The Homœopathic healing art, as taught in my own writings and in those of my pupils, when faithfully followed, has hitherto shown its natural superiority over any allopathic treatment in a very decided and striking manner; and this not only in those diseases which suddenly attack men (the acute diseases), but also in epidemic diseases and in sporadic fevers.
Venereal diseases also have been radically healed by Homœopathy much more surely, with less trouble and without any sequelae; for without disturbing or destroying the local manifestation it heals the internal fundamental disease from within only, through the best specific remedy. But the number of the other chronic diseases on this great earth has been immeasurably greater, and remains so.
Treatment by allopathic physicians hitherto merely served to increase the distress from this kind of disease; for this treatment consisted of a whole multitude of nauseous mixtures (compounded by the druggist from violently acting medicines in large doses, of whose separate true effects they were ignorant), together with the use of manifold baths, the sudorific and salivating remedies, the pain-killing narcotics, the injections, fomentations, fumigations, the blistering plasters, the exutories and fontanels, but especially the everlasting laxatives, leeches, cuppings and starving treatments, or whatever names may be given to all these medicinal torments, which continually varied like the fashions. By these means the disease was either aggravated and the vital force, spite of so-called tonics used at intervals, was more and more diminished; or, if any striking change was produced by them, instead of the former sufferings, there appeared a worse state — nameless diseases caused by medicine, tai worse and more incurable than the original natural one — while the physician consoled the patient with the words: "The former sickness I have been fortunate enough to remove; it is a great pity that a new (?) disease has appeared, but I hope to be as successful in removing this latter as in the former." And so, while the scdjic disease assumed various forms, and while new diseases were being added by the use of improper, injurious medicines, the sufferings of the patient were continual!}^ aggravated until his pitiable lamentations were hushed forever with his dying breath, and the relatives were soothed with the comforting pretense:1 ' Everything imaginable has been used and applied in the case of the deceased. ' '
It is not so with Homœopathy the great gift of God I
Even in these other kinds of chronic diseases, its disciples, by following the teachings presented in my former writings and my former oral lectures, accomplished far more than all the afore -mentioned methods of curing; i. e., when they found the patient not too much run down and spoiled by allopathic treatment, as was unfortunately too often the case where the patient had any money to spend.
Using the more natural treatment, Homœopathic physicians have frequently been able in a short time to remove the chronic disease which they had before them, after examining it according to all the symptoms perceptible to the senses; and the means of cure were the most suitable among the Homœopathic remedies, used in their smallest doses, which had been so far proved as to their pure, true effects. And all this was done without robbing the patient of his fluids and strength, as is done by the allopathy of the common physicians; so that the patient, fully healed, could again enjoy gladsome days. These cures indeed have far excelled all that allopathists had ever — in rare cases — been able to effect by a lucky grab into their medicine chests.
The complaints yielded for the most part to very small doses of that remedy which had proved its ability to produce the same series of morbid symptoms in the healthy body; and, if the disease was not altogether too inveterate and had not been too much and in too great a degree mismanaged by allopathy, it often yielded for a considerable time, so that mankind had good reason to deem itself fortunate even for that much help, and, indeed, it often proclaimed its thankfulness. A patient thus treated might and often did consider himself in pretty good health, when he fairly judged of his present improved state and compared it with his far more painful condition before Homœopathy had afforded him its help.^
Even some gross errors of diet, taking cold, the appearance of weather especially rough, wet and cold or stormy, or even the approach of autumn, if ever so mild, but, more yet, winter and a wintry spring, and then some violent exertion of the body or mind, but particularly some shock to the health caused by some severe external injury, or a very sad event that bowed down the soul, repeated fright, great grief, sorrow and continuous vexation, often caused in a weakened body the re-appearance of one or more of the ailments which seemed to have been already overcome; and this new condition was often aggravated by some quite new concomitants, which if not more threatening than the former ones which had been removed homœopathically were often just as troublesome and now more obstinate. This would be especially the case whenever the seemingly cured disease had for its foundation a psora which had been more fully developed. When such a relapse would take place the Homœopathic physician would give the remedy most fitting among the medicines then known, as if directed against a new disease, and this would again be attended by a pretty good success, which for the time would again bring the patient into a better state. In the former case, however, in which merely the troubles which seemed to have been removed were renewed, the remedy which had been serviceable the first time would prove less useful, and when repeated again it would help still less. Then perhaps, even under the operation of the Homœopathic remedy which seemed best adapted, and even where the mode of living had been quite correct, new symptoms of disease would be added which could be removed only inadequately and imperfectly; yea, these new symptoms were at times not at all improved, especially when some of the obstacles above mentioned hindered the recovery.
Some joyous occurrence, or an external condition of circumstances improved by fortune, a pleasant journey, a favorable season or a dry, uniform temperature, might occasionally produce a remarkable pause of shorter or longer duration in the disease of the patient, during which the Homœopath might consider him as fairly recovered; and the patient himself, if he good-naturedly overlooked some passable moderate ailments, might consider himself as healthy. Still such a favorable pause would never be of long duration, and the return and repeated returns of the complaints in the end left even the best selected Homœopathic remedies then known, and given in the most appropriate doses, the less effective the oftener they were repeated. They served at last hardly even as weak palliatives. But usually, after repeated attempts to conquer the disease which appeared in a form always somewhat changed, residual complaints appeared which the Homœopathic medicines hitherto proved, though not few, had to leave uneradicated, 3'ea, often undiminished. Thus there ever followed var3dug complaints ever more troublesome, and, as time proceeded, more threatening, and this even while the mode of living was correct and with a punctual observance of directions. The chronic disease could, despite all efforts, be but little delayed in its progress by the Homœopathic physician and grew worse from year to year.
This was, and remained, the quicker or slower process in such treatments in all non-venereal, severe chronic diseases, even when these were treated in exact accordance with the Homœopathic art as hitherto known. Their beginning was promising, the continuation less favorable, the outcome hopeless.
Nevertheless this teaching was founded upon the steadfast pil-lai of truth and will evermore be so. The attestation of its excellence, 3'ea, of its infallibility (so far as this can be predicated of human affairs), it has laid before the eyes of the world through facts.
Homœopathy alone taught first of all how to heal the well-defined idiopathic diseases, the old, smooth scarlet fever of Syden-ham, the more recent purples, whooping cough, croup, sycosis, and autumnal dysenteries, by means of the specifically aiding Homœopathic remedies. Even acute pleurisy, and typhous contagious epidemics must now allow themselves to be speedily turned into health by a few small doses of rightly-selected Homœopathic medicine.
Whence then this less favorable, this unfavorable, result of the continued treatment of the non-venereal chronic diseases even by Homœopathy ? What was the reason of the thousands of unsuccessful endeavors to heal the other diseases of a chronic nature so that lasting health might result ? Might this be caused, perhaps, by the still too small number of Homœopathic remedial means that have so far been proved as to their pure action? The followers of Homœopathy have hitherto thus consoled themselves; but this excuse, or so-called consolation, never satisfied the founder of Homœopath}'— particularly because even the new additions of proved valuable medicines, increasing from 3'ear to year, have not advanced the healing of chronic Tnon-venereal) diseases by a single step, while acute diseases (unless these, at their commencement, threaten unavoidable death) are not only passably removed, by means of a correct application of Homœopathic remedies, but with the as-sistaiice of the never-resting, preservative vital force in our organism, find a speedy and complete cure.
Why, then, cannot this vital force, efficiently affected through Homœopathic medicine, produce any true and lasting recovery in these chronic maladies even with the aid of the Homœopathic remedies which best cover their present symptoms; while this same force which is created for the restoration of our organism is nevertheless so indefatigably and successfully active in completing the recovery even in severe acute diseases ? What is there to prevent this ?
The answer to this question, which is so natural, inevitably led me to the discovery of the nature of these chronic diseases.
To find out then the reason why all the medicines known to Homœopathy failed to bring a real cure in the above-mentioned diseases, and to gain an insight more nearly correct and, if possible, quite correct, into the true nature of the thousands of chronic diseases which still remain uncured, despite the incontestable truth of the Homœopathic Law of Cure, this very serious task has occupied me since the years 1816 and 18 17, night and day; and behold ! the Giver of all good things permitted me within this space of time to gradually solve this sublime problem through unremitting thought, indefatigable inquiry, faithful observation and the most accurate experiments made for the welfare of humanity.2
It was a continually repeated fact that the non-venereal chronic diseases, after being time and again removed homœopathically 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 clew that the Homœopathic physician with such a chronic (non-venereal) case, yea in all cases of (non-venereal) chronic disease, has not only to combat the disease presented before his eyes, and must not view and treat it as if it were a well-defined disease, to be speedily and permanently destroyed and healed by ordinary homœopathic remedies, but that he has always to encounter only some separate fragment of a more deep-seated original disease.
The great extent of this disease is shown in the new symptoms appearing from time to time; so that the Homœopathic physician must not hope to permanently heal the separate manifestations of this kind in the presumption, hitherto entertained, that they are well-defined, separately existing diseases which can be healed permanently and completely. 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 homœopathically cover the whole of the original disease by means of its peculiar symptoms. By this method he may then be able victoriously to heal and wipe out the malady in its whole extent, consequently also its separate members; that is, all the fragments of a disease appearing in so many various forms.
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 has 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 hfe, 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,3 even till the end of man's life, like every other chronic, miasmatic sickness; e. g., the venereal bubo which has not been healed from within by mercury, its specific remedy, but has passed over into venereal disease. This latter, also, never passes away of itself, but, even with the most correct mode of life and with the most robust bodily constitution, increases every year and unfolds evermore into new and worse symptoms, and this, also, to the end of man's life.
I had come thus far in my investigations and observations with such non-venereal patients, when I discovered, even in the beginning, that the obstacle to the cure of many cases which seemed delusively like specific, well-defined diseases, and yet could not be cured in a Homœopathic manner with the then proved medicines) , seemed very often to lie in a former eruption of itch, which was not unfrequently confessed; and the beginning of all the subsequent 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 ph3^sicians,* and not infrequently my own experi- , ence, 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.
Gradually I discovered more effective means against this original malady that caused so many complaints; against this malady which may be called by the general name of Psora ; i. e. , against the internal itch disease with or without its attendant eruption on the skin. It then became manifest to me, through the aid afforded when using these medicines in similar chronic diseases, in which the patient was unable to show a like cause, that also these cases in which the patient remembered no infection of this kind were of necessity caused by a Psora with which he had been infected, perhaps, even in his cradle, or in some other way that had escaped his memory; and this often received corroboration on a more careful inquiry with the parents or aged relatives.
Most painstaking observations as to the aid afforded by the antipsoric remedies which were added in the first of these eleven years have taught me evermore, how frequently not only the moderate, but also the more severe and the most severe, chronic diseases are of this origin. This observation taught me that not only most of the many cutaneous eruptions which Willan distinguishes with such extreme care from one another, and which have received separate names, but also almost all adventitious formations, from the common wart on the finger up to the largest sarcomatous tumor, from the malformations of the finger-nails up to the swellings of the bones and the curvature of the spine, and many other softenings and deformities of the bones, both at an early and at a more advanced age, are caused by the Psora. So, also, frequent epistaxis, the accumulation of blood in the veins of the rectum and the anus, discharges of blood from the same (blind or flowing piles), hemoptysis, hematemesis, hematuria, and deficient as well as too frequent menstrual discharges, night-sweats of several 3'ears' duration, parchment-like dryness of the skin, diarrhœa of many years' standing, as well as permanent constipation and difficult evacuation of the bowels, long-continued erratic pains, convulsions occurring repeatedly for a number of years, chronic ulcers and inflammations, sarcomatous enlargements and tumors, emaciation, excessive sensitiveness as well as deficiencies in the senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling; excessive as well as extinguished sexual desire; diseases of the mind and of the soul, from imbecility up to ecstasy, from melancholy up to raging insanity; swoons and vertigo; the so-called diseases of the heart; abdominal complaints and all that is comprehended under hysteria and hypochondria — in short, thousands of tedious ailments of humanity called by pathology with various names, are, with few exceptions, true descendants of this many-formed Psora alone. I was thus instructed by my continued observations, comparisons and experiments in the last years, that the ailments and infirmities of body and soul which, in their manifest complaints, differ so radically and which, with different patients, appear so very unlike (if they do not belong to the two venereal diseases, syphilis and sycosis), are but partial manifestations of the ancient miasma of leprosy and itch; i. e., merely descendants of one and the same vast original malady, the almost innumerable symptoms of which form but one whole and are to be regarded and to be medicinally treated as the parts of one and the same disease in the same way as in a great epidemic of typhus fever. Thus in the year 18 13 one patient would be prostrated with only a few symptoms of this plague, a second patient showed only a few but different ailments, while a third, fourth, etc., would complain of still other ailments belonging to this epidemic disease, while they were, nevertheless, all sick with one and the same pestilential fever, and the entire and complete image of the typhus fever reigning at the time could only be obtained by gathering together the symptoms of all, or at least of many of these patients. Then the one or two remedies,4 found to be Homœopathic, healed the whole epidemy, and therefore showed themselves specifically helpful with every patient, though the one might be suffering from symptoms differing from those of others, and almost all seemed to be suffering from different diseases.
