I.
Readers of THE HOMOEOPATHIC RECORDER will see nothing especially starting in the title selected for this article.
To them it will look perfectly natural, for the followers of Hahnemann have held that view of cancer continuously since he promulgated his theory of chronic diseases and included cancer as one of the manifestations of the psoric diathesis.
But there is something startling in the realization that this view of cancer has been accepted by some of the leading cancer specialist of the world, members of the dominant school who are rapidly spreading it in spite of great opposition from the surgeon and self-appointed “specialists” who think more of their fees than they do of the welfare of humanity.
It is also a little startling to learn that more than one, but one perhaps more than others, of these men in New York, who have devoted their lives to the study and treatment of cancer, have suffered professional persecution and loss of official position, because they were brave and honorable enough to publish the facts which show the tragical results of the common abuse of surgery, and tried to show the people a better way.
The advocates of surgical treatment did not hesitate recently to organize and address themselves directly to the public in a strenuous national campaign, designed to awaken wide spread alarm and drive the possible victims of cancer, through fear, to the operating table. But when the advocates of constitutional treatment addressed the public, presented their argument, advised the use of milder measures, and showed remarkable curative results therefrom, they were immediately denounced as charlatans and made to feel the heavy hand of official and professional wrath.
Taught by history and experience, the “constitutionals” proceeded to organize. We now have in New York a compact body of widely known, serious-minded and conscientious experts, dedicated to the new art of healing cancer by scientific, systemic medication, combined with hygienic and dietetic management; to continued research in the causation and treatment of cancer, and to educating the public along sane and conservative lines.
A new quarterly magazine has been established of which the first number appeared in October, filled with articles of the highest value and of great interest.
Cancer. A Practical Quarterly Journal, Devoted to the Best Interests of Cancer; edited by L. Duncan Bulkley, M.D. Associate Editor, Clarence D. Daniels, M.D.; Collaborators, A. Hirst Appel, M.D., Russell W. Kelsey, M.D., Seelye W. Little, M.D., Edward Preble, M.D. and Thomas L. Stedman, M.D.; published by F.A. Davis Company, Philadelphia,.; is a journal which is destined to exercise a powerful influence for truth and good in the world.
II.
For many years past, scientific and laboratory evidence has been steadily accumulating, until now it can fairly be said to be proved that cancer is the result of a specially perverted metabolism, due principally to a faulty diet, developing in subjects who have inherited or acquired an enhanced sensitiveness to specific forms of irritation.
This definition alone, based upon proven facts, naturally places cancer in the class of constitutional or systemic diseases, since metabolism is a general or systemic process in which the whole living organism is concerned. Other factors besides a faulty diet enter into the causation of cancer, of course, but they also are found to operate directly or indirectly within the metabolic sphere.
Important consequences arise from regarding cancer as a constitutional disease. It leads to radically different methods of treatment; makes prophylaxis possible; opens up new fields of research; inspires with hope those who have been terrorized by the false assertion that there is no hope except in the knife, and rightly teaches that the knife always fails, except in those cases which receives successful pre-operative and post-operative constitutional treatment, which the most strenuous advocates of the knife admittedly do not believe in and do not practice.
Under the constitutional theory of cancer, scientific medication comes into its own and justifies its methods by its results. The subject is to be studied in two general aspects: 1. As a diathesis-a general systemic, morbid predisposition, inherited or acquired, dependent upon certain morphological disproportions and manifesting itself by perceptible signs or symptoms in various functional and trophic disorders long before actual cancer develops.
To this state or condition of the organism has been given the name, Carcinosis. 2. As an actual disease, ultimating in Cancer, the concrete, tangible, localized expression or product of the systemic disorder, existing in several forms.
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.