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Chronic Diseases
Generals
§ 5
Useful to the physician in assisting him to cure are the particulars of
the most probable exciting cause of the acute disease, as also the most
significant points in the whole history of the chronic disease, to enable
him to discover its fundamental cause, which is generally due to a chronic
miasm. In these investigations, the ascertainable physical constitution of
the patient (especially when the disease is chronic), his moral and
intellectual character, his occupation, mode of living and habits, his
social and domestic relations, his age, sexual function, etc., are to be
taken into consideration
§ 36
I. If the two dissimilar diseases meeting together in the human being be
of equal strength, or still more if the older one be the stronger, the new
disease will be repelled by the old one from the body and not allowed to
affect it. A patient suffering from a severe chronic disease will not be
infected by a moderate autumnal dysentery or other epidemic disease. The
plague of the Levant, according to Larry,1 does not break out where scurvy is prevalent, and persons suffering from eczema are not infected by it.
Rachitis, Jenner alleges, prevents vaccination from taking effect. Those
suffering from pulmonary consumption are not liable to be attacked by
epidemic fevers of a not very violent character, according to Von
Hildenbrand.
1 Mémoires et Observations, in the Description de l' Egpte, tom. i.
§ 46
Many examples might be adduced of disease which, in the course of nature,
have been homoeopathically cured by other diseases presenting similar
symptoms, were it not necessary, as our object is to speak about something
determinate and indubitable, to confine our attention solely to those
(few) disease which are invariably the same, arise from a fixed miasm, and
hence merit a distinct name.
Among these the smallpox, so dreaded on account of the great number of its
serious symptoms, occupies a prominent position, and it has removed and
cured a number of maladies with similar symptoms.
How frequently does smallpox produce violent ophthalmia, sometimes even
causing blindness! And see! By its inoculation Dezoteux1 cured a chronic
ophthalmia permanently, and Leroy2 another.
An amaurosis of two years' duration, consequent on suppressed scald head,
was perfectly cured by it, according to Klein.
How often does smallpox cause deafness and dyspnoea! And both these
chronic diseases it removed on reaching its acme, as J. Fr. Clos
observed.
Swelling of the testicle, even of a very severe character, is a frequent
symptom of small-pox, and on this account it was enabled, as Klein5
observed, to cure, by virtue of similarity, a large hard swelling of the
left testicle, consequently on a bruise. And another observer saw a
similar swelling of the testicle cured by it.
Among the troublesome symptoms of small-pox is a dysenteric state of the
bowels; and it subdued, as Fr. Wendt observed, a case of dysentery, as a
similar morbific agent.
Smallpox coming on after vaccination, as well on account of its greater
strength as its great similarity, at once removes entirely the cow-pox
homoeopathically, and does not permit it to come to maturity; but, on the
other hand, the cow-pox when near maturity does, on account of its great
similarity, homoeopathically diminish very much the supervening smallpox
and make it much milder, as Muhry and many others testify.
The inoculated cow-pox, whose lymph, besides the protective matter,
contains the contagion of a general cutaneous eruption of another nature,
consisting of usually small, dry (rarely large, pustular) pimples, resting
on a small red areola, frequently conjoined with round red cutaneous spots
and often accompanied by the most violent itching, which rash appears in
not a few children several days before, more frequently, however, after
the red areola of the cow-pock, and goes off in a few days, leaving behind
small, red, hard spots on the skin; - the inoculated cow-pox, I say, after
it has taken, cures perfectly and permanently, in a homoeopathic manner,
by the similarity of this accessory miasm, analogous cutaneous eruptions
of children, often of very long standing and of a very troublesome
character, as a number of observers assert.
The cow-pox, a peculiar symptom of which is to cause tumefaction of the
arm, cured, after it broke out, a swollen half-paralyzed arm.
The fever accompanying cow-pox, which occurs at the time of the production
of the red areola, cured homoeopathically intermittent fever in two
individuals, as the younger Hardege13 reports, confirming what J. Hunter
had already observed, that two fevers (similar diseases) cannot co-exist
in the same body.
