Look, says Griesselich, at the effects of vaccination; a child with a great scabby eruption is vaccinated and the eruption goes away, and the child, who was previously thin, becomes fat and strong; another, whose skin was previously smooth and healthy, gets an eruption after inoculation with good vaccine; this lay latent in the body, and the vaccination was only the awakener of the “latent psora;” the vaccine was not therefore necessarily bad. Simple recent wounds fester and will not heal when the organism is in a bad state; there lies an obstacle in the body, and that is the bad state of the blood, the “peccant humours,” as the phrase goes.
Therefore, says Griesselich, we may place the scabies, a parasitical disease, in the same category with other morbific causes and disease-rousers; it is not necessary nor right to regard it with Hahnemann as almost the sole cause, or with others as never the cause of the appearance of chronic diseases. The psora-theory, Griesselich continues, has had an unmistakable influence on practice. In the chronic-disease theory, Hahnemann added to his system in two different directions:-
1. By attending to the whole course of the chronic disease, and not merely the symptoms then present.
2. By referring chronic diseases back to certain definite causes.
He also increased the Materia Medica by a number of very important substances, and added to the modes of administering the remedies. He inferred the miasmatic origin of chronic diseases from the imperfection of their cure by the unassisted vis medicatrix nature, even in the best constitutions. It does not very well appear how this circumstance should have led him to infer their miasmatic origin, for we observe that acute diseases of miasmatic origin are often very well cured by nature alone. Chronic diseases being divided into psoric, syphilitic, and sycotic, the remedies for them become also divided into antipsoric, antisyphilitic, and anti-sycotic, and all other remedies were simply termed apsoric. But though we can imagine an apsoric person, it is hard to conceive how a medicine can be apsoric. By this division of medicines the fashion of the old school was imitated, whose medicines are termed anti-rheumatic, antiscrofulous, antarthritic, etc. And yet if we reflect a little, we shall perceive the absurdity of this division of medicaments adopted by Hahnemann; for psoric diseases may be cured by the antisyphilitic mercury and by the antisycotics thuja and nitric acid, whilst syphilitic diseases often require some so-called antipsorics for their cure.
From the histories of cases that were published shortly after the enunciation of the psora-theory, we find that it exercised a great influence on practice. Thus if a disease was long about getting better, no better investigation was made as to the cause of this, but it was at once taken for granted that psora lay at the bottom of it, and as a consequence of this idea it was deemed necessary to give an antipsoric, the favourite being always sulphur. The similia similibus rule was in the meantime forgotten, nor was it even deemed requisite to ascertain from the patient if he had ever had itch, for, says one of the great advocates of the doctrine, (Attomyr.) it is not necessary to make inquires with regard to things that are self-evident, and psora is one of these.
Hahnemann, in his Chronic Diseases, replies to the question-How can an antipsoric be recognised? but his answer is not very definite. His disciple Weber, (Allg. h. Ztg.,3, 137.) however, undertook to answer the question in the following words:-“The sign by which we recognise an antipsoric,”quoth he, “consists solely and alone in the power it possesses to cure partially or wholly the psora in a human being,”which is as though he had said“a medicine is antipsoric because it is so,” and reminds us of Moliere’s candidate for medical honours, who, to the question “Quare opium facit dormire?” replied, to the complete satisfaction of his examiners, “Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva.”
The psora-doctrine, however, exercised a marked influence on the doctrine of the dose and the modes of employing the medicines, as we shall see on a future occasion.
Griesselich concludes with remarking that Hahnemann’s psora- theory is much too one-sided, and that the truth in it consists in the indubitable facts of so-called humoral diseases and in the reciprocal relation betwixt the skin and internal organs. By accepting psora as a general morbific cause we shut ourselves out from investigating the causes of diseases. Antipsoric medicines, as they are termed, are merely remedies of very profound action.
Dr. Arnold, in his recent work on homoeopathy, (Idiop. Heilverf., p. 191.) has the following remarks on itch and the psora- theory:-
After observing that it is not any one particular form of skin disease that leaves secondary diseases, but that many and the most different forms do so, and among others the itch does so; but that the most recent discoveries have shown that the cause of this disease does not depend on any contagious principle
“It becomes therefore a question,” says he, “how a skin disease that is caused and kept up by a parasite can give rise to diseases of other organs. In contagious diseases the pathogenetic operation is frequently of such a nature that the composition of the fluids is altered by the miasm, and they are in a manner poisoned. Something of the same kind may take place also in parasitic diseases, for these animalculae may possibly be the carriers of a poison, and thus contain the condition of a dyscrasia. In this respect there would be no difference whether the essential nature of the itch consisted in a contagious principle as was formerly believed, or in a parasite as is now, with good reason, thought to be demonstrated.
