“The pre-cancer stage embraces all the countless manifestations of chronic disease such as diabetes, epilepsy, psoriasis, eczema, arthritis, in its many forms, asthma, hay fever and numerous tubercular affections as well as the venereal diseases together with the numerous abnormal mental and emotional afflictions which harass the (human) race today.”
— Arthur H. Grimmer, Collected Works, p. 769.

A diathesis is constitutional predisposition toward a particular state or condition. It is recognizable by certain psycho-physical characteristics, by a group of diseases encountered in the ancestors and by a number of associated disorders. Historically, “diathesis” was described in homeopathic medicine in conjunction with, and as a sequel of, a natural (contagious) chronic disease or miasmic disease such as tuberculosis, that is, in the ancestors of the afflicted. The term has been used interchangeably with miasm, even though the “cancer miasm” does not necessarily denote a dyscrasia resulting from an infectious disease (although there is evidence that certain forms of cancer are of an infectious nature). Some classical homeopaths correctly spoke of the psoric, sycotic, syphilitic and tubercular diatheses, a term which I prefer; I am reserving the term “miasm” for infection, as it was originally used by Hahnemann.

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