The Chronic
Diseases, their Peculiar Nature and their Homœopathic Cure.
by Dr Samuel Hahnemann
Presented By Médi-T
(Page 30 … 39)
Hundertmark,
as ab., p. 32. [89] Fr.
Hoffmann, Consult. med.
I. Cas. 28, p.141. [90]Apoplexy.
Cummius in Eph. Nat. Cur. Dec.
I., ann. I, obs.
58. Mobius, Institut.
med., p. 65. J. J. Wepfer,
Histor. Apoplect. Amstel., 1724,
p. 457.Paralysis,
Hoechstetter. Obs. med. Dec.
VIII., obs. 8, p. 245. Journal
de Méd., 1760, Sept., p. 211. Unzer,
Arzt VI., St.
301. [91] Hundertmark,
as above, p. 33. [92] Krause.
Schubert, Diss. de scabie humani
corp., Lips., 1779, p. 23. [93]
Karl Wenzel, as above, p. 174.Melancholy,
Reil, memorab. Fasc.,
III., p. 177. [94]Insanity,
Landais in Roux, Journ. de
Médecine, Tom. 41. Amat.
Lusitanus, Curat. med. Cent.
II., Cur. 74. J.
H. Schulze, Brune, Diss. Casus
aliquot mente alienatorum, Halle, 1707, Cas. I, p. 5. [95]
F. H. Waitz, medic.-chirurg.
Aufsätze, Th. I, p. 130. [96]
Altenburg, 1791. Richter
in Hufel. Journal, XV., II. Grossmann
in Baldinger’s neuem Magaz.,
XI., I. [97]—–
[89]
The itch in a youth of 20 years was suppressed by a purgative which
was allowed to act violently for several days, after which he for
two years suffered daily the most violent convulsions, until,
through the use of birch-juice, the itch was brought back to the
skin.[90]
A young mail of 17 years, of vigorous constitution and good
intelligence, was attacked three years ago, after itch had been
driven out, first by hæmoptysis and then by epilepsy, which grew
worse through medicines until the fits came on every two hours.
Another surgeon, through frequent blood-lettings and many medicines,
effected that he remained free from epilepsy for four weeks, but
soon afterwards the epilepsy returned while he was taking his
noonday nap, and the patient had two or three fits in the nights; at
the same time he was attacked with a very severe cough and
suffocating catarrh, especially during the nights, when he
expectorated a very fetid fluid. He was confined to his bed. At
last, after much medicine, the disease increased so much that he had
ten fits at night and eight during the day. Nevertheless he never in
these fits either clenched his thumbs or had foam at his mouth. His
memory is weakened. The attacks come at the approach of meal-time,
but more frequently after meals. During his nightly attacks he
remains in the deepest sleep without awaking, but in the morning he
feels as if bruised all over. The only warning of a fit consists in
his rubbing his nose and drawing up his left foot, but then he
suddenly falls down.[91]
A woman, after having the itch driven out, had paralysis of one leg
and remained lame.[92]
After driving off the itch with sulphur ointment, a man of 53 years
had hemiplegia.[93]
A minister who for a long time had in vain used internal remedies
against the itch finally grew tired of it and drove it off with
ointment, when his upper extremities were, in a measure, paralyzed
and a hard, thick skin formed in the palms of the hands, full of
bloody chaps and insufferable itching.In the same place
the author mentions also a woman whose fingers contracted from an
itch driven out by external means; she suffered of them a long time.[94]
He found an idiotic melancholy arise in consequence of suppressed
itch; when the itch broke out again the melancholy disappeared.[95]
A student, 20 years old, had the humid itch, which so covered his
hands that he became incapable of attending to his work. It was
driven off by sulphur ointment. But shortly after it appeared how
much his health had suffered from it. He became insane, sang or
laughed where it was unbecoming, and ran until he sank to the ground
from exhaustion. From day to day he became more sick in soul and in
body, until at last hemiplegy came on and he died. The intestines
were found grown together into a firm mass, studded with little
ulcers full of protuberances, some of the size of walnuts, which
were filled, with a substance resembling gypsum.[96]
The same story.[97]
A man of 50 years with whom, after driving away the itch by
ointments, general dropsy had set in; when the itch re-appeared and
drove away the swelling he drove it away again, when he fell into
raving madness, while head and neck swelled up to suffocation; at
last blindness and complete suppression of urine were added.
