Suppression

- BENERJEE.P,

Suppression 

I will now speak of suppression-that blessed method of treatment that turns the disease-force inward and creates more complex and difficult diseases one after another. If you understand suppression, you will be able to avoid them with caution and thus avoid quite a lot of unnecessary sufferings to the patient and troubles to yourself.
 1. Of all the methods of suppression, the most common and yet the most dangerous is that by external application of ointment. It has already been made clear that all itches etc. on the skin, which appear to the unintelligent eye as mere local diseases independent of the man, are but Psora reflected on the external body. They are not independent of the whole man but are conditions of the whole man expressed in those particular forms in those particular localities. It is therefore, extremely silly to treat them as independent units and to drive them from their seats. It is, of course, a fact that they will quickly disappear from the skin under the use of ointment etc., but only to locate elsewhere, because the disease is of the whole man, and local treatment can only improve the "locality", and not the whole man. It has already been stated that people know and well understand the bad consequences of suppressed measles or pox, but they do not admit that the suppression of itches can also result in similar disastrous consequences. The fact is that in the case of measles or pox, the disaster ensues so quickly that they can at once ascribe it to the suppression, while in the case of itches, it becomes difficult for them to ascribe it to the suppression, because it appears long after that suppression. But the law is ever uniform. If suppression of one disease brings disaster, the suppression of all other diseases also will do the same thing. If you doubt this, clear up your doubts by studious observation. You will find that, there can be no breach in the law of uniformity of Nature. There is no cure from the local use of ointment etc. Such local treatment only prepares the way for other diseases. The local affection may disappear under local treatment, but the disappearance of the local affection is not the disappearance of the disease, because the disease is of the man and not of the locality. Such local treatment therefore necessarily brings in a hundred other diseases in other localities. All other systems of medicine than Homœopathy only care to remove the local appearance of the disease. They consider each disease to be a separate unit, independent of the personality of the patient, and they necessarily aim at patching up the diseased part. But as this is in no way a total annihilation of the disease-force, that is to say, as this is in no way a complete restoration of the man to his normal state of health, other affections appear in other parts of the body. They remove the itch, but colic appears, and this colic is at once explained as quite a different disease, and a similar process of scientific(?) treatment for it is recommended. This colic is then suppressed again, and then comes quite a third thing and so on, until insanity or death closes the scene. A young boy had eczema on his leg, which was patched up by external application of ointment. The boy gradually (in 3 or 4 months) developed a terrible dyspepsia with weakness, both physical and mental. The condition of the stomach became so bad at last that he used to pass undigested solid foods with his stool. He was then treated with injection but all for nothing. When, however, the patient was brought to me, I gave him a dose of Psorinum 1000, and this brought out the suppressed eczema in a few days, and the inveterate dyspepsia that was implanted on the boy by the suppression of this eczema gradually disappeared, as also the eczema. There are innumerable such records of suppression of skin diseases by external ointment, resulting in most serious diseases, and subsequent cure of the latter as also of the former under the action of deep acting Homœopathic medicines. The disappearance of the resultant disease under the action of the Homœopathic medicine and that of the suppressed skin disease, after its re-appearance in its original form, should leave no room for questioning the disastrous effects of suppression-the disasters of considering and treating disease as a mere local something independent of the man.

 Not only does the suppression of itches-the external manifestation of Psora-bring such tremendous mischief to the man, but also, similar or even greater mischief is brought on to him by suppression of gonorrhœa and chancre-the external manifestations of Sycosis and Syphilis. He contracts gonorrhœa from a prostitute and is anxious to be rid of the manifestation in the shape of the discharge, and it is done quickly and quietly enough with a few injections. Syphilis is also treated in the same ruthless manner. But the merest removal of the local manifestation of the discharge or the chancre is never equivalent to an eradication of the virus. It gradually permeates the whole man and implants the respective miasms of Sycosis and Syphilis on the economy, and these miasms then travel down from the father to the son and so on, growing more insidious at every succeeding generation, till at last insanity and leprosy honour the victim. The above is only a brief picture of the suppression of the most primary manifestations of the three miasms, Psora, Sycosis and Syphilis, but the trouble does not end here, because the diseases that result from these suppressions are also suppressed in their turn in the same ruthless fashion, and so on till eternity. I have only given you an idea of what happens as a result of suppression. I am afraid, the ablest author on earth will fail to give you an exhaustive description of the total mischief that ensues from it.

