Books: Personal Experience of a Physician

J >> John Ellis >> Personal Experience of a Physician

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I well remember, while practicing in Detroit, attending a prominent
citizen, a lawyer, who had a severe attack of pneumonia; and, while
recovering from it, he went one night into a cold room to sleep, and this
brought on a relapse which involved both lungs, and my patient became very
sick. One day on visiting him I found an Allopathic physician sitting by
his bedside. I was told that he simply called as a friend. As I entered he
arose and walked out into the hall. I followed him, and asked him what he
thought of my patient. He replied very promptly: "He will die! he will die,
sir!! He ought to have been bled, blistered, and physicked long ago, but it
is too late now." I replied: "He will not die, sir, for the very reason
that he has not had the treatment you name; he has his blood and vital
energies, unimpaired by the treatment, to sustain him." And he did not die,
but recovered, and was appointed Governor of one of the Western Territories
long after that.

After having practiced medicine for fifteen years, except the months I was
absent at Cleveland the last six years of the time, I was invited to fill
the chair of Theory and Practice in the New York Homoeopathic Medical
College. This invitation I accepted, and removed to New York and took up my
residence there, and commenced practice again in a new field. About the
year 1868 I invented a new process for refining petroleum by the aid of
superheated steam, and spent eighteen months in developing the process at
Binghamton, N. Y., and then returned to my practice in New York City. In
the year 1873 I gave up the practice of medicine, and in connection with
two gentlemen who were interested in selling oils, I commenced the refining
of petroleum, manufacturing therefrom machinery and other oils; to which
business I have devoted my attention ever since. I have attended chiefly to
the manufacturing department and my partners to the selling.

I have been frequently asked: "Why did you quit the practice of medicine?
Was not that a useful business?" Yes, it was; but I had come to feel that
there were fields for greater usefulness--in fact, that it was vastly more
important to teach people the laws of health and life, and to strive to
lead them by precept and example to shun the causes of disease, than it was
to cure them when they were sick--that prevention was better than cure.
Consequently, when I saw before me a reasonably sure prospect of being able
to make a good deal more money at the refining business than I could ever
expect to make in the practice of medicine, I could but feel that, by the
aid of a reasonable portion of the money thus made, I could perform a far
greater use than I could by practicing medicine. This, then, was the reason
for my giving up a good and useful profession and practice for my present
business. What I have attempted to do for the benefit of suffering humanity
since I gave up the practice of medicine, I will name in a future chapter.

CHAPTER II.

WHY EVERY PHYSICIAN SHOULD EXAMINE AND TEST HOMOEOPATHY.

I was born in the year 1815, and on the 26th of November, 1891, was 76
years of age. I have not practiced medicine as a business for many years,
and I never expect to practice again. As to money, my present business
gives me all I need, and money to spare for benevolent purposes. I do not
expect, nor do I desire, to receive one cent, directly or indirectly, for
the writing of this pamphlet, or for the money which I expect to spend for
paper, printing, binding, and sending it, post paid, to every physician and
clergyman in the United States and Canada whose name I can get. I do it
because I believe and hope it will be a useful work and instrumental in
doing good, and that many who are willing and waiting will find useful
suggestions contained in its pages, and that through their instrumentality
humanity may be benefited.