Artificial irritants applied to the skin and a strong emetic brought
back the itch again; when the eruption extended over the whole body
all the former accidents disappeared.Who, after meditating on even
these few examples which might be much increased from the writings of
the physicians of that time and from my experience, [*]
would remain so thoughtless as to ignore the great evil hidden within,
the Psora, of which evil the
eruption of itch and its other forms, the tinea
capitis, milk crust, tetter, etc., are only indications
announcing the internal, monstrous disease of the whole organism, only
local external symptoms which act vicariously and mitigatingly for the
internal disease? Who, after reading even the few cases described,
would hesitate to acknowledge that the Psora,
as already stated, is the most destructive
of all chronic miasmas? Who would be so stolid as to declare, with,
the later allopathic physicians, that the itch-eruption, tinea and
tetters are only situated superficially upon the skin and may,
therefore, without fear, be driven out through external means since
the internal of the body has no part in it and retains its health?[*]
An opponent, of the old school, has reproached me that I have not
adduced my own experience to prove that the chronic maladies, when
they are not of syphilitic or sycotic origin, spring from the miasma
of itch, as such proofs from experience would have been convincing.
Oho! If the examples here adduced by me from both the older and from
modern non-Homœopathic writings have not yet enough convincing
proof, I should like to know what other examples (even my own not
excepted) could be conceived of as more striking proofs? How often
(and I might say almost always) have opponents of the old school
refused all credence to the observations of honorable Homœopathic
physicians, because they were not made before their own eyes and
because the names of the patients were only indicated with a letter;
as if private patients would allow their names to be used! Why
should I endure the like? And do I not prove my point in a manner
most indubitable and most free from partisanship through the
experience of so many other honest practitioners?Surely, among all the crimes
which the modem physicians of the old school are guilty of, this is
the most hurtful, shameful and unpardonable!The man who, from the
examples given and from innumerable others of a like nature, is not
willing to see the exact opposite of that assertion blinds himself on
purpose and works intentionally for the destruction of mankind.Or are they so little
instructed as to the nature of all the miasmatic maladies connected
with diseases of the skin that they do not know that they all take a
similar course in their origin? And that all such miasmas become first
internal maladies of the whole system before their external assuaging
symptom appears on the skin?We shall more closely
elucidate this process, and in consequence we shall see that all
miasmatic maladies which show peculiar local ailments on the skin are
always present as internal maladies in the system before
they show their local symptom externally upon the skin; but that only
in acute diseases, after taking their course through a certain number
of days, the local symptom, together with the internal disease, is
wont to disappear, which then leaves the body free from both. In
chronic miasmas, however, the outer local symptom may either be driven
from the skin or may disappear of itself, while the internal disease,
if uncured, neither wholly nor in part ever leaves the system; on the
contrary, it continually increases with the years, unless healed by
art.I must here dwell the more
circumstantially on this process of nature, because the common
physicians, especially of modem days, are so deficient in vision; or,
more correctly stated, so blind that although they could, as it were,
handle and feel this process in the origin and development of acute
miasmatic eruptional diseases, they nevertheless neither surmised nor
observed the like process in chronic diseases, and therefore declared
their local symptoms as secondary growths and impurities existing
merely externally on the skin, without any internal fundamental
disease, and this as well with the chancre and the fig-wart as with
the eruption of itch, and fore -since they overlooked the chief
disease or perhaps even boldly denied it- by a mere external treatment
and destruction of these local ailments they have brought unspeakable
misfortunes on suffering humanity.With respect to the origin of
these three chronic maladies, as in the acute, miasmatic eruptional
diseases, three different important moments are to be more attentively
considered than has hitherto been done: First,
the time of infection; secondly,
the period of time during which the whole organism is being penetrated
by the disease infused, until it has developed within; and thirdly,
the breaking out of the external ailment, whereby nature externally
demonstrates the completion of the internal, development of the
miasmatic malady throughout the whole organism.The infection with miasmas,
as well of the acute as of the above-mentioned chronic diseases, takes
place, without doubt, in one single moment,
and that moment, the one most favorable for infection.When the smallpox or the
cowpox catches, this happens in the moment when in vaccination the
morbid fluid in the bloody scratch of the skin comes in contact with
the exposed nerve, which then, irrevocably, dynamically communicates
the disease to the vital force (to the whole nervous system) in the
same moment. After this moment of infection no ablution, cauterizing
or burning, not even the cutting off of the part which has caught and
received the infection, can again destroy or undo the development of
the disease within. Smallpox, cowpox, measles, etc., nevertheless will
complete their course within, and the fever peculiar to each will
break out with its smallpox, cowpox, measles, [*]
etc., after a few days, when the
internal disease has developed and completed itself.[*]
We may justly ask: Is there in any
probability any miasma in the world, which, when it has infected
from without, does not first make the whole organism sick before the
signs of it externally manifest themselves? We can only answer this
question with, no, there is none
!
