| First of all, the definition of miasms. It is a
hereditary predisposition, a defect as you can say, that predisposes
the person to be vulnerable to a host of diseases when the trigger
is right! Indeed, without the trigger on the diseased terrain, the
illness will not occur! As I mention in the case of ASD, the hereditary
background will be syphilitic but without a trigger (emotions, food,
environment, traumas, vaccinations, etc.) ASD will NOT occur. The
definition of hereditary factors as used in homeopathy is much broader
and more correct than we have in allopathy! In allopathy, when hereditary
factors are found to be the cause of a disease, the same name disease
appears in the family history...so ASD is not hereditary when not
another case of ASD is present. For the homeopath, ASD is only one
of the possible expressions of the syphilitic miasms. Mental disease,
drug and alcohol addiction, suicide, and any destructive disease
such as Parkinson, Alzheimer, Multiple sclerosis, etc., are expressions
of the same syphilitic miasmatic background.
How many miasms do we have? Homeopaths again do well to follow
Hahnemann instead of some neo-gurus who invent one miasm after another.
Here is an extract (short) about this topic from my new book, "A
Clinical Guide to the Professional Practice" due this summer.
A Closer Study of the Basic Miasms
Nowadays, the homeopath seems to invent more and more miasms with
new names as if homeopathy was not difficult enough to comprehend
and practice. In Hahnemann Revisited, I also talked about 5 different
miasms (tubercular and cancer besides the three other ones) but
if anything, I wanted to see if this miasmatic theory could not
be simplified and translated into such form, that it is easier to
apply in the practice. Since the choice of a deep working remedy
will depend on the homeopath's miasmatic knowledge, a fine tuned
definition and practical theory might be appropriate and I am not
beyond correcting myself when necessary.
It is always good to define exactly what we are dealing with in
order to understand further analysis of miasms. Let's see what miasms
Hahnemann referred to in CD (Hahnemann, 1997, p34-36) and how he
defined them:
He talked about acute miasms: He speaks about the smallpox vaccination
and tells us that there is no such case, "where any miasm in
the world when it has infected from without, will not make first
the whole organism sick before the signs of it externally manifest
themselves." The latter is also expressed by A201-202. He talked
about it in the same fashion when the skin of the man is infected
with the blood of cattle affected with anthrax.
CD, "If, as is frequently the case, the anthrax has infected
and caught on, all removal of skin is in vain: the black or gangrenous
blister, nearly always fatal, nevertheless always comes out 4
days later, i.e., as soon as the whole living organism has transformed
itself to this terrible disease. This is the same with diseases
like measles: after the contagion from without, the malady connected
with it in the interiors of the whole man must be developed; the
whole interior man must first have become thoroughly sick of measles
(scarlet fever, small pox, etc.) before these various eruptions
may appear on the skin (Hahnemann, 1997, p24)."
In modern times we refer to this as the incubation time, but often
the exterior relief of the internal generalized disease (A201-202)
is still treated in allopathy as if it were a localized disease,
often suppressed by dermatologists and gynecologists.
He says further,
CD, "It is just so with the infection of half acute miasms
without eruptions. Among many persons bitten by a mad dog, only
a few are infected; 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." (And we give those painful
shots in allopathy once the virus is found in the biting dog-Author's
note!). 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 developed in the whole organism (which requires
several days if not weeks), the madness breaks out as an acute
quickly fatal disease. Immediate amputation or excision of the
infected part does not protect from the progression of the disease
within…"
The hydrophobia miasm is termed half acute because it takes a long
time for this miasm to completely develop in the system before the
symptoms manifest. But once these symptoms manifest, the patient
suffers like an acute disease.
The acute miasms of whooping cough, small pox, measles, etc. have
been termed as fixed miasms by Hahnemann, because whenever these
diseases occur, they show their same old clinical fixtures (our
childhood diseases).
Now About the Chronic Miasms!
"How many different miasms are really possible?" I went
to the source, the Organon, and studied carefully where Hahnemann
starts discussing miasms.
In A74 Hahnemann starts talking about the miasms. This aphorism
also provided me with new insight and the true definition of the
miasms and led me to correct some wrong conclusions I drew before.
In this aphorism, Hahnemann talks about how chronic diseases get
artificially created by allopathic treatment by the prolonged use
of violent, heroic drugs, etc…(iatrogenic diseases) All these
"measures" he says, …
A74, …weaken the VF and if they do not completely exhaust
it, progressively untune it, to such an extent that it has to bring
about a revolution (author's emphasis) in the organism to maintain
life against these hostile and destructive attacks."
So far what Hahnemann says, is that the VF being attacked and mistuned
so relentlessly, creates a defense mechanism (he calls it a revolution)
in order to survive these hostile attacks. In the next paragraph
of this Aphorism, Hahnemann tells us clearly that there are only
three major chronic miasms, simply because there are only three
major defense mechanisms in any organism, starting with the individual
cell. All other modern miasms are pseudo or mixed miasms! Miasms
are defensive responses of the cell. Let's see what he says and
explain,
A74 continued, "It has to inhibit or exaggerate the excitability
or sensitivity of a part of the organism, dilate or contract, soften
or harden, or even completely destroy certain parts in order to
protect the organism against complete destruction of life from the
ever renewed hostile attacks of such ruinous forces (emphasis by
author)."
And in this same aphorism, speaking of iatrogenic diseases, he
cites especially bloodletting and starvation diet as the two major
ruinous forces in his time to destroy the organism. Unfortunately
we have many more today.
Looking at A74, we see that Hahnemann describes three possible
different defense mechanisms:
1. Inhibition or deprivation (loss of function) or exaggeration
of the excitability (which translates into irritation or acute inflammation)
or sensitivity (hypersensitivity) of a part of the organism. This
is called psora, a physiological defense: it shuts down or increases
the organism's reactivity. In TCM it would be called general Qi
deficiency.
2. Dilatation (cysts) or contraction, softening (relaxed tendons
and ligaments leading to prolapse of the organs or collapse in general)
or hardening (induration). This represents sycosis or constructive
defense. According to Hahnemann, there are two sycotic forms: one
of over construction (induration, hardening, contraction), one of
under construction (collapse, dilatation, softening, relaxing).
The latter would be called in TCM Yang Excess Qi.
3. Complete destruction is expressed by the syphilitic miasm or:
destructive defense. In TCM, it would be called Yin excess Qi.
According to this definition, only the last two miasms bring structural
changes while psora only produces physiologically changes. A living
being has only three defense types. As a defense response to invasion
of a micro organism, every cell will inflame, indurate or is destroyed
for the wellbeing of the person as a whole!
Much more than I quote here will be in my book. The Cancer miasm
and Tubercular miasm are mixed miasms! Always one of the three major
miasms will be dominant so we can have a case where we see syphilis
dominant with psora secondary (named before syphilitic): we would
indicate it as capital L (for Lues or syphilis) and small p. Some
modern homeopaths invent many more miasms but they would do well
to study again the real source of classical homeopathy, the Organon!
There are many more problems that the present homeopath faces. We
must not make our task more difficult by inventing new things that
only bolster the ego for the one who proposes them!
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