Vacillation, confusion and uncertainty in the choice and management of remedies is only too evident in the majority of cases. Little or no attention is paid to rational auxiliary, especially dietetic, treatment. Consequently there have been far more failures than successes. Probably this is one reason why the homoeopathic vocalists are “singing small” or keeping silent. They are not proud of their record as a whole and many of them doubt their own competency– as well they may.
And yet this is no reason for being silent about the possibilities of homoeopathy, nor about the cases in which it has been successful. The situation is much like that in which Mark Twain (or was it Bernard Shaw?) after listening to a scathing denunciation of Christianity, acidly remarked: “Why condemn Christianity? It has never been tried”.
Look at the way homoeopathy has been muddled and perverted by its nominal followers!.
Cancer cases have been cured by homoeopathic treatment– many of them. Cancer cases can be cure and are being cured by medication by men who have shaken themselves free from the hypnotic suggestions of surgical mesmerisers and from hide-bound tradition. They have faced their cancer cases courageously, studied them and the literature of the subject with open minds, chosen the medicines to be used according to their best judgment, laid out their general plan of treatment, and stuck to it.
Almost as important as technical proficiency in such cases are the moral qualities of faith, courage, patience, bulldog tenacity of purpose “stick”. These are the personal qualities that help to win out in the long run, even when the measures employed are below the standard of scientific accuracy. With a fair amount of therapeutic knowledge, intelligence and common sense, plus the desire and will to succeed, these qualities make up to some extent for technical shortcomings, because their possessors, consciously or unconsciously, thereby draw upon the primary source and supply of healing energy in Nature, available for them and their patients through psychological channels. This is an advantage which no experienced physician will despise.
I hold no brief for medical mediocrity nor technical inefficiency, when I say that any physician with a fair degree of knowledge of medicines and how to select them homoeopathically can learn how to cure cancer if he goes about it in the right way.
The first thing to do after one has made and substantiated a pathological diagnosis of cancer is to forget it. Thenceforth, if one expects to succeed, he will treat, not “cancer”, but a cancer patient. If he has kept pace with the advance of modern ideas he will keep in mind the fact that the morbid condition confronting him, the disease itself, is carcinosis, of which the “cancer” or tumor is merely a product, a secondary local manifestation with which he is not directly concerned; that there is always a pre- cancerous stage represented by certain ailments or syndromes, and a diathesis represented by characteristic constitutional symptoms with which he is concerned.
These are now fairly well known and classified by those who have studied the subject and published their findings. Broadly speaking, they include (for the homoeopathician), practically all symptoms and modalities peculiar to the individual in whatever disease he may have had (differentiated from common symptoms and from ordinary diagnostic and secondary symptoms). They are to be diligently sought and recorded in as complete a clinical history of the case as it is possible to make.
This is absolutely necessary and of the highest importance for the homoeopathician, because frequently in fully developed cases with secondary local pathology or “ultimates” present, few or none but common or secondary symptoms exist. These are of no value to the prescriber in selecting curative remedies. Only the primary dynamical or functional symptoms — those which represent the disease process in its active, formative phases, past or present, are reliable as a basis for curative treatment by medication.
All secondary symptoms resulting from the presence of pathological products, tumors, diseased or disabled organs, etc., must be excluded except so far as they reveal peculiar modalities. Otherwise the prescriber finds himself constantly “chasing the devil around the stump”, caught in a vicious circle of misleading secondary symptoms. Like a squirrel in a whirling cage he is always gong and never getting anywhere.
Ignorance of this fundamental principle has been the main case of failure in the medical treatment, homoeopathic or otherwise, of cancer cases — this, with ignorance of how to apply in the best way the general principle of homoeotherapeutics, Similia Similibus Curantur, by which alone the curative medicine can be found.
The foregoing is all old, standard homoeopathic doctrine which should be familiar to every practitioner. But having forgotten or neglected it, one must be reminded.
To repeat: Cases of cancer have been cured by many medicines used by men of many varying degrees of ability as prescribers. There should be no doubt about it. Hundreds of such cases have been published. Certainly, not all of the men who published them were liars, ignoramuses or fools. It matters not that many of these cases were not very skilfully treated, judged by a high technical standard; that they were zigzagged and muddled through; that medicines were given combined or in alternation, in crude dosage or low dilutions as well as in high potencies; that remedies were too frequently changed; that diet was ignored, and that silly and unnecessary adjuvants were used.
The main point is that many of the patient got well. This proves, at least that Cancer is curable by homoeopathic medication. Cures and failures alike are explainable with equal ease when the principles are understood. Success in treatment is exactly proportionate to the skill of the prescriber, the susceptibility of the patient and the stage or degree of malignancy of the disease.
Homoeopathic and eclectic physicians have many medicines to choose from, and principles to guide them. (They alone remain of those who attempted to treat cancer by medication.) Theoretically, “any case may be cured by any medicine in the materia medica.” But practically this is not quite true. The number of medicines which correspond homoeopathically to the cancer diathesis, to carcinosis, is not large. As a class it is rather small. The synthetic symptomatology, or characteristic syndrome of carcinosis has not been completely worked out yet, but while extensive it also has definable limitations. Both are easily within the mastery of any intelligent homoeopathic prescriber. He has only to search for them.
To give him a new start, shorten his labors and hearten his endeavor, I will suggest that if he will procure, through Boericke and Tafel, a little paper bound volume of 95 pages, published in London by The C. W. Daniel Company and entitled “Cancer, Its Causes, Prevention and Cure,” by Dr. H. W. Anderschou, he will have the best little book on the subject I have ever read.
It is not necessary to enlarge on that statement farther than to say that its author is a Danish homoeopathic physician, although he modestly disclaims orthodox in that or any other branch of medicine. Nevertheless his medicinal treatment is frankly based upon and governed by homoeopathic principles, and if results count for anything it is mighty good homoeopathy. He is quite as unorthodox and just as right in his theory of the nature and causation of cancer.
In treatment he lays great emphasis upon rigid adherence to a meatless, fruit and vegetable diet, the make-up of which is based upon very full scientific researches (his own and others) into the chemistry and physiology of foods, supplemented and verified by extensive clinical experience. He has made many remarkable cures of cancer cases, some of which are described in his book. Reading it is a most enlightening and encouraging experience. Putting its teachings into practice will do much to put homoeopathy back on the map in the treatment and cure of cancer.
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.