Book recommendation
/Very good book that helped a lot of insomnia clients to understand sleep patterns: Gregg Jacobs, Say Good Night to Insomnia.
Homeopathy in the public health system: the experience in Lucca Hospital (1998-2011) Elio Rossi
/Homeopathy in the public health system: the experience in Lucca Hospital (1998-2011)Elio Rossi
Homeopathic Clinic, Campo di Marte Provincial Hospital, Lucca (Italy)
E-mail: omeopatia@usl2.toscana.it (E. Rossi)
The Homeopathic Clinic in Lucca, funded by the Region of Tuscany, was originally set up in 1998 as part of a pilot project designed to evaluate the possibility of including complementary medicine (CM) into the public health care system.
The following are the main activities in the field of clinics, research and education carried out in these years.
Outcome: The data have been updated with those collected from September 1998 to December 2010: 2,592 patients visited for a total of 6,812 consecutive visits. The results were assessed using the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital Outcome Score (GHHOS).
Paediatric patients: An observational longitudinal study was carried out on 551 paediatric patients below or equal to the age of 14 years (mean age 5.9 years), that is 25.7% of 2,141 patients consecutively examined from 1998 to 2008.
Adverse effects: In order to assess the possible risk arising from the use of homeopathy a prospective study was carried out to investigate the adverse drug reactions related to homeopathic medicines. Out of 335 homeopathic consecutive follow-up visits, nine adverse reactions were reported (2.68%).
Clinical risk management: A training course for the health professionals of Tuscan public centres of CM, including homeopathy, was conducted. The aim was to develop a plan for the management of clinical risk starting from the analysis of the activities in the clinics of CM, and a systematic approach aiming at identifying and preventing risks.
Homeopathic aggravation: To evaluate the type, inten- sity and frequency of homeopathic aggravation, in particular with Quintamillesimal dilutions (LM or Q), and its prog- nostic value, a retrospective study was realized on the basis of clinical data. The study examines 1,108 patients consec- utively visited, and 441 cases with follow-up. Sixty-three of them (14%) reported a homeopathic aggravation.
Compliance: In order to understand why the patients did not return for follow-up consultations (drop-out) a tele- phone survey was carried out on each patient visited from 6/1,2002 to 5/31, 2003, who did not return for a follow-up visit. 37 patients out of 73 referred to the effec- tiveness of the treatment and the improvement in their state of health as the reason why they did not return.
Long term outcome of atopic patients: To study the outcome of atopic diseases (AD) in paediatric patients ho- meopathically treated and the clinical evolution of 213 (38.6%) with atopic diseases out of 551 children consecu- tively examined from 1998 to 2008. After 5 years from the first visit, all the children were contacted for long-term evaluation of the disease.
Anti-cancer treatment: An outpatient Clinic of integra- tive medicine applied to oncology was set up in October 2010. In the preliminary stage of activities, 97 patients were visited, with various types of cancer.
Cost-benefit evaluation: A study of the Homeopathic Clinic of Lucca demonstrated cost/effectiveness of home- opathy in respiratory diseases. Cost variation for the spe- cific chemical/therapeutic subgroup recorded a decrease in the first and second year of e 46.29% (p < 0.01, n = 105) and e 47.45% (n = 72) respectively.
All these data demonstrate the validity of the integration carried out in Tuscany and the need to strengthen and consolidate the activities of complementary medicine in public healthcare structures.
Best Homeopathic Remedies!
/What are my top ten remedies? If you knew you were going to be stuck on a desert island - what would be the essential remedies to have?
1. ACONITE - I carry Aconite in various potencies with me... even though I always hope I will not EVER need to use it. It can be used as a first response for SHOCK. When I had been hit by a truck while riding my bicycle, my friend and colleague gave me a dose of aconite while I was still lying on the pavement and she said my pallor went from the colour of the pavement to a healthy pink. ACONITE is also great for anxiety and panic attacks. Also for the first signs of a flu or cold if the onset of it is very sudden or brought on by exposure to a cold wind.
2. ARNICA - Arnica is a MUST HAVE for sooo many things that I would like to just list what I've successfully used ARNICA for all here: Shock, pain from INJURY like sprains, strains, and contusions and to resolve OLD CHRONIC PAINS from an old accident or injury that occurred years previous. Headaches, toothaches, after dental surgery to control pain and bleeding, excessive nosebleeds, insomnia, jet lag, swelling after tattoos, PMS cramping, pains/injury after a vaccine.
3. NUX VOMICA (Colubrina for the prettier name) - for any results of overconsumption (as in overeating, over drinking, over prescribing). For nausea, diarrhea or vomiting from a toxic effect of any substance (food poisoning, alcohol poisoning). For toxic headaches, detox fevers, and excessive eructations (burping farting) from an allergic or toxic overload.
4. IGNATIA - when bad news or grief or a deep disappointment his your heart hard. Where you are overwhelmingly upset and can't see the end of that feeling. This remedy can help bring some light into dark feelings or to ailments that have been brought on since the time of a deep emotional shock or loss.
5. Phosphorus - in case of persistent coughs, excessive nosebleeds or other bleeding.
6. Rhus tox - Specifically known for helping with mouth ulcers, herpes and even chicken pox, rhus tox can be sueful for many sudden allergic responses that show up on the skin. Also it is good for pains from injuries that are already at the stage where a bit of motion helps but too much causes the pain to return. Better said it is useful when the pains come on worst at first motion after not having moved for a while.
7. BRYONIA - for intense pains with any movement. This could be a result of a fever/flu or even after an injury or chronic condition such as carpal tunnel or repetitive stress injury. Especially good for the smaller joints such as ankles, wrists, shoulders. When I was having troubles just picking up a frying pan because my whole wrist would go completely weak from any sudden movements (RSI), I took some Bryonia and was cooking away right away!
8. GELSEMIUM - nervousness and anticipatory anxiety. Diarrhea from anxiety usually to do with an upcoming event. For flus, colds or fevers that have a slow onset and make you feel like you can't do anything with complete body lethargy and ache that feels overwhelmingly heavy.
9. Hepar Sulph - for painful infected wounds, boils and ulcerated wounds
10. Mercury – amazing for mouth ulcers and nasty sore throats
Of course, there are sooo many more 'must have' remedies that can help get rid of nasty health problems and prevent complications from simple symptoms of deeper health concerns.
Next remedies to get: RUTA, APIS, Hypericum, Ledum, Pulsatilla, Chamomilla, etc...
Interview with Dr. Nelie Johnson MD about mental/emotion state of mind versus diagnoses.
/Interview with Dr. Nelie Johnson about mental/emotion state of mind versus diagnoses. http://blogtalk.vo.llnwd.net/o23/show/3/268/show_3268929.mp3
Eczema: Homeopathic Help for Sore and Itchy Skin
/Eczema: Homeopathic Help for Sore and Itchy Skinfrom the blog: http://homeopathyplus.com.au/eczema-homeopathic-help-for-sore-and-itchy-skin/
Eczema is a widespread and unpleasant condition caused by the skin’s overreaction to common substances such as soap, food and dust. The skin reddens, itches, and becomes dry, scaly or bubbly. Annoyingly, these dry patches of skin may also ooze a watery or sticky fluid. Eczema has the ability to make life miserable for young and old.
How far the rash spreads depends on the person. Some sufferers can be covered head to toe in a painful, weeping rash that requires hospitalisation and wet bandages while others will only have one or two dry spots. Even mild eczema can be highly undesirable. Unsightly rashes on the hands and face are not a great help to one’s social life.
Causes of Eczema
Eczema can be hereditary. If one or both parents had eczema, you are likely to as well. The other risk factor is vaccines. Studies show that those who are vaccinated are more likely to have eczema or a range of other allergies than those who are not. So, What Can You Do?
If scratching away at dry, red, and cracked skin is a part of your life, why not make the necessary changes that will either reduce or eliminate the problem completely? Removing the triggers will bring rapid relief to the soreness and itching while homoeopathy can help you get to the seat of the problem to deal with it once and for all. The remainder of this article will help you do just that. It will explore the common triggers foreczema, give some self-help tips, and then look at the homeopathic remedies commonly used by homeopaths to treat and clear eczema. Identifying Common Triggers
Things You Eat: When your immune system sees common food as an invader, eczema will result. Dairy products, cow’s and soy milk baby formulas, seafood, peanuts, sesame seeds, eggs, nuts, acidic fruit, and gluten-containing products made from wheat, rye, barley, and oats are common triggers for anover-sensitive immune system.
Trickily, food may not be the problem at all, but the artificial additives in it. You may have no problem with a cut of steak but a fast food hamburger could be a whole different story.
Environmental Chemicals: Modern soaps, skin creams, perfumes, shampoos, conditioners, fabric softeners, paints, dyes, laundry and washing up detergents are anything but safe and gentle. Many chemicals they contain will all worsen eczema. Cigarettes and cigarette smoke is another culprit. To break the habit,Smoke Stop! can help.
