1908: Each day gives rise to a new system of medical treatment. "Each is a protest against the existing order in medicine."

Patented medicines are on the rise, but have failed to improve mortality and morbidity of the "middle years" of life, creating medical hesitancy!

In 2021, after more than a year of prolific pandemic note taking, I began to organise my revelations into the COVID-19 pandemic timeline, which captures the before, during and after years.

Whenever I added a new timeline data point, which included such things as a significant event, the formation of an organisation or the passing of some legislation, I wondered what circumstances led to it creation. This very questioning has sent me on many journeys back in time, allowing me to learn things about our history which I never knew existed. Piecing together the timeline has helped me make better sense of how we got to where we are today, but that too often we are repeating the same or similar patterns of the past.

One of the big questions that I am still searching for a firm answer on is what really happened during the 1918 pandemic, but also what was happening in the lead up to that point in history?

I have a sense of what happened, but I don’t have enough information yet. Was it really an infectious disease called “influenza” that caused the high death toll? I don’t doubt that people were sick during that time period but was it from fear, a single pathogen, medical interventions of the time, public self-medication and more. Was it more iatrogenic deaths labelled as “influenza” and “pneumonia”?

I don’t expect to find the answers I’m looking for spelled out, and I know I wont find them in mainstream publications. I’m looking for clues from the archived journals from that time, things that might provide some insight into what the atmosphere in the public health and medical profession was like in both the lead up to, and during the 1918 era.

The homeopaths provide a perspective which I find very interesting - I call this "Hidden Knowledge", but really it is information there for anyone to read, it’s just ignored, belittled, forgotten and not talked about.

This Article from the Archives provides some more clues:

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The State of Medicine in 1908

Today I wish to bring to you the words of Royal S. COPELAND the president of the American Institute of Homeopathy, presented June 22,1908 at their annual gathering, titled “The Mission of Homeopathy”. He provides an important perspective on the state of medicine in this time period, from a homeopaths perspective. It chronicles the relationship the laity and orthodox physicians have with the growing use of patented drugs and potentially what role they played in the overall health and mortality of the population…and so much more. This speech was written just 10 years before the 1918 pandemic, and reveals just how ill-equipped the medical establishment was in treating infectious disease, though it does recognise the advancements made in sanitation and surgery.

Bear in mind, at this exact same time in history, on June 20, 1908, Abraham Flexner, who was employed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, published his “criticism” of the state of college education and noted an “opportunity” for it’s reform. Just a few months later, in November of 1908, the Carnegie Foundation took over the American Medical Association’s project to reform medical education, of which Abraham Flexner was placed in charge. He released his findings commonly refered to as The Flexner Report on April 16, 1910, which was the catalyst that shaped today’s pharma-controlled medical education system.

Are we really healthier, with less suffering than we were 120 years ago? Is public trust in the medical system better than it was 120 years ago?

I hope you enjoy reading this address as much as I did!

Read for yourself from page 47 - HERE

You can read the The President’s Address yourself by clicking on the image above, or read along below.

(Highlights and formatting changes are mine)

This is a time when almost every passing day chronicles the birth of a new system of medical treatment. Most of these, it is true, are rather systems of applied philosophy or theology, than of material therapeutics, but each is a protest against the existing order in medicine. Among laymen there is wide spread distrust of present methods of dealing with disease. There can be no other explanation for the abandonment of old methods. Man does not readily depart from the practices of a life time, and caprice, alone, would hardly account for this wholesale defection. Naturally one inquires regarding the attitude of the profession itself. What is the feeling among medical practitioners? Is there perfect confidence and assurance here, or is the uneasiness of the laity simply the reflection of a similar state of the professional mind?

The truth is, among physicians of the allopathic school, there is abundant evidence of an almost absolute loss of respect for drugs and their therapeutic value . No longer does the practitioner pin his faith to remedies which for time out of mind have been depended upon in this or that disease. [Dr William] Osler, the head and shoulders of the dominant school says:

“He is the best doctor who knows the worthlessness of most medicines.”

