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Page: Miasms As a Cause of Disease
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By 1816, Hahnemann was concerned at the failure of his homeopathic remedies to produce lasting cures for chronic diseases. He found that "...the non-venereal chronic diseases, after being time and again removed homoeopathically … always returned in a more or less varied form and with new symptoms." To explain this, Hahnemann introduced the miasmatic theory, that three fundamental "miasms" are the underlying root causes of all the chronic diseases of mankind: Syphilis, Sycosis (suppressed gonorrhoea), and Psora.
This miasm theory was first published in 1828. Though Hahnemann first suspected miasms in 1816, he took 12 years before he published his views. He adopted a reclusive lifestyle while residing in Koethen and his new inclination towards metaphysical pursuits may explain his sudden adoption of Olfaction (inhaling the remedy), which he continued to use until his death in Paris in 1843. Olfaction might derive from Arabian medicine and the art of Perfumery.
The miasm of Psora, he concluded, underpinned most of the chronic diseases known to medicine. Miasma, from the Greek for 'stain', was an old medical concept, used for "pestiferous exhalations". The sense of this is indicated by Hahnemann's Note 2 to §11 of the Organon: "...a child with small-pox or measles communicates to a near, untouched healthy child in an invisible manner (dynamically) the small-pox or measles, … in the same way as the magnet communicated to the near needle the magnetic property..."
According to Hahnemann, miasmatic infection causes local symptoms, usually in the skin. If these are suppressed by external medication, the hidden cause goes deeper, and manifests itself later as organ pathologies. In §80 of the Organon he asserted Psora to be the cause of such diseases as epilepsy, cyphosis, cancer, jaundice, deafness, and cataract.
Even in his own time, many followers of Hahnemann, including Hering, made almost no reference to Hahnemann’s concept of chronic diseases. Today, some homeopathic practitioners find Hahnemann’s theory difficult to reconcile with current knowledge of immunology, genetics, microbiology and pathology, as it seems to ignore the importance of genetic, congenital, metabolic, nutritional, and degenerative factors in sickness; the theory also fails to differentiate between the multitude of infectious diseases. However, most insist that the key elements of his theory are valid. For instance, most of them believe that the fundamental cause of disease is internal and constitutional (i.e. the susceptibility to becoming ill), and that it is contrary to good health to suppress symptoms, especially skin eruptions and discharges. They also accept Hahnemann's concept of latent Psora, the early signs of an organism’s imbalance, which indicate that treatment is needed to prevent the development of more advanced disease.
The miasm theory is not the only meaningful aspect of homeopathy. For example, Hahnemann strongly advocated good hygiene, fresh air, regular exercise, and good nutrition as precursors of good health (see his 1792 essay: The Friend of Health); he was also a pioneer in 1792-3 of humane treatment of the insane (1796, Description of Klockenbring During his Insanity) a year before William Tuke and Philippe Pinel, and he published tracts in which he described the cause of Cholera as "excessively minute, invisible, living creatures" Asiatic Cholera, 1831. Hahnemann's acceptance of the emerging idea of infectious disease before its final proof by Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur indicates some of his medical views incorporated ideas that were at the cutting-edge of contemporary science. These 17th-century epidemiological theories built on the ideas of Girolamo Fracastoro in the 16th century and the discovery of microbes by Anton van Leeuwenhoek one hundred years previously.
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