The Chronic
Diseases, their Peculiar Nature and their Homœopathic Cure.
by Dr Samuel Hahnemann
Presented By Médi-T
(Page 40 … 49)
Yet even at this acme of the
disease the patient still appears healthy in every other respect; all
the symptoms of the internal Psora,
now so much increased, still remain covered and assuaged through the
skin-symptom augmented in the same proportion. But so great a torture,
as is caused by so unbearable an itching spread over the whole body,
even the most robust man cannot continue to bear. He endeavors to free
himself from these torments at any price, and, as there is no thorough
help for him with the physicians of the old school, he endeavors to
secure deliverance at least from this eruption, which itches so
unbearably, even if it should cost his life; and the means are soon
furnished him, either by other ignorant persons, or by Allopathic
physicians and surgeons. He seeks deliverance from his external
tortures, without suspecting the greater misfortune which unavoidably
follows, and is bound to follow, on the expulsion of the external
skin-symptom (which hitherto has acted vicariously for the internal
enlarged psora-disease), as has been sufficiently proved by the
observations mentioned before. But when he thus drives away such an
eruption of itch by external applications, he exposes himself to a
similar misfortune, and acts just as unreasonably, as a person who in
order to be quickly delivered from poverty, and thus as he supposes to
make himself happy, steals a great sum of money, and is, therefore,
sent to the dungeon and the gallows.The longer the itch-disease
has already lasted, whether the eruption, as is usually the case, has
spread over the greater part of the skin, or whether, owing to a
peculiar lack of activity in the skin, (as in some cases) the eruption
has been confined to a few vesicles of itch [*]
– in both cases, supposing only that the Psora
together with its skin-symptom has grown old, the expulsion of the
eruption of itch, whether greater or smaller or even as small as you
please, is attended with the most destructive consequences on account
of the internal itch-disease (psora)
with its unspeakable sufferings, which, through its long continuance,
has increased to a high degree and then unavoidably breaks forth.[*]
See the observation to No. 86. p. 29But the ignorance of the
uninstructed layman may be pardoned if he drives out the itch-eruption
and the troublesome itching by a cold shower-bath, by rolling in the
snow, by cupping, or by rubbing the whole skin, or only the skin
around the joints, with sulphur mixed with lard; for he does not know
to what dangerous accidents and outbreaks of the Psora-disease, that
lurks within, he thereby opens the door and ingress. But who will
pardon the men whose office and duty it is to know the extent of the
inevitably following, illimitable misfortune, resulting from the
external expulsion of the itch-eruption, owing to the Psora which is
then aroused from the whole organism, and who ought to have guarded
against it in every way by a thorough internal cure of the whole of
this disease, [*] when we
see them treat the itch patients all in the same erroneous manner;
yea, with even more violent internal and external remedies, sharp
purgatives, with the Jasser ointment, with lotions of acetate of lead,
with the sublimate of mercury or sulphate of zinc, but especially with
an ointment prepared of fat with flowers of sulphur or with a
preparation of mercury; with which they lightly and carelessly destroy
the eruption, declaring “this is merely an impurity located in
the skin, and must be driven out; then everything will be well and the
man will be healthy and free from every ailment.”[*]
For even when the itch-disease has reached this high degree, the
eruption, together with the internal malady, in one word, the whole psora,
may still be healed by the internal, specific Homœopathic remedies,
with greater difficulty, indeed, than in the beginning, immediately
after its origin, but still far more easily
and certainly than after a complete expulsion of the
eruption by mere external applications, when we must cure the
internal psora as it brings
forth its secondary symptoms and develops into nameless chronic
diseases. The itch-disease, though it may have advanced so far, may
nevertheless in its entire state
be most easily, certainly and thoroughly cured, together with its
external eruption, through the suitable internal remedies, without
the least local application, just as the venereal chancre disease
may most surely and easily be
thoroughly cured often by the least, single dose of the best
preparation of mercury internally administered – when the chancre,
without calling in the aid of the remedy, quickly becomes a mild
ulcer, and in a few days heals of itself, so that no trace of
secondary symptoms (venereal disease) then ever appears or can
appear, since the internal symptom has been cured together with the
local symptoms, as I have taught for many years orally and in my
writings, and have proved by my cures of this kind.
