Psoriasis is also a Herd function
NATIONAL JOURNAL OF HOMOEOPATHY 1995 Jul / Aug Vol IV No 4.
Manu Kothari.
Psoriasis is common, affecting between 1 and 2 per cent of the population in the USA and Europe. It is very persistent, though temporary remissions are common, both with and without treatment". To these broad generalisations in the Oxford Companion to Medical Studies, Wingate adds some more and a reassuring note: "But no lasting cure has yet been found, and the luckiest patients (apart from those whose Psoriasis vanished of its own accord) are those who can come to terms with it as an idiosyncrasy that is unlikely to endanger them and cannot possibly harm anyone else". To belong to a human herd is to be gifted, at random, with Psoriasis.
The term is doubly derived from Greek from Psorian meaning to have the itch and Psen meaning to rub (as if with sand). It is by itself, decent, in skipping the human form and by restricting itself to the extensor surfaces of the limbs, elbows, knees, back and scalp. When it manages to occur all over, it is called Psoriasis Universalis. When affecting flexor surfaces it is called flexural Psoriasis or inverse Psoriasis. When combined with arthritis, it is named Psoriasis arthropathica. Other appellations which make the impotent medical man feel important are psoriasis annularies, annulata, buccalis, circinata, discoidea, figurata, follicularis, guttata, guttate, gyrata, inveterata, lingual, ostracea, palmaris it pustular, pustular, rupioides (like the Indian rupee), and volar. Just as a thorn by any other name pricks as deep, so the diagnosis of psoriasis embellished by any other label remains as self determining, inscrutable and habitant.
Let us now understand why and how Psoriasis is yet another normal herd function. By being common, universal and affecting steadily to one-two per cent of a population. Psoriasis elevates itself to the status of such common disorders as cancer, Schizophrenia, diabetes, clubfoot or a coronary, each of which must occur in a herd in a randomirobabilistic fashion. A Probabilistic Disorder or order is characterized by medical man being certain about its incidence at the herd level Geneticists profess to be knowledgeable about such NORMAL phenomena by consigning them to polygenic or multifactorial inheritance which is a genetic way of saying "I really dont know". To Homoeopaths who might be worried or agitated over the NORMALCY of Psoriasis, let peace come to them from the realisation that Psoriasis is a manifestation of a normal cellular activity (See below) and shall be a part of the human phenotype like the human nose or the finger prints.
Leblond and Moorhead in Canada, worked on the proliferative properties of human cell population to classify them into
- Renewing or ceaselessly multiplying
- Expanding - Multiplying only on demand, and
- Perennial - that never multiply once embryogenesis is over.
Human skin (and mucosa) thrives on being what is, by ceaselessly throwing out cells, at a rate faster than any Cancer cell, a fact that explains the beating the Skin, Mucosa or bone marrow or takes when bone therapy is given against Cancer.
In non-Psoriatic skin or in Psoriatic Skin, that is, in its natural remission, the proliferating cells from the deeper layers of the skin, are allowed to migrate to the superficial layers in such a way that the skin thickness and number of cells per unit volume of epidermis remains constant. "In Psoriatic skin the whole process is accelerated, new cells are formed more quickly than dead cells are being shed, and the living undercoat of the skin becomes too thick. The primary defect may be in the capillary blood vessels of the skin which are abnormally tortuous and dilated in predisposed people whether or not Psoriasis is developed". (Wingate, Penguin Medical encyclopedia).
It is a valid generalization that much of normal embryogenesis has been understood or inferred from the abnormalities that make their appearance albeit quite infrequently. The abnormal as it were amplifies the normal, that being subtle defies our understanding and appreciation. Psoriasis comes now and again to remind us of the ceaseless dynamism of supercancerously proliferating cell populations that maintain an inner harmony and balance that make for the beauty of the skin of Madhuri Dixit. A beautiful unblemished skin is a psoriasis - prone area in which Psoriasis has chosen not to occur, the burden of exhibiting it being taken over by another individual whose skin, in essence, is no less beautiful than that of the acclaimed beauty queen.
