HEPOBT 
OF A 
SPECIAL COMMITTEE 
OF THE 
MEDICAL SOCIETY 
OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 
Upon the Claims of Homceopaths and other Irregular Practi- 
tioners for Professional Recognition in the Medical 
Service of the United States Government, and 
the Charges brought by the Homceo- 
paths AGAINST THE UNITED STATES 
Commissioner of Army 
and Navy Pen- 
sions. 
PUBLISHED BY RESOLUTION OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY. 
WASHINGTON: 
LANGRAN, OGILVIE & CO. 
1871. March 1st, 1871. 
At a regular meeting of the Medical Society of the District of Colum- 
bia, with the president, Dr. J. M. Toner, in the chair, under the head of 
miscellaneous business, Dr. Antisell stated that he learned from the 
public press that the homoeopathic physicians of the country were making 
persistent and vigorous efforts to be placed upon the Boards of Examin- 
ing Surgeons of the United States Pension Office, and that, in view of 
the action of the commissioner of that bureau in removing all irregular 
practitioners from the office lists, they had petitioned the President of 
the United States and the Secretary of the Interior for the removal of 
Commissioner Van Aernam. 
Dr. A. moved that a committee be appointed " for the purpose of in- 
quiring into and reporting upon the facts connected with the exclusion 
of irregular practitioners from the position of examining surgeons in 
the Pension Bureau, with instructions to present recommendations or 
resolutions." 
The motion was carried, and the president appointed the following as 
the committee: Drs. Thos. Antisell, T. Miller, and Louis Mackall. On 
a further motion the president of the society was added to the committee. 
March 8th, 1871. 
The society met, with the president, Dr. Toner, in the chair. Dr. 
Antisell, as chairman of the special committee appointed at the last 
meeting, presented the following report, which was read and received, 
and its preamble and resolutions adopted. On motion of Dr. N. S. Lin- 
coln the report was referred to the Committee on Essays, for publication 
REPORT OF COMMITTEE. 
The committee beg leave to report that the present antagonistic atti- 
tude of the homceopathic practitioners towards the United States Com- 
missioner of Pensions has had its origin in the well-directed labors of the 
latter functionary to simplify and render more uniform the medical action 
of that bureau. 
Some years ago, and up to the commencement of the civil war, the 
Pension Bureau was of small dimensions, and employed a limited staff to 
perform the duties, but when the close of the war found many thousands 
of men distributed over the United States, applicants for pension on ac- 
count of wounds and disease incurred in the line of military or naval 
service, and which more or less incapacitated them for earning their own 4 
livelihood or sustaining their families, the functions of the Pension 
Bureau became extended and onerous, involving the employment of a 
large medical staff demanding not only good general education, but 
special aptitude for diagnosis and a thorough acquaintance with the 
nature and consequences of that class of injuries and diseases incidental 
to camp and active field service; that the medical men employed by the 
Pension Bureau have not always possessed the qualities stated is simply 
a statement of fact, nor could the mass well be otherwise, since they 
were not appointed by examination into their qualifications nor for any 
special fitness, but simply chosen from the locality on the recommenda- 
tion of some one who furnished, when required, the name of one or more 
practitioners of his locality. Politicians' influence often pressed these 
medical men upon the bureau, and their influence often occasioned the 
selection not of the fittest man, but of him most influential in local poli- 
tics, and thus, from one cause or other, the medical qualifications of 
pension surgeons were wholly lost sight of; and hence it was that when 
Commissioner Van Aernam entered on the duties of the bureau he 
found all degrees of medical standing, all classes of practitioners, regular 
and irregular, on the rolls. There were eclectics and Thompsonians, 
Indian doctors, herbalists, hydropaths, homoeopaths, and abortionists, 
according to their own written statement. 
At the time stated there were 1,350 surgeons on the roll, of whom 
1,312 were regular practitioners; of the residual 38 one-half, or 19, 
were homoeopathists, and of this latter number 17 claimed to have gradu- 
ated in colleges of regular medicine; the other 19 were filled up by the 
soi-disant physicians alluded to. 
