EPIDEMIC AND HOMEOPATHY

Epidemics have perturbed humankind from time to time , be  it plague in Europe in the middle age , smallpox , yellow fever in America .

World wide pandemic of 1918_1919 which is estimated to have killed 50_100 million people.

Recently there have been epidemics of swineFlue ,Zika , Encephalitis,Ebola , Influenza , chikungunya, dengue etc. The present day world is experiencing a tumultuous situation , an extraordinary medical emergency pan globe in the form of covid19 .

Scientific evidence in almost all such epidemics clearly showcases that homeopathy can be used both therapeutically and as prophylactic in epidemic disease with success.

Dr. Hahnemann sir talked about epidemics in many aphorism of organon ,in the introduction of ORGANON, lesser writings like FRIEND OF HEALTH published in two volumes 1792 , 1795 , respectively .

IN INTRODUCTION OF ORGANON

• when they prescribe , in large doses , cinchona bark , for all epidemic intermittent fever ,. Which is often distributed over large tracts of  country , the old school practitioners palpably manifest their stupidity , for these disease assume a different character almost every year and hence demand for their care , almost always , a different homeopathic remedy , by means of one or a few very small doses of which they may always be radically cured in a few days .
• Now ,because these epidemic fever have periodical attacks and the adherents of the old school see nothing’s in all intermittent fevers , bu there types are neither know nor cure to know any other febrifuge but cinchona , these routine practitioners imagine if they can but suppress the types of the epidemic intermittent fever with enormous doses of cinchona and it’s costly alkaloid .

IN APHORISM OF ORGANON OF MEDICINE* DR.HAHNEMANN SIR TALK ABOUT EPIDEMICS DISEASES

 • APHORISM NO. _ 73

• Allied to these are those diseases in which many persons are attacked with very similar sufferings from the same cause (epidemically ) , these diseases generally become infectious (contagious ) when they prevail among thickly congregated masses of human beings .

• FOOTNOTE OF APHORISM NO. 73

• “SUBSEQUENTLY to the year 1801 a kind of purpura miliaris (roodvonk ), which came from the west , was by physician confounded with the SCARLET FEVER , notwithstanding that they exhibited totally different symptoms, that the latter found its prophylactic and curative remedy in Belladonna ,the former in ACONITE, and that the former was generally merely sporadic , while the latter was invariably epidemic . Of late years it seems as if the two occasionally joined to form an eruptive fever of a peculiar kind ,for which neither the one nor yet the other remedy,alone will be found to be exactly homeopathic.

FOOTNOTE OF APHORISM NO. 81

• Even those epidemic diseases , which un_doubtedly may be propagated in every separate epidemic by a peculiar contagious principle which remains unknown to us , are designated , in the old school of medicine ,   by particular names , just as if they were well_known fixed diseases that invariably recurred under the same form ,as hospital fever , gaol fever , camp fever , putrid fever , etc .
• THE CANDID SYDENHAM alone perceived this , when he insists upon the necessity of not considering any epidemic disease as having occured before and treating it in the same way as another , since all that occur successively ,be they ever so numerous , differ from one another “

APHORISM NO.100

• It may easily happen that in the first case of an epidemic disease that presents itself to the physician’s notice he does not an once obtain a knowledge of its complete picture ,as it is only by a close observation of several cases of every such collective disease that he can become conversant with the totality of its sign and symptoms.
• The carefully observing physician can , however , from the examination of even the first and second patients ,often arrive so nearly at a knowledge of the true state as to have in his mind a characteristic portrait of it , and even to succeed in finding a suitable , homoeopathically adopted remedy for it .

APHORISM NO.102

• In the course of writing down the symptom of several cases of this kind the sketch of the disease picture become ever more and more complete ,not more spun out and verbose ,but more significant (more characteristic ) , and including more of the peculiarities of this collective disease , on the one hand ,the general symptom (eg_ loss of appetite , sleeplessness ,&c.) Become precisely defined as to their peculiarities .,and on the other ,the more marked and special symptoms which are peculiar to but few disease and of rarer occurrence ,at least in the same combination ,become prominent and constitute what is the characteristics of this malady
• All those affected with the disease prevailing at a given time have certainly contracted it  from one and the same source and hence are suffering from the same disease ,but the whole extent of such an epidemic disease and the totality of its symptom (the knowledge whereof , which is essential for enabling us to choose the most suitable homeopathic remedy for this array of symptom , is obtained by a complete survey of the morbid picture )cannot be learners from one single patients ,but is only to be perfectly deduced (abstracted ) and ascertained from the suffering of several patients of different constitutions. .

