Truly, a systematic revolution, inevitably leading, where abnormal stimulation, over-nutrition, disastrous pressure and intoxication have gone too far, to local death. At this period, with the resulting opening up of ulceration, pyogenic organisms enter the field. Finally, with the blood-stream, and the lymphatic system alike poisoned and disease-bearing, pain, suffering, offensiveness and exhaustion supervene, and the patient dies.
Here, then is the theory: Latent chronic disease. Trauma. Abnormal irritation. Consequent abnormal nutrition. Abnormal, rank, short-lived growth. Implantation. Destruction. Ulceration. Extending dissolution. Death.
Here are a few quotations, to the point, from Hahnemanns Chronic Diseases. But we will venture to make them more easily grasped by substituting for his term PSORA, “infection”. Psora was used by him, as he makes clear, to denote deep-seated, non- venereal chronic disease; once acute and infective, now latent. He calls it hydra-headed, because, on it, as he contends, so many intractible chronic conditions are based.
He says, “The internal infection may continue slumbering in the organism for years without becoming developed into a permanent chronic disease”.
“then a trivial cause some severe injury – shock, wound, large burn, fracturing a leg or arm and some one of the infective chronic diseases breaks forth and increases to a fearful height.” “The deep-seated latent disturbance which has broken out, and is the mother of such chronic secondary affections.” Elsewhere he instances misery, etc. as causal.
“Reason of non-recovery it is the deep-seated infection, slumbering in the inmost recesses of the organism, which the robustest constitution would have been insufficient to expel, unless aided by the efforts of art”.
“The chronic infection continues in the organism, and even develops itself from year to year unless it is extinguished and thoroughly cured by art”.
“Has cancer of the womb any origin except such infection?”.
“Have different varieties of cancer of the breast any other cause than such infection?”.
Such infection is for him “a hydra-headed monster, pregnant with disease”.
“The local infection is a secondary vicarious symptom of an internal disease”.
“Chronic infections (semivital morbid infections of a parasitical nature) can only be neutralized and annihilated by a more powerful remedy producing analogous effects: it is only by these that the patient can be freed from their effects”.
He speaks of “external vicarious symptoms of an internal disease affecting the whole organism”.
REITERATIONS, REFLECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
Hahnemann says:”It is an easy matter to doubt things which are not before us in visible forms; but this proves nothing; according to the old rule, proving is the business of those who deny, negantis est probare”.
“All chronic non-venereal diseases that can neither be cured by regular diet nor favorable circumstances originate in psora,” (i.e. in a once acute, now latent and chronic infection).
“The infection by means of one of the three know chronic miasms is generally the work of a moment: but the complete development of the disease consequent upon such an infection, throughout the whole organism, requires more time. Not until several days have elapsed, during which the miasmatic disease has completed its internal development, does kind nature cause that disease to ultimate in some local symptom which received the internal disease into itself, as it were, and hushes and calms it. The vital forces enjoy a sort of protection in his local symptom, which is formed upon one of the least dangerous parts of the external skin”.
For months the Medical Press has been publishing letters on the “origin or cancer”. Alas! they lead – nowhere!.
A once-acute, now chronic disease, often unsuspected, may ultimate in arteries – even in the aorta, and favor the formation of a perfect rockery of “china” plaques to line that most unlikely spot. (We saw the extreme of such a case “on the table” recently.).
Is there any reason why other acute diseases, besides the venereal diseases, should not live on, in latent state? From that which we KNOW, we should endeavor to deduce: and to envisage that which we are not yet in a position to prove.
As one of our doctors points out, “There is no vital reaction to cancer per se: and therefore no symptoms to treat from the homoeopathic viewpoint”.
In the early stages of, say, breast cancer, a lump is accidentally discovered. There have been no symptoms. The patient often looks, and feels remarkably well. It is only when distress incident on the discovery, and when mechanical and destructive processes supervene, that there are symptoms: and prescribing for the effects of ultimates is not prescribing for the disease: it is merely palliation, not cure, since it has no relation to the real, underlying condition. Hence we perceive the importance of prescribing the nosode of the primary acute infection that lies at the root of this threatening and torturing condition.
Consider, for a moment, INJURY AND REPAIR. How healthy Nature always mends and obliterates; or, at the worst, endeavors to make the best of things. She may not be able to set a broken bone perfectly, but she will mend it, where this is possible, and make it strong. Take simple fracture of bone: here the process of repair is absolutely dramatic. Blood and lymph are instantly poured out; there is a leucocytosis. Granulation tissue is formed in the clot by proliferation of fibroblasts. The special white cells multiply and swarm to the spot.
The osteoblasts to enclose the fracture, and to fill, with temporary bone, that part of the medullary canal, till it is splinted most perfectly, with an internal rod to strengthen and keep it still; while pain, that guardian angel, gives instant warning should any movement endanger the reparative mechanism. Then, true bone is formed to knit the fractured surfaces. This perfected, the osteoclasts (the bone-eaters) get to work, and quietly and imperceptibly remove the scaffolding and restore the medullary canal. And, provided that the position of the fragments was good and maintained, and provided that the patient was in normal health, after a reasonable time nothing remains to betray, even to x-ray, that there had been once such a painful and disabling organic tragedy.
But supposing that the patient had been carrying about a latent, unsuspected, chronic affection, the result might have been different. The very preparations for repair would have afforded a nidus in which disease could thrive: and “bone-buds” and “bone- eaters”, multiplying, in an abnormal blood supply due to the irritation of the disease, would take advantage thereof, in irregularity and unbalance. Bone would thicken here, and thin out there. What should be a beneficent callus, now, rough and irregular, would more or less surround the shaft; in the midst of which a sequestrum, a bit of dead bone might remain, only to be expelled by suppurative processes, establishing a sinus. Various chronic diseases determines varieties of this disastrous process.
But, feed in gradually the indicated homoeopathic remedy of the basic ill-health (tuberculosis, for instance) and we see stimulation to better efforts for repair: or rather, Natures beneficent purposes no longer perverted and frustrated.
What if there were a latent chronic disease engendered by measles – by diphtheria – by any or all of the acute diseases – each of which could block repair when damage accrues to certain tissues.
Might not this explain what has been called diathesis?.
It is recent rapidly growing experience with the “nosodes” of past acute disease, used for the various conditions that constitute “Old Chronics”, that has made one meditate and discuss their possible use in the treatment of cancer.
