"HONORABLE MEDICINE” 
A N T) 
HOMCEOPATHY. 
A defense of individual freedom in the 
study and practice of Medicine. 
THOMAS E. ENlfbE, M. 0., 
NASHVILLE, TENN. 
“To foilmv foolish precedents, and wink 
With both our eyes, is easier than to think.”—Cowper. 
NASHVILLE, TENN.: 
I‘RENTED AT REPUBLICAN BANNER OFFICE. "HONORABLE MEDICINE” 
AND 
HOMOEOPATHY 
lii the August number of the Nashville Journal of 
Medicine and Surgery, owned by William T. Briggs, M.D., 
and edited by William K. Bowling, M. D., assisted by 
the proprietor, appeared the following notice: 
“DR. ENLOE. 
The members of the Graduating Class of the Medical Depart- 
ment of the University of Nashville, of 1874, will regret 
TO KNOW THAT Dr. EnLOE, A CO-GRADUATE, HAS ABANDONED THE 
flag of Honorable Medicine, and embraced Homoeopathy.” 
The terms of this notice, assuming for the mode of 
practice which the editors of the Journal follow the title 
“honorable medicine,” and imputing to Homoeopathy a 
character and a title not honorable, I appear before the 
profession and the public in vindication of my right to 
study and practice medicine in any direction and to any 
extent, prompted by the discoveries of the age and en- 
dorsed by satisfactory success, and in defense of the prop- 
osition, that no school or system of medicine can be 
considered honorable that is not tolerant, enlightened, 
progressive, and above all, successful. 2 
In the study of medicine I did not consider it my duty 
to accept the teachings of the faculty, represented by the 
editors of the Nashville Journal, as the ne plus ultra of 
medical learning; as constituting all that a man should 
know who assumes the grave responsibilities of a physician 
and surgeon among the people. 
I went on with my studies after having received their 
diploma, in which it was certified and attested by their signa- 
tures and the great seal of the University, that I was duly 
qualified to practice Medicine and Surgery in all their de- 
partments. 
Having made the acquaintance of an eminent practi- 
tioner of Homoeopathy, J. P. Hake, M. H., of this city, of 
whose success I had heard much, I endeavored through 
him to inquire into the merits of Homoeopathy. 
Finding him to be a man of broad culture, a graduate of 
one of the best classical and scientific colleges in the land, 
and thoroughly educated in medicine, Allopathic and 
Homoeopathic, I asked him to tell me something of the new 
mode of practice. 
He first handed me a copy of the transactions of “The 
Homoeopathic Medical Society, of the State of Pennsylvania, 
for 1873,” a fine volume of three hundred and thirty-two 
pages, made up of medical and scientific papers and dis- 
cussions, saying, “you can see what Homoeopathy is doing 
in one of our States.” 
Afterward he handed me “The Transactions of the 
American Institutue of Homoeopathy, for 1873,” saying, 
“here you can see what we are doing in a National way— 
in the oldest National Medical Society in America.” 
I looked over the papers bearing upon Materia Medica, 
Practice, Surgery, Obstetrics, Gynecology, etc., etc., mak- 
ing up a volume of nearly eight hundred pages. 3 
He then pointed to the shelves of his library, saying, “here 
you can see what we are doing from month to month—here 
are nine monthly Journals of Homoeopathy, and three quar- 
terlies, as you will find, bearing upon every branch of the 
healing art.” 
He showed me a list of eight or nine Homoeopathic 
Colleges, teaching all the branches taught in other regu- 
larly organized Medical Schools in this country, in the 
oldest of which, that in Philadelphia, he had himself occu- 
pied the chair of Materia Medica, in the years 1855, 1856 
and 1857. 
He showed me eight or nine different Text Books on 
Materia Medica, some of them very large volumes, several 
works on Practice, Surgery, Obstetrics, Diseases of Women 
and of Children, in fact, a large library of books setting 
forth the Homoeopathic mode of practice in its various 
applications. 
He explained to me the nature and bearings of the 
Homoeopathic principle or law, how it had reference merely 
to special Therapeutics, where medicines or other agents 
were employed to make a specific impression upon vital parts, 
that in the end should prove curative. That it had its own 
sphere, distinct from and co-ordinate with those of chem- 
ical, mechanical or strictly physiological or hygienic laws.. 
He showed, what I had often times observed, the entire 
absence of any general Therapeutic principle in the com- 
mon or old school mode of medical practice, the want of 
harmony and constant contradictions in its remedial meas- 
ures, the ignorance of Materia Medica among its practi- 
tioners, and the sad and too often fatal results of their 
blind and reckless administrations among the sick. 
In the books he handed me I discovered the lines of 
order and beauties of system, under a general Therapeutic 4 
law, rising up out of the chaos of medicine as taught me 
in the lecture room and in the text books of the old school. 
I saw that a general law had been discovered, its applica- 
tion tested over arid over again in various diseases—in 
various countries and with constant success. 
Coming out of the darkness where but the dim tapers of 
experience or the less reliable will-o-the-wisps of transient 
theories guide in the selection and use of weapons against 
disease, it was one of the happiest experiences of my life to 
walk in the clear sunlight of a law, fixed and 
telling me ever—to select the remedy capable of producing by 
large doses in the well, affections similar to those I would cure, 
with small doses in the sick. 
I saw that under the pointings of that law belladonna 
had cured scarlet fever; camphor, veratrum and cuprum 
had cured Asiatic cholera; nux vomica had cured paralysis; 
colocynth had cured dysentery; Peruvian bark had cured 
chills and fever; and so on through the whole list of most 
formidable diseases, the remedies most successful I found to 
have been acting in obedience to the Homoeopathic law— 
similia similibus curantur. 
