2.That which is inherent in anything, determining its nature; essential character; essence; endowment; original faculty.
3.A law of nature as illustrated in the mechanical powers; a law of mechanics under which a given mechanism accomplishes certain results”.
In philosophy the word has been used to mean: “(a) one of the ultimate essential elements that enter into the composition of all being:: (b) a moving cause, force or power, by which being manifests itself” (c) final cause as explaining the purposive phenomena is this manifestation.” (“Standard Dictionary”).
Here is a very old word for a very old concept. Shall we do away with it?.
Unfortunately, many practical scientific men of today- chemists, engineers, electrical experts, many of high standing-are not broadly educated. They have been specially and intensively educated in the practical phases of their particular science historically, nor broadly in its theoretical and philosophical relations to other sciences. They are not familiar with the language of general science and philosophy. In their haste to master the book of knowledge, they have plunged into the last chapter first and so come to imagine that they are the first to confront certain problems, some of which are as old as the mind of man, or offer as new certain solutions which were presented before they were born.
We have an illustration of this in Mr. Ketterings description of the theory and principle of “The Elective Affinity of Drugs” as “the new, scientifically established and accepted principle.” We and gland indeed to have this principle substantiated at this late date by one who stands so high as a practical, hard-headed modern scientist. But why “new”? The words, the phrase and the theory are all old, and hence apparently should have come under the speakers condemnation.
The principle of the elective (or attractive) affinity of drugs was enunciated and ably expounded by Dr. Charles Julius Hempel in his Science of Homoeopathy, as long ago as 1860- sixty- three years ago; and many since his time have resorted to it to explain the phenomena of drug action. It can therefore hardly be called “new” in the sense of the being a recently propounded hypothesis in medicine, nor as being newly established and accepted as Mr. Kettering apparently thought.
Clinical experience as well as experimental research has been demonstrating the truth of this principle continuously ever since Hahnemann began his experiments with drugs upon healthy human subjects more than a century ago. It is recognized logical corollary of the universal law of reciprocal action upon which is founded the Hahnemann method of cure by symptom-similarity.
If Mr. Kettering had known that the formula “Likes cure Likes” is merely a paraphrase in medical jargon of the Law of Reciprocal Action (“Action and reaction are equal and opposite”), as this department has repeatedly explained, would he have presumed to call it “a theoretic thought which appeals to the scientist as pure “bunk”- “fake”?.
In closing let me list just a few more of the many “mysteries” which science has been unable to penetrate because its fundamental materialistic principles and hypotheses are all wrong-for which we have the admissions of some of the greatest scientists themselves (Selected).
Why does the ninth satellite of Saturn revolve in a direction contrary to the other eight, and contrary to the general rotation of our solar system?.
Why does not the Sun get appreciably cooler?.
Why is a comet attracted, and the particles of its tail apparently repelled by the sun?.
Why does chemical affinity work in different ways on different substances?.
What is Electricity? Magnetism,” Attraction? Gravity? Light? Heat?.
Why is a bear of steel magnetized under a shock if held in one position and not in another?.
Why does matter sometimes repel and sometimes attract matter?.
Why, at the temperature of liquid air, does phosphorus lose its violent affinity for oxygen, and sulphuric acid no longer turn litmus paper red?.
Why to extremes of heat and cold produce similar effects?.
To what are due the varying cohesive, elastic, frictional, viscous, electric and magnetic properties?.
“All the facts of this order (early evolution of matter) belong to the category of unexplained phenomena of which nature is full, and which becomes more numerous as we penetrate into unexplored regions. The complexity of things seems to increase the more they are studied.” (LeBon, “The Evolution of Matter,” page 262.).
“The more the materialist has investigated such matters,” says an eminent engineer, “and the greater his experience of them, the more uncertain has appeared his knowledge, and the farther he has seemed from any fixed laws”.
Science has not fully solved even one of the many mysteries it has attempted to explain, nor carried one of its partial solutions into the realm of final causes. True scientists, even if materialists, are modest and humble. They confess their limitations. In sympathy, but not entirely in accord with Auguste Comte, who said in his “Positive Philosophy”: “The scientific mind is content merely to record the fact that certain things always occur simultaneously or in sequence and to ignore causal connections”; they find today a spokesman in Dr. George E. Vincent, President of Rockefeller Foundation, who is his “Review for 1922,” speaking of the scientific spirit in medicine, says;
“It recognizes the intricacy of its problems; it realizes that only a beginning has been made; it does not hesitate to admit ignorance or to suspend judgment. Its constant aim is the discovery of truth and its application of human need”.
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.