t30 THE BRITISH ItOM(EOPATHIC JOURNAL

MIASMS A N D A R C H E T Y P E S
B y LLEWELLYN 1~. TWENTYMAN,M.B., B.Cm, M.F.HoM.
MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
W h e n I was foolish enough to accept your invitation to contribute a paper
to these proceedings, I t h o u g h t I knew w h a t I wanted to say, b u t I a m certainly
older and perhaps wiser now. Not only have I become aware since then t h a t
everything t h a t can be said about the miasms, both complimentary and other-
wise, has already been said, but said m u c h better t h a t I can possibly say it.
So I have found myself in a considerably more difficult situation t h a n I bar-
gained for and, to make matters worse, far from home. I t will need, I a m
afraid, our combined endeavours, yours and mine, if we are to rescue this
situation from disaster and come to a n y understanding.
Now, what I w a n t to bring forward contains no new ideas, no original
contribution ; I can, but will not bore you b y doing so, give chapter and verse
and a u t h o r i t y for the ideas I shall use. All t h a t I hope to do, is open potentially
a meeting place for discussion between m a n y different sides and approaches to
the problem of disease, a sort of verbal clearing house for people of different
jargons to exchange their goods and benefit each other and all of us. B u t I
realize t h a t you will not all have had opportunity, or even inclination, to become
familiar with some of the ideas I must bring forward, and so I t h r o w myself as
a beggar on your proverbial hospitality, asking an unprejudiced co-operation
in the task of understanding each other.
I shall not endeavour to make a careful, reasoned presentation, I am sure
t h a t at least the different views entertained about the Miasms are not u n k n o w n
to you, although you m a y not all have particularly studied the question.
There are m a n y excellent contributions to this task in our literature, not only
the classics such as Kent, Allen and H a h n e m a n n , b u t nearer home, such as
Dr. Elizabeth Paterson's. B u t were I to a t t e m p t to present m y ease in
scientific form we should need a series of lectures. Life is short, and I am here,
after all, to provide an aperitif for lunch and, when all is said and done, sheer
science is, well, rather boring. No, I rely o n y o u r intuitions to grasp pictorially
a n y t h i n g I have to say which is worth while. One thing further in intro-
d u c t i o n - e v e r y t h i n g I shall say has arisen in discussion with m a n y colleagues.
I t is a collective endeavour, and has in no w a y been a private b a b y of m y own.
Let us then plunge i n m e d i a s res.
I do not think we can do better for a starting point t h a n take the contrast
of the nerve tissue and blood tissue in our bodies. A n d observing it with the
synthetic eyes of the h o m e o p a t h , the naive childlike eyes of the h o m e o p a t h ,
eschewing the high-blown theories of the scientists, w h a t strikes our unpre-
judiced intuition-? The static pallor of the nerves, the dynamic, scarlet
pulsation of the blood. The cells of the nerve system with little or no power
o f renewal, those of the blood in constant death and resurrection. The nerve-
epithelial tissues in reality a protoplasmic s y n c y t i u m ; the blood and allied
tissues, fish-like cells, swimming in the ocean. We have the feeling, the nerve
is more dead, the blood teeming more with the forces of life and growth. The
relation of these two tissues to our soul functions must be an extreme contrast.
W h e n we are froze'n, petrified with fear, rooted to the spot, as when seeing
a ghost, we are overcome with pallor, but our senses are alert, overwide awake,
but we cannot move. Does not our whole being become nerve ? Does not
fear, sheer stark fright, t u r n us altogether for a m o m e n t into nerve ?
And when we are overcome with shame, and cover ourselves with the
blushes of embarrassment, as did A d a m and E v e with fig leaves, when the
blood rushes up over us and drowns us, are we not confused and bewildered
in our senses, and long to sink through the floor, hide ourselves, rush from the
room. Do we not for a m o m e n t become altogether blood ?
 MIASMS AND ARCHETYPES 131

