“What have doctors to do with souls? We are concerned only with bodies and their ailments”.
Doubtless some such querulous remark will be made, sotto voce, by more than one of my readers on glancing at the title of this paper.
The retort in kind, Yankee fashion, might be: “what has a plumber to do with the tenant of a house in which he is making some badly needed and rather expensive repairs?”.
“Who engaged the plumber to do the job? who watched him rip up his walls and floors, fumble around in dark passages, cut out and replace pieces of damaged piping clean out filth from obstructed traps and flush them, repair leaky faucets, etc., all the while wondering how much his bill will be and whether his bank account will stand it?”.
The querulous one, thinking he has me there, will probably say with a triumphant twinkle in his eye: “Much obliged for the apt analogy. It suits me to a T. Judging from their lofty ways and the size of their bills, plumbers pay just about as much respect to tenants and their proprietary rights in their dwellings as doctors do to their patients souls. Theyre very much alike, in my opinion. They both ignore the tenant, and thats my argument”.
I shall have to grant the argument, change my tactics, but stick to my proposition, to wit: that there is a tenant in the house- a soul in the body-and that his rights and feelings should be respected. Stated thus, I hope I am in position to maintain my thesis. I have at least established an analogy, thanks to my unseen friend, and that is the real purpose of this article.
Would it not be a good idea for both of them, the doctor and the plumber, to take a long look ahead and do a little serious thinking about the part played by Tenants-of the “house not built with hands,” as well as the dwelling at No. 3 New York Avenue?.
It might lead physicians to pay more attention to the subjective and functional phenomena of the individual, which, from a technical standpoint, is much needed.
In spite of their assumption of authority and independence they are both-doctors and plumbers-merely hired servants of the owner or tenant of the house, and it is he with whom they will have to reckon in the end. He foots the bills and his rights must be respected. Back of him, actually and metaphorically, stand Public Opinion, the Government and the Courts to enforce righteous laws and impose the penalties for their violation. He is a wise servant who knows his real master and treats him with due deference and consideration.
Plumbers and doctors alike, backed by their “trade unions” and favored by class legislation, form organizations which tend to become presumptuous, overbearing and tyrannical. Feeling strong in their traditions, their associations and their legal and institutional intrenchments, they think they can do pretty much as they please. Organized, or “official” medicine, dominated always from “the Inside by a few crafty politicians, avid of “power, place and self,” has steadily crept on, year after year, towards its goal of STate Medicine and complete control of the people; which means force, violence and compulsion.
That goal is nearer today than ever before, although few realize it, even in the medical profession. If any one wants confirmation of my statement let him read Senator William L. Loves recent address before the New York State Homoeopathic Medical Society.
At the same time, however, and virtually at an equal pace, The Opposition forms, organizes and grows. “Every evil contains within itself the germs of its own destruction.” The intelligent, thinking conservatives of all schools of medicine are neither blind nor asleep. They already lead and influence perhaps as large a proportion of the “unthinking” populace as do the older and more closely organized forces of “compulsory medicine.” Their power and influence are rapidly increasing, and the medical despots are very well aware of it.
The general drift of the people away from the medical profession is great and very rapid. Surveying the field covered by all the “no-drug,” non-medical, anti-medical, religious and sectarian bodies and cults, and by the various newspapers and periodicals devoting more or less space to the subjects of health, hygiene and physical culture, it has been estimated that there are now more than thirty million people in the United States who have abandoned the medical profession within the last twenty-five or thirty years. That is something to think about.
Within the medical profession itself there are large numbers of physicians who not only resent and oppose the dominance of the little cliques of political schemes who rule their organizations, but sense with alarm the danger to the true healing art inherent in the vast aggregations of capital invested in huge “medical centers,” hospitals, clinics, “research” laboratories, institutes and foundations.
They perceive more or less clearly that such institutions tend toward that pernicious state of centralization, standardization and fossilization which is the greatest obstacle to real scientific progress, and is destructive of personal liberty. With these opposing forces organized medicine is waging a constant warfare and must continue to do so. Victory for either is “in the lap of the gods,” but who can doubt than in the end American ideals will prevail?.
Dominated by a coldly materialistic underlying philosophy which does not give a thought to the soul of man, and using the analytical methods of modern physical science, medicine today dismembers, dissects and disintegrates the human body into its material elements to such an extent that all sense of human form and individuality is lost. Chemists rob the body of its form and reduce it to a few pathetic little piles of earthy substances “earth to earth and ashes to ashes.” They may also secure a jar or two of invisible gases, but the life principle, the man himself, the form and soul of him, eludes them.
“For of the soul the body form doth take;.
For soul is form, and doth the body make.” Spenser.
Histologists tear and tease organic tissue to tatters, and under the microscope scan its cells and fibers, but never succeed in bringing their formative principle into view nor in gaining any knowledge of its nature. Lacking imagination, the see connective tissue but are blind to connective principle. They clutch at the shadow but do not find or see the substance.
The habitual mode of approach to man himself is so cold-blooded, so precipitate, so essentially rough and brutal, that he is frightened away. He may submit his body for examination, but his soul retires into its citadel and refuses to reveal its secrets.
A physical examination nowadays is a fearsome thing. No wonder the average mortal dreads it. It is so complex and technical that no one man can perform it. To do it to the complete satisfaction of the directors of the Gotham Diagnostic Institutes or the Life Elongation Societies requires the use of a large building, an appalling array of equipment, and a crowd of nurses, attendants, “experts” and technicians, none of whom, you may be sure works for the love to it. Like the witty Irishman in the trench who was asked by a simpleton what he was digging for, most of them might truthfully reply as he did, “Digging for dollars, “.
From the outsiders standpoint, or even for some who are “on the inside,” there is a ludicrous side to this, as there is to everything which is carried to extremes. Much of its is totally unnecessary for the real physician, mere “grandstand play,” staged for the purpose of drawing the crowd and increasing the receipts at the box office.
Observe how, as they hustle him through the various departments, or “side-shows” of this diagnostic circus, they undress a man, inspect him, auscultate, palpate and percuss him; lay hold of and throw him down bodily; stick their fingers, probes and specula into his orifices and passages; light up his cavities and interiors and peer into them; flash a dark lantern” on him like the old-time highwayman, holding him up before a fluoroscope to watch his private internal actions; steal samples of his blood, his secretions and his excretions; ram a rubber tube down his throat and despoil his stomach of a tantalizing “test meal,” etc.; all without the slightest apparent regard for his dignity, his feelings or his pocketbook.
In short they treat him much as the inspectors of an African diamond mine treat a native laborer before he is permitted to leave the stockade at the end of his contract period. He may or may not have picked up and attempted to secrete a precious stone some-where on or in his naked, shiny person. He is considered guilty until he is proven innocent. Some of the things done to him must be left to the imagination. Suffice to say that when the inspector gets through with him, the poor wretch knows something about a “thorough examination.” He may even be a candidate for the hospital.
Funny, isnt it, when you look at it that way? Especially when you recall (if you are a followed of Hahnemann) that many of these showy, elaborate, painstaking and frequently pains giving procedures yield nothing that is of value or use in selecting the curative remedy.
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.