The miasma of itch

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 appli-tions* before the internal disease is healed - and this is 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 needs only to touch the general skin, especially with tender children. The disposition of being affected with the miasma of the itch is found with almost everyone and under almost all circumstances, which is not the case with the other two miasmata.

*The venereal disease not only breaks out through the removal of the chancre by the cautery - in which case some wretched casuists have considered syphilis as resulting from the driving back of the poison out of the chancre into the interior of the body, which up to this time is supposed by them to have been healthy - no, even after the quick removal of the chancre without any external stimustill 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 simultaneously be cured in the most effective manner, and this is best affected 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. It is 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 lants, the venereal disease breaks out, which gives additional confirmation, if this were needed, of the indubitable pre-existence of syphilis in the system.

“Petit cut off a part of the labia minora, in which for some days a venereal chancre had appeared; the wound healed, indeed, but the venereal disease broke out notwithstanding.” M. s. Fabre, Leltres, supplement a son traite des maladies veneriennes, Paris, 1786. Of course! because the venereal disease was present in the whole interior of the body even before the outbreak of the chancre.

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;+ 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 may be 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.