A few years after I became a convert to Homoeopathy I met in a railroad car
a venerable professor from the college where I graduated. We were mutually
pleased to see each other, and after our congratulations were over I
remarked to him that, so far as the administration of remedies was
concerned, I had departed somewhat from the "general principles" which he
used to inculcate, and that I had become a Homoeopathist. The Professor
looked up with astonishment and exclaimed most earnestly: "I am sorry to
hear that! I am sorry to hear that!" He manifested not the slightest desire
to know why I had made the change, but was ready to denounce and condemn.
It would be useless to talk to such a man. Before one can see a new truth,
however plain it may be, he must be willing to either examine the question
carefully himself, or to heed the testimony of those who have examined it.
Fortunately, all physicians have not been like the above Professor; for
there have been thousands who were educated in and graduated from
Allopathic schools, some of them gray-haired men, who, like myself, have
carefully studied Homoeopathy and cautiously tested the remedies upon the
sick, who have become converts to the new practice, and who have ever after
relied upon its remedies in the treatment of the sick. No intelligent
physician of any other school has ever carefully read the Homoeopathic
works, and has to any considerable extent cautiously used the remedies in
the treatment of severe cases of various diseases, without being able to
see the vast superiority of the Homoeopathic over the Allopathic treatment
of disease; and no one, without prejudice, and willing to see the truth,
will ever do so without being convinced. Can a man, with eyes open, on a
clear day, go out at noon time and declare that the sun does not shine? He
may make such a declaration while shut up in a cellar or cavern, or if he
never opens his eyes. As one who has patiently and diligently studied and
practiced both systems, I say without the slightest hesitation that
Homoeopathy, as a system of practice, is as superior to Allopathy as the
direct light of the sun is to the reflected light of the moon; in fact,
much of the allopathic practice of to-day is but a reflection of the
homoeopathic light. What intelligent physician to-day bleeds, blisters,
salivates, or vomits his patients, as students were taught to do by
preceptors, professors, and books fifty years ago? And why is such
treatment so frequently, to say the least, discarded now by Allopathic
physicians? Is it not largely because the success which results from the
Homoeopathic treatment of diseases, has convinced Allopathic physicians and
their patients that such violent disease-creating measures and remedies are
unnecessary?

Homoeopathy is strictly a scientific system of medicine. It is based upon a
law of nature--"_Similia similibus curantur_," or the law that
remedies will cure symptoms and diseases similar to those which they will
cause when taken by healthy persons. It is wonderful with what care, skill,
and perseverance the new Materia Medica has been developed, mostly by
intelligent physicians, commencing with Hahnemann, taking the different
remedies in varying doses, and carefully and patiently watching the
symptoms that follow, and writing them down day after day; and then, when
similar symptoms occur in case of disease, giving the remedies and
carefully watching and writing down the results. Allopathic physicians, as
a rule, have not the slightest conception of the vast amount of patient and
persevering labor in this direction which has been done by physicians as
well educated as they are, and most of whom have graduated in the same
schools, who have devoted their lives to this work. Are not these facts
worthy of the consideration of every physician in the world who desires the
highest good of his fellow men? It is well known to every intelligent
physician that there is some truth in the homoeopathic law of cure, and
that it has to some extent been recognized from the earliest periods of
medical history. A cathartic remedy, even in Allopathic doses, will
sometimes cure a diarrhoea, and an emetic will sometimes cure a nauseated
stomach; but such remedies when given in large doses do not always cure, or
they would generally be used by Allopathists; they sometimes seriously and
even dangerously aggravate the disease, so that the vital forces do not
react and thus effect a cure. Nitrate of silver and acetate of zinc, which
applied to well eyes will cause irritation and inflammation, are often
applied to inflamed eyes. The kine pox, which is a similar disease, is well
known to either prevent or materially modify smallpox; and so I could go on
enumerating cases where Allopathic physicians treat their patients in
accordance with the Homoeopathic law of cure. The great discovery of
Hahnemann was not so much the Homoeopathic law of cure, for some knowledge
of that was possessed before his day, but the practical application of that
law to the cure of disease. He found by careful experiments that diseases
can be cured by remedies, which when given to the well will produce similar
symptoms or diseases, in doses so small as not to seriously aggravate the
existing disease or symptoms; and that all diseases may be thus treated
with a success hitherto unknown. This discovery was accompanied by the most
careful experiments by him and his followers upon themselves, to ascertain
with the greatest possible care the effects of various remedies upon the
healthy, so as to be able to make accurate prescriptions for the sick. Here
you have most careful scientific investigation and experiments as to the
action of remedies upon the well and sick, made, not by pretenders or
quacks, but by well educated physicians, that should command the admiration
and respect of every intelligent man and educated physician.

As to the doses given to the sick, which have been such a stumbling-block
to our Allopathic brethren, their size is simply the result of the most
careful experiments. Everyone can understand that if we give an Allopathic
dose of Ipecac to a patient already sick and vomiting, or of Veratrum album
to a patient suffering from Asiatic cholera or cholera morbus, we will
almost certainly aggravate the disease, perhaps to a fatal extent; for it
is the reaction of the vital forces of the system against the new
excitement caused by the remedy, which overcomes this new excitement and
the diseased action at the same time. Now, if the action of the remedy is
so severe that no reaction follows, then, of course, no cure follows, and
even death may result.

