***SYCOSIS is generally understood to be the gonorrhoeal poison. We should make the distinction clear between gonorrhoea and sycosis. Gonorrhoea is the acute infection of the gonococci, which takes from five to ten days to develop a urethritis after an exposure. During this incubation period it is purely an infection; then the local manifestations are thrown outward by Nature at the point of attack as a resentment of the vital energy to the infection. If the gonorrhoea is thoroughly and completely cured, practically no sycosis ever develops. Sycosis is established after a suppressed gonorrhoea, when the acute infection is driven in upon the vital energy by external methods of suppression, and it then becomes a systematic stigma, permeating every living cell of the organism, and transmitting its deadly destructive forces to the offspring as well as retaining the full destructiveness of its power in the original individual, and impregnating the mother of the child.

The suppressed gonorrhoeal infection is very apt to first show itself in attacking the blood and producing an anaemic condition, and a general catarrhal condition is set up. Oftentimes an inflammatory rheumatism develops; inflammation follows in the soft tissues, and changes in the fibre of the muscles. In fact, the whole organism becomes involved. Sometimes a stasis develops in the lymphatics; there is a swelling in the groin following the suppression, and inflammation in the prostatic gland.

These are the symptoms that are first produced after a suppression, showing that the whole organism is involved and in the grip of this destructive force. Seldom do we get these constitutional symptoms when the initial gonorrhoea is cured by the homoeopathically indicated remedy, and if there is any constitutional taint, it is in a mild form.

The transmission of this gonorrhoeal poison, or sycotic poison, as the case may be, is transmitted in the stage into which the infecting individual had arrived. If it is a true gonorrhoeal infection, true gonorrhoea will be transmitted; but if it has reached the secondary stage (which usually comes on three months after the first stage has subsided, and may be delayed a full year) the contracting party will develop the condition at the same stage as the infector.

The secondary and tertiary symptoms of sycosis can be entirely eradicated by homoeopathic treatment.

In the secondary period of sycosis almost every disease that may arise takes on an inflammatory nature in some form; it may be acute, subacute or chronic, and it may vary from very mild to very malignant fevers.

We know how frequently we see cases where soon after marriage a perfectly healthy, robust girl begins to droop and becomes ill. This is because the secondary symptoms of sycosis have been transmitted to the extensive mucous surfaces of the female organs. Oftentimes it is a single organ that becomes involved, like the ovary with its cystic manifestations, or a fallopian tube manifests inflammation; again they may show a very anaemic state of the blood, and when this anaemic condition arises it affects every part of her organism, coming on gradually, slowly, until her whole system is permeated. She becomes pallid, drawn, puffy; there is no stamina to the muscles. The anaemic condition arises from this stigma because sycosis the red blood cells through imperfect oxidization of food.

This may be a forerunner of carcinomatous conditions of the breast or uterus; diabetes, Bright’s disease, or numerous other diseases of this type, largely dependent upon previously existing taints in her own system. Sycotic manifestations are characterized by slowness of recovery; the subject is constantly slipping backward because of the destructive character of the stigma, whenever he gets an acute manifestation.

The sycotic patient is exceedingly suspicious. The suspicion extends to the point where he dare not trust himself, and he must go back and repeat what he has done or said, and wonders if he has said just what he means; he goes back and starts again. He is suspicious that he will be misunderstood, that his hearers will give the wrong meaning to what he is attempting to convey. This suspicion, when turned upon others, leads to the worst forms of jealousy of his friends, for he knows full well that he not understood. The sycotic taint develops the worst forms of degeneracy because of the basic suspicion and jealousy, patients will resort to any and all means of vindicating themselves in their own light. This is the most markedly degenerate of the stigmata, in its suspicion, its quarrelsomeness, its tendency to harm others and to harm animals. This products the worst forms of cruelty and cunning deceit and the worst forms of mania of any of the stigmata.

The sycotic patient is cross and irritable; he is absent minded in certain things, and finds difficulty in getting the right word; the more he looks at the word after he has written it, the more strange it seems and the less confident he is that it is right. He forgets recent happenings, but remembers distant events very clearly. Sycosis, like the syphilitic stigma, has the mark of self-condemnation, which is the moral reaction to the inception of the disease state.

Here, too, we find the fixed ideas, as in syphilis, and in the union of the two stigmata these characteristics are much more marked; there is also the same slow mental power. The sycotic is disposed to fits of anger, and when the syphilitic taint is also present these people present the picture of the sullen, smouldering type that threaten to break out into dangerous manifestations. Sycosis, coupled with psora, is the basis of most criminal insanity and of most suicides; degenerates are sycotic or syphilitic, or result from the combined destructiveness of the two stigmata.