Fear and shame. Fear our experience before the outer reality, shame our
experience before the inner reality. Between these two experiences our life
is lived. They show us, to start with, how one can grasp the idea of disease
as being some normal process occurring at a wrong time and place. Fear is the
nerve process overstepping its normal limits. Shame the blood process
drowning the whole being. Fear you will experience at night, alone in the dark-
ness of the forest, your back to a tree, your breath held in inspiration, your
every sense alert to every sound and movement. You will scarcely dare to
move or even breathe, alone in the darkness. Shame we experience in fullness
of day, faced with the consciousness of inner failure or sin. The exposure of
our inner rottenness to inspection is unbearable, we must hide it, or escape.
The inner revelation of our own nature is overwhelming.
To return for a moment to blood and nerves. The blood carries the
nutritional stream through the organism, it is therefore rooted in the meta-
bolism, in the abdomen, in the belly, which, as tile psychoanalysts have shown,
is the seat of our will, and, as the old saying, " the bowels of his mercy gushed
forth ", tells us is the seat of sympathy and love. These then are carried in
the blood and wish to pour themselves out, to bleed for one another, as the
saying is.
The nerves are rooted in the head. Here is the seat of thought and senses.
Here is intellect, that which cuts and kills. Here is that which separates,
objectifies, hates, that is to say.
And if I may call once again the psychologists to our aid, because I have
warned you to risk the fancies of intuition, what can they tell us ? This--
that we each of us is a trinity. Woman, man and child. We each of us is
this Trinity. And, well, at least Groddeck would teach us, if we would under-
stand that our belly is woman and unconscious and powerful, that our heads
are weak, male and conscious, and that the child in us lives in our heart and
lungs and in the dance of their rhythms. That we think in our heads, feel
in our chest, and will in our belly.
There is a conflict between head and belly, between past and future, and
they play themselves out in the dances of our heart and lungs, as the conflict
of Man and Woman is resolved in the child, and the past and future in the
present.
Let us, from what I have been saying, keep this in mind, the correlation
of nerve and fear, which is felt at night, the correlation of blood and shame,
which is felt by day, and, further, the correlation of fear and hate and thinking,
and that of shame and love and willing. Let us bear it in mind, because I
shall suggest that we can find an entry into our inner sanctuary of the syphilitic
miasm through the study of nerve and fear, and into the sanctuary of Sycosis
through shame and blood, and Syphilis has a nocturnal aggravation, Sycosis
a diurnal aggravation.
But before taking this up, I want to bring another broad way of looking
at it all to our aid. That is to say, that all life functions are movements of
interiorization and exteriorization, centrifugal and centripetal. Some processes
work from within out, others from outside in. The organism is a system o f
polar functions which balance each other. Embryology shows these move-
ments, physiology shows them. Pathology is merely a disturbance of these
movements. A few instances to portray m y meaning. The male genital
function is clearly an exteriorization, not only are the organs themselves
exteriorized, but the function is an excretional one. The female organs are
interiorized, and the pregnancy process is an interiorization,
Feeding is an interiorization, the bowel action is an exteriorization, with
constipation a misplaced tendency to interiorization.
Now, inflammation shows many signs of being a centrifugal tendency.
An abscess works to the surface to discharge itself. The bowel is really a
chronic abscess, the stools the core of the boil, the mucous membrane the walt
132 THE BRITISH ItOMG~OPATItIC JOURNAL

