(By accident (for they cannot give any but a feigned reason for their action) they found out a refuge which temporarily often alleviates the sufferings of their patients when they can not do anything at home with their prescriptions against the unknown diseases; that is, they send him to some sulphur bath or other, where the patients often get rid of a small part of their psora, and thus are also at the first use of the baths for a time relieved of their chronic disease; but afterwards they fall back into the same or a kindred ailment, and the repetition of the bath then avails little or nothing, because the cure of a developed Psora requires a far more adequate treatment than the impetuous use of such baths.)
The older physicians were more conscientious in this matter and observed with less prejudice. They saw clearly and became convinced that innumerable ailments and the most severe chronic diseases follow the destruction of the itch-eruption from the skin. And since this experience compelled them to assume the existence of an internal disease, in every case of itch they endeavored to extirpate this internal malady by means of a multitude of internal remedies, as good as their therapeutics afforded. It was, indeed, but a useless endeavor, because the true method of healing, which it could only be the prerogative of Homoeopathy to discover, was unknown to them. Nevertheless this sincere endeavor was praiseworthy, since it was founded on an appreciation of the great internal disease present together with the eruption of itch, which internal disease it was necessary to remove. This prevented their reliance on the mere local destruction of the itch from the skin, as practiced by modern physicians, who think that they cannot quickly enough drive it away as if it were a mere external disease of the skin-without regarding the great injuries attending such a course. The older physicians, on the other hand, have warningly laid these injuries before our eyes in their writings, giving thousands of examples.
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The observations of those honest men are too startling to be rejected contemptuously, or ignored by conscientious men.
I shall here adduce some of these numerous observations handed down to us, which I might increase by an equal number of my own if the former were not already abundantly sufficient to show with what fury the internal Psora manifests itself when the external local symptom which serves to assuage the internal malady is hastily removed. They also show that it must be a matter of conscience for the physician who loves his fellow-man to direct all his endeavors to cure, first of all, the internal malady, whereby the cutaneous eruption will at the same time be removed and destroyed and all the subsequent innumerable lifelong chronic sufferings springing from the Psora be prevented or, if they are already embittering the life of the patient, be cured.
The diseases, partly acute but chiefly chronic, springing from such a one-sided destruction of the chief skin-symptom (eruption and itching) which acts vicariously and assuages the internal Psora (which destruction is erroneously called Driving the itch into the body) are innumerable; as manifold as the peculiarities of bodily constitutions and of the outer world which modifies them.
A brief survey of the manifold misfortunes resulting thence is given by the experienced and honest LUDWIG CHRISTIAN JUNCKER in his Dissertalio de Damno ex Scabie Repulsa, Halle, 1750, p. 15-18. He observed that with young people of a sanguine temperament the suppression of itch is followed by phthisis, and with persons in general who are of a sanguine temperament it is followed by piles, haemorrhoidal colic and renal gravel; with persons of sanguino-choleric temperament by swellings of the inguinal glands, stiffening of the joints and malignant ulcers (called in German Todenbruche); with fat persons by a suffocating catarrh and mucous consumption; also by inflammatory fever, acute pleurisy and inflammation of the lungs. He further states that in autopsies the lungs have been found indurated and full of cysts containing pus; also other indurations, swellings of the bones and ulcers have been seen to follow the suppression of an eruption. Phlegmatic persons in consequence of such suppressions suffered chiefly from dropsy; the menses were delayed, and when the itch was driven away during their flow, they were changed into a monthly haemoptysis. Persons inclined to melancholy were sometimes made insane by such repression; if they were pregnant the foetus was usually killed. Sometimes the suppression of the itch causes sterility,* in nursing women the milk is generally lacking, the menses disappear prematurely; in older women the uterus becomes ulcerated, attended with deep, burning pains, with wasting away (cancer of the womb).
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*A pregnant Jewess had the itch on her hands and drove it away in the eighth month of her pregnancy so that it might not be seen during the period of her delivery. Three days afterwards she was delivered and the lochial discharge did not appear and she was seized with a high fever; since that time for seven years she had been sterile and had suffered from leucorrhoea. Then she became poor and had to walk a great distance barefooted; hereupon the itch again appeared and she thus lost her leucorrhoea and her other hysteric affections; she became again pregnant and was safely delivered. (Juncker, ibid.)
