Again Hahnemann says in section 249 of the Organon, “every medicine which in the course of its operation produces new symptoms that do not pertain to the disease to be cured, and that are annoying, is incapable of procuring real amendment and cannot be considered as homoeopathically chosen. ” Herein lies one of the secrets of a cure. When we are not well versed in the nature and movements (progressive or evolutionary) of each often chronic miasms, then we are unable to distinguish those symptoms which are drug provings from those which belong to miasmatic processes, or are due to the curative action of a well selected remedy, and of course we may have aggravations from supposedly well chosen remedies. Thus we flounder about in labyrinth of symptoms, and are unable to disentangle the phenomena of each.
If, however, you are acquired with the pauses and rests and the progressive movements of the miasms, you will know something for what is to be expected from a well chosen remedy and you will also know when the disease is eradicated wholly from the organism. It is what you see is disease and understand disease to be, that brings to your mind the importance of its treatment. If, for instance, you see only a circumscribed local inflammation, in an attack of gonorrhoea, you will at once try to extinguish (with a chemical fire extinguisher for that is what it is) that local fire (inflammation); but if you see in that circumscribed phenomenon of suffering the beginning of a deep miasmatic taint, with a long history of death dealing and destructive processes, a blasted life, a jail filling, prison building principle and a soul damning and life cursing medium, you will treat it from a miasmatic basis. Thus we see differently; one sees a simple process that he vainly hopes to extinguish with his chemical fire hose; he deems it local, self-limiting, capable of being destroyed in its acute process (as soon as the bacilli are killed); the other. having all the light Hahnemann has thrown upon disease, and his knowledge of its miasmatic origin, sees a prolonged and endless process, the wrecking of a life, and knows how to extinguish the venereal ulcer or discharge, by the natural process of the law with which he is co-operator and a worker together in truth.
Hahnemann’s “striking, singular, extraordinary, and peculiar symptoms” are basic miasmatic ones, always; hence the wonderful curative effects produced, by remedies selected upon such symptoms; they are capable of reaching down deep enough to extinguish, or what is a better term, to separate their miasmatic bond from the life forces. One of the translators of the Organon, speaking of a so-called homoeopath who prescribes homoeopathic remedies without a knowledge of the law governing their action, says, “but how will this careful and laborious process, by which the best cure of disease can be effected, please those gentlemen (sect), who while pluming themselves with the honorable title of homoeopathists, for appearance sake, administer medicines in the form of homoeopathists, that they have hastily snatched up (quicquid in buccam venit).” If it does not at once relieve the disease for which the remedy is given, they will impute the cause of the failure to the law, and not to their own insufficient knowledge of the law, and of that which disturbs the sick one, and produces the morbid phenomena.
The whole summing up of the matter is this; The remedy that has the therapeutic power to produce an artificial disease closely resembling the natural disease, will subdue or destroy that natural disease, but in order to secure that grouping, that true picture which makes the selection of such remedy possible, it is scientifically necessary to understand the phenomena that produce and keep up the natural disease. We do not say it cannot be done without this, but we do say, it is not scientific Homoeopathy; not the Homoeopathy that Hahnemann endeavors to instill into the student of Homoeopathy from every page of his writings. We further say, if new symptoms arise, the so called Homoeopathy has no positive way to distinguish between them, whether they be drug proving or the retrograde metamorphosis of a latent miasm, coming forth in the order in which Hahnemann said they would. “The physician need not feel any uneasiness, when prescribing an anti-psoric remedy, if the ordinary symptoms of the disease, (Psora) is called out in a higher degree of intensity than they usually manifest themselves.” This part of the law of cure is not looked into carefully enough, and it is so vital, so important, that we should understand if fully, for not to understand the symptoms of the re-appearing of the miasmatic process, is often to make a disastrous failure of our cure, and not only that, but to change all the physiological processes of elimination that are taking place under the curative action of your well-selected anti-miasmatic. It is this “calling out of symptoms,” as Hahnemann calls the work of the curative remedy, that makes the splendid process of a cure. These called-out symptoms are the work of the law in its efforts to restore to normal the false processes due to disease changes in the organism.
We are not to select our remedy on the strength of the name of Psora, or Sycosis, or Syphilis. No! It is to be based upon the totality grouping of the disturbed or active miasm; that grouping should be understood. For the reasons given, and for a great many other reasons, we have not time or space in this article to enumerate. Hahnemann grouped his anti-psoric remedies, and from that grouping he made his selection; his sycotic grouping was extremely limited largely confined to Thuja; this was of course due to his proving of remedies. Today we have almost as many anti-sycotics as we have anti-psorics, and we have also become quite familiar with the fact, that deep acting remedies like the metals, (I might mention Arsenicum) are curative and cover all the miasms, so deep and profound in their action upon the life forces. A thorough knowledge of these chronic miasms, makes plain in the backward and forward movements of disease. It assists us in the selection, too, by the true grouping process of the anti-miasmatic remedies; thus it helps us to watch the true progress of disease, and what to expect in the evolution of each miasm, until it has become completely extinguished or separated from its bond with the life. Besides, we are enabled to set aside these symptoms that are to a great degree, latent in the organism, and select a remedy based upon the active miasm, which then removed, may allow the other symptoms to come to the front so that they can be covered with a second selection. For instance a dose of Sulphur given a tubercular patient, and based upon an apparently good grouping of Sulphur symptoms, has so stirred up the tubercular element in a number of cases for me, as to require many months to repair the damage done to my patient.
It is also necessary for us to become familiar with the suppression of the chronic miasms, also to know those centers, or points around which each miasm centers itself. Many of these symptoms have already been given. Syphilis flies to the meninges of the brain and to the brain itself, to the larynx–throat in general–eyes, bones and periosteum. I have seen paralysis follow in two months, in a case of Syphilis in a man and his wife, when the first secondary expression of the disease which manifested itself on the forehead (roseola) was suppressed by a few application of mercurial ointment. Psora spends its force when suppressed upon the nervous system largely, or upon nerve centers, often producing nervous and mental phenomena of a serious character; but of course these are relieved when an eruption is thrown upon the skin. Sycosis attacks internal organs, especially the pelvic and sexual organs in the worst specific forms of inflammation, producing hypertrophies, abscesses, cystic degeneration, mucous cysts, etc., and when thrown upon the brain it produces headaches, severe acute mania, central insanity, moral degeneracy, dishonesty, etc. All these things ought to be familiar to the faithful guardian of the health of the true Homoeopathic physician. As we study the chronic miasms, we notice that they are presented to us in a multitude of forms and modes. They present shadings as variable as the clouds in the heavens, and are as vacillating as the risings and fallings of the barometer in winter time; here a forward movement and there a backward movement. In this way the contention between them and the life forces is kept up continually. As we look at the face of the sick one we have before us, a physiological mirror, reflecting their very presence, the degree of their disorderly action within, the indelible seal of their presence, stamped and impressed deeply by the life within, as with an oath. Here the clinician looks for signs of health or disease; here he sees the pallor of exhaustion, the flush of fever, the hectic ring, the shadows of despondency, the mental rise and fall, the psoric papules, the syphilitic roseola, the sycotic spot. It is pale, flushed ashy, livid, grey, pigmented, sallow, muddy, bloodless, sunken, and anaemic; it has all the degrees and shadings that the practiced eye can conceive of; all this we find mirrored upon this little field of our visage, the face. Again we look for them at fixed points, in well known centers, that the books on pathology have written so much about, and lastly we see them in the mental spheres, in the morals, and in the acts and very life of the human being.
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