Further thoughts on Psora

A lot of reflective thinking today. If disease development follows infection along a pathway, for example Tuberculosis, there is a known pathology in the aetiology. We expect a singular disease expression. However, Hahnemann opened the concept that all non venereal disease could be linked in some way. He attributed it to skin ailments which could cause internal problems, and of course has had thousands of years to modify.

Conceptually, I accept the link. How it works even evaded Hahnemanns thinking, so he left the matter open for further investigation and consideration.

Here is where I am with it all. Its my thoughts and I take full responsibility if Im wrong…

There is nothing to prevent mankind from being susceptible to all things that affect mankind. Some diseases will overcome the immune system without mercy. SOME individuals will escape the effects but generally, mankind per se will be affected.

In real terms, we as Earths inhabitants, get sick, locally and globally. Some diseases affect nations of certain ethnic characteristics more than another and some nations have no immunity to other nations diseases at all. Yet in this day and age, the world is pretty much an open field as far as disease is concerned.

I postulate the theory that humans to a lesser or greater degree, carry genetically and biologically, the capacity to develop ANY disease as we are predisposed to them, and as such ALL disease share a link. There is no such thing as a PSORA infection. There however is the ability to contage an infection from someone who carries bacteria, or a virus, or a fungus which is PART of the connected worldwide disease source which is classified as Psora. Genetically, I am sure we pass on susceptibility which is triggered when we get infected.

Hahnemann stated that he himself never had Psora. Which logically means that he never contaged a connected disease, but was susceptible to annual acute diseases of no deeper connection.

This allows for people to stop looking for the missing infection of Psora… It is not there. IT never has been. Once infected with certain disease causations, we are open to everything, dependent on our immunity and level of health.

I welcome thoughts on this topic.

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Causal Medicine and homoeopathy. (1 of 2)

The Thrust of modern medicine is to find causes of disease conditions and to  remove them with the idea that by removing the cause the effect will cease and result in cure of a disease.

According to the thinking of mainstream medicine,  three things have been pointed  out as causal factors  of  diseases, e.g.,  pathological structure,  pathological  function  and  indirectly pathogenic bacteria capable of producing disease conditions.

Science postulates the  cause is  the invariable,  unconditional  and immediate antecedent of the effect or the sum-total of conditions, positive and negative, taken together which  are sufficient to produce the  effect without the presence of any  other antecedent  or in other  words,  in scientific investigations,  the  cause must be regarded as the entire aggregate of conditions or circumstances requisite to the effect.

However it can easily be demonstrated that neither structure, nor function or  micro-organisms possess the  properties of cause (strictly according to the  canons of logic), which are as  follows:

• when the cause appears the effect must always follow it;
• when the cause  disappears the  effect must always disappear;
• when the cause varies the  effect must always  vary accordingly;
• the  cause precedes the effect.

Since the principle of causation is a  hypothesis which up till  now has not been proven  in  practice and is theoretically unjustified, all  the researches devised for the purpose of finding causes  (prima causa morbi)  must be inconclusive. Little wonder,  then,  that despite the enormous amount of work done we have been unable to find the original causes of diseases and that  medical   theories  succeed one another with such extraordinary  rapidity.

The  claim of the orthodox system of medicine of being  a rational scientific one because of its being based on the principle of causality, fails.

Here  Homoeopathy  steps  in.  Hahnemann  gave  up  the attempt to  base his system of medicine on a causal basis. To him association or sequence of phenomena was enough. He presented Homoeopathy, based on the Law of Similars as  a descriptive  science,  based on  phenomenalism and not concerned  principally with causal explanations.  It is also  to be noted that  we find  Hahnemann’s ideas in accord with the most advanced conceptions of physical science.

Here, we must pause and reflect, ask questions and rationalize.  Is Hahnemann saying that Bacteria and Virii are not the cause of a disease? No. Hahnemann was among the first to describe bacteria as “living” creatures that carry disease inducing infection. After studying his words for 35 years, I have come to see that he divides causality and individual disease as two separate entities.

