Vol. 24 No. 2 April 2004

Since I have a very free rein in the choice of material in Homœopathica I like to every now and then print something on the vexing topic of miasms. My personal belief is that most ideas expressed these days about miasms are nonsensical and bear scant resemblance to Hahnemann’s theory. I will even go so far as to say that contemporary lecturing and writing on the subject does considerable harm to the practise of good homœopathy – which should be based on the matching of disease with the known, verified, symptoms created in a proving or symptoms universally acknowledged to be associated with the mode of action and/or effects of exposure to a substance in crude form.The word miasm means different things to different people these days. There is a huge gulf between what Rajan Sankaran means when he talks of a ringworm miasm and the Hahnemannian concept. It has been pointed out more than once in this journal that to Hahnemann a chronic miasm was the lingering effect of a disorder experienced in this lifetime – the miasm Syphilis meant the effect of having syphilis; Sycosis was the consequence of having had Human Papilloma Virus (genital wart virus) primarily, and possibly, but not essentially gonorrhea and similar sexually transmitted diseases.

Psora is somewhat harder to define – Hahnemann may even have changed his mind about some aspects of his hypothesis but essentially it is the result of the suppression of some skin conditions.

It must be noted that some of the evidence he gathered to support his theory is extremely dubious; for example his references to Hebrew scripture and the cases in which people were chronically ill after their skin was treated with mercurial or lead ointments. Be that as it may, it is a far cry indeed from the miasmatologists who say such things as “Her dreams of tunnels also confirm a sycotic remedy. People hide in tunnels. Animals store food and protect themselves in tunnels. We get the idea of hiding, or doing things underground, which is a quality of the sycotic miasm.” (From a case conference organised by the International Foundation for Homœopathy in 1995.)

It is very important that homœopaths, and students of homœopathy, are quite sure they know what Hahnemann really said, what Boenninghausen really said, in fact what anyone really said, by reading the original works of the authors quoted, interpreted, misrepresented, etc. A good example is what Kent says Hahnemann meant (in Organon Article 153 for instance) and what the great man really said.

Of course there are those who say that the writings of the founding fathers of homœopathy are ancient history and can be ignored, but what they offer as replacement is sorry stuff indeed.

Bruce Barwell