Prescribing on the basis of Miasm of Psora or Suppressed Itch (Eruptions)

Dr. Hahnemann observed that allopathic drugs suppressed the sickness of the patient instead of curing the malefic disorders. These antipathic drugs only palliate the symptoms of the disease, subsidies the patient or produce drug disease combined with the internal disease. This was due to toxic effects of strong doses of powerful drugs. He therefore, advised the following procedure for the treatment of the patients.

1. Remove the bad effects of the allopathic drugs

2. Remove the bad effects of malefic influences of environments and unhygienic habits

3. Remove the vital disorder due to uncured acute diseases which have disturbed the patient's immunity mechanism and thus remove the suppressed state of the patient.

The failures of well selected remedies compelled Hahnemann to think over the real cause of the disease. Hahnemann studied the causes of suppression from the case history of patients and found the forces which were capable of altering the normal physiological movements, rhythms and pauses. Theses forces had enough power to direct the vital force to act adversely. Hahnemann defined in Organon of Medicine these forces as "Miasms", which literary means " a noxious, polluting factor and effluvia".

Hahnemann categorized these Miasms in three categories: Psora, Syphilis and Sycosis.

Other stalwarts of homoeopathy also recognize DRUG MIASM, VACCINOSIS, ALCOHOLISM, ALUMINUM VESSEL FOR COOKING, PSYCHIC SUPPRESSIONS, SUPPRESSED ERUPTIONS, DISCHARGES, MENSTRUAL FUNCTIONS, SEXUAL DESIRE, etc., which vitiate the vital dynamis.

Hahnemann stated that the PSORA is the mother of all Miasms because it produces functional changes in the body. In the cycle of universe functions come before structure. Function is primary to structure. Physiology is primary to Anatomy. Function is the mother of structure. So Functional alternations in the body leads to structural alterations in the form of either overgrowth or ulcerations.

The human body has three layers known as DYNAMIC or SUBTLE ENVELOP (center), NERVOUS ENVELOP (middle) & PHYSICAL ENVELOP (outer). Nowadays the theory of ECTODERM, ENDODERM and MESODERM being preached by 21st century gurus is nothing new but just an up gradation with respect to Modern Medical Science.

Every directions start from the dynamic and the nervous layer and then discharges to the outer layer. Central Layer is the coordinator and supreme controller of mind and body and makes the organism a living, composite, synthetic unit. A perfect continuation in the layer is state of harmony, balance which is HEALTH.

Psora while causing functional changes produce gaps and breaches in the normal continuity of the dynamic, then nervous and lastly in the outer layer that is physical layer of the organism. Itching or making abrasions in the skin is not mainly the phenomena concerned with the physical layer but a phenomena closely descending from the central or dynamic layer and downward. Its appearance lastly came as ITCH-MITE. So ITCH MITE conception of Psora is wrongly and incompletely interpreted one. 

Clinical Demonstration of Psora by Dr. Thomas P Paschero (MD)

We shall try to show by means of the case history of a patient we have attended the real existence of the Psora as a latent dyscrasia which conditions the dynamic background of all illnesses and as a pragmatic clinical concept which enables us to understand the essential desideratum of the diagnosis and therapeutics; that is, to know what is to be cured in each patient and to now what is to be expected from the medicinal action.

We treated a 39-year-old patient, married, with 17-year-old daughter.

When she was 22 she had a dystocial delivery with vulval rent (forceps). She then began to suffer from pains in the lower abdomen, gravitous, weighing pains as of a fallen abdomen, with cramps in the legs and pains, which radiated from the pelvic belt.

Simultaneously abundant excoriating fetid flux appeared: She underwent local treatment with antiseptic washings, cauterization of the neck and general treatment with barbituric sedative.

Three other pregnancies followed which she interrupted because the general and local state of her genital vias was unbearable.

As her pain did not cease, she was operated upon for appendicitis, in spite of which her pains became even more intense. Therefore, she was again operated on after a diagnosis of a probable intestinal obstruction. The result was negative.

An inspection of fecal matter showed amoebae. She underwent an intense treatment with Yatren and Emetine.

Pains, cramps, general exhaustion, nervousness, migraine, depression and irritability went on. X-rays were applied-deep radiotherapy-which suppressed her menstruation for seven months, with no effective result.

In the meanwhile antibiotics appeared. Penicillin, streptomycin, aureomycin and finally aurum preparations were administered.

Her state remained hopeless. She could only achieve some relief by remaining submerged for hours in hot water.

A hystero-metry was then carried out by a doctor when an acute pain was felt deep in the matrix, caused, according to her, by the hystero-meter (the physician denied having hurt her). From that incident on (about nine years) she continued to have an acute piercing, pain, as if she had been pierced by a sail maker’s needle at the bottom of her pelvis.

They convinced her that she had adhesions, which gave the pulling sensations and produced the pains and as a ventral hernia from the first appendix operation had remained, she was once more operated on without any favorable result being obtained.

