Psora is the beginning of all physical sickness. Had psora never been established as a miasm upon the human race, the other two chronic diseases would have been impossible, and susceptibility to acute diseases would have been impossible. All the diseases of man are built upon psora; hence it is the foundation of sickness; all other sickness came afterwards.

Psora is the underlying cause, and is the primitive or primary disorder of the human race. It is a disordered state of the internal economy of the human race. This state expresses itself in the forms of the varying chronic diseases, or chronic manifestations. If the human race had remained in a state of perfect order, psora could not have existed. The susceptibility to psora opens out a question altogether too broad to study among the sciences in a medical college.

It is altogether too extensive, for it goes to the very primitive wrong of the human race, the very first sickness of the human race, that is the spiritual sickness, from which first state the race progressed into what may be called the true susceptibility to psora, which in turn laid the foundation for other diseases.

If we regard psora as synonymous with itch, we fail to understand, and fail to express thereby, anything like the original intention of Hahnemann. The itch is commonly supposed to be a limited thing, something superficial, caused by a little tiny bit of a mite that is supposed to have life, and when the little itch mite is destroyed the cause of itch is said to have been removed. What a folly!

From a small beginning with wonderful progress, psora spreads out into its underlying states and manifests itself in the large portion of the chronic diseases upon the human race. It embraces epilepsy, insanity, the malignant diseases, tumors, ulcers, catarrhs, and a great proportion of the eruptions. It progresses from simple states to the very highest degree of complexity, not always alone and by itself, but often by the villainous aid of drugging during generation after generation; for the physician has endeavored with all his power to drive it from the surface, and has thereby caused it to root itself deeper, to become more dense and invisible, until the human race is almost threatened with extinction.

Look at the number of the population upon the face of the earth, and notice how few arrive at the age of maturity. It is appalling to think of the number of infants that die, and these largely from the outgrowths, or out-coming of psora. We see little ones born who have not sufficient vitality to live. The congenital debility, and marasmus, and varying diseases of a chronic character that carry off the little ones have for their underlying cause the chronic miasms. The principal underlying cause is psora, next syphilis and next sycosis.

It required twelve years for Hahnemann to discover and gather together the evidence upon which he came to his conclusions. When a patient came to him who manifested chronic disease in any way he took pains to write down carefully in detail all the symptoms, from beginning to end, with the history of the father and mother, until he had collected a great number of appearances of disease, not knowing yet what the outcome would be; but after this careful writing out of the symptoms of hundreds of patients, little and great, and comparing them and then gathering them together in one grand group, there appeared in the totality of this collection a picture of psora in all of its forms.

Up to this time the world had been looking upon each one of these varying forms as distinct in itself, e.g., all the striking features of epilepsy would be gathered together, and epilepsy was then called a disease; but epilepsy is only one of the results of disease, and never appears twice alike. Every person who has epilepsy differs from every other epileptic on earth. But epilepsy, insanity, diabetes, cancer, Bright’s disease, and every other case of so-called disease have all had a beginning and one beginning.

They are not distinct, but operate in each person in accordance with that individual. Hahnemann says that before he began that collection of symptoms he was struck somewhat with wonder that Nux Vomica and Ignatia and such short acting medicines were able to cure only a single manifestation of disease, a group of symptoms, or they would relieve for a time and then the symptoms would come back, although he had followed up the treatment to the best of his knowledge. At the end of a case, he could discover that there had been a continuous progress in spite of the fact that he had relieved his patient of suffering a good many times.

So it is, while acute acting remedies are used, and you will use them if you do not know the psoric doctrine. The short acting medicines are the ones that contain the counterparts of the acute manifestations of psora, and hence when these acute manifestations appear in groups of symptoms you will naturally select acute remedies, and you will palliate them from time to time, but at the end of years you will look upon every individual case, and will notice that the case has been steadily progressing. You will find that you have not struck at the root of the trouble, that there is an underlying something present and prevailing and that the disease is steadily growing worse.