Just so, only upon a far larger scale, it is with the Psora, this fundamental disease of so many chronic maladies, each of which seems to be essentially different from the others, but really is not; as may readily be seen from the agreement of several symptoms common to them which appear as the disease runs its course, and also from their being healed through the same remedy.
All chronic diseases of mankind, even those left to themselves, not aggravated by a perverted treatment, show, as said, such a constancy and perseverance, that as soon as they have developed and have not been thoroughly healed by the medical art, they evermore increase with the years, and during the whole of man's lifetime; and they cannot be diminished by the strength belonging even to the most robust constitution. Still less can they be overcome and extinguished. Thus they never pass away of themselves, but increase and are aggravated even till death. They must therefore all have for their origin and foundation constant chronic miasms, whereby their parasitical existence in the human organism is enabled to continually rise and grow.
In Europe and also on the other continents so far as it is known, according to all investigations, only three chronic miasms are found, the diseases caused by which manifest themselves through local symptoms, and from which most, if not all, the chronic diseases originate; namely, first, syphilis, which I have also called the venereal chancre disease; then SYCOSIS, or the fig-wart disease, and finally the chronic disease which lies at the foundation of the eruption of itch; i. e., the Psora ; which I shall treat of first as the most important.
Psora is that most ancient, most universal, most destructive, and yet m,ost 7nisappre]iended chronic miasmatic disease which for many thousands of years has disfigured and tortured mankind, and which during the last centuries has become the mother of all the thousands of incredibly various (acute and) chronic (non-venereal) diseases, by which the whole civilized human race on the inhabited globe is being more and more afflicted.
Psora is the oldest miasmatic chronic disease known to us. Just as tedious as syphilis and sycosis, and therefore not to be extinguished before the last breath of the longest human life, unless it is thoroughly cured, since not even the most robust constitution is able to destroy and extinguish it by its own proper strength. Psora, or the Itch disease, is beside this the oldest and most hydra-headed of all the chronic miasmatic diseases.
In the many thousands of years during which it may have afflicted mankind, — for the most ancient history of the most ancient people does not reach to its origin, — it has so much increased in the extent of its pathological manifestations — -an extent which may to some degree be explained by its increased development during such an inconceivable number of years in so many millions of organisms through which it has passed,— that its secondary symptoms are hardly to be numbered. And, if we except those diseases which have been created by a perverse medical practice or by deleterious labors in quicksilver, lead, arsenic, etc. , which appear in the common pathology under a hundred proper names as supposedly separate and well-defined diseases (and also those springing from syphilis and the 'Still rarer ones springing from sycosis), all the remaining natural chronic diseases, whether with names or without them , find in Psora their real origin, their only source.
The oldest monuments of history which we possess show the Psora even then in great development. Moses6 3400 years ago pointed out several varieties. At that time and later on among the Israelites the disease seems to have mostly kept the external parts of the body for its chief seat. This was also true of the malady as it prevailed in uncultivated Greece, later in Arabia and, lastly in Europe during the Middle Ages. The different names which were given by different nations to the more or less malignant varieties of leprosy, (the external symptom of Psora) which in many ways deformed the external parts of the body, do not concern us and do not affect the matter, since the nature of this miasmatic itching eruption always remained essentially the same.
The occidental Psora, which during the Middle Ages had raged in Europe for several centuries under the form of malignant erysipelas (called St. A7itho7iy' s Fire) , reassumed the form of leprosy through the leprosy which was brought back by the returning crusaders in the thirteenth century. And though it thus spread in Europe even more than before, (for in the year 1226 there were in France alone 2,000 houses for the reception of lepers), this Psora, which now raged as a dreadful eruption, found at least an external alleviation in the means conducive to cleanliness, which also ■were brought by the crusaders from the Orient; namely, the (cotton ? linen ?) shirts before unknown in Europe, and the more frequent use of warm baths. Through both of those means, as well as through the more exquisite diet and refinement in the mode of living introduced by increased cultivation, the external horrors of the Psora within the space of several centuries were at last so far moderated, that, at the end of the fifteenth century it appeared only in the form of the common eruption of itch, just at the time when the other miasmatic chronic disease, syphilis, began (in 1493) to raise its dreadful head.
Thus this eruption, externally reduced in cultivated countries to a common itch, could be much more easily removed from the skin through various means; so that with the medicinal external treatment since introduced, especially in the middle and higher classes, through baths, washes and ointments of sulphur and lead, and by preparations of copper, zinc and mercury, the external manifestations of Psora on the skin were often so quickly suppressed, and are so now, that in most cases either of children or of grown persons the history of itch infection may remain undiscovered.
But the state of mankind was not improved thereby; in many respects it grew far worse. For, although in ancient times the eruption of psora appearing as leprosy was very troublesome to those suffering from it, owing to the lancinating pains in, and the violent itching all around the tumors, and scabs, the rest of the body enjoyed a fair share of general health. This was owing to the obstinately persistent eruption on the skin which served as a substitute for the internal psora. And what is of more importance, the horrible and disgusting appearance of the lepers made such a terrible impression on healthy people that they dreaded even their approach; so that the seclusion of most of these patients, and their separation in leper hospitals, kept them apart from other human society and infection from them was thus limited and comparatively rare.
In consequence of the very much milder form of the psora during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when it appeared as itch, the few pustules appearing after infection made but little show and could easily be concealed. Nevertheless they were scratched continually because of their unbearable itching, and thus the fluid was diffused around, and the psoric miasma was communicated more certainly and more easily to many other persons, the more it was concealed. For the things rendered unclean by the psoric fluid infected the persons who unwittingly touched them, and thus contaminated far more persons than the lepers, who, on account of their horrible appearance, were carefully avoided.
Psora has thus become the most infectious and most general of all the chronic miasmas. For the miasm has usually been communicated to others before the one from whom it emanates has asked for or received any external repressive remedy against his itching eruption (lead-water, ointment of the white precipitate of mercury) , and without confessing that he had an eruption of itch, often even without knowing it himself; yea, without even the physician's or surgeon's knowing the exact nature of the eruption which has been repressed by the lotion of lead, etc.
It may well be conceived that the poorer and lower classes, who allow the itch to spread on their skin for a long time, until they become an abomination to all around them and are compelled to use something to remove it, must have in the meanwhile infected many.
Mankind, therefore, is worse off from the change in the external form of the psora, — from leprosy down to the eruption of itch — not only because this is less visible and more secret and therefore more frequently infectious, but also especially because the psora, now mitigated externally into a mere itch, and on that account more generally spread, nevertheless still retains unchanged its original dreadful nature. Now, after being more easily repressed, the disease grows all the more unperceived within, and so, in the last three centuries, after the destruction7 of its chief symptom (the external skin-eruption) it plays the sad role of causing innumerable secondary symptoms; i. e., it originates a legion of chronic diseases, the source of which physicians neither surmise nor unravel, and which, therefore, they can no more cure than they could cure the original disease Avhen accompanied by its cutaneous eruption; but these chronic diseases, as daily experience shows, were necessarily aggravated by the multitude of their faulty remedies.
So great a flood of numberless nervous troubles, painful ailments, spasms, ulcers (cancers), adventitious formations, d^^scrasias, paralyses, consumptions and cripplings of soul, mind and body were never seen in ancient times when the psora mostly confined
itself to its dreadful cutaneous symptom, leprosy. Only during the
last few centuries has mankind been flooded with these infirmities,
owing to the causes just mentioned.8 / It was thus that psora became the most universal mother of chronic ( diseases.
The psora ^ which is now so easily and so rashly robbed of its ameliorating cutaneous symptom, the eruption of itch, which acts vicarious!}' for the internal disease, has been producing within the last three hundred 3'ears more and more secondary sj-mptoms, and indeed so many that at least seve7i-£ighths of all the chronic maladies spring from it as their only source, while the rejnaiyiing eighth springs from syphilis and sycosis or from a complication of two of these three miasmatic chronic diseases, or (which is rare) from a complication of all three of them. Even syphilis, which on account of its easy curability deeds to the smallest dose of the best preparation of mercury, and sycosis, which on account of the slight difSculty in its cure through a few doses of thuja and nitric acid in alternation, only pass into a tedious malady difficult to cure when they are complicated with psora. Thus psora is among all diseases the one which is most 77iisapprehended, and, therefore, has been 77medically treated i7i the ivo7'st and 77iost i)iJ7C7^ions 77ia7i7ier.
It is incredible to what an extent modern physicians of the common school have sinned against the welfare of humanity; since, with scarcely an exception, teachers of medicine and the more prominent modern physicians and medical writers have laid down the rule and taught it as an infallible theorem that : ' ' Every eruption of itch is merely a local ailment of the skin, in which ailment the remaining organism takes no part at all, so that it may and must be driven away from the skin at any time and without any scruple, through local applications of sulphur ointment or of the yet more active ointment of Jasser, through sulphur fumigations, by solutions of lead and zinc, but most quickly by the precipitates of mercury. If the eruption is once removed from the skin everything is well and the person is restored and the whole disease removed. Of course, if the eruption is neglected and allowed to spread upon the skin, then it may eventually turn out that the malignant matter may find opportunity to insinuate itself through the absorbent vessels into the mass of humors, and thus to corrupt the blood, the humors and the health. Then, indeed, man may finally be afflicted with ailments from these malignant humors, though these might soon again be removed from the body by purgatives and abluents; but through prompt removal of the eruption from the skin all sequelae are prevented, and the internal body remains entirely healthy."
These horrible untruths have not only been, and are still being taught, but they are also carried out in practice. The consequence is that at the present day the patients in all the most celebrated hospitals, even in those countries and cities that seem most enlightened, as well as the private itch-patients of the lower and higher classes, the patients in all the penitentiaries and orphan asylums, in other civil and military hospitals, wherever such eruptions are found — in short, the innumerable multitude of patients, without exception, are treated, not only by physicians unknown to fame, but by all, even those most celebrated, with the above mentioned external remedies,9 using perhaps at the same time large doses of flowers of sulphur, and strong purgatives (to cleanse the body, as they say). These physicians think that the more quickly these eruptions are driven from the skin the better. Then they dismiss the patients from their treatment as cured, with brazen assurance and the declaration that everything is now all right,10 without regarding or being willing to notice the ailments which sooner or later are sure to follow; i. e., the Psora which shows itself from within in a thousand different diseases.11 If the deceived wretches then sooner or later return with the malady following unavoidably on such a treatment; e. g., with swellings, obstinate pains in one part or another, with hypochondriac or hysterical troubles, gout, consumption, tubercular phthisis, continual or spasmodic asthma, blindness, deafness, paralysis, caries of the bones, ulcers (cancer), spasms, hemorrhages, diseases of the mind and soul, etc., the physicians imagine that they have before them something entirely new and treat it again and again according to the old routine of their therapeutics in a useless and hurtful manner, directing their medicines against phantom diseases; i. e., against causes invented by them for the ailments as they appear, until the patient, after many years' suffering continually aggravated, is at last freed from their hands by death, the end of all earthly maladies.12
The older physicians were more conscientious in this matter and observed with less prejudice. They saw clearly and became convinced that innumerable ailments and the most severe chronic diseases follow the destruction of the itch-eruption from the skin. And since this experience compelled them to assume the existence of an internal disease, in every case of itch they endeavored to extirpate this internal malady by means of a multitude of internal remedies, as good as their therapeutics afforded. It was, indeed, but a useless endeavor, because the true method of healing, which it could only be the prerogative of Homœopathy to discover, was unknown to them. Nevertheless this sincere endeavor was praiseworthy, since it was founded on an appreciation of the great internal disease present together with the eruption of itch, which internal disease it was necessary to remove. This prevented their reliance on the mere local destruction of the itch from the skin, as practiced by modern physicians, who think that they cannot quickly enough drive it away — as if it were a mere external disease of the skin — without regarding the great injuries attending such a course. The older physicians, on the other hand, have warningly laid these injuries before our eyes in their writings, giving thousands of examples.
The observations of those honest men are too startling to be rejected contemptuously, or ignored by conscientious men.
I shall here adduce some of these numerous observations handed down to us, which I might increase by an equal number of my own if the former were not already abundantly sufficient to show with what fury the internal Psora manifests itself when the external local symptom which serves to assuage the internal malady is hastily removed. They also show that it must be a matter of conscience for the physician who loves his fellow-man to direct all his endeavors to cure, first of all, the internal malady, whereby the cutaneous eruption will at the same time be removed and destroyed and all the subsequent innumerable lifelong chronic sufferings springing from the Psora be prevented or, if they are already embittering the life of the patient, be cured.
The diseases, partly acute but chiefly chronic, springing from such a one-sided destruction of the chief skin-symptom (eruption and itching) which acts vicariously and assuages the internal Psora (which destruction is erroneously called "Driving the itch into the body") are innumerable; as manifold as the peculiarities of bodily constitutions and of the outer world which modifies them.
