The problem of suppression
-WRITE HUBBARD.E
A patient said to me recently, "Where can I find literature showing the dangers of suppression? My daughter wants to put ointment on her baby's scalp eczema and won't believe me when I tell her it is perilous to do so". This made me search the literature which I found very meagre. Therefore this attempts to state the problem, the discussion of which in this body should be of real importance.
First, let us define the term; by suppression is meant that a disease manifestation is caused to disappear before the disease itself is cured.
The subject of suppression seems one of the most important from the homoeopathic point of view, but one of the least familiar to the ordinary medical mind. In regular medicine we are continually meeting with examples of suppression, indeed, from our point of view, all of usual medicine which is not unconscious homoeopathy is suppressive. There are various types of suppression.
1. Suppressions accidental or natural and not due to medication of any kind such as, suppression of strong emotion due to the unnatural exigencies of our collective living. These are more or less conscious suppressions although the seriousness of their results is not usually known and the individual takes great pride and credit in thrusting down these emotions.
There is a second kind of accidental suppression which comes from great mental shocks such as mortification or grief.
A third type of natural suppression is in the physical realm such as where the menses are checked by injudicious bathing, or the lochia stopped after labor by catching cold, or milk suppressed, or perspiration suddenly inhibited by chilling.
PAGE 71
Then there is also a type of suppression of one disease by another, which is so frequently spoken of in the Organon. This may take the form of an acute disease being held in abeyance by another acute one until the "cure" of the second; or it may be an acute disease suspending a chronic until the acute course is run. The reverse of this, where a chronic disease holding sway, gives a partial or full measure of immunity against acute disease, could really be classed as suppression although it is more usually thought of as immunity.
2. A second type of suppression most frequent in regular medicine nowadays is suppressions by local applications. This enters into many fields. For instance coryzas and sinus troubles are suppressed by local applications of argyrol, iodine and other substances, leucorrhoeal and gonorrhoeal discharges by injection of mercurochrome, protargol and permanganate; eruptions, from such acute ones as scabies and impetigo, through to the chronic ones, such as eczema and psoriasis, by zinc or sulphur preparations, ammoniated mercury and many others. The rashes due to the exanthems, which may also be classed under natural suppressions in some instances, may be driven in by the unwise use of cold packs. Other secretions, such as foot-sweat are often suppressed by foot powder; conjunctival pus by silver salts; ulcers by various local dressings, and warts by trichloracetic acid or electrical means. We have further the local suppression of many conditions by the different lamps, violet ray therapy, etc.
Haemorrhages are suppressed by local astringents, such as tannic acid, or by local coagulants such as thromboplastin, or by X-ray. (They may also be suppressed by general medication such as calcium lactate and gelatin). This brings up the question as to whether a homoeopathic drug, such as Ceanothus americanus should be classed as suppressive or curative.
3. Now we come to the conditions suppressed by current internal medication; for instance, malaria, which, if not of the quinine type, is simply suppressed by the massive routine quinine dosage often resulting in recurrent neuralgia; acute rheumatic fever where the patient is over-powdered with salicylates leading to suppression of joint symptoms and the inroads of the disease on the heart; epilepsy and choreas are often driven to cover by saturation with sedatives; and heart disease masked by digitalis.
PAGE 72
4. Disease is all too frequently suppressed by surgery: The removal of growths, benign or malign, polypi, tonsils, appendices, varicosities, haemorrhoids, fistulae and bone hypertrophies such as turbinates. The trouble here is that modern medicine sees to remove pathology rather than cure the underlying causes, not realizing that the ultimates of disease are benign attempts at exteriorization, at protective localizations.
5. Most insidious of all are the suppressions by vaccine injections which are now to prevalent that a child may take seven or eight different kinds in a year. I know a family of seven children of a well-known allopathic physician who were given in one year cold vaccines, diphtheria, scarlet fever, whooping-cough, typhoid, paratyphoid and smallpox, and two of the seven were also given hay fever pollen inoculations.
6. There is the whole question of suppressions of syphilis by arsenical and mercurial treatment which many doctors, even of the regular school, feel tends to develop later grave nervous tertiaries as well as saddling the patients with drug results.
7. These is another aspect of suppression, that of the suppression of individual symptoms, and this may be done quite as effectively by the use of homoeopathic remedies as by old school drugs. Never forget that to palliate a curable case is suppression. It will involve you in conditional change of remedies, a sort of "puss in the corner" with the symptoms. it will mask the true fundamental picture of the disease and complicate it to the point were it will be incurable. The degree to which this is done by the general run of homoeopathic practitioners is not realized and is appalling.
PAGE 73
I need not go into the bad results of these different kinds of suppression, you have all seen them. They include asthma, convulsions, paralysis, insanity, tuberculosis and deep diseases of the vital organs. Last year Dr. Stearns gave a paper on Prodromal Symptoms and Their Importance in Prescribing. This paper of mine should be entitled prodromal or Prior suppressions, Their importance in Prescribing. In every case we must "cherchez" not "la femme" but "la suppression". Shall we prescribe for the symptoms before the suppression took place? Shall we use the form of suppression as a symptom in our totality? Shall we prescribe mainly for the present post-suppressive syndrome? We must remember that suppression in any of its forms drives diseases in, masks symptoms, makes protean changes in the form of the disease and blocks the natural exit of the disease. Always leave the golden bridge of your pathological ultimates, as by that route only, can the disease return to cure. Disease is the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. Theseus, the symptom, must find his way back and out of the Labyrinth. Do not cut his cord!