Thus, by the above-stated method of appointment, this heterogeneous 
mass of practitioners became attached to the bureau under former com- 
missioners, who, not being medical men, could not, and cannot, be ex- 
pected to appreciate the inefficiency and weakness of a medical board so 
constituted; nor was it rendered so apparent how impossible it was to 
unify the action of the officer with such a discordant force until very 
lately, when under the present Commissioner the mode of examination of 
pensioners throughout the whole United States was altered, so that, in- 
stead of the pensioner applying to a single pension surgeon, and being 
examined by him and a report forwarded to the bureau at Washington 
by a single surgeon, boards of examination were ordered to convene in 
the localities, before whom the pensioner appeared, when a joint examina- 
tion and joint report was made out and forwarded. 
By this altered arrangement Commissioner Van Aernam hoped to per- 
form the duties of his office intelligibly, and to the best advantage of the 
government and the true interest of the soldier. 
As soon as these boards commenced to be convened, it became appar- 
ent to the bureau that the efficiency and harmony essential could not be 
attained, since, according to the established rule of medical ethics, the 
regular physician refused to attend or consult pn the same board with 
the homoeopath, and to avoid obstructing the business of the office, attain 
unity of action and justice to the pensioner, one or other physician must 
give way. 
In such case the homoeopath does not feel called on to recede, since his 
code of ethics allows him, practically, to consult with all physicians. 
But the ethics of the regular require him to decline or withdraw from 5 
such association, and, as the majority of all these boards are made up of 
regular physicians, such action would break up every board, and deprive 
the Pension Bureau of its most important and experienced medical ad- 
vice. Now, as the ratio of this class of practitioners is to the number of 
regular physicians on the roll of examining surgeons as one to sixty- 
one, admitting, for argument's sake, although it is by no means true, 
both classes to be equally well educated and capable of serving the gov- 
ernment, it is obvious that the simplest mode of removing the difficulty 
and obtaining harmony, was to eliminate this one from every sixty-one; 
and this is what Commissioner Van Aernam did. The assumed rights 
of one physician should not become a stumbling-block when so prepond- 
erating a number of the other class existed. 
But it is idle to assert for one moment, or admit, that the regular phy- 
sician and the homoeopath is of equal benefit to the office, for it is mainly 
surgical advice -which is needed, and a full acquaintance with that por- 
tion of military surgery which is occupied with the treatment and results 
of gunfehot injuries. Such information is only possessed by those who 
were surgeons in the late war, or who have served or held the office of 
surgeon in city surgical hospitals; as these latter are a very small class, 
they need not be considered; and it may be stated, therefore, that not to 
secure the services of the volunteer medical men of the war would have 
been reprehensible, and the Commissioner would have been open to se- 
vere animadversion for malfeasance had he neglected to secure such 
counsel, even at the loss of irregular practitioners equally well-educated 
on other points. Commissioner Van Aernam had, then, no alternative 
but to drop the irregular in order to secure harmony and efficiency in 
the action of these boards. Besides, it was most natural for the Com- 
missioner to select from that class of medical men who, and who alone, 
were eligible to and did service in the army and navy. Possessed with 
this conviction, and solely in the interest and regular discharge of the 
duties of his office, he addressed a circular letter, dated May 25,1870, to 
each examining surgeon, headed " Personal Report of Examining Sur- 
geon," and containing certain queries. The blank is as follows: 
Personal Report of Examining Surgeon. 
Dated , 187 . 
Name in full, ; residence, ; county of , State 
of ; graduated at ; diploma dated ; nature of mil- 
itary or naval service (if any) ; * under what system of medicine 
do you practice ? 
* This question can be answered in one word, thus, "allopathic," "homoeopathic," 
"hydropathic," "eclectic," &c., &c., as the case may be. 