A brief survey of the manifold misfortunes resulting thence is given by the experienced and honest Ludwig Christian Juncker in his Dissertatio de Damno ex Scabie Repulsa, Halle, 1750, p. 15-18. He observed that with young people of a sanguine temperament the suppression of itch is followed by phthisis, and with persons in general who are of a sanguine temperament it is followed by piles, hemorrhoidal colic and renal gravel; with persons of sanguino-choleric temperament by swellings of the inguinal glands, stiffening of the joints and malignant ulcers (called in German Todenbrüche) ; with fat persons by a suffocating catarrh and mucous consumption; also by inflammatory fever, acute pleurisy and inflammation of the lungs. He further states that in autopsies the lungs have been found indurated and full of cysts containing pus; also other indurations, swellings of the bones and ulcers have been seen to follow the suppression of an eruption. Phlegmatic persons in consequence of such suppressions suffered chiefly from dropsy; the menses were delayed, and when the itch was driven away during their flow, they were changed into a monthly hemoptysis. Persons inclined to melancholy were sometimes made insane by such repression; if they were pregnant the foetus was usually killed. Sometimes the suppression of the itch causes sterility,13 in nursing women the milk is generally lacking, the menses disappear prematurely; in older women the uterus becomes ulcerated, attended with deep, burning pains, with wasting away (cancer of the womb).
His experiences were frequently confirmed by the observations14 of others, as e. g. with reference to
Asthma, Lentilius Miscell. med. pract. Tom. I., p. 176. Fr. Hoffmann Abhandlung v. d. Kinderkrankheiten, Frft.,1741, p. 104. Detharding in Append. ad Ephem. Nat. Cur. Dec. III., ann 5 et, 6 et in obs. parallel. ad obs. 58. Binninger, Obs. Cent. V., obs. 88. Morgagni, de sedibus et. caus. morb. Epist. XIV., 35. Acta Nat. Cur. Tom. V obs. 47. J. Juncker, Consp. ther. spec. tab. 31. F. H. L. Muzell, Wahrnehm. Samml. II. Cas. 8.15 J. Fr. Gmelin in Gesner's Samml. v. Beob. V. S. 21.16 Hundertmark.-Zieger Dissert. de scabie artificiale, Lips. 1758, p. 32.17 Beireis — Stammen. Diss. de causis cur imprimis plebs scabie laboret. Helmst., 1792, p. 26.18 Pelargus (Storch) Obs. clin. Jahrg., 1722, p. 435 n 438.19 Breslauer Sammlung v. Jahre 1727, p. 293.20 Riedlin, the father, Obs. Cent. II., obs. 90. Augsburg, 1691.21
Suffocating Catarrh, Ehrenfr. Hagendorn, hist. med. phys. Cent. I., hist 8, 9.22 Pelargus, Obs. clin. Jahrg., 1723, p. 15.23
Suffocations from Asthma, Joh. Phil. Brendel, Consilia med., Frft., 1615, Cons., 73. Ephem. Nat. Cur., Ann. II., obs. 313. Wilh. Fabr. V. Hilden, Obs. Cent. III., Obs. 39.24 Ph. R. Vicat. Obs. Pract., obs. 35, Vitoduri, 1780.25 J. J. Waldschmid, Opera, p. 244.26
Asthma with General Swelling. Waldschmid, ibid. Hoechstetter, Obs. Dec. III., obs. 7 Frft. et Lips, 1674, p. 248. Pelargus, Obs. Clin. Jahrg., 1723, p. 504.27 Riedlin, the father, Obs. Cent. II., obs. 91.28
Asthma with Dropsy of the Chest. Storch in Act. Nat. Cur. Tom. V., obs. 147. Morgagni, de sed. et causis morb. XVI., Art. 3429 Richard, Recueil d'observ. de Méd. Tom. III., p. 308, à Paris, 1772. Hagendorn, as above, Cent. II., hist. 15.30
Pleurisy and Inflammation in the Chest, Pelargus, as above, p. 10.31 Hagendorn, as above. Cent. III., hist. 58. Giseke, Hamb. Abhandl., p. 310. Richard, as above. Pelargus, as above. Jahrg., 1721, p. 23 and 114,32 and Jahrg., 1723, p. 29,33 also in Jahrg., 1722, p. 459.34 Sennert praxis med. lib. II., P. III., Cap. 6, p. 380. Jerzembsky, Diss. Scabies salubris in hydrope, Halae, 1777.35 Karl Wenzel, Die Nächkrankheiten von zurückgetretener Krätze, Bamb., 1826, p. 49.36
Pleurisy and Cough, Pelargus, as above, Jahrg., 1722, p, 79.37
Severe Cough, Richard, as above. Juncker, Conspect. med. theor. et pract. tab., 76. Hundertmark, as above, p. 23.38
Hemoptysis, Phil. Georg. Schroeder, Opusc. II., p. 322. Richard, as above. Binninger, Obs. Cent. V., obs. 88.
Hemoptysis and Consumption, Chn. Max Spener, Diss. de ægro febri maligni, phthisi complicata laborante, Giess, 1699.39 Baglio, Opera, p. 215. Sicelius Praxis casual. Exerc. III., Cas. I., Frft et Lips, 1743.40 Morgagni, as above, XXI., Art. 32.41 Unzers Arzt C C C, p. 508.42 Karl Wenzel, as above, p. 32.
Collection of Pus in the Chest. F. A. Waitz, Medic. Chirurg. Aufsätze Th. I., p. 114, 115.43 Preval, in the Journal de Médec., LXI., p. 491.
Cysts of Pus in the Intestines, Krause. Schubert, Diss. de scabie humana. Lips, 1779, p. 23.44
Great Degeneration of a Great Part of the Intestines. J. H. Schulze, in Act. Nat. Cur. Tom., 1 obs., 231.45
Degeneration of the Brain. Dimenbrock, Obs. et Curat. med., obs. 60. Bonet, Sepulchretum anat., Sect. IV., obs. 1, § 146 and § 2.47 J. H. Schulze, as above.
Hydrocephalus, Acta helvet., V., p. 190.
Ulcers in the Stomach. L. Chn. Juncker, Diss. de scabie repulsa, Halle, 1750, p. 16.48
Sphacelus of the Stomach and Duodenum. Hundertmark, as above, p. 29.49
General Dropsical Swelling.50
Dropsy of the Chest. Hessler in Karl Wenzel, as above, p. 100 and 102.
Dropsy of the Abdomen, Richard, as above, and with several other observers.
Swelling of the Scrotum (in boys). Fr. Hoffmann, Med. rat. syst., III., p. 175.
Red Swelling of the Whole Body. Lentilius, Misc. med. pract., Part I., p. 176.
Jaundice. Baldinger, Krankheiten ein. Armee, p. 226. Joh. Rud. Camerarius, Memorab. Cent., X., § 65.
Swelling of the Parotid Glands. Barette, in the Journal de Méd., XVIII., p. 169.
Swelling of the Cervical Glands, Pelargus, as above, Jahrg., 1723, p. 593.51 Unzer, Arzt. Part VI., St. 301.52
Obscuration of the Eyes and Presbyopia, Fr. Hoffman, Consult. med., 1 Cas. 50.53
Inflammation of the Eyes, G. W. Wedel. Snetter, Diss. de Ophthalmia, Jen., 1710. Hallmann, in Kœnigl. Vetenskaps Handl. f. A. X., p. 210.54 G. Chph. Schiller, de Scabie humida, p. 42, Erford. 1747.
Cataract, Chn. Gottlieb Ludwig, Advers. med. II., p. 157.55
Amaurosis, Northof, Diss. de scabie, Gotting., 1792, p. 10.56 Chn. G. Ludwig, as above.57 Sennert, prax. lib. III., Sect. 2, Cap. 44. Trecourt, chirurg. Wahrnehmungen, p. 173. Leipz. 1777. Fabricius ab Hilden, Cent. II., obs. 39.58
Deafness. Thore in Capelle, Journal de santé, Tom. I. Daniel, Syst. aegritud. II., p. 228. Ludwig, as above.
Inflammation of the Bowels, Hundertmark, Diss. de scabie artificiali, Lips. 1758, p. 29.
Piles, Hemorrhoids, Acta helvet. V., p. 192.59 Daniel, Syst. aegritud. II., p. 245.60
Abdominal Complaints, Fr. Hoffmann, Med. rat. syst. III., p. 177.61
Diabetes (Mellitaria), Comment. Lips. XIV., p. 365. Eph. Nat. Cur. Dec. II., ann. 10, p. 162. C. Weber, Obs. f. I., p. 26.
Suppression of Urine, Sennert, Prax. lib. 3, p. 8. Morgagni, as above, XLI., art. 2.62
Erysipelas, Unzer Artz, Th. V., St. 301.63
Discharges of acrid humors. Fr. Hoffman, Consult. Tom. II., Cas. 125.
Ulcers, Unzer Arzt, Th. V., St. 301.64 Pelargus, as above, Jahrg., 1723, p. 673.65 Breslauer Samm., 1727, p. 107.66 Muzell, Wahrnehm. II., Cas. 6.67 Riedlin, the son, Cent. obs. 38.68 Alberti-Gorn, Diss. de scabi., p. 24. Halle, 1718.
Caries, Richard, as above.
Swelling of the Bones of the Knee. Valsalva in Morgagni, de sede et caus. morb. I. art. 13.
Pain in the bones, Hamburger Magaz., XVIII., p. 3, 253.
Rachitis and Marasmus in Children, Fr. Hoffman. Kinderkrankh. Leipz., 1741, p. 132.
Fever, B. V. Faventinus, Medicina empir., p. 260. Ramazzini, Constit. epid. urbis. II. No. 32, 1691.69 J. C. Carl in Act. Nat. Cur. VI., obs. 16.70
Fever, Reil, Memorab. Fasc. III., p. 169.71 Pelargus, as above; Jahrg., 1721, p. 276,72 and ibid. Jahrg., 1723.73 Amatus, Lusit. Cent. II., Cor. 33. Schiller Diss. de scabie humida, Erford, 1747, p. 44.74 J. J. Fick, Exercitatio med. de scabie retropulsa, Halle, 1710, § 2.75 Pelargus, as above, Jahrg., 1722, p. 122.76 Also Jahrg., 1723, p. 10, p. 1477 and p. 291. C. G. Ludwig, Advers. med. II., pp. 157-160.78 Morgagni, as ab. X., art. 9;79 XXI., art. 31;80 XXXVIII., art. 22;81 LV., art. 3.82
Fever. Lanzonus, in Eph. Nat. Cur., Dec. III., ann. 9 and 10, obs. 16 and 113. Hoechstetter, Obs. med., Dec. VIII., Cas. 8.83 Triller. Wehle, Diss. nullam medicinam interdum esse optimam, Witemb., 1754.84 Fick, as ab., § 1.85 Waldschmidt, Opera., p. 241. Gerbizius, in Eph. Nat. Cur., Dec. III., ann. 2, obs. 167. Amatus, Lusit., Cent. II., Curat. 33.86 Fr. Hoffmann, Med. rat. system, T. III., p. 175.87
Tertian Intermittent Fever. Pelargus, as ab., Jahrg., 1722, p. 103, cfr. with p. 79.88 Juncker, as ab., tab. 79; Eph. Nat. Cur., Dec. I., ann. 4. Welsch, Obs. 15. Sauvages, Spec. 11. De Hautesierk, Obs., Tom. II., p. 300; Comment. Lipsienses XIX., p. 297.
Quartan Fever, Thom. Bartholinus, Cap. 4, hist. 35. Sennert, Paralip., p. 116. Fr. Hoffman, Med. rat. system III., p. 175.89
Vertigo and a Total Sinking of the Strength, Gabelchofer, Obs. Med. Cent. II., obs. 42.
Vertigo Like Epilepsy, Fr. Hoffmann, Consult. Med. I., Cas. 12.90
Epilepsy Like Vertigo, Fr. Hoffmann, as ab., p. 30.91
Convulsions, Juncker, as ab. tab. 53. Hoechstetter, Eph. Nat. Cur. Dec. 8, Cas. 3. Eph. nat. cur. dec. 2, ann. obs. 35, and ann. 5, obs. 224. D. W. Triller. Welle, Diss. nullam medicinam interdum esse optimam, Viteb., 1754, § 13, 1492 Sicelius, Decas Casuum I., Cas. 5.93 Pelargus, as ab., Jahrg., 1723, p. 545.94
Epileptic Convulsions and
Epilepsy, J. C. Carl in Act. Nat. Cur. VI., obs. 16.95 E. Hagendorn, as above, hist. 9.96 Fr. Hoffmann, Consult. med. I., Cas. 31.97; ibid. med. rat. syst. T. IV., P. III., Cap. I., and in Kinderkrankheiten, p. 108. Sauvages, Nosol. spec. 11. de Hautesierk, obs. T. II., p. 300. Sennert, prax. III., Cap. 44. Eph. Nat. Cur. Dec. III., ann. 2, obs. 29. Gruling, obs. Med. Cent. III., obs. 73. Th. Bartolin, Cent. III., hist. 20. Fabr. de Hilden, Cent. III., obs. 10.98 Riedlin, lin. med. ann., 1696, Maj. obs. 1.99 Lentilius, Miscell. med. pr., P. I., p. 32. G. W. Wedel, Diss. de aegro epileptico, Jen., 1673.100 Herrm. Grube, de arcanis medicorum non arcanis, Hafn., 1673, p. 165.101 Tulpius, obs. lib. I., Cap. 8.102 Th. Thompson, Medic. Rathpflege, Leipzig, 1779, pp. 107, 108.103 Hundertmark, as ab., p. 32.104 Fr. Hoffmann, Consult. med. I., Cas. 28, p. 141.105
Apoplexy. Cummius in Eph. Nat. Cur. Dec. I., ann. 1, obs. 58. Mobius, Institut. med., p. 65. J. J. Wepfer, Histor. Apoplect. Amstel., 1724, p. 457.