The measles bear a strong resemblance in the character of its fever and
cough to the whooping-cough, and hence it was that Bosquillon noticed,
in an epidemic where both these affections prevailed, that many children
who then took measles remained free from whooping-cough during that
epidemic. They would all have been protected from, and rendered incapable
of being infected by, the whooping-cough in that and all subsequent
epidemics, by the measles, if the whooping-cough were not a disease that
has only a partial similarity to the measles, that is to say, if it had
also a cutaneous eruption similar to what the latter possesses. As it is,
however, the measles can but preserve a large number from whooping-cough
homoeopathically, and that only in the epidemic prevailing at the time.
If, however, the measles come in contact with a disease resembling it in
its chief symptom, the eruption, it can indisputably remove, and effect a
homoeopathic cure of the latter. Thus a chronic herpetic eruption was
entirely and permanently (homoeopathically) cured16 by the breaking out of
the measles, as Kortum observed. An excessively burning miliary rash on
the face, neck, and arms, that had lasted six years, and was aggravated by
every change of weather, on the invasion of measles assumed the form of a
swelling of the surface of the skin; after the measles had run its course
the exanthema was cured, and returned no more.
§ 72
With respect to the first point, the following will serve as a general
preliminary view. The disease to which man is liable are either rapid
morbid processes of the abnormally deranged vital force, which have a
tendency to finish their course more or less quickly, but always in a
moderate time - these are termed acute diseases; - or they are diseases of
such a character that, with small, often imperceptible beginnings,
dynamically derange the living organism, each in its own peculiar manner,
and cause it gradually to deviate from the healthy condition, in such a
way that the automatic life energy, called vital force, whose office is to
preserve the health, only opposes to them at the commencement and during
their progress imperfect, unsuitable, useless resistance, but is unable of
itself to extinguish them, but must helplessly suffer (them to spread and)
itself to be ever more and more abnormally deranged, until at length the
organism is destroyed; these are termed chronic diseases. They are caused
by infection with a chronic miasm.
§ 77
Those diseases are inappropriately named chronic, which persons incur who
expose themselves continually to avoidable noxious influences, who are in
the habit of indulging in injurious liquors or aliments, are addicted to
dissipation of many kinds which undermine the health, who undergo
prolonged abstinence from things that are necessary for the support of
life, who reside in unhealthy localities, especially marshy districts, who
are housed in cellars or other confined dwellings, who are deprived of
exercise or of open air, who ruin their health by overexertion of body or
mind, who live in a constant state of worry, etc. These states of
ill-health, which persons bring upon themselves, disappear spontaneously,
provided no chronic miasm lurks in the body, under an improved mode of
living, and they cannot be called chronic diseases.
§ 78
The true natural chronic diseases are those that arise from a chronic
miasm, which when left to themselves, and unchecked by the employment of
those remedies that are specific for them, always go on increasing and
growing worse, notwithstanding the best mental and corporeal regimen, and
torment the patient to the end of his life with ever aggravated
sufferings. These, excepting those produced by medical malpractice (§ 74),
are the most numerous and greatest scourges of the human race; for the
most robust constitution, the best regulated mode of living and the most
vigorous energy of the vital force are insufficient for their
eradication1
§ 79
Hitherto syphilis alone has been to some extent known as such a chronic
miasmatic disease, which when uncured ceases only with the termination of
life. Sycosis (the condylomatous disease), equally ineradicable by the
vital force without proper medicinal treatment, was not recognized as a
chronic miasmatic disease of a peculiar character, which it nevertheless
undoubtedly is, and physicians imagined they had cured it when they had
destroyed the growths upon the skin, but the persisting dyscrasia
occasioned by it escaped their observation.