The replies contained in the personal report abundantly sustained his 
judgment and furnished the means of ascertaining the experienced, the 
competent, and the irregular practitioners. The latter immediately 
after received a letter requesting them to withdraw their names from 
the lists of examining surgeons, and from that date the office of Exam- 
ining Surgeon for the Pension Office has been wholly in the hands of 
regular medicine. 
The elimination, however, was not confined to this class only, for it 
proceeded to the extent of removing over five hundred additional exam- 6 
ining surgeons who were not deemed competent, although regular in 
their mode of practice and medical education. Among the parties ad- 
dressed was Dr. Stillman Spooner, of Oneida, New York, who, acknowl- 
edging his homoeopathic practice, also was requested to resign. Shortly 
after he addressed a letter to the commissioner protesting against his 
action, calling it a proscription of opinion, and endeavoring to excite 
political feeling and introduce it as a reason why homoeopaths should 
share these offices. 
The further history of this matter maybe slated in a few words. 
Homeopaths in one or more of the states agitated this " grievance," as 
they termed it, by meetings and by inflammatory articles in the news- 
papers, fanning political party flames, exciting a false public sentiment, 
and indulging in arguments and statements wholly at variance with 
truth. The Homoeopathic State Medical Society of New York, at their 
meeting, held in the city of Albany, passed resolutions denunciatory of 
the commissioner, and demanding his removal for this act of displacing 
irregular practitioners, and a deputation during last month waited on 
the President and Secretary of the Interior calling for the quick removal 
of the commissioner; and thus the matter stands. 
From various sources, public and private, official and personal, the 
commissioner has received an unanimous endorsement of his proceedings 
from the profession; and your committee, in reviewing the whole affair, 
are of opinion that the action of the commissioner, while it was conducive 
to the best interests of the bureau over which he presides, by availing 
himself of medical advice, whenever practicable, only from physicians 
who, having served in the late civil war, are certainly the most compe- 
tent to form opinions on wounds and disease of military life, that 
action was also in accordance with the views of the whole medical 
profession of this country, with whom homoeopaths and other irregular 
practitioners have no professional status. 
Your committee would call attention to the arrogance and untruths 
contained in the statements of the irregulars in this contest to secure 
place and position under the government. The homceopathists have the 
temerity to say they are 10,000 in the United States, but a careful col- 
lection of the actual returns show that the whole number in our country 
does not exceed 3,000. Dr. S. Spooner says, in his published letter: 
" In the village of Oneida, my place of residence, there are eight physi- 
cians, four belonging to each school. We recognize each other as 
physicians on equal terms." It sounds rather strangely to our ears 
to hear that four regular physicians, the whole hope of a village, 
can be so forgetful of their ethical vows as to consult promiscuously with 
irregulars, and we are relieved to learn, from a communication dated 
from the same Oneida, Dr. S. Spooner's village, in which he is accused 
of conduct unbecoming a physician ; and that, " by homoeopathic physi- 
cians in this vicinity, he is considered irregular in his practice, and is 
seldom, if ever, called into consultation." The writer of the same com- 
munication goes into the detail of medical acts of Dr. S. Spooner, which, 
if previously known to the Pension Office, would doubtless have led to 
his instant dismissal from his position as pension surgeon; and this is 
the man whom the homoeopaths deem worthy to put forward as a case of 
oppression and proscription of opinion. 
Having now shown that, for the sake of the due performance of the 7 
medical duties of the bureau, it was essential that only regular 
physicians should be selected, and that the number of class of irregular 
practitioners is so small that they ought not to be considered, in 
view of the overwhelming majority of opinion on the side of the regulars, 
your committee desire to place before you some further considerations. 
