Resignation of Dr. Isaac Colby
In 1850, Dr. Benoni Carpenter of Pawtucket submitted a resolution to the Council of the Massachusetts Medical Society, "That all homeopathic practitioners are, or should be, denominated irregular practitioners, and, according to the By-Laws of this Society … ought to be expelled from membership." In that same year, Dr. Isaac Colby (d. 1866) of Salem asked to resign from the Society because he had become a homeopath and had been excluded from the Society's fellowship and privileges. A small committee—Oliver Wendell Holmes, George Hayward, and J. B. S. Jackson—considered the matter, and its report—"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," is the Society's first formal expression regarding homeopathic practitioners, a number of whom were current members. The committee's only resolutions were that any fellow professing homeopathy could resign if he wished and that no diploma from a homeopathic educational institution would be considered evidence of medical education. Isaac Colby formally resigned his fellowship in the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1853.
The Massachusetts Homeopathic Fraternity responded to the 1850 report by reforming itself into the Massachusetts Homeopathic Medical Society in April 1851.
The homeopathic society had approximately 60 members at this period, and all but two were also members of the Massachusetts Medical Society. The Massachusetts Medical Society apparently contemplated expulsion of the homeopaths following the 1850 report and, again, in 1859, but continued to tolerate their membership, taking no action at the time. But the 1860 revision of the Society's by-laws states formally that "No person shall hereafter by admitted a member of the Society who professes to cure diseases by Spirtualism, Homeopathy, or Thompsonianism." In 1871, a resolution was adopted that homeopathic practice was "conduct unbecoming and unworthy an honorable physician and member of this Society."