NATURE OF CHRONIC DISEASES - Dr. S. Sudarshana

          Hahnemann in this theoretical part explains about the background behind the development of theory of chronic miasm, describes psora as a chronic miasm and development of psora.

The Homoeopathic healing art, when faithfully followed, has hitherto (up to this time) shown its natural superiority over any allopathic treatment in a very decided and striking manner and this not only in those disease which suddenly attack men(the acute diseases),but also in epidemic diseases and in sporadic fevers.

          Venereal diseases also have been radically healed by homoeopathy much more surely, with less trouble and without any sequelae; for without disturbing or destroying the local manifestation it heals the internal fundamental disease from within only, through the best specific remedy.

         Treatment by allopathic physicians hitherto merely served to increase the distress from this kind of disease; for this treatment consisted of a whole multitude of nauseous mixtures compounded by druggists from violently acting medicines in large doses, of whose separate true effects they were ignorant, together with the use of manifold baths, the sudorific and salivating remedies, the pain killing narcotics, the injections, fomentations, fumigations, the blistering plasters, the exutories and fontanels, but especially the everlasting laxatives, leeches, cupping’s and starving treatments, or whatever names may be given to all these medicinal torments, which continually varied like fashions. By these means the disease was either aggravated and the vital force, spite of so called tonics used at intervals was more diminished or if any striking change was produced by them, instead of the formal sufferings they appeared a worst state there- nameless disease caused by medicine, far worse and more incurable than the original natural one. And so, while the same disease assumed various forms, and while new diseases where being added by the use of improper injurious medicines, the sufferings of the patient where continually aggravated until his pitiable lamentations where hushed forever with his dying breath.

It is not so with homeopathy, the great gift of God!

     Using the more natural treatment, Homeopathy physicians have frequently been able in a short time to remove the chronic disease which they had before them, after examining it according to all the symptoms perceptible to the senses and the means of cure were the most suitable among the homeopathic remedies, used in the smallest doses which had been so far proved as to their pure, true effects. And all this was done without robbing the patient of his fluids and strength, as is done by the allopathy of the common physicians, so that the patient fully healed, could again enjoy gladsome days.

       The complaints yielded for the most part to very small doses of remedy which had proved its ability to produce the same series of morbid symptoms in the healthy body and if the disease was not altogether to inveterate and had not been too much and in too great degree mismanaged by allopathy, it often yielded for a considerable time, so that mankind had good reasons to deem itself fortunate even for that much help and indeed, it often proclaimed its thankfulness.

          Even some gross errors of diet taking cold, the appearance of weather especially rough, wet cold and stormy, or even  the approach of autumn, if ever so mild more yet, winter and wintry spring, and then some violent exertion of the body or mind, but particularly some shock to the health caused by some severe external injury  or a  very sad event that that bowed down the soul, repeated fright, great grief, sorrow and continuous vexation often caused in a weakened body the reappearance of one or more of the ailments which seemed to have been already overcome and this new condition was often aggravated by some quite new concomitance, which is not more threatening than the former ones which had been removed homeopathically were often just as troublesome and now more obstinate. This would be especially the case whenever the seemingly cured disease had for its foundation a Psora which had been more fully developed. When such a lapse would take place the Homeopathic physician would give the remedy most fitting among the medicines then known, as if directed against a new disease, and this would again be attended with pretty good success which for the time would again bring the patient into a better state.

       Some joyous occurrence, or an external condition of circumstances improved by fortune, a pleasant journey, a favorable season or dry, uniform temperature, might occasionally produce a remarkable pause of shorter or longer duration in the disease of the patient, during which the Homeopath might consider him as fairly recovered, and the patient himself, if he good naturedly overlook some passable moderate ailments, might consider himself as healthy. Still such a favorable pause would never be of long duration and the repeated returns of the complaints in the end left even the best selected  Homeopathic remedies then known, and give in the most appropriate doses, the less effective the often they were repeated. They served at last hardly as weak palliatives. The chronic disease could, despite all efforts, be but little delayed in its progress by the homeopaths and grew worse from year to year.