Hahnemann saw this and it was a mystery to him because he had acquired a perfect mastery over the acute diseases with the acute remedies. Such psorics had been at this time very well proved, Belladonna, Aconite, Bryonia, Arnica, China, Nux Vomica, etc., etc., and these had been found to be perfectly suitable for the acute manifestations of psora and for the acute miasms. Hahnemann had not yet learned that the acute miasms were utterly and strictly acute miasms; and could not, therefore, compare acute miasms with chronic miasms, or vice versa. He had not seen them yet as miasms.

One will not understand the acute miasms clearly until able to compare them with chronic miasms. They side up one with another, and make it wonderfully manifest. The acute miasms come on either with sufficient violence to cause death to patients, or with less violence, wherein there is a period of progress and a tendency to recover. They cannot be prolonged in the patient, and must subside.

The acute miasms are not governed in accordance with fixed time in order to be acute miasms, because they have times of their own. Neither is there a time after the lapse of which the chronic miasm is said to be chronic. According to the old school, diseases have been divided into acute, sub-acute and chronic. If any sickness ran longer than six weeks, it would be placed among the sub-acute; if it ran on indefinitely, it was called chronic. But a chronic miasm is chronic from its beginning, and an acute miasm is acute from its beginning. It is from its nature, from its capabilities, from what it will do to the human race, that we must name the miasm.

So Hahnemann tells us frankly that he was astonished to find at the end of a certain length of time no progress had been made with his remedies in chronic diseases. The symptoms appeared with their own regularity, much stronger than before, which showed they were progressing. Hahnemann enters not only a difficult study, but with all sorts of difficulties, and after studying for twelve years he developed the fact that in all cases observed there was an underlying chronic disease, a chronic miasm, which had a tendency to progress and to end only with the life of the patient. Then he bent himself to the provings of medicines, in order to discover from them a likeness to the chronic miasms. Had he never come to this conclusion, he would not have noticed such things.

When he had brought all the symptoms before the mind in one grand collective view, he began to observe and reflect as to what was the first, and what was the second, and later appearances in the line of progress in this deep-seated chronic miasm. Thus it was that he observed amongst those who were dying with phthisis that in their younger days they had a vesicular disease between the fingers and upon the body, which had been suppressed by the ointments in vogue at that time.

Then the question naturally arose, what had this suppression to do with that which came after wards? As to how Hahnemann figured out the answer to that question you can read in his “Chronic Diseases,” but he does not tell it all; although he gives many pages of experiences and observations. You will more clearly understand and be better prepared to take up Hahnemann’s line of thinking, if you enter into the use of appropriate medicines and apply principle to the progress of disease–that is, you will see a demonstration of his teaching in the curative treatment of a very large number of cases of sickness by applying principles; that diseases get well in the reverse order of their coming, that the latest symptoms will be the first to go away, and that the older symptoms will come and go in reverse order in which they appeared; old symptoms, in the form of eruptions, come back, old chills, which have been suppressed, come back, and many other chronic manifestations come back again in a sort of successive order.

If we observe these things we must come to the conclusion that when we have driven these oldest and deepest troubles back to their original manifestations, which was perhaps a vesicular eruption, and if we see nothing more simple than this eruption, we must conclude that the suppression of such an eruption was the beginning of trouble.

If you practice accurately, you will observe these things; if you are not a success in practice, you will not observe these things. Many patients are so badly off that this is never observed, and then we have the onward progress; that is, we have the patient declining, instead of the disease declining. If that patient is only better as to symptoms, and his old symptoms do not come back, we know that he is only being palliated, that the disease processes are only being restrained, but that it is not a case of cure.

There is one thing that you should know and it is sometimes best to say it to the patient, and that is that they should not take too much courage, because a patient that takes too much courage may take too much discouragement when reverses come. So when a woman walks into your office and says beautiful things by way of gratitude for what you have done for her, because you have mitigated the deep-seated trouble, perhaps chronic sick headache, or epilepsy, but she cannot tell you of an eruption returning or you have observed no backward progress of that disease, no reverse order of the symptoms, it is often well to say to that patient, that notwithstanding the fact that she appears to be much improved the trouble is not over for all that.