Hot and Cold: Extremes of temperature irritate eczema, as can humid or very dry air – the much loved air-conditioner may not be man’s best friend after all! Hot showers or baths also act as triggers.
Natural Substances: Dust mites; moulds; feathers, pet hair, and dander; and grasses, plants, and pollens are well known allergens (things that produce a reaction). These allergens may be small but really pack a punch with eczema.
Emotional Stress: Our emotional health and stability is often reflected on our skin. Over-work, unhappiness, and stress can all worsen eczema. Self-Help Measures
Avoid woollen and synthetic clothing as both can irritate eczema. Look for natural fibres such as cotton. Launder new clothes before wearing to remove free-floating dyes and chemicals.
Double-rinse clothes after washing to remove all detergent. Diets low in essential fatty acids contribute to dry and inflamed skin. Oils such as flaxseed and fish oils are rich in omega 3 fatty acids that reduce inflammation and improve allergies. Add them to your diet. Soothe your skin with an oatmeal bath. Place a cup of oatmeal into an old stocking and let the water run through it as you fill your bath. Milk or apple cider vinegar dabbed onto the eczema can soothe the rash and settle the inflammation. Be warned – the apple cider vinegar may sting a little at first. Honey also relieves the inflammation and any infection. Apply to the affected area and cover. Organic coconut oil is a gentle and safe alternative to sorbolene cream for dry and sore skin. Sorbolene contains preservatives, emulsifiers, and mineral oil – substances you don’t want to absorb through your skin and which can actually worsen eczema in some people.
Treat your Eczema with Homeopathy
Homeopathic remedies frequently relieve or eradicate eczema – not only for people but animals as well. They are safe to use with babies through to the elderly. Many different remedies can be used depending on the symptoms of the sufferer but some of the main ones are listed below.
It is important to note that while these remedies can be used by yourself at home to safely treat numerous acute problems, eczema is a chronic complaint that should have the careful management of a trained homeopath. If you are not sure of what you are doing, too strong a dose, or too many doses of even the best matching remedy can cause a temporary aggravation of your eczema. While this will not be harmful, it is best avoided.
For good results in the treatment of your eczema, please use the services of a fully qualified homeopath.
Many of the following remedies are found in home-use kits. Arsenicum Album (Ars)
Key Symptoms: Eczema that itches and burns. Rough, scaly skin. Skin red, as if burnt. Must scratch until skin raw. Worse for: cold. Better for: warmth; warm or hot water.
Supporting Symptoms: Skin hard and parchment-like. Scratching the skin raw improves the itching. Itch worsens as skin heals. Worse for: undressing; cool air; right side.
Other Comments: Those who need Ars. can be anxious about many things, including health, and tend to be restless. Anxiety worsens from midnight to 2 AM. Pains are usually burning in nature while the person can feel chilly in general. Calcarea Carbonica (Calc-c)
Key Symptoms: Rough, dry skin with a tendency to crack.
Supporting Symptoms: Itching blisters between fingers and in bends of elbows. Bran-like coating on skin. Worse for: water. Better for: scratching.
Other Comments: Those needing Calc-c are often overweight or flabby. They tend to be obstinate and worry about safety or security. They may be anxious about health, flying, insanity, mice, or heights. There can be a love of eggs, ice cream, and milk. Sweat will often occur on the back of the neck. Graphites (Graph)
Key Symptoms: Eczema that oozes a thick yellow or honey-like discharge. Dry, rough skin or hard, thick skin with cracks. Eczema and cracks behind the ears. Worse for: night; warmth of bed.
Supporting Symptoms: Skin covered by crusts and scales. Eczema and cracks on skin heal slowly. Eczema that leads to asthma especially when suppressed by steroid creams. Eczema worse on the left side of the body.
Comments: Those who need Graphites are often indecisive, prone to depression, and easily affected by small things. They like to think things through slowly and can suffer from obesity. Complaints may be worse on the left side of the body. Chicken is oftena favourite food while salt, sweets, and fish may be disliked. There may be a tendency for keloid scarring. Medorrhinum (Med)
Key Symptoms: Eczema from birth. Eczema and asthma combined. Itching to the point of bleeding.
Supporting Symptoms: History of bright red nappy rash with a sharply defined rather than speckly border. Better for: being by the sea.
Other Comments: Those who need Medorrhinum are often passionate and full of extremes. They can be either introverted or extroverted, or swing between the two. They come to life at night and frequently bite their nails. Medorrhinum types like to sleep on their stomach and will often get into the knee-chest position to relieve complaints. Natrum Muriaticum (Nat-m)
Key Symptoms: Eczema with small blisters and intense itching. Blisters weep a watery fluid on scratching and turn to cracks as they dry. Eczema in hair margins or eyebrows.
Supporting Symptoms: Eczema with suppressed emotions or following grief. Eczema where thighs rub, in groin, or between fingers. The skin may be greasy.
Other Comments: Those needing Nat-m are sensitive and easily hurt but may not show it. They often have a strong history of grief or disappointment. Those who need Nat-m.can be serious, self-contained, and prefer to keep to themselves. Headaches and migraines can develop from the heat of the sun. There may be a dislike of slimy food and a liking for bread, pasta, and salty things. Rhus toxicodendron (Rhus-t)
Key Symptoms: Intensely itchy eczema with frequent oozing. Small blisters that break on scratching and ooze a watery fluid. Rash often on arms, hands or genital region.
Supporting Symptoms: Restlessness with the eczema. Hard, thick skin. Blisters break, crust, and then crack. Rashes that burn and prickle. Worse for: cold air; cold damp weather; getting wet. Better for: running scalding hot water over the eruption.
Other Comments: Those who need Rhus-t will be restless and feel better for motion. Complaints are generally worse for cold and damp weather or environments and better for warmth and dryness. Often there is a love of cold milk. Rhus-t is one of the main remedies needed in the treatment of chickenpox. Sulphur (Sulph)
Key Symptoms: Intense itching that must be scratched. Scratching to the point of bleeding. Pleasurable scratching. Itch that burns. Redness of rash. Worse for: warmth of the bed; becoming overheated; bathing.
Supporting Symptoms: Moist eczema. Skin has a dirty appearance. Discharge develops an offensive or eggy smell. Worse for: night; perspiration; wool. Better for: cold; cold applications.
Other Comments: One of the most common remedies for eczema. Can be easily confused with Psorinum. Those needing Sulphur can be opinionated and philosophical. They also have a reputation for being messy and lazy. Psorinum (Psor)
Key Symptoms: Intense itching that must be scratched, sometimes to the point of bleeding. Worse for: night; warmth of the bed.
Supporting Symptoms: Dirty appearance of skin. Eczema behind the ears. Despair and depression with the eczema. Infected eczema. Offensiveness of the eczema or discharge. Generally feel chilly. Better for: warmth.
Other Comments: One of the most common remedies for eczema. Can be easily confused with Sulphur. Those needing Psor. can be anxious and despair of the future. They may be chilly, have a fear of poverty and be anguished at night.
Many of the above remedies are found in home-use kits - See more at: http://homeopathyplus.com.au/eczema-homeopathic-help-for-sore-and-itchy-skin/#sthash.VKaiHdlE.dpuf
“Is it the flu or is it EBOLA?” Important information regarding EBOLA Hemorrhagic Fever
/“Is it the flu or is it EBOLA?” Important information regarding EBOLA Hemorrhagic Fever Compiled by Sally Tamplin MARH,DSH, PCH and Jacob Mirman MD, DHt, CCH
Ebola
The top US medical official, Thomas Frieden, has said that the Ebola challenge is the biggest since AIDS. Britain and the USA have implemented enhanced security screening measures at airports.The UN’s Ebola mission chief says the world is falling behind in the race to contain the virus. According to recent statistics 70% of cases are fatal.
The media is talking at length about this unprecedented, extremely serious, and most contagious disease sweeping across parts of desperately poor, under resourced West Africa since February 2014. It is seriously affecting the African economy, The World Bank says that billions of dollars could be drained from West African countries by the end of the year if the virus continues to spread. It is crossing country borders and now taking hold in densely populated areas.The World Bank has added $170 million to the $230 million it has already pledged in emergency assistance for countries battling to control the outbreak. The US government has already spent more than $100 million in response to the outbreak and the European Union has announced funding worth $180 million to help the governments of West Africa strengthen their health services. The Gates Foundation is committing $50 million to help step up efforts to tackle the deadly virus and purchase badly needed supplies. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have donated $25 million to the CDC foundation. President Obama has announced that he is sending 4,000 US troops to Liberia to help fight the virus outbreak, the UK is sending a hospital ship and the UN security Council has declared the outbreak to be a threat to international peace and security.