“Throw physic to the dogs" is the almost universal cry of the old school of medical men. Agnosticism is the attitude of that profession toward all therapeutic procedure. Only recently, a prominent allopathic neurologist in one of the large cities of the continent stated to your speaker:

“I am an honest man, trying to help my patients, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in our materia medica to give a ray of hope to the afflicted, I am helpless as a babe in the presence of disease, and feel myself to be a useless barnacle on the hull of society."

Whence comes this lack of lay and professional belief in drugs! Why should men turn away from the established school, seeking cures elsewhere for their ailments? Is this revolution justified? Let us examine the records and see what is the state of things. Is disease just as fatal, perhaps more fatal, than formerly? Is human suffering less by reason of the seeming advances in sanitation, surgery and therapeutics?

Sanitation - “is a technical, scientific attack upon the essential causes of disease”

In sanitation, for instance, there is a far-flung battle line. No more do men trust in reeking tube and iron shard. Sanitation is not now a matter of foul smelling disinfectants. It is a technical, scientific attack upon the essential causes of disease. The nation, the state, the municipality, even the rural communities, are insistant upon the active observance of sanitary rules. The inspector, with equal foot, visits the capitol and the cabin, the palace and the pig-stye, the skyscraper and the adobe. Nothing escapes his watchful eye. With test tube and microscope, with culture medium and incubator, with guinea-pig and rabbit, with all the paraphernalia of modern science, he searches out the causes of disease and recommends methods to avoid them. The flea, the fly, the tick, the rat, the mosquito and the family cat are in turn the objects of his displeasure.

This conditioned aversion to “vectors” is important to note. As patented medicines were on the rise, so to the search for patented pesticides increased. In 1895 th US Department of Agriculture “ushered in the era of widespread chemical pest control”. When did “infantile paralysis” epidemics begin to raise their heads? There is note of the “Great New York epidemic of 1907”¹ and polio cases mysteriously subside when the weather got cooler.

Lets continue…

Commissions without number have instituted successful search into the nature and hiding places of the foes of humanity. Undoubtedly, mankind has benefited materially by these labors. Many regions of the earth heretofore uninhabitable by any except the immune, are now safe dwelling places for all. Most of the plagues and epidemics of older times are now, in all probability, purely historical. Mankind, consequently, is under great debt to the many departments of science devoted to sanitation, even though the full measure of the debt may be infinitely less than the enthusiastic claims of the laboratory. Of this more may be said later.

Surgery - now popular as interest in medical treatments wane

Since the days of Lister, surgery has taken huge strides in results and popularity. Hospitals, a few years ago places to be dreaded and avoided, have become more numerous and are crowded to the doors with patients, seeking attention largely on the surgical side. Not an organ of the body and hardly an affection now is excluded from the surgeon's field. With waning interest in medicines and purely medicinal treatment, the profession and laity have turned to surgery. There is something appealing and fascinating in the thought of a brief surgical operation and convalescence, with immediate escape from long time pain. Why suffer the delay and ultimate disappointment of medical treatment when the surgeon can so easily end both? Thus the surgeon waxes rich, the hospital accounting is to the good and the old time family physician, like Doctor McClure, is known only as a character in fiction.

The quick-fix of surgery! Are we any different today?

If, by sanitary and surgical procedure, disease is not only shortened, but longevity promoted, and human existence sweetened, it were unwise to utter protest against the present trend in medicine. But the wise man will “take stock" occasionally to see if he is really thus enriched. Let us to-night examine the situation and determine if it be one to face with joy or with anxiety.

The gloomy outlook for “the middle stage of existence”

The most encouraging results of human effort to wipe out disease and to promote longevity have been accomplished in the extremes of life. Thousands of babies have been kept alive who must certainly have died except for increased medical knowledge. Frail, puny, immature infants, formerly the easy victims of any infection, are so guarded against germ invasion, carefully nourished, consuming sterilized food, breathing sterilized air, so protected from every foe, that they pass the danger line and safely reach an age and development capable of self support.

So, too, the very old are warned against over active physical exertion, and so directed as to food, drink, surroundings and exercise, as to live beyond the old time expectancy.

