EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS



The hypodermic needle, copied from the fang of the venomous serpent, never believes its origin. When “The Serpent” entered Eden he brought his “Hypodermic” and poison with him. When the hypodermic syringe with its “fang” was taken up by the doctors the “Old Serpent” grinned. He foresaw the time when the medical profession, armed with his weapon and in the guise of therapeutists, would become his most powerful ally in disseminating body- and soul-destroying poisons throughout the human race.

All serums and most of the important drugs are now regularly administered by the hypodermic needle. Even the homoeopaths are falling into line and boasting of the superior results they get by using the needle. They accept and laud serum therapy (and the needle) as being “homoeopathic in principle.” They prove drugs hypodermically.

BEHOLD “THE NEW HOMOEOPATHY” !.

There is much to be done in the field of legitimate research – in materia medica and therapeutics – much left undone that should have been done. There are many useful drugs that have been only partly proved. There are many others that have been carelessly and incompetently proved, having many questionable and unreliable symptoms in their records. There are hundreds of new chemical substances and elements, products during the last fifteen or twenty years of the finest and most highly developed chemical and physical laboratories the world has ever known.

Among these latter might be found remedies for some or many of the new or changed forms and phases of diseases that have appeared during the same period which perplex or baffle us – largely the result of serological methods of treatment. Some of these do not seem to respond to treatment with the old remedies as readily and perfectly as formerly. May not some of these new or changed forms and phases of disease be due to the pathogenetic influence, by contact or absorption during manufacture or use in daily life, of some of these new elements that have been introduced? If this be true, they must find their cure in the same elements potentiated, or raised to the dynamical plane by trituration, solution, dilution and ionization, or transformed into colloids. The way to find out is to begin proving those substances in the regular way, and do it rightly.

It is a fascinating field and a subject of immense importance. Do we find anybody at work at it? Evidently not among those who regard homoeopathy as a complete and finished product – a method incapable of modification, improvement or expansion along its original lines – the very ones who, as a rule, by reason of their familiarity with the method as thus far developed; by their thorough grasp of its fundamental principles and their conscientiousness in trying to apply them; by their ability as observers and interpreters of symptoms – particularly of the finer grade – should be best qualified to take up this work. They would be if they could free themselves from the deadening influence of the idea that Homoeopathy is complete and perfect and go to work.

Because they are neglecting their inherited estate their business is passing into the hands of a generation of different ancestry, different training, different methods, different ideals; a generation alert, active and aggressive, but with little reverence or respect for the old, and without the filial sentiment of direct descendants.

The newcomers are bent upon acquiring and condemning the “Old Homestead,” razing it to its bare foundation and building upon that, or rather, a portion of it, an entirely new edifice. The land and the building site now occupied are too prominently located and too valuable to escape the covetous eyes of the newcomers, but the old building, so long neglected, begins to look shabby and ruinous, entirely out of keeping with the pretentious mansions by which it is surrounded.

How long will it be, if the owners do not bestir themselves, before they will be evicted and have all their household furniture and precious heirlooms set out on the sidewalk?.

Stuart Close
Stuart M. Close (1860-1929)
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.