Miasms - Understanding the Roots of Disease
By Gina Tyler DHOM.

 In Hahnemann's words ,"the true natural chronic diseases are those that arise from a chronic miasm, when left to themselves, improper treatment, go on to increase, growing worse and torment the patient to the end of his life."  - 78 Organon

Hahnemann spent 12 years of his life investigating miasms, collecting proof these findings going unnoticed by others in the medical professions, "the chronic diseases" was written. He describes how using antipsoric medicines used on the psora miasm would enable a practitioner to cure effectively.

The conditions that would modify a miasm in a persons body would be things like, climate and peculiar and physical character of the person it is in, mental delays, excesses, or abuses in life, in diet passions, habits and various customs.

The medical profession (allopathic doctors) have put names on various diseases such as, jaundice, dropsy, leucorrhoea, hemorrhoids, eczema, asthma, hysteria, rheumatism, herpes, mania to name a few. Hahnemann considers all these based from the same beginnings. The medical profession treats each one on an individual basis with each a medical treatment. All these names have no use and no influence on the practice of the true physician.

Only the totality of the signs of the individual state of each particular patient is used to cure the disease. So no real cure of miasms can take place without a strict particular treatment (individualization) of each case of disease. A difference between acute and chronic disease. Acute meaning starting suddenly, lasting for only a short amount of time. Chronic, a slow progression of imbalances being treated by allopathic suppressive medicines turning into further and further complications as the disease lasts and goes deeper into the human mind and physical body, even years go by without let-up. Chronic miasms are very hidden, the symptoms are much more difficult to be ascertained. Lots of questions need to be asked to trace the picture of disease. Questions about the history of one's family, mental delusions, dreams, peculiar symptoms. 

The miasms are: psora, sychosis, syphillis, and tuburcular. Psora, the mother of all diseases goes back the farthest in human history. Psora or "itch" is the monstrous internal chronic miasm, the only real fundamental cause and producer of all the other numerous forms of disease. (more on psora)

 Diseases with such allopathic names as: Convulsions, mania, imbecility, 
 madness, epilepsy, scoliosis, cancer, gout, hemorrhage from nose, lungs, 
 bladder, asthma, impotence, deafness, urinary calculus, defects of the senses and pains of thousands of kinds. Psora has passed on through hundreds of generations of people and has produced an innumerable variety of defects, injuries, derangements, and sufferings

 Physical expressions of the miasms

 The mind and body work together as a unit and the disturbances are 
 expressed  in both spheres. 

• A.- Psoric Miasm: reaction of body on exposure to environmental stimuli to ones surroundings like noise, light, and odors, producing functional disturbances like headache, nausea, and discomfort.
• B.- Sycotic Miasm: hypersensitive response to something specific arising from a deficiency of the normal response like tumors, allergies, keloids. Deficient feeling gives rise to an increased attempt to repair the fault.
• C.- Syphlitic Miasm: Not manageable, finding destruction like gangreen, ulceration. Body and mind destroy itself, give-up.
• D.- Tuburcular Miasm: respiratory imbalance, weak lungs, offensive, headsweat, worse with exposure to cold, re-occurring epistaxis, bleeding gums, long eyelashes, craving for salt, enuresis, bleeding stools, milk disagrees causing diarrhea, anemic, weakness, ringworm, acne, white spots on nails, nightmares.

Personality types

•  A.- Psoric Miasm: highs and lows, struggling with outside world, becomes apparent at times of stress, lack of confidence, constant anxiety feelings, fear, like he can't do it, insecurity, anxiety about the future but always having hope, mentally alert.
• B.- Sycotic Miasms: secretiveness, hide his weakness, tense, constantly covering up situations, fixed habits, suspicious, jealous, forgetful. 
• C.- Syphlitic Miasm: strong pessimistic view on life, cannot modify what is wrong, give-up, destroy, no point in trying to adjust, sudden impulsive violence directed at himself or others, dictational rigid ideas. Mental paralysis, mentally dull, suicidal, stupid, stubborn, and homicidal.
• D.-Tuburcular Miasm: dissatisfaction, lack of tolerance, changes everything, does harmful thing to one's self.