Photo atul_ebola
The World Health Organization (WHO) says that it is the largest outbreak ever recorded and could be catastrophic in terms of lives lost. They have declared it an international health emergency. WHO has warned that Ebola infections could reach 5,000 to 10,000 new cases per week within two months if efforts to tackle the outbreak are not stepped up. There have been more than 9,191 confirmed cases and the virus has claimed 4,546 lives to date mainly in Guinea,Liberia and Sierra Leone, Liberia being the worse country affected. More than 200 of these victims are health care workers. Before the Ebola outbreak there was just one doctor available to treat 100,000 people in Liberia. Despite these large financial pledges the medical charity, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), has warned that the international response has been “lethally inadequate.” President Obama has announced that the world needs to act faster to halt the outbreak. An emergency meeting is about to go ahead between President Obama and the British, French, Italian and German leaders as the crisis escalates. A man traveling from Liberia to the USA recently died in a Dallas hospital, health authorities scrambled to find all those that he has been in contact with and two of his care givers have now tested positive for Ebola.
EBOLA, a severe viral infection, is described as one of the most deadly on the planet; it can prove to be fatal within days, so we felt it expedient to discuss the role of homeopathy in the current crisis and we are in the process of gathering homeopaths together to respond to this escalating situation. This web site offers free advice and help from professional homeopaths who have volunteered their time and expertise to assist in the control and treatment of this dreadful disease.
Ebola Virus concepts isolated
Homeopathy has always won its laurels in the resolution of acute, killer diseases so we would be remiss if we did not inform the public how homeopathy can help you and your loved ones if EBOLA ever comes to your neighborhood. The disease is currently spreading faster in Africa than the efforts that have been made can control it. The world has become a smaller place in respect to our ability to travel and move across the globe quickly by air, likewise we need to be mindful that infectious diseases also travel fast and can take hold in distant communities, so we do need to be prepared! There is also always the threat of bioterrorism. Homeopathic knowledge can help us become less fearful and help ourselves. There may come a time when we are on our own!
Ebola Virus
Currently medical authorities have no answer to this rampant killer; they report that it is an incurable virus and there is no vaccine currently available or specific antiviral treatment. There is some debate about using experimental drugs without medical trials. According to the news media EBOLA has a fatality rate of approx 70%.
Ebola Outbreak
Strict isolation, critical care barrier nursing, supportive comfort care and aggressive help with rehydration because of the loss of body fluids are the mainstay of conventional medical practice. Low blood pressure is a problem due to the excessive loss of bodily fluid through diarrhea and vomiting. Medical treatment may be helpful with complicating infections and patients have a better chance of survival if they receive early diagnosis and treatment.
The good news is that our homeopathic community has a lot more ammunition to offer. Homeopaths have well over two hundred years of documented successes and while EBOLA might be the disease label in this current crisis, homeopaths only look to symptoms and use their totality as a guide to the most useful remedies that can help each individual to rally and fight killer infections. Old homeopathic books talk about the 1918 Spanish Influenza characterized by bleeding from all parts of the body, just as EBOLA does in its most deadly form. Homeopaths are familiar with the remedies that can produce such symptoms and the remedies that can likewise cure, after all our cornerstone of practice is the premise that like cures like.
Unlike the influenza virus that can be quickly transmitted through airborne droplet infection (someone sneezing or coughing around you) the EBOLA virus is presently transmitted by actual contact with the body fluids of those who are infected and are showing symptoms. So exposure to infected saliva, sweat, vomit, diarrhea and blood can spread this virus. Up to three months after clinical recovery the disease may still be transmitted through sexual contact.
Medizin Global Arzt Ärztin
If you have been watching the news reports you will have noticed the very rigorous cross contamination procedures that the African medical treatment facilities have been implementing. Avoiding contact with infected body fluids is an absolute must, EBOLA is considered a level 4 biohazard and this is why so many of the reported EBOLA cases are from relatives and health care workers who have been infected whilst caring for a victim of this deadly virus or by exposure whilst burying a contaminated corpse. Doctors and nurses have succumbed to the infection and at the end of July the number one EBOLA physician for Sierra Leone lost his life. Africa has seen much civil war and atrocities in the recent past and many African people have little confidence in authorities and health care workers so relatives who should have been brought to the hospital have been cared for in the home and hence the disease has spread quickly. Now there is a situation where some African isolation hospitals are becoming overwhelmed and very sick, contagious people are being cared for in their homes and some victims are dying in the streets as they are turned away from overstretched medical facilities. Medical aid workers are having a hard time persuading people that they cannot give their loved ones the traditional burial that is customary in their culture; this involves washing the dead body.
This influenza web site is a treasure chest of information and we really want to stress that many of the remedies carefully researched and added to this web site may be key players in the treatment of EBOLA, as you read on you will notice that many reported EBOLA symptoms can look like those characterized by influenza and H5N1 Bird flu. This is why we felt it so important to talk about EBOLA here.
EBOLA FACTS
The virus is not new and was formerly known as, “The Zaire Virus,” it can be first traced back to 1976 when the Zaire Virus first appeared in rural Africa and was very virulent. Good detective work pointed to a Belgian nun working in the Congo. The nuns spread the virus amongst themselves and to their patients who visited the antenatal clinic established in a Catholic Mission, they were given injections and it is believed that the needle was the initial site of transmission. Outside the Catholic Mission the virus began to spread through the transmission of contaminated body fluids.
Stop ebola red and black
There are five identified ebolavirus subtypes and four are capable of human to human transmission. There have been a couple of dozen outbreaks since 1976 and all of those were contained. This current virus strain is close to the, “ Zaire Strain” and is almost as virulent. According to the CDC web site new evidence strongly implicates fruit bats as the reservoir hosts for the Ebola viruses. If you continue to read our web site you will learn that birds are the reservoir of the influenza viruses. Initial infections in humans result from contact with the blood or secretions of an infected bat or a wild animal that the bat has bitten. It is believed that the EBOLA virus is carried and spread through primates. In rural Africa, where this latest outbreak first began, it is common for the people to hunt and eat wild animals such as antelopes, chimps and also bats. The Guinea Health Minister Remy Lamah forbid consumption of fruit bats in the area afflicted with the epidemic.
Signs and Symptoms of EBOLA
Homeopaths pay particular attention to the symptoms that a patient presents; the totality is a signpost to be used to find the most suitable homeopathic remedy. As the patient’s presenting state changes a succession of different remedies may possibly be required to bring about full resolution of the disease. Homeopaths carefully watch and note all symptoms including those that affect the physical body and the mental and emotional states too.
Photo symptoms Ebola
According to the CDC early diagnosis is quite difficult in the initial stages of infection because symptoms such as headache, fever, vomiting and diarrhea can be indicative of many diseases including influenza. In fact the early stages of EBOLA can look just like the flu. The symptoms of EBOLA and other hemorrhagic fevers also resemble those of malaria and dengue fever.
Symptoms such as severe fever, headache, joint and muscle aches, weakness, diarrhea, vomiting, stomach pain, lack of appetite are seen in many suffers by the medical professionals who are treating this current outbreak of EBOLA.
Additionally some patients may experience a rash, red eyes, hiccups, cough, sore throat, chest pain, difficulty breathing and difficulty swallowing.
According to recent statistics half of all EBOLA cases are presently progressing to hemorrhagic symptoms, this means bleeding inside and outside of the body that cannot be stopped, in particular bloody diarrhea, and vomit, bleeding from the gums and the eyes. This generalized bleeding is present in many but not all cases of EBOLA and is probably caused by DIC, disseminated intravascular coagulation. In this condition the blood coagulation cascade is triggered, causing blood clot formation in blood vessels. The process uses up the clotting factors, rendering blood unable to clot. The inner lining of blood vessels also becomes compromised. The result is easy bleeding from the damaged vessels, which is unstoppable due to loss of clotting ability. Due to blood loss as well as other factors the vital organs are shutting down, the body is breaking down and death is imminent.
danger ebola
Symptoms may appear anywhere from 2 – 21 days after exposure to the virus, but according to the CDC 8 – 10 days are most common.
Lately there has been some discussion about this incubation time, some sources report that the incubation time may, in some people, be as long as 42 days.
According to USA Today, August 17, the prodrome symptoms are as follows:
Days 5 – 9 : Fatigue, headache, fever, chills Day 10: High fever, vomiting blood, rash, and passive behavior Day11: Bleeding from the nose, mouth, eyes and anus Day12: Seizures, internal bleeding, loss of consciousness, death
While there are some survivors many succumb to the virus. The reasons are not yet fully understood. It is known that patients who die usually have not developed a significant immune response to the virus at the time of death. Patients obviously have a better chance of recovery if they receive professional nursing care and rehydration therapy.
Homeopaths have always paid attention to the constitution of their patients, Louis Pasteur in the twilight of his life declared that the disease was nothing and the constitution of the individual was everything! Careful homeopathic remedy selection, according to the totality of symptoms, and unique to the individual is the key that opens the door to healing. The remedies do not heal they are simply a catalyst for change. When we are out of balance a carefully selected remedy can wake up our innate healing ability, commonly homeopaths refer to it as “the vital force.” It is our own innate healing ability that can bring us back to health.