Incalculably greater and more important than the two chronic miasms just
named, however, is the chronic miasm of psora, which, while those two
reveal their specific internal dyscrasia, the one by the venereal chancre,
the other by the cauliflower-like growths, does also, after the completion
of the internal infection of the whole organism, announce by a peculiar
cutaneous eruption, sometimes consisting only of a few vesicles
accompanied by intolerable voluptuous tickling itching (and a peculiar
odor), the monstrous internal chronic miasm - the psora, the only real
fundamental cause and producer of all the other numerous, I may say
innumerable, forms of disease1, which, under the names of nervous
debility, hysteria, hypochondriasis, mania, melancholia, imbecility,
madness, epilepsy and convulsions of all sorts, softening of the bones
(rachitis), scoliosis and cyphosis, caries, cancer, fungus nematodes,
neoplasms, gout, haemorrhoids, jaundice, cyanosis, dropsy, amenorrhoea,
haemorrhage from the stomach, nose, lungs, bladder and womb, of asthma and
ulceration of the lungs, of impotence and barrenness, of megrim, deafness,
cataract, amaurosis, urinary calculus, paralysis, defects of the senses
and pains of thousands of kinds, etc., figure in systematic works on
pathology as peculiar, independent diseases
1) I spent twelve years in investigating the source of this incredibly
large number of chronic affections, in ascertaining and collecting certain
proofs of this great truth, which had remained unknown to all former or
contemporary observers, and in discovering at the same time the principal
(antipsoric) remedies, which collectively are nearly a match for this
thousand-headed monster of disease in all its different developments and
forms. I have published my observations on this subject in the book
entitled The Chronic Diseases (4 vols., Dresden, Arnold. [2nd edit.,
Dusseldorf, Schaub.]) before I had obtained this knowledge I could only
treat the whole number of chronic diseases as isolated, individual
maladies, with those medicinal substances whose pure effects had been
tested on healthy persons up to that period, so that every case of chronic
disease was treated by my disciples according to the group of symptoms it
presented, just like an idiopathic disease, and it was often so for cured
that sick mankind rejoiced at the extensive remedial treasures already
amassed by the new healing art. How much greater cause is there now for
rejoicing that the desired goal has been so much more nearly attained,
inasmuch as the recently discovered and far more specific homoeopathic
remedies for chronic affections arising from psora (properly termed
antipsoric remedies) and the special instructions for their preparation
and employment have been published; and from among them the true physician
can now select for his curative agents those whose medicinal symptoms
correspond in the most similar (homoeopathic) manner to the chronic
disease he has to cure; and thus, by the employment of (antipsoric)
medicines more suitable for this miasm, he is enabled to render more
essential service and almost invariably to effect a perfect cure.
§ 81
The fact that this extremely ancient infecting agent has gradually passed,
in some hundreds of generations, through many millions of human organisms
and has thus attained an incredible development, renders it in some
measure conceivable how it can now display such innumerable morbid forms
in the great family of mankind, particularly when we consider what a
number of circumstances1) contribute to the production of these great
varieties of chronic diseases (secondary symptoms of psora), besides the
indescribable diversity of men in respect of their congenital corporeal
constitutions, so that it is no wonder if such a variety of injurious
agencies, acting from within and from without and sometimes continually,
on such a variety of organisms permeated with the psoric miasm, should
produce an innumerable variety of defects, injuries, derangements and
sufferings, which have hitherto been treated of in the old pathological
works2), under a number of special names, as diseases of an independent
character.
1 Some of these causes that exercise a modifying influence on the
transformation of psora into chronic diseases manifestly depend sometimes
on the climate and the peculiar physical character of the place of abode,
sometimes on the very great varieties in the physical and mental training
of youth, both of which may have been neglected, delayed or carried to
excess, or on their abuse in the business or conditions of life, in the
matter of diet and regimen, passions, manners, habits and customs of
various kinds.
2 How many improper ambiguous names do not these works contain, under each
of which are included excessively different morbid conditions, which often
resemble each other in one single symptom only, as ague, jaundice, dropsy,
consumption, leucorrhoea, haemorrhoids, rheumatism, apoplexy, convulsions,
hysteria, hypochondriasis, melancholia, mania, quinsy, palsy, etc., which
are represented as diseases of a fixed and unvarying character, and are
treated, on account of their name, according to a determinate plan! How
can the bestowal of such a name justify an identical medical treatment?
