Hidden Knowledge Part 3: Veriphobia Medicorum - Fear of Truth on the Part of Physicians.

Address to the Homeopathy Medical School's Graduating Class of 1866 - You'll love this one. Gold right here!

As I continue to travel down the weaving and winding rabbit tunnels of medical history, I continue to come across wise and enlightening writings in the archives. Their words as so cleverly crafted (unlike mine!), their passion, determination, frustration and hope is so obvious, it touches my heart.

I wish to share another gem with you that further drives home the indoctrination, censorship and prejudice against homeopathy in 1866.

• In case you’ve missed Part 2, you can find it HERE

In this stack, Professor Cooke is “preparing the troops for battle” at their graduation from Homeopathic Medical College. I suggest you get your favourite beverage (I have mine!) and enjoy another piece of timeless wisdom and insight into the treatment of the profession of homeopathy.

Veriphobia Medicorum

An extract from an address by N. F. Cooke, Professor of Theory and Practice, to the graduating class at the Hahnemann Medical College - published 1866.

I’ll provide you the link in the next stack (I have my reasons). Any highlights are mine own

I propose, then, to leave the well worn path, and invite your attention as fellow Physicians, to the last medical lecture it will be my privilege to pronounce before you. I shall describe to you a disease, not laid down in the medical books, and purposely reserved for my regular course for this occasion. It is a disease which you will meet, certainly encounter at every step of your professional career, and if unfamiliar with its nature and treatment, will cause you more perplexity and annoyance than all other maladies combined. It is, moreover, fatal in its character— fatal to the life of science. I propose for it the term Veriphohia (fear of Truth.) There are, it is true, many varieties of the disease, all causing much mischief.

But the variety with which you have mainly to deal, and the eradication of which you are specially charged, is the Veriphohia Medicorum —the fear of Truth on the part of Physicians. I assume the law of Homoeopathy to be the very embodiment of medical truth. No argument can be needed to prove this to you, gentlemen, to-day graduates of the system. You must have become in some way, deeply impressed with this fact, or you would probably have won your Diplomas a little earlier, and considerably easier.

Let us pass at once, then, to the consideration of the nature and forms of opposition to this Truth, and the appropriate remedies with which to combat it. It effects, to a greater or less extent, all Physicians and Students of the Old School, and is malignant in inverse proportion to the amount of cultivation and intellect. Benign in character and moderate in intensity in Physicians of enlarged views and liberal culture, it is especially severe in subjects of deficient mental calibre and limited educational advantages. This rule holds good in nearly all cases; there are, indeed, a few notable exceptions, but egotism and obstinacy are found to be the fostering elements in the majority of such, instances. How often has it been my good fortune to treat successfully a Veriphobist of this class, by an application of the simple remedy— exposition , followed, perhaps, by one or two doses of bedside illustration.

The first symptom of recovery is usually the exclamation— “If this be Homoeopathy, I will investigate it and test it.” When the patient reaches this stage, he maybe considered already convalescent, and nature may be confidently trusted to perfect the cure.

A leading Old School Physician of this city—now retired from practice—who has been for the forty best years of his life a subject of veriphobia in its most violent form, remarked to me the other day, “I abandoned my large professional practice for this reason: I saw what Homoeopathy could do, and being too old to learn it, I deemed it dishonest to practice an inferior system.”

Said one of the best and oldest physicians in this State, in the course of a consultation, “Sir, Young Physic has the best of it. The law of similia is as true as the law of gravity. But I am too old to study it. I know that ipecac will relieve nausea, and for years have treated croup successfully with aconite and spongia; but ‘ trust in God, and keep your powder dry;’ always begin the treatment with an emetic.” I call this a hopeful case, but with strong relapsing tendencies.

An aged Old School Physician of a neighboring State, on learning that his daughter, ill in this city, with phlegmasia alba dolens , was under Homoeopathic treatment, came flying here to wrest her from the clutches of such a monstrous heresy. After a consultation upon the case, he exclaimed, “Sir, I can’t understand your treatment of my daughter, but for God’s sake keep on!”

The AEtiology of Veriphobia is found mainly in the tremendous pressure which is brought to bear upon the Medical Student in all Old School Colleges, and upon the graduated Physician by his professional colleagues, against the slightest manifestation of a yearning for Truth, or even respectful and gentlemanly bearing towards its adherents. The Student is taught, nay, commanded, under the penalty of failure in his final examination, to loathe and detest the very name of Homoeopathy. He is even forbidden to speak of the Homoeopathist as a physician! He must not even be seen in the company of the proscribed class; he must shun them as the very pariahs of professional society ! He is literally forced by every agency that power and advantage can command, to abstain from any thing and every thing that might possibly open his eyes to medical Truth!

