This article attempts to use a short discussion about miasms and nosodes as a launching pad into a deeper discussion of homeopathic views about disease and cure, as basically aspects of essentialism. Dr Samuel HAHNEMANN (1755-1843) When Hahnemann announced his miasm theory in 1828 it was greeted
This article attempts to use a short discussion about miasms and nosodes as a launching pad into a deeper discussion of homeopathic views about disease and cure, as basically aspects of essentialism.
Dr Samuel HAHNEMANN (1755-1843) When Hahnemann announced his miasm theory in 1828 it was greeted with shock, disbelief, uproar and derision by the entire medical world. Even many homeopaths blushed with shame and completely ignored the idea as preposterous. It was hard to see where Hahnemann was coming from. The grand scheme of the miasms, so familiar today, seemed just like words from an alien language. If you start from symptom totality, then you can just about reach the even wider concept of a miasm as a grouped entity deriving from hundreds of cases. But if you start from the familiar allopathic terrain of a ‘disease’ affecting whole populations, then the idea of miasms as internalised and inherited dyscrasias seems very hard to grasp. The conceptual challenge is simply one of breadth of view. Each individual case, upon which homeopathy is based, was henceforth to be viewed in the light of another totality – the family legacy of Psora, Syphilis and Sycosis.
The theory of miasms originates in Hahnemann’s book The Chronic Diseases, [1] published around the same time that he also decided to fix 30c as the standard potency for all homeopaths. He declared that the theory was the result of 12 years of the most painstaking work on difficult cases of a chronic character combined with his own research into the historical diseases of man.
The three miasms given in that work are held to be responsible for all disease of a chronic nature and to form the foundation for all disease in general. This latter aspect was then to receive considerable amplification from Kent. Kent was also able to more clearly identify those remedies that relate to each miasm. Though now generally accepted by most homeopaths without question, at the time, the theory was generally greeted with disbelief and derision from all but the most devoted followers. This can be explained in part by the primitive nature of medical science at that time, which was not really very willing to accommodate any theory for the origin of disease, least of all such a grand and all-embracing one.
The word miasm means a cloud or fog in the being. Its meaning can be expanded and seen as a primary defect; a root cause; a shadow, fragment or internalised relic of an actual disease passed down the genetic line; a vaccine defect; a pre-disposition [dyscrasia] towards a predictable pattern of certain diseases and disorders within a family, race or the human race; and a defect of the vital force.
The theory suggests that if 100% of all disease is miasmatic, then 85% is due to the primary and atavistic miasm Hahnemann called Psora. The remaining 15% of all disease he held to be either syphilitic or sycotic, being derived from suppressed Syphilis or suppressed Gonorrhoea. Hahnemann, unlike Kent later, attached no moral dimension whatsoever to the sexual nature of the two latter miasms. Kent, of course, emphasised this moral aspect a great deal, which might not be that surprising in the somewhat puritanical atmosphere of nineteenth century small town America.
Taking them in reverse order, we can depict the main characteristic features of each miasm.
Sycosis
This miasm is held to be responsible for many sexual and urinary disorders, and affections of the joints and the mucous membranes. Also those conditions worsened by damp weather and by contact with the sea. Thus arthritis and rheumatism, asthma, catarrhs, bronchitis, cystitis and warts are all regarded as partly or mainly sycotic in character. The wart came to be seen as the underlying archetype of this miasm as it is also held to be responsible for all warty excrescences and growths. Chief remedies are Thuja, Lycopodium, Natrum sulph, Causticum, Kali sulph, Staphysagria, Calc and Sepia amongst many others.
Syphilis
This miasm is held to be responsible for many diseases of the nervous system, the blood and skeleton as well as a range of psychological disorders, including alcoholism, depression, suicidal impulses, insanity, loss of smell and taste, blindness, deafness and ulcerations. It is also associated with many heart conditions, some vesicular skin eruptions and diseases that have a definite nocturnal periodicity. Chief remedies are Arsenicum, Aurum, Mercury, Phosphorus, Lycopodium and Nitric acid, amongst many others.
Psora
The word Psora is probably derived from the Hebrew ‘Tsorat’ and Greek ‘Psora’ meaning a fault, groove or stigma. Hahnemann held that all non-venereal chronic diseases are Psoric. That includes most diseases of a chronic nature, all skin diseases, most mental illness, other than syphilitic ones, allergies, varicose veins, haemorrhoids, most dysfunctional diseases of organs and systems, etc. He lists among others, catarrhs, asthma, pleurisy, haemoptysis, hydrocephalus, stomach ulcers, scrotal swelling, jaundice, swollen glands, cataract, diabetes, tuberculosis, epilepsy, fevers and suppressed urine as all being typically Psoric manifestations, including, of course, the whole gamut of skin problems. Chief Psoric remedies he suggests include Sulphur, Natrum mur, Calc carb, Arsen alb, Lycopodium, Phosphorus, Mezereum, Graphite, Causticum, Hepar sulph, Petroleum, Silica, Zinc and Psorinum amongst many others.