When some external manifestation occurs, such as a catarrhal condition, a leucorrhoea, or even the return of the menstrual period, there is a general amelioration of the mental condition. The mental condition may be much better when wart or fibrous growths appear; they are always better in general from the return or breaking open of old ulcers or old sores, and markedly better by the return of acute gonorrhoeal manifestations. Pains often alternate with the leucorrhoea. While there is much amelioration by eliminative processes, natural eliminations, such as diarrhoea, free urination, or even perspiration, does not ameliorate.

All the miasms, or stigmata, have many head symptoms. The headache in the vertex is sycotic in its origin; or there may be frontal headache. These are worse lying down and at night, especially worse after midnight. There are feverish night, especially worse after midnight. There are feverish headaches of children. This patient is restless and wants to be kept in motion, which better. The head symptoms resemble the syphilitic in that they have the night aggravations, and there is the same type of vertigo at the base of the brain.

The hair falls out in circular spots; the hair of the beard falls. The sycotic scalp perspires, but there are not the moist, matting eruptions of syphilis.

Sycosis never gives a true ulcer; the sycotic manifestations are more overgrowth of tissue than destructive of tissue. There are many warts and warty growth; these are sycotic signposts. Moles and papillomata may be either syphilitic or sycotic. Deposits of gouty concretions characterize the stigma.

Arthritic troubles of the eye are a combination of sycosis the psora; there are also neuralgias which are worse on change of weather, worse change of barometer, worse rainy weather.

The sycotic usually has a red nose with prominent capillaries. The sense of smell is lost. Children with “snuffles” are usually syphilitic or sycotic; the sigma has moist snuffles, but without ulcerations or crusts; the discharge is purulent, scanty, with the odour of fishbrine.

The fishbrine odour is characteristic of the sycotic taint, and it may appear in all the discharges, but especially in the discharges from the genital tract. The sycotic discharges, like the tubercular, are greenish-yellow.

There is often nasal stoppage out to thickening of the membranes and to enlargement of the turbinated bones. Except in acute colds the discharges are scanty. The slightest among of discharge, however, better the patient.

Hay fever conditions, which are exceedingly difficult of cure under ordinary treatment, are more easily understood when we remember that they are an expression of syphilis and latent sycosis, very often with a psoric taint. Erysipelas is a combination of the psoric and sycotic stigmata.

The sycotic patient is especially liable to rheumatic troubles, and where this faint appears, especially if there has been any attempt at suppression of the heart, with violent hammering and heating.

In the combination of sycosis and psora we get the right soil for valvular and cardiac disturbances with changes in the organic structure; these are the conditions that cause the fatalities. With these sycotic heart conditions there is none of the fear and apprehension that we find in the psoric patient. The syphilitic and sycotic heart conditions are much more dangerous than the psoric, but the psoric patient worries about his condition, takes his pulse frequently, fears death and remains quiet, while the syphilitic and sycotic patients have no mental distress, and may have no subjective heart symptoms; but they die suddenly and without warning.

If there are pains about the heart and dyspnoea, these conditions are better from gentle exercise, as slow walking or riding. When there is any trouble about the heart in sycotic patients there is usually some dyspnoea. When the heart condition is of rheumatic origin, however, there is sometimes severe pain, very much worse by motion. These patients have a soft, slow, easily compressible pulse; the valves are roughened, the muscles become flabby and soft, and in long-continued cases they lack power. As a rule these patient are fleshy and puffy; their obesity is the cause of their dyspnoea.

Frequently the face becomes bluish and cyanotic, sometimes with venous congestion. The cyanotic condition in these patients is not painful. The anasarcas never become very extensive, because these patients die before the anasarcas has time to manifest itself to any degree; they snuff out like a candle. These conditions are very much worse by high living, rich spicy food or spirituous liquors.

Meats arouse the latent sycosis as in psora. The sycotic patient should take meat sparingly, and it is better for him to use more freely of nuts, beans of cheese. Gouty conditions cannot digest meats. He craves beer, and while this is not a desirable element of his diet, it causes much less worse than do wines.

He is usually worse by eating any food, and better by lying on the stomach or by pressure.