You can remove the cause, the bacteria, the virus, the fungus, and yet Dis-ease itself will continue to be present in the organism. Many times I have seen Gonnorhea infection ( Neisseria gonorrhoeae) removed from a person, and yet health declines. Sometimes even the partners health can decline and no trace of gonorrhoea can be detected.

So a situation arises within homoeopathy and understanding of what Hahnemanns theory of Miasms is refering to. In my experience, 95% of all explanations are simply wrong. I bring Miasms into this discussion simply because it answers how we as homoeopaths can relate to the subject of causality and disease.

It took me a number of years of reading and re-reading the Chronic Diseases and the Organon to gain insight into the explanation of Hahnemanns words. For those of us with a training in homoeopathy that included Kents interpretive and religious overlay, it required a leap of faith to put aside the philosophy of Swedenborgianism and just look at Hahnemann without that veil. Once done, the meaning of Hahnemanns words became clear.

Miasm is an infecting agent.

Miasmatic Disease is the resultant illness after being infected. It is NOT the infecting agent.

So. following the logic, once infected a disease process starts up. This is no longer dependent on the infecting agent, and is a direct reaction to BEING infected. Removing the primary infection prevents a CONSTANT infection state, but does not stop the reactive disease production that has started.

We will discuss further in another article.

 

HOMOEOPATHY EXPLAINED

HOMOEOPATHY EXPLAINED
By John Henry Clarke, M. D.

Hahnemann’s Doctrine of the Chronic Miasms.

     By “chronic disease” Hahnemann did not mean exactly the same thing as is now generally understood by the phrase – a disease that lasts a long time and is incurable. To make his meaning clear, I can not do better than quote Hahnemann’s own definition of acute and chronic diseases, from paragraph 72 of his Organon :-

     “The diseases to which is liable are either rapid morbid processes of the abnormally deranged vital force, which have a tendency to finish their course more or less quickly, but always in a moderate time – these are termed acute diseases ; or they are diseases of such a character that, with small, often imperceptible beginnings, dynamically derange the living organism, each in its own peculiar manner, and cause it to deviate from the healthy condition in such a way that the automatic life energy, called vital force, whose office it is preserve the health, only opposes to them at the commencement and during their progress, imperfect, unsuitable, useless resistance, but must helplessly suffer (them to spread and ) itself to be more and more abnormally deranged, until at length the organism is destroyed ; these are termed chronic diseases. They are caused by infection from a chronic miasm.”

     By “miasm” Hahnemann means an infectious principle, which, when taken into the organism, may set up a specific disease. According to Hahnemann, there were not only miasms of acute disease, like the infectious principle of scarlatina, for example, but also of chronic diseases. Among the latter he recognised three-syphilis, sycosis and psora. The first is the lues venerea, which is recognised by all schools alike. The second is allied to this, but is distinguished by the production of characteristic warty growths. The third is a discovery of Hahnemann’s, about which there has been the greatest misconception.

     Before giving an account of what Hahnemann meant by “psora,” I will give a familiar instance of a chronic miasm – the disease set up by vaccination. Vaccinia or “Cow-pox,” as the late Dr. Matthews Duncan pointed out, is extremely analogous to syphilis in many of its characters, and not the least in the appearance of secondary disorders after the primary illness is over. The course of the disease is well known. The virus having been introduced through an abrasion of the skin, in about a week inflammation occurs at the spot. Then there appears first a vesicle, then a pustule, then a scab, and finally a scar when the scab drops off. During the time that this series of events is occurring, constitutional symptoms manifest themselves, chiefly in the form of fever and undefined malaise. When the healing has taken place, three may be nothing more occur. The organism may have reacted perfectly and discharged the miasm. But this is not often the case. The diminished susceptibility to small-pox infection shows a change of a deep constitutional character. This constitutional change has been named “vaccinosis” by Burnett, and, as I can attest, is the parent of much chronic illness. Often skin eruptions occur, lasting for years, or various other kinds of ill-health, lasting, it may be, as long as life lasts, and not seldom shortening life. When such a series of disorders occurs, it is not (according to Hahnemann’s doctrine, though he did not use this illustration) a succession of new diseases, but different evolutions of one and the same disease, the “miasm” of Vaccinia producing the chronic malady, vaccinosis.