Homeopathic Remedies for EBOLA
Pic pestle mortar flowers
We want every reader to understand that it is important to treat the individual, not the disease and to pay special attention to the totality of symptoms. Please note that many remedies documented on this web site for influenza like symptoms may be suitable for a patient suffering from EBOLA like symptoms so please do read and use all of the resources that are offered on this site. Some of the homeopathic remedies that have been described on this web site since its inception have a hemorrhagic symptom picture this is because when we first began researching influenza we were particularly concerned with H5N1 Bird Flu.
rooster
Half of all victims of this disease die and many bleeding symptoms are observed, (Current H5N1 statistics: WHO confirmed cases 2003 – 2014 /650 cases and 386 deaths) In our research for this flu web site we were particularly interested in the role of homeopathy during the 1918 pandemic – ( H1N1 strain) which also presented with many hemorrhagic symptoms.
Understanding more about homeopathic remedies
photo flu kit
Remedies come from many different sources. Most are derived from plants, but animal products, minerals, metals and some poisons, which have been used medicinally for generations, are also used. The homeopath has thousands of remedies to choose from, and new remedies, appropriate to our life and times, are being researched as we write. Homeopathic remedies are prescribed according to the Law of Similars. The law states, “That which makes sick shall heal.” This means that the symptoms caused by an overdose of a substance are the symptoms that can also be cured by a small dose of that same substance.
Photo - Ebola Onion Remedy
As an example, we know that when we cut up an onion most people experience an acrid runny nose, soreness in the throat and stinging, runny eyes. A homeopath may suggest Allium Cepa, this is the homeopathic remedy made from the onion for the individual who has a cold and sore throat with these symptoms. Therefore, homeopathy uses medicines prepared from natural substances that are similar to the illness. The name homeopathy is actually derived from two Greek words meaning “similar and suffering.” The Law of Similars has been a part of medical practice since the time of Classical Greece, but homeopathy, as we know it today was first formulated over two hundred years ago by Christian Samuel Hahnemann.
pic Hahneman
A well-chosen homeopathic remedy acts as a signal, which energizes or stimulates the body’s self-healing powers, mobilizing the defense systems and working on all aspects of the body, mental, emotional and physical. We could liken it to the jump leads that have to be used when the car has been left out in the cold weather because the battery is flat!
The remedy simply acts as a catalyst. The body heals itself; but the well-chosen remedy awakens the vital force or chi, which has at some point become stuck.
In classical homeopathy, which is what we are advocating, only one remedy or signal is used at a time. Just as a television reproduces only the program to which it is tuned, a sick person is very sensitive to, or is tuned into, the correct remedy, and only a minute stimulus from the right remedy is required. This is sometimes called the principle of the minimum dose .The idea is to cure with the minimum amount of intervention.
Generally there are two ways of preparing substances. Plants are macerated and soaked in a mixture of alcohol and water; this becomes known as the “mother tincture.” The mixture is diluted by adding one drop of the tincture to 99 drops of alcohol and water; it is then succussed (the container is repeatedly struck against a hard, elastic surface.) This is then called the 1C potency; the C stands for centesimal because the substance is diluted one part in one hundred. The process is repeated by taking one drop of the 1c mixture, diluting it with 99 drops of alcohol and water, and succussing it. This is then called the 2C potency. Each progressive dilution and succession yields the next higher potency.
Some remedies are made by decimal dilution. This means that one drop of the “mother tincture” is diluted by adding one drop of the tincture to 10 drops of alcohol and water, and then it is succussed. This is now called the 1X potency; the X stands for decimal because the substance is diluted by one part in 10.
Minerals and nonplant substances are diluted initially by trituration, this means grinding up with lactose, or milk sugar. The ratio of one part in one hundred or one part in ten is repeated. This process is usually repeated up to 3C or 3X, at which stage the lactose/mineral mixture can be dissolved and then the higher potencies are made in the same way as the liquid potencies described in the previous paragraph.
After initial preparation of the raw material the remedies are made by serial dilution and succussion (vigorous shaking) in a solution of alcohol and water.
This is done a few times or up to many thousands of times. The liquid dilution is then used itself as a remedy or soaked into tablets or granules for convenience. The diluted remedies are described as being “potentised,” in recognition of the dynamic healing power that they can stimulate. Frequently the dilutions are so great that no chemical trace of the original substance remains. Most people question this asking, “How can it possibly work if there is nothing there?”
The truth is we don’t know why, other homeopaths and scientists will tell you the same thing. The important point is that they do work and homeopaths get to witness miracles every day. For over thirty years, veterinary medicine has contributed to the development of homeopathy because it has shown that the therapy works on animals, who are unaware of what they are taking and therefore cannot be subject to the placebo effect.
Homeopathic literature, both past and present, documents cases, sometimes of severe pathology, that have been cured or significantly helped by homeopathy.Since the remedies usually have nothing left of the original substance there is no danger of toxicity and nasty side effects if properly administered, because there is no chemical trace to accumulate in the body’s tissues.
Homeopathic remedies are not intrinsically dangerous but they are powerful and must be treated with care and respect. Where the patient’s condition requires serious conventional treatment, homeopathy enables a reduction in the dosages of conventional drugs and can help to decrease the unwanted side effects.
If you would like to learn more please take a look at Dr. Jacob Mirman’s book:http://www.bookonhealing.com
Various pharmacy bottles of homeopathic medicine
Which remedies would be most useful for EBOLA?
Below is a list of remedies that we have compiled along with the help of some of our homeopathic friends and colleagues from all over the world and from our wealth of homeopathic literature, the writings of homeopathic pioneers who took the time to prove remedies and record their successes for posterity. This list contains remedies that we believe may be helpful in the treatment of EBOLA like illnesses. Some of the remedies listed are new to this web site and are documented in detail right here. Other remedies that we have included in our list can be read in full detail under the influenza remedies section on this web site.
Please make use of all the information that we offer, this is an educational site and we ask all readers who wish to use homeopathy to work with a professional homeopath who knows and understands how best they can be utilized. As more information becomes available and if other remedies come to the fore this web site will be updated so it continues to be an excellent source of homeopathic information for you, your family and our global homeopathic community. Remember viruses will always be with us, they will always find ways to mutate but homeopathy works to strengthen the individual so he can fight the disease, it is our best and perhaps our only chance in these troubled times.
Here is a brief synopsis of the most important remedies for hemorrhagic EBOLA then please read on for a full, very detailed description of our new snake additions and note that although the snakes are new arrivals they are a most welcome addition to our web site! That which can kill can also cure!
Prevention is by far the best way!
As a preventative if an outbreak occurs in your neighborhood, Bothrops 30 c, one dose daily, until the threat has passed. This homeopathic remedy closely matches the symptoms of hemorrhagic EBOLA as we are seeing and hearing from the news reports and may be considered the genus epidemicus – meaning the most useful remedy for most of the population and the one that may help prevent the disease in those who have been exposed. However, in truth, we do not fully know this yet. Homeopaths need to be able to treat several people with EBOLA first and compare symptoms before we know for sure exactly what the genus epidemicus may be. When we know for sure we will post prominently on this web site! Please refer to the web site often in any global crisis and tell your friends about us too!
Our friend and homeopathic colleague Dr. Jose Issac who is head of a large homeopathic teaching hospital in India reminds us of the following:
“The best way to find a medicine for an epidemic is to find out by the method envisaged in Samuel Hahnemann’s Organon of Medicine, the following protocol may be useful:
1. First study the common symptoms manifested by the majority of patients 2. This will help us to find the group of remedies that can cure a particular disease 3. From this list select the individualizing features so that we can specifically come to fewer remedies in the group.”
Taking responsibility – helping ourselves
If we have a toxic body and mind we are more likely to succumb to disease. Take the opportunity right now while you are well to lose any extra weight, get physically fit, start to eat a balanced diet and take action to reduce the amount of stress that you have in your life. Most importantly, deal with toxic thoughts and emotions!
Early Symptoms
Please note that not all cases of EBOLA progress to the hemorrhagic state and in the early stages we will see more flu like symptoms, not the later stage of hemorrhage. It is important to become familiar with the flu remedies, all well documented on this site. Homeopaths select remedies for the state that they observe before them so if the patient suddenly develops a very high fever, is extremely hot and delirious, has dilated pupils and a red face we are going to be thinking of the remedy Belladonna. Likewise, we may consider Gelsemium for a patient whose onset of symptoms was not too sudden and dramatic, who is not particularly restless, who complains of body pain and who is completely drained and weak. EBOLA has taken center stage regarding the news media and many people are fearful, particularly fearful of contamination and this is not surprising when we see health care workers on TV wearing space suits! We should definitely think about the homeopathic remedy Arsenicum Album especially when we see a patient who is extremely anxious, fearful of contamination, restless, exhausted, complaining of burning pains, is thirsty for small sips of water and who has vomiting and diarrhea.
As in influenza cases, if we can begin homeopathic remedies in the early stages of disease we have a much better chance to bring our patients back to health and to avoid the destructive hemorrhagic state. Again, we remind readers, that as the state changes we may have to change the remedy and it is possible that in the case of a very sick person we may need a succession of well indicated remedies to bring them back to health.