Paralysis, Hoechstetter. Obs. med. Dec. VIII., obs. 8, p. 245. Journal de Méd., 1760, Sept., p. 211. Unzer, Arzt VI., St. 301.106 Hundertmark, as above, p. 33.107 Krause. Schubert, Diss. de scabie humani corp., Lips., 1779, p. 23.108 Karl Wenzel, as above, p. 174.
Melancholy, Reil, Memorab. Fasc., III., p. 177.109
Insanity, Landais in Roux, Journ. de Médecine, Tom. 41. Amat. Lusitanus, Curat. med. Cent. II., Cur. 74. J. H. Schulze, Brune, Diss. Casus aliquot mente alienatorum, Halle, 1707. Cas. 1, p. 5.110 F. H. Waitz, medic.-chirurg. Aufsätze, Th. 1, p. 130.111 Altenburg, 1791. Richter in Hufel. Journal, XV., II. Grossmann in Baldinger's neuem Magaz., XI., I.112
Who, after meditating on even these few examples which might be much increased from the writings of the physicians of that time and from my experience,113 would remain so thoughtless as to ignore the great evil hidden within, the Psora, of which evil the eruption of itch and its other forms, the tinea capitis, milk crust, tetter, etc., are only indications announcing the internal, monstrous disease of the whole organism, only local external symptoms which act vicariously and mitigatingly for the internal disease? Who, after reading even the few cases described, would hesitate to acknowledge that the Psora, as already stated, is the most destructive of all chronic miasmas? Who would be so stolid as to declare, with the later allopathic physicians, that the itch-eruption, tinea and tetters are only situated superficially upon the skin and may, therefore, without fear, be driven out through external means since the internal of the body has no part in it and retains its health ?
Surely, among all the crimes which the modern ph^'sicians of the old school are guilty of, this is the most hurtful, shameful and unpardonable I
The man who, from the examples given and from innumerable others of a like nature, is not willing to see the exact opposite of that assertion blinds himself on purpose and works intentionally for the destruction of mankind.
Or are they so little instructed as to the nature of all the miasmatic maladies connected with diseases of the skin that they do not know that they all take a similar course in their origin ? And that all such miasmas become first internal maladies of the whole system before their external assuaging symptom appears on the skin ?
We shall more closely elucidate this process, and in consequence we shall see that all miasmatic maladies which show peculiar local ailments on the skin are always present as internal maladies in the system before they show their local symptom externally upon the skin; but that only in acute diseases, after taking their course through a certain number of days, the local symptom, together with the internal disease, is wont to disappear, which then leaves the body free from both. In chronic miasmas, however, the outer loca symptom may either be driven from the skin or may disappear of itself, while the internal disease, if uncured, neither wholly nor in part ever leaves the system; on the contrary, it continually increases with the years, unless healed by art.
I must here dwell the more circumstantially on this process of nature, because the common physicians, especially of modern days, are so deficient in vision; or, more correctly stated, so blind that although they could, as it were, handle and feel this process in the origin and development of acute miasmatic eruptional diseases, they nevertheless neither surmised nor served the like process in chronic diseases, and therefore declared their local symptoms as secondary growths and impurities existing merely externally on the skin, without any internal fundamental disease, and this as well with the chancre and the fig-wart as with the eruption of itch, and therefore — since they overlooked the chief disease or perhaps even boldly denied it — by a mere external treatment and destruction of these local ailments they have brought unspeakable misfortunes on suffering humanity.
With respect to the origin of these three chronic maladies, as in the acute, miasmatic eruptional diseases, three different important moments are to be more attentively considered than has hitherto been done: First, the time of infection; secondly, the period of time during which the whole organism is being penetrated by the disease infused, until it has developed within; and thirdly, the breaking out of the external ailment, whereby nature externally demonstrates the completion of the internal development of the miasmatic malady throughout the whole organism.
The infection with miasmas, as well of the acute as of the abovementioned chronic diseases, takes place, without doubt, in 07ie single 77moment, and that moment, the one most favorable for infection.
When the smallpox or the cowpox catches, this happens in the moment when in vaccination the morbid fluid in the bloody scratch of the skin comes in contact with the exposed nerve, which then, irrevocably, dynamically communicates the disease to the vital force (to the whole nervous system) in the same moment. After this moment of infection no ablution, cauterizing or burning, not even the cutting off of the part which has caught and received the infection, can again destroy or undo the development of the disease within. Smallpox, cowpox, measles, etc., nevertheless will complete their course within, and the fever peculiar to each will break out with its smallpox, cowpox, measles,114 etc., after a few days, when the internal disease has developed and completed itself.
The same is the case, not to mention several other acute miasmas, also when the skin of man is contaminated with the blood of cattle affected with anthrax. If, as is frequently the case, the anthrax has infected and caught on, all ablutions of the skin are in vain; the black or gangrenous blister, nearly always fatal, nevertheless, always comes out after four or five days (usually in the affected spot); i. e., as soon as the whole living organism has transformed itself to this terrible disease.
(It is just so with the infection of half-acute miasmas without eruption. Among many persons bitten by mad dogs — thanks to the benign ruler of the world — only few are infected, rarely the twelfth; often, as I myself have observed, only one out of twenty or thirty persons bitten. The others, even if ever so badly mangled by the mad dog, usually all recover, even if they are not treated by a physician or surgeon.115) But with whomsoever the poison acts, it has taken effect in the moment when the person was bitten, and the poison has then communicated itself to the nearest nerves and, therefore, without contradiction, to the whole system of the nerves, and as soon as the malady has been developed in the whole organism (for this development and completion of the disease nature requires at least several days, often many weeks), the madness breaks out as an acute, quickly fatal disease. Now if the venomous spittle of the mad dog has really taken effect, the infection usually has taken place irrevocably in the moment of contagion, for experience shows that even the immediate excision116 and amputation of the infected part does not protect from the progression of the disease within, nor from the breaking out of the hydrophobia — therefore, also, the many hundreds of other much lauded external means for cleansing, cauterizing and suppurating the wound of the bite can protect just as little from the breaking out of the hydrophobia.
From the progress of all these miasmatic diseases we may plainly see that, after the contagion from without, the malady connected with it in the interiors of the whole man must first be developed; i. e., the whole interior man must first have become thoroughly sick of smallpox, measles or scarlet fever, before these various eruptions can appear on the skin.
For all these aattc miasmatic diseases the human constitution possesses that process which, as a rule, is so beneficent : to wipe them out (/. c. , the specific fever together with the specific eruption) in the course of from two to three weeks, and of itself to extinguish them again, through a kind of decision (crisis), from the organism, so that man then is wont to be entirely healed of them and, indeed, in a short time, unless he be killed by them.117
In the chronic miasmatic diseases nature observes the same course with respect to the mode of contagion and the antecedent formation of the internal disease, before the external declarative symptoms of its internal completion manifests itself on the surface of the body; but then that great remarkable difference from the acute diseases shows itself, that in the chronic miasmata the entire internal disease, as we have mentioned before, remains in the organism during the whole life, yea, it increases with every year, if it is not exterminated and thoroughly cured by art.
Of these chronic miasmata I shall for this purpose only adduce those two, which we know somewhat more exactly; namely, the venereal chancre and the itch.
In impure coition there arises, most probably at the very moment in the spot which is touched and rubbed, the specific contagion.
If this contagion has taken effect, then the whole living body is in consequence seized with it. Immediately after the moment of contagion the formation of the venereal disease in the whole of the interior begins.
In that part of the sexual organs where the infection has taken place, nothing unnatural is noticed in the first days, nothing diseased, inflamed or corroded; so also all washing and cleansing of the parts immediately after the impure coition is in vain. The spot remains healthy according to appearance, only the internal organism is called into activity by the infection (which occurs usually in a moment) , so as to incorporate the venereal miasma and to become thoroughly diseased with the venereal malady.
Only when this penetration of all the organs by the disease caught has been effected, only when the whole being has been changed into a man entirely venereal, i. e., when the development of the venereal disease has been completed, only then diseased nature endeavors to mitigate the internal evil and to soothe it, by producing a local symptom which first shows itself as a vesicle (usually in the spot originally infected), and later breaks out into a painful ulcer called the chancre; this does not appear before five, seven or fourteen days, sometimes, though rarely, not before three, four or five weeks after the infection. This is therefore manifestly a chancre ulcer which acts vicariously for the internal malady, and which has been produced from within by the organism after it has become venereal through and through, and is able through its touch to communicate also to other men the same miasma; i. e., the venereal disease.
Now, if the entire disease thus arising is again extinguished through the internally given specific remedy, then the chancre also is healed and the man recovers.
But if the chancre is destroyed through local applications118 before the internal disease is healed, — and this is still a daily practice with physicians of the old school, — the miasmatic chronic venereal disease remains in the organism as syphilis, and it is aggravated, if not then cured internally, from year to year until the end of man's life, even the most robust constitution being unable to annihilate it within itself.
Only through the cure of the venereal disease, which pervades the whole internal of the body (as I have taught and practiced for many years), the chancre, its local symptom, will also simultane-oush119 be cured in the most effective manner; and this is best effected without the use of any external application for its removal — while the merely local destruction of the chancre, without any previous general cure and deliverance of man from the internal disease, is followed by the most certain outbreak of syphilis with its sufferings.
Psora (itch disease), like syphilis, is a miasmatic chronic disease, and its original development is similar.
The itch disease is, however, also the most contagious of all chronic miasmata, far more infectious than the other two chronic miasmata, the venereal chancre disease and the figwart disease. To effect the infection with the latter there is required a certain amount of friction in the most tender parts of the body, which are the most rich in nerves and covered with the thinnest cuticle, as in the genital organs, unless the miasma should touch a wounded spot. But the miasma of the itch 7ieeds only to touch the general skin, especially with tender children. The disposition of being affected with the miasma of itch is found with almost everyone and under almost all circumstances, which is not the case with the other two miasmata.
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. It is communicated so easily, that even the physician, hurrying from one patient to another, in feeling the pulse has unconsciously inoculated other patients with it; wash which is washed with wash infected with the itch; f new gloves which had been tried on by an itch patient, a strange lodging place, a strange towel used for drying oneself have communicated this tinder of contagion; yea, often a babe, when being born, is infected while passing through the organs of the mother, who maybe infected (as is not infrequently the case) with this disease; or the babe receives this unlucky infection through the hand of the midwife, which has been infected by another parturient woman (or previously); or, again, a suckling may be infected by its nurse, or, while on her arm, by her caresses or the caresses of a strange person with unclean hands; not to mention the thousands of other possible ways in which things polluted with this invisible miasma may touch a man in the course of his life, and which often can in no way be anticipated or guarded against, so that men who have never been infected by the psora are the exception. We need not to hunt for the causes of infection in crowded hospitals, factories, prisons, or in orphan houses, or in the filthy huts of paupers; even in active life, in retirement, and in the rich classes, the itch creeps in. The hermit on Montserrat escapes it as rarely in his rocky cell, as the little prince in his swaddling clothes of cambric.
As soon as the miasma of itch, e. g., touches the hand, in the moment when it has taken effect, it no more remains local. Henceforth all washing and cleansing of the spot avail nothing. Nothing is seen on the skin during the first days; it remains unchanged, and, according to appearance, healthy. There is no eruption or itching to be noticed on the body during these days, not even on the spot infected. The nerve which was first affected by the miasma has already communicated it in an invisible dynamic manner to the nerves of the rest of the body, and the living organism has at once, all unperceived, been so penetrated by this specific excitation, that it has been compelled to appropriate this miasma gradually to itself until the change of the whole being to a man thoroughly psoric, and thus the internal development of the psora, has reached completion.
Only when the whole organism feels itself transformed by this peculiar chronic-miasmatic disease, the diseased vital force endeavors to alleviate and to soothe the internal malady through the establishment of a suitable local symptom on the skin, the itch-vesicles. So long as this eruption continues in its normal form, the internal psora, with its secondary ailments, cannot break forth, but must remain covered, slumbering, latent and bound.
Usually it takes six, seven or ten, perhaps even fourteen days from the moment of infection before the transformation of the entire internal organism into psora has been effected. Then only, there follows after a slight or more severe chill in the evening and a general heat, followed by perspiration in the following night, (a little fever which by many persons is ascribed to a cold and therefore disregarded), the outbreak of the vesicles of itch, at first fine as if from miliary fever, but afterwards enlarging on the skin'-i120 — first in the region of the spot first infected, and, indeed, accompanied with a voluptuously tickling itching which may be called unbearably agreeable (^Grim7nen), which compels the patient so irresistibly to rub and to scratch the vesicles of itch, that, if a person restrains himself forcibly from rubbing or scratching, a shudder passes over the skin of the whole body. This 7'rubbing and scratching indeed satisfies somewhat for a few moments, but there then follows immediately a long-cojitinued burning of the part affected. Late in the evening and before midnight this itching is most frequent and most unbearable.