His taste is musty or fishy. His pains are always colicky in nature, especially in the abdomen, and they are better by bending double and by hard pressure. In fact, we hear of his colic so frequently that we get tired of the story. There are occasional diarrhoeas, but always preceded and accompanied by the colic, griping and tenesmus. The stools are *Rheum., *Chamomilla and *Mag. carb. are typical of this stigma. The colicky manifestations make the patient irritable. All bowel and intestinal troubles of sycotic origin have the constant symptom of colic, whether it be in the diarrhoea, the haemorrhoids, or any other digestive manifestation; and with this there is always the marked irritability.

The sycotic child is sour-smelling in all ways; even the stools smell sour. He wants constant attention; he must be rocked or carried; his colics are better from lying on the abdomen or from pressure. *Dulcamara is typically sycotic in its manifestations; it has the diarrhoea, acrid and corrosive; from getting wet; bleeding haemorrhoids with great pruritis; fishbrine smell.

In the urinary tract there are many symptoms. There is intense pain on urination; children scream from the pain. This is due to a spasmodic contraction affecting the urethra. Many disease of the urinary tract are combined syphilis, psora and sycosis, and with the last two most prominent. The diabetic patient is usually strongly tubercular, but if there is a sycotic taint as well, the condition becomes much more malignant. Bright’s disease is a manifestation of all three stigmata combined. Where we find fibrous changes we may be sure there is a strong sycotic influence.

In the rectum we find many conditions of tubercular origin, as strictures, fistulae, sinuses and pockets, but when there is the addition of the sycotic stigma the conditions are greatly aggravated, and there is much more tendency toward malignancy, for combinations of the tubercular diathesis with sycosis produce cancerous affections.

In acquired sycotic conditions represented by prostatic gland troubles there is a combination of all three stigmata.

The most frequent location of the sycotic manifestations in women is in the pelvic organs. Pelvic inflammations such as inflammation of the ovaries, inflammatory processes of the fallopian tubes; in fact, all of the inflammatory disease of the female pelvis may be traced to this taint. In the more chronic types we get cystic degeneration of the ovaries, the uterus and the fallopian tubes. Again, the infection may pass on into the peritoneal cavity, and we find general peritonitis and general cellulitis. Appendicitis is directly traceable to sycotic influences.

To distinguish the sycotic manifestations in the abdomen, bear in mind the colicky, spasmodic and often paroxysmal pains of sycosis, the acrid discharges which corrode the skin; the stale fish or fishbrine odour of the discharges; the mottled appearance of the mucous membranes.

The attempt to suppress sycotic manifestations, especially the discharge, is very common medical practice; but suppressive measures meet with a very prompt and decided renewal of the stigmatic power and energy. After such an attempt, the destructive of the destructive progress of the disease becomes much more rapid, and often rapidly to malignancies. This is very often seen in the disturbances of the sexual organs which lead to surgery as a way out of the difficulty, and immediately after operation, when the physician has reason to believe his patient to be on the road to recovery, there will be a sudden flaring up of the difficulty and death ensues very soon. When such a series of circumstances occurs, it is unquestionably because of the sycotic influence that may have been more or less unnoticed in the patient’s condition. Often there is such a sequence of events after some injury.

Sycosis, continuing the gonorrhoeal poison in its chronic state, has the rheumatic conditions that we may expect. There are tearing pains in the joints, which are worse during rest, worse during cold damp weather, better moving or stretching, better dry weather. There are pains in the small joints with infiltrations and deposits. Stiffness, soreness and lameness are characteristic of this stigma. The troubles in the joints, where there are deposits of lime salts as in arthritis deformans, are sycotic. The gouty diathesis has sycotic base.

The sycotic skin manifestations tend forward overgrowth or extra deposits. The nails are ribbed or ridged and thick and heavy. Moles, warts, wine-coloured patches and other manifestations of unnaturally thickened skin belong in this classification. Skin eruptions of this stigma occur in circumscribed spots, and there are exfoliating eczemas. Psoriasis is a combination of the three stigmata, with sycosis and psora predominating. The fishscale eruptions are also a combination of the three stigmata, with the dryness of psora, the squamous of syphilis and the overgrowth of tissues, or the thickened skin manifestations, of sycosis. Herpes zoster has a sycotic base. Malignancies of the skin are more violent and intractable in proportion as the sycotic taint is increased. Barber’s itch readily develops in sycotic patients, while it rarely develops unless there is a sycotic taint.

We have all noted the tendency of some operated patients to develop stitch abscesses. This never occurs unless there is a sycotic tendency in the patient.