Review on cure and recovery by Stuart Close

Dr Devanshu Kumar Ladla

Merriam-Webster’s medical dictionary defines cure as stopping a disease or illness entirely, but   recovery as the softer “act of regaining or returning towards a normal or healthy state.”  In other words, to be cured of a disease would mean restored to a condition in which it no longer affects you whatsoever, but recovery is where you learn to cope with the condition and no longer let it get in the way of leading a healthy and good life.^[1]

Stuart close view on this topic:-

• The advent of homeopathy in the world opened a new era in medicine and gave a new meaning to the word “cure’’.
• For the first time in history it then became possible to treat disease under scientific principles and perform true cure by medication.
• In the first paragraph of Organon he penetrated directly to the heart of the matter and declared that the “The physician high and only mission is to restore the sick to health to cure’’.
• Here Hahnemann took his stand. From this point he viewed his field. By this standard he measured all physicians, all medical theories, method and systems and he desired and demanded the same measurement for himself and his own method.
• He asked but one question, applied but one test, do they cure the sick?
• Experience and observation of the men and method of his day (old school) showed clearly that they did not cure.
• In the second paragraph of the Organon, Hahnemann gives for the first time in medical history, an adequate and satisfying definition of the ideal expressed in the word “cure’’.

The highest ideal of cure is rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of health or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable and most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles.

• Cure is dependent, not upon precedent (example), opinion or speculation but upon the application of principles, principles moreover that are easily comprehensible.
• Practice of medicine has been called “the art of healing’’ hence a cure is a product of art.
• Art defined-art is practice guided by correct principles in the use of means for the attainment of a desire end.
• An artist is one who is skilled in applying knowledge or ability to the accomplishment of a concrete purpose.
• When the homeopathic artist takes the crude materials that nature provides and adapts them directly to therapeutics ends by potentization ,rendering them harmless ,more active, more potent, more assmilable and hence more efficient.

Art not imitation the nature-

• Art is not mere servile imitation of nature, nor of nature’s processes, although such base imitation are constantly being foisted upon the medical profession and the public in the name of art or science.
• Hahnemann says –the vital force, capable of acting in harmony with the physical arrangement of our organism, and without reason, insight or reflexion, was not given to us that we should regard it as the best guide in the cure of disease.
• The true healing art is that intellectual office incumbent on the higher human mind and free powers of thought, discriminating and deciding according to cause.
• Examples-many examples of the working of the homeopathic principle may be found in nature:

1. Relief from rubbing a bruise
2. Applying snow to a frozen ear
3. Radiant heat to a burned finger
4. The instinctive actions of sick or injured animals, as when they eat grass or leaves to produce vomiting when they are nauseated, or lick the secretion from their own wounds or sore.

• By observing all the previous facts(examples) ,as a homeopathic artist we should not go through that same way, like that the dog had apparently cure himself by licking the pus from his own sores, or that human victim of septicemia had recovered after accidently or intentionally ingesting a portion of his own morbid secretion.
• To know the efficacy of “autogenous pus” as a remedy he would first submit the morbid product to the recognized scientific process of modification by mechanical potentiation according to the method of Hahnemann.
• Proving that medicine on the healthy human being and if he chose to approach the problem first from the clinical side he would administer doses of the potentiated substance to the person from whom it was taken and observe the outcome.
• Some other example are given like venomous reptiles and insects inject their poison by puncturing the skin and obtain quick and positive results. This suggest but not justify the use of hypodermic needle for therapeutic purpose.
• So cure is never accomplished by methods which are but a mere imitation of nature or nature’s processes. Recoveries, only, results from such method.

The distinction between cure and recovery-

• The favorable outcome of medical treatment may be either a cure or a recovery.
• A cure is always a result of art and is never brought about by nature- nature however aided or unaided, often brings about a recovery, under the operation of natural laws.
• Aside from homeopathy ,sanitation and surgery, the only real progress in handling the problem of disease during the last century has been in the adoption of hygienic method of treatment tending towards natural recovery-the abolition of all drugs and dependence upon rest,diet,regimen and good nursing-known as the expectant method.

Definition of recovery–

• Recovery is the spontaneous return of the patient to health after the removal, disappearance or cessation of the exciting causes and occasion of disease, or as a result of treatment which is not directly and specifically curative in its nature.
• Recovery is favored by the application of sound principles of mental and physical hygiene, judicious mechanical or surgical treatment when required, avoidance of drugs used for their “physiological (really pathogenic) effects, and by enlightened sanitation.

The expectant treatment inadequate-

• Nature unaided, however, or with the aid afforded by the expectant treatment and by sanitation and surgery, is unable to cope successfully with many form of severe disease.

                     Ex-cholera, yellow fever, pneumonia, diphtheria, typhus and typhoid fever, small pox.

• If disease are divided into three classes with regard to their rate of mortality, the highest mortality is found among those treated by

1. Ordinary drug methods
2. Next lower under the expectant method
3. The lowest under homeopathic treatment.

         The superiority of homoeopathy-

• Homeopathy has gained its greatest triumphs in those diseases which are uninfluenced by even the expectant treatment. The best is epidemics of cholera.
• It is the duty of every physician to avail himself of all the resources of hygiene, sanitation and surgery, but it is also his duty to put prejudice aside and investigate the claims of a method of medication which can show such markedly superior results as does homeopathy.
• The homeopathy is only one therapeutic mode which can legitimately claims to effect true cures by medication, as distinguished from recoveries, how?

