Hahnemann’s idea at first was simply to reduce the “strength” or material mass of his drug, but his passion for accuracy led him to adopt a scale, that he might always be sure of the degree of reduction and establish a standard of comparison. Under certain conditions he found, perhaps to his surprise, that instead of weakening the drug he was actually increasing its curative power. In reducing the density of the mass he perceived that he was setting free powers previously latent, and that these powers were the greatest and most efficient for their therapeutic purposes, *when the remedy so prepared was applied under the principle of symptoms similarity.
Struck by the idea of the development of latent powers through what he had at first considered merely as dilution, he ceased calling the process : dilution,” and named it “potentization” or “potentiation,” which it truly is- a process of rendering potent, or powerful, that which was previously impotent.
Familiar to all is the trend of modern scientific thought away from the crudely materialistic notions of the early physical scientists, toward a higher conception of the constitution of matter.
Describing his conception of the nature and constitution of matter, Sir Isaac Newton quaintly said : “It seems probable to me that God in the beginning formed matter in *solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties and in such proportion to space as most to conduce to the end for which he formed them; even *so very hard as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God Himself made one in the first creation.”
To Newton, light consisted of a perfect hail of these minute material atoms thrown off from the light producing body. In the exercise of his scientific imagination he saw these little particles of matter flying in every direction at incredible speed.
Later came the conception of the luminiferous ether. Physicists think now of a ray of light as the pulsation or vibration of *an intangible substance which acts like a solid, but which lets ordinary matter pass through it without interference.
The marvels of electricity as developed in such inventions as the dynamo the electric motor, the electric light, the telegraph and telephone and the later the X-Ray and wireless telegraph and radio have done much to incline men toward the acceptance of a more spiritual interpretation of the universe. He who accepts without questions the operation of this invisible intangible force the real nature or which no man knows, to say nothing of the phenomena of radio-activity, gravitation, and chemical affinity, should not stumble over the homoeopathic high potencies he may make and demonstrate for himself any day.
Carl Snyder, in ” New Conceptions in Science,: points out how many advances in science and the arts have been made possible by the discovery of a *new mechanical appliance. That homoeopathy was thus made possible has not heretofore been recognized.
Snyder says: – ” The phrase, Mechanical appliance’ is used broadly, as including all that may contribute to exact measurement and to the extension of our primitive senses in any direction. In this sense the calculus, or the reactions of the chemists test tube must be reckoned as mechanical no less than the thermometer, the microscope or the balance. It also includes such aids to calculation as the use of the zero ( or more strictly speaking, a decimal system of counting); algebra, the inventions of fluxions, logarithms and the side rule.
“We have all heard the story of how Archimedes detected the alloy in King Hiero’s crown; how a certain weight of gold had been given by the king to an artificer to make over into a crown; how the King, suspecting a cheat, asked his friend Archimedes if he could tell whether base metal had been put in with gold; how Archimedes, sorely puzzled, stepped one day into his bath, observed how the water ran over forgot everything and ran home naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting, Eureka! Eureka!”
“Archimedes’ discovery was simply this; that a body in water displace a quantity of water of *equal weight, and not according to its bulk, as one might believe at first thought. With it he established the idea of specific gravity.
By this he not only exposed the tricky goldsmith, but was led to all sorts of investigations, and finally to the discovery of the Lever.”
In a similar way Hahnemann, groping about in his study of the action of homoeopathic drugs on the healthy human organism, perplexed by the aggravation resulting from ordinary doses, seeking to find a dose so small that it would not endanger life and desiring to accurately measure his degree of dilution so that he might repeat or retrace his steps, invented or adopted *the centesimal scale of menstruation. Immediately he found ready to his hand the means of solving the problem in which so many others before him had failed.
He had devised a process, simple in the extreme, by which with nothing but a mortar and pestle, a series of small glass vials and a small quantity of sugar of milk, or of pure water or alcohol he could not only modify toxic substances so that they were rendered harmless without destroying their curative powers, but develop and measure the inherent, latent medicinal energy of inert substances to any extend desired.
Substances which were entirely inert (physiologically or pathogenetically) in their natural state, such as the minerals, charcoal and lycopodium were by the newly invented process of trituration, solution and subsequent liquid potentiation, developed into medicines of remarkable power.
Homoeopathy, as a practical art thus became possible and Hahnemann passed on, leaving Hippocrates, Galen and all the other competitors in the race far behind.
And this was all brought about by the invention of simple mathematical scale of measurements. It is so simple that only very few, even yet, begin to grasp its tremendous significance. One of the greatest physicists who ever lived, after reflection upon, it said that the Hahnemann theory of potentiation would ultimately lead to an entirely new conception of the constitutions of matter. And so it has. Newton’s “hard, massy material atom” and even the atom of later physicists, is nor more as an ultimate conception. It has given place to the immaterial electrical corpuscle, or electron, infinitely smaller and more active than the atom.
Historically homoeopathic potentiation is a development of very old and very common pharmaceutical processes. The mortar and pestle are as old as medicine. Minerals and inorganic substance are commonly prepared for the therapeutic use by methods not only closely analogous, in its first stage to the homoeopathic method, but having their origin in the same fundamental necessity; namely, the necessity for rendering such substances soluble, capable of being taken up by the absorbents and appropriated by the sentient nerves of the living organism. Metals like mercury, lead and iron are entirely inert medicinally until they have been submitted to some process, physical or chemical by which their mass is broken up and rendered soluble, and their latent medicinal energy thereby set free. It matters not by what name we call such a process, it is essentially a potentiation and homeopathic potentiation is nothing more or less than a *physical process by which the dynamic energy, latent in crude substances, is liberated developed and modified for use as medicines.
Hahnemann, recognizing that the therapeutic action of a drug is the direct opposite of its physiological or toxic action, saw the possibility and necessity of extending this process, by perfectly simple, reliable and accurate means, so that it shall not only release the latent energy, but render it available for the higher purposes of healing by depriving it of its destructive or toxic action, while at the same time developing its purely therapeutic qualities and broadening its field of action.
It is perhaps not quite fair to imply that the dominant school has not recognized such a possibility. That it has done so is evidenced by its attempts to prepare certain morbid products, mostly of animal origin, for use as therapeutic agents by submitting them to a biological process which may be regarded as somewhat analogous to homoeopathic potentiation. I refer to the processes by which the various serums and vaccines and prepared. The old time vaccination in which the patient was inoculated directly with the so-called “humanized” vaccine virus, represents its first attempt in this direction. So many evil arose from the practice that it was soon discontinued, and the more modern method devised. By this method, an animal, usually a calf, was inoculated with pus from a fully developed human smallpox pustule. After the ensuing disease thus set up in the animal had developed, serum or pus from one of the resulting pustules was again inoculate into another healthy animal to undergo the same or similar organic modifications. This process having been repeated a varying number of times, through a series of animals, the final product was used to inoculate human beings. With many technical modifications and extensions this is essential the process use to-day in the preparation of the sera and vaccines.
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.