The Nature of Chronic Diseases

Surely, among all the crimes which the modern physicians of the old school are guilty of, this is the most hurtful, shameful and unpardonable!

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 forthe 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 symptoms appear 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 symptoms 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 local symptoms 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 observed 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:

1. The time of infection
2. The period of time during which the whole organism is being penetrated by the disease infused, until it has developed within
3. 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 above mentioned chronic diseases, takes place in one single moment. That moment is the one most favorable for infection.

When the small-pox or the cow-pox 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.

Small-pox, cow-pox, measles, etc., nevertheless will complete their course within. The fever peculiar to each will break out with its small-pox, cow-pox, measles,* etc., after a few days, when the internal disease has developed and completed itself.

*We may justly ask: Is there in any probability any miasma in the world, which, when it has infected from without, does not first make the whole organism sick before the signs of it externally manifest themselves? We can only answer this question with, no, there is none!

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.*) 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 excision + 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.