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(* On the other hand, the most dreadful diseases of every kind which have not been spoiled by any medical fatuity, in the families of farm laborers and other day laborers, on whom of course no ordinary physician presses his services, are quite commonly, almost as if by a miracle, cured by the antipsoric remedies in a short time, and are transformed into lasting good health.)
Woe to the young homoeopathic physician who has to found his fame upon the cure of those diseases, of rich and prominent persons, which by a mass of allopathic evil arts have degenerated into such monstrosities! With all his care he will end in failure!
A similar great hindrance to a cure of far-advanced chronic diseases is often found in the debility and weakness into which youths fall who are spoiled by rich parents, being carried away by their superabundance and wantonness, and seduced by wicked companions through destructive passions and excesses, through revellings, abuse of the sexual instinct, gambling, etc. Without the least regard for life and for conscience, bodies originally robust are debilitated by such vices into mere semblances of humanity, and are besides ruined by perverse treatment of their venereal diseases, so that the psora, which frequently lurks within, grows up into the most pitiable chronic diseases, which, even if the morality of the patient should have improved, on account of the depressing remorse, and the little remnant of their wasted vital powers, accept antipsoric relief only with the greatest difficulty. Such cases should be undertaken by homoeopathic physicians as curable only with the greatest caution and reserve.
But where the above-mentioned often almost insurmountable obstacles to the cure of these innumerable chronic diseases are not present,* there is nevertheless found at times, especially with the lower classes of patients, a peculiar obstruction to the cure, which lies in the source of the malady itself, where the psora, after repeated infections and a repeated external repression of the resulting eruption, had developed gradually from its internal state into one or more severe chronic ailments. A cure will, indeed, also be certainly effected here, if the above-mentioned obstacles do not prevent, by a judicious use of the antipsoric remedies, but only with much patience and considerable time, and only with patients who observe the directions and who are not too aged nor too much debilitated.
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(* One additional obstacle to the homoeopathic cure of chronic diseases, and one which is not very rare but is still usually disregarded, is: The suppressed sexual instinct with marriageable persons of either sex, either from non-marriage owing to various causes not removable by a physician, or where in married persons sexual intercourse of an infirm wife with a vigorous husband, or of the infirm husband with a vigorous wife has been absolutely and forever interdicted by an injudicious physician, as is not infrequently the case. In such cases a more intelligent physician, recognizing the circumstances and the natural impulse implanted by the Creator, will give his permission and thus not infrequently render curable a multitude of hysterical and hypochondriac states, yea, often even melancholy and insanity.)
But in these difficult cases also the wise arrangement of nature is manifested in aid of our efforts, if we only make a good use of the favorable moment offering. For experience informs us that in a case of itch arising from a new infection, even when, after several preceding infections and repressions of the eruption, the psora has made considerable progress in the production of chronic diseases of many kinds, the itch which has last arisen, if it has only still kept its full primitive eruption unhindered on the skin, may be cured almost as easily as if it were the first and the only one, i.e., usually by merely one or a few doses of the appropriate antipsoric medicine, and that by such a cure the whole psora of all the preceding infections, together with its outbreaks into chronic ailments, is cured.*
Nevertheless it is not advisable to intentionally cause a new artificial infection with itch, even if the patient felt no repugnance to it (as is nevertheless, frequently the case) merely on account of the easier cure in that case of the old psora which had been several times renewed; because in severe chronic diseases of a non-venereal and therefore psoric origin, – as e.g. suppuration of the lungs, a complete paralyzation of one or another part of the body, etc., – the itch miasma rarely retains its hold, and, as far as experience shows, it clings less when caused by an artificial inoculation than when it originates from an accidental, unintentional infection.
I have little further to say to the physician already skilled in the homoeopathic art as to how he is to operate in the cure of chronic diseases, except to direct him to the antipsoric remedies appended to this work; for he will know how to use these remedies for this noble end successfully. I have only to add a few cautions.
First of all, the great truth is established that all chronic ailments, all great, and the greatest, long continuing diseases (excepting the few venereal ones) spring from psora alone and only find their thorough cure in the cure of the psora; they are, consequently, to be healed mostly only by antipsoric remedies, i.e., by those remedies which in their provings as to their pure action on the healthy human body manifest most of the symptoms which are most frequently perceived in latent as well as in developed psora.
The homoeopathic physician, therefore, in curing a chronic (non- venereal) disease, and in all and in every symptom, ailment and disorder arising in this disease, no matter what seductive name these may have in common life or in pathology, will usually and especially look to the use of an antipsoric medicine selected according to strictly homoeopathic rules, in order to surely attain his end.
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(* The same is the case, according to the merciful arrangement of nature, with syphilis, where, after a local destruction of the chancre or the bubo and after a consequent breaking out of the venereal disease, a new infection takes place. The new infection, while the chancre remains undisturbed, may be cured, together with the venereal disease sprung from the former infection, just as easily by a single dose of the best mercurial preparation, as if the first chancre were still present, – provided that no complication with either of the other two chronic miasmata, especially the psoric, has taken place; for in such a case, as has been mentioned above, the psora must first be removed.)
Let him not think, while a well-chosen antipsoric medicine is acting and the patient some day feels a moderate headache, or else a moderate ailment, that he must give the patient at once some other medicine, whether an antipsoric or another remedy; or if perchance a sore throat should arise, that he must give another remedy, or another on account of diarrhoea, or another on account of some moderate pain in one part or another, etc.
No! the homoeopathic antipsoric medicine having been chosen as well as possible to suit the morbid symptoms, and given in the appropriate potency and in the proper dose, the physician should as a rule allow it to finish its action without disturbing it by an intervening remedy.
For if the symptoms occurring during the action of the remedy have also occurred, if not in the last few weeks, at least now and then some weeks before, or some months before in a similar manner, then such occurrences are merely a homoeopathic excitation, through the medicine, of some symptom not quite unusual to this disease, of something which had perhaps been more frequently troublesome before, and they are a sign that this medicine acts deeply into the very essence of this disease, and that consequently it will be more effective in the future. The medicine, therefore, should be allowed to continue and exhaust its action undisturbed, without giving the least medicinal substance between its doses.
But if the symptoms are different and had never before occurred, or never in this way, and, therefore, are peculiar to this medicine and not to be expected in the process of the disease, but trifling, the action of the medicine ought not for the present to be interrupted. Such symptoms frequently pass off without interrupting the helpful activity of the remedy; but if they are of a burdensome intensity, they are not to be endured; in such a case they are a sign that the antipsoric medicine was not selected in the correct homoeopathic manner. Its action must then be checked by an antidote, or when no antidote to it is known, another antipsoric medicine more accurately answering its symptoms must be given in its place; in this these false symptoms may continue a few more days, or they may return, but they will soon come to a final end and be replaced by a better help.
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.