How can we excuse the whole host of physicians, who, hitherto, after
treating this generally spread venereal disease for more than three
hundred years, nevertheless remain so ignorant in recognizing its
nature, that in looking at a chancre they even to this day
acknowledge nothing diseased in the infected patient, but this same
chancre, and do not see the syphilis, which was already present
within and had been developed in the whole organism, even before the
breaking out of the chancre; and so they blindly suppose, that the
chancre is the only venereal evil which is to be extirpated, and
that this needs but to be destroyed by external applications, in
order to be able to declare the man cured; and this without being
instructed, by the many thousand cases in their experience, that by
the local extermination of the chancre they have never done anything
but injury, as they have only deprived the syphilis pre-existing
within of its diverting local symptoms and have thereby compelled
the internal malady to break out only the more certainly and
dreadfully (and in a manner more difficult of cure), as venereal
disease. How can such a universal, pernicious obliquity of vision be
excused?
Or why did these physicians never reflect on the origin of the
figwarts? Why did they always overlook the internal universal
malady, which is the cause of these excrescences? It is only when
this is recognized, that it can be thoroughly cured by its
Homœopathic remedies, which then cause the figwarts to be healed,
without the application of any external means of destruction.
But even if a shadow of an excuse might be offered for this sad
negligence and ignorance, and if anyone would claim that these
physicians have only had three and one-half centuries, in which to
discern clearly the true nature of syphilis,
and that they might have learned this truth after a still more
extended practice (still I have endeavored, though in vain, to
convince them of their error a number of years ago and since then
from time to time), nevertheless, that general negligence of
previous physicians and, I may well say, their obstinate blindness,
are quite without excuse, in that they did not recognize the
internal pre-existing malady, the psora,
which lies at the bottom of the itch-disease, which has infected men
for several thousands of years, and that they ignored in their proud
levity all the facts which point to it, so that they might continue
the delusion and leave the world in its destructive infatuation
that: the unbearably itching pustules are
only a mere superficial ailment of the skin, and by their local
destruction man is delivered from the whole disease, and has fully
recovered.
Not perchance mere medical scribblers, no, the greatest and most
celebrated physicians of modern and most modern days have made
themselves guilty of this grievous error (or shall I say of this
intentional crime), from VON HELMONT even to the latest advocates of
the Allopathic medical practice.
By the use of the above mentioned remedies, they indeed usually
reached their aim; i.e., the
driving away of the eruption and of the itching from the skin, and
they supposed in the intoxication of their spirit (or at least they
pretended), they had destroyed the disease itself and, indeed,
totally, and they sent away the patients, thus abused, assuring them
that they were again healthy.