A patient said to me recently, "Where can I find literature showing the dangers of suppression? My daughter wants to put ointment on her baby's scalp eczema and won't believe me when I tell her it is perilous to do so". This made me search the literature which I found very meagre. Therefore this attempts to state the problem, the discussion of which in this body should be of real importance.
First, let us define the term; by suppression is meant that a disease manifestation is caused to disappear before the disease itself is cured.
The subject of suppression seems one of the most important from the homoeopathic point of view, but one of the least familiar to the ordinary medical mind. In regular medicine we are continually meeting with examples of suppression, indeed, from our point of view, all of usual medicine which is not unconscious homoeopathy is suppressive. There are various types of suppression.
1. Suppressions accidental or natural and not due to medication of any kind such as, suppression of strong emotion due to the unnatural exigencies of our collective living. These are more or less conscious suppressions although the seriousness of their results is not usually known and the individual takes great pride and credit in thrusting down these emotions.
There is a second kind of accidental suppression which comes from great mental shocks such as mortification or grief.
A third type of natural suppression is in the physical realm such as where the menses are checked by injudicious bathing, or the lochia stopped after labor by catching cold, or milk suppressed, or perspiration suddenly inhibited by chilling.
PAGE 71
Then there is also a type of suppression of one disease by another, which is so frequently spoken of in the Organon. This may take the form of an acute disease being held in abeyance by another acute one until the "cure" of the second; or it may be an acute disease suspending a chronic until the acute course is run. The reverse of this, where a chronic disease holding sway, gives a partial or full measure of immunity against acute disease, could really be classed as suppression although it is more usually thought of as immunity.
2. A second type of suppression most frequent in regular medicine nowadays is suppressions by local applications. This enters into many fields. For instance coryzas and sinus troubles are suppressed by local applications of argyrol, iodine and other substances, leucorrhoeal and gonorrhoeal discharges by injection of mercurochrome, protargol and permanganate; eruptions, from such acute ones as scabies and impetigo, through to the chronic ones, such as eczema and psoriasis, by zinc or sulphur preparations, ammoniated mercury and many others. The rashes due to the exanthems, which may also be classed under natural suppressions in some instances, may be driven in by the unwise use of cold packs. Other secretions, such as foot-sweat are often suppressed by foot powder; conjunctival pus by silver salts; ulcers by various local dressings, and warts by trichloracetic acid or electrical means. We have further the local suppression of many conditions by the different lamps, violet ray therapy, etc.
Haemorrhages are suppressed by local astringents, such as tannic acid, or by local coagulants such as thromboplastin, or by X-ray. (They may also be suppressed by general medication such as calcium lactate and gelatin). This brings up the question as to whether a homoeopathic drug, such as Ceanothus americanus should be classed as suppressive or curative.
3. Now we come to the conditions suppressed by current internal medication; for instance, malaria, which, if not of the quinine type, is simply suppressed by the massive routine quinine dosage often resulting in recurrent neuralgia; acute rheumatic fever where the patient is over-powdered with salicylates leading to suppression of joint symptoms and the inroads of the disease on the heart; epilepsy and choreas are often driven to cover by saturation with sedatives; and heart disease masked by digitalis.
PAGE 72
4. Disease is all too frequently suppressed by surgery: The removal of growths, benign or malign, polypi, tonsils, appendices, varicosities, haemorrhoids, fistulae and bone hypertrophies such as turbinates. The trouble here is that modern medicine sees to remove pathology rather than cure the underlying causes, not realizing that the ultimates of disease are benign attempts at exteriorization, at protective localizations.
5. Most insidious of all are the suppressions by vaccine injections which are now to prevalent that a child may take seven or eight different kinds in a year. I know a family of seven children of a well-known allopathic physician who were given in one year cold vaccines, diphtheria, scarlet fever, whooping-cough, typhoid, paratyphoid and smallpox, and two of the seven were also given hay fever pollen inoculations.
6. There is the whole question of suppressions of syphilis by arsenical and mercurial treatment which many doctors, even of the regular school, feel tends to develop later grave nervous tertiaries as well as saddling the patients with drug results.
7. These is another aspect of suppression, that of the suppression of individual symptoms, and this may be done quite as effectively by the use of homoeopathic remedies as by old school drugs. Never forget that to palliate a curable case is suppression. It will involve you in conditional change of remedies, a sort of "puss in the corner" with the symptoms. it will mask the true fundamental picture of the disease and complicate it to the point were it will be incurable. The degree to which this is done by the general run of homoeopathic practitioners is not realized and is appalling.
PAGE 73
I need not go into the bad results of these different kinds of suppression, you have all seen them. They include asthma, convulsions, paralysis, insanity, tuberculosis and deep diseases of the vital organs. Last year Dr. Stearns gave a paper on Prodromal Symptoms and Their Importance in Prescribing. This paper of mine should be entitled prodromal or Prior suppressions, Their importance in Prescribing. In every case we must "cherchez" not "la femme" but "la suppression". Shall we prescribe for the symptoms before the suppression took place? Shall we use the form of suppression as a symptom in our totality? Shall we prescribe mainly for the present post-suppressive syndrome? We must remember that suppression in any of its forms drives diseases in, masks symptoms, makes protean changes in the form of the disease and blocks the natural exit of the disease. Always leave the golden bridge of your pathological ultimates, as by that route only, can the disease return to cure. Disease is the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. Theseus, the symptom, must find his way back and out of the Labyrinth. Do not cut his cord!
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