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SYMPTOMS OF LATENT PSORA.

Mostly with children: frequent discharge of ascarides and other worms; unsufferable itching caused by the latter in the rectum.

The abdomen often distended.

Now insatiable hunger, then again want of appetite.

Paleness of the face and relaxation of the muscles.

Frequent inflammations of the eyes.

Swellings of the cervical glands (scrofula).

Perspiration on the head, in the evening after going to sleep.

Epistaxis with girls and youths (more rarely with older persons), often very severe.

Usually cold hands or perspiration on the palms, (burning in the palms).

Cold, dry, or ill-smelling sweaty feet, (burning in the soles of the feet).

The arms or hands, the legs or feet, are benumbed by a slight cause.

Frequent cramps in the calves (the muscles of the arms and hands).

Painless subsultus of various portions of the muscles here and there on the body.

Frequent or tedious dry or fluent coryza or catarrh,* or impossibility of catching a cold even from the most severe exposure, even while otherwise having continually ailments of this kind.

Long continued obstruction of one or both nostrils.

Ulcerated nostrils (sore nose).

Disagreeable sensation of dryness in the nose.

Frequent inflammation of the throat, frequent hoarseness.

Short tussictilation in the morning.

Frequent attacks of dyspnoea.

Predisposition to catching cold (either in the whole body or only in the head, the throat, the breast, the abdomen, the feet; e.g., in a draught, (usually, when these parts are inclined to perspiration), and many other, sometimes long- continuing ailments arising therefrom.

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(* The epidemic catarrhal fevers and catarrhs which seize almost everyone, even the healthiest persons (Grippe, Influenza), do not belong to this category.)

(Persons not afflicted with psora through draughts and damp cold air may not be agreeable to them, do not suffer any colds or evil after-effects therefrom.)

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Predisposition to strains, even from carrying or lifting a slight weight, often caused even by stretching upward and reaching out the arms for objects which are hung high (so also a multitude of complaints resulting from a moderate stretching of the muscles: headache, nausea, prostration, tensive pain in the muscles of the neck and back, etc.)

Frequent one-sided headache or toothache, even from moderate emotional disturbances.

Frequent flushes of heat and redness of the face, not infrequently with anxiety.

Frequent falling out of hair of the head, dryness of the same, many scales upon the scalp.

Predisposition to erysipelas now and then.

Amenorrhoea, irregularities in the menses, too copious, too scanty, too early (too late), of too long duration, too watery, connected with various bodily ailments.

Twitching of the limbs on going to sleep.

Weariness early on awaking; unrefreshing sleep.

Perspiration in the morning in bed.

Perspiration breaks out too easily during the daytime, even with little movement (or inability to bring out perspiration).

White, or at least very pale tongue; still more frequently cracked tongue.

Much phlegm in the throat.

Bad smell from the mouth, frequently or almost constantly, especially early in the morning and during the menses, and this is perceived either as insipid, or as slightly sour, or as if from a stomach out of order, or as mouldy, also as putrid.

Sour taste in the mouth.

Nausea, in the morning.

Sensation of emptiness in the stomach.

Repugnance to cooked, warm food, especially to meat (principally with children).

Repugnance to milk.

At night or in the morning, dryness in the mouth.

Cutting pains in the abdomen, frequently or daily (especially with children), more frequently in the morning.

Hard stools, delaying usually more than a day, clotted, often covered with mucus (or nearly always soft, fermenting stools, like diarrhoea).

Venous knots on the anus; passage of blood with the stools.

Passing of mucus from the anus, with or without faeces.

Itching on the anus.

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Dark urine.

Swollen, enlarged veins on the legs (swollen veins, varices).

Chilblains and pains as from chilblains, even outside of the severe cold of winter; even, also, in summer.

Pains as of corns, without any external pinching of the shoes.

Disposition to crack, strain or wrench one joint or another.

Cracking of one or more joints on moving.

Drawing, tensive pains in the neck, the back, the limbs, especially, also, in the teeth (in damp, stormy weather, in northwest and northeast winds, after colds, overlifting, disagreeable emotions, etc.).

Renewal of pains and complaints while at rest, and disappearance of the same while in motion.

Most of the ailments come on at night, and are increased with a low barometer, with north and northeast* winds, in winter and towards spring.

Uneasy, frightful, or at least too vivid, dreams.

Unhealthy skin; every little lesion passes into sores, cracked skin of the hands and of the lower lips.

Frequent boils, frequent felons (whitlows).

Dry skin on the limbs; on the arms, the thighs, and also at times on the cheeks.

Here or there a rough, scaling spot on the skin, which causes at times a voluptuous itching and, after the rubbing a burning sensation.

Here or there at times, though seldom, a single insufferably pleasant, but unbearably itching vesicle, at its point sometimes filled with pus, and causing a burning sensation after rubbing, on a finger, on the wrist or in some other place.

Suffering from several or from a greater number of these ailments (even at various times and frequently), a person will still consider himself as healthy, and is supposed to be so by others. He may also lead a quite endurable life in such a state, and without much hindrance, attend to his business as long as he is young or still in his vigorous years, and so long as he does not suffer any particular mishap from without, has a satisfactory income, does not live in vexation or grief, does not overexert himself; but especially if he is of quite a cheerful, equable, patient, contented, disposition. With such persons the psora (internal itch malady), which may be recognized by a connoisseur by means of a few or by more of the above symptoms, may slumber on for many years within, without causing any continuing chronic disease.

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(* In Europe northeast winds are cold, sharp and dry, corresponding to our west winds.-Transl.)

