HAHNEMANN’S CONCEPTION OF CHRONIC DISEASE BY M. L. TYLER
We all know the joy of seeing sickness of definite symptoms yield, almost miraculously, to the remedy of like symptoms.
We thrill to the triumphs of Homoeopathy in Cholera-in Dysentery-in Ptomaine poisonings-in Pneumonias-in Broncho- pneumonias-in hundreds of conditions, trivial and severe.
And then we all come across cases which, after apparent yielding to the seemingly indicated remedy, recur, finally cease to respond. WHY IS THIS?
This was also Hahnemann’s experience. But that indomitable Pioneer did not merely shrug his shoulders, and dub them,”Old Chronics ” Neither did he accept the suggestion of his followers that “perhaps not enough remedies had been discovered and proved to cover all cases of disease”…. This he says he “rejected, as mere subterfuge.”
But-he stuck to his guns “In spite of failures in the case of some chronic non-venereal diseases, the Doctrine of Similars has been, and ever will be founded on the unshaken pillars of truth. Facts have confirmed its excellence-yet-if this may be said of human things, its infallible.”
“Why, then,” he asks, “should the continued homoeopathic treatment of the non-venereal chronic diseases have been so unsuccessful? Why should Homoeopathy have failed in thousands of cases to cure thoroughly and forever such chronic ailments?”
For ten years he toiled night and day to discover the reason why the homoeopathic remedies, then known, did no effect a true cure of the above-named chronic diseases, before (fearing that his discoveries might die with him) he “communicated to two of his most deserving disciples, for their own benefit and that of their patients, the most important of his discoveries relative to the nature and treatment of CHRONIC DISEASES.”
He tells us (Org. Par. 77) that, by Chronic Diseases, he does not mean those from constant exposure to unavoidable noxious influences;-habitual indulgence in excess in eating and drinking :-the constant want of the necessaries of life :-unhealthy dwellings;-or those from want of fresh air and exercise;-from over-taxed mind and body;-from continued mortifications and troubles. “All these,” he says, “will vanish of their own accord under improved conditions… provided that there is no chronic miasm pervading the organism. They do not deserve the name of chronic diseases.”
For him,”True, natural Chronic Diseases are those which owe their origin to a chronic parasitic miasm or germ” (or, as we should say, a chronic parasitic micro-organism). He says, they constantly extend; and, not with-standing the most carefully regulated mental and bodily habits, they never cease to torment their victim with constantly-renewed suffering to the end of his life (if left to themselves without the aid of special remedies for their relief). These are.. the source of great sufferings to the human race. The most robust constitution, the best of habits, and the greatest energy of unaided vital force are unable to resist them.
“Hitherto only syphilis was known to some extent as one of these chronic miasmatic diseases, which, if left uncured, will become extinct only with life.
“Sycosis (the condylomatous disease) if left to itself uncured, is likewise inextinguishable by vital force, and was not hitherto recognised as an internal, chronic, miasmatic disease of a peculiar nature, as it undoubtedly is.”
I must leave to others, more learned in these things than myself, to determine what, exactly, Hahnemann meant by his SYCOSIS. It is his second chronic venereal parasitic disease, and he seems to connect it, rightly or wrongly, with excrescences on the genitalia, and with a “kind of Gonorrhoea wherein a fluid, looking like thick pus, comes out of the urethra.’
But Hahnemann found both syphilis and gonorrhoea easily curable, provided they were not complicated, with his third chronic disease, PSORA.
It may be noticed that Hahnemann’s PSORA stands-an Ogre, at the threshold of his Chronic Diseases, and has turned away many from the Temple of Healing.
But we will strive to push past and enter -if only tentatively and suggestively.
Of Hahnemann’s three named Chronic Diseases, his PSORA was for him,”the hydra-headed, most wide-reaching and difficult of all the chronic parasitic microbic diseases.” He calls it “the oldest, most universal and most pernicious chronic parasitical disease… an ancient, smouldering contagion… of incomparably greater significance than either of the above named chronic miasms” (Syphilis and Gonorrhoea).
