Complications in the primary stage are few and seldom dangerous; cystitis of a mild form is often present; severe forms develop only in cases where local treatment is employed; these may go on even to abscesses about the neck of the bladder or in the urethra. Frequently I have met such cases where silver nitrate or mercury had been used in the injection fluid. Some of these abscesses were followed by hemorrhages. I have never seen gonorrhoeal orchitis except in cases that had been tampered with by the use of some local medicament. Even in the ordinary uncomplicated case, where a tubercular diathesis is present in the patient, gonorrhoea is slow and difficult to eradicate from the organism. But when the disease is suppressed in the above specified soil, you have a case on your hands of which you cannot prophesy the outcome, for unless the process is soon arrested there is no telling what complications may arise, or to what degree the tubercular element may be stirred up.
If the discharge is not re-established a cure can never be made and the organism may die from morbid processes and changes dependent upon the stasis due to suppression. Sometimes the disease, after its suppression, will develop secondary or tertiary symptoms at once; again it may take years to manifest itself in any marked degree upon the life force. A cachexia does not always develop in those cases where the disease is suppressed, and this is where the disease is suppressed, and this is where some of us are deceived. We do not always recognize the immediate effects of the suppression in all cases, but it will come later on in some form, often foreign to that which you are looking for, or that you would expect. It may be in the nature of the pain as neuralgia, rheumatism, ovaritis, again the digestive tract may be disturbed, or the brain, and mental changes and aberrations present themselves. Indeed, there is no telling where it may break out or what the nature or character of the new disease process, or change may be. By suppressing the disease we have wrapped up in the organism a death process, it is a deadly virus disseminated-the bite of the deadly asp, brewing its deadly potion in the innermost chambers of the Tabernacle of life. Therefore, Death’s processes must come forth and will sooner or late open the doors and show you the mortuary changes within.
The first great change which Sycosis produces when suppressed, is to attack the blood and to produce anaemic states and conditions. It is not always noticeable, even when it its present in considerable degree. However, catarrhal conditions come after a while, and rheumatism, and gout, even Bright’s disease may develop. Diabetes and kindred diseases have often their parentage in a suppression of the disease in this primary stage. Inflammations follow in organs and in soft tissues; fibrous changes in any organ are to be met with, until the whole organism is overcome by this death-dealing process due to the suppression. But to return to our subject of primary complications, we notice buboes are sometimes present, as is the case in Syphilis. they may be of a suppurative or non-suppurative variety, yet they seldom come unless suppressive measures are employed. They are usually due to stasis of the disease in its primary stage or in the beginning of the secondary stage. Prostatitis is not uncommon, hemorrhoids come later in the disease, of which more will be said. Prostatitis is a very common lesion, and it may continue throughout all the stages of the disease. It is, indeed, as you know, one of the most stubborn and difficult conditions to combat. Of course it is not always due to Sycosis, but that element is frequently the origin of its appearance.
As has been seen acute articular rheumatism is apt to develop after a suppression. You, no doubt, have noticed how prevalent rheumatism has become in the past ten years. Did it ever occur to you that ninety-four per cent of these cases were due to a sycotic infection or taint? It will pay you to look into this matter and to search diligently for a primary cause. We used to look for it in men more than in women. It appears in women now about as frequently as in men. Why should this be so? The reason for this, is that the rheumatism of twenty years go was not often found to be of sycotic origin. Now eighty per cent of males are affected, and they, of course, affect their wives, so the rheumatic element is found to be very nearly, if not equally distributed between the two sexes. I can remember the time when rheumatic fever was a common disease. We seldom see it now, that is the true old psoric or pseudo-psoric rheumatic fever, where the temperature would rise each day to 103, 104, and even higher, where the joints become greatly swollen, and sensitive, and the patient developed symptoms similar to typhoid fever. We usually meet with such cases in youth, in young women, or in growing girls, with a tubercular element well marked.
The arthritis we meet today seldom has such a temperature, nor does it develop a typhoid character. In its place we have the true sycotic or gonorrhoeal arthritis which usually presents itself in a sub-acute form with a temperature of 101 or 102, with one joint involved, and the swelling never of such a character as mentioned in the old-fashioned arthritis. The pain is usually subacute, although at time it does become severe, but there is not the high temperature, the sensitiveness, the swelling, the prostration as found in the old-fashioned rheumatic fever. Strange to say, the sycotic arthritis usually follows a suppression of some kind, and is relieved by the re-establishing of the original discharge, either from the urethra, or by the return of an old suppressed leucorrhoea. Much more might be said concerning the subject of suppression, but we will deal with it more fully later on this work.
We will now take up Secondary Sycosis and on looking closely into its phenomena, we will see that the secondary and tertiary stages bear about the same relation to the first stage as those stages do in Syphilis. When Syphilis is treat homoeopathically, we find but we secondary lesions and the tertiary stage is conspicuously absent. The tertiary symptoms do not develop and the same thing may be said of Sycosis when treated homoeopathically; there are no secondary and tertiary developments. Therefore, all secondary and tertiary symptoms are the result of poor treatment. How necessary it is for us to become, not only familiar with the disease in its primary stage, but all through its developments. No honest physician will do work that is detrimental to his patients if he is aware of it. Indeed, it is largely for lack of knowledge, that men err. “My people perish for lack of knowledge,” says the Divine Book; so is it true with the physician of today. There are like Pandora’s Box, when all that was left in it was hope. Hope is a very good thing to be in possession of, but a knowledge of the truth is power for present use and for present action.
Contagion is said to be the transmission of the poisonous principle. So in the transmission of the sycotic virus, the result will depend largely upon the stage in which it is transmitted. The symptoms that follow, and the diseases that make their appearance, will correspond in some degree to the stage and age of the primary infection. That is, if the virus is transmitted during the primary stage, the symptoms develop in the newly infected one will be primary symptoms, or those found in gonorrhoea of the first stage. If the disease is transmitted in the second stage, there will be no primary symptoms to speak of. For instance, if the female is affected in the second stage, we may have no symptoms to begin with, save a scanty vaginal catarrh with perhaps a slight pruritis of the vulvae. This discharge is so acrid that it induces the pruritis, which if by local treatment, will present sooner or later new and often distressing symptoms, such as inflammation of any of the pelvic organs, or some form of rheumatism.
Often a single organ like the ovary or a tube may become affected, and the whole force of the disease for a time be concentrated upon this point or centre. There is no telling what the outcome of the disease may be, or the endless line of chronic affections that may follow secondary infection. The patient, on the other hand, may show signs of infection only by the anaemic state of the blood. Anaemia is prone to develop in all stages of the disease, but especially in the second and third. This anaemic state of the blood is a profound state-it involves every cell and fiber of the entire organism. It increases the same as in Syphilis, slowly and insidiously, until the whole organism is engulfed in its profound intoxication. The face looks at times ashy, grayish, drawn, puffed, and even doughy in severe cases. This anaemic condition becomes the basis of deep destructive disease such as cancer of the breasts and uterus, epithelioma, diabetes, Bright’s disease, acute phthisis, pneumonia, cholera infantum if in children, and numerous other diseases of which more will be said. In cases of typhoid, scarlet, and other severe fevers, we see by their deep and profound action, their slow and tedious recovery, that some deep acting poison, already in the system, is being disturbed from its slumbers by the new miasmatic, “the fever,” that gives to it a malignancy and a positiveness not found in other cases of the same fevers. How necessary it is for us to know what miasm lies behind these fevers, for no cure can be made until the right anti-miasmatic remedy is found.
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