As a matter of fact, you will find that all the symptoms given in Chronic Diseases–there are a great many pages on psora- are found principally under the pathogenesis of Sulphur and Psorinum. All of those on sycosis, and more that have been added since, come under the symptomatology of Medorrhinum, and of syphilis under the symptomatology of Syphilinum and Mercury, but then with the addition of others. DR. SCHWARTZ: I just want to say I think this is a valuable paper, because it makes us realize, along with our homoeopathic remedies, the importance of the study of foods to enhance the value of the homoeopathic remedies.
I recall, at one of the conventions several years ago, the superintendent of the Homoeopathic State Institution at Allentown, Pennsylvania, mentioned that their beneficial results in the treatment of the mentally unbalanced were greater since they were paying so much more attention to foods. I read a report of the results they are getting in Elgin, Illinois, where they have been able to discharge many of their patients since they have been using large doses of vitamin B and have paid more intention to the diet. So we have to admit that.
In our own private practice, we should realize some of the things Dr. Duncan mentioned yesterday. If we think of live foods as being radioactive, just as we think of our homoeopathic remedies as being radioactive, by studying them it may explain the different types of patients, as the doctor said. In Europe, where the diet among certain classes is more limited and monotonous, explaining the growth and the appearance of people in certain places, not only the climate but the quality of the food throughout the centuries; if we keep an open mind on the subject and think of foods as supplying cellular deficiency, the combination of homoeopathic remedies and a balanced diet should certainly give us increased results.
DR. GOBAR: With regard to the question that scabies cannot be cured by an internal preparation, that it is a local infection, is disproved by–I just dont recall the name of the scientist, but he did some experiments on white rats. He gave them a diet free of vitamin B and after they had received this vitamin-free diet they developed scabies. He was on the point of discarding the rats because of this fact in continuing his experiment, but he put them aside and gave them vitamin B and within a very short time the scabies disappeared and they returned to normal. He tried that over two or three times, and each time he developed the same thing, proving that by lack of vitamin B scabies was developed.
I think in selecting a remedy on a single symptom, or on one or two symptoms, we fail very often to recognize the fact that we are picking out a remedy as a whole. We become so familiar with these remedies that we classify them as individuals. We know Dr. Schmidt by his general characteristics, and in walking along we pick him out of a crowd instantly. So we do with our remedies. As soon as the patient tells us three or four symptoms, the characteristics, and all that, instantly we get that remedy. Then we think we have prescribed on the symptoms.
DR. DIXON: My conception of psora and sycosis has always been that it differentiated between scabies and the suppression of it. Psora, to me, means that there has been raw sulphur rubbed on the scabies to cure it, so-called, but it has only suppressed it which brings on the symptoms Hahnemann called psora; not the scabies itself, but a suppressed condition of it. Likewise, sycosis, not the gonorrhoea itself, but the mismanagement of a case of gonorrhoea that has possibly been suppressed by strong astringents. The symptoms following that in the individual is what I call a sycotic condition. That is my conception in reading Hahnemann on it.
I want to say that if you can cure a case of asthma in an infant with a dose of Medorrhinum in fifteen minutes time, it is corroborative evidence we cant overlook, and I have done it more than once.
Likewise, the scabies itself, I contend, is amenable to treatment with the homoeopathic potency, and will clear up like other conditions. You render the soil unfavorable to the development of it and the scabies disappears. I have cured trench mouth many times with potency, and athletes foot, and there is certainly a germ present. We all have to admit it.
Vitamins have become so popular in the last five or ten years that a certain percentage of my patients–I am sure all of you have had them come to you–have been through the mill of the food faddists–I call them faddists but some call them specialists–and they certainly respond to the homoeopathic remedy.
I have only about three rules to give my patients along dietary lines. One of them is to eat slowly and quit bolting their food. I tell them to chew their food thoroughly and get it thoroughly and get it thoroughly mixed with the saliva before it is swallowed. That is a very important thing, I think, in any condition where food disturbances are manifest. The next rule is not to eat when they are mentally disturbed or fatigued. We have all seen spasms in nursing babies that were put to the breast when the mother was angry. That is a well-known fact. I could go on naming instances all up and down the line that are just as pertinent. Certainly, there are things that should not be overlooked in the diet of the patient, but a certain majority of those who come from the food specialists need the homoeopathic remedy, and improve under it.
DR. CUSTIS: It seems to me we waste a lot of time worrying about what psora is. One man says it is avitaminosis, another says it is scabies, another says it is focal infection, and another says something else. I dont believe we know anything about what psora is. It is certainly a deep-seated something– whether it is a hereditary thing or something else, I dont know- which affects a great many people at the present time, and which, unless we pay some attention to with our homoeopathic remedy, we fail a great many times in curing cases that we cure otherwise.
I think Dr. Farrington said something he didnt realize the importance of when he was discussing this. He said two brothers came to this country and caught scabies and were treated by applications of sulphur, and one got asthma and the other escaped. Why did he escape? There is the point.
It is the same thing with cancer. We say that cancer is due to chronic irritation or to injury. You take 100 women and subject them to the same trauma of the breast, and possibly five or ten of them will get cancer, and the other ninety or ninety- five wont. The answer is deeper.
When we ride our hobbies, whether they be food or scabies or chronic infections, or whatever they are, we are missing, it seems to me, the real fundamental thing that we absolutely know nothing about. Hahnemann laid it to scabies, because scabies was a terrifically prevalent condition in Hahnemanns time. Most everybody had scabies because of the dirt, lack of bathing, and all that sort of thing. A certain percentage of those people, after their scabies didnt get well, showed these other symptoms. It was the obvious thing.
The doctor who just read his paper lays it to avitaminosis because today, with our present method of living, our present poor eating and our eating of refined foods, some of us have certain conditions. Dr. Mackenzie, who has done a lot of work, lays it to chronic infection, or foci of infection in a great number of people, but I dont believe any of us know what we are talking about.
