When the itch-eruption has only lately broken out and is not yet widely spread on the skin, nothing of the general internal malady of the psora is as yet to be noticed in the state of the patient. The emotional symptom acts as a substitute for the internal malady and keeps the psora with its secondary ailments as it were latent and confined.*
In this state, the disease is most easily cured through specific remedies internally administered.
But if the disease is allowed to advance in its peculiar course without the use of an internal curative remedy or an external application to drive away the eruption, the whole disease within rapidly increases, and this increase of the internal malady makes necessary a corresponding increase of the skin-symptom. The itch-eruption, therefore, in order to be able to soothe and to keep latent the increased internal malady, has to spread and must finally cover the whole surface of the body.
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(* As also the chancre, when not expelled, acts vicariously and soothingly for the syphilis within, and does not permit the venereal disease to break out, so long as it remains undisturbed in its place. I examined a woman who was free from all the secondary symptoms of the venereal disease; with her a chancre had remained in its place untreated for two years, and had gradually acquired the size of almost an inch in diameter. The best preparation of Mercury, internally administered soon and entirely healed, not only the internal malady, but also the chancre.)