On the other hand, it is sometimes wise to say: “If an eruption should come out, do not on your life meddle with it,” because they will probably use what they say relieved it in the first place, some Sulphur ointment, or some other miserable stuff. The physician should bear in mind to caution the patient against removing any of the symptoms in the case. When the patient comes and reports such wonderful tales of progress, take down your record and look it over. If you have in the record failed to get the earlier history of the case, endeavour then, if possible, to find out something about the previous symptoms, the earlier symptoms, and then it is sometimes well with an intelligent person to say: “Do not be surprised, do not be alarmed, if such and such symptoms return,” cautioning the patient to report to the physician and apply nothing.

Now, it is from these circumstances that we observe finally, where the patient is so well instructed not to do anything, to take no drugs, to keep the life as pure as possible, to keep the physical forces untrammeled by violence, it is under such circumstances that we shall observe the coming back of symptoms that have long been suppressed. Long after the treatment has ceased, a patient will come back and say: “This old trouble has come back on me; can you do anything for it?” You have now to look over the record, and you see that sure enough this is like what came out in the beginning of this trouble; that psora existed in its simplest form of a vesicular eruption upon the child, and that it was suppressed.

These are the simplest cases of psora, because these can be counted collectively in one person; but the complicated forms of psora are those that are inherited. Amongst the simple forms of psora, after the eruptions disappear, catarrhal troubles come on, with their varying manifestations. You prescribe for all these symptoms, and presently the eruptions of childhood come back, especially in a younger person. It it is in a more complicated state, we do not get the patient back to the original form of psora, because the parent had the simple form of psora, and the child gets a complex form from those which were present when the patient came to you. You will seldom see the vesicular form or simple form brought back except in those who have had the simple form, but forms approximating the simple will return if the vital energy of the economy is being turned into order.

Since this, then, is the natural form of economy, we see we are gradually travelling back towards the beginning of psora or its earlier forms. If you are treating a vicious form of scaly eruptions, dry hard horny scales, you will, under accurate prescribing, notice these scaly formations disappear, but after the vital force has become strong enough you need not be surprised to see vesicular eruptions develop, for the original so-called disease had changed from its vicious squamous form to the milder vesicular form. Different names have been given to the skin diseases, but we see that names are of very little value.

The different eruptions change into varying forms but they are all from one cause, and will come back in their successive stages under true homoeopathic treatment. This is seen quite often enough to demonstrate what I am talking about, and from this alone we can ascertain that psora begins with the simple isolated vesicular form of eruption. At times you will be treating the more advanced and complicated forms of psora, where there are organic changes; after the patient gets the homoeopathic remedy for a while he comes to a standstill, seems to be doing nothing, but in the course of time vicious ugly eruptions come out upon the body. This is a good sign in so far as the disease manifests itself upon the skin, or in catarrhal discharges, the internal organs are safe, but when these outward manifestations are stopped the internal parts suffer.

If this be true, what conclusion must we come to as to the good or injury done to patients when every catarrhal discharge is stopped and every eruption upon the skin is driven away by out- ward applications? What are we to conclude when we see that the idea of the medical world of today is to stop everything that appears upon the surface? When we know the truth in regard to psora, we see what a wonderful damage it is to the patient to have these outward signs stopped in this way, what a tremendous shock it is to the economy and how it is that psora is pushed on and made worse, made more complex from year to year, from generation to generation, until it is the fundamental disease of the human economy and the basis of all the trouble in man.

At the present day, as you are now prepared to hear, we can really learn more about psora by watching it in its backward progress than by watching it in its onward progress in any particular case. It is the cause of the chronic manifestations of disease that are not syphilitic or sycotic. We are able to group together in the mind all those vicious constitutional states (not syphilitic or sycotic) that are called organic disease, as the results of psora. Then the five forms of Bright’s disease are not diseases, but the result of psora operating upon the economy and attacking the kidney. The common chronic diseases of the liver are not diseases, but the localization of psora in the liver; the lung diseases and heart diseases and brain diseases are not diseases, because they have one single origin, and from this origin we follow their progress and thus study them from their beginnings to their ends, from cause to ultimates. Only in this way will we have a clear knowledge of their internal cause and beginnings.

