SYPHILIS
The true course of this disease cannot be properly followed from old school writings, as their habitual use of massive doses prevents the disease following its natural course.
The primary manifestations is the chancre, which usually appears fifteen days after exposure. This chancre, under proper homoeopathic treatment, tends to enlarge, and the bubo frequently suppurates, whereas, under allopathic treatment, the bubo remains as a hard lump and seldom suppurates. Under homoeopathic treatment the bubo disappears if the chancre discharge profusely.
Hahnemann taught that it was possible to prevent the appearance of secondary symptoms, but this is a mistake, for they always sooner or later appear. In Hahnemann’s day the distinction between the chancre and chancroid was not properly understood, and doubtless it was this that led him into error. The chancre is followed by the eruptions which likely call for a different remedy. The closer the remedy given for the chancre is to the similimum the less copious will be the eruption.
The eruption under homoeopathic treatment are usually very profuse, but are never pustular. The eruption is followed by ulceration of the throat. The first ulcer to come will be the last to disappear under homoeopathic treatment. The next manifestation is the falling out of the hair.- (K.) The tertiary large under homoeopathic treatment, if it appears at all, is a shadow.- (K.)
The foregoing only holds true when the treatment has been purely homoeopathic throughout, but when we are called on to treat a case that has passed down to the tertiary stage under allopathic treatment the procedure is very different.
In such a case under appropriate treatment all the symptoms he has already experienced will return, but in the opposite order to which they originally appeared, viz., the falling out of the hair, when the sore throat eruptions and finally the chancre. Of course, these various stages will call for different remedies according to the symptoms-(Never leave Mercurius so long as it benefits.-K.)
Syphilis, like sycosis, is always taken at the stage it is in, in the person from whom it is caught, and consequently when under homoeopathic treatment the symptoms begin to come back in the reverse order-they only go back to the stage at which the patient took the disease. In old broken down syphilitics any very guiding symptoms it is advisable to give a few doses of Syphilinum, which usually serves to re-establish the vital reaction and bring out the symptoms. After this comes antipsorics are called for because, when syphilis has advanced so far, psora has usually got mixed with it.-(K.) If either psora or sycosis is active when syphilis is taken the syphilis usually suppresses the other miasm, and when after a period of anti-syphilitic remedies the disease becomes latent the symptoms of sycosis or psora begin to be active again and must be treated by their corresponding remedies until they in turn becomes latent. The syphilis may again become active, and this alternation of the different miasms may go on for a time before the patient is thoroughly cured.
This alternation of the miasms is very important, because antipsoric remedies, such as Sulphur, Calcarea and Graphites are more likely to do harm than good if given while the syphilis is active.-(K.)
When syphilis has progressed till gummatous formations have been produced round the anus, in periosteum and in the brain, Sulphur, if given, will suppurate these, and thus make the patient worse. I have see it suppurate the soft palate away when I did not know he had syphilis. You may have to give at once Mercurius or Mercurius cor. to stop the action of the Sulphur.- (K.).
