There are many things to be considered as influencing the vital force in bringing about the tertiary stage of Sycosis. First and most important is the suppression of the disease either in the primary or secondary stage. If the disease is suppressed in the primary stage, it may without showing secondary symptoms at all, go on to the tertiary stage, although in most cases, especially in the tubercular constitution and in women, the secondary stage develops in a few months after the primary suppression. Usually tertiary lesions, due to primary suppression, do not make their appearance sooner then from one to two years. In cases where the vitality of the patient is good, and where there is a strong reactive force in the organism, it may be delayed for many years. Sometimes we see it appearing as a malignancy, after forty years of age or at the climacteric period of women. Of course functional disturbances are as a rule found to be present in the majority of cases soon after suppression. These functional disturbances may be almost anything, headaches, neuralgia, rheumatic pains, gastric troubles, mental difficulties, menstrual irregularities, aggravations from cold, climatic changes and barometric risings and fallings.
Returning again to our subject we find the things influencing the appearance of the tertiary stage, are early suppressions, the drying up of the discharge by any means either from local irrigation or the introduction of strong drugs into the system such as Copaiba, Cubebs, Gelsemium, Ergot, Potassium bromide, the fluid extract of corn-silk, sandal-wood oil, Balsam of Peru; the Saw-palmetto, and many others. The most profound suppressions, how ever, are produced by the use of irrigation with such drugs as potassium permanganate, nitrate of silver, hydrastics, zinc sulphate, besides compounds of ingredients too numerous to mention. Operations in the secondary or inflammatory stage of the disease, such as curettments; the removal of a diseased organ, the uterus ovarian tubes, or any of the pelvic organs, are methods of hasting the third state of the disease; also the suppression of secondary inflammations such as cervicitis, leucorrhoeas, orchitis, acute rheumatism or catarrhal difficulties of a secondary character, wherever found.
The fourth means of tertiary invasions and probably the most fruitful cause, is the suppression of gleet by medicated dutches, medicated pencils, the local treatment of strictures, by dilatation, incision, or other operative measures. The patient suffering with gleet is a silk man in every sense of the word. He is always complaining never well; his complaints are numerous and his symptomatology as variable as the winds of March. His system is thoroughly poisoned with the gonorrhoeal taint, that has so long been dammed up in the organism. Indeed gleet is sub-acute gonorrhoea,. You may call it gleet or any other name you will, but it is as much gonorrhoea as it was in the beginning. It may be subdivided into the different forms and given scientific names but it is nothing more nor less than gonorrhoea in the second or third stage, virulent as ever it was in the first stage, although the symptoms in the newly infected one may vary some from those of the initial stage of the disease; yet the infection from these gleety patients will produce secondary and tertiary symptoms, and are often just as virulent as the infection in the primary stage.
More will be said concerning the subject of gleet, as we will take up the subject again by itself. Besides these causes enumerated as aiding in the development of the tertiary stage, there are conditions arising that we wish to mention, as often assisting in bringing this thing about, for instance pregnancy. The sealing up of the uterus, and the turning of the physiological forces in an other direction, will sometimes develop the third stage of Sycosis. It usually in this case makes its appearance in the form of some eruption, generally of a verrucous character (verruca filiformis) or as gouty states of the system, or as fibroid changes and growths. Occasionally mucous cysts and other conditions arise which we will mention later on. Again, operations prolong fevers and injuries, are secondary or exciting cause for the developments of the developments of the tertiary stage of the disease, Sycosis. Of course, in all these conditions mentioned, we are to understand that unhomoeopathic treatment and methods are employed, for, had the patient had true Homoeopathic treatment, we would expect no tertiary developments at all. After giving due consideration top all the above named causes by which the tertiary stage develops, we find, that secondary inflammations do runs this course in certain time, when as a natural result the tertiary state follows. We see this in the gleety inflammations which later on become fibrous and there is no longer a discharge. Secondary inflammations sometimes undergo cystic degeneration; changes are met with the form of gouty deposits, gouty concretios and even gouty inflammations, all of which are tertiary changes.
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