Not so roseate, however, is the prospect of the middle stage of existence. Indeed, if statistics are worth anything, the outlook is gloomy and discouraging. Stevenson says the individual who expects to live but a week, should be just as cheerful and active as if he were expecting to live a hundred years. A member of this body does not share Stevenson's optimistic spirit. This doctor says that he is in constant dread that old Death, armed with a club, is lurking just around the corner, ready to beat out his brains and end his medical career. Were our friend to study the United States Census Report for 1902, he would find material to justify his fears, and he might come to feel that the patient, as well as the doctor, is not so safe, excluding age itself, as he was even ten years ago.

Dr Copeland goes on to present some mortality data where he compares the losses per 100,000 between 1890 to 1900, of which mortality increased “enormously” for certain diseases in that short 10 year period.

He mentions the Census Report 1902, of which I found the historical Mortality Statistics housed on the CDC website from the "Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of the Census". The Twelfth Census of the United States², taken in the Year 1900 was reported in 1902 with dates back to 1850. I believe this is the document he is referring to.

As compared with the death losses of 1890, in the United States, the losses per hundred thousand in 1900 had enormously increased as regards certain diseases.

• Pneumonia, for instance, reaped 1107 more deaths in every hundred thousand cases than ten years previously;

• heart disease, 1328 more;

• kidney disease, 1222 more;

• apoplexy, 806 more;

• diseases of the stomach, 338 more;

• diabetes, 164 more;

• cancer, 634 more.

The increase of fatal cases of cancer in this country and all over the world is terrifying. In 1900, of reported deaths, thirty thousand people died from this dread disease in the United States. Probably, if the truth were known, more than fifty thousand Americans departed this life as the direct result of cancer in 1907.

So what I find interesting here is the large increase in pneumonia deaths since 1890, around the time bacterial-vaccines³ were increasing. Fast forwards a few more years, and all forms of pneumonia is the largest cause of death in the 1918 pandemic⁴. Is it the case that no matter the factors that lead to pneumonia, the orthodox medical establishment had no effective means of treating the patient⁵, contrary to what I have found for the homeopath of that time.

Arthur W. Mayo Robson, late President of the International Congress of Surgery, in his recent book on “Cancer of the Stomach⁶,” is authority for some facts regarding the marked increase in the mortality from cancer. He says, “In England during the last thirty years, the recorded death rate from cancer has nearly doubled, while in America it has almost been trebled. Doubtless this may be partly due to greater accuracy in diagnosis, for the increase has been largely recorded in the internal organs and much less in accessible parts. But, as stated by Dr. Roger Williams, there has not only been uniformity in the variations of the increment in the long accession of years, but the increase has involved all parts of the body without material alteration in the normal proportionate ratios; moreover the increase has been recorded in most civilized countries."

For the sake of our present discussion, it is granted that some diseases are being reduced in number of cases and in severity by modem methods of treatment. For instance, tuberculosis, in its incipiency, is undoubtedly curable, or apparently so, by the present day system of rest, feeding, and out-of-door life. From personal inspection of most of the public, and many of the private sanitoria of America, your speaker is fully convinced of the value of the Trudeau system⁷. Without the added aid of internal medication, the natural methods are certainly accomplishing: much for humanity in its fight against the white plague. The universal testimony of the physicians in change of these institutions is that medicines are never given, except, of course, for acute or intervening disease. The significance of this fact will later appear.

There is small wonder that the medical man, the sociologist, the philanthropist, the statesman and the humanitarian should join hands in the great crusade against tuberculosis. The results of treatment in this disease are in such marked contrast to the usual effects of medical treatment that naturally they must attract wide and favorable comment. There is always more acclaim over one victory in a losing war than over a dozen fruitless battles. It was ever thus. We have heard, indeed, that joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. No wonder a profession, counted among the learned callings, with its garments threadbare and its granaries empty, shall rejoice that in its barren acres is this one splendid field! We rejoice, too, and, with all mankind, join in the pean of praise and thanksgiving.

The curability of diphtheria by neutralizing the toxins of the causal germ is a second monument to scientific genius. There are those, of course, who still object to the use of antitoxin, and insist that it is harmful rather than beneficial. Personally, your speaker, at the risk of possible criticism from within the sound of his voice, states as his conviction that von Behring's gift to humanity is of inestimable value. However, he wishes, in the same breath, to declare that the effect cannot be explained as dynamic or therapeutic, in the true sense, but it is simply a wise use of chemistry almost as elementary as the administration of an alkali to neutralize an acid.

