Introduction: Sycosis, its history:
Hahnemann considered sycosis as the diathesis which endangers the least the chronic diseases. Its consequences are seen from time to time. When the local symptoms of sycosis, i.e., the growth on the genital organs are removed by cauterisation or by surgical means, sycosis manifests itself in another more dangerous manner.
His two other miasms are Psora and Syphilis. The problem of syphilis can be solved easily because the cause is known. The problem of Psora has somewhat been solved by the French Homoeopaths specially by Dr. A. Nebel. But there is still doubt as regards the real meaning of Psora. But it is a fact that according to the expression of Kent “Urchadigung”, i.e., the original sin of man. Psora may be considered as the miasm of the human civilisation. And it will go on making man allergic to the seven-eighth of diseases existing in the human kind. Unknown diseases will appear more and more on the human body, as man will become more and more civilised in the modern sense of the term and as man will become more and more affected in his mental and nervous sphere.
His two other miasms are Psora and Syphilis. These three miasms are of unequal importance because Psora alone is responsible for 7/8th of human diseases. But it will be wrong to believe that each of these miasms alone is responsible for some pathological phenomena in a particular individual. They, on the contrary intricate themselves in many cases of which the gravity is due to Psora. According to Hahnemann sycosis can be easily cured by alternate doses of Thuja and Nitric acid, if it is not complicated with Psora.
According to Dr. Martiny tuberculosis is not in association with sycosis. But this point is refuted by Dr. Bernard.
As regards sycosis Jahr says that “we do not dare, neither can we affirm, the existence of that disease as Sui generis.”
The first students of Hahnemann had shown exactly the clinical indications of Thuja and other anti-sycotic remedies. Thus the disciples of Hahnemann widened the field of sycosis. But the reality of sycosis was still doubted by persons like Jahr and others.
To Hahnemann sycosis and syphilis are venereal diseases. To him syphilis is a disease of chancres and sycosis is a disease of “Figs” from the Greek Sycon and by extension fig-like growth.
Celsa, in the antiquity, described the sycosis of Homoeopaths as ” a particular form of outward symptoms, which one may call an acute form.”
Petroz writes in the Journal, de la Societe Gallicane, 1851, pg.361″. There is an ulcer which the Greeks called sycosis because of its likeness to fig: it is a growth on the skin and its generic character is the character of the disease itself. There are two kinds of growth. The first is a hard and round ulcer, the second is humid with unequal borders. The hard one oozes a kind of sticky secretion while the humid one oozes more abundant foetid secretion. The one or the other attack the hairy parts of the genital organ. The callous and round ulcers attack particularly the beard and the humid one the tegument.”
Other descriptions of sycosis are found in Paul d’Egina, Actinuz and Galen. But Teste wrote in 1853 that the sycosis of the latter writers are not the same as that of Celsa. The sycosis of the latter writers being the tumours on the eyelids. Finally other writes of the antiquity gave the name fig to indurated tumours, pain less or scirrhus, etc…
In 1847 Rapou said that the majority of Italian doctors did not consider sycosis as different from syphilis. Almost all the German doctors still believe that syphilis and sycosis are same.
Teste in France considered sycosis as an “Ingenious hypothesis of Hahnemann”. Tests considered it as non-venereal disease, although it may be transmitted by coition and may cause the appearance of symptoms of the genital organs.
At that time gonorrhoea was considered as the cause of this diathesis.
Hahnemann considered sycosis as a venereal disease only because the seat of this disease is on the genital organs. But the very discovery of Thuja is perhaps the sure indication that sycosis is not a venereal disease.
Finally, as many of the sycotic symptoms are related to a gonorrhoeal discharge, specially when this discharge is suddenly stopped by treatment or because of any other reason. Rapou clearly indicates the last fact when citing Ritter(Histoire de la doctrine-Medical homoeopathique, 1847, p.373).
Thuja can cause the disappearance of the dermal manifestations of this “Miasm”. It is also a remedy of acute and chronic gonorrhoea. But Hahnemann did not consider that all gonorrhoeas are caused by sycosis.
“Ordinarily, in this kind of gonorrhoea, the discharge is, from the beginning, somewhat like thick pus. The emission of urine causes little pain, but the body of the penis is swollen and full of hard nodules. There are glandular nodosities on the back of that organ, and it is very painful to touch”.
Hahnemann also says that the miasm of other Gonorrhoea, seem not to penetrate the whole organism. They are only localised on the genital organs.
