If there are pains about the heart and dyspnoea, these conditions are better from gentle exercise, as slow walking or riding. When there is any trouble about the heart in sycotic patients there is usually some dyspnoea. When the heart condition is of rheumatic origin, however, there is sometimes severe pain, very much worse by motion. These patients have a soft, slow, easily compressible pulse; the valves are roughened, the muscles become flabby and soft, and in long-continued cases they lack power. As a rule these patient are fleshy and puffy; their obesity is the cause of their dyspnoea.
Frequently the face becomes bluish and cyanotic, sometimes with venous congestion. The cyanotic condition in these patients is not painful. The anasarcas never become very extensive, because these patients die before the anasarcas has time to manifest itself to any degree; they snuff out like a candle. These conditions are very much worse by high living, rich spicy food or spirituous liquors.
Meats arouse the latent sycosis as in psora. The sycotic patient should take meat sparingly, and it is better for him to use more freely of nuts, beans of cheese. Gouty conditions cannot digest meats. He craves beer, and while this is not a desirable element of his diet, it causes much less worse than do wines.
He is usually worse by eating any food, and better by lying on the stomach or by pressure.
His taste is musty or fishy. His pains are always colicky in nature, especially in the abdomen, and they are better by bending double and by hard pressure. In fact, we hear of his colic so frequently that we get tired of the story. There are occasional diarrhoeas, but always preceded and accompanied by the colic, griping and tenesmus. The stools are *Rheum., *Chamomilla and *Mag. carb. are typical of this stigma. The colicky manifestations make the patient irritable. All bowel and intestinal troubles of sycotic origin have the constant symptom of colic, whether it be in the diarrhoea, the haemorrhoids, or any other digestive manifestation; and with this there is always the marked irritability.
The sycotic child is sour-smelling in all ways; even the stools smell sour. He wants constant attention; he must be rocked or carried; his colics are better from lying on the abdomen or from pressure. *Dulcamara is typically sycotic in its manifestations; it has the diarrhoea, acrid and corrosive; from getting wet; bleeding haemorrhoids with great pruritis; fishbrine smell.
In the urinary tract there are many symptoms. There is intense pain on urination; children scream from the pain. This is due to a spasmodic contraction affecting the urethra. Many disease of the urinary tract are combined syphilis, psora and sycosis, and with the last two most prominent. The diabetic patient is usually strongly tubercular, but if there is a sycotic taint as well, the condition becomes much more malignant. Bright’s disease is a manifestation of all three stigmata combined. Where we find fibrous changes we may be sure there is a strong sycotic influence.
In the rectum we find many conditions of tubercular origin, as strictures, fistulae, sinuses and pockets, but when there is the addition of the sycotic stigma the conditions are greatly aggravated, and there is much more tendency toward malignancy, for combinations of the tubercular diathesis with sycosis produce cancerous affections.
In acquired sycotic conditions represented by prostatic gland troubles there is a combination of all three stigmata.
The most frequent location of the sycotic manifestations in women is in the pelvic organs. Pelvic inflammations such as inflammation of the ovaries, inflammatory processes of the fallopian tubes; in fact, all of the inflammatory disease of the female pelvis may be traced to this taint. In the more chronic types we get cystic degeneration of the ovaries, the uterus and the fallopian tubes. Again, the infection may pass on into the peritoneal cavity, and we find general peritonitis and general cellulitis. Appendicitis is directly traceable to sycotic influences.
To distinguish the sycotic manifestations in the abdomen, bear in mind the colicky, spasmodic and often paroxysmal pains of sycosis, the acrid discharges which corrode the skin; the stale fish or fishbrine odour of the discharges; the mottled appearance of the mucous membranes.
The attempt to suppress sycotic manifestations, especially the discharge, is very common medical practice; but suppressive measures meet with a very prompt and decided renewal of the stigmatic power and energy. After such an attempt, the destructive of the destructive progress of the disease becomes much more rapid, and often rapidly to malignancies. This is very often seen in the disturbances of the sexual organs which lead to surgery as a way out of the difficulty, and immediately after operation, when the physician has reason to believe his patient to be on the road to recovery, there will be a sudden flaring up of the difficulty and death ensues very soon. When such a series of circumstances occurs, it is unquestionably because of the sycotic influence that may have been more or less unnoticed in the patient’s condition. Often there is such a sequence of events after some injury.
Sycosis, continuing the gonorrhoeal poison in its chronic state, has the rheumatic conditions that we may expect. There are tearing pains in the joints, which are worse during rest, worse during cold damp weather, better moving or stretching, better dry weather. There are pains in the small joints with infiltrations and deposits. Stiffness, soreness and lameness are characteristic of this stigma. The troubles in the joints, where there are deposits of lime salts as in arthritis deformans, are sycotic. The gouty diathesis has sycotic base.
The sycotic skin manifestations tend forward overgrowth or extra deposits. The nails are ribbed or ridged and thick and heavy. Moles, warts, wine-coloured patches and other manifestations of unnaturally thickened skin belong in this classification. Skin eruptions of this stigma occur in circumscribed spots, and there are exfoliating eczemas. Psoriasis is a combination of the three stigmata, with sycosis and psora predominating. The fishscale eruptions are also a combination of the three stigmata, with the dryness of psora, the squamous of syphilis and the overgrowth of tissues, or the thickened skin manifestations, of sycosis. Herpes zoster has a sycotic base. Malignancies of the skin are more violent and intractable in proportion as the sycotic taint is increased. Barber’s itch readily develops in sycotic patients, while it rarely develops unless there is a sycotic taint.
We have all noted the tendency of some operated patients to develop stitch abscesses. This never occurs unless there is a sycotic tendency in the patient.