Clearly not all homeopaths were of the same opinion about anti-toxin serums (antibodies) derived from animals injected with graduated doses of diphtheria or tetanus bacteria⁸.

Let us turn a moment to another disease thought to be more or less under control of the modem laboratory methods, typhoid fever. Regarding this disease a recent writer has said: “In spite of all that is being done to purify water supplies and correct other means of conveyance of typhoid infection, in 1900 there were 3,405 deaths from this disease per 100,000, against 3,216 for 1890, an increase of 189. It is my personal conviction, based upon observation and reports in medical journals," this writer says, “that typhoid fever has been more prevalent for the past eighteen months than it was when the statistics embodied in the last census reports were gathered."

Simon Flexner, the Rockefeller Institute investigator, reports a case where for half a century a patient, supposedly cured of typhoid fever, was nothing more nor less than a culture medium for typhoid bacilli. During all these years he spread and disseminated this dread disease. Another writer, George Dean, of the Lister Institute, in a March number of the British Medical Journal, tells of a similar case where the germs were found in the secretions of the body twenty-nine years after the attack. Forster of Strassbourg, has determined that the normal bile is an excellent medium for the typhoid bacillus and that fully 2 per cent, of typhoid victims, for months or years, are typhoid carriers. Talk about exterminating typhoid! One might as well talk about exterminating rain drops or snow storms!

In this connection, speaking of the dangers from infectious diseases, in a recent number of Science, Flexner says: "Perhaps the chief single compelling phenomenon is that of the microbe carrier, who is everywhere coming to be regarded as a serious menace to the health of communities. He is not a new discovery, for, as regards diphtheria, he has been known for more than a decade. But now he has been found to disseminate, not only typhoid fever, but also dysentery, plague, cholera, influenza, spinal meningitis, and, in certain localities, a host of protozoan diseases. Moreover, he is not, like the victim of tuberculosis, who is also a microbe carrier, a sufferer from the disease which he disseminates; he is, as a rule, immune to the microbes in an actual sense and is usually ignorant of the sinister role he plays in life.”

Wow, the superspreader narrative began to take hold over 100 years ago with Dr Simon Flexner.

Flexner recites instances of long persistence of disease producing microbes, not only of typhoid fever, but also of other dread conditions. Plague germs, for instance, have persisted seventy-six days after recovery; influenza bacilli [now Haemophilus influenzae] have been found in the sputum a whole year after the attack.

With all these facts before us, the outlook is indeed gloomy. In spite of all that sanitation has done and may yet accomplish; in spite of all the marvellous results of surgery — the acme of which must soon be attained — in spite of all the modem methods of nursing and general management of the patient, disease is rampant, each year more prevalent and more fatal. Is there no help for the sons of men? Must we sit in idleness and with folded hands accept the inevitable as merely the execution of heaven's relentless verdict?

Before suggesting a remedy for this lamentable state of affairs we should, perhaps, analyze the figures and offer some reasons for these discouraging statistics.

For a decade we have bowed down and worshipped the laboratory. The physiologist, the pathologist, the histologist, the embryologist, the bacteriologist, the physicist, and the chemist have been placed upon a pedestal, demanding the homage of the nations. Your speaker takes second place to no man in his admiration of and respect for these scientists, and belief in their labors. They have faced myriads of problems, and, to the satisfaction and betterment of mankind, have solved them, one by one. As Achilles dragged the body of Hector at his chariot wheel, so has the moden scientist subjugated the unwilling mysteries of life.

Regardless of our interest in all this fascinating research, a proper proportion must be maintained. The conclusions of the experimental laboratory must not blind us to the fact that the human cell may not react in the same manner, and the laboratory of life itself may force a different conclusion. In the language of Duckworth : "The clinician is always in the face of the personal factor in each patient. The physiologist has a dog, or a guinea-pig, or some definite organ of an animal, but rarely a man, before him. The problems are not the same, and never can be. The personal factor, then, demands careful study from the physician, for men and women are not so many wooden nine-pins turned in a lathe as some would have us believe. A very little consideration makes it clear that this is not true, and multitudes of instances at once disprove this view which is evolved in the laboratory of the physiologist and contradicted at the bedside."