The great beauty and excellence of the Homoeopathic system of medicine
consists in the ability to treat patients successfully thereby, without
making well organs sick, or aggravating existing diseased action, or
creating an opposite diseased state, as you do when you give a cathartic
remedy in a cathartic dose for constipation; in that case the reaction, if
reaction follows, is not in the right direction, consequently the
constipation is often aggravated. I have hardly ever seen, excepting in
cases of mechanical obstruction, a severe and troublesome case of
constipation that had not been caused by the use of cathartic remedies. So
if we give an opiate, or an astringent, for a diarrhoea, we can see that it
is a direct effort to restrain the disease by force, as it were, and we
necessarily have to give large doses; and, if the vital forces react
against this medicinal intrusion, the reaction is not in the direction of
health. It is true that the vital forces sometimes overcome the diseased
action in spite of the medicinal action; but it does not always do this,
and subacute and chronic diarrhoeas are the result of the use of such
remedies in some cases. To create disease of a well organ for the sake of
curing disease in another organ, as is done when blisters are applied to
the skin for diseases of internal organs, and when cathartics are given for
diseases of the head or lungs, every one can see is a roundabout treatment;
and while patients may sometimes be benefited by this calling off, as it
were, the attention of the vital forces from the diseased action in other
organs, still it is not a very satisfactory treatment as a whole; for you
may lessen the vital power of resistance against diseased action, and may
even cause serious disease of the organ assailed. I repeat, one of the
great beauties of Homoeopathy lies in the fact that when remedies are given
in accordance with its law of cure, they do not have to be given in
disease-creating doses.

Hahnemann tells us that a single dose of the 30th dilution of Aconite,
which contains but the decillionth of a drop of the tincture of the remedy,
will cure acute pleurisy in twenty-four hours. I have thus treated patients
suffering from pleurisy with a single dose of that remedy (it should be
given soon after the commencement of the disease), and at the end of
twenty-four hours have found the pain and fever all gone, and the skin
moist and cool; and in one instance within two days the patient was on his
way to California. I have never seen any such satisfactory cures of that
disease from any kind of Allopathic treatment, nor from the low dilutions
of Aconite or any other Homoeopathic remedy.

Hereafter I shall call attention of both physicians and the clergy to the
causes and different methods of restraining or curing both spiritual and
natural diseases; for there is the most beautiful analogy or correspondence
between the methods of treating natural and spiritual diseases, and they
must be considered in connection if we would clearly see the truth.

CHAPTER III.

THE DANGERS THAT RESULT FROM THE ALLOPATHIC TREATMENT OF DISEASES.

This treatment of diseases, more in the past than at present, consists
largely in giving and applying remedies in disease-creating doses. The
antiphlogistic treatment consists of blood-letting and the use and
application of reducing remedies which directly or indirectly lessen the
inflammatory or febrile action; but it is manifest that while it may lessen
the activity of the diseased symptoms it also lessens the vitality of the
system as a whole, and consequently its power to resist and overcome the
existing diseased action; so that it is a serious question whether in many
cases more is not lost than gained, and it is certain that, owing to the
loss of blood and strength, convalescence will be more tedious. Then the
use of remedies which cause active diseased action is not always safe. My
own mother, at the age of 51 years, while in delicate health, was taken
with a severe pain in her side. A physician was called. She thought an
emetic would do her good. The physician gave her one, and she died during
its operation, or immediately afterward. Her physician was so affected by
this sudden and unexpected result that he had to go and lie down. At that
time I was but 10 years old.

In typhoid fever there is a tendency to irritation of the mucous membrane
of the small intestines; and, as I have already stated, I am satisfied from
observation that when cathartics are given during this disease this
irritation is often most seriously aggravated, and death not unfrequently
follows as a result.