General Nature of the Miasm

•  A.-Psoric Miasm- itching, burning, inflammation leading to congestion.- philosopher, selfish, restless, weak, fears.
• B.-Sycotic Miasm: over production of growth like warts, condylomata, fibrous tissue, attack internal organs, pelvis, sexual organs.
• C.-Syphlitic Miasm- destructive, disorder everywhere, ulceration, fissures, deformities, ignorance, suicidal, depressed, memory diminished.
• D.-Tuburcular Miasm: changing symptomology, vague, weakness, shifting in location, depletion, dissatisfaction, lack of tolerance, careless "problem child", cravings that are not good for them.

Dermatological Symptoms of the Miasms

• A.-Psoric Miasm- dirty, dry, itching without pus or discharge, burning, scaly eruptions, eczema, cracks in hands and feet, sweat profuse < during sleep offensive.
• B.-Sycotic Miasm- Warty, moles, unnatural thickening skin, herpes, scars, nails are thick and irregular---corrugated, oily skin with oozing, disturbed pigment in patches.
• C.-Syphlitic Miasm- Ulcers, boils, discharge of fluids and pus offensive, slow to heal, leprosy, copper colored eruptions < by heat of bed, spoon shape thin nails that tear easily, gangreen putrid.
• D.-Tuburcular Miasm- ringworm, eczema, urticaria, herpes, re-occuring boils with pus and fever. Does not heal fast. Leprosy < by warmth of bed > by cold nails white spots.

Pains Of Miasms

• A. -Psoric Miasm: neurological type, sore, bruised, >rest <motion.
• B. -Sycotic Miasm: Joint pains, rheumatic pains are < cold, damp  > motion, stitching, pulsating, wandering
• C.- Syphlitic Miasm: Bone Pains, tearing, bursting, burning
• D.- Tuburcular Miasm: Great exhaustion, never enough rest, sun> give strength.

Miasmetic Clinicals

• A.-Psoric Miasm: Acidity, burning, cancer, sarcomas, constipation, epilepsy, flatulence, hoarseness, itching of skin, leprosy, burning of spinal cord, watery discharge from nose and eyes with burning
• B.-Sycotic Miasm: Abortion, acne without pus, angina pectoris, anemia, appendicitis, cough (whooping), colic, pelvic disease + sexual organs, piles, prostatitus, nephritis (kidney), gout, arthritis, dry asthma, dysmenorrhoea, herpes, rheumatism, warts, urinary ailments.
• C.-Syphlitic Miasm: discharges putrefaction, blindness, boil in veins and bones, carcinomas, fistula, fungal infection of extremities, gangreene, hyperextension, bone marrow inflammation, insanity due to depression, leucorrhoea, rheumatism of long bones, skin disease with ooze + pus, sore throat, history of abortions, sterility, immature death, cardiac attacks, suicidal deaths, insanity, cancer, tuberculosis, ulcers of ear, nose, urinary organs, mouth
• D.-Tubercular Miasm: Aching pain in knees, swelling without any cause, asthma, bedwetting, cancer, carious teeth, destruction of bone marrow, diabetes, dry cough (barking), eczema, emaciation, epilepsy, extreme fatigue, weakness, glands enlarged, tonsils, influenza, insanity, obstruction of intestines, malaria, insomnia, nocturnal perspiration, palpitation, profuse hemorrhage of any orifice, pneumonia, ring worm, short temper, nasal coryza,  worms.

 The inheritance of the miasms is not genetic and actually takes place because the "vital force" of parents is tainted by such states. As observed with mother and father at time of conception. Miasms are seen to be transmitted to the offspring. It is not the pathology which shows the miasm but the state. The characteristics in that individual, keeping with the mental and physical state. The three together reflect the miasm. The mental = delusion and the physical = type of reaction. A disease state is usually a combination of miasms with it's main focus on one miasm,. It is important to percieve each miasmatic state of the remedy, in order to understand the disease state, because then we become aware of how a person perceives and react to his surroundings, how he perceives himself and how he reacts when things became unmanageable and stressful. We need to understand the remedy as how it's related to the miasm. This understanding comes from study of the symptoms both physical and mental. The understanding of the mental delusions of a particular miasm in a remedy. The delusion of that remedy must lie in that particular miasm. 

