Editorial Correspondence
47b Welbeck Street,
Cavendish Square, W.I.
July 29, 1927.
DEAR DR. STUART CLOSE:.
It was a great disappointment to some of us not to see you. And you would have enjoyed the Congress? It went off very well, and made up for all the work-and worry-preparing for it.
I am just off-to recover! but must write you a line before I go.
The Congress should help to raise the status of Homoeopathy here. And some of the American doctors were very pleased with how things went. They will tell you. The Prince of Wales was not only our Patron, but he wrote us a charming message of greeting. The Lord Mayor presided at a meeting at the Mansion House, at his invitation, and we had a fine crowd there. And Wheeler made one of his telling and tactful orations. He has the power of putting things instructively and charmingly for the laity and for non- homoeopaths. He is interesting-and convincing. Nothing but good can come of that.
Then Gordon Selfridge gave a reception to the Congress at Lansdowne House-one of the great houses of London, which he leases from Lord Lansdowne. Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, was present, and very charming, and Selfridges daughter, Princess Wiasemsky, was receiving. Lord Dysart (the Earl) invited a large Congress PArty to Ham House, one of the beautiful historical homes of England, to Garden Party.
Sir Jagadis Bose gave a wonderful lecture, in connection with the Congress, but just before it took place, showing the effects of poisons on plants, lethal in large doses, and revitalising and stimulating, in small doses. Sir Oliver Lodge also gave us a lecture, and Sir Frederick Keeble. These were for Congress members and friends and patients. They were all crowded, and very successful.
I will enclose programme of the real Congress business. Three were a lot of good papers, which will be printed in Congress Transactions. Boyd had a lot of his apparatus down from Glasgow, and gave some find demonstrations, besides his paper. This will be printed.
Lady Perks and Mrs. Balfour Williamson also entertained the Congress ladies and took them to Windsor Castle and to Hampton Court.
Altogether-with a large banquet to end up, it all went off very well. Besides the Americans, there were some very live wires among the foreign doctors-keen men-and men of our way of thinking-Mattoli from Italy-Pierre Schmidt from Switzerland-a fine old Swede-and many languages were spoken. The Germans are going ahead with homoeopathy-among them Haehl was very interesting, and the elder Meng is quite a personality. Professor Friedlander came over at his own request, to address the Congress. He is not a doctor, and not a homoeopath, but very interested.
Haehls address was very interesting. He told us how he began collecting Hahnemann relics at the age of eighteen, and how he had practically devoted his life to it. And he told us a lot about how he had at last discovered Hahnemanns Casebooks-forty of them! and a lot of valuable stuff with them.
Dr. Gladwin also charmed the Congress. We got her to talk, instead of reading her paper. And we drew our chairs up round her while she told us, in her charming way, about the last corrections to the REpertory, and about Kent, and the last time she saw him. She made us all realise his undaunted will: working- lying down-rising to do a little more-then having to lie down and rest again. We shall all remember the touching picture she painted for us.
Many big men have poured out their lives into Homoeopathy- besides Hahnemann. A CAuse for which so much has been sacrificed, cannot die.
Yours sincerely.
JOHN WEIR.
To the Editor,
THE HOMOEOPATHIC RECORDER,
1011 Arch St.,
Philadelphia, Pa. U.S.A.
Sir:.
I hope that the following remarks will not be classed as “fanatical, hysterical,” or as savoring of “insane vacuity” (see page 238, May RECORDER), but there are two sides to every question.
Personally, I think it a mistake to drop the word or name “Homoeopathic” belonging to any institution, organisation, book, pharmacy, or what not, until, and not until, the old school shall have made some honorable pronouncement as to Homoeopathy! It is our due, and our clientele have some rights herein!.
Only this last winter, during my very humble wanderings in the south of France, I came across elderly ladies, in two hotels, who were suffering greatly. They had wanted Homoeopathy at the local doctors hands, and had been told they could hat it. But from what I found, they were being made ill solely from overdrugging, at the hands of men who knew nothing of Homoeopathy. These women had been used to Homoeopathy all their lives; there are thousands such so stranded, from time to time.
I think, the world over, we should retain our classification, as physicians, and for literature, pharmacies, hospitals, etc., else how can our clientele know where to seek the beneficent aid they want and demand.
I grant that the old school are coming our way, and nothing suits their book so well as to be allowed their silent (if somewhat crude) appropriate of our methods-until we shall be left high and day, with a very bastard substitute foisted on our clientele, and we never having obtained a just honorable acknowledgment of what we have stood for during 130 odd years.
It is one thing for doctors working in such huge centers, such as in this New York Homoeopathic Hospital mentioned in your article, which is firmly established by the contributions and privations of countless subscriptions from ardent Homoeopaths; and it is quite another thing for the majority of our profession laboring far away from the protection of such huge hospitals and bodies.
The majority of our men are losing strength, and caste even, by the “volte face” of our big centers which are dropping the word Homoeopathy. I must confess, without any fanaticism or hysteria or insane vacuity, that I am heart and soul in the preservation of our distinctive nomenclature, until such time as we have open admission that there was, and is, a truth in Homoeopathy and Hahnemann, and I will throw my lot in with any organization which is wise enough to so proclaim and insist, until we have some admission from the leading colleges in the Old School, even then I don;t quite see how we can erase the name from books and pharmacies, else how can we discover just such teaching and reference as will be required for all time to come.
I see in the article quoted above (RECORDER, May 27, p. 238) mention is made of “Rohr of England, using highly potentised (attenuated) doses of Tuberculin.” Did he mention that he was following in somebodys guiding footsteps, or did he infer all this was his own brain wave?.
I have seen in the old school journals of England a strange claim: “Comfrey-a new cell proliferent,” by old school leaders (two working together) who said they had searched all literature for fifty years back and had not found a single instance of the use, or mention of, such a wonderful drug. They stole it wholesale, and had not the generosity nor honor to say that Homoeopathy had used it for the whole of said fifty years, and so it will go on. Their “discoveries” are all their own and Homoeopathy be damned!.
Is it fair? It is sane? Should we not still hold on The admission will never come if our big centers betray their (our) trust. The Hindoos have a saying “under the lamp is the greater darkness”.
Yours sincerely, for square deal, which is in our keeping for our patrons, and financial adherents, who are more enthusiastic for Homoeopathic benefits than of the profession (evidently).
E. PETRIE HOYLE, Hon, Administrative Secretary, Ninth Quinquennial International Homoeopathic Congress.
Editor HOMOEOPATHIC RECORDER,
Dear Doctor:.
Open and free discussion of a subject is a good thing, and to be encouraged. The responses to my letter in the May RECORDER, though they give a few indications of irritation, if not of real anger, make me feel that the few “digs” I gave our good-natured editor in that letter were worth giving, especially as he told me he enjoyed them.
The third paragraph in DR. Underhills letter, page 350, August RECORDER may, I think, be taken as a clear, concise and authoritative statement of the position of the symptomatologists as a group. At any rate, the position which he therein takes is really the crux of the present discussion. He says: “In each case of illness, the subjective and objective symptoms present to the observing and intelligent physician the picture of the individual sick patient. The remedy that has produced in its provings essentially similar symptoms is the indicated or homoeopathic remedy for the patient.
This statement at once leads one to ask: What criterion has the physician which enables him to say definitely that he has disclosed all or even the essential symptoms in a case if he has concerned himself with symptoms only? A loquacious patient we all know is not stingy about handing out symptoms, but what about a reticent or morose patient or one that does not speak the doctors language? Obviously his “grubbing” ability and capacity is his only criterion.
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.