All the sufferings, which follow the one-sided destruction of the
cutaneous eruption, which belongs to the natural form of the psora,
they passed off as a newly arisen disease, owing to quite another
origin. In their narrowness of mind, they never regarded the
innumerable, plain testimonies of honest observers of earlier days,
which record the sad consequences of the local expulsion of the
itch-eruption, which often followed so closely, that a man would
have to deny his reason, or else acknowledge them as the immediate
result of the indwelling severe malady (the psora),
which had been deprived of the local symptom (the cutaneous
eruption), destined by nature to alleviate the internal malady,
whence the uncured internal disease has been compelled to a manifest
outbreak of its secondary symptoms.Who can pardon them if they
are not willing to learn from the many warning examples recorded by
the older, more conscientious observers, nor by the many thousands of
other examples, which frequently, yea, almost daily, come before their
eyes? Yet they cannot see nor be convinced as to the certain, quickly
fatal or lifelong insidious misfortune they bring upon the
itch-patient through the destruction of his eruption, as they thus
merely unfetter the internal malady (psora), which is laden with
innumerable ailments. This disease is neither destroyed nor cured; and
so this thousand-headed monster, instead of being conquered, is
inexorably let loose against the deceived patient to his destruction,
by tearing down the barriers that shut it in.It may easily be imagined, as
experience, also teaches, that the more months a neglected
itch-eruption, has flourished on the skin, the more surely has
internal psora, which underlies
it, been able to reach, in even a moderate space of time, a great -and
finally its greatest- degree, which dreadful increase it also then
proves through the more dangerous consequences, which the expulsion of
so inveterate an eruption unavoidably draws after it in every case.On the other hand, it is just
as certain that the eruption of a few vesicles of itch which has
broken out only a few days before, in consequence of a recent
infection, may be expelled with less immediate
danger; as the internal psora that
has sprung up in the whole organism has not yet had time to grow up to
a high degree, and we must confess that the expulsion of a few
vesicles of itch, that have just arisen, often shows no immediate,
manifestly strong, evil consequences. Wherefore with delicate and
aristocratic persons, or their children, it usually remains unknown,
that a single vesicle or, a few vesicles itching violently, which
showed only a few days and were at once treated by the careful
physician with lead ointment or a lotion of lead, and which
disappeared the following day, had itch for their foundation.However small the internal psora,
may be at the time of the quick suppression of an itch-eruption, which
has only developed a few vesicles and which is then followed by only
moderate ailments and complaints (which are then usually, from
ignorance, ascribed by the domestic physician to other causes of
little import): the internal malady of psora,
although as yet of slight degree, remains in its character and in its
chronic nature the same general psoric disease of the whole organism; i.e.,
without the aid of art it is ineradicable, and cannot be extirpated by
the strength of even the best and most robust bodily constitution, and
it will increase even to the end of the patient’s life. It
is usually the case, indeed, that this disease, deprived as early as
possible of the first traces of its cutaneous symptom by local
applications, will grow but slowly in the beginning and will make but
slow progress in the organism -much slower- progress than where the
eruption has been allowed to remain for a long time on the skin; for
in the latter case the progress of the internal psora
is of immense rapidity; but the disease, nevertheless, increases
unceasingly, and even in the best cases and under the most favorable
circumstances, quietly and often for years unperceived by the eyes; so
that anyone, who does not know the signs of its latent presence, would
suppose and declare such persons to be healthy and free from any
internal malady. Often for years it does not manifest itself in
prominent symptoms, which might be called manifest diseases.Many hundred observations
have gradually acquainted me [*]
with the signs, by which the internally slumbering, [**]
hitherto latent psora
(itch-malady) may be recognized even in those cases where it has not
yet manifested itself in any startling disease, so that I am able to
root out and to thoroughly cure this malady with its roots, more
easily before the internal psora
has risen to a manifest (chronic) disease, and has developed to such a
fearful height that the dangerous conditions make the cure difficult
and in some cases impossible.[*]
It was more easy to me, than to many hundreds of others, to find out
and to recognize the signs of the Psora as well when latent and as
yet slumbering within, as when it has grown to considerable chronic
diseases, by an accurate comparison of the state of health of all
such persons with myself, who, as is seldom the case, have never
been afflicted with the psora, and have, therefore, from my birth
even until now in my eightieth year, been entirely free from the
(smaller and greater) ailments enumerated here and further below,
although I have been, on the whole, very apt to catch acute epidemic
diseases, and have been exposed to many mental exertions and
thousand fold vexations of spirit.[**]
Allopathy has also assumed hidden (latent)
conditions of disease in patients, in order to explain, or, at
least, to excuse its blind inroads with violent medicines,
blood-letting, anodynes, etc. These so-called qualitates
occultæ Fernelii are, however, wholly suppositions and
imaginary, as (according to the statement of this same physician)
they are supposed not to be recognizable by any manifestations and
symptoms. But whatever does not make known its hidden, imaginary
existence by any sign does not exist for us men, who are limited by
our Creator in our cognizance of things to observations – it is
consequently a phantom of a roving fancy. It is quite different with
the various forces slumbering (latent)
in nature; despite their ordinary occultness, they, nevertheless,
show themselves when the requisite circumstances and conditions
appear; e.g., latent heat, even in metals that feel cold, is
manifested when they are rubbed, just as the Psora manifests itself;
e.g., as a drawing pain in the
sheaths of the muscles, when the person infected with Psora has
been, exposed to a draught, etc.There are many signs of the psora
which is gradually increasing within, but is as yet slumbering, and
has not yet come to the full out-break of a manifest disease; but no
one person has all these symptoms; the one has more of them, the other
a smaller number; the one has at present only one of them, but in the
course of time he will also have others; he may be free from some,
according to the peculiar disposition of his body or according to the
external circumstances of different persons.