And if the treatment is not always to be the same, why make use of an
identical name which postulates an identity of treatment? Nihil sane in
artem medicam pestiferum magis unquam irrepsit malum, quam generalia
quaedam medicinam, says Huxham, a man as clear-sighted as he was estimable
on account of his conscientiousness (Op. phys. med., tom. I.). And in like
manner Frittze laments (Annalen, I, p.80) that essentially different
diseases are designated by the same name. Even those epidemic diseases,
which undoubtedly may be propagated in every separate epidemic by a
peculiar contagious principle which remains unknown to us, are designated,
in the old school of medicine by particular names, just as if they were
well-known fixed diseases that invariably recurred under the same form, as
hospital fever, goal fever, camp fever, putrid fever, bilious fever,
nervous fever, mucous fever, although each epidemic of such roving fevers
exhibits itself at every occurrence as another, a new disease, such as it
has never before appeared in exactly the same form, differing very much,
in every instance, in its course, as well as in many of its most striking
symptoms and its whole appearance. Each is so for dissimilar to all
previous epidemics, whatever names they may bear, that it would be
dereliction of all logical accuracy in our ideas of things were we to give
to these maladies, that differ so much among themselves, one of those
names we meet with in pathological writings, and treat them all
medicinally in conformity with this misused name. The candid Sydenham
alone perceived this, when he (Obs. med., cap. ii, De morb, epid.) insists
upon the necessity of not considering any epidemic disease as having
occurred before and treating it in the same way as another, since all that
occur successively, be they ever so numerous, differ from one another:
Nihil quicquam (opinor,) animum universae qua patet medicinae pomoeria
perlustrantem, tanta admiratione percellet, quam discolor illa et sui
plane dissimilis morborum Epidemicorum facies; non tam qua varias ejusdem
anni tempestates, quam qua discrepantes divewrsorum ab invicem annorum
constitutiones referunt, ab iisque dependent. Quae tam aperta praedictorum
morborum diversitas tum propriis ac sibi peculiaribus symptomatis, tum
etiam medendi ratione, quam hi ab illis disparem prorsus sibi vendicant,
satis illucescit. Ex quibus constat morbus hosce, ut ut externa
quadantenus specie, er symptomatis aliquot utrisque pariter super
venientibus, convenire paulo incautioribus videantur, re tamen ipsa (si
bene adverteris animum), alienae admondum esse indolis, et distare ut aera
lupinis.
From all this it is clear that these useless and misused names of diseases
ought to have no influence on the practice of the true physician, who
knows that he has to judge of and to cure diseases, not according to the
similarity of the name of a single one of their symptoms, but according to
the totality of the signs of the individual state of each particular
patient, whose affection it is his duty carefully to investigate, but
never to give a hypothetical guess at it.
If, however, it is deemed necessary sometimes to make use of names of
diseases, in order, when talking about a patient to ordinary persons, to
render ourselves intelligible in few words, we ought only to employ them
as collective names, and tell them, eg., the patient has a kind of St.
Vitus's dance, a kind of dropsy, a kind of typhus, a kind of ague; but (in
order to do away once and for all with the mistaken notions these names
give rise to) we should never say he has the St. Vitus's dance, the
typhus, the dropsy, the ague, as there are certainly no disease of these
and similar names of fixed unvarying character.
§ 148
The natural disease is never to be considered as a noxious material
situated somewhere within the interior or exterior of man (§ 11-13) but as
one produced by an inimical spirit-like (conceptual) agency which, like a
kind of infection (note to § 11) disturbs in its instinctive existence of
the spirit-like (conceptual) principle of life within the organism
torturing it as an evil spirit and compelling it to produce certain
ailments and disorders in the regular course of its life. These are known
as symptoms (disease). If, now, the influence of this inimical agency that
not only caused but strives to continue this disorder, be taken away as is
done when the physician administers an artificial potency, capable of
altering the life principle in the most similar manner (a homoeopathic
medicine) which exceeds in energy even in the smallest dose the similar
natural disease (§§ 33, 279), then the influence of the original noxious
morbid agent on the life principle is lost during the action of this
stronger similar artificial disease. Thence the evil no longer exists for
the life principle - it is destroyed. If, as has been said, the selected
homoeopathic remedy is administered properly, then the acute natural
disease which is to be overruled if recently developed, will disappear
imperceptibly in a few hours.