The homoeopaths demand their right to be appointed to these positions 
on account of their education, their number, and influence, and assert 
that they are kept unjustly out of positions in the Army and Navy Med- 
ical Staff* solely from the jealousy of legitimate medicine, and that, 
although few in number, they are entitled to representation as far as their 
numbers go. It is no doubt true that numbers do not give the right, and 
that majorities are apt to be exclusive; but this is only true when the 
numbers represent a heterogeneous assembly. On matters strictly pro- 
fessional, whatever be the profession, the majority are likely, nay, indeed, 
almost certain, of being on the right side, and this majority constitutes 
the voice and authority of the profession, regulates and controls the 
whole body, and the dictum of that majority is accepted as the profes- 
sional axiom. The courts of law regulate the practice of the bar, and 
no attorney dare act or practice in opposition to the rules of court. In 
Episcopal religions the Bishops give the formula, and the minister who 
disputes or practically differs is disrobed; and how would the public treat 
any complaint of injustice, oppression, and illiberality against these gov- 
erning bodies? The only governing body in medicine in this country is 
the American Medical Association, the representative organ of the whole 
regular profession. 
Medical men, and this body has declared in its code of ethics that con- 
sultations are only to be held with regular practitioners, and that "no 
" one can be considered as a regular practitioner or a fit associate in con- 
" sulfation whose practice is based on an exclusive dogma to the rejection 
"of the accumulated experience of the profession and of the aids actually 
"furnished by anatomy, physiology, pathology, and organic chemistry," 
(Code of Med. Ethics, Art. 4, § 1,) and any surrender of this rule 
should be considered a step backward in the profession. 
The power of our profession over the entire public rests not on jealousy 
and illiberality nor on numbers, but on a consciousness in that public that 
we represent the progress of medicine from apostolic times in continuous 
succession, from which all smaller sects of practitioners are offshoots, 
fostered by ambition, vanity, and continued by obliquity of intellect or 
sordid self-interest; that regular medicine rests not on the dogma of a 
single teacher, which may be modified to suit the knowledge of the pres- 
ent day, but upon an humble, faithful, and world-wide observation of the 
laws of nature, verified and proved and made manifest over and over 
until he that runs may read, and changing, altering, and improving its 
practice in accordance with the lights of all the sciences. If this be so, 
and the experience not only of this country but of Europe and the whole 
civilized world proves it, since everywhere almost without exception reg- 
ular medicine is entrusted with important governmental medical offices 
and support; then is the reason evident that regular medicine only should 
be called in to serve the government, and that homoeopathy or other 
irregular sects in medicine, no matter how numerous or influential, politi- 
cally or otherwise, it may be, should not be represented in such situations. 8 
Your committee, in conclusion, recommend the adoption of the follow- 
ing preamble and resolutions: 
Whereas, the large majority of the present examining surgeons of the Pension Bureau 
have served in the medical corps of the volunteer forces during the late war; and 
whereas, none but regular physicians were admitted into that corps of the regular army 
and navy, and therefore none but regular physicians are provided with the medical ex- 
perience requisite on examining boards : therefore, 
Resolved, That this Society deems the action of the Hon. Commissioner of Pensions, 
in excluding irregular practitioners from the Medical Examining Board under that 
bureau as made in the best interest of the public service, thereby leading to uniformity 
of action, increasing the efficiency of the bureau, and affording to the pensioner the 
benefit of the most skilled advice; and it is earnestly hoped that the government will 
not in this instance disregard the deliberate and expressed conviction of the whole legit- 
imate medical profession of this country by appointing to medical position or office a 
class of men whose practice is not based on experience and observation, the only true 
groundwork of medical progress, but upon arbitrary dicta, not verified after nearly a 
century of trial, and which are wholly opposed to the ordinary exposition of the natural 
laws of physical science. 
Resolved, That a copy of the foregoing resolutions be respectfully forwarded to the 
President of the United States and the honorable Secretary of the Interior. 
(Signed) 
THOS. ANTISELL, M. D., Chairman. 
THOMAS MILLER, M. D. 
LOUIS MACKALL, Jr., M. D. 
J. M. TONER, M. D. 
Published in accordance with instructions from the Medical Society of 
the District of Columbia. 
WM. LEE, M. D., Chairman. 
S. B. BUSEY, M. D., 
W. W. JOHNSTON, M. D., 
Committee on Essays and Publication.