Group of students in library

On this page we will produce regular articles and papers of interest to prospective students and Homoeopaths beyond the College.

Feedback is encouraged - please forward you comments via

Updates will take place every 6 - 8 weeks.

From the Think Tank on The Syphillitic Miasm and Chaos Theory.
The Think Tank is a group of former students who meet at infrequent intervals to wrestle with difficult aspects of homoeopathic theory. Some of their craziest pronouncements may be due to the coffee anti-doting their homoeopathic remedies!

A favourite exam question is If all symptoms are curative, what is the role of ulceration in the syphillitic miasm? It is indeed perplexing as ulceration is degenerative and destructive. How can this be curative?

One view may be to see the production of ulcers as always on the particular level so it may be the action of the Vital Force to expel the destructive power of the miasm to the extremities, or as far out from the centre as is possible, to a point where it can even sacrifice a part to preserve the integrity of the whole. This would be in keeping with other activities of the Vital Force in producing symptoms of a more and more serious nature, degeneration of the miasm, i.e. further and further disturbance as the patient ages having less vitality. We can recognise this as compromise to hold together whatever integrity is possible. The underlying principle is that the Vital Force retains the blueprint of potentiality and works to create form and function as close as possible to this ideal.

What ever the disturbance there is an underlying order. The blueprint is information, or the nature of the Vital Force. Each part or cell contains the knowledge of the whole and its place in it.

Yet, if the syphillitic miasm is a mutation then that is a re-ordering. The pattern is reconstructed. What we see as a syphillitic pattern is really the chrysalis stage of the butterfly, the period of dissolution before the new form emerges. We would contend that ulceration is a gross parody of this - perhaps it goes back to Vithoulkas in A New Model of Disease where teleos has broken down. There is the other side of the coin where the majority of mutations are not able to survive. Or, is the individual expendable so on the grander scale the syphillitic miasm contributed to the growth of humanity in the tuberculoid age as the humanitarian, the romantic, the visionary, and the cancer miasm phase as empathy for others and greater awareness and connectedness to the world? Does chaos theory account for growth and diversity?

Put to practical use, there is a phenomenon that appears increasingly these days when we are working with persons of very low vitality. First, on the pseudo sycotic level we begin to see a loss of integrity and lack of boundaries that becomes cancer or the borderline personality, not quite a Koch curve perhaps. The cancer cell seems to have lost a concept of its place in the whole. On the pseudo-syphillitic level where integrity is a main theme there is a loss of healing power. Aggravations are prolonged so that amelioration may not be traced back to the remedy in the common mind. But, there is something else, Kent may have touched on it as aggravation without amelioration because the remedy was too close. The oversensitivity of this patient will respond to lesser potencies but there is an apparent breakdown of the symptom pattern so they appear unwell yet great change is occurring and often obvious only on the mental and emotional level. It is as if we only see the chaos and really need to analysis the material finely to see the order as the threads are drawn together. The recovery from ME or post-viral can illustrate this. However, it also brings to mind the bombardment with multiple waves of many frequencies. Does this scatter the signal so the presentation appears chaotic or are we into the realms of quantum mechanics where the signal information recedes into potentiality?

NONSENSE? Maybe so. What are your thoughts in the matter?