 Again, besides the suppression of the primary manifestations of the miasms and of the manifestations that appear on the suppression of those primary manifestations, there is a third type of suppression, and the effects of these are more dangerous still. It is the suppression of the manifestations of two or more miasms in combination. There is no limit to the varieties of diseases they create. This will be dealt with in details later on, as it is an indispensable equipment for successful treatment of chronic diseases.
 2. Besides suppression by ointment, diseases are often suppressed by indiscreet use of the surgeon's lancet. Surgical instruments have their scope of use; a mechanical way of treatment as it is, it should be resorted to only in local affections of a mechanical nature. It has absolutely no use in cases where the whole man, the whole system, is concerned. As soon as the disease in hand is such as indicates an abnormality in the systemic processes, it ceases to be a case for surgery, because unless you correct the systemic processes, the removal of the disease-product will be the only thing accomplished, while the processes at fault will continue to do their work-if not there on the same place, certainly, in some other. If you remove a tumour of the lid, which is the pathological product of a long course of some sort of abnormal functioning of the system, you only remove the product, without correcting the process at fault, and the result will be that the same defective process will continue, and as such, the product also will continue to be formed. This product may not now be in the same spot and in the same form, but in some other region of the body in some other form, as the opposition offered at its original site will naturally give it a tendency to follow the line of least resistance. Indiscreet manual surgery also suppresses and gives an inward turn to the disease force, just as suppression by ointment does.

 It is, however, to be recognised that surgery has its own sphere of use, and that sphere is the sphere of local affections. Suppose, for example, you break your knee. Now, here is a case in which the system is not evidently responsible in any way. The break could not be the result of the liver or the kidney not performing their functions, and here you cannot, therefore, repair the damage by the use of internal medicine. It is purely a local affection independent of the man, and it has, therefore, to be treated locally by the surgeon's knife. It is, however, to be remembered that in cases of this nature also, internal use of Homœopathic medicines is also indispensable, when the malady becomes a condition of the man in his entirety, that is to say, when the damage is not completely repaired owing to the system being at fault and as such being unable to recover from the effects of the local damage in spite of proper local treatment. Every man does not recover from the effect of a broken knee equally quickly. And if it is so, and if one man is having an unusually delayed recovery, it is the man himself (i.e.  his system) who is responsible, and in such cases, the use of internal medicine is unavoidable. From the above, it must be clear to you that it is necessary to discriminate carefully and correctly between a case for surgery and a case for medicinal treatment;-not only this, but also to avoid indiscriminate use of surgical instruments in real cases for medicinal treatment, as in that case, suppression of the disease manifestation and not a cure of the man will result and this will give the disease an inward turn.

 3. A third type of suppression results from the use of strong chemicals, like quinine and arsenic etc., in material doses. This is also a very common type of suppression, and ought to be understood even by the simplest layman. The enlargement of spleen and liver and a hundred other things that follow the suppression of fever by those drugs is a daily affair in our times.

 4. Now the question arises, whether Homœopathic medicines can ever suppress diseases instead of curing them. The reply to this, however, depends on what you understand by the expression Homœopathic medicines. If it means medicines applied strictly according to the laws of cure-(1) the law of similarity, (2) the law of potentisation and (3) the law regarding the use of only one medicine unmixed at a time,-as it ought to mean, suppression is impossible. If, however, Homœopathic medicine is only taken to mean a colourless and odourless drop from a Homœopath's medicine chest, and prescribed by a Homœopath without regard to the laws detailed above, there may be as bad suppression from Homœopathic medicines as from the methods described above, as in such cases there is no Homœopathicity between the medicine and the case, and as such the application of the medicine is unhomœopathic here. If there is only a partial similarity between the medicine selected and the case in hand, the symptoms covered by the medicine may be removed, but a removal of the symptoms is not necessarily cure. True cure consists in a restoration of the patient to his normal health, and the automatic disappearance of the disease symptoms in such a case only is "cure". If this does not happen, it is to be understood that only the manifestations in the shape of the symptoms have disappeared while the patient is continuing ill yet. One thing is, however, to be noted here, namely, that in a case of Homœopathic suppression, that is to say, in a case of suppression due to the unhomœopathic use of Homœopathic medicines, the mischief is generally far less than in the other forms of suppression, as in such suppressions, the disease force is not always given an inward turn. All that happens is that the patient is not completely cured, and as such, the disease force is allowed to continue to work. If, however, we want to pass as Homœopaths, we must make it a point that even this type of suppression, though it is the least harmful of the several types, does not take place in our hands, because as Homœopaths our business ought to be to cure the sick.

 The above is, however, by no means an exhaustive statement of the various methods of suppression, as suppression results from any method that is unhomœopathic and short of curative, and let us, therefore, understand "cure" precisely as it is.