The laboratory idea has run rife. Much of scientific value has been discovered, but all is yet too new, too unassimilated, to be of value to the practitioner. It is of no interest to the patient to be assured that this or that germ is the cause of his trouble, that this or that pathological change has occurred in his tissues. What he wants to know is, what will cure him. The argumentum ad hominem is: What can you do for me?

The general profession is rich in scientific theory, but, speaking now of the allopathic branch, poor in remedial resource. Among the laity there is, in spite of Collier's attacks, an increasing use of patent medicines. Quinine and opium are imported in large quantities, and the annual consumption of drugs is estimated by a conservative statistician at about two gallons exclusive of liquors and cordials, for every man, woman and child in the United States!

Hold on a minute, the annual consumption of all drugs is estimated at two gallons on average, per person per year, in metric that is 9 litres per person per year. Am I reading that correctly? That is crazy. Though it does provide an insight into the potential habits of the US population leading up to 1918, especially for over the counter Aspirin who’s price halved over night.

Could mass Aspirin overdose have contributed to the death rate in the 1918 pandemic?

Probably a large percentage of the increase in heart disease may be attributed to the pernicious habit of using headache powders. Likewise, many of the deaths in pneumonia are doubtless the result of cardiac depression following the use of antipyretics. Even some educated doctors are still antidiluvian enough to think “the fever must be broken," to quote the antiquated language of olden days. All drugs used for their physiological effects to slow the heart's action and reduce fever are, in the opinion of your speaker, harmful always, dangerous often, and fatal not infrequently.

In 1918 many deaths were grouped as “all forms of pneumonia” with “influenza” and cardiac depression is noted through the literature! Also, don’t doctors today still recommend giving paracetemol to break a fever?

Conservative and observant physicians of the old school have come to recognize these malevolent results of drugs. Naturally, they have lost confidence in them and a large number have practically abandoned therapeutics. This lack of confidence in drugs, added to almost reverential devotion to the laboratory ideas, has developed the Osler⁹ school of medical practice. It's slogan, as we have said, is: “He is the best doctor, who knows the worthlessness of most medicines."

William Osler headed up the highly influencial Johns Hopkins Schoool of Medicine.

The practice of medicine with most of the followers of this thought is a fad, a sport, or a chase after scientific facts. The game is won by a careful record of the onset, course and effects of the disease, by a study of the bacteriological peculiarities of the attack, by a systematic examination of the secretions and excretions, and, finally, by a radical post-mortem examination to confirm the ante-mortem conclusions.

Your speaker does not wish to be unfair. He does not include in this class the majority of practitioners by any means. He respects and admires many of the other profession who are known to him as honest, conscientious men and women. In common with your speaker these join in protest against the present day trend. Take the language of Sir Dyce Duckworth, of London, for instance. In speaking before the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, four months ago, Sir Dyce said:

"We are, I much fear, suffering in these days from a widely spread spirit of incredulity, timidity and hopelessness in the whole realm of therapeutics. We spend much time in cultivating elaborate diagnosis, and this is quite right, but we grievously neglect our main business as healers and mitigators of disease. Our knowledge of the materia medica has declined out of all proportion to that gained by the progress of bacteriology which claims to supersede the older therapeutical art. It will never supersede it, for there are, as Sir William Jenner said, but two great questions to be answered at the bedside of a sick man — what is the matter with him? and what will do him good? Are we not too apt to-day to forget the second question, to experiment with synthetical novelties, and to forget the old long-approved remedies? In short, are we not, as physicians, slowly drifting into the position of abstract scientists and gradually losing our proper relation to the sick as skillful medical artists?"

Were the subject ended here, your speaker would be counted an iconoclast, and the discussion fruitless. But it need not rest at this point, as we shall see.

