Mark O'Sullivan, 2nd Year Essay: Sycotic Miasm & Remedies

Irish School of Homeopathy 10. Jan. 2006

Compare and contrast any two anti-sycotic remedies to identify and

illustrate the fundamental nature of the sycotic personality.
“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing exceeds like excess” - Oscar Wilde

The sycotic miasm, one of the original Hahnammanian miasms, is said to be present as the result
of inheritance of suppressed Gonorrhoea, a sexually transmitted disease characterised by intense,
painful inflammation and profuse discharge of yellow-green pus. The key here from the
homeopathic perspective is the profuseness of discharge, accompanied by increased urination.
The disease causes the profuse production of pus in order to counteract the infection. The Sycotic
miasm is said to be Gonorrhoea, suppressed by allopathic treatment and thereby pushed deeper
into the vital force. This mistunement is then passed down the ancestral line, expressing itself in
mental, emotional or physical symptoms which have excess and extremes as their keynote.

The word sycotic has its roots in the Greek for “fig” (syco) due to the figwarts, resembling figs1,
which sometimes accompany gonorrhoeal conditions and along with growths of many kinds, are
indicative of a diathesis involving overproduction. Figwarts and other growths feature in the
symptom picture of some prominent anti-sycotic remedies, two of which are discussed below.

Thuja Occidentalis
Made from the Arbor Vitae, or “tree of life”, a species of Cedar tree which grows in damp places.
Known to herbalism for its balsamic resin, invaluable for moving catarrh from congested lungs. The
Cedar is held in many cultures, quite
independently, as a tree which wards off evil
spirits and is planted close to dwellings for this
reason2. Already we see some Thuja remedy
keynotes – susceptible to damp3 and
overproduction from the mucus membranes
along with a tendency towards spiritualism,
including communication with the dead. Small
cones, like warts, form on the branches of the
Cedar. It is the original sycotic remedy, Thuja Occidentalis
1 Ortega, p69
2 Buhner, in lecture at Convergence Festival
3 Vithoulkas, p205

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Mark O'Sullivan, 2nd Year Essay: Sycotic Miasm & Remedies
Irish School of Homeopathy 10. Jan. 2006

identified by Hahnemann as a treatment for suppressed Gonorrhoea.

Individuals needing Thuja feel as though there is something wrong with them and compensate by
extreme strategies of subterfuge both toward themselves and others. Abuse can sometimes be the
trigger for this. The more primal drives are guiltily denied expression within the personality. Hence,
they can become disconnected from themselves in an elaborately constructed social persona
designed to appear virtuous, calm and above reproach4. They can appear open, like Phosphorus5
or very structured, like Kali Carb6 while all the time being secretive and very careful not to expose
their “true” natures. They compartmentalise their lives and can be quite different in temperament to
one set of friends than to another. While all the time behind this façade they can be filled with
doubt, believing themselves to be ugly and contemptuous.

This disassociation can lead to their feeling weak and fragile in their bodies. And through an
excess of mental control, rigidity in thinking and in the physique can result. Therefore, they can be
cruel and obsessive in mind and arthritic in body. The basic drives can be sublimated into religious
fervour and relations with the spirit realms. They feel “split” and estranged from themselves. The
suppressed vital force, needing expression, can manifest physically in growths, tumours, warts,
polyps and moles.

Argentum Nitricum
Silver nitrate is a poisonous compound which used to be used medicinally for eye infections. It is
also used in the development of photographs, due to its sensitivity to light, and in the production of
explosives. Photophobia is an Arg Nit symptom, as is
epilepsy brought on by flashing lights7. They can have
very good, “photographic” memories.

A person in an Arg. Nit. state is hurried, anxious and

excitable. They feel pressure when working to deadlines
and fear failure. They can be riddled with phobias and
superstitions, strange ideas that stick in their heads Argentum Nitricum
leading them to act in a seemingly irrational manner.

4 Sankaran, p203
5 Wallace, p150
6 Vithoulkas, p207
7 Vermeulen, p155

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Mark O'Sullivan, 2nd Year Essay: Sycotic Miasm & Remedies
Irish School of Homeopathy 10. Jan. 2006

They are highly loquacious, lateral thinking troubleshooters8 who are intellectually omnivorous.
Their performance anxiety can lead to gastric problems, “explosive” flatulence, eructations and
diarrhoea9. With all the mental energy firing, nerves can also become frazzled, with heart
palpitations and in extreme cases, epilepsy. They are warm blooded and crave sugar.

Two key issues for the Arg Nit state are fear of losing control and expanded personal boundaries.
The Arg Nit state is one of feeling somehow internally disordered, set apart from others and
perhaps even feeling despised. They fear insanity. They can do nothing right and feel that they
cannot ever succeed. In the face of this they must maintain control and “hold it together”, prevail in
times of crisis or alternatively, just drop everything and leave on a whim if they give in to their
escapist tendencies10. They are accelerated and impulsive, getting into everything around them.
They can lack a sense of social appropriateness, being extremely direct. Their anxiety can be
exacerbated if there are temporal or spacial boundaries set around them, blocking any means of
flight. They are better for open spaces.

Sycotic Nature of the remedies

As already noted, the sycotic miasm is one of extremes on every level of the individual. Both Thuja
and Arg Nit exhibit extreme overreaction to negative internal feelings resulting in a flight to the
mind, where fixed or obsessive ideas and a desire to maintain control result in disordered mental
behaviour which distracts them from that which they would rather not acknowledge – dark inner
feelings of somehow being deficient. This is expressed through polish and control in Thuja but Arg
Nit distracts himself with frenetic activity.

The flip side of this extremity is weakness11 and both remedies experience symptoms of physical
weakness along with obsessive worry about the state of their health and low self esteem.

Physical overproduction is marked in both remedies. In growths and discharges for Thuja, whereas
this is cheifly expressed in flatulence for Arg Nit. Mentally, both remedies are extreme with Arg Nit
in particular turning this into a torrent of verbiage. Ultimately, both have an excess of cowardice
toward their primal energies which causes one to hide and the other to take flight.

8 Sankaran, p16
9 Tyler, p81
10 Sankaran, p17
11 Wallace, p148

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Mark O'Sullivan, 2nd Year Essay: Sycotic Miasm & Remedies
Irish School of Homeopathy 10. Jan. 2006

References

Materia Medica of Homeopathic Medicines

Dr. S.R. Phatak

Remedy Notes 1
John Wallace, SRP Press 1999

Homeopathic Drug Pictures

M.L. Tyler

The Essence of Materia Medica

George Vithoulkas, B. Jain Publishers, New Delhi, 2001

The Soul of Remedies

Rajan Sankaran, Homeopathic Medical Publishers, Mumbai, 1997

Prisma, An arcana of Materia Medica Illuminated

Franz Vermeulen, Emryss, Haarlem, 2004

Notes on the Miasms

Dr. S. Ortega, National Homeopathic Pharmacy, New Delhi, 1980

The Lost Language of Plants

(Also, lecture as part of Convergence Festival, Dublin 2003.)
Stephen Harrod Buhner, Chelsea Green Publishing, VA USA. 2002

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