The question of homeopathic potency?
This is debatable and homeopaths have varying views. When we first developed our web site and produced the influenza kit we wanted the general public to be well prepared in a worst case scenario. We included all the main influenza remedies in three ascending potencies 30c, 200c and 1M. Homeopathic remedies in 30c potency are commonly available in health food stores but the higher potencies may be needed in acute disease and lower, frequently repeated potencies, in very weak, broken down states. We have listed some potency suggestions from our friends and colleagues at the end of this article. Please work with a professional homeopath who is knowledgeable in remedy selection and potency. We have a link on our web site to reputable homeopathic pharmacies where remedies can be purchased.
Photo - Ebola Echinacea Remedy
Some Remedies to Consider for hemorrhagic EBOLA – (while we feel the listed remedies are the most likely ones to be useful, as we treat and repertorize the first few cases, we may see other remedies coming to the forefront. We know that we should not limit ourselves to this list and will keep you updated on this web site as the situation becomes clearer.)
Crotalus horridus 30c – consider this remedy when there is difficulty in swallowing due to spasms and constriction in the throat. Tongue can be fiery red, smooth and polished (compare with Pyrogen) and very swollen. In diarrhea the stools are black, thin and offensive. Emesis looks like coffee grounds. Dark, purple colored blood that will not coagulate, bleeding from any part of the body including the eyes, gums, nose and the sweat. Offensive discharges. Edema with purplish, mottled skin, late in the disease the patient may turn yellow. Photophobia. Sepsis. Blood boils. Severe prostration, the pulse may be scarcely felt. This remedy has an affinity with the right side. Cannot lie on the right side or back without vomiting. Many homeopaths believe this to be the main remedy for hemorrhagic EBOLA but we have given this careful thought and think that Bothrops or Lachesis may be the better choice. Crotalus horridus has an affinity to jaundice and as far as we are aware this is not a characteristic symptom of EBOLA.
Bothrops Lanceolatus 30c – this remedy has lots of nervous trembling, difficulty articulating speech, sluggishness, swollen, puffy face and black vomiting. There is thrombosis causing neurological phenomena like strokes and bleeding from all orifices. This looks very similar to the picture of DIC, or disseminated intravascular coagulation, a dreaded complication of many conditions treated in ICUs. Blindness, especially in daytime. Fever with shivering followed by very profuse cold sweat. This remedy has an affinity with the right side. Lachesis mutus 30c – In this remedy look for delirium with trembling and confusion. The patient may talk too much. Tongue dry, black and trembling. Lots of profuse hemorrhaging from any where in the body, the blood is dark and does not easily clot, great sensitivity to touch, often tight clothing cannot be tolerated especially around the neck, the patient feels better for heat and worse on the left side. Disease begins on the left side then goes to the right side. Perspiration is cold and stains yellow, and it may be bloody. Phosphorous 30c – this is a homeopathic remedy for hemorrhage where there is bright red gushing blood from any where in the body and profuse watery diarrhea. Longing for cold food and drinks but as soon as water becomes warm in the stomach it is thrown up. Perspiration has the odor of sulphur. Aggravation in the evening before midnight and lying on the left or painful side. People in a Phos state tend to have a lot of anxiety and fear especially at night. YOU WILL FIND THIS REMEDY WELL DOCUMENTED ON OUR FLU WEB SITE
Mercurius corrosivus 30c – this remedy is indicated for dysentery and persistent tenesmus of the rectum that is not better by passing stool. The stool is bloody, slimy and offensive. Tenesmus of the bladder, burning, hot urine, bloody or brown. Scanty or suppressed urine. Copious bleeding, better when lying on the back with the knees bent up, delirium, headache with burning cheeks, photophobia, black swollen lip, metallic, bitter or salt taste in the mouth. Terebinthiniae oleum – this remedy is better known as Turpentine. We chose to include it in our list because it has a selective affinity to bleeding mucous surfaces and it has a particular affinity to inflammation of the kidneys following acute disease with dark, passive, fetid hemorrhage. The urine may be scanty and suppressed and smell of violets, constant tenesmus. The tongue may be dry, red sore, burning in the tip, with prominent papillae. The breath is cold and foul. In fever, heat with violent thirst with cold, clammy sweat. Choking sensation in the throat. Nausea and vomiting. Difficult breathing and bloody expectoration from the lungs. Secale cornutum 30c – this is a fungus remedy and is for the collapsed state. The face is pale, pinched and sunken. Diarrhea is profuse, watery, putrid and brown. It is discharged with great force, exhausting, painless and involuntary. The patient may crave acids and lemonade despite the diarrhea. Urine may be pale, watery or bloody or it may be suppressed. Thin, slow, painless, dark oozing of blood with offensive, putrid odor. Tingling in the limbs. White cold extremities, painful, as in Raynaud’s phenomenon. The patient wants to be uncovered although the skin feels very cold to touch, (compare with Camphor) they feel worse from heat and from any motion. Echinacea angustifolia 30c – this remedy has been made from the Purple Cone flower and is indicated when there is a septic state developing, blood poisoning, fetid smelling discharges and enlarged lymph nodes. Profound prostration, very weak and tired. Severe headache. The brain seems too large. White coating of the tongue with red edges, bed sores. Blood follows the stool. Pyrogen 30c – this remedy has been made from rotten meat and is for septic states. Consider its use when the well chosen homeopathic remedy fails to improve symptoms. Great restlessness, the bed feels hard and the patient feels bruised and sore. The stool is large and black and carrion like and the pulse is abnormally rapid and out of proportion to the temperature. YOU WILL FIND THIS REMEDY WELL DOCUMENTED ON OUR FLU WEB SITE
Coffin in morque
Camphor, Carbo Veg and China are considered corpse reviving remedies. China is particularly well known for its loss of body fluids. Camphor has the delusion that they are the only one left in the world and that God has forsaken them. This could be an important remedy for EBOLA, we have heard recent accounts from survivors, they talk of their fear and the feeling of being abandoned, forsaken by God. YOU WILL FIND THESE REMEDIES WELL DOCUMENTED ON OUR FLU WEB SITE so please check them out!
Now for more on those remedies that have a particular affinity to hemorrhage! This added information will be especially helpful for our professional homeopathic community.
Bothrops lanceolatus – possibly the first remedy to think of when EBOLA has become hemorrhagic. This remedy is found on the French Caribbean island of Martinique. It is known as the fer-de–lance, this is French for lance head. Like Crotalus Horridus and Crotalus Cascavella the remedy has an affinity for septicaemia. There is vomiting of black blood and bloody stool so we feel it is extremely important to include it in our list of possible homeopathic remedies for EBOLA. Choudhuri describes what happens when the victim is affected by this substance:
“The limb swells speedily to an enormous size. It becomes soft and flabby and full of gas. The whole limb becomes infiltrated with bloody serum; the limb looks discoloured with blotches of blue. Very soon extensive suppuration sets in and the skin and the flesh start to come off in bits. The result is an alarming process of moist gangrene exposing the bones and the tendons and harder tissues. The whole limb is dissected alive.”
There is slight shivering followed by a profuse cold sweat. We see this picture of coldness in the other crotalus remedies. The face of Bothrops is swollen and fuffy, the skin is also swollen, livid, cold and with hemorrhagic infiltration.
Choudhuri says that Bothrops is very similar to the other hemorrhagic remedies; a feature of the poisoning is that the blood becomes extremely fluid, dark and sometimes spurts out in jets.
Boericke says that we should expect to find under these remedies the symptomotology of thrombosis and its associated pathology: hemiplegia, aphasia and inability to articulate. There is the unusual symptom of paralysis in one arm or one leg only. Clark writes:
“After being bitten in the little finger of one hand, paralysis began in the fingertips of the other hand and extended over the whole of that side.”
He says that the diagonal course of the symptoms is marked.
Being unable to communicate is a feature of this remedy. Agrawal lists the following rubrics for Bothrops:
Aphasia Forgetful, words while speaking Mistakes, using wrong words
There is also the usual snake feature of a feeling of constriction in the throat and difficulty in swallowing.
A particular feature of this remedy is that there is blindness due to hemorrhage in the retina. Crotalus horridus also has this picture of retinal hemorrhage. Bothrops has the unusual symptom: Day blindness: “Can scarcely see her way after sunrise.”
Like Crotalus horridus this remedy is worse on the right side. Lachesis is worse on the left side.
More hemorrhagic remedies – Crotalus horridus
This homeopathic remedy comes from one of the deadliest and most rapidly fatal of all poisons. The intensity of this remedy matches the intensity of the EBOLA virus.
The famous homeopath Constantine Hering first made a homeopathic proving of Crotalus horridus. The poison is an acid and has an affinity with the blood, the heart and the liver. The poison produces a rapid and direct depressing influence on the sensorium and medulla oblongata deranging both circulation and nuitrition. It acts primarily upon cerebro- spinal nerve centers, and secondarily on the blood fibrin causing decomposition.