An older, more chronic disease will yield somewhat later together with all
traces of discomfort, by the use of several doses of the same more highly
potentized remedy or after careful selection1 of one or another more
similar homoeopathic medicine. Health, recovery, follow in imperceptible,
often rapid transitions. The life principle is freed again and capable of
resuming the life of the organism in health as before and strength
returns.
§ 149
Diseases of long standing (and especially such as are of a complicated
character) require for their cure a proportionately longer time. More
especially do the chronic medicinal dyscrasia so often produced by
allopathic bungling along with the natural disease left uncured by it,
require a much longer time for their recovery; often, indeed, are they
incurable, in consequence of the shameful robbery of the patient's
strength and juices (venesections, purgatives, etc.), on account of long
continued use of large doses of violently acting remedies given on the
basis of empty, false theories for alleged usefulness in cases of disease
appearing similar, also in prescribing unsuitable mineral baths, etc., the
principal feat performed by allopathy in its so-called methods of
treatment.
§ 161
When I here limit the so-called homoeopathic aggravation, or rather the
primary action of the homoeopathic medicine that seems to increase
somewhat the symptoms of the original disease, to the first or few hours,
this is certainly true with respect to diseases of a more acute character
and of recent origin, but where medicines of long action have to combat a
malady of, considerable or of very long standing, where no such apparent
increase of the original disease ought to appear during treatment and it
does not so appear if the accurately chosen medicine was given in proper
small, gradually higher doses, each somewhat modified with renewed
dynamization (§ 247). Such increase of the original symptoms of a chronic
disease can appear only at the end of treatment when the cure is almost or
quite finished
§ 171
In non-venereal chronic disease, those, therefore, that arise from psora,
we often require, in order to effect a cure, to give several antipsoric
remedies in succession, every successive one being homoeopathically chosen
in consonance with the group of symptoms remaining after completion of the
action of the previous remedy.
§ 173
The only diseases that seem to have but few symptoms, and on that account
to be less amenable to cure, are those which may be termed one-sided,
because they display only one or two principal symptoms which obscure
almost all the others. They belong chiefly to the class of chronic
diseases
§ 201
It is evident that man's vital force, when encumbered with a chronic
disease which it is unable to overcome by its own powers instinctively,
adopts the plan of developing a local malady on some external part, solely
for this object, that by making and keeping in a diseased state this part
which is not indispensable to human life, it may thereby silence the
internal disease, which otherwise threatens to destroy the vital organs
(and to deprive the patient of life), and that it may thereby, so to
speak, transfer the internal disease to the vicarious local affection and,
as it were, draw it thither. The presence of the local affection thus
silences, for a time, the internal disease, though without being able
either to cure it or to diminish it materially.1 The local affection,
however, is never anything else than a part of the general disease, but a
part of it increased all in one direction by the organic vital force, and
transferred to a less dangerous (external) part of the body, in order to
allay the internal ailment. But (as has been said) by this local symptom
that silences the internal disease, so far from anything being gained by
the vital force towards diminishing or curing the whole malady, the
internal disease, on the contrary, continues, in spite of it, gradually to
increase and Nature is constrained to enlarge and aggravate the local
symptom always more and more, in order that it may still suffice as a
substitute for the increased internal disease and may still keep it under.
Old ulcers on the legs get worse as long as the internal psora is uncured,
the chancre enlarges as long as the internal syphilis remains uncured, the
fig warts increased and grow while the sycosis is not cured whereby the
latter is rendered more and more difficult to cure, just as the general
internal disease continues to increase as time goes on.