In the work on “Chronic Diseases” Hahnemann refers to psora as the oldest, most universal and most pernicious chronic miasmatic disease, yet it has been misappropriated more than any other. “Psora is the oldest miasmatic chronic disease known. The oldest history of the oldest nation does not reach its origin. Psora is just as tedious as syphilis and sycosis, and is moreover, hydra-headed. Unless it is thoroughly cured, it lasts until the last breath of the longest life. Not even the most robust constitution, by its own unaided efforts, is able to annihilate and extinguish psora.”

The three chronic miasms, psora, syphilis and sycosis, are all contagious. In each instance there is something prior to the manifestations which we call disease. We speak of the signs and symptoms of a disease, we speak of the outcropping of the symptoms when we speak of syphilis, but remember there is a state prior to syphilis or syphilis would not exist. It could not come upon man except for a condition suitable to its development. In like manner psora could not exist except for a condition in mankind suitable for its development.

Psora being the first and the two coming later, it is proper for us to inquire into that state of the human race that would be suitable for the development of psora. There must have been a state of the human race suitable to the development of psora; it could not have come upon a perfectly healthy race, and it would not exist in a perfectly race. There must have been some sickness prior to this state, which we recognize as the chronic miasm psora; some state of disorder, some state that it would be perfectly rational and proper for man to undertake to solve as to its cause, as to its history, and as to its very nature.

Some will say, but if we undertake to do this will have to accept the world of God as historical, as relating to the beginning, because there is no other going so far back. There is no harm in reasoning from that and I hope you will so accept it, not only as history, but as divine revelation, not that I wish to quote from or refer to it, because I never do so in my teaching. If we look upon syphilis we will see that man’s own act leads him to the place where he comes in contact with syphilis; it is the result of action.

Syphilis is that disease which corresponds to the effect impure coition, of going where syphilis is, of coming in contact with those who have it. It is an action; it is not so with psora. Man does not seek it, he does not go where it is, he does not associate with those necessarily that have it. He may be exposed; but syphilis is the result of his own action, which is an impure formication or adulteration which he knows better than to seek, and knows enough from his intelligence to avoid. Syphilis, then. is a result of action, although after once ultimated it may be perpetuated by accident. There is always a state and condition of man that precedes his action, and if syphilis corresponds to man’s action; and there is a state prior to it, a diseased condition that precedes, that state must correspond to the which precedes action, which is thinking and willing.

Thinking and willing established a state in man that identifies the condition he is in. As long as man continued to think that which was true and held that which was good to the neighbor, that which was uprightness and justice, so long man remained upon the earth free from the susceptibility to disease, because that was the state in which he was created. So long as he remained in that state and preserved his integrity he was not susceptible to disease and he gave forth no aura that could cause contagion; but when man began to will the things that were the outcome of his false thinking then he entered a state which was the perfect correspondence of his interior. As are will and understanding, so will be the external of man.

As the life of man or as the will of man, so is the body of man, and as the two make one in this world, there is evolved from him an aura which is vicious in proportion to his departure from virtue and justice into evils. And long before the time of Noah’s flood, which was an inundation that destroyed the evils ones that were upon the earth at that time, there was a manifestation, called leprosy, which was but the result of the dreadful profanity that took place in this period.

A great many people suffered then from the violent aura of leprosy, whereas the natural disorder of the human race today is a milder form of psora upon a different race of people. If we had the same race upon the earth today we would have leprosy among them, as we now have the milder form of psora. The ancients referred to leprosy as an internal itch.

Hence this state, the state of the human mind and the state of human body, is a state of susceptibility to disease from willing evils, from thinking that which is false and making life one continuous heredity of false things, and so this form of disease, psora, is but an outward manifestation of that which is prior in man. It was not due to actions of the body, as we find syphilis and sycosis to be, but due to an influx from a state, which progressed and established itself upon the earth, until we can see it as but the outward manifestations of man’s very nature.

The human race today walking the face of the earth is but little better than a moral leper. Such is the state of the human mind at the present day. To put it another way, everyone is psoric. We know what leprosy means, and to say that the whole world is in a state of psora is no broader or narrower than to say that leprosy prevails today upon the face of the earth, but it prevails in a milder form, in the face of the earth, but it prevails in a milder form, in the form of psora.