1. Because it is based upon a definite general principle or law of nature
2. It is able to successfully apply that principle to indivual cases
3. It does actually restore the sick to health, quickly, safely, gently and permanently, upon easily comprehensible principles.

         Relation to cure to disease:-

• Disease is manifested perceptible by sign and symptoms. Cure is manifested by the removal of the symptoms.
• The removal of all the symptoms of the case is equivalent to a cure. But if symptoms disappear and the patient is not restored health and strength it means either that some of the most important symptoms of the case have been overlooked, or that the case has passed beyond the curable stage.
• Cure related to the case as a whole- a patient may have his hemorrhoid removed and be relieved of his rectal symptoms, but if the symptoms of the heart or liver disease which preceded and caused his hemorrhoids are not removed the patient is not cured , and so of innumerable other morbid condition.
• Cure is not affected by the removal surgically nor by any local means, of the external secondary, pathological “end product” of disease, ex-tumour, effusion, collection of pus, useless organ or dead tissue, for the morbid functioning which produces those effects often remain unchanged, after such removal.
• Cure is effected only by dynamical treatment-based on fixed principles.

Disease End products and mechanical treatment-

• The tangible, physical results of disease as thus defined may and often do disappear spontaneously when the internal dynamic disturbance is removed by curative medication, but they are not primarily the object of homeopathic treatment.
• It may be necessary eventually, to remove them mechanically by surgical art.
• Mechanical measures become necessary when the tangible products of disease are so far advanced or so highly developed that they become secondary causes of disease and obstacles to cure.

The objects of treatment-

1. The primary object of homeopathic treatment is the restoration of normal functional balance health.
2. The basis of Homeopathic prescription is the totality of symptoms which represents the internal derangement(functional)- the abnormal process of the disease itself, not its ultimate or “end products”
3. If the prescription is on the basis of disease end product, it’s nothing but the wastage of time and energy of any physician.
4. Correct the fault process(the process which takes a healthy individual into the diseased condition)

Requirement of cure-

1. The first requirement of a cure by medication is that it shall be the result of the direct application of a definite principle of therapeutic medication.

• The result may be accidental or intentional on the part of the prescriber in a given case, but its relation to the means based on rational explanation.
• It is always possible to formulate a method or technique, by means of which the principle may be successfully applied to every case within its scope.

1. The second requirement of a cure by medication is that it must be individual.

• Indivualization of the medicine
• Individualization of disease
• Individualization of patient(morphological factor)

1. The third requirement for the performance of an ideal cure, therefore, is a complete and impartial collection and record of the facts which constitute the natural and medical history of the individual.

• Heredity
• Family history of the individual
• Any abnormalities during birth
• Education
• Occupation
• Habits
• Social and domestic relation
• Chronological symptomatic history of all his disease
• Indisposition
• Idiosyncrasies
• Accidents
• Vicissitudes

1. In considering the recorded results of each examination, the homeopathic therapeutics pays particular attention to the unusual, peculiar, exceptional feature or symptoms which give the case its individuality. It helps to find out the similimum.

Manner and direction of cure

• Cure take place in a definite, orderly manner and direction.
• Normal vital processes-cellular-organic-system, begins at the center and proceed outwardly.
• Life is a centrifugal force, radiating, externalizing, concentrating and organizing spirit into matter-from above downward, like wise disease is a centripetal force, opposing, obstructing, penetrating towards the center and tending to disorganization.
• The progression of all chronic disease is from the surface towards the center; from less important to more important organs-from below upwards.
• Curative medicine reinforce the life force, reverse the morbid process and annihilate the disease.
• Symptoms disappear from-

                Above downward, from within outward and in the reverse order of their appearance.

Ex-a patient with an obscure rheumatic endocarditis, for example, begins to have signs and symptoms of acute arthritis soon after taking the homeopathic remedy and is relieved of his chest suffering, we know that cure has commenced.

 The trend of modern therapeutics-

• Cure as a medicinal, appears to have been abandoned by the dominant school of medicine.
• Formerly every new therapeutic method or measure based its claims to acceptance upon alleged cures.
• It the results of its use could be made to pass for cure, it was given some sort of standing in the medical world.
• If not, or if time revealed the falsity of the claim, it was relegated to the limbo of exploded theories.
• In many cases, the condition of the patient after his supposed cure (modern therapeutics) is found to be worse than it was before.
• A very common example- the young man, for instance, whose gonorrhea was treated by injections, and who was told by his physician, after the discharge disappeared, that he was cured and might marry the girl of his choice, soon found that his previously healthy young wife began to complain of serious trouble in her reproductive organ.
• So here we seen that how a suppressive treatment creates a dangerous disease condition in a healthy wife.

Conclusion
By this chapter we learned that the cure never happened by the imitating the nature, nor by making an imaginary hypothesis about diseases. According to dr Hahnemann which dr Stuart close revealed in this chapter that cure only happen when we work on symptoms similarity, totality, individualization, and the most important point have to applying the scientific technique(nature law of cure) for a cure.

References-
Pease RW. Merriam-Webster’s medical dictionary. Springfield, MA: Merriam Webster; 1995.
Close S. The genius of homeopathy. Nanopathy; 1981.

Dr. Devanshu Kumar Ladla
(B.H.M.S., M.D) Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed To Be University, Pune
devanshu0732@gmail.com