Homoeopathy : report of the speeches on irregular practice delivered at the Nineteenth Anniversary Meeting of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, held at Brighton, August 13 & 14, 1851.

Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Homoeopathy : report of the speeches on irregular practice delivered at the Nineteenth Anniversary Meeting of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, held at Brighton, August 13 & 14, 1851. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    Such, then, is the Report of your Committee. It has been carefnlly considered: and it was not framed till the opinions of many Associates had been collected and weighed. We, there- fore, eai-nestly, and with confidence, as to the propriety of the course indicated, ask you to adopt it as an expression of the sentiments of the Association. It is a plain, straight-forward manifesto; and I sincerely trust that it does not contain one expression which is in any way distasteful to a single Member who now hears me. We must not think of what we are about to do as a matter of good or bad policy—we must only feel that Ave are this day called on to maintain, in the face of the world, the honour of oui- noble profession, and to express, in simple phrases, what we conscientiously feel to be the truth. Let us say our mind plainly, fii-mly, and caknly. Silence would be far better than the giving forth of a feeble and uncertain sound. [Cheers.] Db. Malden (of Worcester), said :—I move that the Report be adopted. After what you heard from me yesterday, you cannot doubt my sincerity; and it is therefore needless to detain you.* Dr. C. J. B. Williams (of London), said:—Having been asked, since I entered the room, to second the adoption of the resolutions, I cannot hesitate to do so; and, unprepared as I am, I cannot help saying a few words on the subject, although, so far as I can judge from the demonstration of feeling which has greeted the Report, the meeting seems pretty unanimous abeady. It might be a question whether it is the province of this Association to take up matters of this kind and express a decided opinion upon them: but, I only ask, if you do not take them up, where is the body that will? You see all sorts of quackery, with homoeopathy foremost, rampant through the land, deluding, by its unaccountable infatuations, the powerful, the learn- ed, the rich, and, worse than all, the poor in multitudes: and not only arc riches placed at the command of the instruments of these fal- lacies, but what are far more precious, and this is far more terrible to contemplate,—the lives of our fellow-creatures. In fact, there is at this moment throughout this country an awful system of trafficking or gambling with the issues of life and death, a perHous tamper- * Dr. Maiden alluded to a very interesting and able paper on Empiricism Wliich he hiid read on the previous day. li 2
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