John Henry Clark indicates that it belongs to the hemorrhagic diathesis because it causes bleeding to all orifices and surfaces. This bleeding is slow and the blood is dark in nature, the most important characteristic is that it does not clot. The poison causes a disorganization of body fluids and tissues. The tissues decompose and produce putrid malignant conditions. It is a remedy for the septic state. This is the state that is occurring in half of the present EBOLA cases.
E.B. Nash writes,” It seems so far, to have shown its greatest usefulness in diseases, which result in a decomposition of the blood of such a character as to cause hemorrhages from every outlet of the body. Even the sweat is bloody.”
Margaret Tyler writes,” Black offensive blood which will not coagulate.” This remedy has vomiting of black blood.
An important feature of Crotalus horridus is the rapidity of its action. The blood breaks down very quickly, the patient soon becomes jaundiced and rapidly increasing unconsciousness ensues. Many of the recent EBOLA victims succumb to the disease very quickly because of the rapid breakdown. This homeopathic remedy matches the state of the disease that we are presently seeing.
Crotalus horridus has a specific effect on the liver so yellowness and jaundice is an essential feature.
The remedy also has a picture of blueness of parts. James Tyler Kent writes,” Black and blue spots as if bruised.” The well known homeopathic remedy, Lachesis, also has this feature. In both remedies there is a picture of circulatory disturbances with purplish, blue discolorations.
After hemorrhage the skin becomes extremely anemic; it is yellow, pale and bloodless. Since there is an acute state of decomposition, all discharges will smell moldy or fetid. The patient will be in agony, probably moaning and crying, also extremely weak. They may be sleepy, but cannot get to sleep. They become impatient too. There is a picture of collapse in this remedy.
A feature of this remedy is loquacity and suspicion. Lachesis shares these symptoms too.
If the Crotalus horridus patient does get off to sleep it tends to be restless and he may dream of dead corpses and graveyards. He may even smell dead people. This seems to mirror the trail of internal destruction that the venom will work upon its victim. These patients fear death and constantly dwell on death. It is exactly what we are seeing in West Africa right now!
Another feature of Crotalus horridus is that it feels surrounded by foes or hideous animals. This snake is greatly feared because it is so dangerous.
Homeopathic Rubrics:
Delusion: that he is surrounded by an enemy Delusion: pursued by enemies Escape, attempts to Company desire for
Lachesis has an aversion to company. Crotalus horridus has an aversion to members of the family. Choudhuri says that Crotalus patients are mentally very snappish and irritable. In fact he compares their ugly temperament to Nux vomica. He says that sometimes this irritability gives way to timidity, fear, anxiety and sadness. They can be apathetic and indifferent; the remedy has an affinity to senile dementia characterized by mental delusion and forgetfulness.
Rubric: Single symptom; Insanity with coldness of skin
Other rubrics include:
Irritability Sadness with mental depression Anxiety Thoughts of death Dullness and sluggishness Stupefaction Weakness in memory Confusion of mind Answers disconnected Delirium with loquacity Delusions, imaginations and hallucinations
Unlike Lachesis this particular remedy has an affinity to the right side. Crotalus patients are worse for lying on their right side and of course the liver, the main organ to be affected is on the right side.
Crotalus tend to be worse in springtime, often on a yearly basis and upon awakening.
Modalities:
Worse:
Lying on the right side Falling to sleep Warm weather Spring Alcohol Damp and wet On awakening
Better:
Light Motion
The skin of a Crotalus Horridus patient feels cold and dry
Food:
Craves pork, stimulants and sugar Mouth is dry with thirst
Like the other remedies Crotulas horridus has an affinity with the throat. In the physical pathology they feel a tight constriction in this area, and have difficulty swallowing anything solid. There are many rubrics relating to speech and loquacity.
There is also the feature of a feeling of constriction in the throat and difficulty in swallowing.
A particular feature of this remedy is that there is blindness due to hemorrhage in the retina. Crotalus horridus also has this picture of retinal hemorrhage. Bothrops has the unusual symptom: Day blindness, “Can scarcely see her way after sunrise.”
Like Crotalus horridus Bothrops is worse on the right side. Lachesis is worse on the left side.
More hemorrhagic remedies – Crotalus Cascavella
This homeopathic remedy comes from Brazil. It was proved by Mure. The poison of Cascavella is as deadly as that of other hemorrhagic remedies. Clark says that the general symptoms are like those of the other members of the group; there is picture of hemorrhage in this remedy together with yellow discoloration (face red or yellow, yellow diarrhoea) and a feeling of constriction particularly in the throat and the stomach. There is also a theme of coldness.
Rubrics:
Constrictive pains if a string was tied around the thyroid Swallowing difficult Epigastrium sensation cannot bear clothing Sensation of a band around the abdomen
However, the mental symptoms are more pronounced and peculiar. Lancinating pains are frequent and they are better for cold water. Many symptoms are worse at night.
Rubric:
Moaning and groaning during sleep
There are pains in the bones and hallucinations are marked and peculiar. Like Crotalus horridus thoughts dwell on death and there are dreams of corpses and ghosts. They see death as giant black skeleton. This remedy has clairvoyance and loquacity, features that we see in other remedies
There is great fear of being alone in this remedy.
In the repertory it is listed as having the single symptom: thoughts of death when alone.
There is tremendous fear of being alone at night, this is bold type.
Like Crotalus horridus a picture of insanity develops, the provers recorded throwing themselves against doors, another prover said that she wanted to throw herself out of the window.
Rubrics:
Delusion, eyes are falling out Hears footsteps behind him Fancies that someone walks behind him Fancies he hears groans Hears voices that he must follow
There is a particularly strange symptom that came out in the proving:
Great desire for snow
Comparing our remedies – Crotalus horridus and Lachesis
Crotalus horridus is a main remedy for the septic state; Lachesis also has circulatory disturbances with purplish, blue discolouration. Crotalus horridus has a more marked tendency to hemorrhage than Lachesis.
General exhaustion is more pronounced than Lachesis.
Both remedies also have a picture of loquacity and suspicion. Crotalus has loquacity with a desire to escape. However, Lachesis has tremendous jealousy this is not evident in Crotalus horridus.
Again, Lachesis has the rubric clairvoyance, but this is not seen in Crotalus horridus.
Crotalus horridus dreams of dead corpses and graveyards. They may even smell dead people in their dreams. Lachesis has delusions of dead people and that they themselves are dead.
Crotalus horridus has the delusion that enemies or hideous animals surround them. Lachesis believes that they are about to receive injury or is being injured by his surroundings.
Lachesis has the rubric: Aversion to company to indulge her fancy. Crotalus horridus has an aversion to members of his family.
Both remedies have an affinity to throat pathology, difficult swallowing, tight constriction etc:
Both remedies have rubrics for weakness of memory.
Lachesis is bold type for hysteria but Crotalus does not have this rubric at all.
Crotalus horridus is a right-sided remedy; Lachesis has an affinity to the left side, left then right. It has left sided complaints.
Lachesis is warm blooded and purple. Crotalus is cold blooded and is white or yellow.
Crotalus desires alcohol whereas Lachesis is worse for alcohol.
Boericke says that Lachesis antidotes the action of Crotalus Horridus.
Comparing our remedies – Crotalus Cascavella and Lachesis
This remedy is also associated with the septic state, like Lachesis it has a lot of throat pathology. Speech is difficult and there is paralysis of articulation. We tend to associate Lachesis with loquacity.
There is a headache after sleep, as with Lachesis. Cascavella has the strange sensation that something alive was walking inside the head in a circle.
Clarke says that the mental symptoms of this remedy are more pronounced.
Many symptoms are worse at night and hallucinations are marked and peculiar, he hears footsteps behind him, (Lachesis does think that he is being pursued ) follows strange voices and dwells on the dead. On the other hand this remedy can also be deaf, hear nothing. Clarke says that a magnetic state is induced.
There is great fear of being alone, this is bold type. There is no such rubric for Lachesis. This fear is the strongest of all the remedies discussed.
Crotallus Cascavella has the bold type rubric indifference and apathy. Lachesis has this to a lesser extent.
Crotalus Cascavella has the Lachesis rubrics for clairvoyance and loquacity. However, it also has a peculiar desire for snow. There is a feeling of coldness in the stomach after eating and this remedy has a yellow theme running through it similar to Crotalus horridus.
Comparing our remedies – Bothrops and Lachesis
This remedy has an affinity to the septic state and a picture of coldness, which is typical of the snake remedies however, Lachesis is warm blooded. Bothrops and Lachesis have the most coagulating poison. There is the usual throat pathology but Bothrops has paralysis of the tongue and is unable to communicate, Lachesis only has heaviness of the tongue and difficulty in moving it.
There is great lassitude in this remedy, Lachesis tends to be overactive but can also lie in the jungle for months without moving at all. Bothrops has an affinity with the right side, Lachesis with the left.
