A letter to Thomas E. Bond, A.M., M.D., on homoeopathy : occasioned by the publication of his address to the graduates at Washington University, on 3d March, 1851 / by J. Schmidt.

  • Schmidt, J.
Date:
1851
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to Thomas E. Bond, A.M., M.D., on homoeopathy : occasioned by the publication of his address to the graduates at Washington University, on 3d March, 1851 / by J. Schmidt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    This, Sir, is what I am inclined and purpose to do. But in the brief investigation that I shall make of the claims you advance, not for a particular class of men, but for a particular school, to be the only depository of learning and wisdom, I shall not resort to any recriminations, however tempting may be the opportunity. I shall not stop to particularize the titles and currents of opinion and prac- tice which have made of your school, (if it be, as J suppose you claim, the congregation of the Asclepiades, the assemblage of those who are tenants de jure of the healing throne,) a very Egyptian Red Sea to all patients who were not like the children of Israel, under the special protection of Providence. I shall not dwell up- on the numerous phases which the science of Medicine, since his- toric times, will be admitted to have presented—now dogmatic, now empirical, now chemical, now mathematical, at one time positive, at another eclectic, but all the while and at the best, but tentative of truth. Nor shall I pause to indicate the solemn arrogance or hostile acrimony which have been so often displayed by its prac- titioners towards their patients or towards one another, which have been so amusingly dramatized by Moliere from life, in his day, and which do not appear to be quite extinct in our own. 1 may, perhaps, in illustration, refer to the almost uniform oppo- sition, or worse, with which new discoveries, sanctified at last by the approval of the Faculty, have been first received ; and shall assume throughout, what I think facts will warrant me in doing, the utter uncertainty in which the theory, at least, of medicine is left to this day, in spite of all the contributions to steady it made by its numerous hierophants from Hippocrates down to your- self. My principal aim will be to show by a few instances, which mv occupations otherwise render necessary to be briefly treated, that you have altogether misapprehended Homoeopathy in its design and fulfillment; that you have built up a creature of straw which you may have the pleasure of kicking about, and finally knock- ing down; and that all your intellectual flails and cudgels to this