The vesicles of itch contain in the first hours of their formation a lymph clear as water, but this quickly changes into pus, which fills the tip of the vesicle.
The itching not only compels the patient to rub, but on account of its violence, as before mentioned, to rub and scratch open the vesicles; and the humor pressed out furnishes abundant material for infecting the surroundings of the patient and also other persons not yet infected. The extremities defiled even to an imperceptible degree with this lymph, so also the wash, the clothes and the utensils of all kinds, when touched, propagate the disease.
Only this skin symptom of the psora which has permeated the whole organism (and which as more manifestly falling under the cognizance of the senses has the name oiitcJi), only this eruption, as well as the sores which later arise from it and are attended on their borders with the itching peculiar to psora, as also the herpes which has this peculiar itching and which becomes humid when rubbed (the tetter) , as also the tijiea capitis — these alone can propagate this disease to other persons, because they alone contain the communicable miasma of \h.121 psora. But the remaining secondary symptoms of the psora, which in time manifest themselves after the disappearance or the artificial expulsion of the eruption, i. e. , the general psoric ailments, cannot at all communicate this disease to others. They are, so far as we know, just as little able to transfer \}ci.^ psora to others, as the secondary symptoms of the venereal disease are able to infect other men (as first observed and taught by J. Hunter) with syphilis.
When the itch-eruption has only lately broken out and is not yet widely spread on the skin, nothing of the general internal malady of the psora is as yet to be noticed in the state of the patient. The eruptional symptom acts as a substitute for the internal malady and keeps the psora with its secondary ailments as it were latent and confined.^
In this state, the disease is most easily cured through specific remedies internally administered.
But if the disease is allowed to advance in its peculiar course without the use of an internal curative remedy or an external application to drive away the eruption, the whole disease within rapidly increases, and this increase of the internal malady makes necessary a corresponding increase of the skin-symptom. The itch-eruption, therefore, in order to be able to soothe and to keep latent the increased internal malady, has to spread and must finally cover the whole surface of the body.
Yet even at this acme of the disease the patient still appears healthy in every other respect; all the symptoms of the internal Psora, now so much increased, still remain covered and assuaged through the skin-symptom augmented in the same proportion. But so great a torture, as is caused by so unbearable an itching spread over the whole body, even the most robust man cannot continue to bear. He endeavors to free himself from these torments at any price, and, as there is no thorough help for him with the physicians of the old school, he endeavors to secure deliverance at least from this eruption, which itches so unbearably, even if it should cost his life; and the means are soon furnished him, either by other ignorant persons, or by Allopathic physicians and surgeons. He seeks deliverance from his external tortures, without suspecting the greater misfortune which unavoidably follows, and is bound to follow, on the expulsion of the external skin-symptom (which hitherto has acted vicariously for the internal enlarged psora-disease), as has been sufficiently proved by the observations mentioned before. But when he thus drives away such an eruption of itch by external applications, he exposes himself to a similar misfortune, and acts just as unreasonably, as a person who in order to be quickly delivered from poverty, and thus as he supposes to make himself happy, steals a great sum of money, and is, therefore, sent to the dungeon and the gallows.
The longer the itch-disease has already lasted, whether the eruption, as is usually the case, has spread over the greater part of the skin, or whether, owing to a peculiar lack of activity in the skin, (as in some cases) the eruption has been confined to a few vesicles of itchy — in both cases, supposing only that the Psora together with its skin-sympton has grown old, the expulsion of the eruption of itch, whether greater or smaller or even as small as you please, is attended with the most destructive consequences on account of the internal itch-disease (psora) with its unspeakable sufferings, which, through its long continuance, has increased to a high degree and then unavoidably breaks forth.
But the ignorance of the uninstructed layman may be pardoned if
"See the obsen^ation to No. 86, p. 29. he drives out the itch-eruption and the troublesome itching by a cold shower-bath, by rolling in snow, by cupping, or by rubbing the whole skin, or only the skin around the joints, with sulphur mixed with lard; for he does not know to what dangerous accidents and outbreaks of the Psora-disease, that lurks within, he thereby opens the door and ingress. But who will pardon the men whose office and duty it is to know the extent of the inevitably following, illimitable misfortune, resulting from the external expulsion of the itch-eruption, owing to the Psora which is then aroused from the whole organism, and who ought to have guarded against it in every way by a thorough internal cure of the whole of this disease,122 when we see them treat the itch patients all in the same erroneous manner; 3'ea, with even more violent internal and external remedies, with sharp purgatives, with the Jasser ointment, with lotions of acetate of lead, with the sublimate of mercury or sulphate of zinc, but especially with an ointment prepared of fat with flowers of sulphur or vrith a preparation of mercury; mth which they lightly and carelessly destroy the eruption, declaring ' ' this is merely an impurity located in the skin, and must be driven out; then everything will be well and the man will be healthy and free from everA^ ailment." Who can pardon them if they are not willing to learn from the many warning examples recorded by the older, more conscientious observers, nor by the many thousands of other examples, which frequently, 3'ea, almost daily, come before their eyes ? Yet they cannot see nor be convinced as to the certain, quickly fatal or lifelong insidious misfortune they bring upon the itch-patient through the destruction of his eruption, as they thus merely unfetter the internal malady (psora), which is laden with innumerable ailments. This disease is neither destroyed nor cured; and so this thousand-headed monster, instead of being conquered, is inexorably let loose against the deceived patient to his destruction, by tearing down the barriers that shut it in.
It may easily be imagined, as experience also teaches, that the more months a neglected itch-eruption has flourished on the skin, the more surely has internal psora, which underlies it, been able to reach, in even a moderate space of time, a great — and finally its greatest — degree, which dreadful increase it also then proves through the more dangerous consequences, which the expulsion of so inveterate an eruption unavoidably draws after it in every case.
On the other hand, it is just as certain that the eruption of a few vesicles of itch which has broken out only a few days before, in consequence of a recent infection, may be expelled with less immediate danger; as the internal psora that has sprung up in the whole organism has not yet had time to grow up to a high degree, and we must confess that the expulsion of a few vesicles of itch, that have just arisen, often shows no immediate , manifestly strong, evil consequences. Wherefore with delicate and aristocratic persons, or their children, it usually remains unknown, that a single vesicle or a few vesicles itching violently, which showed only a few days and were at once treated by the careful physician with lead ointment or a lotion of lead, and which disappeared the following day, had itch for their foundation.
However small the internal psora may be at the time of the quick suppression of an itch-eruption, which has only developed a few vesicles and which is then followed by only moderate ailments and complaints (which are then usually, from ignorance, ascribed by the domestic physician to other causes of little import): the internal malady of psora, although as yet of slight degree, remains in its character and in its chronic nature the same general psoric disease of the whole organism; i. e., without the aid of art it is ineradicable, and cannot be extirpated by the strength of even the best and most robust bodily constitution, and it will increase even to the end of the patient's life. It is usually the case, indeed, that this disease, deprived as early as possible of the first traces of its cutaneous symptom by local applications, will grow but slowly in the beginning and will make but slow progress in the organism — much slower progress than where the eruption has been allowed to remain for a long time on the skin; for in the latter case the progress of the internal psora is of immense rapidity; but the disease, nevertheless, increases un-ceasingl)^, and even in the best cases and under the most favorable external circumstances, quietly and often for years unperceived hy the e5^es; so that anyone, who does not know the signs of its latent presence, would suppose and declare such persons to be healthy and free from 2.r\y internal malady. Often for years it does not manifest itself in prominent symptoms, which might be called manifest diseases.
Many hundred observations have gradually acquainted me123 with the signs, by which the internally slumbering,124 hitherto latent psora (itch-malady) may be recognized even in those cases where it has not yet manifested itself in any startling disease, so that I am able to root out and to thoroughly cure this malady with its roots, more easily before the internal psora has risen to a manifest (chronic) disease, and has developed to such a fearful height that the dangerous conditions make the cure dif&cult and in some cases impossible.
There are many signs of the psora which is gradually increasing within, but is as 3'et slumbering, and has not yet come to the full outbreak of a manifest disease; but no one person has all these symptoms; the one has more of them, the other a smaller number; the one has at present only one of them, but in the course of time he will also have others; he may be free from some, according to the peculiar disposition of his body or according to the external circumstances of different persons.
SYMPTOMS OF LATENT PSORA.
Mostly with children: frequent discharge of ascarides and other worms; unsufferable itching caused by the latter in the rectum.
The abdomen often distended.
Now insatiable hunger, then again want of appetite.
Paleness of the face and relaxation of the muscles.
Frequent inflammations of the eyes.
Swellings of the cervical glands (scrofula).
Perspiration on the head, in the evening after going to sleep.
Epistaxis with girls and youths (more rarely with older persons), often very severe.
Usually cold hands or perspiration on the palms, (burning in the palms) .
Cold, dry, or ill-smelling sweaty feet, (burning in the soles of the feet).
The arms or hands, the legs or feet, are benumbed by a slight cause.
Frequent cramps in the calves (the muscles of the arms and hands) .
Painless subsultus of various portions of the muscles here and there on the body.
Frequent or tedious dry or fluent coryza or catarrh,125 or impossibility of catching a cold even from the most severe exposure, even while otherwise having continually ailments of this kind.
Long continued obstruction of one or both nostrils.
Ulcerated nostrils (sore nose).
Disagreeable sensation of dryness in the nose.
Frequent inflammation of the throat, frequent hoarseness.
Short tussiculation in the morning.
Frequent attacks of dyspnœa.
Predisposition to catching cold (either in the whole bod126 or only in the head, the throat, the breast, the abdomen, the feet; e. g., in a draught, t (usually when these parts are inclined to perspiration), and many other, sometimes long continuing ailments arising therefrom.
Predisposition to strains, even from carrying or lifting a slight weight, often caused even by stretching upward and reaching out the arms for objects which are hung high (so also a multitude of complaints resulting from a moderate stretching of the muscles : headache, nausea, prostration, tensive pain in the muscles of the neck and back, etc.)
Frequent one-sided headache or toothache, even from moderate emotional disturbances.
Frequent flushes of heat and redness of the face, not unfrequently with anxiety
Frequent falling out of hair of the head, dr3mess of the same, many scales upon the scalp.
Predisposition to erysipelas now and then.
Amenorrhœa, irregularities in the menses, too copious, too scanty, too early (too late), of too long duration, too watery, connected with various bodily ailments.
Twitching of the limbs on going to sleep.
Weariness early on awaking; unrefreshing sleep.
Perspiration in the morning in bed.
Perspiration breaks out too easily during the daytime, even with little movement (or inability to bring out perspiration).
White, or at least very pale tongue; still more frequently cracked tongue.
Much phlegm in the throat.
Bad smell from the mouth, frequently or almost constantly, especially early in the morning and during the menses, and this is perceived either as insipid, or as slightly sour, or as if from a stomach out of order, or as mouldy, also as putrid.
Sour taste in the mouth.
Nausea, in the morning.
Sensation of emptiness in the stomach.
Repugnance to cooked, warm food, especially to meat (principally with children ^
Repugnance to milk.
At night or in the morning, dryness in the mouth.
Cutting pains in the abdomen, frequently or daily (especially with children), more frequently in the morning.
Hard stools, delaying usually more than a day, clotted, often covered with mucus (or nearly always soft, fermenting stools, like diarrhœa).
Venous knots on the anus; passage of blood with the stools.
Passing of mucus from the anus, with or without faeces.
Itching on the anus.
Dark urine.
Swollen, enlarged veins on the legs (swollen veins, varices).
Chilblains and pains as from chilblains, even outside of the severe cold of winter; even, also, in summer.
Pains as of corns, without any external pinching of the shoes.
Disposition to crack, strain or wrench one joint or another.
Cracking of one or more joints on moving.
Drawing, tensive pains in the neck, the back, the limbs, especially, also, in the teeth (in damp, stormy weather, in northwest and northeast winds, after colds, overlifting, disagreeable emotions, etc.).
Renewal of pains and complaints while at rest, and disappearance of the same while in motion.
Most of the ailments come on at night, and are increased with a low barometer, with north and northeast127 winds, in winter and towards spring.
Uneasy, frightful, or at least too vivid, dreams.
Unhealthy skin; every little lesion passes into sores; cracked skin of the hands and of the lower lips.
Frequent boils, frequent felons (whitlows).
Dry skin on the limbs; on the arms, the thighs, and also at times on the cheeks.
Here or there a rough, scaling spot on the skin, which causes at times a voluptuous itching and, after the rubbing, a burning sensation.
Here or there at times, though seldom, a single insufferably pleasant, but unbearably itching vesicle, at its point sometimes filled with pus, and causing a burning sensation after rubbing, on a finger, on the wrist or in some other place.