§ 204
If we deduct all chronic affections, ailments and diseases that depend on
a persistent unhealthy mode of living, (§ 77) as also those innumerable
medicinal maladies (v. § 74) caused by the irrational, persistent,
harassing and pernicious treatment of diseases often only of trivial
character by physicians of the old school, most the remainder of chronic
diseases result from the development of these three chronic miasms,
internal syphilis, internal sycosis, but chiefly and in infinitely greater
proportion, internal psora, each of which was already in possession of the
whole organism, and had penetrated it in all directions before the
appearance of the primary, vicarious local symptom of each of them (in the
case of psora the scabious eruption, in syphilis the chancre or the bubo,
and in sycosis the condylomata) that prevented their outburst; and these
chronic miasmatic diseases, if deprived of their local symptom, are
inevitably destined by mighty Nature sooner or later to become developed
and to burst forth, and thereby propagate all the nameless misery, the
incredible number of chronic diseases which have plagued mankind for
hundreds and thousands of years, none of which would so frequently have
come into existence had physicians striven in a rational manner to cure
radically and to extinguish in the organism these three miasms by the
internal homoeopathic medicines suited for each of them, without employing
topical remedies for their external symptoms. (See note to § 282)
§ 232
.... alternating diseases, are also very numerous,1) but all
belong to the class of chronic diseases; they are generally a
manifestation of developed psora alone, sometimes, but seldom, complicated
with a syphilitic miasm, and therefore in the former case may be cured by
antipsoric medicines; in the latter, however, in alternation with
antisyphilitics as taught in my work on the Chronic Diseases.
1 Two or three states may alternate with one another. Thus, for instance,
in the case of double alternating diseases, certain pains may occur
persistently in the legs, etc., immediately on the disappearance of a kind
of ophthalmia, which latter again appears as soon as the pain in the limbs
has gone off for the time - convulsions and spasms may alternate
immediately with any other affection of the body or some part of it - in a
case of threefold alternating states in a common indisposition, periods of
apparent increase of health and unusual exaltation of the corporeal and
mental powers (extravagant gaiety, extraordinary activity of the body,
excess of comfortable feeling, inordinate appetite, etc.) may occur, after
which, and quite unexpectedly, gloomy, melancholy humor, intolerable
hypochondriacal derangement of the disposition, with disorder of several
of the vital operations, the digestion, sleep, etc., appear, which again,
and just as suddenly, give place to the habitual moderate ill-health; and
so also several and very various alternating states. When the new state
makes its appearance, there is often no perceptible trace of the former
one. In other cases only slight traces of the former alternating state
remain when the new one occurs; few of the symptoms of the first state
remain on the appearance and during the continuance of the second.
Sometimes the morbid alternating states are quite of opposite natures, as
for instance, melancholy periodically alternating with gay insanity or
frenzy.
§ 233
The typical intermittent disease are those where a morbid state of
unvarying character returns at a tolerably fixed period, while the patient
is apparently in good health, and takes its departure at an equally fixed
period; this is observed in those apparently non-febrile morbid states
that come and go in a periodical manner (at certain times), as well as in
those of a febrile character, to wit, the numerous varieties of
intermittent fevers.q
§ 234
Those apparently non-febrile, typical, periodically recurring morbid
states just alluded to observed in one single patient at a time (they do
not usually appear sporadically or epidemically) always belong to the
chronic diseases, mostly to those that are purely psoric, are but seldom
complicated with syphilis, and are successfully treated by the same means;
yet it is sometimes necessary to employ as an intermediate remedy a small
dose of a potentized solution of cinchona bark, in order to extinguish
completely their intermittent type.
