By susceptibility we mean the general quality or capability of the living organism of receiving impressions; the power to react to stimuli. Susceptibility is one of the fundamental attributes of life. Upon it depends all functioning, all vital processes, physiological and pathological. Digestion, assimilation, nutrition, repair, secretion, excretion, metabolism and katabolism, as well as all disease processes arising from infection or contagion depend upon the power of the organism to react to specific stimuli.
The cure and alleviation of disease depend upon the same power of the organism to react to the impression of the curative remedy.
When we give a drug to a healthy person for the purpose of making a homoeopathic “proving” or test, the train of symptoms which follows represents the reaction of the susceptible organism to the specific irritant or stimulus administered.
When a homoeopathically selected medicine is administered to a sick person, the disappearance of the symptoms and restoration of the patient to health represents the reaction of the susceptible organism to the impression of the curative remedy.
The “homoeopathic aggravation”, or slight intensification of the symptoms which sometimes follows the administration of the curative remedy, is merely the reaction of the organism, previously perhaps inactive or acting improperly because of lowered susceptibility, as it responds to the gently stimulating action of the medicine. As a piece of machinery in which the bearings have become dry or rusty from disuse, creaks and groans when it is again started up into action, so the diseased, congested, sluggish organs of the body sometimes squeak and groan when they begin to respond to the action of the curative remedy.
All this, and much more is included in the Hahnemann doctrine of Vitality, under the Newtonian principle of Mutual Action, (“Action and reaction are equal and opposite”) restated in medical terms by Hahnemann as *”Similia Similibus Curantur”, and employed by him as the law of therapeutic medication.
It is understood that action and reaction in the medical and physiological sense takes place only in the living organism, and that it depends upon that fundamental quality and attribute of life which we call susceptibility.
We shall see that the kind and degree of reaction to medicines depends upon *the degree of susceptibility of the patient, and that the kind and degree of susceptibility, in any particular case or patient, depends largely upon how the case is handled by the physician; for it is in his power to *modify susceptibility. Indeed, this power to modify susceptibility is the basis of the art of the physician.
If the physician knows how to modify susceptibility in such a way as to satisfy the requirements of the sick organism and bring about a true cure then is he a physician indeed; *since cure consists simply in satisfying the morbid susceptibility of the organism and putting an end to the influx of disease-producing causes. To accomplish this he must know that susceptibility implies and includes affinity, attraction, desire, hunger need; that these all exist and express themselves normally as states and conditions in every living being; but that they may become morbid and perverted and so cause disease, suffering and death. He knows also that susceptibility implies the existence of the wherewithal to satisfy susceptibility; to supply need, hunger, desire, affinity, attraction, and he knows how and where to find the necessary modifying agents.
It is a well-known fact that the living organism is much more susceptible to homogeneous or similar stimuli than to heterogeneous or dissimilar stimuli. Throughout the entire vegetable and animal kingdom we find the law of development and growth to be *like appropriating like. Organism and organs select elements most similar to their own elements. The same law holds good in excretion, each organ excreting or throwing off elements analogous to those of its own basic structure.
So it is in satisfying the morbid susceptibility which constitutes disease. As hunger demands food, so disease demands medicine. But the demand is always consistent with the universal law.It is for the symptomatically similar medicine, because that is the only thing that really satisfies the susceptibility.
This morbid susceptibility which constitutes disease may exist toward several different medicines, the degree of susceptibility to each depending upon the degree of symptom similarity; but the highest degree of susceptibility exists toward the *most similar the simillimum, or equal. Hence a given patient may be cured of his disease homoeopathically by either of two methods; by giving several more or less similar medicines in succession or by giving one exactly similar medicine the simillimum or equal. It depends upon whether he is being treated by a bungler or an expert. The bungler may “zig zag” his patient along through a protracted illness and finally get him well, where an expect would cure him by the straight route with a single remedy in half the time.
The sick organism being so much more susceptible to the similar medicine than the well organism, it follows that the size or quantity of the dose depends also upon the degree of susceptibility of the patient. A dose that would produce no perceptible effect upon a well person may cause a dangerous or distressing aggravation in a sick person, just as a single ray of light will cause excruciating pain in an inflamed retina, which in its healthy condition would welcome the full light of day.
Susceptibility as a state may be increased, diminished or destroyed. Either of these is a morbid state which must be considered therapeutically from the standpoint of the individual patient. Morbid susceptibility may be regarded as a negative or minus condition a state of lowered resistance. J. J. Garth Wilkinson (Epidemic Man and His Visitations) says:
“One man catches scarlet fever from another man, but catches it because he is *vis minor to the disease, which to him alone is *vis major. His neighbor does not catch it; his strength passes it by as no concern of his. It is the first man’s foible that is the prime reason of his taking the complaint. He is a vacuum for its pressure. The cause why he succumbed was in him long before the infector appeared. Susceptibility to a disease is sure in the individual or his race to be (come) that disease in time. For the air is full of disease waiting to be employed.
“Susceptibility in organism, mental or bodily is equivalent to *state. State involves the attitude of organizations to internal causes and to external circumstances. It is all the resource of defense or the way of yielding. The taking on the states is the history of human life. Pathology is the account of the taking on of diseased states, or of definite forms of disease, mental or bodily.
“In health we live and act and resist without knowing it. In disease we live but suffer; and know *ourself in conscious or unconscious exaggeration.”
We must also predicate a state of normal susceptibility to remedial as well as toxic agencies, which it is the duty of the physician to conserve and utilize. No agent or procedure should be used as a therapeutic measure which has the power to diminish, break down or destroy the normal susceptibility or reactibility of the organism, because that is one the most valuable medical assets we possess. Without it all our efforts to cure are in vain. To use agents in such a manner or in such a form or quantity as to diminish, impair or destroy the power of the organism to react to stimuli, is to align ourselves with the forces of death and disintegration. Conservation of the power of the organism to react defensively to a toxin, a contagion or an infection is as important as it is to conserve the power to react constructively to food and drink, or curatively to the homoeopathic remedy. It is as normal and necessary for the organism to react pathogenetically to a poison, in proportion to the size and power of the dose, as it is to react physiologically to a good dinner.
The problem is one of adjustment to conditions. The point to be kept in mind is to recognize and conserve normal susceptibility in all our dealings with the sick and to do nothing to impair it. Every remedy or expedient proposed for treatment of the sick should be submitted to this test. Does it respond to the demand of the suffering organism as expressed by similar symptoms? Does it supply the organic need? Does it satisfy the susceptibility without injury or impairment of function? In short, *does it cure? Unquestionably many remedies, methods and processes more or less popular even to-day, in this ultra-scientific age, do not and cannot conform to this standard.
Many substances are used medically in such form, in such doses, by such methods and upon such principles as to be distinctly depressive or destructive of normal reactivity. They are forced upon or into the suffering organism empirically without regard to nature’s law. So far as their effect upon disease is concerned they are in no wise curative, but only palliative or suppressive and the ultimate result, if it be not death, is to leave the patient in a worse state than he was before. Existing disease symptoms are transformed in to the symptoms of an artificial drug disease. The organism is overwhelmed by a more powerful enemy which invades its territory, takes violent possession and sets up its own kingdom.
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.