of the abscess--an abscess in its right place, a functional abscess. The male
sex function is clearly inflammatory.
Polar to inflammations are those processes which start on the surface and
work in. Such processes are tumours, cancers. The female sex function is a
tumour formation, the brain is a tumour, the polar organ of the colon, hence
we can well understand the connection of the German word for thinking,
danken, with dung, and also the posture of Rodin's statue of The Thinker,
and also perhaps the significance of the bowel organisms as revealed by Dr.
Paterson.
Now recall that cancers seldom or never erode into centrifugally flowing
arteries, they always spread into the centripetally flowing veins and lymphatics,
whereas we all know the danger of erosion of arteries in abscesses and inflam-
mation, particularly in amputation. At the two poles of pathology stand
cancer and inflammation. In cancer a nerve process is manifest, inflam-
mation a blood process. Could we say a cancer is an organic fear, fear repressed
right into the unconscious, whereas inflammation is an organic shame ? A
cancer is petrified, stony hard, we describe it. An inflammation is pulsating
and hot. You see, I am suggesting that the nerves and head are the interi-
orizing pole, and the belly and blood express the exteriorizing tendency. I t is
true that the veins are centripetal within this tendency, but even they have the
tendency to bleed. The very outer form of the body indicates this. The head,
spherical, concentrating its forces inwards to the sella turcica, its bones on
the outside, arising as membrane bones, sheets of bone, whereas the limbs
represent the radial structure of our trunk.
Starfish and sea urchins. Silica and Calcarea.
So now to draw this together for our immediate purposes, blood and
nerve, belly and head represent constant tendencies in opposite directions
toward disease. These two tendencies must be constantly rebalanced if we are
to keep well. Health is nothing, perfect cure is a chimera, but healing is a
real process, which our art can help or hinder.
Now, what bearing, if any, does all this have on the question of the Miasms ?
When I was searching out these lines of thought which I have been trying now
to make live in our mental vision, I was lucky to have a conversation with
Dr. Kenyon. And to him I owe the suggestion that the whole tendency which
I have characterized as interiorization to him seems like the Syphilitic type.
That started it all.
So now, without prejudicing the issue as to whether the Miasms of Syphilis
and Sycosis are to the identified with the diseases, the pathological entities,
of Syphilis and Gonorrhcea, let us just take up some of the pathological details.
The essential lesion in Syphilis is an endarteritis. That can, to me, be
expressed as the nerve process intruding right into the sphere of the blood
circulation. I t is the tendency of the blood vessels to become nerves. I t is
a hardening, dying process. The lesions of Syphilis, like those of Cancer, are
typified by painlessness. Look at Charcot joint, with its enormous destruction
and new production of tissue, and its painlessness, and contrast it with the
gonocoecal joint, with its heat, exquisite pain and tenderness. This latter is
an inflammatory condition. The blood process is active. The catarrhal con-
ditions of Sycosis, are they not an expression, for instance, in the nose of
turgescence ? The nose, which is a sensory organ, has a balanced condition
of nerve and blood, moves in the catarrhal conditions of sycosis towards a
dominance of the blood. Whereas in the rare atrophic rhinitis it moves
towards nerve and the syphilitic remedies come in.
So w e come to the point that in our nerve and blood systems we see two
constant tendencies to disease or illness of opposite type always at work in us.
There must be a constant healing reconciling process in us too. And it must
be in the rhythms of our organism which we study so little. We see in our
colon the rhythms of peristalsis. There is the conflict between the excretory
 MIASMS AND ARCHETYPES 133

