Reactions in the living subject manifest themselves in perceptible functional and tissue changes which, in the case of human beings, may be felt and intelligently observed, described, measured and recorded. In medical parlance, reactions are expressed by symptoms, subjectively and objectively. Under this principle and by this method have our homoeopathic provings been conducted, and from these provings our materia medica is constructed.
Tests, of course, are conducted with doses only sufficient to arouse characteristic reactions without endangering or destroying, life since to do otherwise would defeat the end in view.
Knowing experimentally the damaging or pathogenetic effects of relatively large doses of a drug upon the healthy living subject; knowing also that relatively small doses of the same drug exercise a more moderate and stimulating effect, the next logical step is to determine the natural relation between drugs and disease.
Systemic reactions to pathogenetic agents of every kind, tangible or intangible, are observed and studied by the physician in the light of this principle in the same manner as the reactions of protoplasm to drugs and other stimuli are studied by the biologist; for the physician is essentially a biologist, as medicine is fundamentally a biological science.
Systemic reactions to morbific influences, pathogenic organisms and drugs alike are all manifested by perceptible phenomena or symptoms. In fact, the student of the comparative symptomatology of drugs and diseases needs not to progress very far to realize that it is impossible to draw any sharp line of demarcation between them. All diseases are produced by morbific agencies or poisons of some kind, primarily or secondarily generated and the symptoms of disease are precisely similar to the symptoms of drugs. It is not illogical to deduce that the direct. causative agents are similar if not identical, and that the differences in effects are due to differences in the size and quantity of the doses, the morphological peculiarities of the subjects and different conditions.
Modern medicine in its use of the sera and vaccines, in demonstrating the identity, or at least the similarity, of disease-producing and disease-curing agents, and in so doing is demonstrating the homoeopathic principle.
The biological law under discussion brings again to the front, as of fundamental importance, the old, old subject of The Dose, which has received so much discussion in the past. Perhaps from this time on the discussion can be carried on without bigotry, acrimony or prejudice to a point where the two schools of medicine can arrive at some amicable understanding based upon the acceptance of a general principle of therapeutic medication.
Medical Sociolists – The homoeopathic medical profession would have been spared a large part of the tiresome and unprofitable discussions which have wasted time, paper and printer’s ink in the past if would-be critics, before entering the literary field, had at least informed themselves correctly of the derivation and meaning of certain terms used by those whom they attacked. Misunderstanding or misusing a word, they attached an arbitrary or imaginary meaning to it and proceeded to belabor their “man of straw.”
In reviewing the controversial literature of homoeopathy it is surprising to find so large a part of it thus initiated. Much of it could never have been written by men who had even “a speaking acquaintance” with sciences other than the one they professed to represent.
Men who thoroughly understand a subject rarely misunderstand each other. They have been over the same course and learned the same language. They know the groundwork and essentials of their common art or science, and they also know something of its relations with the other branches of art and science.
All true science are interrelated. They touch one another at many points. Each is dependent upon the others in many respects. They often “Exchange works” as well as words.
Entrance upon the profession of medicine has, until recent years, been so easy and unrestricted, that a large proportion of its matriculants had not even the equivalent of a modern grammar school education. With little or none of the cultural and still less of the scientific training which goes into the make-up of a well educated man, they have been permitted to take a course in medicine and enter upon its practice. Innate ability, a studious disposition and hard work have enabled some of these men to make up for their pre-medical shortcomings and earn high honors; but the majority have been medical misfits, without whom the profession and the public would have been better off.
So long as such men confined their attention strictly to the practice of medicine, according to their lights, much could be forgiven. But when they invaded the literary field and began to write of matters of which they knew little or nothing, and even to set themselves up as critics of men who did know patience ceased to be a virtue. In pillorizing the culprits, the editors of magazines and society Transactions who admitted such trash to their pages should not be overlooked. Verily they have much to answer for!
A striking example of the misunderstanding and misuse of words is found in the voluminous and for a long time seemingly endless discussion centered around the word “spiritual” used by Hahnemann in paragraph 9 of the Organon, which reads as follow: “In the healthy condition of man, the *spiritual vital force (autocracy), the dynamis that animates the material body (organism) rules with unbounded sway, and retains all the parts of both sensations and functions, so that our in-dwelling, reason-gifted mind can freely employ this living, healthy instrument for the higher purposes of our existence”.
Failing to see that Hahnemann had permissibly used the word “spiritual” as the antithesis of the words “material” or “tangible” the would-be critics swooped down upon it like a hawk upon a chicken, fastened their talons in it and proceeded to make the feathers fly. Unfamiliar also with the word “dynamis” and ignorant of its derivation and meaning, they turned their imagination loose and assumed that Hahnemann was referring to some mystical, “spiritualistic” sort of a thing which to their half-educated and crudely materialistic minds had no existence. Much ridicule and cheap wit, as well as invective, were wasted upon Hahnemann and homoeopathy.
Had they taken pains to refer to any good dictionary they might have learned that dynamis is a Greek noun meaning power or force; the power or principle *objectively considered, applied by Hahnemann to the life principle.
By the use of that word and its adjectives, dynamic and dynamical (of or pertaining to forces not in equilibrium; pertaining to motion as the result of force: opposed to static) Hahnemann introduces us into the realm of Dynamics, the science which treats of the motion of bodies and action of forces in producing or changing their motion. In medicine dynamical commonly refers to functional as opposed to organic disease. Hahnemann thus opened the way for bringing homoeopathy under mathematical laws, creating the Science of Homoeopathics and giving it its rightful place in the “Circle of the Sciences”.
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.