Example: Arsenic (syphlitic) despair of recovery, suicidal disposition, weakness, feels unloved, insecure 

                  Arsenic (psoric)"delusion sees theives"
                  Arsenic (sycotic) cannot trust people, obsessive, compulsive

There are only a few remedies that belong to one miasm : psora - psorinum, sycosis- medorrhinum, syphilis- syphilinum. To study one remedy "syphlinum" is to study a syphlitic miasm. Or a syphillis characteristic. 

Rubics- antisocial, abusive, indifferent to the future, hopeless despair of recovery, desperation, his efforts are lost of no use. The situation is beyond his capacity to salvage it, manic tendencies, manic religiousness,Manic washing hands, yet hopeless so compensates into antisocial behavior. "I don't care" attitude, mind goes slow/ paralyzed, desire to kill, all fascists, all anarchists and exploiters in history are the product of the syphlitic miasm, Napoleon, Chritopher Columbus, Aedie Amin, Hitler. Will reguard appropriate both the death of an individual, or an atom bomb explosion over an entire town. The pathologies are concerned with destruction, ulceration, poor reaction, it's as if the body and mind decided to destroy itself because it sees no hope. Syphilis itself is a taint which slowly destroys, with a difficult death. Syphilis in a mother's body shows itself in forms of habitual abortions. The fetus is already in a process of self-destruction. "I wish I had never been born". Once we can understand the miasmatic element in a person we can see the out come of the case with certainty. 

Why is it necessary for a homeopath to know the chronic miasms? Some might say as long as one prescribes according to the law of similia he cures his cases. The important factor here is "so long as he selects the most  similar remedy as possible." The fact is, we cannot select the most similar remedy possible unless we understand the phenomena of the acting miasm. 
The true similia is always based on the existing miasm. It makes the difference between fighting the disease in the dark and in bright light when one knows the underlying principle that fathers the phenomena. If one has no knowledge of the laws of action and reaction, how can we watch the progress of a case without a definite knowledge of the disease forces (miasms) with their mysterious and persistant progressions. So, if we can know nothing aboutthe traits and characteristics of our enemy, it's impossible to wage war against the disease. 

Theses things Hahnemann wrote about in his theory of disease. The physician skilled in anti-miasmatic prescribing dips deeper into the case and applies an agent that has a deeper and closer relationship with the prevented life force. The results are always better. "The suffering of the immediate vital principle which animates the interior of our bodies, when it is morbidly disturbed, produces symptoms in the organism that are manifest"----Organon

A knowledge of all miasmatic phenomena would be a complete knowledge of all that is known as disease. Hahnemann discovered the miasms due to the fact these ailments kept coming back, year after year. Even with the correct remedy given, still no permanent cure. Hahnemann's proof of the existence was the persistency of these chronic diseases considering, diet, hygiene, health still a come-back in the disease constantly repeating itself. They seem to come from within the organism itself, from some peculiar dynamis within,from something that was deranged. Within the life-force itself, inherent, internal, pre-existing within the dynamis. Hahnemann wrote in a footnote in "chronic diseases" about the third book of Moses (Leviticus) where the word psora is mentioned, given to eruptive diseases. The miasms run through our  history from the beginnings. (Greek = psora = itch).

When complicated suppressive drugs came about, the psora also became complicated. Drugs such as arsenic, quinine, mercury used to suppress ailments became used more frequently. Soon a more malignant manifestation presented itself in forms of epidemics. When a suppression took place in an organism with two or more miasms present, all conditions magnified and intensified. 

Bibliography: Organon 5th and 6th edition - HahnemannThe Substance Of Homeopathy -Sankeran Miasmatic Diagnosis-S. K. BanerjeaThe Chronic Miasms And Pseudo Psora ---J.H.Allen

List of Dr. Tyler's articles on homeopathy

Dr. Tyler practices homeopathy in Woodland Hills, California and she also gives phone consultation for children who have been hurt by vaccines.