Organon §206

Before beginning the treatment of a chronic malady, the most careful inquiry is required in order to determine whether or not the patient has had a venereal infection, either syphilis or the rarer figwart disease [gonorrhea]. 185*

1. If the only symptoms present are those of syphilis or gonorrhea, the treatment must be directed against this alone. However, in recent times, such pure cases are very rare.

2. In any case of psora with a history of venereal infection, the venereal infection must be taken into consideration as it will have complicated the psora. This is always the case when the signs are not those of pure psora. Almost always, when the physician imagines that he has a case of old venereal disease before him, he in fact has a case that is principally associated with (complicated with) psora. This is because the internal itch diathesis (psora) is by far the most frequent fundamental cause of chronic diseases.

3. Occasionally, the physician will have to combat both the miasms of psora and syphilis which are further complicated with sycosis, in chronically diseased bodies in which sycotic infections had once occurred independently.

4. Much more frequently, the physician will find cases in which psora is the only fundamental cause of all the remaining chronic sufferings (whatever they may be called) which, on top of it all, have often been bungled by allopathic artlessness, and have thereby been monstrously heightened and deformed.

185* In inquiries of this kind, one must not be misled by the frequent assertions of patients or their relations regarding the cause of protracted diseases (including the greatest and most protracted ones) attributing them to such things as a cold suffered many years ago (from getting soaked or drinking something cold while overheated), a former fright, a strain from lifting, a vexation, sometimes even a bewitchment, etc. These occasions are much too minor to engender a protracted disease in a healthy body, to maintain it for years, and to increase it from year to year, as is the tendency with all chronic diseases from developed psora. Much more important causes than these recollected noxious factors must lie at the base of the inception and continuation of any significant, obstinate, inveterate malady. Those alleged occasions can only serve as moments of enticement for a chronic miasm.