To Hahnemann, as we have already said, syphilis and sycosis were two distinct diseases. After the researches of Fournier on Syphilis the idea that syphilis and sycosis are the same disease was completely abandoned.
Towards the end of the 19th century the works of J.Compton- Burnett considerably widened the field of sycosis. He showed its relation to the intempestive vaccinations, specially the vaccinations that do not take up.
The vaccine is an infections disease which causes immunisation when inoculated in man. It protects him from smallpox.
The pathogenous agent of the vaccine does not reside in the liquid part of the lymph, but in the granulations which are found suspended in the lymph.
According to the allopaths, vaccines that do not take up, is of no consequence but such is not the opinion of homoeopaths.
Dr.J.Compton-Burnett has described under the name of vaccinosis a group of pathological troubles that are seen in the cases where the vaccines did not take up.
Why does the vaccine not take up? The officials think it is because the person vaccinated is immunised against small-pox. But according to Burnett and his followers the person is intoxicated by the vaccine virus, but he does not react, the organism does not disburden itself of the vaccine virus by outward manifestations. As a result a chronic stage comes into being.
The works of Burnett on “Vaccinosis” appeared in the year 1892. The question of vaccinosia is at present undisputed.
The ideas of Burnett were amply confirmed later on and it is now said that not only vaccinations but also the use of serums are the causes of sycotic diathesis.
Then comes Grauvogle with his three biochemic constitutions. He wished to renew the ideas of Hahnemann about Psora, Sycosis and Syphilis, with Carbonitrogenoid, Hydrogenoid and Oxygenoid constitutions. His idea were remodelled by Dr. Nebel and his group. They do not consider the constitutions of Grauvogle similar to the three diathesis of Hahnemann. They say that the biochemic constitutions are favourable grounds of the three miasms of Hahnemann.
Finally Dr. A. Nebel by his marvellous description of the Thuja type, made an important contribution to the problem of sycosis. He has moreover shown the relation of sycosis with psora.
In the article of Dr. M. Martiny “On Biological value of sycosis”, you will find that the persons having hydrogenoid constitution are predisposed to sycosis, and have a natural tendency to have atony of their reticulo-endothelial system. According to him the lethargy of the reticulo-endothelial system is characterised by slow and torpid reactions of the local defense with dragging suppurations.
Dr. Bernard in his treaties on sycosis has acknowledged the relation of sycosis with the reticulo-endothelial system. He calls it chronic reticulo-endotheliosis or premature old age of the system. According to him Tuberculin plays an important part in the formulation of this disease. According to him the hereditary “Carbonic constitution” is a hereditary sycosis of tuberculous origin and that the different forms of arthritic manifestations are to be related to sycosis. He contents that everything inter-penetrates the organisms and there really does not exist any partition between them.
Thus the notion of sycosis is much more widened at present than it was at the time of Hahnemann. Specially, the discovery that as a result of the weakness and torpidity of Reticulo-endothelial system, a sycotic condition is established, will, still widen the field of sycosis in the future.
Furthermore, it is now established that as a result of sudden suppression of not only gonorrhoeal discharge, but also of my kind of discharge such as leucorrhoea or discharge due to rhinitis, after medication or cauterisation, can cause a sycotic state of the human organism.
In the word we may say that sycotic diseases have a torpid nature, they develop slowly and when they develop drags on for a long time. The character of psoric diseases is exactly the opposite. In psoric diseases the organism has an explosive reaction.
Bernoville was a major lecturer in homeopathy, and he was active in Liga Medicorum Homeopathica Internationalis, and a founder of the le Syndicat national des médecins homœopathes français in 1932, and a member of the French Society of Homeopathy, and the Society of Homeopathy in the Rhone.
Fortier-Bernoville wrote several books, including Une etude sur Phosphorus (1930), L'Homoeopathie en Medecine Infantile (1931), his best known Comment guerir par l'Homoeopathie (1929, 1937), and an interesting work on iridology, Introduction a l'etude de l'Iridologie (1932).
With Louis-Alcime Rousseau, he wrote several booklets, including Diseases of Respiratory and Digestive Systems of Children, Diabetes Mellitus, Chronic Rheumatism, treatment of hay fever (1929), The importance of chemistry and toxicology in the indications of Phosphorus (1931), and Homeopathic Medicine for Children (1931). He also wrote several short pamphlets, including What We Must Not Do in Homoeopathy, which discusses the logistics of drainage and how to avoid aggravations.
He was an opponent of Kentian homeopathy and a proponent of drainage and artificial phylectenular autotherapy as well.