and retentive tendencies, the sympathetic and parasympathetic, the male and
female, and this conflict is balanced in the rhythms of bowel action. There
are the rhythms of sleeping and waking, of breathing, of the pulse, All these
rhythms in every tissue and organ and cell are constantly playing into each
other, healing the conflict of sense and metabolism in rhythmic dance. But
these rhythms into which our feelings enter so freely, get sluggish and inert.
They do not move quickly and freely balancing each new strain. As our
feelings are lazy and live in habitual attitudes, or else dart superficially over
things, so congestions occur in our rhythmic processes. Here we come to Dr.
Paterson's conception of the relation of the Morgan nosode to Psora. Con-
gestion is the keynote ; Psora, the most profound of the miasms, what is it ?
Can we penetrate its mystery, or come near at all to its inwardness ? Is it not
the congenital sloth of feeling, the reluctance to accept the eternal freshness of
each new moment, the cowardliness that seeks the illusion of safety and security
of the familiar, rather than the heroic recreation of the present ? W h a t
heals ? The experience of eternity in the present. Those blissful moments
which come to all of us when, over the stale torpitude of things, there steals the
freshness of the new, awakening and renewing all. Could we but dare to live
in the spirit of such moments, Psora could not touch us. Psora is the expression
of our emotional inertia, our common human unregenerateness. I t represents
the failure of the very healing function itself, the reconciling dance through
which we are united to the very cosmos itself. Is not Art, which secretly
induces us into these moments, the greatest of all healers ?
Now, there are three remedies standing traditionally in the middle of the
Materia Medica--all three anti-ps.orics. I mean, of course, Sulphur, Calcarea
carbonica and Lycopodium. Now, if the views I have been expressing are in
a n y way useful or even true in some way or other, psora stands between
Syphilis and Sycosis as feelings stand between thinking and willing. I t leans
on one hand towards Syphilis, on the other towards Sycosis. Syphilis is even
one extreme limit, Sycosis the other of Psora. H a t e and Love, whose interplay
are our feelings, reach their limit in thinking and willing. H a t e in the cold
objectifying thought which kills reality into things, and love in the fulfilment
of the creative deed. So if there are three central anti-psorics we might expect
t h e m to be related to Syphilis on the one hand, to Sycosis on the other, and
more centrally to Psora itself. Lycopodium represents a great tendency to
explosion, to exteriorization. I t is composed of eentres, the spores each
anxious to explode radially in all directions. Calcarea, by contrast represents
a centripetal tendency, it comes from the enveloping oyster shell. And so the
Lycopodium patient is an intellectual, dried up, fearful and anxious, whereas
the Calcarea patient is sympathetic to a degree, their bowels of mercy are ready
to gush out, they are, with their exudative diathesis, wet, not dried up. Is it
fanciful and no more to see Lycopodium pointing to Syphilis, Calcarea to
Syeosis ? And Sullghur, the mythological fire-bearer, to fail the flame of our
emotions to ecstatify them. Is not that the anti-psoric par excellence ?
Are ideas, Mr. President, just words, or are they realities ? This is the
syphilitic question. The question of the development of our thinking beyond
the mere word playing of today to the appreciation of meanings and realities.
Are motives of group conscience, Ladies and Gentlemen, fit grounds for
our actions ? This is the Sycotic question. I t is the question of the creative
deed expressing the freshly intuited goal and not mere slavish obedience even
to good causes.
Is it surprising that the Syphilitic, with his exaggerated thinking, is
ameliorated in the mountains amongst the eagles soaring on the wings of
thought. Where else should his syphilis be healed ? Or is it surprising t h a t
the great ocean herself heals the Sycotic. That ocean, from whose bosom we
all sprang and who can still speak to us so that we come to know better our own
personal unique aim and meaning.
134 THE BRITISH HOMEEOPATItIC JOURNAL

Disease, then, in the sense I am trying to speak about it, points not only
backwards to its origin, to the opening of Pandora's box or the expulsion from
Eden or to the birth trauma of the psychoanalysts, but forwards. Every
illness is a pregnancy of the personality. Every illness should result in a new
birth of the personality, should deepen and enrich our experience and expression
of life. We should not regard illness merely as an evil to be obliterated, but as a
challenge to the acceptance of a broader and deeper intensity of life. Socrates
was not ashamed to compare his work to that of a Midwife, and I always feel
that we, as physicians should do the same. I do not believe it is silly, but
technically and most scientifically true to speak of a patient being pregnant
with his higher self. I believe that we should approach a patient with this
sense in us. And I do not see that we can reach a full understanding of the
Miasms if we shirk these issues, of which one can only speak in metaphor.
Nevertheless, in spite of all its faults, the modern psychological movement
has this to its credit, that one can speak of myth and symbol again. I t has
shown how m y t h and symbol are psychologically true, and also physiologically
true. I t enables us to speak even in scientific circles of these issues, and has
graciously confirmed the truth of fairy stories.
Miasms are not things.
They pertain to the world of creative realities which form our thoughts
and also are discoverable forming the phenomena. They arc ideas, not the
abstract ideas but living, visible ideas, arehc-types. Perhaps one should as
well say they are symbols.
Now I am coming to the end. I have sought to show in what sort of way
I believe we can make these ideas alive for us today. I have not aimed at this
merely as a matter of history or merely for speculative interests. To
Hahnemann it obviously became a matter of importance to deepen his insight
into the nature of disease. I n his efforts to understand and get the feel, as one
says of the chronic sick, he evolved this method. And surely to get the feel
of a patient is almost the most important thing. I t is only when we get the
feel of something that we can do it well. And I think in this great work of
Hahnemann's one can detect his efforts to get the real feel of the problems of
chronic illness. One can, I think, feel how he grasps the real nature of man
in such a way as to know how to heal him. What is more I think that the
deepening of insight won through these ideas of Syphilis, Syeosis and Psora,
allows him to follow the healing process without getting lost or stuck.
Can we afford not to win this insight for our own patients ? Is it enough
to choose blindly remedies according to rule, when we can win to a veritable
insight into our actions ? I t is certainly better to choose remedies according
to a true rule than according to no rule, but it is even better to have the feel
of the patient, and his disease and the remedy.
I believe that these miasms, these symbols or archetypes, can act in our
thoughts to open our medical eyes, so that we can penetrate into the problems
of disease. And it is for this reason that I have attempted to open this road
to their understanding. There is here, I believe a great field of development
awaiting, and a fulfilment of Hahnemann's high hopes and endeavours.

