Sciatica. The Syphilinum Nosode
When I try to explain in a few words how we managed to deal with my husband's sciatica (inflammation of the sciatic nerve), it never works.
Because if you don't first explain what Hahnemann's miasmatic theory is — the story can't even begin.
And if you don't clarify what a nosode is — the story can't end.
Everything started in the winter of 2020, when my husband began experiencing symptoms of sciatica.
Maybe the trigger was the stress and worry over his mother’s illness.
Maybe it was the COVID infection we had around New Year's.
He had a history of back problems — two sequestered herniated discs, issues in the thoracic and lumbar spine...
And all of these periodic flare-ups had been “treated” with homeopathic remedies.
But something didn’t feel right.
My husband was turning to homeopathy so often (and not just for his back) that it started to resemble allopathic treatment.
What had gone wrong?
Should we call his previous treatment incorrect or incomplete?
After all, he kept having to go back for help — over many years.
One remedy would help, he’d feel great for a while — and then a new issue would arise.
Then another remedy. And so on.
So we began to wonder — can homeopathy truly make someone well?
And that brought us to a bigger question:
"What does it even mean to be “a healthy person”?
Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, believed that almost every person is already ill at birth.
We inherit a kind of miasmatic burden — a disease passed down through generations.
He identified the first and most ancient miasm as Psora.
But over time, humanity became host to four main miasms:
Psora
Pseudo-Psora (Tubercular miasm)
Sycosis
Syphilis
We rarely see a patient with just one disease that we can treat with a perfectly matched remedy and declare them cured.
So in my early days as a homeopath, I kept asking myself — what am I doing wrong?
I’d read the writings of famous homeopaths.
They’d describe the remedy, then the patient’s suffering, then the simillimum in the correct potency — and voilà!
The person is healed.
But I couldn’t recreate those results in real life.
Take my husband, for example.
His treatment wasn’t even started by me — it began with a well-known Kyiv homeopath, Tatyana Demyanovna Popova,
and was continued by her son Anton.
He was prescribed a huge number of remedies over the years.
A lot of issues were resolved — ulcers of the stomach and duodenum fully healed, chronic pancreatitis improved, excess weight,
deep depression, alcohol abuse, panic attacks…
So many things it’s hard to remember them all — he had quite the “medical résumé.”
By 2020, he’d been treated with homeopathy for 13 years — and yet here he was again, ill.
Hahnemann came to his theory of chronic diseases nearly 200 years ago.
Even back then, he wrote that these conditions rarely appear in isolation.
Instead, they are intricate compositions — combinations of several, often dissimilar, disease patterns that merge into a complex structure.
These “constructions” of chronic illness cause deep-seated pathology in the body.
And to treat them effectively, simply matching the simillimum — a remedy most similar to the current symptoms — is not enough.
That’s where Miasmatic Theory comes into play.
We try to determine which miasm is currently active — Psora, Sycosis, Tubercular, or Syphilitic — and choose the remedy accordingly.
But even among the countless homeopathic remedies that are considered anti-miasmatic,
their effect is sometimes not sufficient to truly make a person healthy.
That’s when we turn to nosodes:
Tuberculinum
Psorinum
Medorrhinum
Syphilinum
Thuja
(Though Thuja isn’t technically a nosode, it’s often used as one because of its strong anti-sycotic action.)
Nosodes are some of my absolute favorite homeopathic tools.
When you recognize the need for a nosode in a specific case — bam! — and you witness a miracle.
Every time, it inspires awe and restores hope:
hope that the effort wasn't in vain, that we really can relieve suffering,
that we can remove miasmatic burdens… and that inherited predispositions no longer have to rule someone's life.
But here opinions begin to diverge, at least slightly.
Many respected homeopaths believe that although nosodes are essential,
they can’t remove miasmatic taint on their own.
They aren’t curative by themselves.
For example, Kent once said:
“Psorinum does not cure Psora. Syphilinum does not cure Syphilis. Medorrhinum does not cure Sycosis.”
But — a nosode matched to the active miasm can unblock vital responses
and give the organism back its ability to react.
If the body doesn’t respond to a well-chosen simillimum, or healing is slow due to sycotic interference — we give Medorrhinum or Thuja.
If the cause of blockage is syphilitic — then Syphilinum is the nosode we reach for.
And so on.
But there’s also another group of homeopaths who believe that nosodes can independently cure inherited pathology.
A brilliant master among them was Dr. Burnett.
He was next-level.
Using nosodes alone, he could achieve results that other homeopaths couldn’t reach, even with the best simillimums.
And who’s to say that’s wrong?
Burnett simply went a less traditional route — experimenting constantly with new nosodes and organ remedies.
Over time, he perfected his approach and achieved remarkable success.
I’m not there yet 😏
I still walk the path of the first group: nosode plus simillimum.
But either way — it’s clear that without nosodes,
you’re not going to budge the boulder of chronic illness.
Each miasm has its own signature.
And if you take time to study and memorize those characteristics,
they’ll jump out at you during case-taking —
giving you a pretty good idea which miasm is active now.
Now we can return to the sciatica...
From the moment this illness flared up, my husband was convinced he wouldn’t survive until spring unless it stopped.
