Correspondence relative to the introduction of homœopathy into the hospital.

Date:
[1868]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Correspondence relative to the introduction of homœopathy into the hospital. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CORRESPONDENCE. Royal Infirmary, Aberdeen, 6tli October, 1808. I. Dear Dr. B-eith, As your colleagues in charge of the medical patients in this Hospital, we are constrained to address you in reference to the modes of treatment which have been employed by you for some time back in the cases under your care. It is with great reluctance that we do so, as we know that you are imbued with great zeal for science, and that you have a thorough love for your profession ; but we consider that it is a duty we owe to the public, and to the Managers of this Institution on the one hand, and to the interests of the Aberdeen Medical School, to ourselves, and also to our Colleagues on the other, to protest against your use here of acknowledged homoeopathic medicines and preparations. Further, with regard generally to the doses of medicines prescribed by medical men, great licence is no doubt given and taken in these days. But you have been in the habit of giving the officinal prepara¬ tions in doses so very much less than those indicated in the British Phar¬ macopoeia of 1867, a work compiled by the most eminent authorities on Therapeutics and Materia Medica in Great Britain, that we must remonstrate with you on this point also. With your theory of the action of medicines we cannot agree. We think your deductions wrong, and as your views on the Therapeutical action of medicines are opposed to the teachings of men wrho hold the foremost rank in our profession, wTe ask you to ro-consider those views, for the sake of your own professional status, as well as of the delicate position in which you place us. We remain, Yours very truly, ..LjijS (Signed) ALEX. HARVEY. J. W. F. SMITH. Dr. Archibald Keith, Physician, Royal Infirmary.