______________________________________________________________________
We are very grateful to our homeopathic colleagues around the world who have contributed to our article and list their personal comments and suggestions here. Please note that they may not be specifically the views of the authors of this web site.
Our friend and colleague Jeremy Sherr FS Hom, well known in homeopathic circles for his work on new homeopathic provings and work with AIDS patients in Tanzania, has done a small repertorisation for us based on the symptoms of hemorrhagic EBOLA as currently reported by Wikipedia:
Rubrics:
Stomach – vomiting – diarrhea – during Stomach – vomiting; type of – blood Expectoration – Bloody Skin – Ecchymoses Generals – Hemorrhage – blood – non –coagulable Skin- Eruptions – petechiae
Based on this work Jeremy writes, “I think that in addition to the hemorrhagic remedies already discussed that you should also consider: phos, ferrum phos, secale, kreos and china for hemorrhagic EBOLA”
Dr. Jose Issac MD (Hom) has commented that since EBOLA is a virus problem and since no one to date has treated a victim homeopathically the antiviral miasmatic remedy THUJA 200c could be used. “From the symptoms which I could understand I would prefer either giving the homeopathic remedy LACHESIS as the symptomatic preventative or the anti – viral miasmatic remedy THUJA. In my opinion I would suggest either giving Lachesis 200c OR Thuja 200c , one pill every alternate day, to people who are prone to develop this disease as a preventative for one month.”
Dr. Jose Issac also writes: ‘For treating patients with EBOLA, I think the best remedy would be Arsenicum Album 200c, one pill every four hours until the fever disappears. This is because in the early stage there is sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed in the second stage by vomiting and diarrhea, rash, impaired kidney and liver and internal bleeding. Those who are taking homeopathic remedies should stop taking tea, coffee, chocolate and mint as these substances antidote homeopathic remedies.”
Our colleague Dr.Todd Rowe MD, MD (H), CCH, DHt, President of the American Medical College of Homeopathy writes, “In regards to remedies, I think focusing on venoms that are hemorrhagic rather than venoms that are neurotoxic will be key. My suspicion as with any severe acute disease is high potencies frequently (minimally 200C or 1M). This would be similar to treatment of pneumonia. “
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The hidden story about vaccines, drugs and food… Three huge topics in one film. Why put all this in one movie? Because these issues are directly related, and we have an opportunity to harness the millions of us engaged in each of them to overcome the noise put out by the medical-industrial conglomerate. You peel back the layers and see what’s really driving our industrialized food, our vaccine expansion, and our dependence on pharmaceuticals – it’s the same culprit. Huge corporations funded by individual misery, one broken life at a time. These three story lines converge on Wall Street, but this story takes us beyond the problem to the inspiring and empowering role mothers are now taking in uniting to protect their families.
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Five Reasons to NOT get the Flu Vaccine by Elena Cecchetto
/Five Reasons to NOT get the Flu Vaccine by Elena CecchettoINGREDIENTS 1. Various chemicals: Formaldehyde, beta-propiolactonethimerosol, sodium taurodeoxycholate, neomycin sulfate, polymyxin B, sodium deoxycholate, polysorbate 80 (Tween 80), hydrocortisone, gentamicin sulfate, ovalbumin, nonylphenol ethoxylate, polymyxin, neomycin, polysorbate 80, octylphenol ethoxylate (Triton X-100), sodium phosphate, gelatin, ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA), monosodium glutamate, hydrolyzed porcine gelatin, sucrose, gentamicin sulfate.1 2. Eggs: If you are allergic to eggs, or have asthma, the flu and yellow fever vaccines might be ones to be wary of. You might want to ask for a low-egg vaccine.2 3. Thimerosol (Mercury): This ingredient may or may not have been linked to autism.3 SIDE EFFECTS Would febrile seizure4, narcolepsy5, Asthma2, Guillain-Barré syndrome6, or fetal toxicity7 be worse than the flu? These are some of the side effects considered to be linked to flu vaccines. Or the flu itself? A study published in 2011 made an association about increased likelihood of coming down with the flu after having received the vaccine.8 OTHER RESOURCES People are turning to natural sources Vitamin D, Vitamin C, Oregano Oil, turmeric, echinacea, reishi mushrooms and so on to strengthen their immune systems. During the 1918 flu epidemic, the Homeopathic Physicians demonstrated a 1.05% mortality rate while orthodox medicine saw approximately a 30% death rate9. PREVENTATIVE MEASURES The Center for Disease control says that the flu vaccine is the best way to control influenza10. What about getting plenty of rest, exercise, proper nutrition, drinking plenty of fluids and regular hand washing. Consider other medical authorities’ proactive measures. Europe’s drugs regulator has ruled Pandemrix (the swine flu vaccine) should no longer be used in people aged under twenty5. Australia no longer recommends the annual flu shot for children under five years old11. CHOICE Everybody is different. Use your right to choose. Or in other words, “educate before you vaccinate”. Consider that our immune system is a highly refined and intellectual system that works naturally and effectively by way of protection through our mucous membranes (skin, mouth, ears) not by way of intramuscular injection. References. 1. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipient-table-2.pdf 2. http://www.ruh.nhs.uk/patients/patients_leaflets/paediatrics/patient_info_egg_imms.pdf 3. http://thinktwice.com/fraud.htm 4. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/02/12/alert–seizures-now-reported-in-kids-receiving-flu-vaccine.aspx 5. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/22/us-narcolepsy-vaccine-pandemrix-idUSBRE90L07H20130122 6. http://www.medicinenet.com/guillain-barre_syndrome/article.htm 7. http://het.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/09/12/0960327112455067.abstract?rss=1 8. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22001885 9. http://hpathy.com/homeopathy-papers/homeopathy-allopathy-and-the-1918-influenza-pandemic/ 10. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/wk/mm62e0111.pdf 11. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/02/12/alert–seizures-now-reported-in-kids-receiving-flu-vaccine.aspx
Whether it’s the benefits of talk therapy or the pills and tonics they provide, homeopaths in San Francisco are helping people turn their lives around.
/Whether it’s the benefits of talk therapy or the pills and tonics they provide, homeopaths in San Francisco are helping people turn their lives around. •
When you walk into the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, a space set up to help some of San Francisco’s 7,500 homeless people maintain their health and well-being, you are struck first by the colors: bright blue lockers, yellow and aqua walls, everything painted in toy-box hues. Men and women gather around plastic tables, joking, eating, waiting for their clothes to dry in the washing machines. The center often holds support groups and social events for their clients, including LGBT Saturdays and a weekly Ladies’ Night.
You sign in at a desk staffed by a cheerful, pleasant man. Your name goes on the second or third page; the space was designed to serve a few dozen people a day and instead serves hundreds. They form a line down the block before the doors even open. It’s two blocks from the heart of the Mission’s rapid gentrification, but worlds away. “As homeopaths,” she tells me, “we are part of the cure. We listen like nobody else listens.”
The Resource Center also offers mental health services to its clients, many of whom are veterans, abuse survivors, and addicts. A number suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, a psychological response to violence and other trauma that leads to flashbacks, nightmares, difficulty functioning, and, too often, suicide.
Turn left and go up the stairs. Here you have a choice: straight will take you through a little nest of cubicles, walls dotted with family photos, and into the clinic, which is orderly and clean. It looks like a small neighborhood clinic anywhere in America: a tidy waiting area with a young receptionist behind a big desk, leading off to small, sterile exam rooms.
There, the neighborhood’s homeless people can access free preventative care, acute services like infection or fever treatment, and disease testing—people living on the street are 11 times more likely to suffer from tuberculosis, and between a third and a half of all those with HIV in the United States are either homeless or are at risk of losing their housing.
But if you turn left instead, you will enter one of two small, messy offices that, once a week, play host to a clinic run by the Homeopathy Institute of the Pacific, or HIP.
HIP is run by Wanda Smith-Schick, an intense, warm woman with hair that fans out from beneath a green headband like a cartoon sun. She is beautiful. When I visited the center she shook my hand, and I was struck with the feeling that this is a woman who gets shit done. “As homeopaths,” she tells me, “we are part of the cure. We listen like nobody else listens.”
The HIP clinic runs every Tuesday morning, staffed by three volunteers who each have their own private practices. Most of its patients are referred by the medical clinic or the mental health staff at Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, usually after the patients have expressed concern over seeing doctors and taking medication. HIP also operates two separate non-profit clinics, one elsewhere in San Francisco and one in Redwood City, California, specifically to treat veterans with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries.
“This room, I can’t see vets in. There are no windows, it’s like they’re trapped in a box,” Smith-Schick says, waving her hand around the small turquoise office. HIP started the veterans program because so many of the people they saw in the Mission were vets with PTSD. Those clinics mostly treat low-income vets, and occasionally their family members.
I ask her to tell me a story about someone she’d helped at the Resource Center. For nausea, a homeopath might give a highly diluted amount of a treatment that causes nausea, on the principle that this will trigger the body to “correct the imbalance.”
