Themes of the major Miasms

PSORIC MIASM

Source of Miasm:  Hahnemann’s great postulated “itch mite” can be said to include the ancient and modern source of non-veneral skin or itching diseases.  Psoric pathogens include but are not necessarily limited to only scabies, eczema, streptococcus, staphylococcus, etc.  Hahnemann included leprosy in his psoric miasm, but since it is now isolated as its own pathogen, one can more accurately say that leprosy deserves its own smaller category Leprosy Miasm.  

Indications and Features of Psoric Miasm:  

Vital Force is slowed down.  Cold.  Slow.  Atrophy.  Hypofunction.  Weakness.  Lack.

Hypersensitive.  Abnormally sensitive.   Disturbances of sense and function.  Nervous system is affected, including nervous and mental disturbances, especially when skin eruptions are suppressed.  These are ameliorated when the skin eruption is present.

Symptoms on Ectodermal layer of Embryonic Tissue:  The ectodermal layer of tissue in the developing embryo develops into first the amniotic sac, then into the skin, cornea of the eye, eyes, mucous membranes near the surface of the skin and the nervous system.  

Skin symptoms which are psoric itch, are irritated, burn or have a neuralgic quality. The skin sometimes has a scruffy, dirty character.   Often < from bathing or cold water (they are often chilly, even though their extremities and surface areas can be hot).  Redness of mucous membranes.  

Granvogel’s constitutional type Nitrogenoid: excess of carbon & nitrogen producing constipation and dry mucous membranes. (See Clarke)

Nervous system symptoms include restlessness, hurry, weakness.  

Processes, Metabolism:  Inflammation and congestion.  Deficiencies: weakness, coldness, hypofunction (hypotension, hypothyroid, etc).  Disturbed nutrition tending towards emaciation.  Deficiency, insufficiency, scanty (discharges, eruptions, bowel evacuations, perspiration, metabolism).  Insufficient absorption and assimilation of nutrients.  Sensitive to foods, allergies.  Insufficient ability to assimilate leads to hyper sensitivity to foods.  Common conditions: skin eruptions, nervous conditions, allergies, hypo metabolic conditions, oversensitivities.  Psora reaches so deeply into the being that any system can be affected. Air in stomach/abdomen = Psora.

Mental/Emotional State:  Sensitive, over reaction to stimuli.  Lack of.  Poverty Mentality.  Poor self confidence and poor confidence in the world and the resources available to him.  Miserliness, selfishness.  Timidity.  Sense of limitation.  Restlessness, finds no peace in being still, so is compelled to move.  Wants change, novelties.  Hurry.  Very affected by emotions, difficulty assimilating things.  Anxiety about ability to handle things, easy overwhelm,  depressed (sprint runner, then must lie down, easily tired out).

Modalities:

Aggravated by:  standing, needs to lean on something to support himself.  Ameliorated by: discharges of normal eliminative functions (perspiration, urination, diarrhoea).

SYCOTIC MIASM

Source of  Miasm:  The gonococcus bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae which causes the venereal disease gonorrohoea.  

Indications and Features of Sycotic Miasm:   

Vital Force is Accelerated.  Gonococcus produces proliferation and incoordination.  Excess.  Excess growth of tissue, exaggeration and hyperfunction.  Wildness.  Secrecy and hiding. Suspicion.  Acquisitive.

Hyperfunction:  Hypertension, hyperthyroid, fleshy growths, moles, warts, tumours, excrescences.  Nails are thick, ridged, or ribbed.  Excess mucous.  Inflammation (esp. joints), oedema, enlargement of glands.

Symptoms on the Endodermal Layer of Embryonic Tissue: Tissues developing from this layer develop into the epithelial lining of the primitive gut tract, its glands and epithelial component of structures which develop as outgrowths from the gut.  

Tissues preferred by sycotic membranes: joints, mucous membranes, connective tissue,  urogenital tract.  Catarrhal discharges.  Sycotic patients are not relieved by natural discharges such as perspiration, urination, diarrhoea as psoric patients are.  They are relieved by discharges from the mucous membranes (through which the infection originally enters).

Corresponds to Grauvogel’s Hydrogenoid Constitution:  Excess of hydrogen produces excessive secretion of mucous membranes, is worse from damp.  (See Clarke)

Processes, Metabolism:  Excess:   growth, enlargement, oedema, skin eruptions with oozing of sticky fluids, oily skin (think “discharge”), inflammation (chronic), esp. of joints, reproductive organs. Hypertrophies, oedema. 

Common conditions of sycosis: asthma, arthritis, diaper rash in babies (red, demarcated areas from early on), skin eruptions which ooze, chronic vaginitis or discharge from the penis, eczema, malignancies, cysts, moles, fleshy warts, growths.

