Life, Health & Disease


It is not against disease that we struggle, but against the causes of disease. The actual causes of disease in the last analysis are from without. They do not exist in the life substance itself….


*Life is the invisible, substantial, intelligent, individual, co-ordinating power and cause directing and controlling the forces involved in the production and activity of any organism processing individuality.

Health is that balanced condition of the living organism in which the integral, harmonious performance of the vital functions tends to the preservation of the organism and the normal development of the individual.

Disease is an abnormal vital process a changed condition of life, which is inimical to the true development of the individual and tends to organic dissolution.

Vital phenomena in health and disease are caused by the reaction of the vital substantial power or principle of the organism to various external stimuli. So long as a healthy man lives normally in a favorable environment he moves, feels, thinks, acts and reacts in an orderly manner. If he violates the laws of life, or becomes the victim of an unfavorable environment, disorder takes the place of order, disease destroys ease, he suffers and his body deteriorates.

When organic vitality is exhausted, or is withdrawn, his transient material organism dies, yields to chemical laws and is dissolved into its elements, while his substantial, spiritual organism continues its existence in a higher realm.

Agents, material or immaterial, which modify health or cause disease, act solely by virtue of their own substantial, entitative existence and the co-existence of the vital substance, which reacts in the living organism to every impression made from within or without. The dead body reacts only to physical and chemical agents, under the action of which it is reduced to its chemical elements and dissipated as a material organism.

All reactions to stimuli by which the functions and activities of the living body are carried on, originate in the primitive life substance at the point where it becomes materialized as cells and protoplasmic substance.

Agents from without which affect the living body to produce changes and modifications of its functions and sensations act upon the protoplasm through the medium of the brain and nervous system. Food drink, heat, light, air, electricity and drugs, as well as mental stimuli, all act primarily upon the living substance as materialized in the cells of the central nervous, system, calling forth the reactions which are represented by functions and sensations.

*”Power resides at the center, and from the center of power, force flows”.

The phenomena of life, as manifested in growth, nutrition, repair, secretion, excretion, self-recognition, self-preservation and reproduction, all take their direction from an originating center. From the lowest cell to the highest and most complex organism, this principle holds true. Cell wall and protoplasmic contents develop from the central nucleus, and that from the centrosome, which is regarded as the “center of force” in the cell. All fluids, tissues and organs develop from the cell from within outwards, from center to circumference.

*Organic control is from the center. In the completely developed human organism vital action is controlled from the central nervous system. The activities of the cell are controlled from the centrosome, which may be called the brain of the cell.

The central nervous system may be compared to a dynamo. As a dynamo is a machine, driven by steam or some other force, which through the agency of electro-magnetic induction from a surrounding magnetic field, converts into electrical energy in the form of current the mechanical energy expended upon it, so the central nervous system is a machine driven by chemical force derived from food which, through the agency of electro-vital induction from a surrounding vital field, converts into vital energy, in the form of nerve current or impulses, the chemico- physical energy expended upon it.

As an electrical transportation system depends for its working force upon the dynamo located in its central power station, so the human body depends for the force necessary to carry on its operations upon the central power station, located in the central nervous system.

Any disturbance of conditions at the central power stations is immediately manifested externally at some point in the system; and any injury to or break in the external system is immediately reflected back to the central station.

In health and disease, it is the same, both being essentially merely conditions of the life in the living organism, convertible each into the other. In each condition the modifying agent or factor acts primarily upon the internal life principle, which is the living substance of the organism. This reacts and produces external phenomena through the medium of the brain and nervous system which extends to every part of the body. Food or poison, toxins or antitoxins, therapeutic agents or pathogenic micro- organisms, all act upon and by virtue of the existence of the reacting life principle or living substance of the organism.

Cure of disease, or the restoration of health, likewise begins at the center and spreads outwardly, the symptoms disappearing from within outward, from above downward and in the reverse order of their appearance.

Resistance to morbific agents is from the center when life reigns. Vital resistance is the defensive reaction of living substance to noxious elements and organisms and to disease- producing causes and agents in general, in obedience to the inherent instinct or law of self-preservation, which belongs to life in organism.

Metaphorically speaking, disease is resistance. Disease, manifested by symptoms, expresses in vital reaction and resistance of the living organism to the inroads of some injurious agent or influence. It is a battle a struggle, a costly and painful, resistance to an invader.

Strictly speaking it is not against disease that we struggle, but against the causes of disease. The actual causes of disease in the last analysis are from without. They do not exist in the life substance itself. They are “foreign to the spirit”, to man’s true nature. They become operative or effective in the organism conditionally, by virtue of the existence of the vital principle of susceptibility, reaction and resistance, and of a living organism in and through which action and reaction can take place.

Matter and Force. – Physical science declares that matter is indestructible. Matter is corporeal substance; the form of being or substance that is characterized by extension, inertia, weight, etc., or in general by the properties cognized by the senses. The constitution and mode of production of matter are traced backward from mass through molecules, atoms, and electrons to a vibratory or radiant state of matter supposed to exist in the interatomic ether of space.

Ether is a hypothetical medium filling all space, through which, in the form of transverse wave-motion, radiant or vibratory energy of all kinds, including light-waves, is propagated. According to physical science, all energy exists in the ether, and matter may be regarded as, in a sense, a condensation “a specifically modified from of ether”, as Lodge puts it. This is as far as physical science can go. Of the nature and source of the “Energy” in other words, of *what it is that radiates through the ether in the form of “transverse waves”, physical science can tell us nothing. In stating this conception science tacitly admits the substantial character of the ether, or energy in general, and of specific forms of energy in particular, although its phraseology is often vague and its terms contradictory. Physical science does, however, adhere to the general principles of the indestructibility of matter and the persistence of force. It is thus far in harmony with the more advanced position taken in the substantial philosophy. It is much to have arrived at that point in thinking. But of incorporeal living substance, or Life and mind and Intelligence as the primary source and basis of all energy current science has as yet only a faint conception; although more than one physical scientist has reached the conclusion that, in the last analysis all force is a manifestation of Will, and that every physical action is primarily a psychical action.

Biological science traces matter backward from organism through cells, nuclei, to the centrosome, an organ found in the protoplasm, but usually only occurring in close connection with the nucleus. When active the centrosome is said to be “at the center of sphere of attraction and a system of rays”. and is regarded as the dynamic center governing karyokinesis and cell division.

Biological science, therefore when examined closely is found to recognize, at least tacitly the existence of Life as a substantial, entitative, indestructible power. How or by what else could the vital force necessary to carry on vital processes be generated? How else could there be in the cell a “dynamic center? Dynamic center means “center of power”. Statically, power means capacity of a person or thing for work, for producing the force by which work is done. There must be a source from which force is produced or drawn, and that source must be substantial. Kinetically, power is the cause, force the medium, and work the effect. Power, therefore, considered either as an attribute or the thing itself, is actually a substantial, entitative being.

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.