She then went back to radiotherapy, which again suppressed her menstruation up to the present, there having now been 14 months amenorrhoea.

In a new attempt to soothe her pains-she was treated with injections, truncutar anesthetics of Novocain alcohol, but her sufferings were not alleviated.

The patient came to consult us in a state of despair, with an anxious expression upon her face and showing hostility, distrusting the medical treatment and demanding urgent relief of her pains. She felt as though they were pricking her, piercing her with a dagger through tier pelvis, from the front to the back, with a fiery burning sensation, as that of a lesion; or open wound, as if a flame was burning her; all this together with great anxiety, restlessness, excitation, and desperation. Her relations were at a loss; her husband, whom I am treating, says that he cannot stand any more; her daughter has become neurotic and stays away from home. She is in an unbearable humor, extremely irritable, accusing and reproaching everyone.

She has a pale and emaciated face with large bluish rings around her eyes. She was proportionally fatter in the lower part of her body, with varicose legs, her blood pressure being 120/90. Tachy-cardiac pulse. There were no lesions either in her cardio circulatory or respiratory apparatus.

She has an aching, tympani tic, distended abdomen with profuse pain and indicated pain centers at the center and deep in the pelvic excavation.

The gynecological examination showed a slight ulceration of the neck, slight flux and a somewhat outsize matrix in retro-version.

Her hereditary and familiar antecedents are of no importance. Personal antecedents: she was healthy till her delivery, She declared. Had measles, eczema when a child, at 2 years old. It was treated with ointments.

Seventeen years ago; the year after her delivery, she had eczema in her right hemi face and auditory right duct, which was treated with nitrate of silver. The eczema disappeared at once. She always had serious migraines in the upper ciliar region and right frontal lobe.

She was given to furious crying because of her pains. She vehemently demanded relief of her pains. She talked of accepting the removal of the matrix, which had been proposed. Her husband was against this for she had already been through many operations without any result.

She had intense flashes of heat with profuse perspiration. She presented large ecchymoses with real sub fusions and provident varices in the section of the saphenus, principally on the right.

This patient presented a conversion hysteria engendered psychically by anxiety, caused by the restriction of her sexual instinct in conflict with the prohibition, which she imposed upon herself after such a traumatic delivery as she had at 22.

The pelvic neuritis was a phobic displacement of her fear or anxiety because of her delivery or pregnancy which she rejected refusing sexual contact. In fact we learned that she refused to have any sexual contact with her husband except on a very few occasions during those 18 years after her delivery. Her husband had a lover and she knew it. She declared she did not mind at all and put all the blame on herself because "she is no good". She made a definite gesture of wounded dignity before which all comment de trop. The few occasions on which she had contact with- her husband in those 18 years caused her as many pregnancies which she at once rejected with the consent of her doctors who admitted she could not, go through with them because of her intense sufferings.

Therefore in this patient there was a deep repression of her sexual instinct with hysteria of somatic conversion, which took the form of pelvic neuritis. But this neurotic repression of her instinct was not a pure psychical mechanism originated by the delivery traumatism. This patient was Sycotic because immediately after her delivery she had abundant fetid excoriating flux with exulceration of the neck, which she suppressed with washing and cauterization as well as pelvic pain, and cramps, which announced neurotic lesions of the Sycosis. When she suppressed her exonerative Sycotic manifestations her character changed and she became irritable, violent, anxious, hysterical, with repression of her sexual instinct rationalized by fear of delivery for which there was no reason if there were no Sycotic basis of affective perversion.

This patient had suffered from repeated suppressions. Her leucorrhoea had been suppressed along with menstruation (radiotherapy).

Three pregnancies, which represented the erotic liberation of the pregnancy, delivery and lactation, had been suppressed. They suppressed her eczema, which had appeared a year after her delivery and which implied a vicariant elimination of the Sycosis.

She suppressed her affective instinctive manifestations (sexual frigidity). She was physically and anemically blocked up. A liberation of the patient's repressions and the re-establishment of the exonerative law of healing were urgently required. The only positive diagnosis was that of morbid dynamic tension created by the introjections and the only home was the curative restoration of the morbid discharge, through the skin and the mucous membranes.

Due to the etio-pathogenic antecedents, sexual and affective frigidity, the flushes of heat together with the portal ecstasy graph and weeping during the consultation, she was given Sepia 200.

On October 24 we made this prescription, which produced no change. On November 17 we prescribed Sepia 1000 which did not modify the case either.

We reconsidered the position and noticed that the patient adopted an overbearing, haughty and proud attitude. Her husband and daughter had already informed us of her overbearing attitude arid her marked tendency to dominate. Besides we discovered the symptom that he wished to be left alone, not to meet anybody, was very unsociable, but was terrorized when left alone in the house. She would not meet people she did not know or be introduced or have contact with anyone at all. But she was constantly talking about her things or her family. She ran away from people not through dislike, but because she had no self-confidence, she feared contact with the others because she said she was unable to think (it was fear of intellectual not affective contact). 

