HOMOEOPATHIC MATERIA MEDICA [How To Protect Homoeopathic Materia Medica]
By Robert H
No 2
by Title, Bureau of Materia Medica, I.H.A., July 2, 1953.
G.KENT SMITH, M.D.
I was asked by Doctor Lucy Swanton
Clark to prepare a paper on “How to Protect the Homoeopathic Materia
Medica,” which to me seems like an odd subject, for there is not much
that can be said about it. The only danger to the homoeopathic materia
medica is its atrophy and death due to disuse; therefore we should concern
ourselves with what can be done to keep the materia medica in use. The
only way to keep the materia medica from going into disuse is to get new
men interested in Homoeopathy and thus in the materia medica, for we are
losing homoeopaths faster than we are replacing them. As I have stated in
papers elsewhere, the way to get more men interested in Homoeopathy is to
establish it as a specialty. When we have done that we shall immediately
lose sectarian ridicule and we also shall become more attractive to
younger men who have been taught specialities and have grown up in an age
of specialization.
As you know, England has Homoeopathy as
a post graduate specialty. Dr. Clark wrote me that this specialty was set
up by an act of parliament. However, in this country specialities are not
set up by politicians but are the banding together of a group of doctors
mutually interested in one branch of medicine who incorporate themselves
and set up specifications to test the men in this field so that they may
be certified as having adequate knowledge of that branch of medicine.
In conclusion, it is my opinion that a
specialty is the only salvation for Homoeopathy and its materia medica and
that, if we are to save it, we must act now as the next meeting will be
too late, because the next meeting is always one year in the future. There
have been a number of individual efforts along this line and I have
received numerous inquiries and letters concerning these efforts, and the
authors all the anxious to see this done. So, if this convention wants to
accomplish something worth while
for Homoeopathy, it should organize a
united effort for the incorporation of Homoeopathy into a specialty.
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