§ 235
With regard to the intermittent fevers, 1) that prevail sporadically or
epidemically (not those endemically located in marshy districts), we often
find every paroxysm likewise composed of two opposite alternating states
(cold, heat - heat, cold), more frequently still of three (cold, heat,
sweat). Therefore the remedy selected for them from the general class of
proved (common, not antipsoric) medicines must either (and remedies of
this sort are the surest) be able likewise to produce in the healthy body
two (or all three) similar alternating states, or else must correspond by
similarity of symptoms, in the most homoeopathic manner possible, to the
strongest, best marked, and most peculiar alternating state (either to the
cold stage, or to the hot stage, or to the sweating state, each with its
accessory symptoms, according as the one or other alternating state is the
strongest and most peculiar); but the symptoms of the patient's health
during the intervals when he is free from fever must be the chief guide to
the most appropriate homoeopathic remedy.2)
1) The pathology hitherto in vogue, which is still in the stage of
irrational infancy, recognizes but one single intermittent fever, which it
likewise termed ague, and admits of no varieties but such as are
constituted by the different intervals at which the paroxysms recur,
quotidian, tertian, quartan etc. But there are much more important
differences among them than what are marked by the periods of their
recurrence; there are innumerable varieties of these fevers, some of which
cannot even be denominated ague, as their fits consist solely of heat;
others, again, are characterised by cold alone, with or without subsequent
perspiration; yet others which exhibit general coldness of the surface,
with a sensation on the patient's part, or whilst the body feels
externally hot, the patient feels cold; others, again, in which one
paroxysm consists entirely of a rigor or simple chilliness followed by an
interval of health, while the next consists of heat alone, followed or not
by perspiration; others, again, in which the heat comes first and the cold
stage not till that is gone; others, again, wherein after a cold or hot
stage apyrexia ensues, and then perspiration comes on like a second fit,
often many hours subsequently; others, again, in which no perspiration at
all comes on, and yet others in which the whole attack consists of
perspiration alone, without any cold or hot stage, or in which the
perspiration is only present during the heat; and there are innumerable
other differences, especially in regard to the accessory symptoms, such as
headache of a peculiar kind, bad taste of the mouth, nausea, vomiting,
diarrhoea, want of or excessive thirst, peculiar pains in the body or
limbs, disturbed sleep, deliria, alterations of temper, spasms, etc.,
before, during or after the sweating stage, and countless other varieties.
All these are manifestly intermittent fevers of very different kinds, each
of which, as might naturally be supposed, requires a special
(homoeopathic) treatment. It must be confessed that they can almost all be
suppressed (as is often done) by enormous doses of bark and of its
pharmaceutical preparation, the sulphate of quinine; that is to say, their
periodical recurrence (their typus) may be extinguished by it, but the
patients who suffered from intermittent fevers for which cinchona bark is
not suitable, as is the case with all those epidemic intermittent fevers
that traverse whole countries and even mountainous districts, are not
restored to health by the extinction of the typus; on the contrary, they
now remain ill in another manner, and worse, often much worse, than
before; they are affected by peculiar, chronic bark dyscrasias, and can
scarcely be restored to health even by a prolonged treatment by the true
system of medicine - and yet that is what is called curing, forsooth!
2) Dr. von Bonninghausen, who has rendered more services to our beneficent
system of medicine than any other of my disciples, has best elucidated
this subject, which demands so much care, and has facilitated the choice
of the efficient remedy for the various epidemics of fever, in his work
entitled Versuch einer homoopathischen Therapie der Wechselfieber, 1833,
Muster bi Regensberg.
§ 241
Epidemics of intermittent fever, in situations where none are endemic, are
of the nature of chronic diseases, composed of single acute paroxysms;
each single epidemic is of a peculiar, uniform character common to all the
individuals attacked, and when this character is found in the totality of
the symptoms common to all, it guides us to the discovery of the
homoeopathic (specific) remedy suitable for all the cases, which is almost
universally serviceable in those patients who enjoyed tolerable health
before the occurrence of the epidemic, that is to say, who were not
chronic sufferers from developed psora.
§ 242
If, however, in such an epidemic intermittent fever the first paroxysms
have been left uncured, or if the patients have been weakened by improper
allopathic treatment; then the inherent psora that exists, alas! in so
many persons, although in a latent state, becomes developed, takes on the
type of the intermittent fever, and to all appearance continues to play
the part of the epidemic intermittent fever, so that the medicine, which
would have been useful in the first paroxysms (rarely an antipsoric), is
now no longer suitable and cannot be of any service. We have now to do
with a psoric intermittent fever only, and this will generally be subdued
by minute and rarely repeated doses of sulphur or hepar sulphuris in a
high potency.
