If we observe these things we must come to the conclusion that when we have driven these oldest and deepest troubles back to their original manifestations, which was perhaps a vesicular eruption, and if we see nothing more simple than this eruption, we must conclude that the suppression of such an eruption was the beginning of trouble.
If you practice accurately, you will observe these things; if you are not a success in practice, you will not observe these things. Many patients are so badly off that this is never observed, and then we have the onward progress; that is, we have the patient declining, instead of the disease declining. If that patient is only better as to symptoms, and his old symptoms do not come back, we know that he is only being palliated, that the disease processes are only being restrained, but that it is not a case of cure.
There is one thing that you should know and it is sometimes best to say it to the patient, and that is that they should not take too much courage, because a patient that takes too much courage may take too much discouragement when reverses come. So when a woman walks into your office and says beautiful things by way of gratitude for what you have done for her, because you have mitigated the deep-seated trouble, perhaps chronic sick headache, or epilepsy, but she cannot tell you of an eruption returning or you have observed no backward progress of that disease, no reverse order of the symptoms, it is often well to say to that patient, that notwithstanding the fact that she appears to be much improved the trouble is not over for all that.
On the other hand, it is sometimes wise to say: “If an eruption should come out, do not on your life meddle with it,” because they will probably use what they say relieved it in the first place, some Sulphur ointment, or some other miserable stuff. The physician should bear in mind to caution the patient against removing any of the symptoms in the case. When the patient comes and reports such wonderful tales of progress, take down your record and look it over. If you have in the record failed to get the earlier history of the case, endeavour then, if possible, to find out something about the previous symptoms, the earlier symptoms, and then it is sometimes well with an intelligent person to say: “Do not be surprised, do not be alarmed, if such and such symptoms return,” cautioning the patient to report to the physician and apply nothing.
Now, it is from these circumstances that we observe finally, where the patient is so well instructed not to do anything, to take no drugs, to keep the life as pure as possible, to keep the physical forces untrammeled by violence, it is under such circumstances that we shall observe the coming back of symptoms that have long been suppressed. Long after the treatment has ceased, a patient will come back and say: “This old trouble has come back on me; can you do anything for it?” You have now to look over the record, and you see that sure enough this is like what came out in the beginning of this trouble; that psora existed in its simplest form of a vesicular eruption upon the child, and that it was suppressed.
These are the simplest cases of psora, because these can be counted collectively in one person; but the complicated forms of psora are those that are inherited. Amongst the simple forms of psora, after the eruptions disappear, catarrhal troubles come on, with their varying manifestations. You prescribe for all these symptoms, and presently the eruptions of childhood come back, especially in a younger person. It it is in a more complicated state, we do not get the patient back to the original form of psora, because the parent had the simple form of psora, and the child gets a complex form from those which were present when the patient came to you. You will seldom see the vesicular form or simple form brought back except in those who have had the simple form, but forms approximating the simple will return if the vital energy of the economy is being turned into order.
Since this, then, is the natural form of economy, we see we are gradually travelling back towards the beginning of psora or its earlier forms. If you are treating a vicious form of scaly eruptions, dry hard horny scales, you will, under accurate prescribing, notice these scaly formations disappear, but after the vital force has become strong enough you need not be surprised to see vesicular eruptions develop, for the original so-called disease had changed from its vicious squamous form to the milder vesicular form. Different names have been given to the skin diseases, but we see that names are of very little value.
The different eruptions change into varying forms but they are all from one cause, and will come back in their successive stages under true homoeopathic treatment. This is seen quite often enough to demonstrate what I am talking about, and from this alone we can ascertain that psora begins with the simple isolated vesicular form of eruption. At times you will be treating the more advanced and complicated forms of psora, where there are organic changes; after the patient gets the homoeopathic remedy for a while he comes to a standstill, seems to be doing nothing, but in the course of time vicious ugly eruptions come out upon the body. This is a good sign in so far as the disease manifests itself upon the skin, or in catarrhal discharges, the internal organs are safe, but when these outward manifestations are stopped the internal parts suffer.
If this be true, what conclusion must we come to as to the good or injury done to patients when every catarrhal discharge is stopped and every eruption upon the skin is driven away by out- ward applications? What are we to conclude when we see that the idea of the medical world of today is to stop everything that appears upon the surface? When we know the truth in regard to psora, we see what a wonderful damage it is to the patient to have these outward signs stopped in this way, what a tremendous shock it is to the economy and how it is that psora is pushed on and made worse, made more complex from year to year, from generation to generation, until it is the fundamental disease of the human economy and the basis of all the trouble in man.
At the present day, as you are now prepared to hear, we can really learn more about psora by watching it in its backward progress than by watching it in its onward progress in any particular case. It is the cause of the chronic manifestations of disease that are not syphilitic or sycotic. We are able to group together in the mind all those vicious constitutional states (not syphilitic or sycotic) that are called organic disease, as the results of psora. Then the five forms of Bright’s disease are not diseases, but the result of psora operating upon the economy and attacking the kidney. The common chronic diseases of the liver are not diseases, but the localization of psora in the liver; the lung diseases and heart diseases and brain diseases are not diseases, because they have one single origin, and from this origin we follow their progress and thus study them from their beginnings to their ends, from cause to ultimates. Only in this way will we have a clear knowledge of their internal cause and beginnings.
In the work on “Chronic Diseases” Hahnemann refers to psora as the oldest, most universal and most pernicious chronic miasmatic disease, yet it has been misappropriated more than any other. “Psora is the oldest miasmatic chronic disease known. The oldest history of the oldest nation does not reach its origin. Psora is just as tedious as syphilis and sycosis, and is moreover, hydra-headed. Unless it is thoroughly cured, it lasts until the last breath of the longest life. Not even the most robust constitution, by its own unaided efforts, is able to annihilate and extinguish psora.”
The three chronic miasms, psora, syphilis and sycosis, are all contagious. In each instance there is something prior to the manifestations which we call disease. We speak of the signs and symptoms of a disease, we speak of the outcropping of the symptoms when we speak of syphilis, but remember there is a state prior to syphilis or syphilis would not exist. It could not come upon man except for a condition suitable to its development. In like manner psora could not exist except for a condition in mankind suitable for its development.
Psora being the first and the two coming later, it is proper for us to inquire into that state of the human race that would be suitable for the development of psora. There must have been a state of the human race suitable to the development of psora; it could not have come upon a perfectly healthy race, and it would not exist in a perfectly race. There must have been some sickness prior to this state, which we recognize as the chronic miasm psora; some state of disorder, some state that it would be perfectly rational and proper for man to undertake to solve as to its cause, as to its history, and as to its very nature.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.