But the greatest danger and evil which result from the Allopathic treatment
of disease lie, not in the direction of the sudden deaths which sometimes
result from the use of its remedies, but in the liability of patients to be
led into the habitual use of a drug that has afforded them palliative
relief during sickness, and the countenance thus given for the use of such
drugs by the laity during health. Perhaps as a rule poisonous substances
palliate the symptoms which they cause, or which follow their use. A
cathartic remedy will palliate the costiveness which frequently follows the
use of cathartic remedies. Opium will palliate the sleeplessness and
suffering that follow when the patient leaves off the use of opiates which
he has been taking for disease; and alcohol and all fluids and remedies
which contain an appreciable quantity of alcohol will palliate the coldness
of the surface, craving, and distress which follow when a patient who has
been taking such remedies attempts to discontinue their use. And thus the
patient is led to continue the remedy because it makes him feel better
every time he takes it; and, consequently, he is led on as naturally as
water runs down hill, until he becomes a slave to his appetite.

Now, cannot every conscientious and intelligent man see what an immense
blessing to his fellow men it would be if all physicians were able to treat
their patients as successfully by the use of Homoeopathic remedies and
doses as by the use of the so-called Alcoholic stimulants and Narcotics,
which are enslaving and ruining so many, and thus be able to discard and
discountenance the use of all such remedies? How can honest, conscientious
physicians disregard and treat with contempt the testimony of physicians
who have been educated in the same schools with themselves, but who have
used their reason and freedom to investigate the new practice and test the
curative action of its remedies, when they assure them that they have
treated their patients far more successfully by the use of Homoeopathic
remedies than they ever have done by the use of narcotics, alcoholic and
fermented drinks, and other Allopathic remedies? How can physicians
disregard the testimony of multitudes of patients who have been thus cured?

Why should not every physician study Homoeopathy and test the remedies on
the sick? He can do it cautiously; he has all of his old remedies by him;
what has he to lose? If they do not relieve his patient's sufferings more
safely and promptly, he is not obliged to continue to use them. Is it a
sensible and rational course for any one to allow himself to be so strongly
confirmed in the views of prominent professors, teachers, and books, that
he cannot without prejudice examine new truths and new methods of treating
diseases, and even new theories? Should not a man strive to keep abreast of
the age in which he is living? Take it, for instance, in regard to the
action of alcohol on living structures. No other man has ever experimented
so carefully, patiently, and thoroughly as has Dr. Richardson, of England,
and the results of his experiments appeal to the common sense and
observation of every unbiased man. He shows conclusively by its action that
it should never have been given in a vast majority of the cases of disease
where it is given by physicians; yet what attention is paid to his
testimony and demonstrations, which every disinterested physician can see
to be true if he will?

Dr. Richardson has also shown conclusively that alcohol paralyzes the
minute capillary vessels, so that while the blood is forced into them
through the arteries by the heart, it does not flow out of these minute
vessels into the veins as rapidly as it does during their healthy action;
consequently these vessels are congested and unnaturally distended with
blood; the face and surface of the body become red, owing to the presence
of an unnatural quantity of blood in these vessels. Nor is this all. The
heat of the body is generated by changes going on in the blood and flows
with the blood, and consequently the surface of the body becomes, from the
presence of this excess of blood, unnaturally warm; but the heat is rapidly
radiated from the surface, consequently the body, as a whole, becomes
cooler. Dr. Richardson found by careful experiment that, while the surface
was warmer, internally the body was cooler and less able to stand the cold;
and he also substantiated the truth of his experiments by experiments on
pigeons.

I will allow Canon Wilberforce, of South Hampton, England, to describe his
experiment. While attending a reception during his recent visit to New York
he was asked the following question:--

Dr. E. P. Thwing: "I would like to ask the Canon, as a physician, if the
feeling as to alcoholic medication in England has changed for the better;
for instance, the aspect of the British Medical Association toward this
subject?"

