The Foundations of the Chronic Miasms in the Practice of Homeopathy

Recensie

This book review is reprinted with the permission of the National Center for Homeopathy

Reviewed by Lynn Byrd, Kim Purcell and Liz Seiberling

Henny Heudens-Mast is considered by many to be one of the greatest homeopaths of our time. With an unwavering classical Hahnemannian approach, Henny reveals how chronic miasms (inherited or acquired disturbances in the vital force that give rise to chronic disease) are at the foundation of homeopathic practice. This book is an easy-to-understand, informative, must-read for all who practice homeopathy, professionals and lay persons alike.

The material in this book is selected from Henny's international seminars, including some in which she works directly with patients in multi-year follow-ups. Henny reveals the chronic miasms in these patients, thus giving her students (her "colleagues") the key to each case. Understanding the chronic miasms enables the homeopath to prescribe with much more certainty and ease, and clarifies what is happening as the case unfolds over time. Henny's concept of the chronic miasms comes directly from Hahnemann and other time-honored masters, updated through her experience with today's population. Henny takes the mystery out of miasmatic prescribing and demonstrates how miasmatic analysis can help us to understand the course of disease and anticipate the path to cure.

 The book's introduction covers the history of miasmatic prescribing, multiple miasms, and how to find the miasm picture from the presenting symptoms. The first five chapters are devoted to the five most well-established chronic miasms: psora, syphilis, sycosis, tuberculosis, and cancer. Each of these chapters thoroughly covers the characteristics of the miasm, presented in an easy-to-assimilate conversational style. The mental and emotional symptoms, general and physical symptoms and modalities, and the particular ways that the miasm manifests in children and infants are covered in separate sections, with helpful summarizing tables.

Fully half of the book comprises case studies that were originally taken in Henny's seminars. These presentations include background information on the case, actual conversation between Henny and the patient (and sometimes a parent), and comments by students in the seminar. Often, in taking the case, Henny would find a triggering event to which the chief complaint could be traced. As in her seminars, Henny gently leads her colleagues to the prescription through careful consideration of the "characteristic" symptoms and the miasm(s) most prominent at the time. She also provides clear guidance on handling the case past the first prescription: "Did the remedy work?" And depending on the answer to that question: "Do we repeat? At what potency? Or do we wait? Or do we need a new remedy?"

The remaining chapters discuss emerging miasms, including a possible AIDS miasm (with a case study of an AIDS patient). There is also a study of three Multiple Sclerosis (MS) cases, each showing primarily a different miasm in order to demonstrate how the same illness can come from different miasms. MS that arises from psora, for instance, presents a different symptom picture than MS arising from sycosis. Practitioner awareness of this can help tremendously in identifying the correct remedy.

This book is invaluable for anyone interested in understanding homeopathy's use in chronic disease. We see no weaknesses, but only room for expansion: more information on the tubercular and cancer miasms, since these are subtler than the others, would be helpful, along with a comprehensive list of the miasmatic composition of well-known remedies.

Henny continues to teach seminars throughout Europe and also twice a year in the U.S. We are currently first-year homeopathic students, who recently attended Henny's seminar in Florida, where the book was released. We initially feared that both the book and the seminar might be "over our heads," but we found both to be very accessible. Many colleagues at the seminar were professional homeopaths with decades of experience, but they and we agreed that Henny's teaching, whether in person or in print, was immensely helpful. The wonderful and scary thing about homeopathy is that it is as complex as is the human mind and body. Henny's book, with the use of the chronic miasms, provides a way to organize that complexity and see the case through a clearer lens.

The authors are students at the Florida Academy of Classical Homeopathy. With 20 years' experience in Criminal Justice, Belinda "Lynn" Byrd transferred her investigative skills to homeopathy when she saw it cure her son's asthma. Kim Purcell is a former stockbroker who feels passionately about homeopathy and also devotes her time to opening legal access through Florida Health Freedom Action. Liz Seiberling, a retired physics professor from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Florida, is moving with her husband onto their solar- and wind-powered sailboat and hopes to take her passion for homeopathy to all corners of the world.

