Individualization.- The practical work of the prescriber in constructing the totality or “case” and selecting the remedy is governed throughout by the logical principle of individualization. It applies equally in the three departments of his work.
1. The examination of the patient. This must be conducted in such a manner as to bring out all the facts of the case. Each symptom, as far as possible, must be rendered complete in the three elements of locality, sensation and modality or conditions of existence.
2. The examination of the symptoms- record of the patient, or the “study of the case.” This must be made in such a manner as to determine what symptoms represent that which is curable by medication, under the law of similars; in other words, to determine, in each particular, case, what symptoms have a counterpart in the materia medica.
3. The examination of the materia medica, by means of indexes, repertories, etc., for the purpose of discovering that remedy which, in its symptomatology, is most similar to the symptoms of the individual patient, at a particular time.
To individualize is to confer particular characteristics upon, distinguish. To select or mark as individual; note the peculiar properties of; particularize; characterize.
“Individualization” has been the burden of the message of every great teacher, since Hahnemann. But too often they have failed or omitted to state the principles upon which the process of individualization is based. They have reported cases illustrating their own personal method of selecting the curative remedy, by which they have attained marvellous results; but they have not shown us fully the inner working of their minds. They have formulated certain rules, but few or none of these rules are of general application. We are like the man from Missouri; we “want to be shown.” We want to known the “why” as well as the “how.” We want principles as well as rules.
It was not because they were unwilling nor that they did not try to reveal the secret of their great skill and power as prescribes. To some of their personal students, with whom they were in peculiar sympathy, they at least partly succeeded in imparting their secret. It is probable, however, that most of these fortunate students received more by unconscious absorption or by intuition than they did by direct verbal instruction. It is doubtful if they themselves always recognized and identified the mental process by which they did their work. It they did, they neglected to *name it.
Simple, even trivial as it seems, the omission to *name a thing or a process, once it is known and used, leads to almost endless trouble and confusion. In its outworking it is sometimes tragical. “A name.” quantity say Hobbes, “is a word taken at pleasure to serve for a small mark which may raise in our mind a thought like to some thought we had before, and which being pronounced to others, may be to them a sign of what thought the speaker had before in his mind.” Names then are contrivances for economizing language: But this is not their sole function. It is by their means that we are enabled to assert general propositions; to affirm or deny any predicate of an indefinite number of things at once. (Millefolium)
Had our teachers of materia medica and therapeutics told us, simply, that they were using the logical faculty in their work, the faculty by which we *reason upon facts and proposition; and that the principles which governed them were the principles of *Applied Logic, we should have been directed at once to the science which, above all others, tends to elucidate the problems that meet us at every step in our medical career and saved us much groping in dark places.
In order to perform successfully the various processes that make up the work of homoeopathic prescriber, he must use his reason in a scientific manner, that is logically; for logic is the Science or Reasoning.
These seem like truisms until we watch to work of the ordinary prescriber and find that instead of doing this, he is merely using *his memory of a few facts and a few inadequate or erroneous rules which he has picked up. This is empiricism, not science. In an art which has to do with the saving of human life it is a crime.
Science is the application of *principles to art and life. Principles are deduced from facts by the exercise of reason. Reasoning is conducted according to fixed laws, which it is our business to learn and apply. To learn how to reason scientifically upon the facts of his department is as essential for the homoeopathic physician as it is for any other scientific man.
Great medical artists, men like Hahnemann, Boenninghausen, Hering, Lippe, Dunham, Wells, Guernsey, Fincke had logical minds, and used the methods and processes of applied logic, perhaps without realizing that they were doing so. They were great by natural endowment as well as by attainment. The special value of their work for us in this connection lies, not in the great number of characteristics and particular indication for treatment which they discovered and published; nor in their valuable manuals and repertories; but in the fact that they possessed and used certain general principles, by the application of which, when they are made known, we, as well as they, may individualize each case and remedy and discover its characteristic for ourselves.
The Art of generalizing.- Analysis, comparison, classification, and generalization are the logical processes by means of which the homoeopathic artist accomplishes his purpose, which is the individualization of his case and the selection of the similar remedy therefor.
Of these processes, generalization, being the synthesis or summing up of the results of preceding work, is perhaps the most important, Certainly it is the one which is least understood and most neglected in ordinary practice; and yet without it, it is impossible to do good work.
The greater includes the less, Generals are more important than particulars in constructing a case and as a basis for prescribing. The generals, which include and are derived from the particulars, constitute the only reliable basis of a curative prescription. Generalizing therefore is one of the most important function performed by the homoeopathic prescriber in selecting the curative medicine.
Mill, in his Treatise on Logic, says : “A general truth is but an aggregate of particular truths; a comprehensive expression by which an indefinite number of individual facts are affirmed or denied at once.” A generalization is the process of obtaining a general conception, rule or law, from a consideration of particular facts or phenomena. A generalization is not possible until the mind has grasped and assimilated all the particulars which enter into its formation. Then they take on form and individuality and are seen as a whole. The mind recognizes and perhaps names the identity, or describes its characteristics in comprehensive phrase. Details enter into minor generalizations, and minor generalization into major until one all-inclusive concept or principle is seen and stated. Such is *Similia Similibus Curantur, one of the most far-reaching generalizations ever made by the mind of man. Its scope no man had ever yet compassed. We have a fair comprehension of its application in healing the sick by the use of medicine, but of its application in the realm of ethics, for example to which it obviously stands related, we have only begun to have an inkling.
*The value of a generalization depends primarily upon the data from which it is drawn. We have seen that these must be accurate and complete. The mistake is constantly being made of attempting to generalize from insufficient, in correct or hastily gathered data.This is as true of the homoeopathic doctor who rushes into the sick room, asks a few hurried questions, looks at the nurse’s chart and makes a “snap-shot prescription” as it is of the pathologist who jumps to the conclusion that microbes are the ultimate cause of disease because he has failed to see his microscope what lies in the surroundings field.
General Symptoms.- *The patient sometimes correctly generalizes part of his own case. This he may do quite unconsciously, as when he refers certain symptoms or conditions of symptoms to his inner consciousness by saying, “I feel” thus and so; “I am worse in rainy weather;” “I am sad, or depressed, or easily angered” as the case may be.
*Nearly all mental symptoms are generals because mental states can only be expressed in generals terms.
Psychologically an emotion or a passion such as anger, grief of jealousy *is a complex state of consciousness in which one or more forms of excited sensibility are expanded, made sensuous and strengthened by admixture of various peripheral or organic sensation that are aroused by some primary feeling. The process by which we become aware of the resulting concrete emotion and give it a name, is essentially a *generalization, subconsciously performed. For this reason mental symptoms, when they appear in the record of a case, are always of the highest rank as material for the final generalization and completion of the totality upon which prescription is based.
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.