Discharges are often yellow, creamy, with a musty, or sickly sweet odour.  Smells or taste like must,  fish, onions, pickled herring.

Mental States:  Fixed ideas, secretive, shame and sensation of something wrong with them which needs to be hidden, concealment, lacking moral code, acquisitive and greedy (need 5 cars, bigger, more, need more thrills, kinky sex, more partners, super big house (the McMansion and Hummer phenomena so prominent now), wildness.  Hyperactive, behaviour problems in children and adults.  Rebellious, wild types who crave sex, drugs & rock and roll.

Modalities:  Ameliorations:  Mental sxs > discharge from mucous membranes.  If discharges are suppressed, it often goes to the reproductive organs producing tumours, abscesses, cysts, or to the mind producing moral degeneracy and even insanity.  Many sxs > lying forward, or on stomach.  Babies sleep in the genupectoral position (fanny up on tummy) commonly.  > movement, active states.  > Evening to sunrise.  (night owl types who find their best energy then and feel alive and awake at night are common)

Aggravations: Damp, rest, cold weather and locales.  Sunrise to sundown.  Quality of pain is stiffness.

SYPHILITIC MIASM

Source of the Miasm:  The venereal Spirochaeta Pallidum.

Indications and Features of Syphilitic Miasm:  The Vital Force has become destructive.  The syphilitic miasm destroys and perverts and deforms on all levels of the being.  It is a movement towards death.  

Destruction:  Degeneration and destruction: organs, mind, functions (spasms, gangrene, malignancies, chronic ulcers which never heal).  Malformed parts (hare lip, dwarfism, improperly formed bones and teeth, etc), or more than normal number of organs, degenerative diseases with organic changes such as degeneration of liver, ulcerative diseases including cancer, pernicious anaemia, fistula, hypertension.  Diseases which attack the heart, brain, eyes, bones, periosteum or blood.  

Corresponds to Granvogel’s Oxygenoid Constitution:  excess of oxygen, leading to dysenteric spasms, ulceration or destruction of mucous membranes (See Clarke).

Tissues Preferred:  can be anywhere, but particularly at the most vital level of the being (see above), and the processes are destructive.  Affinity for long bones (rickets, growing pains – children cannot assimilate minerals.  Thin, spoon shaped nails, bending, tearing nails.  Jagged, malformed teeth.

Processes, Metabolism:  Destructive, ulcerative, deformed and perverted, often at the midline (hairlip, dental arch, club foot).  Profound prostration, wasting, cachexia.  

Discharges:  Virulent, putrid, offensive, destructive discharges.  Bloody, corrosive discharges with pus.  (Skin eruptions ulcerate with offensive discharge with no itching.)  Metallic taste in mouth.

Common diseases: insanity, cardiac and cerebral disease ulcerative, degenerative diseases (Crohn’s Disease, ulcerative colitis, etc.).  Wasting diseases.

Mental State:  Despairing, leading to desperate acts: suicidal, homicidal, perversion.  Anarchists, terrorists, murderers, nihilists.  Keep things to themselves, mental states better by discharge through chancre or ulceration.  Death is a release.  Alcoholism, schizophrenia. Insanity.  Fear of death, of disease.  Obsessional neuroses about health.

Modalities:  Aggravated by natural, excretory discharges, e.g., urination, perspiration, diarrhoea.  Bloody discharges sometimes > mental state.  << a night.  > in day.  

Pain:  Desperate, tearing, ripping, burning, unbearable, spasmodic.

TUBERCULAR MIASM

Source of the Miasm:  Spoken of by Hahnemann as Pseudo-Psora.  Words used to refer to this miasm in older books are “scrofulous” or “strufous”.  Infection is caused by infection with Tubercle Baccilum.  Considered by many homeopaths to be a combined miasm of the sycotic and syphilitic miasms.  I think it is more useful to understand it as its own miasm caused by infection with the tuberculosis bacteria which carries its own physical and energetic patterns and passes it on from generation to generation.

Indications and Features of the Tubercular Miasm:  The Vital Force is destructive and hectic.  If one accepts the combined miasm model, the vital force moves in the direction of excess from the sycotic component  (too much pus, blood, inflammation, heat, metabolic rate is sped up), and in the direction of destruction (the flesh and structure are destroyed in the process -- “consumption”).  The energy carried by the tubercular pathogen and its toxins produces a hectic quality (not enough time, hurry, must rush to get more than I can get done in a limited amount of time – death is imminent).  The signature of this energetic process is waste, loss, rapid metabolism, destruction.

Vital Force is accelerated and destructive: 

Accelerated Aspect:  Hectic fevers, rapid response to stimuli (music, atmospheric changes, weather), big appetite but losing flesh.  Sense of hurry in these people.  Very reactive on all levels.

