CHRONIC DISEASES :

- Phyllis speight.

We have dealt with the basic principles of Homoeopathy as laid down by Hahnemann. With a knowledge of these principles much good work can be done. Yet Hahnemann went a great deal further in the latter part of his life, supplementing his earlier work by making a deep study of Chronic Diseases.

First let us understand the difference between an acute and a chronic disease.

Acute: Those diseases originating from dietary indiscretions, deficient hygiene, physical agents, or bacterial infections. There is a period of progress and a period of decline, and there is always a tendency towards recovery. An example of this can be seen in typhoid, which is due to an acute poison having an evolution ending in recovery or death. Acute diseases, then, run a definite course and are of limited duration.

Chronic:

Those diseases caused by infection from various sources having a period of progress but NO period of decline. The vital force alone is unable to extinguish these diseases hence they cease only with the death of the patient, there being no tendency whatever to recovery unless cured by proper treatment. Syphilis is an example, its manifestations changing over the years of the patient's life, but ever striking deeper towards the vital organs.

Hahnemann, in his practice, observed that the homoeopathic remedies he was then using were successfully in curing the ailments of many patients, yet after a period of time some returned with similar symptoms stronger than before. The disease was in fact progressing.

He states It was a continually repeated fact that the non- venereal chronic diseases, after being time and again removed homoeopathically by the remedies fully proved up to the present time, always returned in a more or less varied form and with new symptoms, or reappeared annually with an increase of complaints. This fact gave me the first clue that the homoeopathic physician...has not only to combat the disease presented before his eyes...but that he has always to encounter only some separate fragment of a more deep-seated original disease.'

He, therefore, must first find out as far as possible the whole extent of all the accidents and symptoms belonging to the unknown primitive malady before he can hope to discover one or more medicines which may homoeopathically cover the whole of the original disease by means of its peculiar symptoms...

But that the original malady sought for must be also of a miasmatic, chronic nature clearly appeared to me from this circumstance, that after it had once advanced and developed to a certain degree it can never be removed by the strength of any robust constitution, it can never be overcome by the most wholesome diet and order of life, nor will it die out of itself. But it is evermore aggravated, from year to year, through a transition into other and more serious symptoms, even till the end of man's life. . .'

Hahnemann then, believed that chronic diseases remained in a latent state in the body, returning from time to time in one form or another. The manifestations may take on the form of an ordinary acute illness, but these were in reality only one event in a series; and these disease could only be cured by a remedy which covered the whole original disease. For example, an attack of asthma may look like an isolated event in a patient's history, but on enquiry it will probably be found that the patient has at some earlier time suffered from a skin eruption. The asthma and the eruption are both symptoms of the same disease.

This conclusion was reached by Hahnemann after nearly twelve years of intensive study and research. For him there were three sources of chronic infection Miasms as he called them Psora and the two venereal diseases Syphilis and Gonorrhoea which he called Sycosis.

Psora had for its keynote, at some period of the patients history, an itch-like eruption. In the case of Syphilis a sequence of disease manifestations was known to exist and it has since been proved conclusively that Gonorrhoea similarly attacks the whole constitutions producing a chronic sequences of diseases manifestation.

The three chronic miasms of Hahnemann were then:

Psora: Contracted or inherited constitutional disease having a non-venereal basis.

Syphilis: The constitutional effects of contracted or inherited syphilis.

Sycosis: The constitutional effects of contracted or inherited gonorrhoea.

Of Psora, Hahnemann writes: I had come thus far in my investigations and observations with such non-venereal patients when I discovered... that the obstacle of the cure of many cases...seemed very often to lie in a former eruption of itch, which was not infrequently sufferings usually dated from that time. So also with similar chronic patients who did not confess such an infection, or what was probably more frequent, who had, from inattention, not perceived it or, at least, could not remember it. After a careful inquiry it usually turned out that little traces of it (small pustules of itch, herpes, etc.) had showed themselves with them from time to time, even if but rarely, as an indubitable sign of a former infection of this kind.'

These circumstances, in connection with the fact that innumerable observations of physicians, and not infrequently my own experience, had shown that an eruption of itch suppressed by faulty practice or one which had disappeared from the skin through other means was evidently followed, in persons otherwise healthy by the same or similar symptoms; these circumstances, I repeat, could leave no doubt in my mind as to the internal foe which I had to combat in my medical treatment of such cases.'

He goes on to describe many ailments known to us by their pathological names which have their origin in Psora skin eruptions, growths, malformations, blood diseases, convulsions, heart-diseases and many others.

He stress that where eruptions on the skin are suppressed by any means, the disease strikes inwards producing dangerous and often fatal complications, and illustrates his argument with many cases. We give below three of these cases in order that you may follow the strength of his argument.

A man 30, to 40 years of age had been afflicted with the itch a long time before, and it had been driven away by ointments; from which time he had become more and more asthmatic. His respiration become at least, even when not in motion, very short and extremely laboured, emitting at the same time a continuous hissing sound, but attended with only little coughing. He was ordered an injection of one drachm of squilla, and to take internally 3 grains of squilla. But by mistake he took the drachm of squilla internally. He was near losing his life with an indescribable nausea and retching. Soon after this the itch appeared again on his hands, his feet and his whole body in great appeared again on his hands, his feet and his whole body in great abundance, and by this means the asthma was at once removed.'

A student who had been for a long time afflicted with the itch drove it off with an ointment, and instead of this there broke out ulcers on his arms and legs, and glandular swellings in the arm-pits. These ulcers were finally cured by external applications when he was seized with dyspnoea and then dropsy, and from these he died.'

Two youths, brothers, drove off the itch by one and the same remedy, but they lost all appetite, a dry cough and a lingering fever set in, they became emaciated and fell into slumberous stupor so that they would have died if the eruptions had not luckily re-appeared on the skin.'

So we see that the nature of these chronic miasms is always to act in a direction from without inward' as can be realized very clearly in syphilis and sycosis from the nature of their contraction. Although not so clearly perceived with psora, the initial affection is always on the skin where it is easily suppressed by local treatment. Thus the same inward direction is again followed.

Having discovered the existence of a chronically operating poison in the essential character of certain diseases, it was necessary for Hahnemann to find deep acting remedies which corresponded in order to obtain complete similarity. These he named anti-psoric, anti-syphilitic and anti-sycotic and they had to be:

1. Remedies which acted in the opposite direction to the chronic diseases from within outward.

2. Remedies of a deep-acting nature, i.e. capable of affecting profoundly the whole organism, both in its metabolic and physiologic processes, the acute 'remedies acting only in the sensory and functional sphere.

From this we see that the fourth Law of the Direction of Cure becomes an essential part of Homoeopathic medicine and practice.

Read and study Chapter 22 of Roberts' The Principles & Art of Cure by Homoeopathy.