The question is often asked, is it necessary to know anything about the chronic miasms, in order to successfully treat those numberless chronic maladies that we meet in our every day practice? Let us see what relationship they bear to Homoeopathic Therapeutics. Hahnemann has said, “The physician is like wise the guardian of health, when he knows what are the objects that disturb it, what produces and keeps up the disease., and what will remove it,” etc. Secale4, Organic. The reverse of this would read like this, he who does not know what objects disturb to vital force or keep up the disease, is not a true the vital force or keep up the disease, is not a true guardian of health. In order to cure disease intelligently we must regard the fundamental cause. I think I hear many say, are not the totality of the symptoms all there is to disease? Yes, but to me it is necessary to know something of what is behind that grouping of the totality. If you do know this you are prescribing for a jack- in-the-box. You cannot follow the evolution of the curative processes; you cannot even prescribe intelligently the proper diet for a patient, unless you know the basic miasm. Of course, the diseases that are present will help you to some extent, but you have no surety unless you know the underlying basic disturbed of he disordered life.
A psoric patient requires a diet altogether different from that of a tubercular patient, and the same thing may be said of those affected with Syphilis and Sycosis. A uric and diathesis never lies behind a tubercular, syphilitic or psoric taint. So to know the basic miasm in each case helps us in many ways, besides that of being a therapeutic aid. It may form a basis not only of the patient diet, but of occupation, mode mode of life, habits, social relations, sexual functions, and numerous other things.. We cannot see the spiritual essence of disease, and it is not necessary that we should do so. But it is necessary to know what is behind each set of phenomena, and not to know, is ignorance. If you wish to says the patient took could, or he over-worked, or became unduly tired, or it was indigestion and a thousand other worm-out, threadbare excuses that are rare from being scientific, you may follow out your old beaten path. That is just what men were doing before Hahnemann’s time, and what they are don’t today. The Allopathic school make but one bite of the proverbial cherry, when they write down germs as the cause of nearly every expression so sickness. We do not deal so with the acute miasms. No! We are very careful, and very diligent to find out with great certainty, the existing disturbing element, such as scarlet fevers, measles, smallpox, etc.
It becomes an offense to the state, if we do not know these things. Yet we may pass over a thousand cases of latent syphilis, tuberculosis, or sycosis, without offence, yet the state suffers more from out overlooking them, than from all the acute miasms put together. Not only does the state suffer but society suffers, our race suffers, humanity suffers untold agony, pain and distress; our jails and penal institutions are filled, and our insane hospitals increase in numbers all over he land.
“Totality of the symptoms is this image of the immediate essence of the malady, inflected externally.” Secale 7, Organon.
What do the symptoms represent? The essence of the malady; and what is the essence of the malady? The chronic miasm. Do you see why it is necessary to understand the phenomena of disease, and why certain symptoms persist and persist with no cessation? Organon II. “In disease this spontaneous and immaterial vital principle, pervading the physical; organism, is primarily deranged by the dynamic influence of a morbific agent, which is inimical to life.” Again in the 12th paragraph, the Organon says, “it is the morbidly disturbed vital principle which brings forth disease.” What does Hahnemann mean by the dynamic influence of a morbific agent? He means that which causes all the morbid phenomena of disease to exist, he means Psora, Syphilis and Sycosis, or any intermingling or blending of the great triune. It is this morbific, dynamic influence which gives to the organism and life force its own nature, is own abnormal sensations, motions, mental and physical disturbances of all kinds and of very character, which as call disease. But in paragraph 18 says, “that beyond the totality of the symptoms, there is nothing discoverable in disease.” That is a great truth and we fully beliefs in it. It is not an understanding of the totality, that we are talking about, but an inellihernty conception for the cause of the phenomena or totality.
