I mean exactly what I say when I charge that the real basis of all these surgical pleadings and urgings and compellings is a hopeless pessimism, a confirmed but concealed belief that cancer is incurable, and that in recommending resort to the knife as “the only hope” (with an implied promise of cure) they belief their own statements and hold out a false hope. They know full well that surgery alone never cures cancer; that it merely removes the external, tangible products of the cancer disease and leaves untouched the disease itself; that this invariably reappears either in its original or in some other form, if the patient does not die of the operation.
The hope surgeons hold out is nothing but the hope of palliation, of temporary relief. Pin them down and they will either admit it, evade it, or (some of them) lie about it. They dare not hold out a promise of cure, and, to give credit where it is due, no reputable surgeon even does make any such promise. All he does at most is to hold out a hope. If the patient misunderstands this (as he usually does) and thinks cure is meant, the surgeon, as a rule, does not permit himself to feel that he is at fault for not destroying hope. If he does not know anything better than surgery, who can blame him?.
How does the public react to this attitude and policy of the dominant profession; to all this publicity and propaganda for surgery in cancer?.
It appears to me, as well as to some other observers, that the principal result of the nation-wide cancer publicity campaign, inaugurated a few years ago and vigorously pushed ever since, has been to bring about a sort of “Reign of Terror”. Certainly the public has not flocked to the surgeons with its “moles, warts and lumps” in any such increased numbers as they expected and hoped.
On the contrary, and quite in accordance with the laws of psychology, a very large proportion of those who were led to believe they had potential cancer or pre-cancerous symptoms, have become more afraid of the medical profession in general and the surgeon in particular, than they were before. Inhibited in their normal reactions by their fears, they have become more secretive, more unapproachable and altogether more difficult to handle.
They know that going to the average physician or surgeon means an operation. They know too, many of them, that an operation does not mean cure. They discount all of the assurances, encouragements and suggestions (not promises) of cure made by the surgical propagandists. They double discount the “cures” performed by surgery. For there are few among them who have not known or heard of some one, perhaps in their own circle, who was unsuccessfully operated for cancer. Likewise, they have heard of cases that have been cured medically without resort to the knife. There are few who can be led to really believe that warts, moles, and swollen glands may develop into cancer. They have seen too many of these disappear of themselves or under simple domestic treatment, to be hoaxed into any such belief.
For the most part these people are right and quite justified in their antagonistic attitude toward the surgical propagandists in this matter. They are suspicious and have a right to be suspicious of ulterior motive, principally mercenary and partly political. The reasons for this suspicion are as plain as the nose on a mans face.
Taken altogether the current campaign is about the coldest blooded, cruelest, most arrogant and presumptuous campaign ever attempted by Official Medicine. With nothing to offer but mechanical and local measures which have been proved ineffectual and worse, measures which have been depreciated or condemned by many of the greatest surgeons who have practiced them because they knew no better way and felt they must do something; condemning or ridiculing every one who differs with them by advising resort to milder measures based upon successful results from constitutional treatment; refusing to investigate or even inspect cases of verified cure by medical treatment and attempting to suppress the publication of all reports of such cures, they have banded themselves into an association, backed by the ubiquitous A. M. A., whose purpose is to beguile or force the public to accept their program and submit themselves to mutilation by the knife, or destruction of their tissues by radium or the X-ray.
The bigotry, selfishness, cold-bloodness and cruelty of such a campaign becomes obvious when it is known that statistics prove the constantly and rapidly increasing extension and terrific mortality of cancer under the mode of treatment they advocate.
The general reaction to the high handed course of official medicine is interesting, to say the least. It has been adverted to in this Department a number of times. But one of the recent special reactions in more than interesting. It is highly significant, inasmuch as it marks the development of an organized counter-attack on modern lines of strategy. Outraged medical and humane feeling is once more crystallizing rapidly, as it did more primitively during the early days of homoeopathy.
In the Koch Cancer Foundation, the American Medical Association will soon have, if it has not already, a foe worthy of its steel. For more than a year now a copy of its ably edited Bulletin has gone monthly to every physician in the United States and Canada. Doubtless it has been read, for the Bulletin claims for the Foundation a membership already of more than three thousand physician who are using the Koch Synthetic Antitoxin in their cancer cases, and that the number is rapidly increasing. Certainly that is “going some”.
The originator of the Koch synthetic cancer antitoxin was in a very intimate personal relation for several years with a widely known homoeopathic physician and author in the early days of his researches. From this physician he received moral support and encouragement, and possibly some helpful scientific suggestions. This physician is supporting the Foundation today.
Probably the homoeopathic school at large has its proportionate numerical representation in the membership of the Koch Cancer Foundation. It would not be surprising if it were true.
Without doubt the A.M.A. is aware of the existence of the Koch Cancer Foundation. Dr. Koch personally has received its delicate attentions. Plans for dealing with the Foundation are doubtless being prepared and the combatants will soon be in the ring.
It will be a pretty fight. We who are to witness it from the homoeopathic section of the arena can well afford to keep our seats and cheer the challenger every time he makes a rally or puts over a punishing punch. May the best man win.
In the meantime what is to prevent us from reviewing the cancer situation from the homoeopathic standpoint, going into training and getting into good condition for a renewed fight with the common enemy along well established lined? For us at least the serum and antitoxin theories can wait a while before we accept them without compromise or modification, since we have very efficient weapons of our own if we are reasonably expert in their use.
Scientific proof of the constitutional nature and basis of cancer is conclusive. Experience and logic alike prove that cancer does not and can not yield to local treatment. Nothing constructive has ever been gained by such measure. They never cure.
The British Medical Journal, October, 1923, said: “Can there be any doubt that in many respects the knife as a cure for cancer has been a ghastly failure?”.
Sir James Paget acknowledged that surgery cannot even be given the credit of prolonging life, to say nothing about saving life. He said: “I am not aware of a single case of recovery”.
Dr. Mayo has been quoted as saying: “After amputation of a cancerous breast under the most favorable circumstances (in the early case where the lump is small as a bean or a hickory nut and accessible) I believe that in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, the disease returns”.
Dr. McFarlan, Professor of Surgery in the University of Glasgow, wrote: The operation never arrests, but uniformly accelerates the progress of the disease”.
Dr. Francis Carter Wood, Vice-President of the American Association for the Control of Cancer, in discussion at the convention of 1925, said: “Radium will not cure cancer. It only destroys cancerous tissue within a certain radius, but does not drive the disease from the blood.” (A significant double admission).
The ghastly dangers and total failures of X-ray to cure cancer are so well know now that it is only necessary to mention and condemn it.
In view of these and innumerable similar statements which might be presented, are we not justified in characterizing the “cancer campaign” as arrogant, cruel, selfish, bigoted, pessimistic and hopeless?.
Has homoeopathy anything better to offer a long-suffering public? It must be admitted that a cursory review of the homoeopathic literature on cancer is not especially exhilarating. One feels that, as a school, we have not much to boast about. It is clear that we have not done as well as we might have done. Of the many cases reported as cured only a few show anything like technical mastery of the subject. Verification of diagnosis is often neglected. Only a few cases are treated systematically and consistently with due regard to the technique of scientific homoeopathic prescribing.
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.