In this episode, Dr. Robin Murphy, ND, explores the true nature of miasms in homeopathy and how disease suppression leads to deeper health issues. Many believe the psoric miasm originates from scabies, but Dr. Murphy explains why this is a misinterpretation of Hahnemann’s work. He discusses how allopathic suppression forces disease inward, contributing to chronic conditions, immune dysfunction, and long-term health imbalances.
This podcast is an excerpt from the Miasms & Immunity lecture by Dr. Robin Murphy, ND; a foundational companion to his full-length teaching on miasmatic prescribing, which focuses on how to recognize and treat inherited and acquired miasms using intercurrent remedies and the principles of classical homeopathy.
Dr. Murphy's Miasms & Immunity lecture contains information on the homeopathic theory of the five major miasms and their relationship to the immune system. Dr. Murphy teaches diagnosing of various types of miasms and their treatment with indicated remedies and reviews mistakes when treating miasms.
The full Miasms & Immunity lecture is available for streaming access.
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Transcript:
So, a lot of people—I think it's a major mistake—consider miasms as relating to the itch disease. So I gotta talk about that for one second here.
And the itch disease is what? Scabies. So, a majority of homeopaths believe that the psoric miasm is from scabies. This is a major mistake in reading Hahnemann and Hahnemann’s Chronic Diseases. Psora has very little to do with scabies. What scabies does have to do with it is that it was the first instance of Hahnemann observing the phenomenon of suppression, which we'll put down here — allopathic suppression—a major cause of miasms.
Hahnemann describes a term he coined — internal diseases. Now, an internal disease is not a disease in your inside organs. A better term for what Hahnemann meant is internalized diseases. So, this whole idea about itch, and Hahnemann, and parasites, and germs is all from a misinterpretation. Hahnemann was giving an example of one of the major etiologies of miasms, which is suppression.
Someone had an itch—and I'll read you some of his cases—someone had an itch, they put an ointment on it, it went away, and then they got depressed, or they got asthma, or they they died. Okay? And he quotes at least 200 cases, and no one believed him. And they're very interesting cases from that time period. You know, a woman had to go do a dance performance, and she had to get the scabies, the little pustules, off her skin. So she got them all, and then she suffered for years. And Hahnemann gives a remedy and brings it all back.
So, suppression is a major, major component. Our first observation, our first diagnosis of miasm, was from allopathic suppression.
Now, in this vitality and spirit, there are centrifugal forces. These centrifugal forces tend to keep all diseases and morbific influences on the surface. A healthy culture will have more skin problems and less internal organ diseases. Okay? As cultures deteriorate, it becomes the opposite. Now, our culture has deteriorated, where things have left the surface, and now we're having heart, liver, kidney, and internal problems. So, the miasm historically was the first observation of internalization of a disease process—from the surface or from a discharge—and it turned in on the immune system. So, the first example is immune damage. Immune damage means suppression or shock to the immune system, and a person doesn't recover from that.
Hahnemann says—he’s talking about the Israelites and stuff like that—but this applies to everybody. Their simple lives and good habits, freedom from overindulgence in wines and spirituous liquors, meats, and rich foods, kept the disease largely confined to the surface of the body.
Psora—he’s quoting, Moses and all this stuff— was that, Leviticus, that chapter? So you can look that up. And Hahnemann says, "See, even back 3,400 years ago, they had the psoric miasm."
Not until men began to locate or congregate in cities, and their habits began to become corrupt, do we see a breaking forth of the true vigor of this psoric miasm.
So, the whole civilization and constructs of our ways of living are the basis. And that's the depletion of the vitality. And then he says, the real problem did not come from living in the Middle Ages and in cities and all this stuff. It says—he says, when our, when the Orthodox schools finally became aware of chemical therapeutics.
Okay, so what's the true name for an allopathic physician? A chemical doctor. That's the true name for what they do. You have a surgeon, and you have chemical doctors. And everything they do—90% of it—is chemotherapy, chemical therapy.
So, Hahnemann talks about chemical therapeutics. So, the first was our lifestyle depleted us. The second thing he says: everything was complexed by chemical therapeutics, which is drugs.
Okay—mercury, arsenic, quinine—and all of this led to suppressions. And the psoric miasm, instead of being minor inconveniences and little itching and scratching, became—you know—a monster, a hydra-headed monster was his term. The mother of all diseases.
Okay? He says, surgery, cauterizations, douches, removal of organs, everything—drug treatment, suppression of discharges—all made the psoric miasm.
So, he's saying it's new. In ancient days, he says, it goes back thousands and thousands of years, but it was always kept at bay. It wasn't until the allopathic influence forced onto a depleted vitality that we came up with a whole new generations and generations of diseases.
And he says, alcohol, spicy foods—he goes on and on and on—all have the effect of waking up these latent miasms.
Okay, so we'll go through some of those things.
And he says, nature always sets up, if possible, peripheral inhibitory points of the disease. Everybody get that?
So, nature always tries to keep it here. We have a vaginitis—we have this murky energy, this miasmatic energy here—and we have a discharge and this and that. We take antibiotics, or we take even herbal douches and stick them up the vagina, and we stop the discharge. This disease turns internal and becomes larger, and the whole system becomes affected. And that's a miasm.
A miasm is an internalized disease—an imprint and damage to the immune system that has a tendency not to recover on its own.
Now, this is one thing a lot of people won’t want to hear, but this is the only aspect—one of the only few things that Hahnemann and a lot of homeopaths agree: diet and lifestyle, in most cases, that I've seen, will not affect your miasms. You can minimize a miasm, and maybe even make it go dormant again, but this damage to the immune system is not so easily repaired by living a clean life.
The repair is very specific, with a specific remedy, with specific information that will go in there and undo that damage. So, that's a limitation for homeopathy.
Now, whether fasting or really powerful qigong and yoga things will blow out a miasm—I haven’t seen it.
But if a person’s vitality is down here at 20%, and you do holistic therapies, you might take it up to 80%, but you still have your miasm. But that miasm has probably no influence on your health—it’s dormant, it went under.
With homeopathy, you can get the miasm out at any level of your vitality. So, that’s the big advantage of homeopathy—emergency medicine's an advantage, preventive medicine, treating dying people, and getting miasms, repairing the immune system. Homeopathy’s specialty is to repair the immune system. And miasms are the damages.
