To the Medical Profession: 
The regular Medical Faculty of this University, feeling 
deeply that not merely their own private interests and those 
of the University are involved in the present struggle in which 
they are engaged, but that the interest and the honor of the 
profession as a whole are at stake, they are extremely desirous 
of securing the support and co-operation of their brethren, as 
without this all their struggles and all their sufferings will have 
been in vain, regular medicine will suffer an ignominious 
defeat, and be driven from its high position here, and a fraud- 
ulent and delusive system will flourish in its stead. 
With the hearty co-operation of the profession in the pres- 
ent crisis, the faculty feel the utmost confidence that a vic- 
torious conclusion to their life-long struggle with homeopathy 
is absolutely certain. The maintenance of homeopathy in this 
University is utterly impossible unless the regular profession shall 
prove recreant to their own highest interests. If proof of this 
assertion is wanted reference may be made to the petition to 
the Board of Regents which the homeopathic fraternity are at 
present circulating for signature among themselves. Unfort- 
unately the faculty have too good reason to know tnat there 
are parties in the profession who are ready and willing to see 
regular medicine disgraced and driven out of this stronghold 
and homeopathy established in its place, if only they can gain 
some little temporary advancement of their own petty inter- 
ests. The accompanying reprint demonstrates beyond all 
question that the State Medical Society allowed itself to be led 
into an inconsistent, unjust, and unwise course of action in this 
matter. The simple fact that the Detroit Medical College has 
taken such a prominent part in the attacks upon this faculty, 
and in manipulating the State Society, is sufficient to warrant 
the condemnation of all those who have united with them in 
their unholy crusade. That these manipulators were actuated 
by hatred of homeopathy and anxiety for the interests of the 
profession is now hardly claimed by them. Had this been the 
case, or had they been gifted with one spark of true loyalty to 2 
our noble profession, they would have generously gone the 
length of waiving, for the time being, their own private inter- 
ests and rallied around those of their brethren who were per- 
force engaged in a hand to hand combat with an insidious and 
dangerous common foe. Had they chosen this course, the bat- 
tle would before this have been won f>r regular medicine, 
and they, the allies «f the University, would have received the 
well-merited thanks of the whole profession, and at the same 
time would have vindicated their claims to true nobility of 
character. 
They have chosen a very different course, as the following 
sentence from the Richmond and Louisville Medical Journal 
goes to prove, if further proof were necessary : 
‘‘It is somewhat surprising that the editors of the Detroit 
Review” [the organ of the Detroit Medical College] ‘-will 
give currency to statements which every one acquainted even 
superficially with the LTniversity of Michigan must know to 
be false and disreputable.” 
A new college at Fort Wayne openly avows that one of the 
chief reasons for its inception and the main hope for its exist- 
ence is the possible decadence of this school through the suc- 
cess of homeopathy. Of course its promoters take the 
warmest interest in the success of Homeopathy here. The 
same remark applies with equal force to the friends of two 
prospective medical colleges in Michigan, the necessity for 
whose.establishment is to be estimated by the anxiety of their 
future professors to attain notoriety ! 
Rush Medical College has condescended to place itself on a 
level with these foetal prodigies, and its meanness is not unap- 
preciated, as the following letter from a student to them shows : 
“ Sir—I was surprised last evening on receiving a card and 
communication from you in which you took the most shameful 
advantage of Michigan University Medical College, by pub- 
lishing the substance of their letter of inquiry, thus sacrificing 
as a faculty, every trace of confidence or honor in a most un- 
manly effort, both to crush a very rightly envied sister college 
and to satiate your appetite upon its carcass. The Rush and 
Detroit Medical Colleges seem to have subsisted in part upon 
the refuse of the envied University College; and as a man in 
the delirium of starvation will eat his own hand, so you pro- 
pose to slay and eat one of the branches of the great profes- 
sional tree of which you are but an ill-nourished twig. By a 
determined effort of the University to lead out in higher 
medical education in the west, together with her thorough drill 
in chemistry and anatomical classes, of which you seem to 
exhibit but a trace, she has attained a position which the pro- 3 
fession too highly appreciates to be likely to annihilate her for 
any visionary cause, especially the claims of soreheads. Had 
you sent me simply an announcement, as Wooster Medical 
College did by the same mail, I could, in spite of its innocent 
appearance and moderate requirements, at least have looked 
on you as gentlemen ; but under this appalling exhibition of the 
cloven hoof, and narrow views, I should certainly retire from 
any effort to enter the profession at all were Rush Medical 
College an approach to a fair representation of the medical 
schools of America. E. H. Collins.” 
The venerable Prof. Gross said to the writer on the 9th of 
June last, “You and your colleagues are placed in a peculiarly 
delicate position, and you are entitled to great consideration 
and sympathy from the profession.” 
All the leading journals of the country have endorsed this 
opinion of the great surgeon, and the latter have gone further, 
and have justified our policy ; for example, the Canada Lan- 
cet, which may be regarded as a thoroughly impartial journal, 
has expressed its views, as follows: 
‘We must confess that our sympathies are strongly with the 
Medical Faculty who refuse to give over the University of 
Michigan, hand and foot to the homeopaths. We, in Ontario, 
have not long since passed through a similar crisis. We have 
discovered that the true way to crush out “pathies” and 
“isms” is to educate all up to the same standard—to adopt a 
leveling up process, instead of the antagonistic one. Drop the 
insane cry of humbug, deceit, knavery, quackery, and the 
like. Such a policy serves but to perpetuate the evil, so to 
speak. Raise the standard of education for all who desire to 
enter the profession, and you will soon extinguish all pathies. 
isms, and men of one idea in medicine. Educate them thor- 
oughly and they will be the better able to discover the errors 
in each system, and gather up the truth from all. It is too late 
in the nineteenth century to endeavor to put down quackerv 
bv anv other means. All the vile phrases, all the obnoxious 
epithets, and all the penal codes that can be devised, are of 
little avail. Neither shonld the regular profession stand idly 
by with folded arms and allow the enemy to have full sway. 
What has the Society (State Medical) or the members of the 
Faculty at Ann Arbor to fear from the homeopaths and a small 
following of students which is sure to become less every year? 
Nothing whatever. No ! let them rather stand manfully at 
their post of duty, let them have faith in their own profession, 
lei them be true to themselves and those under their instruction, 
and let “time, the arbiter of all things,” be judge of the 
result.’ ” 4 
Moreover, all the respectable medical schools have come to 
our aid in the most practical manner by retaining their former 
relation to us. In these circumstances the faculty arc encour- 
aged to hope that in spite of the extraordinary conduct of the 
State Society ; in spite, also, of the unscrupulous efforts of a 
few selfish and narrow-minded faculties, backed as they are b\ 
such medical journals as the “Detioit Review,” nevertheless, 
students will be sent here in such numbers as will convince the 
people that truth has nothing to fear by contact with error, and 
at the same time demonstrate to the friends of homeopath\ 
that if their college is to stand it must do so entirely on the 
merits of their own system (if it has any), and not upon the 
internal feuds and follies of the regular profession. 
This letter is addressed to the profession by the undersigned 
on his own responsibility. 
Donald Maclean, M. D., 
Professor of Surgery, University of Michigan. 
September iS, 1876.