Psorinum

Lecture XII — Nosodes — Psorinum and Ambra grisea

This class of remedies, as I have already intimated in my introductory lecture, consists of disease products. Many of them have been demonstrated to possess medicinal properties, and hence they are useful in the treatment of diseases of the human frame. The field here is certainly an immense one. As yet, we hardly know the commencement of our labors in this direction. I think that the time will come, when the medicines composing the group, will prove themselves to be of immense service in the treatment of chronic diseases. Some of the nosodes have been derived from the diseases of animals, others from those of plants.

Great objections have been made to the nosodes as remedies in homoeopathic practice. It is well that you should understand the prejudices which you will meet, both among the laity and in the profession. Objections have been made to Psorinum, which you know is obtained from the itch eruption and also to Syphilinum^ the syphilitic poison, on the ground that they are nasty and filthy. This objection is certainly absurd, because nobody would for one minute entertain the idea of administering these substances in a low potency; and this being the case, no one will maintain that there is anything nasty or disagreeable to one's feelings in administering to a patient Psorinum y for instance, in the two hundredth attenuation.

Another objection that has been raised against the nosodes, and one which apparently carries some weight with it, is, that the use of these substances interferes with the progress of Homoeopathy by confusing it with Isopathy. We may reason as much as we will, but we must always keep in view the facts of the case. We must fall back on the tribunal before which all our prescriptions must go, and that is experience. Now, I do not know how far I should care to go into these nosodes. Correctly applied, they are not isopathic remedies. What I call pure Isopathy is the practice proposed by Dr. S. Swan, of New York. For example, if a patient is so constituted that he cannot eat strawberries without being made ill thereby, Dr. Swan potentizes the strawberry and administers it to the patient and claims that thus the idiosyncrasy is destroyed. Isopathy rests on the bold assertion that what causes disease will cure it when administered in a high potency. The use of the nosodes in homoeopathic practice differs from this because in Homoeopathy we start with an experimental fact. We have taken these substances, proved them on the healthy, and have administered them at the bedside. We have found them efficacious, therefore we have the same right to claim them as medicines as we have any molecular substance. We will now proceed with their symptomatology, beginning first with

Psorinum.

Psorinum has been sufficiently proved to enable us to use it successfully in the treatment of disease. We find it especially indicated in constitutions which are psoric (to use Hahnemann's word), inpatients who are subject to glandular and cutaneous affections, and who do not react to the apparently well-chosen remedy. Suppose, for example, that the remedy suited to the case is Pulsatilla. The symptoms seem to call for it. The prescription is in accord with every rule of Institutes, and yet relief is but transient. In such a case ; there is some dyscrasia underlying the disease, and this must be removed or modified before it will be possible to cope successfully with the disease. Again, in certain cases of scarlatina your prescriptions avail nothing, and the little ones die. Many of these cases could be saved if we investigated this branch of our materia medica more thoroughly. The various constitutions or dyscrasiae underlying chronic and acute affections are, indeed, very numerous. As yet, we do not know them all. We do know that one of them is due to gonorrhoea. This disease is so frightfully common, that patients with a dyscrasia arising from it are very rapidly increasing. Now I want to tell you why this is so. It is because allopathic physicians, and many homoeopaths as well, do not properly cure it. Gonorrhoea is not a local disease, and, if it is not properly cured, a constitutional dyscrasia is developed, which may be transmitted to the offspring. I know, from years of experience and observation, that gonorrhoea is a serious difficulty, and one, too, that complicates many of the cases that we have to treat. The same is true, in a modified degree, of syphilis. Gonorrhoea seems to attack the nobler tissues, the lungs, the heart and the nervous system, all of which are reached by syphilis only after the lapse of years. To return from this digression. Psorinum, like Sulphur, is to be thought of in cases where there is a decided psoric taint, and the wellchosen remedy refuses to act. Let us look at some of the symptoms, and note the way that Psorinum affects the tissues. It causes an eruption on the skin, usually herpetic in character, and accompanied by great itching. This itching is intolerably worse as soon as the patient gets warm in bed. By and by you will observe that the skin has a dirty, dingy look, as though the patient had never washed himself (which may indeed be the case). In some places the skin has a coarse look, as though bathed in oil. The sebaceous secretion is excessive. In children the eruption is especially noticeable about the head. It may involve the whole scalp, but it spreads characteristically from the scalp down either side of the face, involving the cheeks and ears, like tinia capitis, which in fact it is. This eruption is, at times, moist, and oozes a matter which is very offensive. At other times it is dry, furfuraceous, as it is then called, and may disappear in the summer, only to reappear when cold weather sets in. There is usually associated with these skin symptoms an otorrhcea, which is thin, ichorous, and horribly offensive, having an odor like that of rotten meat. Ulcers appear on the legs, usually about the tibia or around the ankles or other joints. These ulcers have but this to characterize them, they are slow to heal; they are indolent. I may also observe here, that the herpetic and itching eruptions just referred to are apt to appear in the bends of joints, in the bends of the elbows, and in the popliteal spaces. The child is pale, sickly and greatly emaciated. The entire surface of the body emits an offensive odor, which persists despite the most careful washing. This comes from defective action of the cutaneous glands. They do not properly eliminate, and consequently the discharges remain and undergo decomposition and give off this odor, which can never be cured until the child's skin is cured. In summer time these children are very apt to have cholera infantum. There is no remedy that replaces Psorinum in its range of symptoms in this disease. The children are apt to be nervous and restless at night as a precursory symptom to the cholera infantum. They awake at night as if frightened, or they cry out during sleep; then, two or three nights afterward, they begin with diarrhoea; the stools are profuse and watery, dark brown or even black in color, very offensive, almost putrid in odor, worse at night, or driving the patient out of bed early in the morning.