Does it not take three, four or five days after vaccination is
effected, before the vaccinated spot becomes inflamed? Does not the
sort of fever developed -the sign of the completion of the disease-
appear even later, when the protecting pock has been fully formed; i.e.,
on the seventh or eighth day?
Does it not take ten to twelve days after infection with smallpox,
before the inflammatory fever and the outbreak of the smallpox on
the skin take place?
What has nature been doing with the infection received in these ten
or twelve days? Was it not necessary to first embody the disease in
the whole organism before nature was enabled to kindle the fever,
and to bring out the eruption on the skin?
Measles also require ten or twelve days after infection or
inoculation before this eruption with its fever appears. After
infection with scarlet fever seven days usually pass before the
scarlet fever, with the redness of the skin, breaks out.
What then did nature do with the received miasma during the
intervening days? What else but to incorporate the whole disease of
measles or scarlet fever in the entire living organism before she
had completed the work, so as to be enabled to produce the measles
and the scarlet fever with their eruption.The same is the case, not to
mention several other acute miasmas, also when the skin of man is
contaminated with the blood of cattle affected with anthrax. If, as is
frequently the case, the anthrax has infected and caught on, all
ablutions of the skin are in vain; the black or gangrenous blister,
nearly always fatal, nevertheless, always comes out after four or five
days (usually in the affected spot); i.e.,
as soon as the whole living organism has transformed itself to this
terrible disease.(It is just so with the
infection of half-acute miasmas without eruption. Among many persons
bitten by mad dogs -thanks to the benign ruler of the world- only few
are infected, rarely the twelfth; often, as I myself have observed,
only one out of twenty or thirty persons bitten. The others, even if
ever so badly mangled by the mad dog, usually all recover, even if
they are not treated by a physician or surgeon. [*])
But with whomsoever the poison acts, it has taken effect in the moment
when the person was bitten, and the poison has then communicated
itself to the nearest nerves and, therefore, without contradiction, to
the whole system of the nerves, and as soon as the malady has been
developed in the whole organism (for this development and completion
of the disease nature requires at least several days, often many
weeks), the madness breaks out as an acute, quickly fatal disease. Now
if the venomous spittle of the mad dog has really taken effect, the
infection usually has taken place irrevocably in the moment of
contagion, for experience shows that even the immediate excision [**]
and amputation of the infected part does not protect from the
progression of the disease within, nor from the breaking out of the
hydrophobia – therefore, also, the many hundreds, of other much lauded
external means for cleansing, cauterizing and suppurating the wound of
the bite can protect just as little from the breaking out of the
hydrophobia.[*]
We are indebted especially to the careful English and
American physicians for these comforting experiences – to HUNTER and
HOULSTON (in London Med. Journal,
Vol. I.), and to VAUGHAN, SHADWELL and PERCIVAL., whose observations
are recorded in jam. Mease’s “On the
Hydrophobia, Philadelphia, 1793.”[**]
An eight-year-old girl, in Glasgow, was bitten by a mad dog on the
21st of March, 1792. A surgeon immediately,
exsected the wound altogether, kept it suppurating and
gave mercury until it produced a mild salivation, which was kept tip
for two weeks; nevertheless hydrophobia broke out on the 27th of
April and the patient died on the 29th of April. M. DUNCAN’S Med.
