General Interpretations



So the physician who knows only a little rudimentary materia medica and therapeutics in addition to his medical-college- knowledge of general medicine, and is content with that knowledge, will never be anything but a routinist and a medical misfit.

Homoeopathy a Science. Homoeopathy, or Homoeotherapy, is the department of science in general medicine which has for its principal objects the observation and study of the action of remedial agents in health and disease, and the treatment and cure of disease by medication, according to a fixed law or general principle.

Homoeopathy was founded and developed into a scientific system by Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) under the principles of the Inductive Method of Science as developed by Lord Bacon, Its practice is governed by the principle of Symptom-Similarity, which is the application in medicine of the universal principle of Mutual Action formulated by Sir Isaac Newton in his Third Law of Motion; “Action and reaction are equal and opposite”.

Homoeopathy, as a science, rests fundamentally upon four general principles; Similarity, Contrariety, Proportionality and Infinitesimality, reducible to the universal principle of Homoeosis, or Universal Assimilation. (Fincke.)

“Science is Knowledge reduced to law and embodied in system” “Knowledge of a single fact, not known as related to any other, or of many facts, not known as having any mutual relations or as comprehended under any general law, does not reach the meaning of science.”

“A science in its development is 1. A collection of exactly observed facts: 2. A correlation or generalization of these facts, forming a system; 3. A formulation of these generalization as laws; 4. It proceeds to some principle or force accounting for these laws; hence, exact knowledge of proximate causes”. (Condensed from The Standard Dictionary.)

Law, in the broadest sense, is the observed order or relation of the facts. It is not required that the cause of the order or relation be known. As mathematicians and astronomers, accustomed to deal with the highest order of facts, are content to accept the law of gravitation without explanation of the cause, so physicians, if there be a law of cure, may accept it without explanation of its cause. But the tendency of modern physical science is toward the more complete generalization, its goal being the discovery of a universal principle which shall connect all physical phenomena.

Specifically, in the scientific sense, a law is the connecting link between two series of phenomena, showing their relation to each other.

“There are two tests of the validity of any law that is claimed to be a natural law or law of nature.

1. That it is capable of connecting and explaining two series of natural phenomena.

2. That it is in harmony with other known laws.

In optics, for example, we have the phenomena or properties of luminous bodies, and the phenomena of light receiving bodies. These two series of phenomena are connected and explained by the law of the diffusion of light.

In physics the phenomena of the sun, as regards density and volume, are related to the phenomena of the earth by the law of attraction or gravitation.

In chemistry the properties of potassium are related to the properties of sulphuric acid by the law of chemical affinity and definite proportions, in the formation of a new compound, potassium sulphate”. (Abstracted from Dunham, Science of Therapeutics.)

So in Homoeotherapy, we have the phenomena of drugs related to the phenomena of diseases by the law of mutual action, under the principles of similarity, contrariety, proportionality and infinitesimality; reducible again to the principle of Universal Assimilation or Homoeosis.

“Therapeutics is that department of medical science that relates to the treatment of disease and action of remedial agents on the human organism, both in health and disease.” (Standard Dictionary.)

Since it conforms to every requirement of these general, authoritative definitions of Science, homoeopathy has been defined as The Science of Therapeutics. No other method or system of medical treatment conforms or even claims to conform to all of these fundamental requirements.

But while it can easily be shown that the curative action of any agent whatsoever used in the treatment of disease, mental or physical, conforms to the fundamental principle of Mutual Action, in the narrower or more practical sense homoeopathy must be defined as *the science of therapeutic medication, since it commonly uses medicines or drugs alone to effects its purposes.

Homoeopathy is not, strictly speaking “a system of Medicine” as it is often inaccurately called, using the word medicine in its broad general sense. General medicine is made up of a number of distinct sciences, including General Therapeutics, which covers all the therapeutic resources known to man. It makes use of many agencies besides medication for the alleviation of human ills.

Homoeopathy, therefore, is a department of general medicine, like anatomy, physiology and pathology.

