***THE venereal stigmata (or, as Hahnemann called them, miasms), are fundamentally infections of a specific nature. It is well to bear in mind the basis of all infection and of all chronic diseases before we can properly understand the workings of a stigmatic disease. Let us consider syphilis, for instance.
This is one of the comparatively modern diseases, and it is the basis for many constitutional troubles. Syphilis is from its inception a constitutional disturbance. Syphilis is supposed to be contracted from an impure coition. Much of the susceptibility and lowering of the defence toward the specific poison is developed and maintained because of the mental attitude of the individual, in that in its very inception it is a violation of his normal standards and therefore reacts upon and lowers the vitality.
Let us consider what happens after an impure coition. Prophylactics seemingly have very little to do with preventing the development of this condition, but there remains a period of about three weeks after the exposure when no symptoms or no manifestations of any kind show themselves. This is the period when the disease is taking hold on the system constitutionally, while apparently producing no symptoms. Then the vital energy undertakes to expel the poison by forming a chancre on some part of the body surface, usually the genital organs. In other words, the vital energy is attempting to push out the enemy, and so long at this chancre remains on the surface as an expression of the inward turmoil, no constitutional symptoms appear.
This state may last for months, or even years, provided it is not suppressed. In just the degree that this chancre does not suffer interferences does it represent the ability of the vital energy to cope with the intruder. The general treatment among physicians is to cauterize or treat locally this manifestations, such treatment tending to immediately dry the chancre and throw the poison back, by suppression, into the innermost recesses of the system. Then it is that a chain of symptoms begins to develop, showing that the vital energy is profoundly disturbed, and that it is helpless to cope unaided with the enemy.
(Now investigators in the ordinary school of medicine have begun to question whether chancre is not a provision of nature to counteract the syphilitic poison, their theory being that the chancre actually produces within itself antibodies that act defensively against the specific inroads of the disease.)
Usually the next step taken by Nature a is to produce an eruption on the body. If this manifestation is in turn treated by suppressive measures, the disease attacks the internal organs, tending always to attack that part of the organism which is least able to resist. It may be the central nervous system; it may be the arterial system and the heart; it may be the liver or the intestinal tract. Any or all of the tissues of the body feels the deadening influence of this intruder. These manifestations may be suppressed in one place after another, so that the man lives out his days with this incubus in his system, ever ready to develop into some new manifestation at the most trivial provocation. Grief, sorrow and worry are potent influences to develop these manifestations; or it may be exposure to the elements, a slight accident, stress of business relationship, or any one of many other causes, that starts the irritation; but unless this is met by the art of the similar antisyphilitic remedy, he passes his days in discomfort and distress and comes to a premature old age.
This stigma has its effect upon the protozoon, and the offspring shows the effect in many ways. When the offspring is affected with the syphilitic taint he will not show the direct effect in the primary chancre or ulcer, for by the time the disease has passed into the second generation the fault has become thoroughly married to the life forces and it becomes a part of his being. This results in many constitutional tendencies such as deformities, chronic catarrhal conditions of the nose and throat, malformations of the teeth and of the bony structure, ulcers and many other manifestations. In the second generation we find none of the primary local manifestation, for the manifestations have changed their character, showing that the economy is thoroughly impregnated with the deadening and destructive effect of the stigma.
In the primary disturbances we may find that this infection of syphilis becomes grafted on to a psoric base. Here we have a complication of troubles, and just as each of these stigmata is a problem in itself, the union of the two becomes a much more complicated problem, requiring great patience and skill to solve. Usually in this union of psora and syphilis the psoric symptoms predominate, and here the predominant symptoms of psora must be treated first with the antipsoric *simillimum, for the syphilis is largely hidden, and we must strive to help the vital force to throw off the greater and more predominant incubus which the patient manifests.
After the patient responds to the remedy by a decided improvement in the conditions first prescribed for, and the psoric condition is largely obliterated, we must change our tactics, for then the syphilitic dyscrasia will show itself and become prominent. Then the symptoms must be met with the antisyphilitic *simillimum, or the remedy that is most similar and adapted to syphilitic symptoms, to which we will be guided by the similitude of the remedy.
The patient who is suffering from syphilis in a latent state or who manifests the inherited stigma presents a picture that is very easy to recognize; and this is probably the easiest of he miasms, or stigmata, to treat. Patients with inherited or latent syphilis are mentally dull, heavy, stupid and especially stubborn, sullen, morose, and usually suspicious. They are always depressed, but in the depression they keep their troubles to themselves and sulk over them, These are the people who develop fixed ideas, which are not eradicated by any amount of explanation or talk. Their mental powers are slow in reaction; they become melancholy, and condemn themselves. They like to be alone, yet desire to escape from themselves as well as from others. In their slowness of comprehension the thoughts they had starting a sentence will vanish, they forget what they were about to say and they find it hard to get back into the track of their conversation. If they are reading, they read a few lines, and then they must re-read it to comprehend it.
They are always worse at night; all the symptoms develop me after the sun goes down. There is oppression, restlessness and anxiety at night; they dread the night because it is so oppressive. Restlessness is so great that it drives them out of bed.
We must remember that the tubercular patient is manifesting the union of the syphilitic and the psoric dyscrasia. Oftentimes we find the child who has inherited this stigmatic combination has a tendency toward tuberculosis; this child presents the picture of the “problem child” in the school, being slow of comprehension, dull, unable to keep a line of thought; he is unsocial, keep to himself and becomes morose and sullen. No greater service can be rendered to society than to meet these conditions of the problem child of school age and under, with the homoeopathic treatment, using as weapons the antisyphilitic and antipsoric remedies as they are indicated. This is the only treatment that will put these children into the sphere where they will be able to develop normally and become useful, happy citizens.
In patients manifesting the syphilitic stigma, if we are so fortunate as to observe the appearance of external manifestations or unusual discharges we will observe also that the patient is greatly improved in general and his mental state will seemingly become more normal. This is true if a catarrhal or leucorrhoea discharge is established; it is true if an old ulcer, perhaps of the leg, opens up and discharges; and so long as these avenues of escape are active the patient will be more normal. However, the natural avenues of elimination do not ameliorate the patient; sweating aggravates rather than ameliorates, and natural sweat, profuse urination and diarrhoeas never ameliorate the syphilitic conditions, except in constitutions such as the tubercular, which are a combination of the syphilitic and the psoric, and this is due to the general amelioration of all psoric manifestations from these natural avenues of elimination. In tubercular children a haemorrhage from the nose will clear up the mental state for some time; and in tubercular adults nosebleeds will clear up old neuralgias.
Now the degenerates and criminals and criminally insane are either sycotic or syphilitic in their stigmatic inheritances. Many of the criminally insane and degenerates could be very greatly benefited and probably cured by some of the antisyphilitic remedies.
Let us take up some of the symptoms of the head as manifest in the syphilitic patient. These headaches usually some on in the night and are almost always in the back of the head; they will ache all night, get better in the morning, only to come on again at night. The headaches are dull, heavy yet lancinating; they are persistently constant at the base of the brain on one side.