Comment, Dec. II., Vol.
VII., Edinb. 1793, and The
New London Med. Journ., II.From the progress of all
these miasmatic diseases we may plainly see that, after the contagion
from without, the malady connected with it in the interiors of the
whole man must first be developed; i.e., the whole interior man must
first have become thoroughly sick of smallpox, measles or scarlet
fever, before these various eruptions can appear on the skin.For all these acute
miasmatic diseases the human constitution possesses that process
which, as a rule, is so beneficent: to wipe them out (i.e.,
the specific fever together with the specific eruption) in the course
of from two to three weeks, and of itself to extinguish than again,
through a kind of decision (crisis),
from the organism, so that man then is wont to be entirely healed of
them and, indeed, in a short time, unless he be killed by them.[*][*]
Or have these various, acute, half-spiritual miasmas the peculiar
characteristic that – after, they have penetrated the vital force in
the first moment of the contagion (and each one in its own way has
produced disease) and them, like parasites, have quickly grown up
within it and have usually developed themselves by their peculiar
fever, after producing their fruit (the mature cutaneous eruption
which is again capable of producing its miasma) – they again die out
and leave the living organism again free to recover?
On the other hand, are not the chronic miasmas disease-parasites
which continue to live as long as the man seized by them is alive,
and which have their fruit in the eruption originally produced by
them (the itch-pustule, the chancre and the fig-wart, which in turn
are capable of infecting others and which do not die off of
themselves like the acute miasmas, but can only be exterminated and
annihilated by a counter-infection,
by means of the potency of a medicinal disease quite similar to it
and stronger than it (the anti-psoric), so that the patient is
delivered from them and recovers his health?In the chronic miasmatic
diseases nature observes the same course
with respect to the mode of contagion and the antecedent formation of
the internal disease, before the external declarative symptoms of its
internal completion manifests itself on the surface of the body; but
then that great remarkable difference from the acute diseases shows
itself, that in the chronic miasmata the entire internal disease, as
we have mentioned before, remains in the organism during the whole
life, yea, it increases with every year, if it is not exterminated and
thoroughly cured by art.Of these chronic miasmata I
shall for this purpose only adduce those two, which we know somewhat
more exactly; namely, the venereal chancre
and the itch.In impure coition there
arises, most probably at the very moment in the spot which is touched
and rubbed, the specific contagion.If this contagion has taken
effect, then the whole living body is in consequence seized with it.
Immediately after the moment of contagion the formation of the
venereal disease in the whole of theinterior begins.
In that part of the sexual
organs where the infection has taken place, nothing unnatural is
noticed in the first days, nothing diseased, inflamed or corroded; so
also all washing. and cleansing of the parts immediately after the
impure coition is in vain. The spot remains healthy
according to appearance, only the internal organism is called into
activity by the infection (which occurs usually in a moment), so as to
incorporate the venereal miasma and to become thoroughly diseased with
the venereal malady.Only when this penetration of
all the organs by the disease caught has been effected, only when the
whole being has been changed into a man entirely venereal, i.e.,
when the development of the venereal disease has been completed, only
then diseased nature endeavors to mitigate the internal evil and to
soothe it, by producing a local symptom which first shows itself as a
vesicle (usually in the spot originally infected), and later breaks
out into a painful ulcer called the chancre; this does not appear
before five, seven or fourteen days, sometimes, though rarely, not
before three, four or five weeks after the infection. This is
therefore manifestly a chancre ulcer which acts vicariously for the
internal malady, and which has been produced from within by the
organism after it has become venereal through and through, and is able
through its touch to communicate also to other men the same miasma;
i.e., the venereal disease.Now, if the entire disease
thus arising is again extinguished through the internally given
specific remedy, then the chancre also is healed and the man recovers.But if the chancre is
destroyed through local applications [*]
before the internal disease is healed, -and this is still a daily
practise with physicians of the old school,- the miasmatic chronic
venereal remains in the organism as syphilis, and it is aggravated, if
not then cured internally, from year to year until the end of man’s
life, the most robust constitution being unable to annihilate it
within itself.[*]
The venereal disease not only breaks out through the removal
of the chancre by the cautery, – in which case some wretched
casuists have considered syphilis as resulting from the driving back
of the poison out of the chancre into the interior of the body,
which up to this time is supposed by them to have been healthy, –
no, even after the quick removal of the chancre without any external
stimulants, the venereal disease breaks out, which gives additional
conformation, if this were needed, of the indubitable pre-existence
of syphilis in the system. “Petit
cut off a part of the labia minora, in
which for some days a venereal chancre had appeared; the wound
healed, indeed, but the venereal disease broke out notwithstanding.”
