one teaspoonful of the solution thus madeshould be given three or four times a day The patient commenced improvingimmediately and was soon wellSoon after that I removed to Grand Rapids Michigan and commenced anew thepractice of medicine I then had neither the knowledge nor the faith inhomoeopathy which I thought would justify me in treating any serious caseof disease with homoeopathic remedies but I did not neglect to study thenew books One day a friend of my younger days who was residing at GrandHaven came into my office and said that he had been suffering from thetoothache for several days and that he did not like to have the toothextracted and he wanted to know if I could do anything for it withoutextracting it I told him that I had recently obtained some homoeopathicbooks and remedies and that I had noticed that remedies were spoken of fortoothache So I looked over my books and selected Belladonna as the remedysuitable in his case and gave him a dose of it and other doses to takewith him if he needed them We talked in the office for a short time andthen we walked up to the hotel where he was stopping as we entered hestood still a moment and remarked Well my tooth does not ache asseverely as it did I saw him weeks afterward and he told me that he hadnot had the toothache from the hour he took the medicineAway in that new place then a village of about one thousand inhabitantswith no homoeopathic physician within a hundred miles of me I commencedcautiously the use of the new remedies first in mild cases of disease andin cases where Allopathic treatment failed to produce the desired effectAmong the first of the serious cases where I used the remedies was a caseof pneumonia A young man had been very sick with that disease for manydays I had