Great Personalities:- All great forward movements in religion, science or art originate in the mind of some individual who appears at the psychological moment and announces his mission. His personality and his teaching represent the truth for which he stands.
To a moses or a Luther, to a Washington or a Lincoln, to a Plato or a Bacon, to a Hippocrates or a Hahnemann, each in his own sphere and period, the world comes and must come for instruction, inspiration and leadership.
Always following the appearance of great teacher or leader, opponents, detractors or corruptors spring up and attempt to stay or destroy, or divert to their own glory the progress of the new movement. Disciples or would-be disciples have always to be on guard against false teaching. Their principal safeguard is in maintaining a sincere and intelligent loyalty to the historic leader whose personality and teachings represent the original truth, and in intellectual and personal fellowship with other followers who maintain the same attitude and relation.
Lesser lights and lesser leaders there must and always will be to whom, each in his own rank and degree, honor and loyalty are due; but the disciple is never above his master. He only is “The Master” to whom the first great revelation of truth was made and by whom it was first developed and proclaimed; for such epochal men are supremely endowed and specially prepared, usually by many years of seclusion, intense thought and labor. They are raised up at last to do a great work. They stand on the mountain tops of human experience, from whence they have a field of view and a grasp of truth never before attainable. Like Moses they have as it were, received the “Tables of the Law” direct from the hand of the almighty.
Homoeopathy, the science and art of therapeutic medication, has a twofold existence as an institution and in the personnel of its loyal, individual representatives.
These two constituents are pervaded by a common animating spirit, which finds expression respectively in its organizations and literature and in the life and practice of its followers.
Homoeopathy a System – The fundamental principles of homoeopathy are embodied in a system of doctrines, laws and rules of practice which were first formulated, named and systematically set forth by Hahnemann in his Organon of the Rational Art of Healing. By that, homoeopathy was given a name an individuality and a character which defines and identifies it for all time.
The practical demonstration of homoeopathy is committed to its personal representatives, whose success will be proportionate to their efficiency. Efficiency in homoeopathy implies and involves native ability, acquired technical proficiency and logical consistency in the application of its principles. The exercise of these qualifications requires honesty, courage, fidelity to a high ideal and a right point of view.
Every problem with which homoeopathy deals, therefore, must be approached and every technical process conducted systematically from a particular and definite mental standpoint. The student or practitioner of homoeopathy must not only know what this point of view is, but he must acquire it and act from it in each case. This might be called the personal side of homoeopathy; for in the last analysis homoeopathy, from the psychological standpoint, is essentially a state of mind existent in the person of its representative. In this sense personality, or the sum of all the essential attributes and qualities of the individual is a condition-precedent to professional success.
Having defined the qualities and attributes that enter into the make-up of the homoeopathician the various practical problems and technical processes of homoeopathy can be taken up and discussed from the point of view already established.
As a prerequisite to a clear understanding of the subject, as well as to the attainment of efficiency in the practical application of its principles it is assumed that homoeopathy is what it is claimed to be a complete system of therapeutic medication. As a scientific system it is made up of certain facts, laws, rules and methods or processes, each of which is an integral part of the whole.
Nothing conflicting with its established principles can be added to it nothing taken away, if it is to stand in its integrity. Once it is determined what these essential elements and principles are, homoeopathy must stand or fall as a whole.
A mutilated homoeopathy is a lame and crippled thing, compelled to sustain itself by crutches, splints and braces. An emasculated homoeopathy is an impotent homoeopathy, without the virility necessary to maintain or reproduce itself. Some shortsighted, superficial and weak-kneed individuals, actuated by their prejudices, or through their failure to comprehend the subject as a whole, have adopted an emasculated homoeopathy for themselves and attempted to support their crippled eunuch as a candidate for general acceptance.
Subjects such as the “life force” the single remedy potentiation, infinitesimals, the minimum dose, and the totality of the symptoms as a basis for the prescription, they have characterized as unessential “so long as the principle of *similia was maintained”. They do not perceive that each of these doctrines is logically drawn from and inseparably connected with the one fundamental doctrine which they profess to accept and apply. It is this which has brought homoeopathy, *as an institution, down to a point where its very existence is threatened.
Within its sphere homoeopathy is entirely adequate to meet all its own problems in its own way, when it is practiced in its purity and entirety. But homoeopathy will fail if it is forced outside or beyond its real sphere, or if it is perverted and emasculated. To know the true sphere and limitations of homoeopathy is as necessary to practical success as to know its technic and resources.
Mere formal knowledge of the “law of cure” and the technic of prescribing does not make a homoeopathic physician in the true sense of the word. Something more than that is needed. Into that cold and inert body the breath of life must be breathed before it becomes a living soul. Homoeopathy is a spirit as well as a body of rules and principles and the spirit must be incarnated in every true believer and follower. That incarnation takes place when the mind of the neophyte is opened to the philosophical truths which underlie both the method and the principles, and he becomes imbued with the desire and the purpose to make them the ruling influence of his life.
Methods of adapting and applying the principles have changed to some extent as the scope and technic of prescribing have been developed, but homoeopathy is essentially the same to-day that it was a hundred years ago. Individual practitioners, nominally followers of Hahnemann, have drifted away from his teachings and method, and some have attempted to inject into or graft upon homoeopathy all sorts of fads and fancies; but the mongrel thing thereby created deceives no one who has derived his knowledge from the fountain head. Homoeopathy as set forth by Hahnemann, while not perfect, is complete in all essentials as a system. It is supreme within its legitimate sphere because it is the only method of therapeutic medication which is based upon a fixed and definite law of nature.
The validity of this law has been disputed by the dominant school of medicine ever since it was first promulgated by Hahnemann; but it has never been denied by any one who has complied with all the conditions necessary for a scientific demonstration of its verity. To comply with those conditions in good faith and test the matter is to be convinced.
It is conceivable and probably true that one reason for the rejection of the homoeopathic principle is that the principle, as usually stated, has never been fully understood. It is a fact that most, if not all of attempts (With an exception to be brought forward later) to state the principle have been faulty. Analysis and comparison have not been carried far enough, in most cases, to clearly identify the principle and its relations, and establish homoeopathy in the “circle of the sciences” where it belongs.
The dominant school of medicine has not only denied that the so- called “homoeopathic law” is a law of nature, but denied that there is any general law which governs the relation between drugs and disease and have ceased searching for one. The existing situation has never been better characterized than by Mons. Marchand de Calvi in an eloquent and stirring address to the French Academy of Medicine.
“In medicine”, he said, there is not nor has there been for some time, either principle, faith or law. We build a Tower of Babel, or rather we are not so far advanced for we build nothing; we are in a vast plain where a multitude of people pass backwards and forwards; some carry bricks, others pebbles, others grains of sand, but no one dreams of *the cement; the foundations of the edifice are not yet laid, and as to the general plan of the work it is not even sketched.
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.