IN-DOCTOR-NATION!

Nor is this powerful pressure wielded with less effect upon the graduate—upon him who of all others should be freest and most untrammeled. Is he suspected of the least proclivity to a recognition of medical truth? He is forthwith called upon for explanations, and if unable to clear himself from so serious a charge, is expelled from Medical Societies, banished from honorable offices, proscribed, spurned, detested! He must not even be known to have been in consultation with a Homoeopathic Physician—he may not dare to do it.

This is true. No association what so ever with a Homeopath or be banished. What would it do to someone’s psyche to have such threatening pressure? This reminds me of the tactic used today here in Australia, where any healthcare professional is under the threat of being “investigated” and potentially losing their license if they say, do or think ANYTHING that remotely could be conceived to be anti-vax.

The pressure is brought to bear upon them so powerfully that they cannot resist it. With these facts before us, can we wonder that Veriphobia is epidemic? The public at large have no conception of this state of things. They know that “Homoeopathists” and “Allopathists” are “at loggerheads”—they term it “a quarrel” but they little imagine the indignities heaped upon us, nor the earnestness and eagerness with which we court an investigation of our theories. There are always two parties to “a quarrel.” This can be none, for we are not combative; we are ready on all occasions to meet ridicule with argument, scorn and derision with clinical demonstration.

Just like the frontline doctors and other experts who stepped up and spoke out during the COVID-19 pandemic. History is repeating itself! So sorry, I can’t help interjecting….you have no idea how much I hold back!

Nor would the settled policy of this institution “never to retaliate in kind,” have been even so far infringed, as I am guilty of doing to-day, but for the necessity of explaining to you, gentlemen, and through you to the public, the existence and the nature of this baneful malady—the Veriphohia Medicorum.

Sporadic cases of Veriphobia are far more hopeful than the epidemic form. The Litter is malignant, mean, despicable. Like all other Zymotic diseases, it freely propagates its own virus in its course. It is essentially contagious.

In some instances, happily greatly diminished in frequency by the practice of inoculation, it infects laymen, in whom the disease, when fully developed, is alarmingly malignant and foul.

In the lay variety, however, if the patient can survive the treatment by inoculation, viz: the clinical application of his own dogma, he is generally cured, and if so, is rarely attacked a second time.

Epidemic Veriphobia is now prevailing throughout the Northern States, and you will have abundant opportunities for studying and combating it. You will also have frequent occasion to observe that the epithets, malignant, mean and despicable, are by no means misapplied. The subjects seem to be seized with a veritable mania. Like wolves, they are comparatively - harmless when encountered singly, but in the full pack, are desperate and fierce. I am informed that a combined effort has been, or is to be made, in our State Legislature, which, if successful, will render this the last annual commencement of your Alma Mater. It is sought to smuggle a bill through that august body, creating a board of “Medical Examiners,” before whom all candidates for degree of Medical Doctor must be brought. The palpable object of this is to exclude Homoeopathists altogether from the ranks of medicine, precisely as they are so successfully excluded from the Army and Navy. This is Veriphobia in its despicable aspect. Its subjects, in this instance, are men of low and obscure origin, weak and imbecile.

So there you have it. The board of Medical Examiners used to combat a “rival”. I have yet to deep dive into this history, when it actually occurred and which body lobbied for it’s existence. I assume it was the lobby group, the American Medical Association (AMA), as that was their objective when they formed in 1847.

Controlling medical education in it’s entirety is the linchpin that pushed this healing art to the back corners - but not extinguish it completely… yet. Curiously Cooke states that the public recognise what what happening. Wow, so many parallels to today.

“Clothed with a little brief authority,” and fearful of honorable competition at the bedside, the Veriphobia epidemic has so entangled in red tape and circumlocution the law makers of our land, from President to dull-eared Congressmen, that it has thus far excluded Truth from our public Hospitals, and from our Army and Navy. Here Veriophobia runs riot, mad, delirious. It drives a Franklin from his noble work at Mound City Hospital, and finally from the Army, for no other earthly reason than that he saved too many patriots from butchery!

Thank God, its fury only lifted a Beebe to a higher and nobler eminence!

