***SYCOSIS is generally understood to be the gonorrhoeal poison. We should make the distinction clear between gonorrhoea and sycosis. Gonorrhoea is the acute infection of the gonococci, which takes from five to ten days to develop a urethritis after an exposure. During this incubation period it is purely an infection; then the local manifestations are thrown outward by Nature at the point of attack as a resentment of the vital energy to the infection. If the gonorrhoea is thoroughly and completely cured, practically no sycosis ever develops. Sycosis is established after a suppressed gonorrhoea, when the acute infection is driven in upon the vital energy by external methods of suppression, and it then becomes a systematic stigma, permeating every living cell of the organism, and transmitting its deadly destructive forces to the offspring as well as retaining the full destructiveness of its power in the original individual, and impregnating the mother of the child.
The suppressed gonorrhoeal infection is very apt to first show itself in attacking the blood and producing an anaemic condition, and a general catarrhal condition is set up. Oftentimes an inflammatory rheumatism develops; inflammation follows in the soft tissues, and changes in the fibre of the muscles. In fact, the whole organism becomes involved. Sometimes a stasis develops in the lymphatics; there is a swelling in the groin following the suppression, and inflammation in the prostatic gland.
These are the symptoms that are first produced after a suppression, showing that the whole organism is involved and in the grip of this destructive force. Seldom do we get these constitutional symptoms when the initial gonorrhoea is cured by the homoeopathically indicated remedy, and if there is any constitutional taint, it is in a mild form.
The transmission of this gonorrhoeal poison, or sycotic poison, as the case may be, is transmitted in the stage into which the infecting individual had arrived. If it is a true gonorrhoeal infection, true gonorrhoea will be transmitted; but if it has reached the secondary stage (which usually comes on three months after the first stage has subsided, and may be delayed a full year) the contracting party will develop the condition at the same stage as the infector.
The secondary and tertiary symptoms of sycosis can be entirely eradicated by homoeopathic treatment.
In the secondary period of sycosis almost every disease that may arise takes on an inflammatory nature in some form; it may be acute, subacute or chronic, and it may vary from very mild to very malignant fevers.
We know how frequently we see cases where soon after marriage a perfectly healthy, robust girl begins to droop and becomes ill. This is because the secondary symptoms of sycosis have been transmitted to the extensive mucous surfaces of the female organs. Oftentimes it is a single organ that becomes involved, like the ovary with its cystic manifestations, or a fallopian tube manifests inflammation; again they may show a very anaemic state of the blood, and when this anaemic condition arises it affects every part of her organism, coming on gradually, slowly, until her whole system is permeated. She becomes pallid, drawn, puffy; there is no stamina to the muscles. The anaemic condition arises from this stigma because sycosis the red blood cells through imperfect oxidization of food.
This may be a forerunner of carcinomatous conditions of the breast or uterus; diabetes, Bright’s disease, or numerous other diseases of this type, largely dependent upon previously existing taints in her own system. Sycotic manifestations are characterized by slowness of recovery; the subject is constantly slipping backward because of the destructive character of the stigma, whenever he gets an acute manifestation.
The sycotic patient is exceedingly suspicious. The suspicion extends to the point where he dare not trust himself, and he must go back and repeat what he has done or said, and wonders if he has said just what he means; he goes back and starts again. He is suspicious that he will be misunderstood, that his hearers will give the wrong meaning to what he is attempting to convey. This suspicion, when turned upon others, leads to the worst forms of jealousy of his friends, for he knows full well that he not understood. The sycotic taint develops the worst forms of degeneracy because of the basic suspicion and jealousy, patients will resort to any and all means of vindicating themselves in their own light. This is the most markedly degenerate of the stigmata, in its suspicion, its quarrelsomeness, its tendency to harm others and to harm animals. This products the worst forms of cruelty and cunning deceit and the worst forms of mania of any of the stigmata.
The sycotic patient is cross and irritable; he is absent minded in certain things, and finds difficulty in getting the right word; the more he looks at the word after he has written it, the more strange it seems and the less confident he is that it is right. He forgets recent happenings, but remembers distant events very clearly. Sycosis, like the syphilitic stigma, has the mark of self-condemnation, which is the moral reaction to the inception of the disease state.
Here, too, we find the fixed ideas, as in syphilis, and in the union of the two stigmata these characteristics are much more marked; there is also the same slow mental power. The sycotic is disposed to fits of anger, and when the syphilitic taint is also present these people present the picture of the sullen, smouldering type that threaten to break out into dangerous manifestations. Sycosis, coupled with psora, is the basis of most criminal insanity and of most suicides; degenerates are sycotic or syphilitic, or result from the combined destructiveness of the two stigmata.
When some external manifestation occurs, such as a catarrhal condition, a leucorrhoea, or even the return of the menstrual period, there is a general amelioration of the mental condition. The mental condition may be much better when wart or fibrous growths appear; they are always better in general from the return or breaking open of old ulcers or old sores, and markedly better by the return of acute gonorrhoeal manifestations. Pains often alternate with the leucorrhoea. While there is much amelioration by eliminative processes, natural eliminations, such as diarrhoea, free urination, or even perspiration, does not ameliorate.
All the miasms, or stigmata, have many head symptoms. The headache in the vertex is sycotic in its origin; or there may be frontal headache. These are worse lying down and at night, especially worse after midnight. There are feverish night, especially worse after midnight. There are feverish headaches of children. This patient is restless and wants to be kept in motion, which better. The head symptoms resemble the syphilitic in that they have the night aggravations, and there is the same type of vertigo at the base of the brain.
The hair falls out in circular spots; the hair of the beard falls. The sycotic scalp perspires, but there are not the moist, matting eruptions of syphilis.
Sycosis never gives a true ulcer; the sycotic manifestations are more overgrowth of tissue than destructive of tissue. There are many warts and warty growth; these are sycotic signposts. Moles and papillomata may be either syphilitic or sycotic. Deposits of gouty concretions characterize the stigma.
Arthritic troubles of the eye are a combination of sycosis the psora; there are also neuralgias which are worse on change of weather, worse change of barometer, worse rainy weather.
The sycotic usually has a red nose with prominent capillaries. The sense of smell is lost. Children with “snuffles” are usually syphilitic or sycotic; the sigma has moist snuffles, but without ulcerations or crusts; the discharge is purulent, scanty, with the odour of fishbrine.
The fishbrine odour is characteristic of the sycotic taint, and it may appear in all the discharges, but especially in the discharges from the genital tract. The sycotic discharges, like the tubercular, are greenish-yellow.
There is often nasal stoppage out to thickening of the membranes and to enlargement of the turbinated bones. Except in acute colds the discharges are scanty. The slightest among of discharge, however, better the patient.
Hay fever conditions, which are exceedingly difficult of cure under ordinary treatment, are more easily understood when we remember that they are an expression of syphilis and latent sycosis, very often with a psoric taint. Erysipelas is a combination of the psoric and sycotic stigmata.
The sycotic patient is especially liable to rheumatic troubles, and where this faint appears, especially if there has been any attempt at suppression of the heart, with violent hammering and heating.
In the combination of sycosis and psora we get the right soil for valvular and cardiac disturbances with changes in the organic structure; these are the conditions that cause the fatalities. With these sycotic heart conditions there is none of the fear and apprehension that we find in the psoric patient. The syphilitic and sycotic heart conditions are much more dangerous than the psoric, but the psoric patient worries about his condition, takes his pulse frequently, fears death and remains quiet, while the syphilitic and sycotic patients have no mental distress, and may have no subjective heart symptoms; but they die suddenly and without warning.
