Gonorrhoea


Gonorrhoea, its history, origin, suppression, progression and homeopathic view point by j.H.Allen….


The history of this disease or miasm shows it to be of ancient origin. Hippocrates records a number of cases, and farther down in the history of medicine we hear of it from Pliny, Juvenal, Celsus, Galen, and others. They all testify to the specific nature of the disease and its venereal origin. Few, however, speak of it secondary an tertiary effects or manifestations. None seems to have understood that it was a miasm or a continuous and permanent disease in the blood, and that the organism had no power within itself to throw it off. None knew of its progressive changes bringing forth new processes of disease, often with malignant aspect or running into chronic morbid states that often proved incurable to the most persistent treatment. There were, however, a few of the more studious minds that saw secondary and tertiary manifestations follow the suppression of the primary or seemingly harmless catarrhal discharge. Acute or sub-acute rheumatism and even gouty conditions followed in its wake. Not until our own day was this generally understood. Now the majority of well educated physicians understand to some degree at least, what is meant by gonorrhoeal infection and the complications that follow its suppression by local measures. Many physicians today no longer advocate the use of injections or douches to dry up, what was once thought to be a local disease, but prefer the slower method of setting up a drug urethritis by internal medication or use of crude drugs that act specifically upon the genito-urinary tract.

Finger, a great German authority on gonorrhoea, says, “Gonorrhoea of the male urethra is one of the most frequent diseases with which the practitioner has to deal.” I cannot agree with Dr. Finger, if we understand him to mean the disease in the acute stage, but if he means the disease in all stages, including the hereditary forms, I am fully in accord with his statement. Noeggerath, speaking of the frequency with which it is met, says, “I do not know the statistics of other cities, but after carefully examining or questioning every patient who has come to me for the treatment of this disease in general, I am fully convinced that in New York City fully eight-tenths of all men are in some way afflicted with the disease.” Other have give even a higher estimate. The same author further states that ninety per cent of these so affected human beings remain uncured. Think of a system of medicine whose leaders frankly admit the inefficiency of their methods of cure, when such an over-whelming majority turn away from even their best and most pronounced healers, uncured and often unhelped or in any way aided on the way to health. No infrequently we find some of these helpless invalids wandering up and down the earth looking for the elixir of life. Nine-tenths of them have had the disease suppressed in the initial stage and have already a well advanced secondary inflammation or a tertiary process established in some organ or vital part, so as to be often past all power of restoration.

Noeggerath, Martineau, Hancock, Kollicker, Otis, Lydston, and a host of other equally prominent and high in authority, now fully recognize the fact, demonstrated by Hahnemann over one hundred years ago, that present day pelvic inflammations are generally secondary processes of gonorrhoeal infection. Thus they say metritis, endo-metritis, salpingitis, pyo and hydro-salpingitis, ovaritis, parametritis, pelvic peritonitis, sterility, and menstrual disorders, occur according to the age and severity of its toxic power. The same is known to every intelligent Homoeopath, of the miasms Syphilis and Psora. We see by this that the best thinking and investigating minds in the Allopathic school are cognizant of the fact that gonorrhoea is, in the first place, not a self-limiting disease, and in the second place it is not wholly a local process. We do not agree with any of these authors that the pelvic inflammation or any of the secondary processes develop by extension of the local inflammation, for we have seen destructive inflammations develop at remote points of the organism, quite separate anatomically from the genito-urinary tract. We have also noticed a systemic involvement to a greater or less degree with morbid mental accompaniment. As in Syphilis or Psora, all the miasms have their own fixed laws governing their evolutions and processes of development. When we recognize these governing principles, we recognize more easily their modus operandi.

As we become acquainted with these characteristics peculiar to each miasm, we readily classify all their pathology and the diseases that they propagate. All the various symptoms and phenomena belonging to a miasm are characterized by certain peculiarities belonging to that miasm and no other. To illustrate this, we might refer to Syphilis. We note the raw ham or copper color throughout all its cutaneous processes; in Sycosis we must familiarize ourselves with the discharges, with their odor and color, with its pains, and with its climatic aggravations. This is the way to become acquainted with disease, to look into their death processes, to thus become familiar with their habitual movements, and their possible combinations with other miasms. For instance, cancer, lupus, tumors of all kinds, malignant inflammations, and processes are but blendings and combinations of the miasms.

Dr. Lydston very gallantly admits that the kidneys may become affected, and that even the whole renal tract may become involved. But we know that Sycosis is not a partial infection of the organism nor by any means confined to the pelvic field or genito-urinary path; it is more, infinitely more it is an issue of the blood. When we come to understand that the life is in the blood, we readily see that this disease is an issue of the blood. Moses speaks of it in the fifteenth chapter of Leviticus, where he calls it an issue of the blood, or a running of the reins. We are to understand, however, that two forms of issue of the blood are mentioned in the same book, one a disease process, which we have every reason to believe was gonorrhoea, and the other a loss of the seminal fluid, commonly known today as nocturnal pollutions. But to return to our subject, this tissue of the blood (as referred to in Holy Writ), only magnifies and verifies Hahnemann’s theory of disease, that, “disease is a disturbance of the life force.” We have already learned that the “life is in the blood,” therefore this issue of the blood (gonorrhoea) involves every drop of blood in the human organism.

Thus far we agree with Noeggerath, that the infection can come at any stage of the disease, and that the symptomatology will correspond to the stage, when infection took place, modified as in Syphilis by the constitutional dyscrasia of the infected one. That is, the infection may occur when the disease is in its acute or inflammatory stage, or later on, when in a latent condition. For instance, if the disease is latent in a married man, there sometimes appears a similar latent infection in the wife. Therefore we must not expect to find the same set of phenomena in every case, nor the same specific acute action to its secondary or tertiary processes. An infection with if suppressed in its acute stage, might develop inflammations rapid and destructive in their character, would, if contracted in a latent or more chronic state develop the same processes in a greatly modified, less destructive, yet, nevertheless, equally persistent and difficult form. There will be great liability to bring forth tertiary processes such as fibroids, cancer, lupus, or diabetes.

Sooner or later we find these patients suffering from some form of chronic or sub-acute inflammation. We have already given the pelvic inflammations in the female and we might also mention the more common secondary inflammations in the male. Beginning with the kidneys, we may mention nephritis, Bright’s disease, anterior and posterior urethritis, buboes, prostatitis, cowperitis, orchitis, epididymitis, deferentitis, and seminal- vesiculitis, all involving the sexual and urinary organs. There are many other secondary inflammations that we might enumerate. As we survey this fearful array of symptoms of both male and female, we can readily see it vies with Syphilis and often produces greater suffering, and more speedily destroys life.

John Henry Allen
Dr. John Henry Allen, MD (1854-1925)
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