Author of Diseases of the Skin, Psora, Pseudo-psora and Sycosis.
(Concluded).
Distribution of Syphilis.
We can truly say that, if any disease more than another, follows the lines of trade and commerce, it is syphilis, and as the nineteenth century found man reaching out with his trade every corner of the inhabited earth, so syphilis is wont to appear and spread with its usual severity. It follows ship lines and rail- roads, strengthening itself at great centers of trade, seaports, army and navy cantonments and in all kinds of camps where many human beings are collected together, especially in times of war.
Climatic conditions seem to influence it very little, for we find it, not alone in temperate zones, but in the torrid and the remotest inhabited points of the cold zones, such as Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and North Russia. It is not a malady of fifth or of the poor. It is a disease that spreads when men are closely aggregated temporarily. Thus it is met with most frequently in large capitals and in densely populated cities; where trade meets and where exchange of commodities takes place. It is a disease of the second and third decades of life in both sexes, at a time of life when the activities of life are at their highest point in respect to travel and trade and intercourse with the world.
Syphilis prevails extensively in Russia and in its great cities, in Norway, Sweden, Germany and Poland. Intemperate habits are, no doubt, the most promising factors in increasing the disease in all countries, as my experience in practice for many years has demonstrated. Men from thirty to fifty usually contract it while in a state of intoxication. This is true, to a greater or less extent, in such cities as London, Liverpool, Manchester, New York and Chicago. Usually from five to eight per cent of all venereal diseases are syphilitic. In the densest populated cities of Europe, about five in one thousand are affected with the disease.
One prominent authority estimates that in Paris alone they have constantly from two to four thousand newly infected cases. One prominent authority estimates that in Paris alone they have constantly from two to four thousand newly infected cases. What has been said of its prevalence in Europe may safely be said of the Far East-Japan, China, Asiatic Russia, Syria, Asia Minor and Afghanistan. In Egypt, the cities of Cairo and Alexandria, so largely visited by foreigners, the disease is met with frequently, even among the natives. In tropical islands and in tropical zones of the Orient, it is not infrequently blended with leprosy, inducing its worst forms, often developing, with the aid of the hot, sultry climate and unsanitary conditions, the gravest forms of the disease.
The Western Hemisphere is by no means free from syphilis. It is frequently met with in Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec, Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans, Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Buffalo and Boston, and not infrequently in smaller towns and cities. I am sage in saying that it is quite common among the American negroes, combining with scrofula and the white plague, tuberculosis, and inducing, often, the most destructive processes that can come to humanity. We also find it to be prevalent in cooks, waiters and domestic servants, as porters in hotels. Among the immigrants that come to this country in large numbers affected by this disease are the Spanish, from South America, French Canadians, Mexicans, Scandinavians, the lower classes of Jews and those of German birth.
Evolution and Course of Disease.
Syphilis is conveyed from one individual to another (“contact syphilis”) and by inheritance. The acquired from may be conveyed either by a physiological or pathological fluid or living or dead protoplasm. The morbid matter may come directly from one individual to another or by indirect methods. For a long time the nature of this virus was unknown, but today our modern pathologists have determined that its infective essence is a micro-organism. All infected persons become virus carriers. The power of the infection wanes however, in its virulence with the progress of the disease, that is in the infective forms, which is not true of the transmitted forms.
Infected individuals cured of the disease are said to be immune from a second infection no animal can be infected, unless it be those of the monkey tribe. This is not true of the gonorrhoeal or tubercular virus, which attacks most animals. Syphilis is on the whole, a human malady, this being the case by virtue of the sui process of the disease. The mucus, or secretion from the mucous patch or the primary lesion, chancre, is said to be the most virulent from of the virus. The virus usually enters the circulation by an abrasion of the skin or mucous membrane, and at this point of entry, the first pathological process begins.
At that moment, the period of the evolution of primary lesion begins and the systemic intoxication is but a matter of a couple of weeks (“fifteen to forty days”) The general average is three weeks or thereabouts. There is but one from of syphilis and it is undefined in its degree of malignancy by the constitutional bases from which the seed comes, and the ground in which it is planted; the habits of the infected one, whether they be temperate or not; if they are addicted to tobacco, alcohol, beers, wines, coffee or the eating of much animal food depends much on its malignant action on that organism Again, if there is already a scrofulous or tubercular soil, the chances are that every movement of the syphilitic invasion will be of a similar malignant from.
A little farther on in the disease, the glands of elimination, the blood and lymph vessels, become overtaxed with work and soon manifest profoundly the deeper invasion of the whole organism. It may be well to mention here that the mildest forms of chancre my be followed by the gravest forms of the disease. Of course, this is not true if followed up with the homoeopathic remedy in the potentized from. Usually it seldom progresses beyond the papular form of a skin eruption, but in writing about syphilis or any other disease, we must leave all that out until it comes to the treatment or we do not get a clear conception of violent inroads of the disease.
The next step in the disease is the involvement of the lymph vessels and glands, usually the glands nearest the chancre are involved. They increase from a soft fullness to a marble hardness and they may be single or multiple. We see this taking place from the sixth to the tenth day after the appearance of the primary sore, the chancre. This is the beginning of the manifest systemic involvement. All the time this process had been going on from the moment of infection, but the human eye could not detect it. This is why the books insist the disease is first local. All this is erroneous teaching. It is never local except to the mind so material that it cannot follow the dynamic action and movement of disease.
The whole effect of the system whether it be the circulatory, the blood, the lymph or the glandular elimination process shows the deep resentment of the presence of the morbific elements in the circulation. Its every effort is now to combat and, if possible, drive out its enemy. This is why we see all these excesses, these hurrying to and fro in the circulation, the violent explosive eruptions upon the skin, the hyperplasia, the hypertrophied glands, which are overworked at times to the point of dissolution. No wonder we have violent stasis of the disease, epilepsy, insanity and all the multiple forms of paralysis when we see men, who claim to be healers of the sick, creating all these processes by local application or injections of death-dealing drugs.
Primary Syphilis.
The primary stage of syphilis is generally known as that stage or phase of the disease which precedes all signs of infection and is attended only by local changes in the point of infection or innoculation. This local change is characterized and known by the name of chance. It assumes different forms, but a typical one assumes the form of an ulcer usually round and with clean cut edges. As soon as this lesion is fully recognized,the specific character of the disease is at once recognized. It becomes the flag of distress, the S.O.S. of great danger to the organism.
It establishes, as with an oath, the fate of the human being so infected. Soon after the appearance of the chancre, the whole organism is involved by a slow systemic infection. This infection, or involvement, has been divided into three well- defined stages, and known in all languages and in all literature on the disease as the primary, secondary and tertiary stages. Each stage has it time periods and its own peculiar phenomena. Not infrequently we find preceding the primary lesion, general malaise and a cachexia peculiar to this disease. Sometimes a general dyscrasia develops, showing clearly the deep systemic derangement that precedes the secondary stage of the disease.
J.H. Allen was a student of H.C. Allen. He was the president of the IHA in 1900. Dr. Allen taught at the Hering Medical College in Chicago. Dr. Allen died August 1, 1925
Books by John Henry Allen:
Diseases and Therapeutics of the Skin 1902
The Chronic Miasms: Psora and Pseudo Psora 1908
The Chronic Miasms: Sycosis 1908