Suffering from several or from a greater number of these ailments (even at various times and frequently), a person will still consider himself as healthy, and is supposed to be so by others. He may also lead a quite endurable life in such a state, and without much hindrance, attend to his business as long as he is young or still in his vigorous years, and so long as he does not suffer any particular mishap from without, has a satisfactory income, does not live in vexation or grief, does not overexert himself; but especially if he is of quite a cheerful, equable, patient, contented, disposition. With such persons the psora (internal itch malady), which may be recognized by a connoisseur by means of a few or by more of the above symptoms, may slumber on for many years within, without causing any continuing chronic disease.
But still, even in such favorable external relations, as soon as these persons advance in age, even moderate causes (a slight vexation, or a cold, or an error in diet, etc.), may produce a violent attack of (however only a briefs disease: a violent attack of colic, inflammation of the chest or the throat, erysipelas, fever and the like, and the violence of these attacks seems to be out of proportion to its moderate cause. This is mostly wont to happen in fall128 or winter, but often also by preference in springtime.
But even where a person, whether a child or an adult, who has the psora slumbering within him, shows much semblance of health, but happens upon the opposite of the above-described favorable conditions of life, when his health and whole organism have been very much weakened and shaken by a prevalent epidemic fever or an infectious acute disease,129 smallpox, measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever, purple rash, etc , or through an external severe lesion, a shock, a fall, a wound, a considerable burn, the breaking of an arm or a leg, a hard labor, the confinement due to a disease (usually helped on by the incorrect and weakening Allopathic treatment), confinement at a sedentary occupation in a gloomy, close room, weakening the vital force; the sad losses of beloved relatives bending down the soul with grief, or daily vexation and annoyance which embitter the life; deterioration of the food or an entire want of what is necessary and indispensable, exposure and inferior food beating down man's courage and strength; then \)i& psora, which has hitherto slumbered, awakes and shows itself in the heightened and augmented symptoms enumerated below, in its transition to the formation of severe maladies; one or another of the nameless (psoric) chronic diseases f breaks out and most of all through li^eakeiiing and exliaiLstiiig improper treatment by allopathic physicians, they are aggravate dfrom time to time without intermission, often to a fearful height, if external circumstances favorable for the patient do not interpose, and cause a moderation in the process of the malad3\
But even if favorable external conditions should again check the rapid development of a disease that has broken out, true health can not be lastingly restored by any of the modes of treatment hitherto known, and the customary allopathic treatments, with their aggressive, inappropriate remedies — such as baths, mercury, prussic acid, iodine, digitalis, quinine, starvation and other fashionable remedies included — only hasten death, the end of all those maladies which the physician cannot heal.
When once, under the above-mentioned unfavorable outward surroundings, the transition of\\\.^ psora from its slumbering and bound condition to its awakening and outbreak has taken place, and the patient leaves himself to the injurious activity of the usual allopathic physician, who deems it appropriate to his office and his income to mercilessly assault the organism of the patient (as we are sorry to witness every day) with the battering-rams of his violent, inappropriate remedies and weakening treatments; — in such a case, the external circumstances of the patient and his situation with respect to his surroundings may have changed ever so favorably, but the aggravation of the disease nevertheless proceeds under such hands without any escape.
The awakening of the internal psora which has hitherto slumbered and been latent, and, as it were, kept bound by a good bodily constitution and favorable external circumstances, as well as its breaking out into more serious ailments and maladies, is announced by the increase of the symptoms given above as indicating the slumbering psora, and also by a numberless multitude of various other signs and complaints. These are varied according to the difference in the bodily constitution of a man, his hereditary disposition, the various errors in his education and habits, his manner of living and diet, his employments, his turn of mind, his morality, etc.
Then when the itch-malady develops into a manifest secondary disease there appear the following symptoms, which I have derived and observed altogether from accounts of diseases which I myself have treated successfully and which confessedly originated from the contagion of itch, and were mixed neither with syphilis nor s3xosis.
I am quite willing to believe that many more symptoms may have occurred in the experience of others.
I would only add further, that among the symptoms adduced there are also such as are entirely opposed to each other, the reason of which may be found in the varying bodily constitutions existing at the time — when the outbreak of the internal psora occurred. Yet the one variety of symptoms is found more rarely than the other and it offers no particular obstruction to a cure:
Vertigo; reeling while walking.
Vertigo; when closing the eyes, everything seems to turn around with him; he is at the same time seized with nausea.
Vertigo; on turning around briskly, he almost falls over.
Vertigo, as if there was a jerk in the head, which causes a momentary loss of consciousness.
Vertigo with frequent eructations.
Vertigo even when only looking down on the level ground, or when looking upward.
Vertigo while walking on a road not enclosed on either side, in an open plain.
Vertigo ; she seems to herself now too large, now too small, or other objects have this appearance to her.
Vertigo, resembling a swoon.
Vertigo, passing over into unconsciousness.
Dizziness; inability to think or to perform mental labor.
Her thoughts are not under her control.
She is at times quite without thought (sits lost in thought).
The open air causes dizziness and drowsiness in the head.
Everything at times seems dark and black before his eyes, while walking or stooping, or when raising himself from a stooping posture.
Rush of blood to the head.130
Heat in the head (and in the face).^
A cold pressure on the top of the head.^
Headache, a dull pain in the morning immediately on waking up, or in the afternoon when walking rapidly or speaking loudly.
Headache on one side, with a certain periodicity (after 28, 14 or a less number of days), more frequently during full moon, or during the new moon, or after mental excitement, after a cold, etc.; a pressure or other pain on top of the head or inside of it, or a boring pain over one of the eyes.^
Headache daily at certain hours; e. ^., a. stitching in the temples.131
Attacks of throbbing headache (e.g. , in the forehead) with violent nausea as if about to sink down, or, also, vomiting; starting early in the evenings, repeated every fortnight, or sooner or later.
Headache as if the skull were about to burst open.132
Headache, drawing pains.133
Headache, stitches in the head (passing out at the ears).134
Roaring noise in the brain, singing, buzzing, humming, thundering, etc.
The scalp full of dandruff, with or without itching.
Eruption on the head, tinea capitis, malignant tinea with crusts of greater or less thickness, with sensitive stitches when one of the places becomes moist; when it becomes moist a violent itching; the whole crown of the head painfully sensitive to the open air; with it hard swellings of the glands in the neck.
The hair of the head as if parched.
The hair of the head frequently falls out, most in front, on the crown and top of the head; bald spots or beginning baldness of certain spots.
Under the skin are formed painful lumps, which come and pass away, like bumps and round tumors.135
Feeling of contraction in the skin of the scalp and the face.
Paleness of the face during the first sleep, with blue rings around the eyes.
Frequent redness of the face, and heat.136
Yellowish, yellow color of the face.
Sallow yellowish complexion.
Erysipelas on the face.137
Pressive pain on the eyes, especially late in the evening; he must shut them.
He cannot look long at anything, else everything flickers before him; objects seem to move.
The eyelids, especially in the morning, are as if closed; he cannot open them (for minutes; yea, even for hours); the eyelids are heavy as if paralyzed or convulsively closed.
The eyes are most sensitive to da3dight; they are pained by it and close involuntarily.138
Sensation of cold in the eyes.
The canthi are full of pus-like mucus (eye-gum).
The edges of the eyehds full of dry mucus.
On the edges of the eyelids, inflammation of single Meibomian glands or of several of them.
Inflammations of the eyes, of various kinds.139
Yellowness around the eyes.
Yellowness of the white of the eye.140
Dim, opaque spots on the cornea.141
Dropsy of the ejx.
Obscuration of the crystalline lens, cataract.
Squinting.
Far-sightedness; he sees far in the distance, but cannot clearly distinguish small objects held close.
Short-sightedness; he can see even small objects by holding them close to the eye, but the more distant the object is, the more indistinct it appears, and at a great distance he does not see it.
False vision; he sees objects double, or manifold, or only the one-half of them.
Before his eyes there are floating as it were flies, or black points, or dark streaks, or networks, especially when looking into bright daylight.
The eyes seem to look through a veil or a mist; the sight becomes dim at certain times.
Xight-blindness ; he sees well in daytime, but, in the twilight he cannot see at all.
Blindness by day; he can only see well during the twilight.
Amaurosis; uninterrupted dimness of vision142 increased finally even to blindness.
Painfulness of various spots in the face, the cheeks, the cheekbones, the lower jaw, etc., when touched; while chewing, as if festering inwardly; also like stitches and jerks; especially in chewing there are jerks, stitches and a tension so that he cannot eat.143
The hearing is excessively irritated and sensitive; she cannot bear to hear a bell ring without trembling; he is thrown into convulsions by the beating of the drum, etc.; many sounds cause pains in the ear.
There are stitches in the ear, outwardly.144
Crawling sensation and itching in the ear.
Drjmess in the ear; dry scabs within, without any ear-wax.
Running from the ear of thin, usually ill-smelling pus.
Pulsation in the ear.
Various sounds and noises in the ear.145
Deafness of various degrees even up to total deafness, with or without noise in the ear; occasionally worse, according to the weather.
Swelling of the parotid glands.146
Epistaxis, more or less profusely, more or less frequently.
The nostrils as it were stopped up.147
Sensation of dryness in the nose, troublesome even when the air passes freely.
Polypi of the nose (usually with the loss of the power of smelling); these may extend also through the nasal passages into the fauces.
Sense of smell, weak, lost.
Sense of smell perverted.148
Too violent sensation of smell, higher and highest sensitiveness for even imperceptible odors.
Scabs in the nose; discharge of pus or hardened clots of mucus.149
Fetid smell in the nose.
Nostrils frequently ulcerated, surrounded with pimples and scabs.
Swelling and redness of the nose or the tip of the nose, frequent or continual.
Under the nose, or on the upper lip, long-lasting scabs or itching pimples.
The red of the lips is quite pale.
The red of the lips is dry, scabby, peeling off; it chaps.
Swelling of the lips, especially of the upper Hp.150
The inside of the lips is lined with little sores or blisters.151
Cutaneous eruption of the beard and of the roots of the hairs of the beard, with itching.
Eruptions of the face of innumerable kinds.152
Glands of the lower jaw swollen, sometimes passing over into chronic suppuration.
Glandular swellings down the sides of the neck.
Gums bleeding at a slight touch.
Gums, the external or the internal, painful, as if from wounds.
Gums, with erosive itching.
Gums, whitish, swollen, painful on touching.
Gums, recession, leaving the front teeth and their roots bare.
Gnashing of the teeth during sleep.
Looseness of the teeth, and many kinds of deterioration of the teeth, even without toothache.
Toothache of innumerable varieties, with varying causes of excitation.
She cannot remain in bed at night, owing to toothache.
On the tongue, painful blisters and sore places.
Tongue white, coated white or furred white.
Tongue pale, bluish-white.
Tongue full of deep furrows; here and there, as if torn above.
Tongue dry.
Sensation of dryness on the tongue, even while it is properly moist.
Stuttering, stammering; also at times sudden attacks of inability to speak.
On the inside of the cheeks painful blisters or sores.
Flow of blood from the mouth; often severe.
Sensation of dryness of the whole internal mouth, or merely in spots, or deep down in the throat.153
Fetid smell from the mouth.
Burning in the throat.
Constant flow of saliva, especially while speaking, particularly in the morning.
Continual spitting of saliva.
Frequent mucus deep down in the throat (the fauces), which he has to hawk up and expectorate frequently during the day, especially in the morning.
Frequently inflammation of the throat, and swelling of the parts used in swallowing.
Insipid, slimy taste in the mouth.
Intolerably sweet taste in the mouth, almost constantly.
Bitter taste in the mouth, mostly in the morning.154
Sourish and sour taste in the mouth, especially after eating, though the food tasted all right.155
Putrid and fetid taste in the mouth.
Bad smell in the mouth, sometimes mouldy, sometimes putrid like old cheese, or like fetid foot-sweat, or like rotten sour kraut.
Eructations, with the taste of the food, several hours after eating.
Eructations, empty, loud, of mere air, uncontrollable, often for hours, not infrequently at night.
Incomplete eructation, which causes merely convulsive shocks in the fauces, without coming out of the mouth.
Eructation, sour,' either fasting or after food, especially after milk.
Eructation, which excites to vomiting.
Eructation, rancid (especially after eating fat things).
Eructation, putrid or mouldy, early in the morning.
Frequent eructations before meals, with a sort of rabid hunger. Heart-burn, more or less frequent; there is a burning along the chest, especially after breakfast, or while moving the body.
Water-brash, a gushing discharge of a sort of salivary fluid from the stomach, preceded by writhing pains in the stomach (the pancreas), with a sensation of weakness (shakiness), nausea causing as it were a swoon, and gathering of the saliva in the mouth, even at night.156
The ruling complaints in any part of the body are excited after eating fresh fruit, especially if this is acidulous, also after acetic acid (in salads, etc.).
Nausea early in the morning.157
Nausea even to vomiting, in the morning immediately after rising from bed, decreasing from motion.
Nausea always after eating fatty things or milk.
Vomiting of blood.
Hiccough after eating or drinking.
Swallowing impeded by spasms, even causing a man to die of hunger.
Spasmodic, involuntary swallowing.
Frequent sensation of fasting and of emptiness in the stomach (or abdomen), not unfrequently with much saliva in the mouth.