We make no attack upon the law; no cure can be made outside of the law, for all law is fixed,.external and unchangeable. But we do believe it s necessary to know whether the phenomena presented in a given case are of sycotic, syphilitic or tubercular origin;for the totality grouping must be about the symptoms of the active miasm. This is one reason why the peculiar or characteristic symptoms, when taken into consideration in making your prescriptions, gives us such wonderful results. Those brilliant cures that are occasionally made with the single remedy, occur where a single miasm lies behind the phenomena, but where the mixed miasms are present, brilliant cures are not so made, and it is in those cases that it is so necessary to understand the order of the their evolution.
This evolution, Hahnemann his portrayed clearly in the Organic, Secale 38. when he says, “if the disease, which is dissimilar to the old, be more powerful than the later it will then cause its suppression, until the new disease has either performed its own course, it it cured (removed by the indicated remedy, but then the old or former disease reappears.” In this way the chronic miasms act; one is usually active, and holds the other in abeyance. For instance, Sycosis if present in any form or in any stage, usually takes the precedence. Suppose a case in which there is a marked pseudo-psoric condition, where perhaps a great many Calcarea symptoms are to be found. Now Calcarea symptoms are to be found. Now Calcarea is a basic remedy, and in it we find a perfect picture of the tubercular diathesis, but Calcarea will not meet the new order of things, even if it has the greater number of symptoms as far as may are able to enumerate them, But you cannot enumerate them, hence totality (if numbers alone count) does not fulfil the law of at give disturbing miasm that fulfills the demands of he law.
When the remedy of he first section ceases to act or is found no loner to be curative, then a remedy may be selected from the grouping about the older miasm, the pseudo-psoric presentation, and the cure is complete. I have noticed many times men of good standing in the profession, prescribing Psorinum or sulphur for the cure of an acute miasm, like Cuban Itch Impetigo, and Scabies, when Sepia, Rhus tox., Rumex crispus, or some remedy that covered the acute miasm fully was all that was needed. True they found some symptoms calling for the remedies they selected, but these were found to greatly aggravated the case, much to their disappointment, by stirring up latent chronic miasms, and leaving the case worse than when they began. I have seen this kind of prescribing in case that are incurable, such as organic heart trouble, tuberculosis, etc. In these cases it is a dangerous practice to prescribe deep acting antimiasmatic remedies. It is a bad practice. We must follow not only the law of therapeutics, but the metamorphosis of disease, and understand the law governing it. Not infrequently in these cases of mixed miasms, were are compelled to make on selection of the remedy from three to five symptoms, ignoring all others, and when this first remedy has brought the system to the proper condition, when all those symptoms that were rejected condition, then all those symptoms that were rejected may be taken into consideration, and a second prescription made. This is especially true where suppression are present, or where secondary processes develop from suppressions or from bad treatment, Organon, Secale 50. “Even nature herself has no other Homoeopathic agents at her command than miasmatic disease.” The more we study disease and the better we become acquainted with the law of cure, the more frequently we employ the nosodes or diseased substances.
Our Allopathic friends are following closely along the same lines, although their methods of preparing them are unscientific and in the end, harmful to the race. It is simply the application of natural diseases, as the Homoeopathic treatment of today, like the regular school, is palliative in its nature, even with the single remedy and the potency. One reason for this, is a lack 9of knowledge of the chronic miasms, that lie behind the morbid phenomena with which we have to deal. Many of us know how to select a remedy, but we do no know how long to wait upon its action; in other words we do not understand and retrocession of each miasm, whether it be Syphilis Psora or Sycosis. We have yet to learn their secondary and tertiary presentations, and the phenomena which attend each new setting of the disease. Again we have so little knowledge of them and are at sea when we find them blacketed and veiled by suppressive or palliative treatment.
J.H. Allen was a student of H.C. Allen. He was the president of the IHA in 1900. Dr. Allen taught at the Hering Medical College in Chicago. Dr. Allen died August 1, 1925
Books by John Henry Allen:
Diseases and Therapeutics of the Skin 1902
The Chronic Miasms: Psora and Pseudo Psora 1908
The Chronic Miasms: Sycosis 1908