FOOTNOTE OF APHORISM NO.235

• DR.BOENNINGHAUSEN , who has rendered more services to our beneficent system of medicine than any other of my disciples , has best elucidated this subject ,which demands so much care , and  has facilitated the choice of the efficient remedy for the various EPIDEMICS of fever ,in his work entitled VERSUCH EINER HOMÖOPATHISCHEN THERAPIE DER WECHSELFIEBER , 1833 , MUNSTER BEI REGENSBERG. “HOMOEOPATHIC OUTLOOK TOWARDS PREVENTION AND CURE OF EPIDEMIC “

• According to homeopathy  we tend to raise the level of immunity where it is persistently low  to  the optimum limit  and  vice versa for high immunity cases .
• In this manner homeopathic approach what’s the maintenance of optimum immunity range , the practice system  tends  to  prevent and cure all sorts of disease . Same goes for the curious cases of covid _19
• There are lot of medicine available in this HOMOEOPATHIC system of practice where the immunity can be maintain in the optimum range and that shall lead to the prevention of entry of the virus in the first case of even to the cure after being affected by the same
• Whenever an infection affects the human being ,it is not necessary at all that the entire race undergoes the trauma of suffering from that particular disease .
• The effect of the infection in a body largely depends upon the reaction  of the “immunity system ” even before covid19 , the world has encountered many epidemic infectious diseases across the globe .
• Be it SARS ,MERS, SPANISH FLU , MEASLES , SMALLPOX , ETC DURING THE PERIOD OF SPREAD ,million pershed and million were affected .Even in those outbreaks , the disease could not affect the entire race owing to the immunity system .
• It is necessary for the immunity to be optimum , neither nor more , for a being .
• When it is deficient , it opens flood gates making humans forever to multiplies of infectious disease , and in excess immunity case ,it makes humans hypersensitive to give an excess response in any normal climate and shall suffer from disease due to it .

ACCORDING TO APHORISM NO.31

THE INIMICAL FORCES PARTLY PSYCHICAL , PARTLY PHYSICAL , TO WHICH OUR TERRESTRIAL EXISTENCE IS EXPOSED , WHICH ARE TERMED , MORBIFIC NOXIOUS AGENTS ,DO NOT POSSESS THE POWER OF MORBIDLY DERANGING THE HEALTH OF MAN UNCONDITIONALLY

 APHORISM NO.33

• THAT THE MORBIFIC NOXIOUS AGENTS POSSESS A POWER OF MORBIDITY DERANGING MEN’S HEALTH THAT IS SUBORDINATE AND CONDITIONALLY .

EPIDEMIC IN THE PAST : HOW DID HOMOEOPATHY HELP

• preventive use of homeopathy was first applied in 1801 during an epidemic of SCARLET fever in konigstiger ,germany, when Hahnemann prescribed a single dose of Belladonna , as the GE to susceptible children in the town with 100% success.
• Camphora , cup.met , verat alb, proved successful in different stages of the cholera epidemic (1831_1832)And it was reported that mortality rate in european hospital was 7 percent to 10 percent , where’s with conventional treatment , it varied b/w 40 and 80 percent .
• Camphora saw another epidemic of cholera (1846) where mortality rate amongst patients treated with homeopathy was 5 to 16 percent as compared to 54 to 90 percent amongst patients treated conventionally .
• The belladonna ,cal.carb, tuberculinum , regime adopted in a phased manner as a preventive for Japanese encephalitis in 1999 for a period of 3 years brought down the mortality and morbidity rate of Japanese encephalitis in the state of Andhra Pradesh .
• Dengue fever outbreak occur in Brazil (2001_12) identified GE Eupatorium perfoliatum.
• During the 2016 outbreak of dengue and chikungunya in Delhi , Eupatorium perf.
• As GE COULD PREVENT about 85 percent of the population in the homeopathic group .
• Historically , homeopathic treatment with indicated homeopathic remedy based on individualisation has help relieve and save lives in epidemics of diarrhea ,typhus ,hospital fever in 1813, diphtheria in 1862_64 and kerato_conjunctivitis in Cuba in 1995 etc .
• In recent years ,success of adjacent homeopathic treatment  in the epidemic of dengue and acute encephalitis syndrome have been reported in studies conducted by CCRH.

About Author:

DR. ABHISHEK KUMAR

PG (SCHOLAR )BATCH -20-21.

GOVT HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICAL COLLEGE BHOPAL (MP)