There once lived a physician whose contemporaries differed from ours. His confreres, unlike ours, had faith; at least their works indicated a living and riotous faith, in drugs. Huge boluses, horrid concoctions, vile mixtures, impossible combinations were the rule; but no matter what form the prescription took, there was consistency at least in this, that each dose carried a gigantic amount of drug substance. In protest against these massive doses, this physician of whom we speak, proposed a single remedy, to be administered according to a certain law, in such quantity and form as to be at once assimulated by the system of the patient. Dissension and argument followed his pronouncement. Anger, vilification, ostracism and banishment ensued. But the seed was sown, and the grateful tears of the healed watering the soil, the plant came to full leaf and vigor.

The times and the seasons have changed. Now the profession, the same old profession in spite of renewals in lock, stock and barrel, has come to discard, not only the crude drugs of a century ago, but practically all internal medication. The pendulum has swung to the other side of the arc. But if Duckworth's warning is heeded, if this scientifically acute but practically obtuse profession will take its eye from the microscope and raise its head from the research table, it will see that the shrub of homoeopathic therapeutics, so thrifty a hundred years ago, has now grown into a giant oak. Within its sheltering shade is room for all the tribes of men who seek the balm of healing.

Unfortunately that giant oak got hacked back in the decades that followed, but it still survives to this day, and appears to be shooting some branches. It’s new growth is fertilized by the acute and urgent need for healing and ever growing dissatisfaction and distrust with the mainstream “old school”.

It must be conceded that the dominant school can lay no claim to therapeutic possession. No matter what its need of praise, at least it can expect nothing in this direction. It should not resent, therefore, the claims of another for that which it does not itself possess, and upon which it places no value. Disclaiming monopolistic views as regards the law of similars, having at heart the highest good of the race, and only this, and looking upon the acceptance of our proven theories as the world's hope for the cure of disease, we must be forgiven, if, as a profession, we stand aloof from the nontherapeutic practice. There may be greater misfortune in this life than discord and dissension. The sword is sometimes a greater blessing than peace at any price. The mission of homoeopathy cannot be fulfilled until the theory of similars is accepted as the therapeutic law. We have no quarrel with the other school simply because of our differences in belief. We concede to all the privilege to think and form conclusions. We claim a like privilege.

Our observation of the careful proving of drugs, of the scientifically accurate materia medica, and of the daily results of its application, absolutely confirm our belief in the universality of the law of cure. Therefore, to set aside this conviction would be to surrender a moral principle, and to give up the secret of therapeutic success. We insist that the medical profession ought not be a political machine, a close corporation to be kept in perfect working order, a great organization consisting of orders and degrees, with national, state, district, county and local branches, having no ostensible reason for existence except to control legislation, regulate prices, dictate terms and methods for the treatment of the poor, and seek the balance of power in party politics.

Truth alone is eternal. Theories change and arguments based upon them fall to earth. Institutions having answered their purpose cease to exist. Governments are fleeting and transitory. Democracy, even, is said to be an experiment. To us it seems as steadfast as did the City of the Seven Hills and the Roman Empire itself to the contemporaries of the Apostle Paul. But all this has passed away. So it must be with the established order in medicine. An institution which has outlived its usefulness, which has so far lost its cunning as to permit disease to multiply in its very door-yard, which has so failed of its mission as to witness the almost daily birth of a new system of medical thought — such an institution must lose its prestige and deserves no better fate than to pass into innocuous desuetude.

In its stead will be adopted another system, a system which has passed a century's probation, and with each year has strengthened its hold upon the minds of the observant.

Homoeopathy was an experiment in Hahnemann's time ; it proved its value by the clinical test during the next period; by the present day methods it has been scientifically proven, both as to the theory of similars and the small dose.

Sir A. E. Wright's¹⁰ opsonic work, for example, is but a confirmation or re-discovery of homoeopathy. The results of his research are familiar to every professional listener. Working for instance, with the germs of pus production, he, too, observed the law of similars. Taking minute quantities of the toxins of the disease producing germ, toxins capable of producing symptoms similar to those caused by the germ, he was able to cure the lesions produced thereby. Not only did Wright thus re-discover the law of similars, but also, strange as it may seem, he hit upon the century old conclusion as regards the size of the dose. One ten thousandth of a milligram, equal to the sixth decimal dilution of the homoeopathic profession, is the dosage recommended by this scientist. This work is but one example of recent unbiased confirmation of homoeopathic claims. Indeed, whereever the allopathic school can point to positive results in therapeutic treatment, these but verify our claims. The opsonic theory of Wright, the anti-tubercular system of von Behring, the mercurial treatment of specific disease, indeed every single therapeutic procedure of proven value in use by the other school, is simply a verification of Hahnemann's theories.

