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In reality most mental alienations are bodily diseases only. These mental and emotional symptoms develop in some cases more or less rapidly; assume a state of most conspicuous one-sidedness, is finally transferred like a local disease, into the invisibly fine organs of the mind, where they seem to obscure the bodily symptoms. In short, the disorder of the coarser bodily organs is transferred, as it were, to the almost spiritual organs of the mind, where the physician will search in vain for their cause.

In recording the totality of symptoms of such a case, we must obtain an accurate description of all physical symptoms, which prevailed before the disease degenerated into a one-sided mental disorder. We compare then, these early symptoms with their present indistinct remnants, which occasionally appear during lucid intervals, and add the symptoms of the mental state as observed by the physician and attendants of the patient.

Though a patient may be relieved of an acute mental disorder by non-anti-psoric medicine, no time must be lost in perfecting the cure by continued anti-psoric treatment, so that the disease may not break out anew, which will be prevented by strict adherence to well-regulated diet and habits. If neglected, psora will be usually developed during the second attack, and may assume a form, periodical or continuous, and much more difficult to cure.

Mental diseases, not the result of physical or bodily affections, and which have not yet undermined the physical health too seriously, admit of the speedy cure by psychical treatment, while careful regulations of habits’ will re-establish the health of the body, but as a measure of precaution a course of anti-psoric treatment is advisable, in order to prevent a recurrence of the attack of mental aberration. The physician and attendants must strictly enforce proper hygiene and physical regiment of the mind. The treatment of insane persons should be conducted with a view to the absolute avoidance of corporal punishment or torture. Physicians and attendants should always treat such patients as if they regarded them as rational beings.

Intermittent diseases also claim our attention. Some return at a certain period. There are others, apparently non-febrile affections, resembling intermittents by their peculiar recurrences. There are also affections characterized by the appearance of certain morbid conditions, alternating at uncertain periods with morbid conditions of a different kind. Such alternating diseases are mostly chronic and a product of developed psora. In rare instances they are complicated with syphilitic miasma. The first needs purely anti-psoric treatment, the latter an alternation of anti-psoric with anti-syphilitics.

Typical intermittents recur after a certain period of apparent health, and vanish after an equally definite period. Apparently non-febrile morbid conditions, recurring at certain periods are not of sporadic or epidemic nature, they belong to a class of chronic, mostly genuine psoric diseases. Sometimes an intercurrent dose of highly potentized Peruvian bark extinguishes the intermitted type of the disease.

In sporadic or epidemic intermittents, not prevalent endemically in marshy districts, each attack is mostly composed of two distinct stages, chill and heat, or heat and then chill; still more frequently they consist of three stages, chill, heat and finally sweat. The remedy, usually a non-anti-psoric, must have the power to produce in healthy persons the several successive stages similar to the natural disease, and should correspond as closely as possible with the most prominent and peculiar stage of the disease; but the symptoms which mark the condition of the patient during the pyrexia, should chiefly be taken for guides, in selecting the most striking remedy. The best time to administer the remedy is a short time after the termination of the paroxysm, when the medicine has time to develop its curative effect without violent action or disturbance and the vital force is then in the most favourable condition to be gently modified by the medicine and restored to healthy action. If the apyrexia is very brief, or if the after effects of the preceding paroxysm disturb it, the dose of the medicine should be administered when the sweating stage diminishes or when the subsequent stages of the paroxysm decline.

Most chronic diseases originate from three chronic miasms:

a. internal syphilis,

b. internal sycosis, and

c. particularly from internal psora.

Each of these must have pervaded the whole organism and penetrated all its parts before the primary representative local symptom makes its appearance for the prevention of the internal disease. Innumerable chronic diseases may follow the suppression of the local symptom; the true physician cures the great fundamental miasm together with which its primary as well as its secondary symptoms disappears.

Before beginning the treatment of a chronic disease the physician must find out whether the patient ever had been infected by syphilis or by gonorrhea. Although it is rare to meet with- uncomplicated cases of these affections, as we usually find them often complicated with psore, the most frequent and fundamental cause of chronic diseases. To determine the course now to be pursued it will be necessary to inquire into all former treatment and what medicines have been employed and with what result. By this we can understand the deviations which the treatment had produced in the original disease, to convert this artificial deterioration.

A full anamnesis of the case along with the state of mind and temperament of the patient ought to be recorded. It may be useful to direct or modify the mental condition by psychical means. Guided by the most conspicuous and characteristic symptoms, the physician will be enabled to select the first anti-psoric, anti-syphilitic or anti-sycotic remedy for the beginning of the cure.

The state of the patient’s mind and temperament is often of most decisive importance in the selection of the remedy, as each medical substance affects also the mind in a different manner. Mental diseases must only be treated like all other affections and they are curable only by remedies similar to the disease.

Affections of external parts, not caused by external injuries, proceed from an internal morbid state. All curative measures must be taken with reference to the state of the whole system, in order to effect the obliteration and cure of the general disease by internal remedies.

In examining such a case, the following steps has to be done:

1.the record of the exact state of the local disease is added to the summary of all symptoms.

2.other peculiarities to be observed in the general condition of the patient.

Then get at the totality of the symptoms and to select the corresponding remedy which removes the local as well as the general symptoms.

Notwithstanding the well-regulated habits of the patient a remnant of the disease may still be left in the affected part, or in the system at large, which the vital force is unable to restore to its normal state; in that case the actual local disease frequently proves to be the product of psora, which has lain dormant in the system, where it is now about to become developed into an actual chronic disease. Anti-psoric treatment will be necessary to remove this remainder and to relieve the habitual symptoms peculiar to the patient previous to the acute attack.

It is not advisable to combine the local application of a medicine simultaneously with its internal use. Because it is difficult to determine whether the disease has been exterminated by external application or internal medicine. Relying on the internal remedy alone, the removal of the local disease proves the achievement of a radical cure and of complete recovery from the general disease.

When the system is affected with some chronic disease which threatens to destroy vital organs or life itself and which does not yield to the spontaneous efforts of the vital force, the latter endeavors to substitute a local disease on some external part of the body, whether the internal disease is transferred by derivation, in order to lessen the internal morbid process. But still the internal disease may increase constantly and their nature will be compelled to enlarge and aggravate the local symptoms in order to make it a sufficient substitute for, and to subdue the internal disease.