§ 244
The intermittent fevers endemic in marshy districts and tracts of country
frequently exposed to inundations, give a great deal of work to physicians
of the old school, and yet a healthy man may in his youth become
habituated even to marshy districts and remain in good health, provided he
preserves a faultless regimen and his system is not lowered by want,
fatigue or pernicious passions. The intermittent fevers endemic there
would at the most only attack him on his first arrival; but one or two
very small doses of a highly potentized solution of cinchona bark would,
conjointly with the well-regulated mode of living just alluded to,
speedily free him from the disease. But persons who, while taking
sufficient corporeal exercise and pursuing a healthy system of
intellectual occupations and bodily regimen, cannot be cured of marsh
intermittent fever by one or a few of such small doses of cinchona - in
such persons psora, striving to develop itself, always lies at the root of
their malady, and their intermittent fever cannot be cured in the marshy
district without antipsoric treatment. It sometimes happens that when
these patients exchange, without delay, the marshy district for one that
is dry and mountainous, recovery apparently ensues (the fever leaves them)
if they be not yet deeply sunk in disease, that is to say, if the psora
was not completely developed in them and can consequently return to its
latent state; but they will never regain perfect health without antipsoric
treatment.
§ 247
It is impractical to repeat the same unchanged dose of a remedy once, not
to mention its frequent repetition (and at short intervals in order not to
delay the cure). The vital principle does not accept such unchanged doses
without resistance, that is, without other symptoms of the medicine to
manifest themselves than those similar to the disease to be cured, because
the former dose has already accomplished the expected change in the vital
principle and a second dynamically wholly similar, unchanged dose of the
same medicine no longer finds, therefore, the same conditions of the vital
force. The patient may indeed be made sick in another way by receiving
other such unchanged doses, even sicker than he was, for now only those
symptoms of the given remedy remain active which were not homoeopathic to
the original disease, hence no step towards cure can follow, only a true
aggravation of the condition of the patient. But if the succeeding dose is
changed slightly every time, namely potentized somewhat higher (§§
269-270) then the vital principle may be altered without difficulty by the
same medicine (the sensation of natural disease diminishing) and thus the
cure brought nearer.1
1 We ought not even with the best chosen homoeopathic medicine, for
instance one pellet of the same potency that was beneficial at first, to
let the patient have a second or third dose, taken dry. In the same way,
if the medicine was dissolved in water and the first dose proved
beneficial, a second or third and even smaller dose from the bottle
standing undisturbed, even in intervals of a few days, would prove no
longer beneficial, even though the original preparation had been
potentized with ten succussions or as I suggested later with but two
succussions in order to obviate this disadvantage and this according to
above reasons. But through modification of every dose in its dynamiztion
degree, as I herewith teach, there exists no offence, even if the doses be
repeated more frequently, even if the medicine be ever so highly
potentized with ever so many succussions. It almost seems as if the best
selected homoeopathic remedy could best extract the morbid disorder from
the vital force and in chronic disease to extinguish the same only if
applied in several different forms.
§ 291
Baths of pure water prove themselves partly palliative, partly as
homoeopathic serviceable aids in restoring health in acute diseases as
well as in convalescence of cured chronic patients with proper
consideration of the conditions of the convalescent and the temperature of
the bath, its duration and repetition. But even if well applied, they may
bring only physically beneficial changes in the sick body, in themselves
they are no true medicine. The lukewarm baths at 25 to 27° serve to arouse
the slumbering sensibility of fibre in the apparent dead (frozen, drowned,
suffocated) which benumbed the sensation of the nerves. Though only
palliative, still they often prove themselves sufficiently active,
especially when given in conjunction with coffee and rubbing with the
hands. They may give homoeopathic aid in cases where the irritability is
very unevenly distributed and accumulated too unevenly in some organs as
is the case in certain hysteric spasms and infantile convulsions. In the
same way, cold baths 10 to 6° in persons cured medically of chronic
diseases and with deficiency of vital heat, act as an homoeopathic aid. By
instantaneous and later with repeated immersions they act as a palliative
restorative of the tone of the exhausted fibre. For this purpose, such
baths are to be used for more than momentary duration, rather for minutes
and of gradually lowered temperature, they are a palliative, which, since
it acts only physically has no connection with the disadvantage of a
reverse action to be feared afterwards, as takes place with dynamic
medicinal palliatives
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