Hahnemann makes but two classes of disease, and under this general head he classifies all forms and conditions of disease. “The first” he says, “are rapid operations of the vital power, departed from its natural condition, which terminates in a shorter or longer period of time, but are always of a moderate duration. These are the acute diseases.” “The others,” he says, “are less distinct, and often imperceptible on their first appearance.” these diseases develop very slowly, and that force known as the vital power, cannot resist them It is not strong enough, until they destroy the organism. These are known as chronic diseases and are produced by infection of a chronic miasm.” We see by section 72, that Hahnemann had a clear and extensive knowledge of the chronic miasms and we also know he wished his followers to become acquainted with them, and for that reason he wrote the first volume of Chronic Disease, which is Wholly given over to the study of the chronic miasms, Psora, Syphilis and Sycosis.
We have ever reason to believe that after twelve silent years of study (as we see in Vol I. of Chronic Diseases), for he gave no knowledge of it to the world in all that time, he must have become very familiar with them. The sixty-four carefully written pages in volume one of chronic diseases, testify to that fact. In these pages he goes in to detail and illustrates the subject by the many goes into detail and illustrates the subject by the many cases therein referred to. Not long ago a prominent physician said to me, “Hahnemann wrote the Organon after he wrote the Chronic Diseases.” Yes, and he filled the Organon as well as the wonderful introduction to that valuable and indispensable book full of it. Besides, men like Charges J. Hemple, who translated The Chronic Diseases, and wrote its preface, believed and followed its teachings and we have no less a light than Constantine Hering, who also wrote a preface found in Vol I.
In this work Hahnemann not only gives us the character and nature of the chronic miasms, Syphilis. Psora, and Sycosis, but he tells us about the movements, the internal workings and the law that governs their action, even that which the life force in the lawn of cure. Speaking of Psora, he ways it is the fountain head of chronic ailments and is mother all those numberless ailments and is mother of all those numberless ailments which we find enumerated in our pathological work, such as epistaxis varices, hemorrhoids, hematemesis, menorrhagia, night-sweats, constipation, and all the host of names catalogued in our momental acuter. Again, he tells us of their disastrous results upon the whole human family throughout the age of plagues, and pestilences of which they were the father; the millions, whose lives went out like the cutting off of the current from an electric bulb.
It is a fearful picture so dramatically drawn out in the first thirty or forty pages of Vol. I of Chronic Diseases, and Hahnemann meant the lesion for each of us to study carefully. He meant that we should become familiar with his etiology of disease, which in truth is the only true cause of disease worthy of our study. This brings all disease under a sin process, under transgression of law, “whose wages are death”. He devotes pages to the history and date of many cases of suppression of chronic and acute miasm, giving the awful consequences and disastrous result of such suppression. In the ninety-seven cases to which the calls our attention, he presents a graphic picture of miasmatic suppressions with all their fatal endings, death processes and malignant ultimations. He pointed out these result as coming from the unscientific treatment that were unhomoeopathic in each case.
Hahnemann again speaking of the lack of study, and attention given to the chronic miasms says, on the 50 in the old edition for Chronic Diseases, “that the circumstances relative to the cause of chronic diseases, deserve so much more to be noticed, as the common physicians, especially the modern, have from sheer blindness, overlooked it, although it was evidently the cause of all chronic diseases.” On the same page he gives three relays we should follow in investigating the three chronic miasms. First, the period when infections took place; second, the period when the whole organism began to be tainted with the miasmatic poison, the third, the manifestations of the external expression, by means if which Nature indicates the complete development of the miasmatic disease of the internal organs.
From these lines we learn that we are to become familiar with all the chronic miasms during their initial stages, their periods of invasion of the organism, and also when the secondary expressions appear upon the skin, which show was the completion of the miasmatic involvement. The third period is when Nature relieves the internal stress upon he organs, and a comparative equilibrium is established in the life force. This third treatment for the patient. You have all seen Sulphur or Psorinum, or perhaps some other remedy bring about these secondary expressions in the form of eruptions upon the skin, or perhaps by some discharge being re established or some former suffering renewed often the mental sphere is relieved and the physical grows worse or vice versa. One fact that Hahnemann brought to view very clearly in this connection, is, that the miasmatic infection becomes fully developed in the organism, before these eruptions appear upon the skin.
