Psora – 5


During the treatment of chronic diseases by antipsoric remedies we often need the other non-antipsoric medicines in cases where epidemic diseases or intermediate diseases (morbi intercurrentes) arising usually from meteoric and telluric causes attack our chronic patients, and so not only temporarily disturb the treatment, but even interrupt it for a longer time….


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If a homoeopathic physician, scrupulous at the wrong occasion, should ask me bow he might fill up the many days after giving a dose, so that it may continue its action undisturbed during the above-mentioned long time, and so satisfy, without injuring, the patient who every day * asks for his medicine, I reply with two words, that he should be given every day at the usual time for medicine a dose of sugar of milk, about three grains, which shall be marked as usual with continuous numbers. I remark here, that I consider the sugar of milk thus used as an invaluable gift of God.**4

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(* No old established custom among the people, be it ever so hurtful, can be suddenly changed. So also the homoeopathic physician cannot avoid allowing a new chronic patient to take at least one little powder a day; the difference between this and the many medicinal doses of allopaths is still very great. During this daily taking of a powder, following the numbers, it will be a great benefit to the poor patient who is often intimidated by slanderers of the better medical art, if he does not know whether there is a dose of medicine in every powder, nor again, in which one of them? If he knew the latter, and should know, that to-day’s number contains the medicine of which he expects so much, his fancy would often play him an evil trick, and he would imagine that he feels sensations and changes in his body, which do not exist; he would note imaginary symptoms and live in a continual inquietude of mind; but if he daily takes a dose, and daily notices no evil assault on his health, he becomes more equable in disposition (being taught by experience), expects no ill effects, and will then quietly note the changes in his state which are actually present, and therefore can only report the truth to his physician. On this account it is best that he should daily take his powder, without knowing whether there is medicine in all or in a certain powder; thus he will not expect more from to-day’s powder than from yesterday’s or that of the day before.)

(Chronic patients who firmly trust in the honesty and skill of their physician will be satisfied, without any after thoughts, to receive such a dose of sugar of milk every two, four or seven days, according to the disposition of each, and nevertheless retain a firm confidence, as, indeed, is only just and reasonable.)

(** There were some anxious purists, who were afraid that even the pure sugar of milk, either in itself or changed by long trituration, might have medicinal effects. But this is a vain, utterly unfounded fear, as I have determined by very exact experiments. We may use the crude, pure sugar of milk as a food, and partake of considerable quantities of it, without any change in the health, and so also the triturated sugar. But to destroy at the same time the fear to which utterance has been given by some hypochondriacs, that through a long trituration of the sugar of milk alone, or in the potentizing of medicines, something might rub off from the porcelain mortar (silica), which being potentized by this same trituration would be bound to become strongly acting Silicea(1), I took a new porcelain triturating bowl in which the glazing had been rubbed off, with a new porcelain pestle, and had one hundred grains of pure sugar of milk, divided into portions of thirty-three grains, triturated eighteen times for six minutes at a time and as frequently scraped for four minutes with a porcelain spatula, in order to develop by this three hours strong trituration a medicinal power either of the sugar of milk or of the silica or of both; but my preparation remained as indifferent and unmedicinal as the crude, merely nutritive sugar of milk, of which I convinced myself by experiments on very sensitive persons.)

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We cannot flatter ourselves that the antipsoric medicine given was rightly selected, or that it will forward the cure of a chronic disease, if it quickly and entirely destroys as if by a stroke of magic the most troublesome symptoms, old, great, continuous pains, tonic or clonic spasms, etc., so that the patient almost immediately after taking the medicine, fancies himself as much freed from sufferings as if he were already restored, and as if in heaven. This deceptive effect shows that the medicine here acts enantiopathically as an opposite or palliative, and that in the days following we cannot expect anything from this remedy but an aggravation of the original disease. As soon then as this deceptive improvement within a few days begins again to turn to aggravation, it is high time to give either the antidote to this medicine, or, when this cannot be had, a medicine which is homoeopathically more appropriate. Very rarely will such an enantiopathic remedy do any good in the future. If the medicine which is thus antipathic at once in the beginning, i.e., which seemed so to alleviate, is inclined to reciprocal action, it is possible that when the aggravation from this dose takes place, a second dose of the same remedy may produce the contrary, and thus bring about a lasting improvement, as I have at least perceived in ignatia.

