The latest symptoms that have been added to a chronic disease, which has been left to itself are always the first to yield in an antipsoric treatment; but the oldest ailments and those which have been most constant and unchanged, among which are the constant local ailments, are the last to give way; and this is only effected, when all the remaining disorders have disappeared and the health has been in all other respects almost totally restored.

The following is a case in which an LM potency was used to treat a case of suppressed venereal disease. The client was an Irishman who was studying with a yogi in India. He was a strong, well built, rather coarse kind of person. He was not stupid in any way, yet sometimes slow of understanding. His appearance was a bit disheveled in that he wore half Indian and half western clothes. I had known him for a few years and I had already observed that many of his habits were a little psoric, but the predominance of his psychology showed the sycotic and syphilitic miasms. He was a suspicious sort of fellow who looked out of the corners of his eyes and questioned the motives of others and sometimes had fixed opinions. Compared to the average person in society he was a religious fanatic, as he lived in a cave with few belongings. These and other traits pointed toward inherited sycosis. At the same time, he also had something of the dullness, genius, and madness that is associated with the syphilitic miasm. This appeared to be the deepest, darkest, hidden part of his personality.

He went to England for a visit and contracted a severe case of chlamydia. This produced a greenish, dirty discharge, as well as much local irritation of the penis. I did not see the case in its acute state, so I do not know all of the exact symptoms. He visited a homeopath who gave him Thuja in a centesimal potency. This did not help the situation, so he went to an allopathic doctor who gave him a full course of tetracycline.

The treatment with antibiotics palliated the acute symptoms, but he was left with a little gleety discharge which manifested as a clear or white secretion at the meatus and caused much itching. In the mornings he would express a small amount of the discharge but it would return later during the day. He returned to the allopathic clinic and was told he had non-specific urethritis (NSU) and there was nothing they could do about it.

From this time forward he developed several of the symptoms of the sycotic miasm. First of all, his prostate gland began to swell and become painful with concomitant pains underneath and in the rectum. This was followed by a loss of memory and dulling of the intellect. Evidently his susceptibility to chlamydia was due to his latent sycotic miasm and this new infection activated the entire syndrome. This was not a simple local urethral discharge caused by NSU. The entire sycotic syndrome began to manifest deeply in his constitution. He began to develop a pain in his lower back that started moving up his spine to his head. At the same time, his extremities were becoming arthritic and painful. This was followed by a further deterioration of his mental and intellectual faculties and a particular weakness of memory. He began to feel guilty, dirty and contaminated. Although he wore ragged clothes, he was not particularly dirty; yet, he could smell his body odor and it upset him greatly. He began to exhibit signs of dullness, sadness, depression, despondency, doubt of cure, and salvation. When he looked around he would squint his eyes, which made him look shifty. His memory continued to fail and his mind became more confused. He became very sleepy, apathetic, tired and lazy, as well as more dirty as he started changing his clothes less frequently. The symptoms continued to increase over a period of around eight months until he was in pretty bad shape.

I formed the totality of the symptoms around the syndrome of the sycotic miasm and the state of his temperament. His metaphysical attitude, rough lifestyle, ragged clothes, depression, despondency, sleepiness, tiredness and laziness led me toward the remedy Sulphur. The itchy nature of his gleety discharge and the redness of his meatus also pointed toward this remedy. This was confirmed by the general concomitants such as his warmer constitution, his desire for soupy foods, and his sensitivity to his own body odors. I had a few LM potencies which I had made myself from the 3C potency, so I was anxious to try them. Sulphur is a multi-miasmic remedy although is most famous for its antipsoric nature. In Kent 's Repertory, it is listed as a 2 for sycosis as well as for syphilis. It seems that the venereal disease brought out this man's inherited sycotic miasm, which then magnified certain aspects of his potentially sulfuric nature. Before the acquired venereal disease he appeared more sycotic then psoric, as he was more suspicious and closed minded than is usual for psora or Sulphur. It was as if the sycotic layer actually made him more sulfuric than he was before the suppressed venereal infection. As we began his treatment, he was an obvious Sulphur patient who was deeply sycotic.

In Aphorism 281, Hahnemann taught that sensitivity can be measured on a scale of 1 to 1000. I felt sure that this gentleman was on the low end of that sensitivity scale. After the suppression of his primary symptoms, a Dutch homeopath had given him all sorts of high potency remedies. Anyone with an average to high sensitivity would have felt some reaction to so many high potency remedies, yet he felt nothing. Taking into account the sluggishness of his nature at this time, his rather coarse lifestyle, and the fact he could take so many high potencies without any effects, I decided his constitutional sensitivity was rather low. For this reason I began the case with Sulphur LM 0/3. In the Organon, Hahnemann recommends beginning LM cases in the "lowest degrees" of potency. Most chronic cases are started on the LM system with the 0/1 potency, although under certain conditions cases may be begun with the LM 0/2 and LM 0/3 potency. As this individual seemed to be at the lower end of the sensitivity scale, I started the case out at Sulphur LM 0/3. This is the highest potency with which I have opened a chronic case. This was one of my first LM cases.