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But still, even in such favorable external relations, as soon as these persons advance in age, even moderate causes (a slight vexation, or a cold, or an error in diet, etc.), may produce a violent attack of (however only a brief) disease: a violent attack of colic, inflammation of the chest or the throat, erysipelas, fever and the like, and the violence of these attacks seems to be out of proportion to its moderate cause. This is mostly wont to happen in fall or winter, but often also by preference in springtime.

But even where a person, whether a child or an adult, who has the psora slumbering within him, shows much semblance of health, but happens upon the opposite of the above-described favorable conditions of life, when his health and whole organism have been very much weakened and shaken by a prevalent epidemic fever or an infectious acute disease,* smallpox, measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever, purple rash, etc., or through an external severe lesion, a shock, a fall, a wound, a considerable burn, the breaking of an arm or a leg, a hard labor, the confinement due to a disease (usually helped on by the incorrect and weakening Allopathic treatment), confinement at a sedentary occupation in a gloomy, close room, weakening the vital force; the sad losses of beloved relatives bending down the soul with grief, or daily vexation and annoyance which embitter the life; deterioration of the food or an entire want of what is necessary and indispensable, exposure and inferior food beating down man’s courage and strength; then the, psora, which has hitherto slumbered, awakes and shows itself in the heightened and augmented symptoms enumerated below, in its transition to the formation of severe maladies; one or another of the nameless (psoric) chronic diseases breaks out and most of all through weakening and exhausting improper treatment by allopathic physicians, they are aggravate from time to time without intermission, often to a fearful height, if external circumstances favorable for the patient do not interpose, and cause a moderation in the process of the malady.

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(* At the termination of an acute fever there often follows, as if incited by such a fever, an appearance of an old psora residing in the body, as an eruption of itch. This the physicians explain as a new generation of itch in this individual body replete with bad humors (scilicet), since they know nothing of a psora in man which may be quiescent for a long period. But the itch-disease cannot now be generated or arise or be created anew of itself, just as no smallpox or cow-pox, no measles, no venereal chancre disease, etc., can now make its appearance with any man without previous infection.)

(The one or the other disease, according to the original bodily constitution, a peculiar mode of living, a peculiar disposition of the mind often arising from the individual education or a more receptive or more weakened condition of some part of the body, gives a peculiar direction to the disease, and thus causes the itch disease to lead to the origin of the one or the other disease, so as to show itself preferably in that one direction and develop itself in that particular modification. A passionate, peevish disposition gives an extraordinary predisposition to the development of the psora; so also previous exhaustion through frequent pregnancies, excessive nursing of infants, extraordinary hardships, exhausting erroneous medical treatment, debauchery, and a profligate mode of living. The internal itch-disease is, as before mentioned, of such a peculiar nature that it may remain, as it were, tied down and covered up for a long through external favorable surroundings, so that a man may seem to the superficial observer healthy for years, even for many years, until circumstances unfavorable to the body or the soul, or to both, may arise, and serve as a hostile impulse to awaken the disease slumbering within and thus develop its germs. His acquaintances and his physician, yea, the patient himself, can not then comprehend how his health could so suddenly fall into a decline. To bring some examples for explanation from my own experience: After a simple fracture of a limb attended with confinement to bed for five or six weeks, there may follow diseased conditions of another kind, the cause of which cannot be guessed, which diseased condition, even when measurably removed, nevertheless returns, and which even without any error in diet nevertheless at their return show aggravation. This is mostly the case in fall (winter) and spring and becomes a tedious ailment increasing from year to year, a lasting cure for which, without the substitution of a still worse disease for it by an allopathic cure, has been hitherto vainly sought for in the councils of former physicians and also in visits to mineral springs. There are in man’s life innumerable stumbling-blocks or unfavorable occurrences of this kind which serve to awaken the psora (the internal itch-disease) which till then has been slumbering (perhaps for a long time previously) and which cause its germs to develop. They are often of such a nature that the grave evils which gradually follow on them are out of all proportion to them, so that no rational man can consider those occurrences as sufficient causes for the chronic diseases which follow and which are often of a fearful character. But such a man is compelled to acknowledge a deeper seated hostile cause of these appearances, which cause has only now developed itself.

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For example, a young married woman who, viewed superficially and according to the common standard, was healthy, but who had in her childhood been infected with psora, had the misfortune to be thrown out of her carriage while in the third month of her pregnancy, from which she suffered not only slight injury and the fright, but also a miscarriage, and the attending loss of blood gave her a considerable set-back. In a few weeks, however, her youthful constitution had pretty well recovered, and she might have been of a speedy return to lasting good health, when the announcement of the dangerous illness of a beloved sister, living at a distance, threw her back and augmented her former ailments, which had not yet been quite removed, by the addition of a multitude of nervous disorders and convulsions, thus turning them into a serious illness. Better news from her sister, indeed, follow, and at last good news. At last her sister, entirely restored herself, pays her a visit. But the sick young wife still remains sick, and even if she seems to recover for a week or two, her ailments nevertheless return without any apparent cause. Every succeeding confinement, even when quite easy, every hard winter, adds new ailments to the old, or the former disorders change into others still more troublesome, so that at last there ensues a serious chronic illness though no one can see why the full vigor of youth, attended by happy external surroundings, should not have soon wiped out the consequence of that one miscarriage; still less can it be explained why the unfortunate impression of those sad tidings should not have disappeared, on hearing of the recovery of her sister, or at least on the actual presence of her sister fully restored.