This true of all the miasms; they all produce eruptions upon the skin in their secondary and tertiary stags. In Psora we have the papules, in Syphilis the polymorphic lesions, m and in Sycosis, the great family of warts, moles and blotches that have already been mentioned in his work, “It is the same,” Hahnemann says, “in the chronic miasmas as in the acute, for after the internal disease is completed, the eruptions appear.” It is a pathological law, that while the acute goes through its evolution within a few days or weeks, the chronic often takes tears. Not infrequently we lose sight of syphilis for many years when to our surprise it again appears as an eruption, upon the skin, or as some destructive ulceration. The acute disappears with a succession of rapid movements, often of a violent febrile nature, and the organism disposes of then quickly and forever, but we find it not so in the chronic miasms. their evolution is slow, with pauses and rests, yet they are always present. Latent for years, they may give forth eruptive expressions of themselves in any of their cycles, which relieves the organism from great internal suffering.
The life force has no power to disengage itself from chronic miasms, as they bare not so self-limited as are th acute. This thought is splendidly illustrated by Hahnemann is page fifty-four of Chronic Diseases, Vol. I. In speaking of Syphilis, the says, “not till the internal disease is completely developed, does Nature try to alleviate or hush its sufferings, by forming a spot where the infection takes places, a local symptom as a substitute for an internal disease.” The contagiousness of the disease comes with his expression, and the power to convey, comes with and through the local manifestations, which did not appear until the while organism was thoroughly imbued with the miasmatic poison. “Only the vicarious chancre has the power of communicating to other persons the same miasms, which is the internal disease.” All the chronic miasms, Psora, Syphilis, and Sycosis, take about the same period of time in the development of their first stages, which is from ten to seventeen days. “Psora,” says Hahnemann, “takes from ten to fourteen days; the disease in all three makes its appearance at the point of infection and then develops secondary and tertiary processes.”
Psora develops the itch vehicles or the itching papule, Syphilis, the virulent open ulcer, and Sycosis, the specific catarrhal discharge. All have a slight febrile disturbance and show signs and symptoms just before secondary infection. They all have malaise, functional disturbances and manifestations of specific poisons following the infection, and a little previous to the secondary expression of the disease. In acute disease such as scarlet fever and measles we prescribe, as a rule, for the totality of the symptoms covering the malady, and why not so understand the chronic miasms, that we can do likewise? Paragraph 258 of the Organon, in speaking of this phase of the subject says: “We are to be careful not to entertain a prejudices against those remedies from which we may have experienced some check, because we had made a bad selection; and we should never lose slight of this great truth that of all the known remedies there is but one, that merits of preference before all others, namely, the one whose symptoms bear the closest resemblance to those which characterize the malady.”
This malady I have found in every case to be the active miasms, and that active miasms is as frequently sycosis on anything else, and the curative remedy will very often revolve about its symptomatology. In the same case, any prescriber could find psoric grouping or perhaps a pseudo-psoric grouping, that appeared to be (to the student not acquainted with miasmatics) of great value. It is here I claim that majority of our failures occur in selecting the true simillimum. Thus a knowledge of the active miasm that lies behind the malady, assists us in grouping our remedies, whether they be anti-psoric, anti-syphilitic, or anti-sycotic. The second selection of the remedy will now, as a rule, cover that grouping that the first remedy covered by mistake. Then we conclude that the first selection of the remedy should culminate about the active miasms, and the second selection should cover the latent miasms, now disturbed or brought into action by active miasms on which we based or first prescription.
J.H. Allen was a student of H.C. Allen. He was the president of the IHA in 1900. Dr. Allen taught at the Hering Medical College in Chicago. Dr. Allen died August 1, 1925
Books by John Henry Allen:
Diseases and Therapeutics of the Skin 1902
The Chronic Miasms: Psora and Pseudo Psora 1908
The Chronic Miasms: Sycosis 1908