That the new world which is in the making may have strong, clear minded spiritually well developed men and women, free from the many inherited handicaps which now prevent effective, constructive work from the majority of our citizens, it is necessary that children be freed from inherited tendencies to chronic disorder.
Let the imagination reach out to realization of even some of the benefits to be reaped from such freedom and then let one’s reason encompass the fact that this freedom is practical and not wholly visionary. For the treatment of children by homoeopathy according to the philosophy of Hahnemann is entirely possible now, to say nothing of improvement in such treatment the future might bring to maturity.
By miasmatic children is meant those born afflicted with one or more of the chronic miasms of Hahnemann. Deep, broad thinker that he was, he developed his theory of chronic miasms from over twenty years of constant study of the symptoms of patients coming to him and his disciples for treatment. As these patients returned for cure of one ailment after another, it became evident that the man himself was sick behind his manifold ailments and that each new ailment must have the same basic disorder as all the others. Thus gradually developed three chronic miasms, or perhaps taints, each with its own characteristics.
Also it became evident that a great many people express symptoms of combinations, of the three. In the provings of remedies on healthy people appeared groups of symptoms corresponding to each miasms and also groups of symptoms corresponding to each miasm and also groups representing combinations of them. Since the Law of Similars is the law of cure, homoeopathy is capable of curing the chronic miasms if handled by wise, able prescriber and if environment and care are favorable. Hence the possibility in the present time of curing miasmatic children.
In his studies, Hahnemann recognized groups of symptoms with a syphilitic backgrounds, groups of symptoms with a sycotic background and a mass of symptoms outside of either which he termed psoric.
Future students may name these differently but the group will always exist in the minds of those who comprehend homoeopathic philosophy and use it in practice.
In the limits of a short paper it is impossible to give clear symptomatic pictures of the three miasms. Such descriptions are to be found in Dr.H.A.Robert’s book, The Principles and Art of Cure by Homoeopathy, to which the reader is referred.
Psora has its own characteristics, briefly hinted; functional disorders, not structural changes; inertia; lack of ambition; great weariness; desire to lie down; effects of emotional disturbances; ungrounded fears; great mental depression; anxiety; easy changes in temperament; lack of power to concentrate the mind; keen intellectual activity for a short time but lack of stability and lasting power; great chilliness; great restlessness which spurs on in spite of desire to rest and consequent inefficiency; hunger which never is satisfied; craving for foods which often don to agree; better from applied heat; dry, rough skin.
According to provings of syphilitic remedies, syphilis also has its own characteristics: mental dulness; stupidity; depression which produces sullen silence; fixed ideas; slowness of comprehension; aggravated all night and better all day: restlessness and anxiety all night; headache all night; tendency to destruction of bones and other tissues even to deformity; destructive ulcerations in many locations; several kinds of neuralgias; sudden heart failure without warning; debilitating diarrhoeas; sticky gluey hair which falls easily in spots or areas; eruptions moist, crusty, suppurating; deformed palatal arches and deformed teeth which soon decay; deformed nails.
Sycosis, the miasm which develops after a suppressed gonorrhoea, produces marked anaemia; inflammation of the mucous membranes, especially those of the genital sphere, and these hang on, are slow to cure and cause general indefinite illness. Mentally the sycotic patient is suspicious, jealous, quarrelsome, self-condemnatory and later degenerate. There are various catarrhal discharges often with a fishbrine odor, which relieve mental disturbances; all sorts of arthritic manifestations; rheumatic heart conditions with cyanosis; skin eruptions with proliferation of tissue; tendency to proliferation of cells to tumors, moles, warts, calluses, etc.
Thus it is seen that each miasm has its own general character but it is far more frequent to find combinations of them in patients than to find them distinct in their manifestations. Hence, it is most important for a homoeopathic observer to watch for clear characteristic symptoms of each miasm and for all sorts of combinations. Psora and syphilis combined often produce tuberculosis. Psora and sycosis combined often produce new growths, e.g., cancer.
