ORGANON $ 35 et seq.
From these paragraphs we see that there are several kinds of protection from sickness. When a violent epidemic is raging we all know that, although the number of victims is large, they are few compared to those who go through the epidemic unscathed, and the question always arises, why is it? We suppose, and probably rightly so, that a large number of the immune have escaped because they were usually strong and vigorous, or in a state of very good order.
But we find among those who have escaped the epidemic a number of persons who are anything but strongly really invalids, one in consumption, another in the last stages of Bright’s disease, another with diabetes. We call them all together and find than none of them have had dysentery or smallpox, or whatever disease was epidemic. They have not been susceptible to epidemic influences. How are you going to explain this? The reason is that they have sickness that it is impossible for the epidemic to suppress.
The epidemic is allopathic, or dissimilar to their diseases, and cannot suppress their disease because of its virulency. Now if they some mild from of chronic disease, a severe attack of dysentery will cause that disease to disappear temporarily, and the new (epidemic) disease will take hold and run its course, and when its subsides the old symptoms will come back again and go on as if they had not been meddled with. This is an illustration of dissimilars, and shows that dissimilars are unable to cure : they can only suppresses. If the chronic disease is stronger than the epidemic disease, i.e., if it has an organic hold upon the body, it cannot be suppressed. This is essentially the relation of the acute dissimilar disease to the chronic disease of severity.
The relation between chronic dissimilar diseases is somewhat different. For example, a patient is in the earlier stages of Bright’s disease, and the symptoms are clear enough to make a diagnosis. He takes syphilis, and at once the kidney disease is held in abeyance, the albumin disappears from the urine and his waxiness is lost. But after a year’s careful prescribing the syphilitic state disappears, and very soon the albumin appears again in the urine the dropsy returns and he dies of an ordinary attack of Bright’s disease.
Then there are cases where two chronic diseases seem at times to alternate with each other; one seems to be subdued for a time and the other prevails. Under proper homoeopathic treatment one will be reduced in its activity and the other chronic disease will show itself. This you will find to be the case when have to treat syphilis and psora together.
The psoric patient, who has been suffering from a skin eruption or one of the various forms of psora, takes syphilis, all the the psoric manifestations, the nightly itching of the salt rheum will disappear, and the syphilitic manifestations for a while and you will be able to subdue them, and in proportion again and will hold inn abeyance that portion of the syphilitic state which is still uncured. You will than be compelled to drop the anti-syphilitic and take up the anti-psoric treatment, and again the homoeopathic remedies will restore apparent order in the economy.
But after this has been done, you will be surprised to see syphilitic state return in the condition corresponding to its last manifestations. You must then drop the anti-psoric treatment and resume the anti- syphilitic. Thus they alternate; when you weaken one, the stronger comes up. The uncomplicated syphilitic eruption does not itch; but the psoric eruption as a rule is an itching eruption, and this will be seen in the alternation of the two diseases. If the patient is given proper treatment his condition will be simplified, but if given proper treatment it will become very complicated.
The two miasms will unite and form a complexity, which is most vicious state of affairs; then the syphilitic eruptions, while they have all the appearance of syphilis, will itch as if they were psoric eruptions. Mercury in large doses is capable of bringing about such a result. Proper homoeopathic treatment causes a separation, while inappropriate treatment produces complication, and you will never see one improve where homoeopathic remedies have caused the trying up of the combination.
Again take a chronic malarial diathesis, which has existed so long that it has complicated itself with psora we sill see after the quinine has been antidoted that the chills and fever will come back in their original form. Here you see an evidence of the separation which Homoeopathy always tends to bring about. The malarial state is now brought into observation for the purpose of cure.
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.