I)ISCUSSION
TH~ PRnSIDE~T : Some of the finest minds in Homceopathy have con-
cerned themselves with attempts at classifying humanity in order to understand
its diseases, and we are glad to welcome Dr. Twentyman among such as Allen,
Grauvogl, Kent, Boyd, Vannier and Teste.
I have enjoyed this beautiful paper immensely. One can see that Dr.
Twentyman has a deep knowledge of homceopathy, and also psychology--
it seems to me according to Jung. The combination will bear valuable fruit.
I appreciate his desire to get the " feel of the patient ", and his assessment of
 1V[IASMS AND ARCtIETYPES 135

the patient as a living entity, not a collection of symptoms to be repertorized.

This is in line with Dr. Gibson Miller's work: he wrote of " that greatest
general of them all " meaning the subtle total personality of the drug proving
and the patient (e.g. C h i n a and A r g . nit.). He instanced the suicidal promp-
tings of C h i n a , " hidden, shame faced and mixed with fear ", the disposition
of A r g . nit. to cheat.
Dr. J o ~ PATERSOn: Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen. As Dr.
Twentyman was reading his paper, I also was following a copy, but occasionally
I raised m y eyes and looked around, and wondered if any of the members of
the Congress were under the impression that they were attending an Inter:
national and not a National British Congress, since the speaker in his opening
remarks made claim to being a foreigner in this p a r t of the world, and I had
some doubts as to whether his language was being readily understood b y his
audience.
Perhaps I may be allowed to summarize and translate into more simple
language the main points in his paper before I make m y comments.
Ficst of all I want to offer an apology to Dr. Twentyman. I n the course
of an earlier conversation with him on the subject of this paper, he informed
me that he had no intention of r e a d i n g a paper, he would s p e a k to the subject
of the paper. Now having heard the paper read, you will readily understand
why I begged him to put it into writing.
That was for m y benefit as the opener of the discussion, but m y advantage
has been his disadvantage, because I know that there are many points in his
mind, which do not appear in the written paper, and that he could only make
reference to the fact that he could give you chapter and verse for the basis
of many of the ideas he was putting forward.
For example, why did he start off with the consideration of the nerve and
blood tissues. From m y conversation with him, I m a y be able to give you the
clue, as we discussed the beginning of life as seen in the circumstances of
childbirth.
When a child is born into this world, what is its first experience ? I t is
a nerve stimulus from contact with the outside world--nerve sensation--and
immediately following that the heart and circulation sends the blood flooding
to all parts. For the child, life starts with these two functions of " Nerve "
and " Blood " - - a n d that is the starting point of Dr. Twentyman's paper.
Briefly tabulating and comparing his remarks I would put it thus :
l~m~vE TIssuE. Static, confined within a rigid structure, with no power
of regeneration, its function is " sensory " and its chief emotion that of
petrifying fear.
BLOOD TISSUE. Dynamic, free and pulsating throughout the body,
capable of rapid regeneration, its function is " metabolic " and its chief emotion
suffusing shame.
Here Dr. Twentyman would give you chapter and verse for the newer
conception that there are no such things as " motor nerves " only " muscle
sensory nerves "
Disease, he says, is a normal process occurring at the wrong time or in the
wrong place, and then he goes on to the consideration of the polarity of life
processes, under the terms " Interiorization " and " Exteriorization ". The
terms m a y be~rather strange but the ideas implied regarding the direction of
action should be readily accepted by anyone acquainted with the Hahnemannian
philosophy regarding the nature of Disease.
EXTERIORIZATION. I n action centrifugal, working from within outwards,
excretory and represented normally by the male function with its turgescenee
of the organ and exudation.
Abnormally the same action takes place in " inflammation " a working
from within outwards, with congestion of tissues and final discharge.
INTERIORIZATION. In action centripetal, working inwards, secretory
136 THE BR:ITXSH ~ I O M G ~ O P A T H X C J O U R : N A L