In consequence her symptoms were: a haughty, proud, domineering air, wish to be left alone, bur with people around her, dislike of people because of a feeling of inferiority of impotence, sadness, depression, weeping. Those symptoms led us to prescribe Lycopodium 1M with the expected result.

Eight days later eczema appeared at the back of the ears, which spread over the tight cheek and neck. In the course of 20 days the eruption spread to her breast, shoulders, back, the whole face and part of the scalp. It reached monstrous proportions, with considerable edema, honey like secretion and meliceric scabs, and when these fell there were section of fiery red with exposed dermis.

This extraordinary eczema lasted three months and some days. Only placebo was prescribed together with the constant moral comfort that her eczema meant towards her healing. In spite of her extraordinary aspect, the patient tolerated this situation much better than the previous one. A few days after the eruption appeared pelvic pains, which she had for so long completely disappeared. She felt more calm and at ease.

On January 30,1952, we prescribed Lycopodium 10 M, when her eczematous outbreak was in full evolution, it having remained stationary. Twenty days after this last dose the eruption completely disappeared and the patient could consider herself cured.

In March 1953, she had abundant sour smelling perspiration as well as tiredness without motive, headaches and flushes of heat. We prescribed Sulphur 10M, which ends the case history. At present she is going on well with no symptoms, without eczema and without the least pelvic trouble. She has even reconditioned her family life in the happiest way, with the consequent moral recuperation of her husband and daughter.

This patient was psoro-sycotic, victim of reiterated suppression, who was totally cured when the process could be transmitted to the skin, thus liberating the morbid energy reissuing an eczema she had had as a child 17 years earlier and which was suppressed by means of nitrate of silver.

Upon first observation it is evident that the eczema acted as a healing manifestation of an internal illness, ratifying the function of the skin as an emunctorial organ closely connected with the rest of the whole organism as a biological unity. No organ can be treated independent of the rest so that skin diseases cannot be considered solely as diseases of the skin. 

In the second place it is evident that the eczema was pathologically related to the pelvic neuritis, the genital inflammatory syndrome and the alterations of her character. The physio-pathology could not explain the pathogenic case history and the eczema, but such connection clinically exists and the evolutionary course of the patient clearly shows it.

Immediately after her delivery there was abundant leucorrhoea, which was suppressed bringing about an inflammatory pelvic state. One year later an eczema, which was also suppressed, appeared, a serious general and psychical state both for her private life and that of the family becoming established. A medicine was selected according to her, psychical case history and the eczema, which had been suppressed 17 years before reappeared curing the patient.

What is that common root which unites such unlike affections as an inflammatory process, mental alteration and cutaneous eruption? Isn't it evident that these intercalating phenomena of her biographical history are metastases of only affection, the eczema that initiated and closed the case history?

This common root cannot be conceived, but in terms of constitutive dynamic disposition of the individual which tends to project a flow of energy towards the exterior and which becomes morbid when it is opposed by repression or suppression. The fact that such energy is of a purely psychical instinctive libidinal type or is chemically transformed into segregated toxins by the mucous membranes and skin, only confirms the concept of functional totality of the organism as a biological psychophysical unity. What appears in the conceptual elaboration of this concept of functional totality is that in the scientific analysis of the physical, chemical humoral and nervous mechanisms which the organism develops, the chain is interrupted when we reach the psychical point and the examination must take a leap to bridge the unknown link which unites the mental to the organic, the anemic to the corporal, the psychic to the physiological. It will never be possible to establish a scientific correlation between the psychical and the organic except in the plane of pure clinical observation, which allows the synthetic grasp of each through the patient's biographical history. The real illness of this patient was a dynamic alteration of her organism produced by the suppression of her genital flux or a sycotic nature due to its physical characteristics and the suppression of the drainage of the affective energy, which consequently produced a deep alteration in the personality of the patient. The sycosis exonerates through the mucous membranes and this route was closed due to the intensive local treatment. But as an underlying state to all psychosomatic pathology, there exists the constitutional diathesis called Psora by Hahnemann which consist of a latent idiosyncrasy or dynamic state of allergic hypersensitivity that provokes the exonerative activity of the vital current in a paroxysmic or accessional form, invariably from the center to the periphery, from the most to the least vital organs, from the mind to the emunctories.

This efferent vital activity made itself evident in our patient in the shape of an outbreak of eczema, which she had as a child. This was suppressed and reappeared a year after her first genital episode and it was again suppressed. The patient remained with her morbid internalized energy in a permanent state of susceptibility or psoric hyperergy exacerbated by the suppression of her cutaneous manifestations with neurotic alterations of the psychical personality, determined by the suppression itself. The conclusion suggested by this cases as that only a strict clinical historiographic observation through the therapeutically originated phenomenon of the reissue of old symptoms enable an understanding or the causal relation between the different morbid episodes and conceptual identifications of the diathesis which underlies as a dynamic disposition, the chemical as well as organic pathological manifestations.

Updated on: 01 Feb 2010