The Nature of Chronic Diseases

By the use of the above-mentioned remedies, they usually reached their aim; i. e., the driving away of the eruption and of the itching from the skin, and they supposed in the intoxication of their spirit (or at least they pretended), they had destroyed the disease itself and, indeed, totally, and they sent away the patients, thus abused, assuring them that they were again healthy.

All the sufferings, which follow the one-sided destruction of the cutaneous eruption, which belongs to the natural form of the Psora, of Sulphur or with a preparation of Mercury; with 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 every 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, yea, almost daily, come before their eyes?

Yet they cannot see nor be convinced as to the certain, quickly fatal or life-long 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.

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. they passed off as a newly arisen disease, owing to quite another origin.

In their narrowness of mind, they never regarded the innumerable, plain testimonies of honest observers of earlier days, which record the sad consequences of the local expulsion of the itch-eruption, which often followed so closely, that a man would have to deny his reason, or else acknowledge them as the immediate result of the indwelling severe malady (the Psora), which had been deprived of the local symptom (the cutaneous eruption), destined by nature to alleviate the internal malady, whence the uncured internal disease has been compelled to a manifest outbreak of its secondary symptoms.

On the other hand, the eruption of a few vesicles of itch which has broken out only a few days before, inconsequence 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 unceasingly, and even in the best cases and uder the most favorable external circumstances, quietly and often for years un-perceived by the eyes; 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 any internal malady. Often for years it does not manifest diseases.

Many hundred observations have gradually acquainted me* with the signs, by which the internally slumbering,* 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 difficult and in some cases impossible.

• It was more easy to me, than to many hundreds of others, to find out and to recognize the signs of the Psora as well when latent and as yet slumbering within, as when it has grown to considerable chronic diseases, by an accurate comparison of the state of health of all such persons with myself, who, as is seldom the case, have never been afflicted with the Psora, and have, therefore, from my birth even until now in my eightieth year, been entirely free from the (smaller and greater) ailments enumerated here and further below, although I have been, on the whole, very apt to catch acute epidemic diseases, and have been exposed to many mental exertions and thousand fold vexations of spirit.

There are many signs of the Psora which is gradually increasing within, but is as yet 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.

• Allopathy has also assumed hidden (latent) conditions of disease in patients, in order to explain, or, at least, to excuse its blind inroads with violent medicines, blood-letting, anodynes, etc. These so-called qualitates occultoe Fernelii are, however, wholly suppositious and imaginary, as (according to the statement of this same physician) they are supposed not to be recognizable by any manifestations and symptoms. But whatever does not make known its hidden, imaginary existence by any sign does not exist for us men, who are limited by our Creator in our cognizance of things to observations - it is consequently a phantom of a roving fancy. It is quite different with the various forces slumbering (latent) in nature; despite their ordinary occultness, they, nevertheless, show themselves when the requisite circumstances and conditions appear; e. g., latent heat, even in metals that feel cold, is manifested when they are rubbed, just as the Psora manifests itself; e. g., as a drawing pain in the sheaths of the muscles, when the person infected with Psora has been exposed to a draught, etc.