and represented normally in the female state of pregnancy, by rapid prolifera-

tion of tissue ceils to form the embryo.
Abnormally the same action of proliferation, working inwards, takes place
in " malignancy " in turnout formation.
According to this thesis, normal bowel movement may be considered as a
" chronic abscess "--action occurring in the right place while a boil " is an
"

abscess formation in the wrong place.

Dr. Twentyman in his paper makes a rather startling statement, the
"

brain is the polar organ of the colon ".

I know that he has chapter and verse for this, and that certain authorities
claim that the brain and nervous system of the vertebrates is represented in the
insect by two ganglia, one on either side of its primitive intestinal canal. I n
the course of development these two ganglia multiply and close the end of the
canal which then becomes the brain and spinal canal of the vertebrate.
Your brain is then the polar organ of the colon ", originating from the
"

primitive intestinal canal of the insect.

MIAsMs. Working along these lines, Dr. Twentyman has been able to
present to us a newer conception as to the nature of miasms from his study of
the interaction of the nerve and blood tissue.
In health there is a balance of action between these tissues.
SYcosIs. The nose is a highly sensitive organ-nerve tissue, but should
it become invaded and congested by the blood, the clinical symptoms resulting
would be that of catarrh " which we associate with the syeotie miasm.
"

PsoRA. The skin is the primitive sense organ and should it become
over-ridden by the blood, congestion with resulting eruption and itch it fails
into the Hahnemannian conception of Psora.
SYrmLIS. In Syphilis the nerve tissue invades the blood tissues, as for
example in Endarteritis, and hardens the blood vessels and converts them into
nerve tissue.
Here one would recall the congestive catarrhal condition of the nose seen
in SYcosis, and compare that with the dry atrophic rhinitis of Syphilis.
CANCER. Here we have an example of INTERIOI~IZATION, of proliferation
of cells and tumour formation originating in the overflow of nerve stimulus.
The nerve tissue cannot regenerate itself, but it can cause other tissues to do so,
a regeneration in the wrong place.
Dr. Twentyman therefore suggests that " cancer is an organic fear "
So far I have been offering you m y interpretation and generally accepting the
arguments put forward, but now I find myself in disagreement with Dr.
Twentyman's statement, that miasms are not things "
"

I f he means that miasms are only ideas in the mind of the physician, I
would remind him that there is evidence now available to show that miasms
may be expressed in terms of bacteriology and biochemistry. In practice they
can be recognized from the subjective and objective symptoms which exist as
realities in the patient, and it is for this reason that I regard the miasms as of
prime importance in the diagnosis and treatment of disease, especially chronic
disease.
No one could make a study of the bowel flora in relation to disease without
being forced to consider the tIahnemannian conception of the miasm as the
basis of chronic disease, and it was probably this which induced Dr. Elizabeth
Paterson to interest herself in the subject and to present a paper under the title,
" The Chronic Miasms in Prescribing " (Scottish Branch, Faculty--December,
1933).
In the course of stool examinations we found that the Morgan bacillus
could be isolated from a variety of different diseases, as for example in Infantile
Eczema, Broncho-pneumonia in children, digestive disturbances in the adult,
bilious vomiting, migraine, eholeeystitis, gall stone, renal stone and colic, and
in the malignant turnout of advancing years. I f one considers that this B.
 MIASMS AND ARCHETYPES 137