In homoeopathy, humanity has the priceless secret, the key to the shackles of disease, relief from the bane of the ages. This has long been the testimony of our own school of practice, it has occasionally been admitted by a broad-minded and observant man of the other school, and this past twelve months especially has been widely discussed in scientific bodies, and homoeopathic ideas, if not the name, are now practically accepted by the dominant school. In the language of the bright winged angel of olden days, we “bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” In homoeopathy is healing for the nations. With joint ownership in all the marvels of surgery, in all the products of the laboratories, in all that the sciences collateral to medicine have determined — with joint ownership in all these, homoeopathy has been sole possessor of the knowledge of remedial application. When surgery has been helpless, the laboratory impotent, and general science hopelessly at sea, homoeopathy has gone on, serene in the conviction of cures impossible by other methods.

Practitioners of our faith are everywhere; our hospitals are increasing in numbers and influence; our asylums, homes and dispensaries are without end ; the records are open and the results of our practice speak for themselves.

But the homoeopathic profession has no wish to make selfish use of its knowledge. As the momentary ambassador of this great profession and in the name of Samuel Hahnemann, I freely confer upon all physicians, of all schools, of all creeds and color, of all nationalities and languages, a boon greater than scalpel or forcep, greater than anesthetic or anodyne, greater than hypodermic or application, greater than lotion or emollient, the knowledge of the homoeopathic materia medica, and the right to use it in its original purity. By authority of his living heirs, I divide with you our inheritance and receive you as sons and daughters, with ourselves, of our father in the faith, Samuel Christian Frederick Hahnemann.

End of Presidential Address: THE MISSION OF HOMCEOPATHY

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1. The Great New York epidemic of polio in 1907
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951002708590x&seq=213

2. The Twelfth Census of the United States (1850-1900) reported in 1902
(Warning large pdf file)
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsushistorical/vsush_1900_4.pdf

3. Timeline of the development of “vaccines”
https://totalityofevidence.com/historical-vaccine-notes-in-the-pursuit-of-artificial-immunity/

4. Timeline data points before, during and after the 1918 pandemic, including statistics
https://totalityofevidence.com/1918-influenza-pandemic-spanish-flu/

5. February 26, 1916 – JAMA: Symposium on Pneumonia During 1915 and 1916 from pg 687
https://archive.org/details/journalamericanm66ameruoft/page/686/mode/2up

“Dr. William Egbert Robertson : The large number of deaths from pneumonia is due to our own ignorance of the disease and of the proper method of handling it. Pneumonia usually develops in individuals with a disease focus ; if not tuberculous, probably intranasal, or an old sinus disease.” – pg 688

6. Cancer of the Stomach 1907 by A. W. MAYO ROBSON
https://archive.org/details/cancerofstomach00robs/page/n5/mode/2up

7. Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau promoted “the value of fresh air, exercise, and healthy diet” as well as disease reporting and quarantine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Livingston_Trudeau

8. See December 4, 1890 On the development of diphtheria immunity and tetanus immunity animals - Dr. E. Behring and Dr. S. Kitasato
https://totalityofevidence.com/historical-vaccine-notes-in-the-pursuit-of-artificial-immunity/

9. The Principles and Practice of Medcine by William Osler MD First published 1892, many updated editions followed. You’ll find links:
https://totalityofevidence.com/documents-from-the-archives/
William Osler was one of the Big Four recruited by Johns Hopkins to lead research activities. The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine began in 1893. Osler was appointed as physician in chief of Johns Hopkins Medical School and professor of medicine in 1889.
https://totalityofevidence.com/timeline/johns-hopkins-establishes-university-and-hospital-in-his-name/

10. For Sir Almroth E. Wright’s “Vaccine Therapy” work see 1900 to 1920s
https://totalityofevidence.com/historical-vaccine-notes-in-the-pursuit-of-artificial-immunity/