Jul 19, 2010
Yesterday my wife and I were having that all too familiar discussion for parents: do the kids have miasms? Ok, so maybe this is not your typical discussion in family health but it may be more relevant than it first appears. Today’s family health conversations are about obesity, Attention Deficit Disorder, Autism, hyperactivity, or asthma—all of which may be influenced by “miasm” like phenomena.
The hypothesis of miasms was first proposed by Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann in 1828. Hahnemann, the originator of homeopathy, used the term miasm in his book “The Chronic Diseases”. The word miasm means cloud or fog. Hahnemann described them as related to chronic disease in this way:
“…or they are diseases of such a character that, with small, often imperceptible beginnings, dynamically derange the living organism, each in its own peculiar manner, and cause it to deviate from the healthy condition in such a way that the automatic life energy, called vital force, whose office it is preserve the health, only opposes to them at the commencement and during their progress, imperfect, unsuitable, useless resistance, but must helplessly suffer (them to spread and) itself to be more and more abnormally deranged, until at length the organism is destroyed; these are termed chronic diseases. They are caused by infection from a chronic miasm.”
A lot has changed since 1828 and the kernel his idea may be obscured by the language used to convey the idea. In Hahnemann’s time the world was just entering the industrial age and many conflicting ideas of how this new world should be viewed were vying for popular acceptance. Hahnemann’s ideas lean towards a group of ideas or philosophies called vitalism. Vitalists believed that a force or energy was responsible for life and that all living things somehow shared this vital force (see Luke Skywalker). These ideas were opposed by another group called Materialists who believed that life was what happened when the parts were put together correctly and energy was applied to the mechanism. The Vitalists saw disease as a disruption or distortion of the vital force and the Materialists saw all cause related to the physical mechanism being broken or misaligned.
In the industrial age, guess which idea people could relate to better? The Materialists won and guys like Hahnemann we viewed as “a little out there!” Of course in our current age of enlightenment this is all clear now,… not! Unfortunately the team names have changed but the same argument rages on. Perhaps it is time to stop picking sides and seek the common ground.
A new science called Epigenetics may provide some new language and solid discussion points that really relate to family health today and provide a new explanation for some of the observations that lead to the theory of miasms. Epigenetics is the science of how certain heritable traits are past from parents to children. These traits are not in the genetic code but influence how the genes express to form those traits. It is a complex science, fitting for the information age and beyond the understanding of industrial thought processes, but it is hard science which avoids the criticisms of being “new age”.
Epigenetic studies have found that things parents do, like smoking, starving, or overeating, create markers that change how genes express themselves. These expressions can take the form of shorter life spans, tendency towards obesity, and other traits whose causes have been difficult to understand.
The Human Genome Project recently completed mapping the 25,000 genes that we all share. As we begin to understand how these gene markers can alter gene expression we are confronted with a much more complex puzzle in genetics. Early theories of genetics explained that genes were like light switches, they were either on or off. Now we know they are more complex with more possible variations of expression.
The information age is symbolized by the personal computer. Amazing graphics, 3-D animation, music, video, ideas, communication, and photos animate the computer and we interact with it; it is real. At the heart of every computer are micro switches, controlled by binary logic of a one or a zero, switches turned on or off and the combination of thousands of these switches create music, graphics, interactive video games, and all the wonders of the electronic age.
Hahnemann may not have had the language or the technology to peer into the mechanisms of heredity, but he did give us a vision that the choice, lifestyle, and challenges of one generation may affect the fabric of creation for the next generation. I think it would be wise to realize that the kernel of his work could be important in the coming age. In a computer it is difficult to define where energy ends and mechanism begins. Perhaps the computer helps us to move beyond the limitations of the industrial framework and realize that a cloud of energy containing information and influencing form is not too farfetched.
It should also be noted that modern science has realized that the water molecule has the potential to store untold quantities of information. I wonder what Hahnemann would say about that?
Erich Worster
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