Ravenous hunger (canine hunger) , especially early in the morning; he has to eat at once else he grows faint, exhausted and shaky, (or if he is in the open air he has to lie straight down) .
Ravenous hunger with rumbling and grumbling in the abdomen.
Appetite without hunger; she has a desire to swallow down in haste various things without there being any craving therefor in the stomach.
A sort of hunger; but when she then eats ever so little, she feels at once satiated and full.
When she wants to eat, she feels full in the chest and her throat feels as if full of mucus.
Want of appetite; only a sort of gnawing, turning and writhing in the stomach urges her to eat.
Repugnance to cooked, warm food, especially to boiled meat, and hardly an}^ longing for anything but rye-bread (with butter), or for potatoes.158
In the morning, at once, thirst; constant thirst.
In the pit of the stomach there is a sensation of swelling, painful to the touch.
Sensation of coldness in the pit of the stomach.
Pressure in the stomach or in the pit of the stomach, as from a stone, or a constricting pain (cramp).159
In the stomach, beating and pulsation, even when fasting.
Spasm in the stomach; pain in the pit of the stomach as if drawn together.160
Griping in the stomach; a painful griping in the stomach;161 it suddenly constricts the stomach, especially after cold drinking.
Pain in the stomach, as if sore, when eating even the most harmless kinds of foods.
Pressure in the stomach, even when fasting, but more from every kind of food, or from particular dishes, fruit, green vegetables, rye-bread, food containing vinegar, etc.162
During eating, feels dizzy and giddy, threatening to fall to one side.
After the slightest supper, nocturnal heat in bed; in the morning, constipation and exceeding lassitude.
After meals, anxiety and cold perspiration with anxiety.163
During eating, perspiration.
Immediately after eating, vomiting.
After meals, pressure and burning in the stomach, or in the epigastrium, almost like heartburn.
After eating, burning in oesophagus from below upward.
After meals, distension of the abdomen.164 After meals, very tired and sleepy.165 After meals, as if intoxicated.
After meals, headache.
After meals, palpitation of the heart.
Alleviation of several, even remote, complaints from eating.
The flatus does not pass off, but moves about, causing many ailments of body and of spirit.166
The abdomen is distended by flatus,167 the abdomen feels full, especially after a meal.
Sensation as if the flatus ascended; followed by eructations-then often a sensation of burning in the throat, or vomiting by day and by night.
Pain in the hypochondria when touched, and in motion, or also during rest.
Constricting pain in the epigastrium, immediately under the ribs.
Cutting pains in the abdomen, as if from obstructed flatus; there is a constant sensation of fulness in the abdomen — the flatus rises upwards.
Cutting pains in the abdomen almost daily, especially with children, oftener in the morning than in other parts of the day, sometimes day and night, without diarrhœa.
Cutting pains in the abdomen, especially on the one side of the abdomen, or the groin.168
In the abdomen, qualmishness, a sensation of voidness, disagreeable emptiness,169 even immediately after eating, he felt as if he had not eaten anything.
From the small of the back, around the abdomen, especially below the stomach, a sensation of constriction as from a bandage, after she had had no stool for several days.
Pain in the liver, when touching the right side of the abdomen.
Pain in the liver, a pressure and tension — a tension below the ribs on the right side.
Below the last ribs (in the hypochondria) , a tension and pressure all over, which checks the breathing and makes the mind anxious and sad. Pain in the liver, stitches — mostly when stooping quickly. Inflammation of the liver. Pressure in the abdomen as from a stone.170
Hardness of the abdomen.
Crampy colic, a grasping pain in the bowels.
In colic, coldness on one side of the abdomen.
A clucking, croaking and audible rumbling and grumbling in the abdomen.171
So-called uterine spasms, like labor pains, grasping pains often compelling the patient to lie down, frequently quickly distending the abdomen dthout flatulence.
In the lower abdomen, pains pressing down toward the genitals.172
Inguinal hernias, often painful while speaking and singing.173
Swellings of the inguinal glands, which sometimes turn into suppuration.
Constipation; delayed stools sometimes for several days, not infrequently with repeated ineffectual urging to stool.
Stools hard, as if burnt, in small knots, like sheep-dung, often covered with mucus, sometimes also enveloped by veinlets of blood.
Stools of mere mucus (mucous piles).
Passage of round worms from the anus.
Discharge of pieces of tape-worm.
Stools, in the beginning very hard and troublesome, followed by diarrhœa.
Very pale, whitish stool.
Gray stools.
Green stools.
Clay-colored stools.
Stools with putrid, sour smell.
At the stools, cutting pains in the rectum.
Stools show diarrhœa for several weeks, months, years.174
Frequently repeated diarrhœa, with cutting pains in the abdomen, lasting several days.
After a stool, especially after a softer, more copious evacuation, great and sudden prostration.175
Diarrhœa, soon so weakening, that she cannot walk alone.
Painless and painful hemorrhoidal varices176 on the anus, in the rectum (blind piles).
Bleeding hemorrhoidal varices on the anus or in the rectum177 (running piles), especially during stools, after which the hemorrhoids often pain violently for a long time.
With bloody discharges in the anus or in the rectum, ebullition of blood through the body and short breathing.
Formication and itching formication in the rectum, with or without the discharge of ascarides.
Itching and erosion in the anus and the perinaeum.
Polypi in the rectum.
During micturition, anxiety, also at times prostration.
At times too much urine is discharged, succeeded by great weariness.178
Painful retention of urine (with children and old people).
When he is chilled (feels cold through and through), he cannot urinate.
At times owing to flatulence, she cannot urinate.
The urethra is constricted in parts, especially in the morning.179
Pressure on the bladder, as if from an urging to urinate, immediately after drinking.
He cannot hold the urine for any length of time, it presses on the bladder, and passes off while he walks, sneezes, coughs or laughs.
Frequent micturition at night; he has to get up frequently at night for that purpose.
Urine passes off in sleep involuntarily.
After urinating, the urine continues to drip out for a long time.
Whitish urine, with a sweetish smell and taste, passes off in excessive abundance, with prostration, emaciation and inextinguishable thirst (diabetes).
During urination, burning, also lancinating pains in the urethra and the neck of the bladder.
Urine of penetrating, sharp odor.
The urine quickly deposits a sediment.
The urine discharged is at once turbid like whey.
With the urine there is discharged from time to time a red sand (kidney grits).
Dark-yellow urine.
Brown urine.
Blackish urine.
Urine with blood particles, also at times complete hematuria.
Discharge of prostatic fluid after urination, but especially after a difficult stool (also almost constant dripping of the same).180
Nocturnal passage of semen, too frequent, one, two or three times a week, or even every night.181
Nightly discharge of the genital fluid in a women, with voluptuous dreams.
Nocturnal pollutions, even if not frequent, yet immediately attended by evil consequences.182
Semen passes off almost involuntarily in daytime, with little excitation, often even without erection.
Erections very frequent, long continuing, very painful without pollutions.
The semen is not discharged, even during a long-continued coition and with a proper erection,183 but it passes off afterward in nocturnal pollutions or with the urine.
Accumulation of water in the tunica vaginalis of the testicle (hydrocele).
There is never a complete erection, even with the most voluptuous excitement.
Painful twitches in the muscles of the penis.
Itching of the scrotum, which is sometimes beset with pimples and scabs.
One or both of the testicles chronically swollen, or showing a knotty induration (Sarcocele) .
Dwindling, diminution, disappearance of one or both testicles.
Induration and enlargement of the prostatic gland.
Drawing pain in the testicle and the spermatic chord.
Pain as from contusion in the testicle.
Lack of the sexual desire in both sexes, either frequent or constant.184
Uncontrollable insatiable lasciviousness,185 with a cachectic complexion and sickly body
Sterility, impotence, without any original oro^anic defect in the sexual parts.186
Disorders of the menstrual function; the menses do not appear regularly on the twenty-eighth day after their last appearance, they do not come on without other ailments and not at once, and do not continue steadily for three or four days with a moderate quantity of healthy-colored, mild blood, until on the fourth day it imperceptibly comes to an end without any disturbance of the general health of body and spirit; nor are the menses continued to the forty-eighth or fiftieth 3'ear, nor do they cease gradually and without any troubles.
The menses are slow in setting in after the fifteenth 3'ear and later, or after appearing one or more times, they cease for several months and for 3'ears.187
The menses do not keep their regular periods, they either come several days too early, sometimes every three weeks, or even every fortnight.188
The menses flow only one day, only a few hours, or in imperceptibly small quantities.
The menses flow for five, six, eight and more days, but only intermittently, a little flow every six, twelve, twenty-four hours, and then they cease for half or whole days, before more is discharged.
The menses flow too strongly for weeks, or return almost daily (bloody flux).189
Menses of watery blood or of brown clots of blood.
Menses of very fetid blood.
Menses accompanied with many ailments, swoons or (mostly stitching) headaches, or contractive, spasmodic, cutting pains in the abdomen and in the small of the back; she is obliged to lie down, vomit, etc.
Polypi in the vagina.
Leucorrhœa from the vagina, one or several days before, or soon after, the monthly flow of blood, or during the whole time from the one menstrual discharge to the other, with a diminution of the menses, or continuing solely instead of the menses; the flow is like milk, or like white, or yellow mucus, or like acrid, or sometimes like fetid, water.190
Premature births.
During pregnancies great weariness, nausea, frequent vomiting, swoons, painful varicose veins on the thighs and the legs, and also at times on the labia, hysteric ailments of various kinds, etc.
Coryza at once, whenever she comes into the open air; then usually a stuffed coryza while in her room.
Dry coryza and a stuffed nose often, or almost constantly, also sometimes with intermissions.
Fluent coryza at the least taking of cold, therefore mostly in the inclement season and when it is wet.
Fluent coryza, very often, or almost constantly, also in some cases uninterruptedly .
He cannot take cold, even though there have been strong premonitory symptoms of it, simultaneously with other great ailments from the itch malady.
Hoarseness, after the least amount of speaking; she must vomit in order to clear her voice.
Hoarseness, also sometimes aphony (she cannot speak loud but must whisper), after a slight cold.
Constant hoarseness and aphony for years; he cannot speak a loud word.
Suppuration of the larynx and the bronchia (lar^mgo-bronchial phthisis).191
Hoarseness and catarrh very often, or almost constantly; his chest is continually affected.
Cough; frequent irritation and crawling in the throat; the cough torments him, until perspiration breaks out on his face (and on his hands) .
Cough, which does not abate until there is retching and vomiting, mostly in the morning or in the evening.
Cough, which terminates every time with sneezing.
Cough mostly in the evening after Lang down and whenever the head lies low.
Cough, waking the patient up after the first brief sleep.
Cough, especially in the night.
Cough, worse after awaking in the morning.
Cough, worst after eating.
Cough, at once with every deep breath.
Cough, causing a sensation of soreness in the chest, or at times stitches in the side of the chest or the abdomen.
Dry cough.
Cough, with yellow expectoration resembling pus, with or without spitting of blood.192
Cough, with excessive expectoration of mucus and sinking of the strength (mucous phthisis).
Attacks of whooping cough.193
Violent, at times unbearable stitches in the chest at every breath; cough impossible for pain; without inflammatory fever (spurious pleurisy).
Pain in the chest on walking, as if the chest was about to burst.
Pressive pain in the chest, at deep breathing or at sneezing.
Often a slightly constrictive pain in the chest, which, when it. does not quickly pass, causes the deepest dejection.194
Burning pain in the chest.
Frequent stitches in the chest, with or without cough.
Violent stitches in the side; with great heat of the body, it is almost impossible to breathe, on account of stitches in the chest with-hemoptysis and headache; he is confined to his bed.
Night-mare; he usually suddenly awakes at night from a fright-fill dream, but cannot move, nor call, nor speak, and when he endeavors to move, he suffers intolerable pains, as if he were being torn to pieces.195
Obstruction of the breath, with stitching pains in the chest at the slightest amount of walking;196 he cannot go a step farther (angina pectoris).
Asthma, merely when moving the arms, not while walking.
Attacks of suffocation especially after midnight; the patient has to sit up, sometimes he has to leave his bed, stand stooping forward, leaning on his hands; he has to open the windows, or go out into the open air, etc.; he has palpitations; these are followed by eructations or yawning, and the spasm terminates with or without coughing and expectoration. Palpitation with anxiety, especially at night. Asthma, loud, difficult, at times also sibilant respiration.
Shortness of breath.
Asthma, on moving, with or without cough.
Asthma, mostly while sitting down.
Asthma, spasmodic; when she comes into the open air it takes her breath.
Asthma, in attacks, lasting several weeks.
Dwindling of the breasts, or excessive enlargement of the same, with retroceding nipples.
Erysipelas on one of the breasts (especially while nursing) .
A hard, enlarging and indurating gland with lancinating pains in one of the mammae.197
Itching, also moist and scaly eruptions around the nipples.
In the small of the back, in the back and in the nape of the neck, drawing (tearing), tensive pains.
Lancinating, cutting, painful stiffness of the nape of the neck; of the small of the back.
Pressive pain between the shoulder-blades.
Sensation of pressure upon the shoulders.
