Homeopathy had never a more violent adversary than Dr. Griffon. He look
upon this method as absurd and homicidal; thus, strong in his convictions,
and wishing, as he said, to drive the homeopathists to the wall, he offered
to abandon to their care a certain number of patients, on whom they might
experiment to their liking. But he affirmed in advance, sure of not being
contradicted by the result, that, out of twenty patients submitted to this
treatment, not over five, at the outside would survive. The homeopathists
gave the go-by to this proposition, to the great chagrin of the doctor, who
regretted the loss of this occasion to prove, by figures, the vanity of
homeopathic practice. Dr. Griffon would have been stupefied if any one had
said to him, in reference to this free and autocratic disposition of his
subjects:
"Such a state of things would cause the barbarism of those days to be
regretted when condemned criminals were exposed to undergo newly-discovered
surgical operations; operations which they dared not practice on the
uncondemned. If it were successful, the condemned was pardoned. Compared
to what you do, sir, this barbarity was charity. After all, a chance for
life was thus given to a poor creature for whom the executioner was
waiting, and an experiment was rendered possible which might be useful
to all. But to try your hazardous medicaments on unfortunate artisans,
for whom the hospital is the sole refuge when sickness overtakes them;
to try a treatment, perhaps fatal, on people whom poverty confides to
you, trusting and powerless; to you, their only hope; to you, who will
only answer for their life to God--do you know that this is to push the
love of science to inhumanity, sir? How! the poorer classes already
people the workshops, the field, the army; in this world they only know
misery and privations; and when, at the end of their sufferings and
fatigues, they fall exhausted--half-dead--sickness even does not preserve
them from a last and sacrilegious "experiment!" I ask your heart, sir,
would not this be unjust and cruel?"
Alas! Dr.
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