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.
The first aspect constitutes a problem which is purely medical to be solved by the rational application of scientific medicinal, hygienic and dietetic principles. The second aspect may bring the individual case within the field of conservative surgery, which may or may not, eventuate in operative measures.
III.
The more clearly it is perceived that cancer is primarily and essentially a systematic disease the more evident it becomes that the “radical measures” and “early operations,” so violently and aggressively advocated by many, are tragical errors in a large proportion of cases thus treated.
Under the forms of treatment arising from regarding cancer as a local disease, including radium, X-ray and the knife there has been an increase in its mortality of over thirty per cent in the last twenty years. In view of this fact, and with over 80,000 deaths from cancer annually in the United States, representing at least as many new cases developing each year, and the existence at the same time of at least 300,000 cases, it is evident that something is radically wrong with the current conception and treatment of cancer.
Those who are dominated by the local or surgical idea, have nothing to suggest except earlier recognition of the disease, more radical operations and more of them. Following the organization in 1913 of The American Society for the Control of Cancer, prominent surgeons and “cancer specialists” conducted an intensive campaign throughout the country, urging their views upon the public. There was a large increase in the number of operations, and presumably more radical operations; but instead of falling, the mortality from cancer actually rose and still continues to rise.
The reason for these tragical failures is, that the true nature of cancer is not recognized by those who pursue this course, and that nothing is done to treat the disease constitutionally or to remove its causes. This is only a repetition of the ancient and constantly recurring blunder of mistaking the product of the disease for the disease itself, and imagining that when the thing they regard as the disease is removed, the patient will be well. Primarily, it is an error in logic, a failure to include all the facts in the premises, leading to erroneous conclusions and a false philosophy.
It should be clear to anyone who can think logically that there must be a reason, a cause, for the existence of a cancer, or of any other tangible manifestations of disease; that no tangible thing can be other than a product of the operation of forces which have brought it into existence; and that the removal or destruction of a product does not and cannot remove or destroy the forces, nor the processes by which it was produced.
The cancer mass or tumor which the surgeon removes is not the disease. It is only the end-product of the disease. The real disease is carcinosis, which is not a tangible thing, but a systemic state or condition of wrong functioning, a vital dynamical disturbance or loss of balance, ultimating in cellular and tissue changes. To remove the product without doing anything to remove the disease itself-the morbid, metabolic process which produced the mass- is absolutely futile and puerile. To ignore part of the facts, to refuse to think logically and obstinately maintain a narrow and one-sided view of cancer, and to persist in doing things which lead to the sacrificing of thousands of human lives annually, is a crime against humanity.
IV.
The dietetic errors leading to the development of cancer, according to those who have investigated the subject, consist mainly in the use of foods which have either been deprived of essential, life-sustaining and health-preserving elements (principally the mineral salts) or which have had injurious substances added to them for various purposes, and in the excessive use of nitrogenous foods, especially meat.
The demands of a luxury-loving, pleasures-seeking, extravagant and intemperate public, aided and abetted by selfish, unprincipled and mercenary manufacturers, have resulted in flooding the market with foods which are unfit for human use. Scarcely one of the staple foods in common use can be mentioned that has not been subjected, in its manufacture or preparations to processes which either remove or destroy some of its most valuable elements, or add some deleterious coloring, bleaching, flavoring or preserving agent.
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.