Report of a Committee of the Massachusetts Medical Society on Homœopathy
Description:
After the petition to resign of one of its homeopathic members, Isaac Colby of Salem, the Massachusetts Medical Society appointed a committee, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, to consider the question of homeopathy and whether its practitioners should be permitted membership in the society. The Committee concluded, "It is enough for us to believe that the doctrine of the origin of disease, of the principles by which it should be managed, and the method of administering remedial agents, as proposed by Hahnemann and his disciples, are untrue and unsafe, and that therefore we cannot give to those who adopt this mode of practice the sanction of our Society by receiving them as members of our fraternity." No formal action was taken at this time, but the 1860 edition of the Society's by-laws forbids the acceptance of any practitioner "who professes to cure diseases by Spiritualism, Homoeopathy or Thomsonianism." Report by the Massachusetts Medical Society concerning homeopathy made in 1850
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