morgan is pathogenic to each of these so-called diseases, it must follow that

there is some relationship between these diseases, that they must have a
common factor, an underlying basic disorder--a MIASM.
Unless the physician is able to recognize the type of basic miasm--the
chronic disease, he will fail to cure the acute phases--or diseases--even with
the well-selected similar remedy.
That was Hahnemann's experience which led him to the discovery and
full recognition of the basic miasms.
There is still much work to be done in the study of these miasms and so
I would disagree with Dr. Twentyman's opening remarks, " that everything
that can be said about miasms has already been said " and I think you will
agree with me, after listening to the paper, that he has added considerably to
our knowledge as to the nature of the miasm with very original ideas. I am
sure you will wish to see this in print for further study.
During these past weeks I have had colleagues put the question to me,
" b u t what is an archetype ? " and I must confess that I have not been able
to answer to m y own satisfaction, not even with the dictionary d e f i n i t i o n -
" an original, a pattern ". I felt that was not sufficient to cover what I felt
was in the mind of Dr. Twentyman. Just this morning I was offered a more
personal definition which figs the case. I t implies that an archetype is an
architect or designer who has the gift of " foresight " of " intuition " and is
able not only to produce an original plan to suit the present need, but also
to formulate it to meet the developments of the future.
I think on this definition I might call Dr. Twentyman, an " archetype ",
as also was Hahnemann, and it may explain why in error I have in conversation
with colleagues about this paper, referred t o " Twentyman " a s " Hahnemann ".
I have much pleasure in thanking Dr. Twentyman for this very interesting
paper, and to m y colleagues for inviting me to open the discussion.
Dr. FOCmSTEg : I had the privilege of knowing Dr. Twentyman's ideas
some time ago, and have watched to see how they work out in actual practice.
I t so happened that recently I have been using C a r c i n o s i n on hereditary indi-
cations fairly often and the confirmation of Dr. Twentyman's theories seems to
be suggested by the surprising frequency with which C a r c i n o s i n is followed by
an inflammatory reaction, a cold or tonsillitis coming on a few weeks later.
I t is as if the life processes were diverted from a tendency to interiorization to
an exteriorization.
The association of shame with sycosis is also something which may be
confirmed in practice. I do not wish to give the impression that I have
sufficient evidence to refute or confirm Dr. Twentyman's ideas, but as a matter
of interest, I asked the mothers of all children who had apparently responded
to M e d o r r h i n u m over some months, and the sensitivity to reprimand is so
definite a feature of the vast majority of such children that I find it a useful
confirmatory indication for M e d o r r h i n u m .
Dr. BENJAMINthanked Dr. Twentyman for an interesting paper beautifully
delivered. Here is just one of the many things I would like to ask him. Does
he believe that, as he quoted, the will originates in the abdomen, the thinking
in the head, and the feeling in the chest---if that is the case, those symptoms
we have been accustomed to consider as general symptoms of the patient
become surely merely particulars.
Dr. TWENTYMAN: I have, of course, been expressing myself in a sort of
pictorial shorthand. These things are not just spatially distinct. Every cell
has its belly. I t is the metabolic function of all the cells together that con-
stitutes the physiological belly. This for the organism as a whole is centred
in the abdomen but spreads everywhere.
In the same way every cell has a little function of sensibility left to it.
The amoeba is the classical example of undifferentiated omni-funetioning but
every cell, even the most specialized, retains a minimum of every function.
138 THE BRITISH HOMG~OPATHIC JOURI~AL

