Generalizing the mental states is the most difficult of all and requires the exercise of the highest powers of the physician. In difficult cases of nervous and mental disease the physician must be a trained psychologist and a logician, as well as a most alert and accurate observer.
Reviewing and summarizing the ground thus far covered we find that the inductive method in science is cumulative and evolutionary. It eliminates every element of speculation and deals only with established facts. It takes nothing for granted when data are concerned. It ignores no fact, no matter how trifling it may seem. It confines its operation strictly within the limits of the subject directly in hand. Its deductions are always direct, never indirect.It never makes an inference or deduction from a process of reasoning, or from theoretical grounds, but always from carefully observed facts, A generalization made according to the principles of Inductive Logic Stands in direct and logical relation with the data from which it is drawn and includes them in their essential features. It is arrived at through a series of steps or degrees, in which each conclusion rests firmly upon the preceding steps.
The principles which govern the art of generalization may be summarized as follows:
1. The mind must be freed from the bias of pre-conceived opinions and theories.
2. The subject must be clearly defined, or restricted within definite limits.
3. The phenomena must be determined by actual observation or experimentation, with a single end in view; viz, the truth.
4. All the phenomena must be gathered, if possible. No fact must be omitted, however trifling it may seem.
5. No phenomena are to be admitted to the induction of a study but those elicited by its own process in its own province.
6. The facts must be clearly expressed and recorded with exactness and precision.
7. The phenomena must be expressed and recorded in terms of simple fact, free from speculation about their causes.
8. The facts having been ascertained and clearly stated, they are to be arranged in their natural relation to each other and to the subject of the inquiry by comparison and generalization.
9. Generalization proceeds by bringing together similar and related phenomena into groups, considering these in there relation to each other and to other groups, deducing their general characteristics and stating them in simple, comprehensive form.
10. Particulars appropriately grouped lead to minor generalization, which in turn lead to greater generalizations, but always as required by Lord Bacon’s formula. “ascending continually and by degrees.” “The most rigorous conditions of gradual and successive generalizations must be adopted.”
11. Nothing should be deduced from the facts of observation except what they inevitably include.
12. At every stage of the investigation, the analysis of the phenomena must be carried to its utmost limits before the process of synthesis is begun.
The Law of Causation.- The science of logic has an important relation to medicine in the matter of assigning the causes of disease, upon which, as far as possible, treatment is based, If treatment is to be governed to any extent by the idea of removing or counteracting the effects of the cause of the disease, it follows that success will depend upon correct conclusions as to what constitutes the cause or causes.
Many, if not most, of the mistakes and failures in medical treatment are due to the failure to comprehend and correctly apply the principle of logic known as the *Law of Causation.
Everyone is quite ready to agree that “every effect must have a cause.” But investigation shows that very few seem to know, or, if they know, make use of their knowledge of the fact, that *every effect has a number of causes, all of which must be taken into consideration if correct conclusions are to be formed.
Mill (System of Logic) says :
“The theory of *Induction is based upon the notion of *Cause. The truth that every fact which has a beginning has a cause is co-extensive with human experience. The recognition of this truth and its formation in to a law, from which other laws are derived, is a generalization from the observed facts of nature upon which all true science is based.”
“The phenomena of nature exist in two distinct relation to one another; that of *simultaneity and that of *succession. Every phenomenon is related, in a uniform manner, to some phenomena which co-exist with it, and to some that have preceded and will follows it.”
“Of all truths relating to phenomena the most valuable are those which relate to the order of their succession. On a knowledge of these is founded every reasonable anticipation of future facts, and whatever power we possess of influencing those facts to our advantage. From the same knowledge do we derive our power to make the most effective use of past and present facts.”
“When we speak of the cause of any phenomena, we do not mean a cause which is not itself a phenomenon. It is not necessary (in practice) to invade the realm of metaphysics and seek for the ultimate cause of anything.Of the essences and inherent constitution of things we can know nothing. The only notion of a cause which the theory of induction requires is such a notion as can be gained by experience, in the correct observation and interpretation of facts. But much depends how we observe facts. The trustworthiness of facts often depends upon how the accuracy and freedom from prejudice of the observer. Inasmuch as we do not reason from facts, but from *our conception of the facts, it follows that the reliability of our conclusions depends not only upon correct observation and correct reasoning, but upon the truthfulness of our conceptions of facts.”
(Jevons says : “Science is in the mind and not in things..”
“The Law of Causation, which is the main pillar if inductive science, is but the recognition of the familiar truth that between the phenomena which exist at any instant and the phenomena which exist at the succeeding instant, there is an invariable order of succession. To certain facts, certain facts always do, and, as we believe, will continue to succeed. The invariable antecedent is termed the cause; the invariable consequent, the effect.”
“The universality of the law of causation consists in this, that every consequent is connected in this manner with some particular antecedent, or set of antecedents. Let the fact be what it may, if it has begun to exist, it was preceded by some fact of facts, with which it is invariably connected. For every event there exists some combination of objects or events, some given concurrence of circumstances, positive or negative, the occurrence of which is always followed by that phenomena. We may not have found out what the concurrence of circumstances may be; but we never doubt that there is such a one, and that it never occurs without having the phenomenon in question as its effects on consequence.”
*”It is seldom, if ever, between a consequent and a single antecedent that this invariable sequence subsists. It is usually between the consequent and the sum of several antecedent; the concurrence of all of them being requisite to produce, that is, to be certain of being followed by, the consequent.”
“In such cases it is very common to single out one only of the antecedents under the domination of Cause, calling the others merely conditions : thus, if a person eats of a particular dish and dies in consequence, that is, would not have died if he had not eaten of it, people would be apt to say that eating of that dish was the cause of his death.There need, not however be any invariable connection between eating of the dish and death; but there certainly is, among the circumstances which took place, some combination or other on which death is invariably consequent; combination or other on which death is invariably consequent; as, for instance the act of eating of the dish, combined with a particular bodily constitution a particular state of present health, and perhaps even a certain state of the atmosphere; the whole of which circumstances perhaps constituted in this particular case the *conditions of the phenomenon, or in other words, the set of antecedents which determined, it and but for which it would not have happened.”
*”The real cause is the whole of these antecedents and we have no right, philosophically speaking to give the name of the cause to one of them, exclusively of the others.”
The most common, and in its outworking the most pernicious medical error, is to assume that a disease or a morbid condition had a single cause, and to direct all efforts and agencies against that.
This error is responsible for such tragical failures as have resulted from the attempts to treat or eradicate cholera, tuberculosis and diphtheria on the assumption, at least virtually, that bacilli were the sole cause of these diseases.
The mortality in the last great cholera epidemic under antibacillar treatment was the greatest in history. Human tuberculosis under the same *regime continues its ravages unabated, while millions of dollars worth of cattle have been uselessly destroyed in the attempt to stamp out bovine tuberculosis.
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.