A new contagion comes with every child. As Psora piles up generation after generation, century after century the susceptibility to it increases. This true of every miasm and true of all drugs. We find in the drugged world that those who have been mercurized become more susceptible to Mercury and are more easily poisoned by it. Those poisoned with Rhus are so sensitive to it that they cannot go within a whiff of it; those have been poisoned in their earliest beginning with psora become more sensitive to it, so that in childhood the slightest whiff of from their school friends will bring on a crop of vesicles between the fingers attended with the acarus.

Of course, some persons will say that the acarus is prior to the eruption, but they don’t know that a healthy person will not be affected by the acarus. The miasm is simply evolved out of a state and the acarus is in turn its ultimate. It is the state is prior, the itching is not prior. The human race becomes increasingly sensitive generation after generation to this internal state, and this internal state is the underlying cause which predisposes man to syphilis. If he had not psora he could not take syphilis; there would be no ground in his economy upon which it would thrive and develop.

The will and the understanding are prior to man’s action. This is fundamental. The man does not do until he wills; he wills what he carries out. If man did what he did not will, he would be only an automation. He wills to go to a house of prostitution, or seeks for a prostitute with whom to copulate, and from her he takes the syphilitic miasm. This action of his will and this disease corresponds to the man. There is a state in which he thinks it only, in which he wills, but in which he is not yet arrived at the state in which he can act. First there was the thinking of falses and willing of evils, thinking such falses as led to deprived living and long for what not one’s own, until finally action prevailed. The miasms which succeeded psora were but the outward representations of actions, which have grown out of thinking and willing.

Psora is the oldest outward expression of the disease of the human race representing this vital beginning, and next exists that state that corresponds to action. Thinking, willing and acting are the three things that make up science of the life of the human race. Man thinks, he wills and he acts. Now, that aura which is given out from the human race at any period of its history is that which corresponds to the state of the human race. The children inherit it from their parents and carry it on and continue it. As the internal is so is the external, and the external cannot be except as the result of the internal.

The internal state of man is prior to that which surrounds him; therefore, environment is not cause; it is only, as it were, a sounding board; it only reacts upon and reflects the internal. One who has the prior, which is internal, may have that which can follow upon the external; it flows, as it were from the internal and effects its forms upon the skin, upon the organs, upon the body of man. Such is influx and the in flowing is always in the direction of the least or no resistance; so that it is in the direction of man’s affections, man’s loves.

Things flow in the direction he wants them to flow. Diseases correspond to man’s affections, and the diseases that are upon the human race today are but the outward expression of man’s interiors, and it is true if the diseases are such they represent the internal forces of man. Man hates his neighbour, he is willing to violate every commandment; such is the state of man today. This state is represented in man’s diseases. All diseases upon the earth, acute and chronic, are representations of man’s internals. Otherwise he could not be susceptible, or could develop that which is within him. The image of his own interior self comes out in disease.

This state continued to progress, and it has accumulated and become complex. The original simple psora has added to it syphilis and sycosis, and these progress and have now effected a state, they have continued to effect a state in mankind, whereby the race is so susceptible to acute that many of our citizens have every little thing that comes along, and every little epidemic of influenza brings them down with an acute attack. This could not be but for the complications that a man has caused himself to get into, or has taken upon himself.

This was not done in one generation, but has been accumulating upon the face of the earth so long as we have a history of man. Otherwise man would not be sick, for he should be a perfect animal nature. Look at the perfection or all things put upon the earth; see the plaints, how perfect they are; but man by his thinking evils and willing falses has entered upon a state wherein he has lost his freedom, his internal order, and is undergoing changes which the animal kingdom in its period, and the vegetable kingdom in its period, did not take on.

The miasms that are at the present day upon human race are complicated a thousand fold by allopathic treatment. Every external manifestation of the miasm has in itself a tendency to straighten mankind, but the human race is being violently damaged and disease are being complicated for the reason that these outward expressions are forced to disappear by the application of some violent or stimulating drug.