SYMPTOMS
OF LATENT PSORA.Mostly with children:
frequent discharge of ascarides and other worms; unsufferable itching
caused by the latter in the rectum.The abdomen often distended.
Now insatiable hunger, then
again want of appetite.Paleness of the face and
relaxation of the muscles.Frequent inflammations of the
eyes.Swellings of the cervical
glands (scrofula).Perspiration on the head, in
the evening after going to sleep.Epistaxis with girls and
youths (more rarely with older persons), often very severe.Usually cold hands or
perspiration on the palms, (burning in the palms).Cold, dry, or ill-smelling
sweaty feet, (burning in the soles of the feet).The arms or hands, the legs
or feet, are benumbed by a slight cause.Frequent cramps in the calves
(the muscles of the arms and hands).Painless subsultus of various
portions of the muscles here and there on the body.Frequent or tedious dry or
fluent coryza or catarrh, [*]
or impossibility of catching a cold even from the most severe
exposure, even while otherwise having continually ailments of this
kind.[*]
The epidemic catarrhal fevers and catarrhs which seize almost
everyone, even the healthiest persons (Grippe, Influenza), do not
belong to this category.Long continued obstruction of
one or both nostrils.Ulcerated nostrils (sore
nose).Disagreeable sensation of
dryness in the nose.Frequent inflammation of the
throat, frequent hoarseness.Short tussictilation in the
morning.Frequent attacks of dyspnœa.
Predisposition to catching
cold (either in the whole body or only in the head, the throat, the
breast, the abdomen, the feet; e.g.,
in a draught, [*]
(usually, when these parts are inclined to perspiration), and many
other, sometimes long continuing ailments arising therefrom.[*]
Persons not afflicted with psora
through draughts and damp cold air may not be agreeable to them, do
not suffer any colds or evil after-effects therefrom.Predisposition to strains,
even from carrying or lifting a slight weight, often caused even by
stretching upward and reaching out the arms for objects which are hung
high (so also a multitude of complaints resulting from a moderate
stretching of the muscles: headache, nausea, prostration, tensive pain
in the muscles of the neck and back, etc.)Frequent one-sided headache
or toothache, even from moderate emotional disturbances.Frequent flushes of heat and
redness of the face, not infrequently with anxiety.Frequent falling out of hair
of the head, dryness of the same, many scales upon the scalp.Predisposition to erysipelas
now and then.Amenorrhœa, irregularities
in the menses, too copious, too scanty, too early (too late), of too
long duration, too watery, connected with various bodily ailments.Twitching of the limbs on
going to sleep.Weariness early on awaking;
unrefreshing sleep.Perspiration in the morning
in bed.Perspiration breaks out too
easily during the daytime, even with little movement (or inability to
bring out perspiration).White, or at least very pale
tongue; still more frequently cracked tongue.Much phlegm in the throat.
Bad smell from the mouth,
frequently or almost constantly, especially early in the morning and
during the menses, and this is perceived either as insipid, or as
slightly sour, or as if from a stomach out of order, or as mouldy,
also as putrid.Sour taste in the mouth.
Nausea, in the morning.
Sensation of emptiness in the
stomach.Repugnance to cooked, warm
food, especially to meat (principally with children).Repugnance to milk.