     This was, and remained, the quicker or slower process in such treatments in all non- venereal, severe chronic diseases, even when these we treat in exact accordance with the Homeopathic art as hitherto known. Their beginning was promising, the continuation less favorable, the outcome helpless.

      Homeopathy alone taught first  of all how to heal the well-defined idiopathic diseases, the old, smooth scarlet fever of Sydenham, the more recent purples, whooping cough, croup, sycosis, and autumnal dysenteries, by means of the specifically aiding Homeopathic remedies. Even acute pleurisy and typhous contagious epidemics now allow themselves to be speedily turned into health by a few small doses of rightly-selected Homeopathic medicine.

   Whence then this less favorable, this unfavorable result of the continued treatment of the non-venereal chronic disease even by Homeopathy? What was the reason of the thousands of unsuccessful endeavors to heal the other diseases of chronic nature so that lasting health might result? Might this be caused, perhaps, by the still too small number of Homeopathic remedial means that have so far been proved as to their pure action? The followers of  Homeopathy had hither to thus consoled themselves, but this excuse, or the so called consolation never satisfied the founder of the Homeopathy- particularly because even the new additions of proved valuable medicine increasing  from year to year, have not advanced the healing of the chronic(non-Venereal) diseases by a single step, while the acute diseases ( unless these, at their commencement, threaten unavoidable death) are not passably removed , by means of a correct application of Homoeopathic remedies, but with the assistance of the never- testing, preservative vital  force in our organism , find a speedy and complete cure.

     Why, then, cannot this vital force, efficiently affected through homeopathic medicine, produce any true and lasting recovery in these chronic maladies even with the aid of homeopathic remedies which best cover their present symptoms while this same force which is created for the restoration of our organism is nevertheless indefatigably and successfully active in completing the recovery even in severe acute diseases? What is there to prevent this?

    The answer to his question which is so natural, inevitably lead to the discovery of the nature of these chronic diseases.

     It was a continually repeated fact that the non-venereal chronic diseases, after being time and again removed homeopathically by the remedies fully proved up to the present time, always returned in a more or less varied form and with new symptoms, or reappeared annually with an increase of complaints. This fact gave me the first clew that the Homoeopathic physician with such a chronic (non-venereal) case, yea in all cases of (non-venereal) chronic disease, has not only to combat the disease presented before his eyes, and must not view and treat it as if it were a well-defined disease, to be speedily and permanently destroyed and healed by ordinary homoeopathic remedies but that he has always to encounter only some separate fragment of a more deep-seated original disease.

     The great extent of this is shown in the new symptoms appearing from time to time; so that the Homeopathic physician must not hope to permanently heal the separate manifestations of this kind in the presumption, hitherto entertained, that they are well-defined, separately existing diseases which can be healed permanently and completely. He, therefore, must first find out as far as possible the whole extent of all the accidents and symptoms belonging, to the unknown primitive malady before he can hope to discover one or more medicines which may homeopathically cover the whole of the original disease by means of its peculiar symptoms. By this method he may then be able victoriously to heal and wipe out the malady in its whole extent, consequently also its separate members; that is, all the fragments of a disease appearing in so many various forms.

        But that the original malady sought for must be also of a miasmatic, chronic nature clearly appeared to me from this circumstance, that after it has once advanced and developed to a certain degree it can never be removed by the strength of any robust constitution, it can never be overcome by the most wholesome diet and order of life, nor will it die out of itself. But it is evermore aggravated, from year to year, through a transition into other and more serious symptoms, even till the end of man's life, like every other chronic, miasmatic sickness; e. g., the venereal bubo which has not been healed from within by mercury, its specific remedy, but has passed over into venereal disease. This latter, also never passes away of itself, but, even with the most correct mode of life and with the most robust bodily constitution, increases every year and unfolds evermore into new and worse symptoms, and this, also, to the end of man's life.

      Gradually I discovered more effective means against this original malady that caused so many complaints; against this malady which may be called by the general name of Psora; i.e., against the internal itch disease with or without its attendant eruption on the skin. It then became manifest to me, through the aid afforded when using these medicines in similar chronic diseases, in which the patient was unable to show a like cause, that also these cases in which the patient remembered no infection of this kind were of necessity caused by a Psora with which he had been infected, perhaps, even in his cradle, or in some other way that had escaped his memory; and this often received corroboration on a more careful inquiry with the parents or aged relatives.