     In the early years of his homeopathic practice Hahnemann noticed that in certain cases the remedies he gave only produced temporary benefit. In these cases he found that the homśopathically of the remedies given was not complete. There was some factor in the case which had not been matched. It became apparent to him, then, that he had not only to take account of the malady from also of previous and apparently different maladies. And he found the remedies which corresponded, in their action, to the whole course of the pathological life of a patient were needed for a cure ; and through his provings he discovered what these deeply acting remedies were.

     Many cases he met with in practice in which the ill-health dated from the suppression of a skin disease, probably years before. That skin disease, said Hahnemann, is really a part of the present disorder. To take a common example, asthma is often found to appear after the “cure” by external means of a skin disorder. The patient is not suffering from two diseases : there is, according to Hahnemann’s pathology, one chronic miasm at work producing the two effects.

     The large majority of chronic diseases Hahnemann traced to the chronic miasm he termed “psora,” and he maintained on the skin of the miasm was an eruption of itching vesicles, of which the itch vesicle was a type. It has of which the itch vesicle was a type. It has been started that Hahnemann ascribed to the itch the production of nine-tenths of chronic diseases, and he has been accused of ignorance in not knowing that itch was caused by an insect. But Hahnemann not only knew of the itch-insect, he actually figured it in one of his works. But he maintained that, in spite of the presence of the insect, this was not the whole of the disease – just as the tubercle bacillus is not the whole of pulmonary consumption. If it were, no doctors would escape consumption, since they inhale the bacillus constantly from their patients. “The itch,” Hahnemann maintained, “is chiefly an internal disease’. ‘Psora is an internal disease – a sort of internal itch – an may exist with or without an eruption upon the skin.’ ‘Psora forms the basis of the itch.’ To the reckless suppression of the chief external symptoms of psora Hahnemann ascribed the prevalence of chronic disorders.

     To put it in other words, the psora doctrine of Hahnemann is practically the same as the doctrine of certain French authorities who ascribe a great variety of chronic diseases to what they call a ‘herpetic diathesis’, that is to say, a morbid state of the organism liable to manifest itself on the skin by an itching vesicular eruption.

     The essential truth of Hahnemann’s doctrine may be seen by taking a glance at the history of individuals and families. The skin eruptions of childhood, the late development of bones and teeth, the anaemia of puberty, and the consumption which finally carries off the patient, are not so many different diseases, but different manifestations of one and the same disease, whether we call it ‘psora’ with Hahnemann, or ‘herpetic diathesis’ with the French. Then, again, take a family : one member has enlarged and inflamed glands, one ulceration of the eyes, one a chronic cough, one hysteria, one eczema. They are all children of the same parents, with the same elements of heredity, and their diseases are essentially one and the same, only manifesting itself differently in different individuals. This disease Hahnemann called a ‘chronic miasm’. The seat of its operations is the vital force, which can only be freed from it by dynamically acting homśopathic remedies.

     In his study of the chronic miasms Hahnemann found many other very characteristic symptoms besides the occurrence of eruptions on the skin; and he found remedies having corresponding symptoms, which he gave to patients with signal success. Among those remedies which he found to produce symptoms likest to those occurring in psoric patients, Sulphur takes the foremost place.

     Hahnemann’s great works on Chronic Diseases gives the symptoms of these remedies at length. This work, of which the full title is “The Chronic Diseases : their Specific Nature and Homśopathic Treatment,” is the crowning work of Hahnemann’s career.

     It will be seen from the above sketch that Hahnemann’s theory of disease is profoundly philosophical and intensity practical. It is as far as possible removed from tentative and fragmentary theories of disease current in his own and in our day. Hahnemann’s pathology goes hand in hand with treatment, and is thus checked at every step by the test of practice.

 

The maladies of Homeopathy

It always makes me sad when I see what modern and improved methods of practising homoeopathy has done to our therapy. It has all but destroyed it in the West.

When I read Hahnemann and see the scientific basis for a medical practice, and then see what people do in his name today, it is not good.