At night or in the morning,
dryness in the mouth.Cutting pains in the abdomen,
frequently or daily (especially with children), more frequently in the
morning.Hard stools, delaying usually
more than a day, clotted, often covered with mucus (or nearly always
soft, fermenting stools, like diarrhœa).Venous knots on the anus;
passage of blood with the stools.Passing of mucus from the
anus, with or without fæces.Itching on the anus.
Dark urine.
Swollen, enlarged veins on
the legs (swollen veins, varices).Chilblains and pains as from
chilblains, even outside of the severe cold of winter; even, also, in
summer.Pains as of corns, without
any external pinching of the shoes.Disposition to crack, strain
or wrench one joint or another.Cracking of one or more
joints on moving.Drawing, tensive pains in the
neck, the back, the limbs, especially, also, in the teeth (in damp,
stormy weather, in northwest and northeast winds, after colds,
overlifting, disagreeable emotions, etc.).Renewal of pains and
complaints while at rest, and disappearance of the same while in
motion.Most of the ailments come on
at night, and are increased with a low barometer, with north and
northeast [*] winds, in
winter and towards spring.[*]
In Europe northeast winds are cold, sharp and dry, corresponding to
our west winds. -Transl.Uneasy, frightful, or at
least too vivid, dreams.Unhealthy skin; every little
lesion passes into sores, cracked skin of the hands and of the lower
lips.Frequent boils, frequent
felons (whitlows).Dry skin on the limbs; on the
arms, the thighs, and also at times on the cheeks.Here or there a rough,
scaling spot on the skin, which causes at times a voluptuous itching
and, after the rubbing a burning sensation.Here or there at times,
though seldom, a single insufferably pleasant, but unbearably itching
vesicle, at its point sometimes filled with pus, and causing a burning
sensation after rubbing, on a finger, on the wrist or in some other
place.Suffering from several or
from a greater number of these ailments (even at various times and
frequently), a person will still consider himself as healthy, and is
supposed to be so by others. He may also lead a quite endurable life
in such a state, and without much hindrance, attend to his business as
long as he is young or still in his vigorous years, and so long as he
does not suffer any particular mishap from without, has a satisfactory
income, does not live in vexation or grief, does not overexert
himself; but especially if he is of quite a cheerful, equable,
patient, contented, disposition. With such persons the psora
(internal itch malady), which may be recognized by a connoisseur by
means of a few or by more of the above symptoms, may slumber on for
many years within, without causing any continuing chronic disease.But still, even in such
favorable external relations, as soon as these persons advance in age,
even moderate causes (a slight vexation, or a cold, or an error in
diet, etc.), may produce a violent attack of
(however only a brief) disease: a violent attack of colic,
inflammation of the chest or the throat, erysipelas, fever and the
like, and the violence of these attacks seems to be out of proportion
to its moderate cause. This is mostly wont to happen in fall or
winter, but often also by preference in springtime.But even where a person,
whether a child or an adult, who has the psora
slumbering within him, shows much semblance of health, but happens
upon the opposite of the above-described favorable conditions of life,
when his health and whole organism have been very much weakened and
shaken by a prevalent epidemic fever or an infectious acute disease,
[*] smallpox,
measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever, purple rash, etc., or through
an external severe lesion, a shock, a fall, a wound, a considerable
burn, the breaking of an arm or a leg, a hard labor, the confinement
due to a disease (usually helped on by the
incorrect and weakening Allopathic treatment), confinement
at a sedentary occupation in a gloomy, close room, weakening the vital
force; the sad losses of beloved relatives bending down the soul with
grief, or daily vexation and annoyance which embitter the life;
deterioration of the food or an entire want of what is necessary and
indispensable, exposure and inferior food beating down man’s courage
and strength; then the psora,
which has hitherto slumbered, awakes and shows itself in the
heightened and augmented symptoms enumerated below, in its transition
to the formation of severe maladies; one or another of the nameless
(psoric) chronic diseases [**]
breaks out and most of all through weakening
and exhausting improper treatment by allopathic physicians,
they are aggravate from time to time without intermission, often to a
fearful height, if external circumstances favorable for the patient do
not interpose, and cause a moderation in the process of the malady.[*]
At the termination of an acute fever there often follows, as if
incited by such a fever, an appearance of an old psora