Homoeopathy an Experimental Science.-Like chemistry or physics, homoeopathy is established under the principles of the inductive method in science. Considered as a science, it consists of two series of phenomena, independently observed, collected and studied, connected by an underlying law or principle of nature. Its elements are: 1. The phenomena of disease; 2, the phenomena produced by drugs when administered to healthy persons; and 3, the general law of mutual action, otherwise known as Newton’s Third Law of Motion and as the Law of Similars, which connects the two series of phenomena. The phenomena of disease constitute its pathology, the experimentally derived phenomena of drugs, its materia medica and the application of its materia medica under the law its therapeutics.

Experimentally, in the construction of homoeopathic materia medica, medicines were administered singly, in various doses, to healthy human beings for the purpose of eliciting, observing, recording and comparing their effects. Comparison shows that the symptoms thus produced by drugs are similar to the symptoms of disease. Any symptom or group of symptoms of disease may be duplicated from the materia medica record of drug symptoms.

Experimentally also it has been proven that under certain conditions, to be stated hereafter, medicines cure diseases by virtue of their similarity of symptoms; that is, medicines cure, or remove in the sick, symptoms similar to those which they have the power of producing in the healthy. From this fact of experience was deduced the law of cure and medication, known as the “law of similars”, which is found on examination to be a statement in other words of the general Law of Mutual Action, variously termed the law of equivalence, the law of action and reaction, the law of balance or equilibrium, the law of polarity, the law of compensation and Newton’s third law of motion.

Homoeopathy an Art. – Homoeopathy works in perfect harmony with all necessary rational, non-medicinal and mechanical therapeutic agents. Surgery, obstetrics, hygiene, dietetics, sanitary science, chemistry (so far as it is applied in the preparation of medicines and in ejecting and antidoting poisons) and psycho- therapy all find in homoeopathy their congenial and most powerful ally.

Homoeopathy is opposed in its constitution and principles to all forms of treatment by direct or physiological medication, and to physio-chemical treatment or treatment based upon chemical theories.

Homoeopathy is opposed to the use, under ordinary conditions, of drugs in physiological doses for mere palliative purposes since its primary objects is always the cure or obliteration of disease and complete restoration of health.

Homoeopathy is opposed to the *methods of vaccine and serum therapy, although it is claimed by many that these methods are based upon the homoeopathic principle. It grants that this may be true so far as the underlying principle is concerned, but opposes *the method of applying the principle as being a violation of sound, natural principles of medication and productive of serious injury to the living organism.

It has been proven experimentally and clinically that such methods are unnecessary, and that the results claimed by their advocates can be attained more safely, more rapidly and more thoroughly by the administration of the homoeopathically indicated medicines in sub-physiological doses, through the natural channels of the body, than by introducing it forcibly by means of the hypodermic needle or in any other way.

Homoeopathy is opposed to so-called “pathological prescribing” and to “group treatment” of diseases, by which individual peculiarities are ignored and patients are grouped or classed according to their gross, pathological organic lesions and treated alike. Homoeopathy deals with the individual not the class. It treats *the patient, not a fictitious entity called the disease. Its prescription or selection of medicines is based solely upon individual similarity of symptoms, drug symptoms to disease symptoms, determined by actual comparison in each case.

Stuart Close
Stuart M. Close (1860-1929)
Dr. Close was born November 24, 1860 and came to study homeopathy after the death of his father in 1879. His mother remarried a homoeopathic physician who turned Close's interests from law to medicine.

His stepfather helped him study the Organon and he attended medical school in California for two years. Finishing his studies at New York Homeopathic College he graduated in 1885. Completing his homeopathic education. Close preceptored with B. Fincke and P. P. Wells.

Setting up practice in Brooklyn, Dr. Close went on to found the Brooklyn Homoeopathic Union in 1897. This group devoted itself to the study of pure Hahnemannian homeopathy.

In 1905 Dr. Close was elected president of the International Hahnemannian Association. He was also the editor of the Department of Homeopathic Philosophy for the Homeopathic Recorder. Dr. Close taught homeopathic philosophy at New York Homeopathic Medical College from 1909-1913.

Dr. Close's lectures at New York Homeopathic were first published in the Homeopathic Recorder and later formed the basis for his masterpiece on homeopathic philosophy, The Genius of Homeopathy.

Dr. Close passed away on June 26, 1929 after a full and productive career in homeopathy.