Take something as simple as the Miasms. I say simple because it is a treatise on Infection and the resultant diseases that arise from infection. It is the exact same model that is used In modern medicine except using different names.

There has arisen a whole cultish attitude around the Miasms, to the point where certain individuals have made it almost a mystical energy, originally based on the Swedenborgian notion of original sin and divisions within mankind of deviations from health. So much so that people base prescriptions solely on the assumed ‘Miasm’ and look at the ‘miasmatic remedies’ of that miasm only. In Mexico, miasms are labelled psora = 1. Sycosis = 2 and Syphilis = 3. Then complicated methods of analysis are made and the patient is assigned grading in miasms eg. 312 or 231 etc.

“ Miasms” do not only account for pathological tendencies but also for the attraction towards certain people, their affinity to each other and the (dis-) harmony of relationships. Ortega opined that “any relationship between people is realized tropism. We always pursue that which is analogous, something which prolongs our existence or whose existence we prolong. It is logical that, in the miasmatic realm, we are linked to those who correspond to us, and this correspondence will also be a function of miasmatic characteristics. A psoric-sycotic-syphilitic (or 1-2-3, according to the relative contribution of each miasm) will, in theory, be perfectly complemented by another person represented miasmatically by the numbers 3-2-1, so that the characteristic modes of expression of the one can be fused with those of the other by virtue of continuity, of interlacing, within the overall need of analogy. The expression of their characteristic qualities forms a sort of circle of complementarity and succession whose outcome is a persistent harmonic movement.”

A read of the Chronic Diseases by Hahnemann shows everyone he treated with a miasmatic infection or disease, HAD TO BE PRIMARILY INFECTED with the disease causing agent. This means you had to have been infected with Psora, Syphilis or Gonorrhoea There is no case of him treating anyone born from infected people with a so called miasmatic principle simply because infecting agents are not passed in childbirth. Just the results of the parents disease. The child has to be infected with one of the three infections to become infectious, and the disease passed on itself is not infectious and therefore not a miasm (infection), just the results. It is treated in the same manner as ANY OTHER CASE.

After Boenninghausen wrote his treatise on Psoric diseases and remedies, and was writing on the others, Hahnemann instructed him to just put all the remedies together rather than differentiate simply because the principle of like cures like and case taking method outlined by him still held good.

If you have Syphilis or gonorrhoea from a primary infection, you will be treated in the way outlined by Hahnemann in his writings, probably with mercurius or Sulphur and Thuja and then with whatever other medicines are indicated.

The passed on disease state, is usually limited and developed to the maximum and does not normally progress much further.

There is no mystical magical ethereal meaning to Miasm.

Sadly the West is attracting wanna be healers rather than physicians who want to practice a proven medical speciality.

No wonder the therapy is scorned.

 

Hahnemann’s Conception of Chronic Disease, as Caused by Parasitic Micro-organism

We all know the joy of seeing sicknesses of definite symptoms yield, almost miraculously, to the remedy of like symptoms. We thrill to the triumphs of Homoeopathy in Cholera-in Dysentery-in Ptomaine poisonings-in Pneumonias-in Broncho-pneumonias-in hundreds of conditions, trivial and severe and then!…..we all come across cases which, after apparent yielding to the seemingly indicated remedy, recur :-do less well :-finally cease to respond. Why is this?…..

This was also Hahnemann’s experience. Bu that indomitable Pioneer did not merely shrug his shoulders, and dub them, “Old Chronics!” Neither did he accept the suggestion of his followers that “perhaps not enough remedies had been discovered and proved to cover all cases of disease”….This he says he “rejected, as a mere subterfuge.

But-he stuck to his guns! “In spite of failures in the case of some chronic non-venereal diseases, the Doctrine of Similars has been, and ever will be, founded on the unshaken pillars of truth. Facts have confirmed its excellence-year-if this may be said of human things, its infallibility.”

“Why, then”, he asks, “should the continued homoeopathic treatment of the non-venereal chronic diseases have been so unsuccessful? Why should Homoeopathy have failed in thousands of cases to cure thoroughly and forever such chronic ailments?”