In such cases we may also successfully use, for the ailments following after a few days from such an antipathic remedy, one of the remaining medicines from the considerable store laid down in Materia Medica Pura, in the Archiv der homoeopathischen Heilkunst or in the Annalen. This may be done for a few days until the Psora-disease returns to its customary routine course, when a homoeopathically selected antipsoric medicine is to be given to continue the Cure.

Among the mishaps which disturb the treatment only in a temporary way, I enumerate: overloading the stomach (this may be remedied by hunger, i.e., by only taking a little thin soup instead of the meal, and a little coffee); disorder of the stomach from fat meat, especially from eating pork (to be cured by fasting and pulsatilla); a disorder of the stomach which causes rising from the stomach after eating and especially nausea and inclination to vomit (by highly potentized antimonium crudum); taking cold in the stomach by eating fruit (by smelling of arsenicum); troubles from spirituous liquors (nux vomica); disorder of the stomach with gastric fever, chilliness and cold (bryonia alba); fright (when the medicine can be given at once, and especially when the fright causes timidity, by poppy-juice (opium); but if aid can only be rendered later, or when vexation is joined with the fright, by aconite; but if sadness is caused by the fright, ignatia seeds); vexation which causes anger, violence, heat, irritation, by chamomilla, (but if beside the vexation there is chilliness and coldness of the body, by bryonia); vexation with indignation, deep internal mortification (attended with throwing away what was held in the hand, by staphisagria); indignation with silent internal mortification (by colocynthis); unsuccessful. love with quiet grief (by ignatia); unhappy love with jealousy (by hyoscyamus); a severe cold (next to keeping the house or the bed) by nux vomica; when diarrhoea resulted, by dulcamara; or if followed by pains, coffea cruda; or if followed by fever and heat, by aconite, a cold which is followed by suffocative fits, (by ipecacuanha); colds followed by pains and an inclination to sleep, (by coffea cruda); cold with consequent coryza and loss of the sense of smell and of taste, (by pulsatilla); overlifting or strains (sometimes by arnica, but most certainly by rhus toxicodendron); contusions and wounds inflicted by blunt instruments, (by arnica); burning of the skin (by compresses of water mixed with a dilution of highly potentized arsenicum, or uninterrupted application for hours of alcohol heated by means of very hot water); weakness from loss of fluids and blood, (by china); homesickness with redness of the cheeks, (by capsicum).

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But during the treatment of chronic diseases by antipsoric remedies we often need the other non-antipsoric store of medicines in cases where epidemic diseases or intermediate diseases (morbi intercurrentes) arising usually from meteoric and telluric causes attack our chronic patients, and so not only temporarily disturb the treatment, but even interrupt it for a longer time. Here the other homoeopathic remedies will have to be used, wherefore I shall not enter upon this here, except to say that the antipsoric treatment will have for the time to be totally discontinued, so long as the, treatment of the epidemic disease which has also seized our (chronic) patient may last, even if a few weeks in the worst cases may thus be lost. But here also, if the disease is not too severe, the above mentioned method of applying the medicine by smelling a moistened pellet is often sufficient to help, and the cure of the acute disease may thus he extraordinarily shortened.

The intelligent homoeopathic physician will soon note the point of time when his remedies have completed the cure of the epidemic intermediate disease * and when the peculiar course of the chronic (psoric) malady is continued.

Samuel Hahnemann
Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) was the founder of Homoeopathy. He is called the Father of Experimental Pharmacology because he was the first physician to prepare medicines in a specialized way; proving them on healthy human beings, to determine how the medicines acted to cure diseases.

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.