Psorinum cures a form of chronic cephalalgia with bursting, throbbing pains in the head, preceded by flickering, dimness of vision or spots before the eyes, and accompanied by hunger. Sometimes the patient is inordinately hungry the day before the attack. This hungry feeling is a frequent concomitant of Psorinum complaints. Canine hunger preceding an attack of diarrhoea. Hunger at night, must get up and eat something, like Phosphorus and China, a condition sometimes met with in pregnancy.

We also find Psorinum indicated in the bad effects of suppressed itch. This disease is produced, you know, by the itch insect. You are justified in using as a local application anything that will kill the insect but not suppress the disease. Such an application you have in Oil of lavender, which kills both the insects and their ova. When itch has been suppressed, Psorinum is an excellent remedy to develop it; usually, too, it will cure the disease after its redevelopment. Psorinum is also useful when pustules or boils remain after itch has been cured by some other remedy.

There is another use that may be made of Psorinum, which I have not mentioned, but which is as important as any other. Sometimes, after acute or violent diseases, we find the patient greatly prostrated. For instance, after typhoid fever he is depressed in mind, weak in body, low-spirited, hopeless of recovery, and yet you know that there is no absolute certainty that the patient cannot get well; that there are no organic lesions remaining. He has weakening night-sweats. Perhaps Sulphur has been given without result. In such cases Psorinum is the remedy.

Here you may also consider China or Cinchona, which is an excellent remedy for rapid exhaustion following acute diseases, especially when there has been loss of blood, protracted or profuse diarrhoea, or profuse sweat. It is similar to Psorinum in the night-sweat; but the latter is the remedy when there is the mental state just described — the despair of recovery.

Laurocerasus is to be thought of when there is lack of reaction, especially in chest troubles.

Capsicum is indicated in lack of reaction occurring in persons of lax fibre.

Opium is a very superior remedy in these cases when the patient is stupid and drowsy.

Valerian, Moschus and Ambra grisea are to be used in nervous affections when the apparently well-chosen remedy fails.

Carbo veg. is indicated in cases of abdominal disease when there is great coldness of the body. The breath is cold, and the pulse rapid. Psorinum is very similar, as you see, to Sulphur. It complements that remedy. It is inimical to Lachesis, and is antidoted by Coffea.