SULPHUR Medicine


SULPHUR symptoms of the homeopathy remedy from Plain Talks on Materia Medica with Comparisons by W.I. Pierce. What SULPHUR can be used for? Indications and personality of SULPHUR…


      WHITE SUBLIMED SULPHUR-FLOWERS OF SULPHUR.

Introduction

      Hahnemann advises us against the use of Sulphur made with flowers of sulphur and alcohol to form the tincture, and says that it is far inferior to that prepared by triturating flowers of sulphur with sugar of milk up to the 3rd, and that our potencies should be run up from the 3rd triturate rather than from the tincture.

Hahnemann was the first to prove Sulphur for our school, although its use as a medicine extends back to the beginning of the Christian era. As a purifier, its use is still more ancient and dates at least to as many years before Christ’s time as we have lived since, for in what is put down as 1898 B.C. we read that “the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire.”

The first pathogenesis of Sulphur as published by Hahnemann, contained only 151 symptoms. These he constantly added to, so that in the last edition of his Chronic Diseases they numbered 1,969. In 1857 the re-proving of Sulphur was published by the Austrian Homoeopathic Society, which not only confirmed Hahnemann’s symptoms, but added many new ones, so that in Allen’s Encyclopaedia, which includes the results of all provings, there are a total of 4,083 symptoms.

“Since Sulphur,” says Allen, “is an integral part of every form of protoplasm, it follows that all tissues become affected by its abnormal exhibition, and no particular limit of character can be assigned to it. Its action on the dermoid tissues is, however, very pronounced.” It is a tissue remedy of tissue remedies.

Symptoms

      The Sulphur patient, or the type of person that the remedy is especially adapted, to, has light complexion (88) and blue or brown eyes, with very red lips and redness of the other orifices of the body, especially noticeable around the eyelids, and often associated with soreness and burning of these parts. He has harsh, rough skin and coarse hair, and is liable to skin eruptions. He is weak, lean, and if a child, pot-bellied (31). He is stoop-shouldered, never walks erect and lolls when sitting; standing is the most uncomfortable position for him and he drops into a chair at every opportunity, being loose-jointed seemingly, or too lazy to keep his backbone straight. He is restless (160), nervous and easily irritated. There is a general disagreeable odor to the exhalations of the body, a general aggravation from heat and an aversion to, as well s aggravation from, bathing.

Sulphur is adapted to a person of a scrofulous diathesis, one who is subject to venous (207) and especially to portal congestion. It is a remedy adapted to rouse the reactive powers of the system to increased vigor; to complaints that are constantly relapsing, where the patient seems to get almost well, when the disease returns again and again; and it is especially adapted to disorders that alternate with skin eruptions, or to chronic scrofulous diseases that have resulted from suppressed eruptions. In other words, a person with a psoric taint, and Sulphur is our great anti-psoric remedy.

It may not be out of place here to stop for a moment while we ask the questions, and try to answer them, what is psora and what do we mean by an anti-psoric remedy?

In Hahnemann’s time, and unfortunately for humanity, ever since, skin eruptions were treated, by allopaths, principally by means of local applications, and sulphur formed the basis of all such ointments. The result, as Hahnemann shows us, is that great and lasting harm is done to the afflicted one, as the eruption, instead of being cured, is driven from the surface to some internal organ. Instead of considering the eruption as constitutional, and that some dyscrasia of the internal economy is the cause of the local manifestations, the eruption was and is still treated upon the theory that if you cannot see it the trouble does not exist.

Hahnemann believed “that at least seven-eighths of all chronic maladies spring from” psora “as their only source, while the remaining eighth spring form syphilis and sycosis” (Chr. Dis.).

Now psora, scabies or the itch is, as Dearborn gives the definition,”An animal parasitic disease due to the burrowing in the epidermis of the female acarus, resulting in multiple irritative lesions, which are aggravated by scratching.”

We know it now, but “the acarus was only demonstrated in the year 1834, and only since then scabies was fully enrolled among the parasitic cutaneous affections” (Lilienthal, Am. Inst. Trans.,’86).