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His experiences were frequently confirmed by the observations of others, as e. g. with reference to Asthma, Lentilius Miscell. med. pract. Tom. I., P. 176. Fr. Hoffmann Abhandlung v. d. Kinderkrankheitenn, Frft., 1741, P. 104. Detharding in Append. ad Ephem. Nat. Cur. Dec. III., ann 5 et 6 et in obs. parallel. ad obs. 58. Binninger, Obs. Cent. V., obs. 88. Morgagni, de sedibus et. caus. morb. Epist. XIV., 35. Acta Nat. Cur. Tom. V obs. 47. J. Juncker, Consp. ther. spec. tab. 31. F. H. L. Muzell, Wahrnehm. Samml. II. Cas. 8.1 J. Fr. Gmelin in Gesner’s Samml. v. Beob. V. S. 21.2 Hundertmark.-Zieger Dissert. de scabie artificiale, Lips. 1758, p. 32.3 Beireis-Stammen. Diss. de causis cur imprismis plebs scabie laboret. Helmst., 1792, P. 26.4 Pelargus (Storch) Obs. clin. Jahrg., 1722, P. 435 n 438.5 Breslauer Sammlung v. Jahre 1727, P, 293.6 Riedlin, the father, Obs. Cent. II., obs. 90. Augsburg, 1691.7
Suffocating Catarrh, Ehrenfr. Hagendorn, hist. med. phys. Cent. I., hist 8, 9.8 Pelargus, Obs. clin. Jahrg., 1723, P. 15.9
(When writing the fast edition of the Chronic Diseases, I was not as yet acquainted with Autenrieth’s Versuche fuer die prakt. Heilkunde aus den Klinishen Anstalten von Tubingen, 1808. But I saw on examining the work, that what he says about diseases following the driving away of itch through local applications is only a confirmation of what I had already found with the other hundred writers. He also had observed that the external driving away of itch was followed by ulcers on the feet, pulmonary consumption, hysterical chlorosis with various menstrual irregularities; white swelling of the knee, dropsy of the joints, epilepsy, amaurosis, with obscured cornea; glaucoma, with complete amaurosis; mental derangement, paralysis, apoplexy and curvature of the neck; these he erroneously attributed to the ointments alone. But his own slow local driving away of the eruption by means of sulphuret of potash and soft soap, which he in vain calls healing it, is in no way better. Just as if his treatment were anything else than a local driving away of the eruption from the skin! Of any true cure he knows just as little as the other Allopaths, for he writes: It is, of course, absurd to endeavor to cure itch (scab) by internal remedies. No! it is not only absurd, but even watched to undertake to cure an internal itch-disease which cannot be cured by any local application, through any but internal means, which alone can cure the disease thoroughly and with certainty.)
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(1 A man 30 to 40 years of age had been afflicted with the itch a long time before, and it had been driven away by ointments; from which time he had become more and more asthmatic. His respiration became at last, even when not in motion, very short and extremely labored, emitting at the same time a continuous hissing sound, but attended with only little coughing. He was ordered an injection of one drachm of squills, and to take internally 3 grains of squills. But by mistake he took the drachm of squills internally. He was near losing his life with an indescribable nausea and retching. Soon after this the itch appeared again on his hands, his feet and his whole body in great abundance, and by this means the asthma was at once removed.)
(2 The violent asthma was combined with general swelling and fever.)
(3 A man of 32 years had the itch driven away by sulphur ointment, and he suffered for eleven months from the most violent asthma until by drinking birch-juice the eruption was brought back on the twenty-third day.)
Hahnemann's three major publications chart the development of homeopathy. In the Organon of Medicine, we see the fundamentals laid out. Materia Medica Pura records the exact symptoms of the remedy provings. In his book, The Chronic Diseases, Their Peculiar Nature and Their Homoeopathic Cure, he showed us how natural diseases become chronic in nature when suppressed by improper treatment.