M. s. Fabre, Lettres, supplément à son
traité des maladies vénériennes, Paris, 1786. Of
course! because the venereal disease was present in the whole
interior of the body even before the outbreak of the chancre.Only through the cure of the
venereal disease, which pervades the whole internal of the body (as I
have taught and practiced for many years), the chancre, its local
symptom, will also simultaneously be cured in the most effective
manner; and this is best without the use of any external application
for its removal -while the merely local destruction of the chancre,
without any previous general cure and deliverance of man from the
internal disease, is followed by the most certain outbreak of syphilis
with its sufferings.Psora
(itch disease), like syphilis, is
a miasmatic chronic disease, and its original development is similar.The itch disease is, however,
also the most contagious of all
chronic miasmata, far more infectious than the other two chronic
miasmata, the venereal chancre disease and the figwart disease. To
effect the infection with the latter there is required a certain
amount of friction in the most tender parts of the body, which are the
most rich in nerves and covered with the thinnest cuticle, as in the
genital organs, unless the miasma should touch a wounded spot. But the
miasma of the itch needs only to touch the
general skin, especially with tender children. The
disposition of being affected with the miasma of itch is found with
almost everyone and under almost all circumstances, which is not the
case with the other two miasmata.No other chronic miasma
infects more generally, more surely, more easily and more absolutely
than the miasma of itch; as already stated, it is the most contagious
of all. It is communicated so easily, that even the physician,
hurrying from one patient to another, in feeling the pulse has
unconsciously [*]
inoculated other patients with it; wash which is washed with wash
infected with the itch; [**]
new gloves which had been tried on by an itch patient, a strange
lodging place, a strange towel used for drying oneself have
communicated this tinder of contagion; yea, often a babe, when being
born, is infected while passing through the organs of the mother, who
may be infected (as is not infrequently the case) with this disease;
or the babe receives this unlucky infection through the hand of the
midwife, which has been infected by another parturient woman (or
previously); or, again, a suckling may be infected by its nurse, or,
while on her arm, by her caresses or the caresses of a strange person
with unclean hands; not to mention the thousands of other possible
ways in which things polluted with this invisible miasma may touch a
man in the course of his life, and which often can in no way be
anticipated or guarded against, so that men who have never been
infected by the psora are the exception. We need not to hunt for the
causes of infection in crowded hospitals, factories, prisons, or in
orphan houses, or in the filthy huts of paupers; even in active life,
in retirement, and in the rich classes, the itch creeps in. The hermit
on Montserrat escapes it as rarely in his rocky cell, as the little
prince in his swaddling clothes of cambric.[*]
CAR. MUSITANI, Opera de tumoribus, Cap.
20.[**]
As WILLIS has noticed in TURNER, des
maladies de la peau, traduit de l’anglais, à Paris,
1783, Tom. II., Cap.
3, p. 77.As soon as the miasma of
itch, e. g., touches the hand, in
the moment when it has taken effect, it no more remains local.
Henceforth all washing and cleansing of the spot avail nothing.