Hahnemann and his contemporaries did not know that scabies was due to an animal parasite; but does that fact destroy the truth and value of his psora theory? It does if Hahnemann limited it to what we now know as psora; so it will be well worth our time to look it up and learn what he says in his writings concerning it, and find out if the strictures put upon it by the old school, or the intricate attempts at explanation by some of our school, are justified.

Briefly, Hahnemann’s psora theory is that chronic diseases are caused or abated by some constitutional dyscrasia, inherited or acquired, that lies dormant in the system. If a disease has been suppressed instead of cured, and especially if such suppression has been caused by the use of external applications. it will give rise not only to constitutional symptoms, but it will taint the entire organism, predisposing the system to many other diseases by lowering its power of resistance, as well as modifying any other disease from which the patient may afterwards suffer. Our first efforts, therefore, in treating any chronic disease must be directed to finding out and removing any original taint that may exist before we can hope to get a clear picture of, and cure the disease that the patient comes to us for.

In reading what Hahnemann has to say about psora it would seem as if there could be no question that he was not referring to a parasitic origin, for his whole argument is about the itch eruption being constitutional, its being repressed by external applications and the troubles arising therefrom, for he says: “The first little pustule of itch, with its unbearable voluptuous itching… is in every case and every time the proof of a universal itch disease which has been previously developed in the interior of the whole organism.”

He also says: “The older physicians were more conscientious in this matter” (of suppressing the itch by external applications). “They saw clearly and became convinced that innumerable ailments and the most severe chronic diseases followed the destruction of the itch eruption from the skin. And since this experience compelled them to assume the existence of an internal disease, in every case of itch they endeavored to extirpate this internal malady by means of a multitude of internal remedies as good as their therapeutics afforded…. This prevented their reliance on mere local destruction of the itch from the skin, as practiced by modern physicians, who think that they cannot quickly enough drive it away-as if it were a mere external disease of the skin-without regarding the great injuries attending injuries attending such a course.”

Hahnemann is constantly referring to the itch as the psora, the one generic term for many a non-venereal ailment associated with a skin eruption has only lately broken out, and is not yet widely spread on the skin, nothing of the general internal malady of the psora is as yet to be noticed in the state of the patient.” Also: “Gradually I discovered more effective means against this original malady that caused so many complaints; against this malady which may be called by the general name of Psora; i.e., against the internal itch disease with or without its attendant eruption in the skin.” Again we read: “These are the characteristic secondary symptoms of the long-unacknowledged, thousand-headed monster, pregnant with disease, the Psora” (Chr. Dis.).

This theory of chronic diseases being due to latent taint, is now being advocated by that school of medicine which announces its appropriation of homoeopathic ideas as discoveries; but while Hahnemann’s theory is now an acknowledge fact,”the word psora was a misnomer” (Lilienthal). This mis-use of the word we, with our present knowledge, are able to recognize, but continue the term, not only because we are accustomed to it, but also because there is no other one word to be found that can take its place; we must understand, however, that it is not to be taken in its limited sense.

Our retention of the word psora reminds one of the story told of Horace Greely, who, when conversing with an Englishman concerning some diplomatic talk that the United States had indulged in, remarked: “The trouble with us is that we need a darn’d good licking.”

“Yes, Mr. Greely, you do,” rejoined the Englishmen, pleased at the admission. But his exultation was short-lived, for Greely broke in, as if finishing his former sentence: “But there is no one that can do it.”

As we have seen under Nux vomica that it is often good practice to start patients coming to us from old-school hands with a few doses of this remedy, in order to antidote the drugs taken and so clear up the symptoms of the case, so we find with Sulphur that it is often necessary to begin the treatment of chronic cases with this remedy, and especially so if we discover that any previous trouble that the patient has had has been suppressed. This is particularly true if there is a history of any skin eruption that has been treated with medicated soaps, lotions or ointments. If while taking Sulphur there is a return of their old trouble, such as a diarrhoea that they thought had been “stopped,” or an old skin lesion breaks out afresh, it not tends to confirm us in our diagnosis of a psoric taint, but greatly encourages us as to the ultimate cure of our patient.

Willard Ide Pierce
Willard Ide Pierce, author of Plain Talks on Materia Medica (1911) and Repertory of Cough, Better and Worse (1907). Dr. Willard Ide Pierce was a Director and Professor of Clinical Medicine at Kent's post-graduate school in Philadelphia.