In the limbs, drawing (tearing), tensive pains, partly in the muscles and partly in the joints (rheumatism).
In the periosteum, here and there, especially in the periosteum of the long bones, pressive and pressive-drawing pains.198
Stitching pains in the fingers or toes.199
Stitches in the heels and soles of the feet while standing.
Burning in the soles of the feet.200
In the joints a sort of tearing, Hke scraping on the bone, with a red, hot swelling which is painfully sensitive to the touch and to the. air, with unbearably sensitive, peevish disposition (gout, podagra, chiragra, gout in the knees, etc.).^
The joints of the fingers, swollen with pressive pains, painful when touching and bending them.
Thickening of the joints; they remain hard swollen, and there is pain on bending them.
The joints, as it were, stiff, with painful, difficult motion, the ligaments seem too short.201
Joints, painful on motion.202
Joints crack on moving, or they make a snapping noise.
The joints are easily sprained or strained.203
Increasing disposition to strains and to overlift oneself even at a very slight exertion of the muscles, even in slight mechanical work, in reaching out or stretching for something high up, in lifting things that are not heavy, in quick turns of the body, pushing, etc. Such a tension or stretching of the muscles often then occasions long confinement to the bed, swoons, all grades of hysterical troubles,204 fever, hemoptysis, etc. , while persons who are not psoric lift such burdens as their muscles are able to, without the slightest after effects.205
The joints are easily sprained at any false movement.206
In the joint, of the foot there is pain on treading, as if it would break.
Softening of the bones, curvature of the spine (deformity, hunchback), curvature of the long bones of the thighs and legs (morbus angliacs, rickets).
Fragility of the bones.
Painful sensitiveness of the skin, the muscles and of the periosteum on a moderate pressure.207
Intolerable208 pain in the skin (or in the muscles, or in the periosteum) of some part of the body from a slight movement of the same or of a more distant part; e. g., from T;\Tdting there arises a pain in the shoulder or in the side of the neck, etc. , while sawing or performing other hard labor with the same hand causes no pain; a similar pain in the adjacent parts, from speaking and moving the mouth; pain in the lips and in the back at a slight touch.
Numbness of the skin or of the muscles of certain parts and hmbs.209
Dying off of certain fingers or of the hands or feet.210
Crawling or also prickling formication (as from the limbs going to sleep) in the arms, in the legs and in other parts (even in the fingertips).
A crawling, or whirling, or an internally itching restlessness, especially in the lower limbs (in the evening in bed or early on awaking) ; they must be brought into another position every moment.
Painful sensation of cold in various parts.
Burning pains in various parts (frequently without any change in the usual external bodily temperature).
Coldness, repeated or constant of the whole body , or of the one side of the body; so also of single parts, cold hands, cold feet which frequently will not get warm in bed.
Chilliness, constant, even without any change in the external bodily temperature.
Frequent flushes of heat, especially in the face, more frequently with redness than without; sudden, violent sensation of heat during rest, or in slight motion, sometimes even from speaking, with or without perspiration breaking out.
Warm air in the room or at church is exceedingly repugnant to her, makes her restless, causes her to move about (at times with a pressure in the head, over the eyes, not infrequently alleviated by epistaxis) .
Rushes of blood, also at times a sensation of throbbing in all the arteries (while he often looks quite pale, with a feeling of prostration throughout the body).
Rush of blood to the head.
Rush of blood to the chest.
Varices, varicose veins in the lower limbs (varices on the pudenda), also on the arms (even with men), often with tearing pains in them (during storms), or with itching in the varices.211
Erysipelas, partly in the face (with fever), partly on the limbs, on the breast while nursing, especially in a sore place (with a prickling and burning pain).
Whitlow, paronychia (sore finger with festering skin).
Chilblains (even when it is not winter) on the toes and fingers, itching, burning and lancinating pains.
Corns, which even without external pressure cause burning, lancinating pains.
Boils (furuncles), returning from time to time, especially on the nates, the thighs, the upper arms and the body. Touching them causes fine stitches in them.
Ulcers on the thighs, especially, also upon the ankles and above them and on the lower part of the calves, with itching, gnawing, tickling around the borders, and a gnawing pain as from salt on the base of the ulcer itself ; the parts surrounding are of brown and bluish color, with varices near the ulcers, which, during storms and rains, often cause tearing pains, especially at night, often accompanied with erysipelas after vexation or fright, or attended with cramps in the calves.
Tumefaction and suppuration of the humerus, the femur, the patella, also of the bones of the fingers and toes (spina veiitosd).
Thickening and stiffening of the joints.
Eruptions, either arising from time to time and passing away again; some voluptuously itching pustules, especially on the fingers or other parts, which, after scratching, burn and have the greatest similarity to the original itch-eruption;
or 7iettle-rash, like stings and water-blisters, mostly with
burning pain;
or pimples without pain in the face, the chest, the back, the
arms and the thighs; or herpes in fine miliary grains, closely pressed together into
round, larger or smaller spots of mostly reddish color,
sometimes dry, sometimes moist, with itching, similar to
the eruption of itch and with burning after rubbing
them. They continually extend further to the circum-
terence with redness, while the middle seems to become
free from the eruption and covered with smooth, shining
skin (herpes circinatus). The moist herpes on the legs
are called salt-rheum; or crusts raised above the surrounding skin, round in form,
with deep-red, painless borders, with frequent violent
stitches on the parts of the skin not yet affected; or small, round spots on the skin, covered with bran-like,
dry scales, which often peel off and are again renewed
without sensation;
or red spots of the skin, which feel dry, with burning pain;
somewhat raised above the rest of the skin.
Freckles, small and round, brown or brownish spots in the face, on the hands and on the chest, without sensation.
Liver spots, large brownish spots which often cover whole limbs, the arms, the neck, the chest, etc., without sensation or with itching.
Yellowness of the skin, yellow212 spots of a like nature around the eyes, the mouth, on the neck, etc., without sensibility213 ^
Warts on the face, the lower arm, the hands, etc.214
Encysted tumors in the skin, the cellular tissue beneath it, or in the burses mucosa of the tendons (exostosis), of various forms and sizes, cold without sensibility.215
Glandular swellings around the neck, in the groin, in the bend of the joints, the bend of the elbow216 of the knee, in the axillae,* also in the breasts.
Dryness of the (scarf) skin either on the whole body with inability to perspire through motion and heat, or only in some parts. ^
Disagreeable sensation of dryness over the whole body (also in the face, around and in the mouth, in the throat, or in the nose, although the breath passes freely through it).
Perspiration comes too easily from slight motion; even while sitting, he is attacked with perspiration all over, or merely on some parts; e. g., almost constant perspiration of the hands and feet,217 so also strong perspiration in the axillae218 and around the pudenda.
Daily morning sweats, often causing the patient to drip, this for many years, often with sour or pungent-sour smell.219
One-sided perspiration, only on one side of the body, or only on the upper part of the body, or only on the lower part.
Increasing susceptibility to colds, either of the whole body (often even from repeatedly wetting the hands, now with warm water, then with cold, as in washing clothes), or only susceptibility of certain parts of the body, of the head, the neck, the chest, the abdomen, the feet, etc., often in a moderate or slight draught, or after slightly moistening these parts ;220 even from being in a cooler room, in a rainy atmosphere, or with a low barometer.
So-called weather prophets ; i. e. , renewed severe pains in parts of the body which were formerly injured, wounded, or broken, though they have since been healed and cicatrized; this renewed pain sets in, when great changes of the weather, great cold, or a storm are imminent, or when a thunderstorm is in the air.
Watery swelling, either of the feet alone, or in one foot, or in the hands, or the face, or the abdomen, or the scrotum, etc., alone, or again cutaneous swelling over the whole body (dropsies) .
Attacks of sudden heaviness of the arms or legs.
Attacks of paralytic weakness and paralytic lassitude of the one arm, the one hand, the one leg, without pain, either arising suddenly and passing quickly, or commencing gradually and constantly in-creasino:.
Sudden bending of the knees.
Children fall easily without any visible cause. Also similar attacks of weakness, with adults, in the legs, so that in walking one foot glides this wa221 and the other that way, etc.
While walking in the open air sudden attacks of faintness, especially in the legs.^
While sitting, the patient feels intolerably weary, but stronger while walking.
The predisposition to spraining and straining the joints at a misstep, or a wrong grasp, increases at times even to dislocation; e. g., in the tarsus, the shoulder-joint, etc.
The snapping and cracking of the joints at any motion of the limb increases with a disagreeable sensation.
The going to sleep of the limbs increases and follows on slight causes; e. g., in supporting the head with the arm, crossing the legs while sitting, etc.
The painful cramps in some of the muscles increase and come on without appreciable cause.
Slow, spasmodic straining of the flexor muscles of the limbs.
Sudden jerks of some muscles and limbs even while waking; e. g. , of the tongue, the lips, the muscles of the face, of the pharynx, of the eyes, of the jaws, of the hands and of the feet.
Tonic shortening of the flexor muscles (tetanus) .
Involuntary turning and twisting of the head, or the limbs, with full consciousness (St. Vitus' dance).
Sudden fainting spells and sinking of the strength, with loss of consciousness.
Attacks of tremor in the limbs, without anxiety. Continuous, constant trembling, also in some cases beating with the hands, the arms, the legs.
Attacks of loss of consciousness, lasting a moment or a minute, with an inclination of the head to the one shoulder, with or without jerks of one part or the other.
Epilepsies of various kinds.
Almost constant yawning, stretching and straining of the limbs.
Sleepiness during the day, often immediately after sitting down, especially after meals.
Difficulty in falling asleep, when abed in the evening; he often lies awake for hours.
He passes the nights in a mere slumber.
Sleeplessness, from anxious heat, every night, an anxiety which sometimes rises so high, that he must get up from his bed and walk about.
After three oclock in the morning, no sleep, or at least no sound sleep.
As soon as he closes his eyes, all manner of phantastic appearances and distorted faces appear.
In going to sleep, she is disquieted by strange, anxious fancies; she has to get up and walk about.
Very vivid dreams, as if awake; or sad, frightful, anxious, vexing, lascivious dreams.
Loud talking, screaming, during sleep.
Somnambulism; he rises up at night, while sleeping with closed eyes, and attends to various duties; he performs even dangerous feats with ease, without knowing anything about them when awake.
Attacks of suffocation while sleeping (nightmare).
Various sorts of severe pains at night, or nocturnal thirst, dryness of the throat, of the mouth, or frequent urinating at night.
Early on awaking, dizzy, indolent, unrefreshed, as if he had not done sleeping and more tired than in the evening, when he lay down; it takes him several hours (and only after rising) before he can recover from this weariness.
After a very restless night, he often has more strength in the morning, than after a quiet, sound sleep.
Intermittent fever, even when there are no cases about, either sporadic or epidemic,222 or endemic; the form, duration and type of the fever are very various; quotidian, tertian, quartan, quintan or every seven days.
Every evening, chills with blue nails.
Every evening, single chills.
Every evening, heat, with a rush of blood to the head, with red cheeks, also at times an intervening chill.
Intermittent fever of several weeks' duration, followed by a moist itching eruption lasting several weeks, but which is healed again during a like period of intermittent fever, and alternating thus for years.
Disturbances of the mind and spirit of all kinds.223
Melancholy by itself, or with insanity, also at times alternating with frenzy and hours of rationality.
Anxious oppression, early on awaking.
Anxious oppression in the evening after going to bed.224
Anxiety, several times a day (with and without pains), or at certain hours of the day or of the night; usually the patient then finds no rest, but has to run hither and thither, and often falls into perspiration.
Melancholy, palpitation and anxiousness causes her at night to wake up from sleep (mostly just before the beginning of the menses).
Mania of self-destruction225 (spleen?).
A weeping mood; they often weep for hours without knowing a cause for it.226
Attacks of fear; e.g., fear of fire, of being alone, of apoplexy, of becoming insane, etc.
Attacks of passion, resembling frenzy.
Fright caused by the merest trifles; this often causes perspiration and trembling.
Disinclination to work, in persons who else are most industrious; no impulse to occupy himself, but rather the most decided repugnance thereto.227
Excessive sensitiveness.228
Irritability from weakness.
Quick change of moods; often very merry and exuberantly so, often again and, indeed, very suddenly, dejection; e. g., on account of his disease, or from other trifling causes. Sudden transition from cheerfulness to sadness, or vexation without a cause.
These are some of the leading symptoms observed by me, which, if they are often repeated, or become constant, show that the internal Psora is coming forth from its latent state. They are at the same time the elements, from which (under unfavorable external conditions) the itch-malady, as it manifests itself, composes the illimitable number of chronic diseases, and with one man assumes the one form, with another another, according to the bodily constitution, defects in the education, habits, employment and external circumstances, as also modified by the various psychical and physical impressions. It thus unfolds into manifold forms of disease, with so many varieties, that they are by no means exhausted by the disease-symptoms enumerated in the pathology of the old school, and erroneously designated there as well-defined, constant and peculiar diseases.229
These are the characteristic secondary symptoms230 of the long-unacknowledged, thousand-headed monster, pregnant with disease, the Psora, the original miasmatic malady which now makes its manifest appearance.231