So the " h e a d " is the sum total of sensibility of all the cells, the nervousness
of all the cells, it is centred but not localized in the anatomical head.
I n the same way the rhythms of all the cells find their resultant in the
pulse and breathing.
I am most grateful to Dr. Paterson for sponsoring and interpreting m y
remarks. Actually he is responsible for their ever being written and gave me
much encouragement in bringing it all to the point of formulation. How far
it was Dr. Paterson and how far a bottle of Hock that actually precipitated it
into writing I am not sure. But all the same I think he has misunderstood me
in m y deliberately provocative statement about Miasms not being things.
I t would be a lengthy business to set about a proper elucidation but to
me Ideas, as I have said, are not abstract. They are inherent in tim reality,
part of which meets us through the senses but part through our thinking.
Thinking is the sense organ for the ideas. Now I believe that Miasms belong
to that aspect of the totality which we perceive with our thinking or our
imagination, not with our senses. But for me that does not make them less
real, or objective. On the contrary, it is the ideas which are causative, forma-
tive and the Miasms are that which causes the disturbance. The Miasms
produce the metamorphosis of the bowel flora. Psora is indicated by the
Morgan bacillus, it is not the Morgan bacillus. I t causes the Morgan bacillus
to appear and not the Morgan bacillus causes Psora.
The relation of the Idea to the sense phenomena is different in the field
of organic life to what it is in the inorganic. The Idea is incarcerated in the
organic, it is not merely in the mind of the observer. I must refer you to
Houston Stewart Chamberlain's magnificent lectures on Immanual Kent for a
critical exposition. But this is the crucial issue in what I wanted to say.
THE PRESIDENT thanked Dr. Twentyman.
It is very interesting that the two papers have come like this together
and complement each other, I think most beautifully. We have had many
attempts at grouping patients and grouping drugs. (I) The homce0pathic
conception of miasms being due to latent infection--that was developed by
Dr. Margaret Tyler and is based on the ideas of Hahnemann himself.
And now we have miasms d la Twentyman, based on psychical considera-
tions, which are really extensions of constitutional types.
Then we have the anthropometric classifications, such as those of Draper,
and of the French school, with their carbonic, fluoric and phosphoric types ;
we had a very interesting paper on these from Dr. Quinton.
Then the family history helps one very much in classifying the tendencies
of the patient. I think myself the family history comes to look more and more
as one gets older.
Borland's grouping of types round 5 main drugs in his very interesting
pamphlet " Children's Types ". He classifies children under the Calcarea,
the Baryta carb., the Graphite, the Pulsatilla or the Arsenic group of drugs.
Dr. Boyd's grouping in the emanometer research. This sometimes differs
from clinical groupings. Then we have Dr. John Paterson's suggestion, which
I think is a very interesting one, of psora being associated with bacillary infection
and sycosis with coccal infection.
A doctor's approach and make up will influence his approach to patients,
and his view of drugs. We must attempt to individualize each patient and not
force anyone into a preconceived mould. After all, Dr. Twentyman will
concede that between extremes of blood and brain there are innumerable points.
along a continuous variability.
Now I would like to close with one or two quotations (Draper) : " ~u can
best define but not explain the whole animal as being the life principle, the
spirit or psyche itself ".
" M a n , " he says, " i s an energy unit in action, activated by basic instincts
of preservation and reproduction inherent in all his cells.
 /VIIASMS AND ARCHETYPES 139

" M a n has so far failed to grasp his psychic essence in tangible f o r m s - -

it still eludes analysis and cannot be presented as a chemical f o r m u l a " (nor, I
wolfld add, anatomically as residing in the hypothalamus or pineal body or any
one place).
Herriek says of the mind : " I t is not something t h a t I have, it is something
t h a t I am, that I am doing ", and Draper adds, " The mysterious mind is so
m a n y sided and merges so intimately with every structural part and bodily
function and also with growth and development of all bodily tissue as to render
a full grasp of its permeating omnipresence well nigh impossible. I t streams
like an enzyme through every cell of every organ and each and every function
and vet at the same time is a product of the special energy of each and all of
them" You would almost think it was Hahnemann in the O r g a n o n defining
Vital Force.
With I t a h n e m a n n and Draper I feel we should think of the whole m a n
really as a unity in constant harmonious integrated action, and referable to
separate psyche and soma (as the word " psycho-somatic " does). The
homceopathist's careful consideration of the reactions of the mind in disease,
the relegation of " p a r t i c u l a r " symptoms to a lower place as being secondary
manifestations of a deeper disorder, the use of one remedy for m a n y different
disease-labels, and the firm belief that our derided high potencies really do
influence some vital process at the heart of m a n - - s u r e l y they are all in keeping
with this conception of vital force.
Finally, I shall conclude with a quotation from J. Smut's H o l i s m a n d
E v o l u t i o n (p. 309) : " So long as disharmonies exist in the personality and
conflicts arise between different tendencies in it, so long the personality will
fall below its ideal of a pure homogenous whole, that ideal will only be obtained
when, in the progress of personal development, harmony and internal peace
have been secured.
" I n the ideal man, the discords of ethical life will be composed, because
there will be harmonious correlation of higher and lower ; the harmony will
be the richer in proportion to the variety of elements which have been conserved
and will then combine to produce it."