To illustrate this, suppose we select Belladonna for scarlet fever, covering a splendid and positive totality., Behind this acute miasm (scarlet fever), we will say, lies a latent tubercular element (pseudo-psora), which becomes violently disturbed by the acute active miasm. Soon we notice the Belladonna group waning and the chronic miasmatic element advancing in all its fury, with an abscess perhaps of the middle ear, calling for Hepar, Mercury, or Arsenic. As this is the order things in the acute, so is it chronic. The difference is this, in the case of scarlet fever, is it easy to understand, for the but in the chronic blending, the symptoms are not prominent, not clear, and it requires much study and close observation to distinguish in the secondary or tertiary stages of chronic miasms, what is behind the existing malady, as referred to in paragraph 258 of the Organon.
Until I saw clearly that La Grippe was a sycotic disease, I often found it difficult to select a curative remedy that would wipe it out, without the necessity of a second or third selection; but now knowing what is behind the malady, I have seldom any trouble in securing such a remedy. As you study the disease, you will find the genus-epidemicus will in over ninety per cent. of the cases, be an anti-sycotic one. We select our nosods in that way and from just such knowledge. Yet I have seen Psorinum prescribed in an acute sycotic eruption, that was covered fully by Sepia, entirely on the symptom of itching. The genus epidemicus is but another proof of this truth. The genus epidemicus is the remedy that covers the totality of the existing malady, not all the symptoms of which are to be found in any one patient. Thus it is true of every other case. The disease force combining with the life forces, produce or bring forth an inhibitation, and about that inhibitation is to be found a grouping of symptoms, that represent the similia of the existing malady, which is the phenomena of of miasmatic action in every case. If your do not find this, your treatment is palliative and does not fulfil the law.
But you say, “it is so difficult to discern these things. How can we understand the symptomatology of the present active miasm?” we reply, “in the same manner as you study the drug picture, for drug pictures are but expressions of it.” Gumma is an expression of a peculiarly disturbed life force with a syphilo- psoric basis. Rhus tox gives us a fine conception of a sycotic rheumatism. Benzoic acid of a gouty bladder, and of a gouty state of the system; Rheum and Chamomilla of a sycotic diarrhoea; Gelsemium of an acute state of Law Grippe; Rhus tox, or Sepia, of a sycotic eruption, and so on through the whole list of remedies.
Here comes before some cases of Cuban itch. The patients are an old Homoeopathic physician and this whole family. Their bodies are covered with the eruption, and they are fearful cases;’ they have suffered with it for five months. He has tried all the anti- sycotic remedies, he said, with no relief; but “It is not a psoric disease,” I said, it is the army itch; a sycotic disease, pure and simple. What you need is an anti-sycotic remedy.” Sepia, I m, was selected, which removed every sign of it in eight days. There was no itching to speak of after the fourth day, and much relief after the first twenty-four hours. Only four of five powders were given, and even less would have sufficed. “How did this happen?” you ask. It was a lack of knowledge of the element behind the malady; thus Sepia was overlooked.
The false teaching that has gone forth for years, that everything is Psora that is not Syphilis, has done much to harm the cause of Homoeopathy. “But,” you say, “Hahnemann taught that fact and made it prominent.” Yes, and it was true then, but one hundred years have elapsed since that time and things have changed. This new element Sycosis, has increased and multiplied ten thousand fold since that time. It was an uncommon disease in Hahnemann’s time, and as a rule, was not considered very seriously, as we see on page 102 of Chronic Diseases, Vol II. Yet he briefly describes the true or sycotic form in the three pages given to this subject. On page 113, he speaks of curing this form with Nitric acid (meaning the form with the excrescences or condylomata which we now understand to be from a mixed museum, or a form of Syphilis and Sycosis combined, for which Cinnabaris, as well as Nitric acid are often indicted).