The pain was relentless — day and night —
so intense it made it impossible to stand, walk, or even lie down.
In every position, from his lower back and right hip all the way down his leg,
piercing electrical shocks would shoot through,
combined with constant, gnawing pain.
After a couple of weeks, our kids and I got used to the sharp yelps he made just trying to roll over on the couch.
The only relief came when he lay on his right side, pressing the leg and hip down with his full body weight.
Even then, he could sleep only an hour or two at most.
Then the leg would go numb — and the cycle of despair began again.
In a month, he lost 15 kilograms.
Conventional medicine, as usual, offered painkillers — from Diclofenac to opioids;
odd IV infusions that sometimes helped some patients, but often triggered bizarre complications.
Doctors even advised reading online reviews before trying them.
And of course — surgery. No guarantees. Just “We have to do something.”
Then came the usual list: massages, osteopathy, herbal infusions, essential oils, poultices, mud therapy, acupuncture...
Most of these gave only temporary relief — a few hours at best.
I turned to homeopathy right away.
We tried a lot of remedies.
Nothing worked.
I had never treated sciatica before — and after a while, I started to wonder if this was just one of those conditions where homeopathy can’t always help.
Most of my prescriptions drifted unconsciously toward the syphilitic miasm:
Aurum metallicum
Tellurium
Galium
Veratrum album
Viscum album
various Kalium remedies...
Nothing helped.
Logically, a nosode was needed.
But I hesitated.
Because clearly, the remedy had to be Syphilinum — and I’d never used it before.
I was scared.
Even the word syphilis carries such terrifying weight, it makes you want to avoid it.
What if I made things worse?
What if I hurt him?
But watching the man I love suffer like that would force even the most cautious doctor to take a leap of faith.
He took a single dose of Syphilinum 200C —
and the case began to unfold before my eyes.
Next came Mercurius solubilis 30C.
That potency turned out to be too high for him — so we lowered it to Mercurius solubilis 12C.
Two weeks after the initial dose of Syphilinum, we repeated it.
From then on, we followed this rhythm:
whenever sciatica symptoms returned, he took Mercurius solubilis 12C.
This happened every three to four weeks.
The last dose was in mid-summer.
In total, we worked with this layer of disease for less than six months.
As one of the old masters — I believe it was Kent — once said:
"When the symptoms of the disease we’re treating disappear, I’m always curious — what will remain of the old illness? And what will arise in its place?"
Well, here’s what happened:
after Syphilinum, my husband developed astigmatism.
after Mercurius solubilis, he broke out in eczema on two fingers of his left hand and slightly on one finger of his right.
(He had skin eruptions as a child that were suppressed with ointments and “lotions.”)
Kent also said that true recovery can’t happen in chronic cases unless skin eruptions appear during treatment.
And indeed — as the skin symptoms emerged, the sciatica faded away.
That was our sign:
we were moving in the right direction.
“From within — outwards,” as per Hering’s Law of Cure.
Later, I kept reflecting on the case and began to understand the syphilitic miasm more deeply.
Looking closely, the syphilitic burden was right there on the surface.
There were serious psychiatric issues in the family history — even suicide.
And my husband himself had a clear tendency toward self-destruction:
alcoholism, frequent threats of suicide, deep depression...
Physical signs too:
a prominent chin and lower jaw, changes in his bite, uneven teeth, enamel problems.
A large diastema (a gap between the front teeth), early tooth loss.
Constant dark plaque on the teeth — which would reappear within days even after a professional cleaning.
There are also the obsessive behaviors typical of the syphilitic miasm:
Avoiding cracks in sidewalks, lining up syllables from shop signs, tapping his body if he stepped on a manhole cover...
I think my husband used to count curb joints — that’s called arithmomania 😉
And of course, “syphilitics” love to collect things — anything they think is “valuable,” old or new, with no limits.
Our house was living proof:
- collections of Soviet toy soldiers
- ten different editions of The Three Musketeers WWI weapons
- bandanas from the Orange Revolution
- three Citroën hoods
- five pairs of old mountaineering boots...
And then there were the changes in his addictions.
The craving for alcohol — especially overconsumption — just disappeared.
And after he stopped taking Mercurius and developed eczema on his fingers,
he said he wanted to quit smoking. (He’d been smoking since he was 14. Now he was 40.)
And… he quit!
Because syphilis is always about destruction and self-destruction.
And the best helpers for that are alcohol, tobacco, drugs…
But once you remove that layer of disease —
those things just aren’t needed anymore.
It might seem like this was easy 😀
You follow the protocol and boom — results.
But no. In reality, I was scared.
It felt like I was touching a deep secret of human nature —
something I had been allowed to glimpse…
And then, with homeopathy, I could not only touch it — but actually redirect it toward healing.
And then analyze it.
Learn from it.
And do it again.
Whew!
How could that not leave you speechless?
It’s incredibly inspiring!
And I don’t ever want to stop.
P.S.
This article includes materials from:
L.A. Deeva — "Syphilinum, Part One – Hahnemann Clinic"
James T. Kent — "On the Sycotic Miasm – 1796 Web"
14 April 2022
Pula Croatia