Nothing is seen on the skin during the first days; it remains
unchanged, and, according to appearance, healthy. There is no eruption
or itching to be noticed on the body during these days, not even on
the spot infected. The nerve which was first affected by the miasma
has already communicated it in an invisible dynamic manner to the
nerves of the rest of the body, and the living organism has at once,
all unperceived, been so penetrated by this specific excitation, that
it has been compelled to appropriate this miasma gradually to itself
until the change of the whole being to a man thoroughly psoric, and
thus the internal development of the psora,
has reached completion.Only when the whole organism
feels itself transformed by this peculiar chronic-miasmatic disease,
the diseased vital force endeavors to alleviate and to soothe the
internal malady through the establishment of a suitable local symptom
on the skin, the itch-vesicles. So long as this eruption continues in
its normal form, the internal psora,
with its secondary ailments, cannot break forth, but must remain
covered, slumbering, latent and bound.Usually it takes six, seven
or ten, perhaps even fourteen days from the moment of infection before
the transformation of the entire internal organism into psora
has been effected. Then only, there follows after a slight or more
severe chill in the evening and a general heat, followed by,
perspiration in the following night, (a little fever which by many
persons is ascribed to a cold and therefore disregarded), the outbreak
of the vesicles of itch, at first fine as if from miliary fever, but
afterwards enlarging on the skin [*]
– first in the region of the spot first infected, and, indeed,
accompanied with a voluptuously tickling
itching which may be called unbearably
agreeable (Grimmen), which compels the patient so
irresistibly to rub and to scratch the vesicles of itch, that, if a
person restrains himself forcibly from rubbing or scratching, a
shudder passes over the skin of the whole body. This rubbing
and scratching indeed satisfies
somewhat for a few moments, but there then follows
immediately a long- continued burning of the part affected.
Late in the evening and before midnight this itching is most frequent
and most unbearable.[*]
Far from being an independent, merely local, cutaneous disease the
vesicles or pustules of itch are the reliable proof that the
completion of the internal psora
has already been effected, and the eruption is merely an integrating
factor of the same; for this peculiar eruption and this peculiar
itching make a part of the essence of the whole disease in its
natural, least dangerous state.The vesicles of itch contain
in the first hours of their formation a lymph clear as water, but this
quickly changes into pus, which fills the tip of the vesicle.The itching not only compels
the patient to rub, but on account of its violence, as before
mentioned, to rub and scratch open the vesicles; and the humor pressed
out furnishes abundant material for infecting the surroundings of the
patient and also other persons not yet infected. The extremities
defiled even to an imperceptible degree with this lymph, so also the
wash, the clothes and the utensils of all kinds, when touched,
propagate the disease.Only this skin symptom of the
psora which has permeated the
whole organism (and which as more manifestly falling under the
cognizance of the senses has the name of itch),
only this eruption, as well as the sores which later arise from it and
are attended on their borders with the itching peculiar to psora, as
also the herpes which has this peculiar itching and which becomes
humid when rubbed (the tetter), as also the tinea
capitis – these alone can propagate this to other persons,
because they alone contain the communicable miasma of the psora.
But the remaining secondary symptoms of the psora,
which in time manifest themselves after the disappearance or the
artificial expulsion of the eruption, i.e.,
the general psoric ailments, cannot at all communicate this disease to
others. They are, so far as we know, just as little able to transfer
the psora to others, as the
secondary symptoms of the venereal disease are able to infect other
men (as first observed and taught by J. HUNTER) with syphilis.When the itch-eruption has
only lately broken out and is not yet widely spread on the skin,
nothing of the general internal malady of the psora
is as yet to be noticed in the state of the patient. The emotional
symptom acts as a substitute for the internal malady and keeps the psora
with its secondary ailments as it were latent and confined. [*][*]
As also the chancre, when not expelled, acts vicariously and
soothingly for the syphilis within, and does not permit the venereal
disease to break out, so long as it remains undisturbed in its
place. I examined a woman who was free from all the secondary
symptoms of the venereal disease; with her a chancre had remained in
its place untreated for two years, and had gradually acquired the
size of almost an inch in diameter. The best preparation of Mercury,
internally administered soon and entirely healed, not only the
internal malady, but also the chancre.In this state, the disease is
most easily cured through specific remedies internally administered.But if the disease is allowed
to advance in its peculiar course without the use of an internal
curative remedy or an external application to drive away the eruption,
the whole disease within rapidly
increases, and this increase of the internal malady makes necessary a
corresponding increase of the skin-symptom. The itch-eruption,
therefore, in order to be able to soothe and to keep latent the
increased internal malady, has to spread and must finally cover the
whole surface of the body.
Copyright © Médi-T
2006