The other form is where these excrescences are not present, but where the common sycotic wart, verruca vulgaris, and the pendulous wart is present. In this form the symptoms were net with Thuja, and here Hahnemann gives the order of treatment, of the selection of the remedy as has been mentioned. He says, “If Allopathic treatment has so disturbed Psora or Syphilis, that may have been lying latent in the organism, so that they now become manifest and active, then the order of treatment is reversed, and we first annihilate the psoric miasm, by the subsequently indicated anti- psoric; and then use the remedy indicated for the Sycosis,.” Do you follow those principles in your prescribing for our cases, in general practice, or do you keep pointing away at the Sycosis, and thus fail to cure your case? You are weak right here where you ought to be strong, yet many of you are ready to oppose anyone who calls your attention to this important truth as laid down by the master.
I have no new truth for you, I make no claim to that: I am simply “one crying in the wilderness, make the paths straight, “- follow the teachings of Hahnemann to the very letter, for if you disobey the law you are brings it into disrepute and thus injuring the cause of Homoeopathy. The influence of chronic miasms upon endemic or epidemic diseases, is well known to those who are acquainted with he principles governing Homeopathy. (In this, of course I mean Hahnemannian Homoeopathy, for there does exist in the world a system of medicine so called Homoeopathy, whose followers do not adhere to these principle, and thereby brings great disrepute aid grievance to the cause of Hahnemann).
“This strikingly obstinate character of epidemic disease, “says Hahnemann, “is due to some psoric miasm.” but, today we know it is not due alone to Psora, for Sycosis, as has been mentioned many times, plays frequently as great a part as Psora,. and this is why cancer and the malignant diseases are increasing. A prominent medical writer of England says, “cancer, at the rate it is increasing will destroy all human life on the island in two hundred years.” Malignancies increase and diseases multiply and are magnified by miasmatic blendings and suppressive treatment. I might say hare, that in England there is not more cancer than i in other countries, only in that country the fact has been brought to light more fully. But we know diseases are multiplying in the earth,; we know that they are difficult to cure, more persistent and positive in their bond with the life force. the earth is full of sin, full of diseases, suffering, death, and degeneracy of the human race. It is a veritable house of pestilence, and a hospital of the plague.
All kinds of false theories of cure are arising in the earth, and also false, teaching as to the nature of disease and of life. Many of these false methods of treating disease have come into use within the past ten years, their name is legion. The majority of them are suppressive in their nature and palliative in their effects; all complicate disease, stir upon the chronic miasm, which of course increases malignancies and magnifies diseases and death processes. Again as we resume our subject in the study of the action of acute epidemics, like La Grippe, upon the chronic latent miasmas, we find that as soon as the acute disease passes away, and often before it leaves the organism, the disturbed chronic miasm will require special treatment. “Even, ” says Hahnemann, “if our best remedies should have been employed against the acute miasms,.” Scarcely a case passes through our hands, that does not require at about the close of the acute epidemical disease, the selection of some deep acting anti-psoric or anti-sycotic remedy, before the patient is again restored to health. In this procedure lies the secret for success in the cure of disease. The same thing amy be said of those acute diseases which intervene, called “morbi intercurrentes,” as Hahnemann calls them; no acute disease ever arises (outside of contagious or infectious disease) that is not an effort on a part of the life forces to throw the effects (internal disease or the internal workings of a chronic miasm) to the surface. When the life force fails to do this the disease centers upon some internal organ and we have phenomena, bronchitis, or some other deep- seated disease process.
Not all medicines reach down to the miasmatic taint hence Hahnemann called those that do so anti-psoric, anti- syphilitics, and anti-sycotics. In paragraph 251 of the Organon, he speaks of this fact, and in paragraph 252 etc., saying “if when the (anti-psoric) remedy is given in the proper dose it does not produce an amendment, it is a sure sign that the cause which keeps up th disease, still exists and there is something either in the regimen or condition of the -patient, that must be first altered before a permanent cure can be effected.” There is a superficial setting in the therapeutic grouping of our remedies, and also a deep seated one;the first is palliative and the second curative; both are necessary in the treatment of the sick, yet the first method of prescribing “is overworked,” as is commonly expressed in slang phrase. In this first form of prescribing, the remedy can be repeated frequently with good results, but in the second a frequent repetition will prove injurious to the patient and often entirely spoil the cure.
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