Canon Wilberforce: "I believe that is one point in which we are going
furthest ahead. I think that the whole aspect of the medical question is
changing, mainly under the influence of that distinguished man of science,
Dr. Richardson. He is one of the leading scientific minds of Great Britain.
He has been successful in his experiments and as bold as a lion in his
utterances, and he is leading scientific thought in this direction. He has
proved over and over again, to use a common phrase, that from the monarch
on the throne down to the maggot in the cheese, every healthy being is
better without alcohol. The other day he was staying with me. I have the
greatest possible objection to experimenting upon living animals, but he
described to me an experiment on pigeons. It was not a very painful
experiment; indeed, there are some people who, I am afraid, would like to
have the experiment made upon them. He tried to induce the pigeons to take
peas soaked in alcohol. They refused to do so at first; but after a while
they were pleased, and they selected the peas saturated with alcohol. One
cold night he turned the pigeons out, and on the following day, when he was
examining them, strange to say, all those pigeons that ate the alcoholized
peas were frozen to death, and those that remained teetotalers were
perfectly safe and sound."

The drinking of alcoholic liquors generates no heat, it simply holds the
heat in the congested blood-vessels upon the surface of the body, where it
is wasted, and thus the temperature of the body as a whole is lowered.

The greatest mortality which results from the use of intoxicating drinks
does not result from what is recognized as drunkenness, but from what is
recognized as moderate but steady drinking. The drunkard after his sprees
usually has seasons of abstinence, during which he has a chance to
recuperate or regain strength and vigor, and consequently drunkards often
live to an advanced age; but the steady drinker has no such seasons of
rest, but his face, by its almost constantly congested appearance, shows
the condition of his internal organs; for the effect of alcohol is to
paralyze the minute capillary vessels throughout the body and fill them
with blood, which produces redness upon the surface and a sensation of
warmth. The separation of waste and worn-out materials and their removal is
largely effected through these minute blood-vessels, and it is through them
that nourishment reaches all the structures of the body; consequently, the
almost constant state of congestion of these minute vessels, which results
from regular, moderate drinking, interferes very seriously with this change
or purification and renewal of all the structures of the body. As a result,
while some drinkers die from drunkenness, many more die from apoplexy,
paralysis, laryngitis and bronchitis, heart failure, fatty degeneration of
the heart, diseases of the stomach and liver, Bright's disease of the
kidneys, etc., and especially from an inability to either resist or
withstand epidemic, contagious, or inflammatory diseases, or even
mechanical injuries.

There are life insurance companies that give special privileges to total
abstainers over moderate drinkers (they never insure drunkards). Such
companies find that they can give a bonus of from 17 to 23 per cent. to
total abstainers as compared with moderate drinkers.

I remember very well attending the family of a brewer. He was standing by
when I advised his wife not to drink beer, for it was not good for her, as
it would increase her debility and retard her recovery. With astonishment
and great emphasis he exclaimed: "Tell me that beer is not good for her!"
Striking his chest with his fist, he said: "Just look at me and see what
beer has done for me!" He was born in Scotland, and manifestly inherited a
good, strong constitution. I replied to him: "You are a large, strong man,
but a little too fleshy; what beer has done for you time will tell better
than I can." A few months, perhaps a year or two, after that conversation,
I was riding up a street which led toward his residence when I was called
in a hurry into a saloon to see a man who was said to have fallen down "in
a fit." On reaching his side I found the above brewer dead upon the floor.
Without much question he died of heart failure, from fatty degeneration
caused by the steady use of beer. I never heard of his being intoxicated.

Dr. W. B. Carpenter, who stands at the very head of the physiologists of
our century, says:--

"That the taking of alcoholic stimulants is in any way useful in keeping up
the heat of the body, may now be considered as a myth altogether exploded."

Again he says:--

"Now, it is the result of many observations that the introduction of
alcohol specially deranges the vaso-motor system; this derangement showing
itself alike in disturbance of the heart's action, and in relaxation of the
capillary vessels, which become filled with blood, especially in the
nervous system and in the skin. This causes one to feel that warmth and
exhilaration which is the first effect of the introduction of these
disturbing agencies, and which are appealed to as evidence that drink does
us good. Well, what are the facts? The fresh glow is simply the result of
relaxation of the capillary vessels of the skin, allowing a large quantity
of blood to come to the surface, so as to give the feeling of superficial
warmth. But if a larger amount of blood comes to the surface, it robs the
parts within; and the feeling of genial warmth gives way to a general
depression, especially when we are exposed to severe cold. The temporary
exhilaration of the nervous system, too, is followed by a corresponding
depression. Hence a person feels 'sick and sorry' the next morning after
taking alcoholic stimulant."

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