I made the medicinal solution by placing one small #10 pill into a four ounce solution of water and brandy. After succussing the bottle ten times, the client was asked to stir one tablespoon into four ounces of water in a glass. From this dosage glass he was advised to take one teaspoon as his dose. I asked him to take one dose and come back to see me the next day. When he returned I asked him how he felt and he said, "Oh, I feel all right." I told him to take another dose. At the time he was staying near my house in a room under a Tibetan monastery, so it was easy to see him daily. The next day I asked him how he was feeling, and he responded that he felt pretty good. He looked a little brighter and he didn't have as much of the squinty look to his eyes. It seemed as if he may have been responding to my questions a little better. The rest of the symptoms were exactly the same so I said, "Take it again tomorrow."

I am not recommending that the LM 0/3 can be repeated daily with your average client. In fact, Hahnemann says in paragraph 246 of the Organon, that any "marked obviously progressing improvement" is a condition in which a single dose of an LM potency should be allowed to act without repetition. He goes on to say, however, that in "slowly" improving cases the remedy may be repeated at suitable intervals to speed the cure to 1/2, 1/4, or less the time it would take without repetition. It is often said that the LM potency can be repeated daily, or every other day, for months. This is not the total picture – in the note to Aphorism 246 Hahnemann explains that this should be done only "if necessary." If the remedy is repeated too frequently, it will either cause aggravations or slow down the curative reaction, thereby delaying the cure.

In the sixth edition of the Organon, Hahnemann offers a middle path that strikes a compromise between giving a single unit dose and waiting for a relapse, and the mechanical repetition of remedies. In the LM system, the correct remedy may be repeated in cases that are only slowly improving to speed the cure, rather than waiting for a full relapse of the symptoms. This can only be done if the homeopath is using a medicinal solution succussed just prior to ingestion. This same method can also be applied to the centesimal potency scale if the remedy is prepared in a medicinal solution and the doses carefully adjusted.

After six days of repeating LM 0/3 Sulphur, my client returned to me and said: "Gosh, I'm feeling a little bit funny." I asked him how he felt and he said, "Well, you know, I keep seeing these kind of black things floating around." He was seeing the black motes which Sulphur often produced during its provings. This remedy is a 3 in Kent's Repertory for black motes. I had repeated LM 0/3 for six days in a row and now the remedy is beginning to mimic the provings of Sulphur. It was obvious that I needed to slow down or stop the remedy. I said, "I don't think you should take it today but come back and see me tomorrow." He came back the next day and I asked: "How do you feel?" He said: "They're going away, I don't think I even see them anymore." Most LM aggravations quickly diminish unless the client is hypersensitive. These aggravations tend to last for one, two, or three days under normal circumstances. Nevertheless, the power of the remedies must be carefully controlled through adjusting the dose to match the susceptibility of the constitution and being conservative with repetition.

A homeopathic aggravation is produced when the primary action of the remedy is too strong. This is caused by too large a dose, too high a potency, or excessive repetition of the remedy. For this reason I waited for two more days and then adjusted the dose by placing one teaspoon taken from the first dosage glass and placing it in a second glass. From this second glass I had the client take one teaspoon as a dose. The following day this gentleman comes running over to my house. He looked extremely excited and he had a covered glass in his hand. I asked him what happened and he said he suddenly felt an urging and a pulling down pain in his penis which made his penis feel as if it was going to explode! Then he passed four ounces of filthy greenish-yellow putrid pus-like discharge into a glass. The entire episode lasted less than a minute. When someone passes a discharge like this, the question comes to mind, where did it come from? This is one of the mysteries of homeopathy. How does the vital force do this? The answer to this question lies outside our normal understanding of pathology.

On seeing the discharge, I slowed the repetition of the remedy down to once every three days and all of his symptoms peeled off layer by layer, in the reverse order of which they had developed. His mental temperament changed, his memory came back, he lost the feeling of being dirty and contaminated. The pains in his head and spine went downward toward the coccyx, and the rectum and prostrate stopped hurting. The gleety discharge disappeared and none of these symptoms have ever returned. I slowed down the remedy even further as he improved, and then finally stopped it. He was a changed man who later left for England where he studied homeopathy and was awarded a certificate. I saw him a few years later in India and he said, "Thanks a lot. You saved my life."

This case, and others like it, shows that the complete sycotic syndrome can be overcome with the skillful use of homeopathic remedies. The reinstatement of old discharges, and the return of other old venereal symptoms, is a definite sign that the homeopathic remedy has attained its goal. The removal of these deep miasmic taints from the constitution is one of the greatest gifts of homeopathy, because it not only removes the illness from the sufferer, but also from the following generations. In this way, the homeopath can overcome the past, transform the present, and change the future. This is surely the blessing of Providence and the fruits of the dedicated work of Samuel Hahnemann and those who follow in his footsteps.