At the present day nobody will acknowledge that he had the itch in his childhood, until it is seen by some intelligent mother that it is wise to tell the doctor everything. The itch is looked upon as a disgraceful affair; so is everything that has a similar correspondence; because the itch in itself has a correspondence with adultery, only one is adultery as to internal and the other to externals, one succeeds the other. So it is with all miasms.

And now we have the great miasms before us to treat, as physicians, in all their complications. For instance, if a true sycotic gonorrhoea appears to us second hand it appears in its suppressed form, which is a thousand times worse than the original form. All the outward manifestations have been made to disappear. So it is with the external forms of psora, the vesicular and squamous eruptions, and all the outgrowths and outcroppings of psora.

Every conceivable thing has been resorted to it destroy its manifestations, and the disease has grown until nobody can tell what its outcome will be. How long can thing go on before the human race will be swept from the earth with the result of the suppression of psora? From the suppression of psora we have cancerous affections, organic disease of the heart and lungs, phthisis, and general destruction of the body. How long can it go on? If Homoeopathy does not spread, if it does not establish its doctrines upon the earth so that sick folks can be headed under its principles, this threatening state and condition will increase.

Allopathic physicians are multiplying rapidly, and they are all doing the same thing, even more so now than at the time of Hahnemann. It does seem as if Homoeopathy had become a necessity, but the kind of Homoeopathy that is preached in the majority of our schools will not check the progress of psora. The majority of the college teachers sneer at the doctrine of psora; they sneer at the miasms and continue in their efforts to establish Homoeopathy upon an allopathic basis.

Homoeopathy as taught in the colleges at the present day is simply an attempt to establish Homoeopathy upon an allopathic basis, using allopathic names calling chronic affections by different names, and treating diseases of organs by name. No study is made of psora, but allopathic books are their text-books. Syphilis is not treated from cause to effect, but simply in the way of driving it back or holding it in abeyance, without any effort to permanently cure it. The patients is filled with Mercury, the Iodides and other strong drugs, drugs that are well known to subdue it temporarily by an allopathic effect.

Psora has progressed until it has become the most contagious of diseases, because the more complicated it becomes the more susceptible are our children to its beginnings, and contagion adds to the old disease; and while it goes on the children become increasingly sensitive to the other miasms. The human race at the present day is intensely susceptible to psora, to syphilis and sycosis. “Psora”, says Hahnemann, become, therefore, the common mother of man’s chronic diseases. It can be said that at least seven-eighths of the chronic maladies existing at the present day are due to psora.”

True, if psora could be brought back in a series to its simple state the external of the body would become wonderfully bad to look upon, but the internal would be in a much better state. The vesicular eruptions that come are something dreadful to look upon, horrible in proportion to the vanity of the patient, but these must be allowed to evolve themselves and then wonderful good comes to the economy.

Hereditary states roll out in these manifestations, internal evils flow into external manifestation and Homoeopathy continues to drive them outward and outward, thereby leaving the economy in a state of comparative freedom. Very commonly itch will not yield to the homoeopathic treatment immediately, because the action of the remedy is routing the heredity within, causing it to flow out more exteriorily into manifestations without. One who does not know this, of course, loses heart when his remedies do not at once wipe out the eruption.

A sickly child may come out with eruptions, and if the child is treated properly the sickness will flow out into the eruption and that child will be cured from within out; and finally after much tribulation the outward trouble will pass away, carrying with it the internal trouble. So that when it is said that the appropriate remedy did not immediately wipe off the skin and make it smooth, and therefore Zinc ointment or Sulphur ointment was resorted to, we see that it is a violation of law, and a wonderful damage to the patient.

Then Hahnemann gives a long list of cases with authorities, quotations and reference which you should certainly look over. He also gives the symptoms that he collected while observing and investigating. It was the wonderful similarity between those symptoms when grouped together, representing an image of psora, and those symptoms representing, an image of Sulphur, which led Hahnemann to the use of Sulphur in psoric conditions. In psora we have the images of many remedies; all of the deep acting remedies have more or less something of the nature of psora.