Here the term psoric has been used in the sense of avitaminotic. I think we should consider our great friend psora dead. We have every reason to give it a most solemn funeral. Let us be grateful for it! It has been a wonderful working hypothesis just as ether in astronomy and the molecule and atom in chemistry. Hahnemann never did call it a fact, he called it a theory. Let us admire his wisdom and modesty.
In the light, then, of our new insight into nutrition, psora cannot be an outcrop of some ancient miasmatic disease, but a constitution caused by devitaminized or, better to say, devitalized foods. Such foods are more or less toxic. Even the freshest foods may produce food toxins, if the digestive system or the intracellular metabolism are at fault. They thus contribute to the development of symptoms erroneously called psoric.
This makes the terms psora and miasm obsolete and if we should still use them in our writings, we would have to annex a glossary in which the terms would be given the new definitions. In so doing we shall avoid misunderstanding and derision. We must keep abreast with the times and use the language of the times. But if, conceited by the enormous superiority of our therapeutics, we should ignore the progress of the other medical branches, we would commit a serious mistake. No branch of medicine is so superior that it would not occasionally need help from another branch.
Now a few words about sycosis. According to Hahnemann sycosis is a figwart gonorrhoea. Others have defined it as a constitution in which the gonorrhoea toxins are especially injurious. Some think that sycosis is a gonorrhoea coupled with psora. Still others think that cowpox toxins may cause it too. For the most part reporters of sycotic cases seem to convey the impression that they believe sycosis to be suppressed gonorrhoea. Recently, French homoeopaths defined it as a precancerous constitution which is exact, but does not tell anything about its origin and which has been known in America for over fifty years.
Considering the fact that many sycotic patients have never suffered from gonorrhoea nor have their ascendants, sycosis cannot be gonorrhoea of any form. It can only be a constitution whose characteristic is that it is aggravated by gonorrhoea or made manifest by it when latent. Its etiology is that of psora. In reality it is a subspecies of psora caused by some special food toxins or by faults in digestion or metabolism. Its right to homoeopathic citizenship comes from facilities for grouping symptoms and remedies which it affords.
Industrial vitamins are useful only in animal experiments or in early stages of human avitaminoses, but being merely extracts of foods, they cannot do more than natural foods themselves, and much less when synthetic. In cases of old standing they are useless because such ailments are irreversible except by homoeopathy. In cases with low vitality or high sensitiveness they have often been found harmful. After an initial false stimulation they have caused irreparable damage.
Nevertheless, vitamin science has been of some value from the practical standpoint also. It has shown the necessity of nutritional studies and has propagated better eating habits. Homoeopathy is helped by correct eating and we are grateful for all help no matter what its source.
But there is a tremendous amount of evil caused by adulterants of which the ignorant public is the victim with the consent of the medical profession. We have plenty of reasons to combat such a state of affairs as it is a great obstacle to our homoeopathic remedies. From chlorine in water and alum in bread, the average human at present consumes hundreds of toxic substances every day. They all contribute to physical and mental degeneration and make our prescribing exceedingly difficult.
Knowledge of pathogenetic effects of foods leads to easier homoeopathic prescribing. Excess of well done meat often indicates Sulphur, excess of boiled milk Calc. carb. of sugar Arg. nit., of eggs Ferrum, etc. A man came from a mining camp with a bad cough. When asked what he ate, he said: “Meat, potatoes and gravy.” No more questions were asked, Sulphur was given and his cough stopped at once. A little girl of two years developed night sweats around her head. When asked what kind of food the child had been given, the parents replied: “Mush cooked in milk”. No more questions were asked, Calc. carb. was given and the night sweats stopped almost immediately. The homoeopathic part of the consultation did not last more than five minutes each.
In cases with paucity or absence of symptoms, study the diet of your patients and find its deficiencies. It may give you the clue for a good prescription.
This opens for us a fertile field for new clinical and laboratory investigations, i.e., for the study of the remedies required by the effects of deficient foods, a field whose partial exploration was studied already by our great pioneers, but which, if explored thoroughly, will lead homoeopathy to still higher achievements.
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH.
DISCUSSION.
DR. GRIMMER: This paper opens up quite a little field for discussion and controversy.
However, I, for one, agree with the essayist on the importance of food in its relation to health, but it seems to me that after 140 years of the Hahnemannian doctrines proving so successful, some of us are not prepared to throw them over on the theory that our troubles are more from lack of food or insufficient food or devitalized food, all of which we know to be true. But many of us meet in our practice people who have been dietitians, who have been very careful about their food over a long period of time, and yet they have the need of these remedies, and they exhibit these dyscrasias Hahnemann so carefully, thoroughly, and completely describes.
Hahnemann didnt develop this psora theory over night. You must remember that he spent about twelve years on this. Hahnemanns intellect was superb, ahead of anyone of his time, and it is not likely he would fall into this error of psora. He regarded it as one side of the manifestation. He said that anybody who shakes hands with one suffering from the effects of itch mite doesnt contract psora. That is very true, because I have handled hundreds of such cases and I have never had the itch.
While the doctor has given us a valuable paper to study, I think it will take a lot more proof to convince us that Hahnemann was in error either in sycosis or psora.
DR. FARRINGTON: It so happens that I have given this matter most intensive study during the past years, and in the American Institute Journal I am writing a series of articles which now have reached No. 4 on this subject. I dont intend to read you any of my articles, but I want to say it is true that avitaminosis has caused many diseases, but they belong to the deficiency diseases. There are others belonging to this class which are not caused by lack of vitamins as, for instance, those that are due to endocrine imbalance and have nothing to do necessarily with vitamins.
Vitamins are nothing more than catalysts. By their presence they promote absorption of food. I think this is irrespective of the health of the patient. The most healthy patient you can find on the face of the earth will eventually get sick when vitamins are taken away, or when his food contains an insufficient amount of vitamins. Therefore, the measure of the damage done is dependent only on this inherent resistive power. Supply those vitamins again and he will get well.
He does not have to have any chronic ailment, any deep- seated ailment or any eruption, because avitaminosis, depending on which it is in the alphabet, shows other symptoms.
Sunlight undoubtedly does, as the essayist suggests, promote intracellular metabolism and the body formulates its own vitamins. This is well illustrated by the tuna fish and other deep sea fishes. They live and have their vitamins. How do they get them? They get them by eating the small fry that come down from the surface, and those fish swim near enough to the surface to be affected by the actinic rays of the sun.
Scabies cannot be cured by any homoeopathic indicated remedy, I am sorry to say, Sulphur never cured a case.
A man I treated–one of the few asthma cases I failed to cure–sixty years old told me his asthma had been with him for forty years. When he came over in a vessel with his brother, he got scabies. He used sulphur and was cured. His brother went free, but he had asthma and took it with him to the grave.
Hahnemann knew the acnes in 1879 and mentioned them in some of his earlier writings. It is a curious fact that all through his subsequent writings in the Organon and Chronic Diseases he never mentioned them. He knew that, and he knew of other germs. In one of the articles he wrote concerning cholera, he speaks of the infection of cholera as probably being caused by innumerable little things which float in the air and infect individuals.
For that reason, I say I dont think psora is cured by the rudiments. Hahnemann did call it a theory. He called sycosis a theory. Nevertheless, there wasnt a germ of truth in that theory. It is not necessarily dependent upon any of the diseases or the suppression of any of the skin eruptions he mentions, although they undoubtedly were a very wide factor. All the three miasms are merely convenient working hypotheses, and to us they are of great use in grouping our remedies and in the saving of time and labor in the selection of them.