Destructive Aspect: wasting diseases, loss of tissue around tubercles.  Bloody discharges (coughing up blood, epistaxis, easy haemorrhages).

Common Tubercular Symptoms:  History of T.B. (either self or family), or other tubercular diseases such as whooping cough, repeated respiratory infections, asthma, ringworm, lupus, hay fever or sinusitis.  Chronic inflammation of glands and tonsils.  Bed wetting.  Night sweats.  Hyperactive or problem children.  Marasmus, rickets.  Nails are thin with white spots.  Chronic, debilitating diarrhoea.  Tendency to chronic coughs and easy catching of colds going into the chest.  Low stamina due to low oxygen capacity. Flushed cheeks.  Haemorrhage from lungs or rectum.  Can’t stand extremes of temperatures.  Children with weak ankles and wrists.  Coppery eruptions on skin.  Haemorrhagic conditions.   Often crave meat, smoked meats and cold milk.  Dairy allergy.  Hair on back in children.  Cat issue (love or hate them or allergic).

Appearance:  Often thin, pre-Raphaelite sort of features, black eyelashes, pale skin.  Physically weak.  Narrow chests.  Thin and frail (Phos)  or fat with weakness and lacking stamina (Calc. C)  Fine hair.

Mental States:  A few different types:  1. Problem, hyperactive, malicious person.  2. Slow, backward person (mentally defective).  3. Romantic, hopeful, idealistic “not of this world” person.  4. Any person with chronic respiratory infections, asthma, weakness, etc., not necessarily with any particular mental state. 5.  Desires change, restless, rapidly reacting person.  Fear of dogs and/or cats. 

Modalities:  > D/C from blood and sweat.   > Day. < Night.  > near mountains, in forests (oxygen is pure).  < damp.  > dry, warm weather. 

CANCER MIASM

Source of Miasm:  Multiple sources, including toxic exposures, viruses (Simian virus, Human Adeno virus, EB and HS virus, inter alia), and genetic inheritance.

Indications and Features of Cancer Miasm:

Vital Force is accelerated and destructive.

Accelerated aspect:  Cancer cells have lost their natural signals to stop reproducing and die out when they have reached their natural life span.  They reproduce in an uncontrolled way and invade surrounding tissue and can metastasize to sites distant from the original site via the lymphatic and vascular system.  Because cancer cells are the body’s own tissue, the immune system does not perceive a threat from a foreign agent such as bacteria or viruses, and does not kick into action to attack them, allowing the uncontrolled proliferation.

Destructive Aspect: The cells destroy surrounding tissue as they invade, displacing healthy tissue with cancerous cells.  

Tissue and Cells Affected:  Cancer can arise in any area, and are classed into 2 main groups (Carcinoma which develops from epithelial cells or Sarcoma which arises in connective tissues of bones, muscles and tendons).  The type of cells are also classified histologically but this does not impact the homeopathic treatment.  

Processes, Metabolism:  Production of tumours composed of cancerous cells, changes in existing growths (moles, warts, birthmarks, etc), accelerated metabolism and heat (night sweats, weight loss, wounds that don’t heal, discharge or bleeding, changes in skin texture and colour at site.  Distortion or puckering of tissue, occult bleeding (seen in stool, expectorated material.  

Mental/Emotional State:  The chronic miasmatic state of cancer seems to break into two main groups.  One is an overly responsible sort of person with a feeling of needing to control and order things, a state of excessive responsibility, very fastidious, anxious, with insomnia, very self suppressed, unaware of her needs and taking care of others to the exclusion of herself.  Overly sympathetic.  This is a type which reacts to the inner state of out of control feeling with suppression.  

The second type exhibits a state of passion, longing, wildness and restlessness (a feeling they must break out – dancing, wild music, unconventional lifestyles, constant traveling) and rebellion which frankly expresses the energy of cancer, resisting any controls on themselves.  

In the cancer miasm there is fear of death, of disease, germs, of night.  They are aggravated by being alone, and want light and company.  This is the syphilitic aspect.  

Keynotes to Cancer Miasm:  < Night, Chronic Insomnia, Suppression of needs, or Wildness, Growths, Fear of Cancer and Disease and Germs.  Hx of repeated exanthematic childhood disease, or severe acute infection as infant.  > during storms, likes and is excited by lightening, thunder, storms.  Hx of early childhood responsibility and takes on role of parent in family.  Hx of very strict upbringing and suppression of child’s natural expression. Hx of fevers with no acute illness erupting.  Family Hx of diabetes and/or cancer.  Unusually strong sympathy and attachment to animals.  Café au lait spots on skin, or lots of moles.  Bluish sclerae.  Strong craving for butter and chocolate, spicy, salt, smoked meats.  Or more rarely, averson to fats.  Chronic constipation.  Genupectoral sleep position.