Ten years ago, at the Montreal convention of this association, an attempt was made to discuss psora in the light of the new advances in medicine, but since then discussions of this subject have been avoided. It is now high time that we take this problem up again and give psora a different definition than heretofore. The possibility of a clearer conception of psora and more in accordance with the recent progress in medicine has finally presented itself. We are happy to be able, at this time, to fall in line with this progress without prejudice to any of the homoeopathic principles and, if we are ever to obtain recognition for homoeopathy as an important method of therapeutics, we must fall in line.
Today psora cannot be discussed without a knowledge of the newly studied effects of foods on the human organism, therefore let us begin with a brief introduction into the science of nutrition.
The modern studies of nutrition were started seventy years ago when Voit and Pettenkofer first published their experiments on metabolism. These experiments determined the now well known chemical composition of foods and the caloric requirements of the animal organism.
These two points are of fundamental importance for the understanding of the chemistry of nutrition and were confirmed by other physiologists. This was the chemical era of nutritional research and lasted until about the end of the past century at which time food research took another direction. One then found that many problems which could not be solved with the help of purely chemical methods, had to be approached by other roads.
It had dawned already upon some clinicians that foods possess properties which are not determinable by chemistry, but which nevertheless influence development and health of individuals and races. Let us hear some of their reasons:
Modern civilization and medical science, improving the living conditions of populations, had been expected to improve their physical constitution also, but such was not the case. In Europe at least one found the opposite. One observed that, as soon as the centuries old habits of eating were affected by civilization, the decline began.
In France, for instance, with the gradual spreading of civilization from the center towards the periphery, deleterious influences spread parallel, so that today the consequence of it is that the healthiest population is found in those provinces which are the most remote from Paris, the center of the country. The same process can be seen in every other part of Europe. The more one approaches the large capital cities, the more signs of degeneration one detects in the inhabitants.
It is interesting to note that similar observations have been made on the Negroes in the French African colonies. As long as on their old diet, these Negroes are so strong that they can carry a load of eighty pounds a distance of thirty miles in one day and in addition dance all night, which shows how little it has tired them. All this on the roughest roads in a most unfavorable climate. Their strength is undoubtedly due to their diet because, as soon as they begin to eat canned French foods, they degenerate.
In Italy the same phenomenon can be seen in every little town. There the poor eat as their ancestors ate, but the rich, being ashamed of eating as the poor, eat finer civilized foods. The consequence of it is that the poor are healthy and well developed, while the rich are sick and degenerated. The poor enjoy better health as long as their poverty does not reach the point where they could not secure sufficient amounts of their traditional foods.
This process is not noticeable in America, the living conditions here being different from those in Europe.
A look into history shows the same. The proverbial strength and endurance of the soldiers of Napoleon contrasts sharply with the lack of these qualities in the French soldiers of today.
Only eighty years ago many parts of Europe could boast of men of Herculean statures, with deep chests, large lungs, broad shoulders, strong moustache and exceedingly hard teeth. No such men can be found in those countries today. With every generation their teeth get poorer, muscles weaker, moustache thinner, lungs and hearts smaller; in short, with every generation they are less well developed.
It is a well known fact–and this applies to America also– that our ancestors seldom suffered from degenerative diseases. Also childrens diseases were rarer with them. But they ate simpler foods and took them straight out of nature. By means of their instinct and experience they were able to find out what was correct in matter of foods, while we today succumb to many gastronomic temptations of our civilization and eat foods that are intended to flatter our palate, no matter how injurious they may be to our organism.
Observations of this kind, having convinced some clinicians that the cause of decline of civilized humanity lay in its foods, research other than chemical became necessary in order to discover the nature of the offending factors. These clinicians were not many and their era–called energetic era–was not long, but they deserve serious mention. For them the series of the five constituents of foods: proteins, carbohydrates, fats, mineral salts and water, as determined by the physiological chemists, was not complete. They added another constituent, namely: vital energy.
According to them this energy must animate every molecule of food materials, else we could live on coal and gasoline as well. Every type of food must contain it, else it is devitalized and cannot be assimilated. Chemical analysis cannot detect its presence, but life is proof of its existence and they hoped that some day they would be able to measure with instruments its amount and its quality. Its absolute or even relative absence in foods causes diseases either in a short time or only after years and decades and generations. Plants are builders and carriers of this energy which means that they are more than mere fuel material yielding calories.
They are vehicles for its transport into the animal cells, in which oxidation and other metabolic processes are possible only in its presence. A metabolic process in the animal cell can be compared with miniature lightning. There is no lightning between a cloud and the nearest spot on earth, if there is not enough difference in the electric potentials of the two. Likewise there is no metabolism in the animal cell, if there is no tension of the vital energy in the food on the one hand and if there is none in the protoplasm of the animal cell on the other, in other words, if there is no difference in the electric potentials of food and protoplasm.
Light, heat and chemicals destroy these potentials, that is, neutralize them. Time has the same effect. In culinary and industrial preparations of foods this destruction is carried to different degrees so that we never know the absolute value of such foods. If the vital energies in foods are deficient, metabolism will be deficient and will result in the formation of intermediary metabolic products in the tissues. These are for the most parts acids, whose action is toxic and, if they accumulate to such an extent that they cannot be eliminated, they produce diseases of toxic nature alimentary toxicosis. Gout and scurvy are two such toxicosis known for centuries.
These concepts were not quite new. A number of physicians and biologists of the past, such as Hippocrates, Sydenham, van Helmont, Chauffard, Claude Bernard, etc., had postulated the existence of imponderable energies in foods. Also Hahnemann may be mentioned here. His experience was that decoctions of plants are much less active than fresh plant juices, and he used only fresh juices for his potencies, but he did not suspect that foods could cause systemic troubles. The earliest humanity, centuries before Hippocrates, not only surmised, but had knowledge of the existence of this force and of the morbific effects of its lack in foods, as the ancient Greek mythology attests.
On the basis of these concepts together with personal experiences some clinicians developed empirical rules of alimentary hygiene and therapeutics, but it all remained confined to small groups of men.
Cooperation of the exact science of physics had to be secured, if one was to awaken interest for it in the profession at large. Notwithstanding, their work is of great practical importance and permanent value. Their era falls into the first decade of our century and, about the beginning of the World War, was suddenly interrupted by the discovery of vitamins.
Interest for vitamins spread all over the civilized world with unusual rapidity, almost as rapidly as the radio and movies. Though originally a medical discovery, biological chemists took up this science and inaugurated a research of unprecedented extent and activity. In the course of the last twenty years it has assumed such gigantic proportions that from a homoeopath you should not expect an infallible judgement of its clinical value and scientific importance. In its practical conclusions it has a number of points in common with the teachings of the energetic era, so much so that in the beginning many believed vitamins were only an expression of the vital energy.