On looking at the disease, the question now presents itself-can a long- continued affection of the skin produced by mechanical irritation give rise to affections of other organs when it leaves the organ originally affected? The importance of the skin to the normal actions of the organism is not to be gainsaid; but in the itch, and many other skin diseases that often leave secondary diseases, the disturbance of the functions of the skin is not so great as to account for the origin of these secondary diseases. On the other hand, many of the plans for curing the eruption may disturb the function of the skin in great degree, and thus act in a directly injurious manner on the organism. It is also possible that the morbid secretion by the skin has become to a certain extent by habit a necessity of the organism, and cannot therefore be suppressed without a similar or analogous secretion taking place in another part of the system.
Many medical writers have directed attention to this point, and among the rest Morgagni, who observes, that though the itch always arises from the acarus, yet the pustules form numerous other ulcers, which if all were added together would make an enormous ulcer, which no prudent physician would heal up suddenly if it had lasted any considerable time. Finally, it may be assumed that by means of the irritation set up in the skin by the acarus, a place of manifestation and special development is given to a disease latent in the system, which had hitherto existed without giving rise to any very definite symptoms. When thus the dyscrasia is once roused from its slumbering condition, and has gone on to the state of local eruption or the development of a morbid process, we cannot in general expect that the disease will return to its former latent state on the suppression of these visible morbid states; on the contrary, it is more generally observed that it attacks some other organ as the focus of its local development.
“The parasitic doctrine, therefore, of the itch makes no change in the psora-theory; however, this latter must not be confined to the itch, but must be extended to other skin diseases, or even must be brought into harmony with the doctrine of Crases.”
He then goes onto remark, that though in general Hahnemann’s theories were ultra-dynamic, he has made a most important concession to the humoral pathologists in his psora-theory. But it is a pity he confined his view to the existence of three dyscrasias alone, and thereby incurred the charge of a contracted and partial view of the subject. And if the same caution in searching for indications for the proper remedy in dyscrasic diseases had been made after the publication of the psora-theory as before, the latter would not have done so much harm; for the moment through its means the attention of the practitioner was diverted from the totality of the symptoms of the individual case to the latent psora, as a ground for the choice of the remedy, then the door was opened to all sorts of speculations on the ultimate nature of diseases, and practice modified accordingly.
The opinion of Dr. Henderson, the eminent Professor of Pathology in Edinburgh, on the psora-theory of Hahnemann, is entitled to great weight. In his famous letter to Dr. Forbes (Brit. Journ. of Hom., iv.) he touches upon the subject, but he is there inclined to look upon it as a mistake of Hahnemann’s, and he merely offers an apology for it by adducing examples of similar extravagant theories respecting the nature of chronic diseases from the writing of such celebrated individuals as Stahl, Portal, Astruc, Lalouette, Schonlein, and others.
Robert Ellis Dudgeon practiced at the London Homeopathic Hospital and specialised in Optics.
Robert Ellis Dudgeon wrote Pathogenetic Cyclopaedia 1839, Cure of Pannus by Innoculation, London and Edinburgh Journal of Medical Science 1844, Hahnemann’s Organon, 1849, Lectures on the Theory & Practice of Homeopathy, 1853, Homeopathic Treatment and Prevention of Asiatic Cholera 1847, Hahnemann’s Therapeutic Hints 1847, On Subaqueous Vision, Philosophical Magazine, 1871, The Influence of Homeopathy on General Medical Practice Since the Death of Hahnemann 1874, Repertory of the Homeopathic Materia Medica, 2 vols 1878-81, The Human Eye Its Optical Construction, 1878, Hahnemann’s Materia Medica Pura, 1880, The Sphygmograph, 1882, Materia Medica: Physiological and Applied 1884, Hahnemann the Founder of Scientific Therapeutics 1882, Hahnemann’s Organon 1893 5th Edition, Prolongation of Life 1900, Hahnemann’s Lesser Writing.