He was not a materialist who denied the deific origin and existence of spiritual substance or agents, and maintained that spiritual or mental phenomena are the result of some peculiar organization of matter. Neither was he an idealist in the extreme sense of one who believed, with Bishop Berkeley (and Mrs. Eddy) that all which exists is spirit, and that which is called matter, or the external world, is either a succession, of notions impressed on the mind Deity, an illusion or “error”, or else the mere edict of the mind itself as taught by Fichte.
The Inductive Philosophy of Lord Bacon. – Familiarity with the works and doctrines of the philosophers is shown in Hahnemann’s writings; but he seems to have been most influenced by the inductive philosophy of Lord Bacon. He never mentioned nor quoted Bacon in his writings, but few finer examples of the application of Bacon’s principle to the study of natural phenomena can be found than that of Hahnemann in his development of Homoeopathy.
Bacon had set himself particularly to the task of complete investigation and reformation of physical science; but his plan embraced the whole realm of philosophy, and his principle was applicable to mental and moral, no less than physical science. That principle was Logical Induction, upon which was based the inductive method of observation and experience. This is the only valid basis of conclusions and the accepted ground of modern science.
“His (Bacon’s) merit as a philosopher lies chiefly in having called back the human mind from the wrong direction in which it had so long been seeking knowledge, and setting it on a new path of investigation”, says one writer.
“When Bacon had analyzed the philosophy of the ancients, he found it speculative. The great highways of life had been deserted. Nature, spread out to the intelligence of man, had scarcely been consulted by the ancient philosophers. They had looked within and not without. they had sought to rear systems on the uncertain foundations of human hypothesis and speculation instead of resting them on the immutable laws of Providence as manifested in the material world. Bacon broke the bars of this mental prison-house:- bade the mind go free and investigate nature.” (Davies, Logic of Mathematics.)
Bacon’s fame rests chiefly on his *”Novum Organum”, the second part of his *”Instauratio Magna”, “The object of this was to furnish the world a better mode of investigation of truth: that is, a better logic than the so-called Aristotlelian or syllogistic method; a logic of which the aim should be not to supply arguments for controversy, but to investigate nature, and by observation and the complete induction of particulars arrive at truth”.
It is significant that Hahnemann in selecting a name for his own Magnum Opus chose the very word, “Organon”, used by Bacon, and before him by Aristotle, whose philosophical method, misrepresented and misapplied by the schoolmen of the middle ages, Bacon restored to its true place with improvement of his own.
State of Medicine in Hahnemann’s Time. – The situation confronting Hahnemann in the medical world was similar in many respects to that in the world of physical science which confronted Bacon. Medical theory trod upon the heels of theory as they rapidly passed across the historical field of vision, each one contradicting the other, and all alike the product of imagination and speculation. All were engaged in attempting to find a basis for the treatment of disease in speculations about the interior states, the invisible, internal changes in the organs of the body and the unknowable primary causes of disease.
Ideas which now seem absurd were then matters of the most serious moment, and in their practical working out often became tragical. Blood-letting, the outgrowth of one of these false theories, affords a good example. The celebrated Bouvard, physician to Louis XIII, ordered his royal patient forty-seven bleedings, two hundred and fifteen emetics or purgatives, and three hundred and twelve clysters during the period of one year! During the extremes to which the so-called “physiological medicine” was carried more than six million leeches were used, and more than two hundred thousand pounds of blood was spilled in the hospitals of Paris in one year. The mortality was appalling.
In Hahnemann’s time (1799) the death of our own George Washington was undoubtedly caused by the repeated blood-letting to which he was subjected. He was almost completely exsanguinated.
Medicine was in a state of chaos. Hahnemann faced the problem of creating a new science and art of therapeutics which should be constructed on the basis of facts of observation and experience, according to certain principles which he had laid down for his guidance.
Applying the inductive method which he had evidently learned from Bacon and Aristotle, the first thing Hahnemann did was to take a board view of the whole field of medicine, shake himself clear of any lingering remnant of bias or prejudice which may have been in his mind as a result of his association with the medical men and ideas of his age, and ask himself a few simple, pointed questions.
“What is the real mission of the physician? “Of what use is the medical profession? “Has it any real excuse to offer for its existence?” “Surely not”, he says, “if spends its time and effort in concocting so-called systems out of empty vagaries and hypotheses concerning the inner obscure nature of the process of life; or the origin of disease; nor in the innumerable attempts at explaining the phenomena of diseases or their proximate causes ever hidden from their scrutiny, which they clothe in unintelligible words; or as a mass of abstract phrases intended for the astonishment of the ignorant, while suffering humanity was sighing for help. We have had more than enough of such learned absurdities called theoretical medicine, having its own professorships, and it is high time for those who call themselves physicians to cease deluding poor humanity by idle words, and to begin to act, that is, to help and to heal”.
“The physician’s highest and only calling is to restore health to the sick, which is called Healing”.
“Rational Medicine”.- Scientific medicine must conform to at least three requirements; 1. It must be based on facts. 2. It must be rational, that is logical. 3. It must be demonstrably true.
It is not enough for medicine to be simply “rational”. When people believed that epidemics were sent by offended deities it was “rational” that their children should be offered as propitiatory sacrifices. If one believes that disease is merely an “error of mortal mind” it will be “rational” to adopt the methods of Mrs. Eddy. So-called “rational medicine”, since the days of Hippocrates (Whose “four humors” “humoral diseases” and “humoral remedies” still exist, masquerading under the thinly- disguised term “serum therapy”) has always been “rational” but too often neither logical, based on facts, nor demonstrably true.
What a confession of ignorance of the healing art and of blind worship of false gods is contained in the following paragraphs from a recent editorial in a prominent medical journal:
“No record in history equals the death roll of the World War and the accompanying pandemic of influenza. In these two giant convulsions *man was helpless.
“In the struggle against influenza medicine and science could salvage only a few. If we should experience a recurrence of the epidemic, either mild or severe, are we prepared to meet it?
Statistics of the epidemic referred to show a total, loss under “regular” treatment of approximately a million lives in the United States, with a mortality rate of about thirty per cent!
A hecatomb indeed on the altars of modern “rational medicine” the frightfulness of which is brought home to us by the fact that in fifty thousand cases reported by homoeopathic physicians the mortality was only about one per cent!
Hahnemann’s Working Principles. – It will be profitable to glance eat some general principles which Hahnemann laid down for his guidance in his great work of creating a new science and art of therapeutics. These are to be found succinctly stated in the preface to the second edition of the Organon.
He there broadly defines medicine as “a pure science of experience, like physics and chemistry”.
He declares: Medicine can and must rest on clear facts and sensible phenomena, for all the subjects it has to deal with are clearly cognizable by the senses through experience.Knowledge of the disease to be treated, knowledge of the effects of the medicine and how the ascertained effects of the medicines are to be employed for the removal of disease all this is taught adequately by experience, and by experience alone. Its subjects can only be derived from pure experience and observations, and it dare not take a single step out of the sphere of pure, well- observed experience and experiments, if it would avoid becoming a nullity and a farce’.
He continues: “Unaided reason can know nothing of itself (*a priori), can evolve out of itself alone no conception of the nature of things, of cause and effects; its conclusions about the actual must always be based upon sensible perceptions, facts and experiences if it would elicit truth. If in its operation in should deviate by a single step from the guidance of perception it would lose itself in the illimitable region of phantasy and of arbitrary speculation, the mother of pernicious illusion and of absolute nullity.”
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.