residing in the body, as an eruption of itch. This the physicians
explain as a new generation of itch in this individual body replete
with bad humors (scilicet),
since they know nothing of a psora in man which may be quiescent for
a long period. But the itch-disease cannot now be generated or arise
or be created anew of itself, just as no smallpox or cow-pox, no
measles, no venereal chancre disease, etc., can now make its
appearance with any man without previous infection.[**]
The one or the other disease, according to the original bodily
constitution, a peculiar mode of living, a peculiar disposition of
the mind often arising from the individual education or a more
receptive or more weakened condition of some part of the body, gives
a peculiar direction to the disease, and thus causes the itch
disease to lead to the origin of the one or the other disease, so as
to show itself preferably in that one direction and develop itself
in that particular modification. A passionate, peevish disposition
gives an extraordinary predisposition to the development of the psora;
so also previous exhaustion through frequent pregnancies, excessive
nursing of infants, extraordinary hardships, exhausting
erroneous medical treatment, debauchery, and a profligate
mode of living. The internal itch-disease is, as before mentioned,
of such a peculiar nature that it may remain, as it were, tied down
and covered up for a long through external favorable surroundings,
so that a man may seem to the superficial observer healthy for
years, even for many years, until circumstances unfavorable to the
body or the soul, or to both, may arise, and serve as a hostile
impulse to awaken the disease slumbering within and thus develop its
germs. His acquaintances and his physician, yea, the patient
himself, can not then comprehend how his health could so suddenly
fall into a decline. To bring some examples for explanation from my
own experience: After a simple fracture of a limb attended with
confinement to bed for five or six weeks, there may follow diseased
conditions of another kind, the cause of which cannot be guessed,
which diseased condition, even when measurably removed, nevertheless
returns, and which even without any error in diet nevertheless at
their return show aggravation. This is mostly the case in fall
(winter) and spring and becomes a tedious ailment increasing from
year to year, a lasting cure for which, without the substitution of
a still worse disease for it by an allopathic cure, has been
hitherto vainly sought for in the councils of former physicians and
also in visits to mineral springs. There are in man’s life
innumerable stumbling-blocks or unfavorable occurrences of this kind
which serve to awaken the psora
(the internal itch-disease) which till then has been slumbering
(perhaps for a long time previously) and which cause its germs to
develop. They are often of such a nature that the grave evils which
gradually follow on them are out of all proportion to them, so that
no rational man can consider those occurrences as sufficient causes
for the chronic diseases which follow and which are often of a
fearful character. But such a man is compelled to acknowledge a
deeper seated hostile cause of these appearances, which cause has
only now developed itself.For example, a
young married woman who, viewed superficially and according to the
common standard, was healthy, but who had in her childhood been
infected with psora, had the
misfortune to be thrown out of her carriage while in the third month
of her pregnancy, from which she suffered not only slight injury and
the fright, but also a miscarriage, and the attending loss of blood
gave her a considerable set-back. In a few weeks, however, her
youthful constitution had pretty well recovered, and she might have
been of a speedy return to lasting good health, when the
announcement of the dangerous illness of a beloved sister, living at
a distance, threw her back and augmented her former ailments, which
had not yet been quite removed, by the addition of a multitude of
nervous disorders and convulsions, thus turning them into a serious
illness. Better news from her sister, indeed, follow, and at last
good news. At last her sister, entirely restored herself, pays her a
visit. But the sick young wife still remains sick, and even if she
seems to recover for a week or two, her ailments nevertheless return
without any apparent cause. Every succeeding confinement, even when
quite easy, every hard winter, adds new ailments to the old, or the
former disorders change into others still more troublesome, so that
at last there ensues a serious chronic illness though no one can see
why the full vigor of youth, attended by happy external
surroundings, should not have soon wiped out the consequence of that
one miscarriage; still less can it be explained why the unfortunate
impression of those sad tidings should not have disappeared, on
hearing of the recovery of her sister, or at least on the actual
presence of her sister fully restored.
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