A little research required here on my behalf trying to understand who these historical figures are. (Reminder I’m an Aussie!). I’m assuming the “Franklin” is a homoeopathic doctor who was “driven” out of the Mound City Civil War Naval Hospital sometime during the civil war of 1861–65. Though there was a William B. Franklin who was “promoted to brigadier general of volunteers” in 1861, and doctors likely volunteered.

It surrounds the poor soldier with such needless implements of torture and of horror, that the battle-field, in comparison with the hospital, is justly regarded as a sanctuary. Thank God, again; the surreptitious pocket-cases have come to be as numerous as the match-locks. “God bless them little vials, doctor— they kept me out of hospital.” Who among you, my colleagues, has not been thus greeted by many a war-scared veteran?

Imagine a little sardine-sized tin with a flip-lid that contains a few little vials of first-aid homeopathic remedies (I’ve recently witnessed an authentic such tin). This was clearly known to save the soldiers from the “butcher” house, but also the remedies helped with “fear”.

Who believes that justice would have been so swift and sure upon Surgeon General Hammond, but for his famous anti-mercury [he banned calomel for use on soldiers] and tartar emetic order? No, Veriphobia shivered to its very roots, and exclaimed—“Fiat voluntas Veriphobia ruat Hammond” and Hammond fell accordingly. It withholds the coveted commission from the educated and experienced advocate of Truth, but gives it to the blatant and pin-feathered buzzard of error. I met one day an acephalous Old School acquaintance, gaily arrayed in a new uniform, with all the decorations and gew-gaws which the “regulations” permit I accosted him—“Why, how did you ever get past the Examining Board? You know enough to realize your entire ignorance of medicine and surgery?” Oh, said he, with a leer, ”I only had to damn Homoeopathy pretty savagely!” A raw back-woodsman, freshly turned from some doctor factory, where they rush the machinery at lightning speed, passes a successful examination for army honors, where any of the Faculty of this College would fail!

But, as intimated, there are sporadic cases of Veriphobia, which so little resemble those I have described, that the similitude exists only in name.

The subjects are honorable, learned, high-minded gentlemen. They are afraid of the truth, only because they are suspicious of error. They are, practically, Homoeopathists. Under whatever distinctive appellation we may rank them, they are skillful as Physicians, and honest as men. Blinded by the fallacy that Homeopathy essentially consists in infinitesimal doses, they assume for granted that they never seek to verify by actual inspection. But their practice is safe—they are unwittingly Homoeopathists.

Such an one is a Blake, who dared to brave Veriphobia Meclicorum maligna, by declaring, in a Medical Society, where the disease held savage sway, that the poor man has a right to Homooepnthic treatment in the Army and Navy, and in public hospitals, if he so elects, and was even so bold as to announce his willingness to practice on equal terms with a Homoeopathist in hospital or dispensary. Such, almost, is another who said to me a few days ago: “If you can cure Puerperal Fever, why don’t you tell us what you give?” Poor fellow, but for his Veriphobia, he would long since have gained the coveted information.

Why, it may be asked, do not the Veriphobists consent to contrast their treatment with ours, side by side, in hospital and in camp? What better opportunities could be afforded them for disproving our claims than a fair comparison of the two systems, upon the same classes of patients, taken indiscriminately, under precisely the same circumstances, and the same surroundings?

We have ever been anxious, nay, clamorous for the trial. We invite it—we challenge them to it. Can they have the effrontery to answer that they are unwilling to expose lives to our “do nothing treatment?” Witness the frightful sacrifice of lives, they are now making the world over in their insane experiments! Besides, are we not so rapidly growing in popular favor, that we are even now monopolizing the great majority of the educated, intelligent and wealthy population of the country? And would it not be an actual saving of valuable lives—if indeed we are, as they assert, “letting people die”—were they to seize upon so golden an opportunity of rapidly exposing our delusion? How long would it take, think you, to accumulate statistics sufficient to overwhelm either them or us with the most stubborn kind of facts, if they would for a short time only, relax their resistance and open the doors of an honorable and fair competition in our public hospitals, and in our Army and Navy ? Put down in this way, we should stay put down—nothing could recusitate us, and our hated system would be heard of “never more.” Gentlemen Veriphobists, we invite you to this crucial test. The people will draw the just inference from your refusal. Nay, they have already decided against you. Populas vult decepi et decipiatur. But just hero they can be deceived no longer.

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