Posted October 27th, 2008 by admin
It isn't always Syphilis or Sycosis
Hahnemann noted that Syphilis and Sycosis contributed perhaps 1/8 of the cases of chronic disease he was seeing in the 1820's. What of the remaining 88% representing non-venereal chronic disease?
It occurred to him, that perhaps there was another contagium vivum, or perhaps a collection of these, that might be behaving in the same manner. He'd already identified many acute miasms - acute contagia viva - infectious diseases of relatively fixed character, with finite grip on the organism, resolving in relatively brief time periods under the efforts of the life principle. Perhaps there was another infectious disease, which like Syphilis and Sycosis, continued its grip on the organism despite the best efforts of the dynamis, manifesting in varied patterns of chronic outward expression?
Hahnemann had learned, from investigating acute epidemic disease, that in order to assemble the full image of the disease, it was necessary to observe not only the snapshot-in-time of an individual presentation, but to extend this over the time period of the disease's expression; and also to extend this observation beyond the single patient, into a description of the disease's expressions across a population, taken as if of one person.
Just like the mostly acute epidemics [§102] the chronic wasting sicknesses remain the same as to their essential nature. Just as I did with the epidemics, I had to investigate the chronic wasting sicknesses (namely and principally psora) much more exactly than ever before. I had to do this because of the extent of the symptoms in these chronic diseases and also because one patient carries only a part of the symptoms in himself, while a second or third patient, etc. suffers from some other befallments which likewise, as it were, are only a part torn off from the totality of the symptoms that make up the entire extent of the one and the same disease. Therefore, the complex of all the symptoms belonging to such a miasmatic wasting sickness (in particular, psora) can only be ascertained from very many such individual chronic patients. (Samuel Hahnemann, Organon, aphorism 103)
Applying this approach to his remaining 88% of chronic disease cases, Hahnemann perceived a complex disease-entity which he named Psora. Although much has been made in some quarters that this term may derive from the Hebrew "tsorat" (fault, stigma, pollution; with prominent religious/spiritual implications), it is more likely that Hahnemann was simply referencing the Greek "psora" = "itch". The most superficial expression of this entity - equivalent to the chancre of syphilis and the fig warts of sycosis - was a characteristic itching skin eruption.
In The Chronic Diseases, Hahnemann offers a rather tedious and comprehensive review of the primary, secondary and tertiary symptom-expressions of Psora, building up a full picture of this disease (this is perhaps best appreciated in H. Choudhury's extraction of Hahnemann's work, in Indications of Miasm). It is important to appreciate, that Psora does not merely refer simplistically to a "history of itching eruption," but rather is characterized by an extensive complex constellation of disease-expressions.
As with Syphilis and Sycosis, it was Hahnemann's impression that Psora was a contagium vivum - a dynamic infection by a living agent. "No other chronic miasma infects more generally, more surely, more easily and more absolutely than the miasma of itch; as already stated, it is the most contagious of all …" (Samuel Hahnemann, The Chronic Diseases)). As with Syphilis and Sycosis, the agent responsible for contagion was not identified in Hahnemann's day.
I believe we can legitimately question whether Hahnemann's Psora represents a single chronic miasmatic disease, or a collection of readily-confusable chronic miasmatic diseases. Both Jahr and Hering alluded to this latter possibility (more on this shortly). But before taking up that discussion, let's look into Hahnemann's Psora.
... at least seven-eighths of all the chronic maladies spring from [psora] as their only source, while the remaining eighth springs from syphilis and sycosis ...
(Samuel Hahnemann, The Chronic Diseases).