This book review is reprinted from Volume 99, Number 2, Summer 2006 edition of American Journal of Homeopathic Medicine with permission of the American Institute of

Reviewed by Karl Robinson, MD

Ever since Hahnemann introduced the idea of miasms in his work, Chronic Diseases, there have been homeopaths who embraced these ideas and others who found them either difficult to comprehend or confusing or irrelevant. The well-known homeopath, Henny Heudens-Mast of Belgium, belongs to the former group and she has just published a brilliant exegesis of Hahnemann's idea of the psoric, sycotic and syphilitic miasms plus her own take on the tubercular and cancer miasms. Heudens-Mast has been in practice over thirty-five years and teaches in four languages, often to standing-room-only crowds in Europe, as well as once a year in Florida and Oregon. She is also active in various homeopathic organizations in the European Union.

If you always wondered about the miasms but found them either bewildering or arcane, this book will lead you out of the wilderness. A word commonly used by Heudens-Mast's students to describe her is "perceptive". She is known to perceive the essence of her patients and do so within the context of the five miasms. She makes the miasms comprehensible as she understands them so deeply that she can discern them in modern day speech, gestures, hobbies, vocations, and relationships.

The author opens the book stating, "Miasms are the basis of all disease." This is a large statement. She follows it with another, "The only way to truly cure our patients is by addressing the miasms." She spends the rest of the book explaining how miasms reveal themselves and how they can be addressed.

She begins simply.

Psora is characterized by the idea of "too little." There is deficiency, weakness, slow reaction, poor assimilation and low energy. They are worse from cold and better from warmth. "Psora is the mother of all anxieties and fears," she states.

Sycosis is characterized by the idea of "too much" and is characterized by excess, sudden reactions and over reactions, rapid growth (tumors, warts, etc.) and high energy. Better from movement and better at night. "Sycosis likes excess and excitement," she writes.

Syphilis embodies the idea of "destruction" in which we see perversion, deformation, the tendency to hide and be secretive, with mostly normal energy though all symptoms are worse sunset to sunrise. Worse from warmth and better from cold. "Holding a grudge is syphilitic," she says.

The tubercular miasm contains the first three miasms plus its own essence which is the "love of change," manifested often by a desire to travel and/or a readiness to change one's occupation or pursuits or relationships. These are the artists who passionately and creatively paint, sculpt or wallpaper until 3 or 4 or 5 am, sleep two or three hours, and then rise to do more. They love open air, wind, mountains and fatty meats: barbeque, sausage and cold cuts. "As long as tuberculosis is involved in a new thing, he is energetic," she writes.

The cancer miasm requires the presence of the other four plus a stress such as a vaccination, trauma, or mental shock. The cancer miasmatic disorder tends to be perfectionistic, extremely sensitive, caring and self-sacrificing. They love beauty, animals and dance. "She allows herself to be dominated," she writes and "voluntarily suppresses her feelings."

The above descriptions of the miasms are relatively well known. Heudens-Mast then goes into intricate detail explaining how each miasm presents in the twenty-first century.

There are fascinating snippets such as why people do body piercing. Psora, she says, does it to belong, sycosis to show off. Syphilis? Because he doesn't care about his body, his life and so it becomes a form of self-mutilation.

She even discourses on the psoric, sycotic and syphilitic wart forms for those who thought "a wart is a wart is a wart:'

Why might it be important to have a working knowledge of the miasms?

Firstly, it helps to determine if the pathology is uncomplicated as in simple psora or complicated as when there are three or more miasms present. Cases that show various miasms will be more difficult to cure and will take longer. It is important to understand just how deep the pathology is. One begins with the miasmatic layer that is most florid; i.e., uppermost.

Secondly, Heudens-Mast explains how in the course of treatment as one miasmatic layer is treated, another can emerge sometime later. Simply knowing what is happening gives one an inestimable advantage. Rather than despair that the case is spinning out of control, one can patiently proceed to treat the emerging miasm.

Each of the five miasms is described in wonderful, even captivating detail followed by two cases, also in detail, that demonstrate the successful application of the method. At the end of the book there are two appendices, both in chart form, encapsulating the key points of each miasm.

Is her book worth reading? Only if you're serious about homeopathy.

I'd give it Five Stars.

About the reviewer: Karl Robinson, M.D. is a former editor of the JAIH., founder and past president of the Texas Society of Homeopathy, and founder and president of the New Mexico School of Classical Homeopathy in Albuquerque. He is active teaching Cuban and Honduran doctors on behalf of Homeopaths Without Borders and he conducts a free clinic in Reynosa, Mexico. He also practices in both Houston and Albuquerque.