First, then, concerning sycosis, as being that miasma which has produced by far the fewest chronic diseases, and has only been dominant from time to time. This figwart-disease , which in later times, especially during the French war, in the years 1809-18 14, was so widely spread, but which has since showed itself more and more rarely was treated almost always, in an inefficient and injurious manner, internally with mercury, because it was considered homogeneous with the venereal chancre-disease; but the excrescences on the genitals were treated by Allopathic physicians always in the most violent external way by cauterizing, burning and cutting, or by ligatures. These excrescences usually first manifest themselves on the genitals, and appear usually, but not always, attended with a sort of gonorrhœa1 from the urethra, several days or several weeks, even many weeks after infection through coition; more rarely they appear dry and like warts, more frequently soft, spongy, emitting a specifically fetid fluid (sweetish and almost like herring-brine), bleeding easily, and in the form of a coxcomb or a cauliflower (brassica botrytes). These, with males, sprout forth on the glans and on, or below, the prepuce, but with women, on the parts surrounding the pudenda; and the pudenda themselves, which are then swollen, are covered often by a great number of them. When these are violently removed, the natural, proximate effect is, that they will usually come forth again, usually to be subjected again, in vain, to a similar, painful, cruel treatment. But even if they could be rooted out in this way, it would merely have the consequence, that the figwart-disease, after having been deprived of the local symptom which acts vicariously2 for the internal ailment, would appear f in other and much worse ways, in secondary ailments; for the figwart-miasm, which rules in the whole organism, has been in no way diminished, either by the external destruction of the above-mentioned excrescences, or by the mercury which has been used internally, and which is in no way appropriate to sycosis. Besides the undermining of the general health by mercury, which in this disease can only do injury, and which is given mostly in very large doses and in the most active preparations, similar excrescences then break out in other parts of the body, either whitish, spongy, sensitive, fiat elevations, in the cavity of the mouth, on the tongue, the palate and the lips, or as large, raised, brown and dry tubercles in the axillae, on the neck, on the scalp, etc. , or there arise other ailments of the body, of which I shall only mention the contraction of the tendons of the flexor muscles, especially of the fingers.
The gonorrhœa dependent on the figwart-miasma, as well as the above-mentioned excrescences (i. e., the whole sycosis), are cured most surely and most thoroughly through the internal use of Thuja,3 which, in this case, is Homœopathic, in a dose of a few pellets as large as poppy seeds, moistened with the dilution potentized to the decillionth4 degree, and when these have exhausted their action after fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty days, alternating with just as small a dose of nitric acid, diluted to the decillionth degree, which must be allowed to act as long a time, in order to remove the gonorrhœa and the excrescences; i. e., the whole sycosis. It is not necessary to use any external application, except in the most inveterate and difficult cases, when the larger figwarts may be moistened every day with the mild, pure juice pressed from the green leaves of Thuja, mixed with an equal quantity of alcohol.
But if the patient was at the same time affected with another chronic ailment, as is usual after the violent treatment of figwarts by Allopathic physicians, then we often find developed psora5 complicated with sycosis, when the psora, as is often the case, was latent before in the patient. At times, when a badly treated case of venereal chancre disease had preceded, both these miasmata are conjoined in a threefold complication with syphilis. Then it is necessary first to come to the assistance of the most afflicted part, the psora, with the specific anti-psoric remedies given below, and then to make use of the remedies for sycosis, before the proper dose of the best preparation of mercury, as will be described below, is given against the syphilis; the same alternating treatment may be continued, until a complete cure is effected. Only, each one of these three kinds of medicine must be given the proper time to complete its action.
In this reliable cure of sycosis from within, no external remedy (except the juice of Thuja in inveterate bad cases) must be applied or laid on the figwarts, only clean, dry lint, if they are of the moist variety.