Homoeopathy. The General Board of Health, of Edin- 
burgh and Leith report the total number of cases of cholera 
treated from October 4, 1848 to February 1, 1849 as 
Authentic comparative statistics I found favorable to 
follows: 
' 
CASES. 
DEATHS. 
PER CENT, 
Homoeopathic, 
234 
57 
24 
Allopathic,.. 
581 
489 
84 
In six Homoeopathic hospitals with 1,248 cases of 
cholera, there were 336 deaths, making 27 per cent. 
In nine Allopathic hospitals, with 3,899 eases of cholera, 
there were 2,089 deaths, the per cent, being 54. 5 
But the most remarkable success in the treatment of 
cholera was by Dr. Dake, of this city, in the summer of 
1873. Out of sixty-two cases treated by him he lost but 
one. 
I have seen a list of the cases, giving name, sex and age 
of each patient. 
One fact, the Doctor says, may account for this unusual 
success, not especially due to the remedies employed, 
namely: that nearly all his patients were in white 
where the nursing and general care was of the most enlight- 
ened and faithful character. 
In yellow fever, statistics are quite as favorable to 
Homoeopathy, and so also in other diseases, which I can not 
here mention in detail. 
With such evidences before me, I was not so blinded by 
prejudice that I could not see the truth, nor so afraid of 
my old teachers and associates that I dared not act up to 
my convictions. 
Holding on to all that I had learned from them, I have 
added to the stock, and propose to go on adding to it, all 
that may in any way better enable me to discharge the 
duties of a faithful physician. 
If, for my belief in the Homoeopathic law, and ray use 
of remedies under its direction, I am to be characterized 
as an adherent of dishonorable medicine by the Nashville 
Journal, and if I am to be refused professional recognition 
and aid, under any circumstances, by my old colleagues, 
acting under the “trades union,” self-promoting and heresy- 
stopping rules of the American Medical Association, and 
its subordinate branches, I can only say, “so mote it be.” 
If, because I choose to select remedies for my patients 
upon a different principle, and to administer smaller doses 
than they, I am to be branded as an “ignoramus and quack” 6 
by my old associates, I shall not cease to go forward in the 
way I have chosen, that pursued by such worthy predeces- 
sors as Dr. Eugene R. Smith, and Dr. William C. Dake, 
both graduates of the Medical Department of the Univer- 
sity of Nashville, and both now successfully practicing 
under the Homoeopathic “flag” in this city. 
I shall exercise the privileges of a freeman in every sense 
of the word, defending myself when required against attacks 
from whatever source and in whatever form they may 
come, leaving the results for the judgment of an intelligent 
people who are not bound hand and foot by a low and 
sordid medical bigotry, characteristic of too many within 
the pale of “honorable medicine.” 
In closing, I will mention that my treason to the “flag,” 
which the Nashville Journal says I have “abandened,” is 
but in keeping with the sentiments expressed by some of 
the wisest and most experienced old school physicians in 
this and other countries. 
Boerhave wrote: “If we compare the good which half 
a dozen true disciples of AEsculapius have done since their 
art began, with the evil which the immense number of 
doctors have inflicted upon mankind, we must be satisfied 
that it would have been infinitely better if medical men had 
never existed.” 
Pereira, the great writer on Allopathic Materia Mediea, 
says: “We can hardly refuse our assent to the observa- 
tions of the late Sir Gilbert Blane, that in many cases the 
patients get well in spite of the means employed, and some- 
times, when the practitioner fancies he has made a great 
cure, we may fairly assume the patient to have had a happy 
escape.” 
Sir Astley Cooper said; “The science of medicine is 
founded on conjecture and improved by murder,” 7 
Sir John Forbes wrote: “Ina considerable proportion 
of diseases it would fare as well, or better, with patients, 
in the actual condition of the medical art as more generally 
practiced, if all remedies, at least all active remedies, especi- 
ally drugs, were abandoned.” 
Dr. Rush, the great American physician and scholar, 
wrote: “We have assisted in multiplying diseases, we 
have done more, we have increased their mortality.” 
Bichat, the great French writer, says: “An incoherent 
assemblage of incoherent opinions it is perhaps, of all the 
physiological sciences, that which best shows the caprice of 
the human mind. What do I say? It is not a science for 
a methodical mind. It is a shapeless assemblage of inexact 
ideas, of observations often puerile, of deceptive remedies, 
and of formulae as fantastically conceived as they are tedi- 
ously arranged.” 
Dr. Good asserts: “The science of medicine is a bar- 
barous jargon, and the effects of our medicines on the 
human system are in the highest degree uncertain, except 
indeed, that they have already destroyed more lives than 
war, pestilence and famine combined.” 
Such was Allopathy, or “honorable medicine,” in the 
generation or two before us, and such it is yet. 
Who would be proud in standing beneath the deceptive 
folds of its flag? 
On the other hand, the statistics which I have quoted, 
and the rapid rise and the increasing growth of Homoeop- 
athy, in no place and at no time going backward; meeting 
and conquering the most formidable ailments “that human 
flesh is heir to” in a manner unparalleled in the annals of 
medicine; sought after and employed by the most intelli- 
gent and thoughtful people in the most enlightened parts 
of the earth; practiced by men in every way equal and in 8 
some respects much superior to the majority of physicians; 
unproscriptive, tolerant, progressive, and highly successful, 
Homoeopathy floats a flag bearing at once the true insignia 
of medical science, and hope to the dwellings of the sick. 
Under the folds of such a “flag,” however characterized 
by the journals and faculties of what assumes to be “honor- 
able medicine,” I stand with pride.