Hahnemann also claimed that Psora was the most ancient and insidious miasm, deriving primarily from skin eruptions of various types in the past, such as scabies (Itch), leprosy and psoriasis. These had been supposedly contracted by ancestors or in one’s own early childhood. Their subsequent suppression, especially through the use of ointments, he held to be the primary cause of forcing skin conditions inwards to cause the internalised Psora miasm. Psora, he says, “is that most ancient, most universal, most destructive, and yet most misapprehended chronic miasmatic disease which for many thousands of years has disfigured and tortured mankind…and become the mother of all the thousands of incredibly various chronic diseases.” [1; 9]
Kent, in his Lectures, then greatly enlarged upon the theory, mostly in a moral sense, proposing that Psora was the foundation of all other sickness, without which mankind would be pure and healthy both in mind and body, as in the Garden of Eden. He thus regarded the acquisition of Psora as being equated with the ‘Fall of Man’ and with original sinfulness. He portrayed Psora in this highly moralistic light as also being the foundation of the sexual miasms that came later.
We can see that Hahnemann must have obtained his original idea of miasms through an extension of the very fruitful threads in his thinking about similars and poisonings, with which he was deeply immersed in the original construction of homeopathy. His mind simply must have been drawn towards seeing the wider patterns in cases. For example, Hahnemann “suggested, in 1789, that Mercury…displaced the syphilitic disease by imposing a similar illness,” [2; 3]. He “had taken his time to formulate his first intuitive deduction [similia] in fact seven years…[he] clung obstinately to the everyday world of common sense…and had no use for the theories of pathology then current…[being, in fact] dissociated from theories of physiology and pathology.” [2; 4].
The notion of Psora has many facets; for example, “seven-eighths of all the chronic maladies prevalent are ascribed by Hahnemann to Psora…” [3; 1, 142] He did not confine its meaning solely to Scabies; “Psora…was widely known in Hahnemann’s time, as the general term for a whole series of skin troubles of the most varied kinds…” [3; 1, 143] Its underlying significance was even broader: “to Hahnemann Psora is a disease or disposition to disease, hereditary from generation to generation for thousands of years and it is the fostering soil for every possible diseased condition.” [3; 1, 144] However, the miasm theory should not be viewed too literally as meaning that everyone needs to be dosed up with Psorinum, Syphilinum or Medorrhinum; rather it means that the broad outline of the miasms need to be kept in mind when observing the symptoms of a specific case or family.
For example, in a family with some evidence of alcoholism, deafness, blindness, bone disorders and insanity, one is entitled to believe a syphilitic streak is present. It should not dominate one’s view of each case, but it is useful background information. It guides one towards certain remedies, and away from others, but should never wholly dictate practice. Such would be to fall prey to medical speculation, which Hahnemann certainly regarded as “arid and obfuscating scholasticism.” [4; 62] and “the elaborate manipulation of hollow symbols.” [4; 62]. The dim view he took of medical speculation presumed that too often it is disengaged from practice, lacking efficacy and encourages harmful practices.
Homeopaths should resist the temptation to allow miasms, like some cuckoo in the nest, to exclusively dominate its conceptual base in the way ‘evolution’ has come to dogmatically dominate biology, or the way genetics and bacteria have come to totally dominate allopathy. Allowing such ‘soiling of its own nest’ might be to indulge a delusion, a monistic theory, and to allow the subject to be well and truly hijacked by one idea, or even to comprise a lamentable waste of otherwise objective talent. Kent beseeches us to resist the temptation of allowing excessive dominance to be granted to one idea or theory. Such advice applies equally to the miasm theory, which should be balanced against other homeopathic views.
Nosodes
On the point about the use of miasms in treatment, some people routinely give the corresponding nosode. For example, to a child born with fine syphilitic skin vesicles, they might wish to give Syphilinum rather than the simillimum, say Mercury. This would tend to be seen as an inappropriate use of the miasm concept, as the simillimum is what the patient needs, not the nosode. Such routine use of Psorinum, Medorrhinum and Syphilinum is therefore frowned upon. Certainly, the nosode can do good work, but it should be used more as an occasional inter-current remedy, or when it becomes the simillimum – not just routinely.
Nosodes in general have a chequered history in homeopathy. Some of the more pathological prescribers [e.g. Hughes & Dudgeon] denounced them from the start. Yet, other homeopaths have taken a far more generous view: “the indispensable curative service of the products of disease…safely administered in sickness;” [6] “for the past five years I have regularly used the bacillus virus as part of my daily practice…with great satisfaction;” [7] “I think very highly of Koch’s remedy…I use it in high potency…” [8] In particular, nosodes can be used to neutralise old internalised illness states [dyscrasias] or remove invisible ‘taints’ [blockages] that prevent ordinary remedies from working: “the nosode has removed the miasmatic block.” [9] Then “the remedy will work again after the block is removed with a nosode.” [9] This much at least is the empirical observation of many who use them in regular clinical practice: nosodes were not so well proven as “well-known polychrests…but have been so successful;” [9; 317] their use “depends more on clinical experience…[which has] accumulated for many years and has been checked by the experience of so many practitioners that it is considered trustworthy.” [9; 317]
Miasm, Holism and Essence
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Peter Morrell
