As practically all the diseases known to be due to the tubercle bacillus are attributed by Hahnemann to Psora, it follows that the cause is identical, *and that the two terms, *psora and tuberculosis are synonymous.
The modern list is growing slowly by additions, from time to time, of other disease found to be pathologically or bacteriologically related to tuberculosis. It is quite possible that a large part, if not all, of the remainder of Hahnemann’s list may ultimately be included in the modern list.
Osler, speaking representatively and with the highest modern authority, agrees with Hahnemann, when he says: *Tuberculosis *is *the *most *universal *scourge *of *the *human *race.”
Hahnemann chose Leprosy as the typical form of the ancient protean disease which he named Psora.
Modern bacteriology finds that the bacilli of leprosy resemble the tubercle bacilli in form, size and staining reactions, and that *the leper reacts to the tuberculin test.
Saboraud said: *Leprosy is a tubercular disease closely allied to tuberculosis.”
The same staining characteristics are shown by the bacillus smegmatis, the grass and dung bacilli of Moeller, the butter, bacillus of Rabinowitsch and the bacilli from the crypts of the tonsils, described by Marzinowsky.
McConkey, through clinical experience, came to believe and taught that heart disease, with or without valvular lesions, diabetes, rheumatism and cancer were tubercular in nature and origin.
Alley (H. C.) taught the same of typhoid fever. The list might be extended indefinitely.
The writer believes, tentatively, that Acute Anterior Poliomyelitis, etiologically puzzling in spite of the discovery by Flexner of its specific micro-organism, is of tubercular nature and origin.
In considering tuberculosis or psora as a fundamental disease giving rise to many secondary forms of disease, the specific action of the tubercle bacillus must be considered as conditional No specific organism acts unconditionally. All living germs that propagate and multiply, must have favorable conditions and a suitable soil in which to grow.
Other pathogenic micro-organisms besides the tubercle bacillus, notably the ordinary pyogenic organisms, play their part in the causation and maintenance of the tubercular process. The pyogenic organisms may originate in the teeth, mouth, pharynx, tonsils, nose, ears, or even in the lungs themselves; in the skin, joints, bones, or in short, in almost any organ or tissue of the body where septic processes or lesions exist. But wherever they originate, they play their part in modifying and conditioning the activity of the specific cause of tuberculosis, the bacillus of Koch, and in giving the case its individual character.
Individualization is the cardinal principle of a true pathology as well as of a true therapeutics.
In the eager quest for the specific bacterial causes of the various diseases the principles of logic have not always been applied, and particularly that principle known as the Law of Causation, which teaches that every effect has *a number of causes, of which the specific cause is only the proximate or most nearly related in the preceding series. It also teaches that the specific cause may be modified in its action on the subject by collateral causes or conditions affecting both the subject and the antecedent causes, so that no specific cause can be said to act unconditionally.
Applying this principle to the subject of individual disease we find that, while specific micro-organisms are a necessary factor as immediate or proximate causes of the respective diseases attributed to them, they only act conditionally, and that many modifying conditions must be considered in assigning them their true relation to individual, concrete cases of disease. It follows that micro-organisms, as causes of individual disease, have a very different kind of importance from that which is commonly assigned to them.They are reduced in rank to an equality with several other related, accessory, contributing causes. The tubercle bacillus, for example, ranks in the individual only equally with constitution, heredity, predisposition and environment. Environment includes social and economic position or condition of life as regards means of subsistence, food, clothing, light, air, housing, neighbors, occupation, mental and physical conditions and habits of life and thought. To conduct a campaign against tuberculosis by directing the efforts principally against the bacilli, while neglecting the numerous other equally important causative factors, is futile and hopeless.
Different also is the kind of importance to be attached to the micro-organism from a therapeutic standpoint. Bacteriology can never serve as a basis for a reliable and efficient therapeutics for the individual. Since the micro-organism is only one of the many causes of diseases, the curative remedy for the concrete, resulting disease in the individual must correspond to the combined effects of the various causes. The combined effects are manifested by groups of phenomena or symptoms which vary, more or less, in the various individuals, according to their conditions and circumstances. As the individual cases of every disease vary in their causes and conditions, and consequently in their symptoms or effects, there can be no specific, general remedy for a disease.
It is at this point that the necessity appears for a *general principle of therapeutics. What is needed is not a general remedy for the disease, so long vainly sought, but a general principle, applicable to all the varying cases so that the particular remedy needed by each individual may be found. The homoeopathic system of therapeutic medication is based upon such a principle, and in that system, combined with rational, moral, hygienic, sanitary and sociological measures is found the solution of the problem.
The Toxicological Theory of Disease. :- Life, as a state, of existence, has been defined as “a continuous adjustment of internal to external relations.”
Every living organism is constantly exposed, at every stage of its existence, to influences from without. The known facts all tend to show that every manifestation of energy on the part of the organism is a reaction to some external agent or influence; or, as it might be put, life, as a state of existence, is the result of constant interaction between the living substance of the organism and the elements of the external world; between the individual and his environment; between the microcosm and the macrocosm.
The specific, exciting or efficient causes of disease are all actually or relatively external to the organism. When a pathogenic agent gains entrance to the living organism, resistance is encountered, a reaction is excited, and the phenomena of that reaction representatively constitute disease. Disease, therefore, is the vital reaction of the living organism to the influence of an agent which is inimical to its welfare. In other words, disease is primarily a *morbid dynamical disturbance of the vital principal or power which animates the organism, caused by the influence of some morbific agent external to the organism and manifesting itself by perceptible, sensorial, functional and organic symptoms.
It is not sufficient to say, merely, that “disease is a morbid dynamical disturbance of the vital force.” That definition is correct as far as it goes, but it stops in the middle. To complete it we must add; “caused by some morbific agent actually or relatively external to the organism;” for every internal effect must have an external cause, and *vice versa, according to the universal law of cause and effect. From this point of view all diseases may be regarded as intoxications.
All drugs act by virtue of their specific toxic properties.
All bacterial diseases are primarily intoxications or toxaemias.
Pathologists agree that all pathogenic micro-organisms produce their effects in the living body by means of the specific poisons which they secrete while living, or generate after death.
Diseases arising from physical injury or mechanical violence are toxaemias resulting from chemical changes in the injured tissues, brought about by mechanical interference with the circulation and innervation through inhibition of normal functioning, which leads to degenerative changes and the formation of toxins. Localized circulatory stasis, imperfect oxygenation and the inhibitory influence of traumatic shock upon the normal functions and secretions explain the chemico-toxic changes which occur under such conditions.
Disease arising from chemical agents, aside from the direct physical injury or destruction of tissue as by corrosive poisons, are poisonings of the organism.
Disease resulting from mental or physical trauma occur as a result of the toxic chemical or physical changes that take place in the fluids and tissues of the body through the medium of the nervous system, which reacts to the morbid impression of a violent or long-continued mental emotion in the same way that it reacts to any other dynamical disturbance.
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.