       Most painstaking observations as to the aid afforded by the anti-psoric remedies which were added in the first of these eleven years have taught me evermore, how frequently not only the moderate, but also the more severe and the most severe, chronic diseases are of this origin. This observation taught me that not only most of the many cutaneous eruptions which Willan distinguishes with such extreme care from one another, and which have received separate names, but also almost all adventitious formations, from the common wart on the finger up to the largest sarcomatous tumor, from the malformations of the finger-nails up to the swellings of the bones and the curvature of the spine, and many other softening’s and deformities of the bones, both at an early and at a more advanced age, are caused by the Psora. So, also, frequent epistaxis, the accumulation of blood in the veins of the rectum and the anus, discharges of blood from the same (blind or flowing piles), haemoptysis, hematemesis, hematuria, and deficient as well as too frequent menstrual discharges, night-sweats of several years' duration, parchment-like dryness of the skin, diarrhea of many years, standing, as well as permanent constipation and difficult evacuation of the bowels, long-continued erratic pains, convulsions occurring repeatedly for a number of years, chronic ulcers and inflammations, sarcomatous enlargements and tumors, emaciation, excessive sensitiveness as well as deficiencies in the senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling; excessive as well as extinguished sexual desire; diseases of the mind and of the soul, from imbecility up to ecstasy, from melancholy up to raging insanity; swoons and vertigo; the so-called diseases of the heart; abdominal complaints and all that is comprehended under hysteria and hypochondria - in short, thousands of tedious ailments of humanity called by pathology with various names, are, with few exceptions, true descendants of this many-formed Psora alone. I was thus instructed by my continued observations, comparisons and experiments in the last years, that the ailments and infirmities of body and soul which, in their manifest complaints, differ, so radically and which, with different patients, appear so very unlike (if they do not belong to the two venereal diseases, syphilis and sycosis), are but partial manifestations of the ancient miasma of leprosy and itch; i.e., merely descendants of one and the same vast original malady, the almost innumerable symptoms of which form but one whole and are to be regarded and to be medicinally treated as the parts of one and the same disease in the same way as in a great epidemic of typhus fever. Thus in the year 1813 one patient would be prostrated with only a few symptoms of this plague, a second patient showed only a few but different ailments, while a third, fourth, etc., would complain of still other ailments belonging to this epidemic disease, while they were, nevertheless, all sick with one and the same pestilential fever, and the entire and complete image of the typhus fever reigning at the time could Only be obtained by gathering together the symptoms of all, or at feast of many of these patients. Then the one or two remedies, found to be Homeopathic, healed the whole epidemy, and therefore showed themselves specifically helpful with every patient, though the one might be suffering from symptoms differing from those of others, and almost all seemed to be suffering from different diseases.

     Just so, only upon a far larger scale, it is with the Psora, this fundamental disease of so many chronic maladies, each of which seems to be essentially different from the others, but really is not; as may readily be seen from the agreement of several symptoms common to them which appear as the disease runs its course, and also from their being healed through the same remedy.

      All chronic diseases of mankind, even those left to themselves, not aggravated by a perverted treatment, show, as said, such a constancy and perseverance, that as soon as they have developed and have not been thoroughly healed by the medical art, they evermore increase with the years, and during the whole of man's lifetime; and they cannot be diminished by the strength belonging even to the most robust constitution. Still less can they be overcome and extinguished. Thus they never pass away of themselves, but increase and are aggravated even till death. They must therefore all have for their origin and foundation constant chronic miasms, whereby their parasitical existence in the human organism is enabled to continually rise and grow.

       In Europe and also on the other continents so far as it is known, according to all investigations, only three chronic miasms are found, the diseases caused by which manifest themselves through local symptoms, and from which most, if not all, the chronic diseases originate; namely, first, SYPHILIS, which I have also called the venereal change disease; then SYCOSIS, or the fig-wart disease, and finally the chronic disease which lies at the foundation of the eruption of itch; i.e., the PSORA; which I shall treat of first as the most important.


Dr. S. Sudarshana