“I had a patient with a history of violence. If someone blew their nose at him, he’d go into a rage,” she says. “When I treated him, things started to click back into balance. Months later, he got attacked by two guys at knife-point. He went back to where he was staying, got a knife, said he would get revenge. He tracked them down, found them—and then nothing. He told me, ‘I don’t know what happened, but I saw they were just kids. I don’t know what you’ve been giving me, but that wasn’t me.’”
“He’d always say, ‘Are you a witch?’ I’d say, nope, it’s a science.”
Homeopathy is not, in fact, science. It’s generally considered an alternative medicine, regulated by the FDA but not approved as a treatment. The core belief is “like treats like”; the patient is given a small dose of something that causes a reaction similar to the illness at hand. So for nausea, a homeopath might give a highly diluted amount of a treatment that causes nausea, on the principle that this will trigger the body to “correct the imbalance.”
Homeopaths call their work a holistic therapy, treating the whole person—mind, body, and soul. They spend time talking to their patients, finding out what hurts and what they’ve been through. Then they prescribe one of a few thousand “remedies,” generally in the form of a tablet. The pills contain mostly sugar and filler. The amount of active ingredient used in homeopathic treatments is vanishingly small.
In fact, in modern homeopathy the remedies are diluted to the point where they are unlikely to have a clinical effect. Often, the active ingredients are so diluted it would require absurd numbers of pills, statistically, to get even one molecule of treatment—in some cases, more tablets than there are molecules in the universe. Justifications from homeopaths vary, but usually focus on the idea that the tablets (or water, when the remedies are distributed as a liquid) in some way “remember” the active ingredients on a molecular level.
Many studies have shown that homeopathic remedies are no better than placebo. The studies that support homeopathy are often, as doctor and writer Ben Goldacre has pointed out repeatedly, plagued with scientific problems—for instance, patients may know that they’re getting a placebo drug, which taints the results. Goldacre is not alone in criticizing homeopathy. Practitioners are frequently accused of taking advantage of the gullible and desperate, and some people have become very sick and even died because they rejected modern medicine in favor of homeopathy. Can sugar pills and empathy treat a deadly mental illness in an under-served population? And if they can—and it certainly looks like they can—does it matter that the pills aren’t really medicine?
Whatever success homeopathy has is probably due to the placebo effect. But the placebo effect is a genuinely amazing phenomenon. Scientists have discovered it can be helpful in treating chronic pain, gastroenterisis, and symptoms of Parkinson’s and depression. There’s value in thinking holistically: The mind has immense power over the body. That’s why doctors around the world are navigating the tricky moral waters of informed consent to utilize placebos in an ethical way. And though homeopathic remedies themselves may not have any scientific validity, here in the Mission they’re helping people turn their lives around.
Can sugar pills and empathy treat a deadly mental illness in an under-served population? And if they can—and it certainly looks like they can—does it matter that the pills aren’t really medicine?
“There’s tons of research that just contact alone is helpful for people. There’s a lot of spontaneous recovery among psychiatric patients—a lot of the time they feel much better after their first meeting,” says Jack Tsai, a Yale researcher who studies PTSD in homeless veterans. “If they’re getting benefits from homeopathy, it’s because of that hour of talking.”
I asked Bernardo Merizalde, a medical doctor and professor of psychiatry at Thomas Jefferson University, about homeopathy, which he uses on most of the patients in his private psychology practice. “I think homeopathic medicine is a very good, inexpensive treatment modality to help treat people with PTSD. I have used it in my practice with very good results, in combination with psychological therapies,” he emailed.
This combination is important. HIP doesn’t recommend homeopathic treatment as a replacement for therapy, or even a replacement for standard medication. The Institute works with medical professionals, including at the clinic in the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center. “I don’t ever tell anyone to go off their meds. I tell them to work with me and the doctor, and see their doctor regularly,” Smith-Schick says. “As long as we’re working together, it’s complementary.”
She also stresses that she’s not a trained therapist, and often convinces her patients to see one of the therapists on staff at the Resource Center.
The popularity of complementary medicine, Tsai says, is an indication that established medical practice isn’t cutting it with these patients. “If there’s been a rise in homeopathy, I think it actually points out the failure of the science community to come up with effective treatments,” Tsai says. “There’s a lot of vets turned off by medication, because of the side effects of antidepressants—impotence, daytime sleepiness, dry mouth. They may turn to homeopathy due to the failure of other treatments. It shows they’re looking for something, but there’s a lack of alternative treatments that are effective.”
Smith-Schick agrees. “Vets are coming to me because they don’t want to take drugs. We hear the effects [of going untreated]—more vets have killed themselves than have died on the front lines.”
The most effective treatments for PTSD aren’t drugs at all. They consist of different forms of forcing a patient to relive their trauma, and conditioning them to have a healthier response than full-body shakes and flashbacks. When patients who come in for homeopathic treatment spend an hour telling Smith-Schick about their trauma, it may have similar benefits to this type of therapy. And, when followed by pills and a promise they’ll heal, that might be exactly what HIP’s patients need.
There aren’t any records for how many veterans nationwide seek homeopathic remedies for PTSD, but HIP sees a few dozen a month. Smith-Schick showed me a video testimonial from one of her patients at the veteran’s clinic. He describes a dramatic change over six weeks, during which he took two doses of a remedy.
“I can honestly say I can’t recognize myself compared to the person I was when I came. I was suicidal, I was filled with rage,” the man in the video says.“I feel like, for the first time in my life, that I’m truly open to what God has offered me from the beginning, but you know, because of my circumstances, I’ve been distracted. I would suggest anyone who has any kind of traumatic history to fully take advantage of this wonderful, beneficial resource of homeopathy. And the compassionate listening skills of Wanda.”
Smith-Schick has always been a listener. “When I was in college, strangers on the street would come up to me and tell me their life stories. I must have a sign on my head that says, ‘Tell me more,’” she says. She came to homeopathy after working in an emergency room, and feeling uncomfortable seeing patients boomerang to the hospital with complications from their medication. Now, she finds her work with HIP to be the most rewarding part of her job. Placebo Week
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“I say, I have to work my private practice around the clinic hours. My friends say, what’s wrong with you? It should be the other way around. But I just don’t think that way. If someone needs help, they should get it,” Smith-Schick says.
Christina Garelli, another volunteer, was an architect before she was a homeopath. When her daughter was diagnosed with a genetic condition that caused a great deal of pain, doctors failed to treat it. Homeopathy, though, worked. So Garelli dropped everything to become a homeopath herself. Johanna Abate, the third homeopath at the clinic, attended a four-year program at the Institute of Classical Homeopathy, which as far as I can tell runs basically like a medical school, with several years of book training backed up by time spent in their free clinic.
Smith-Schick introduced me to Ricardo Newball, the services manager for the Resource Center. With a shaved head and hoop earrings, he looks like a Hispanic Mr. Clean with a short beard. Behind his desk is a cork-board with photographs—before and after snapshots of clients who have gotten their lives together, a picture of Newball 100 pounds heavier than he is now. A shrine to hope, perhaps.
When I ask him about Smith-Schick, Newball exclaims, “Wanda! The one and only!” He describes her ability to spot emotional needs as almost super-human. “Wanda’s style is, love unconditionally,” he says. “But she’s also tough.” Initially he didn’t care enough about homeopathy to know if he believed or not. But after weeks of hearing him complain about his aching back, Wanda demanded he come in and take a remedy. It worked.
Now he goes to Wanda for pain, insomnia, and the stress of working an emotionally and physically exhausting job. “I make sure everything is ready so operations can run smoothly. When the director’s not here, I take over, and when the janitor’s not here I clean,” he says.
Having his fingers in everything means he sees the best and worst. Many days he sees both—he might get somebody he’s known for years homed in the morning, and then hours later get a call that another long-time client has died on the street. It takes its toll. Many of the other staff members go to the homeopaths to help with sleep problems and stress.
Smith-Schick, too, feels the strain of so much tragedy. “I hear horrifying stories. Every time I tell myself, now I’ve heard it all, there’s more. I think, oh my God, all these people are suffering,” she says. “It takes practice to detach and listen objectively. In training they say, leave yourself at the door. If you don’t, it’s more how you feel about what they’re telling you.”
I ask Smith-Schick what she’d say to those suggesting homeopathy is really an example of the placebo effect. “All I know is people who come to the clinic get better,” she says. “People get better, and some people leave and have peace.”
This post originally appeared on Medium as “A Sweeter Pill” and is republished here with the author’s permission.
Homeoprophylaxis – Can you believe it? © Elena Cecchetto
/AUDIENCE: Myself, my professors, other students, other homeopaths, other interested parties. PURPOSE: To critically challenge the epistemology of an element of Homeopathic Practice; specifically the idea that Homeopathy can be successful in preventing disease amongst a population for epidemic or pandemic disease outbreaks.
ABSTRACT:
I have written this essay to deconstruct an aspect of my clinical practice. There is controversy around the use of homeoprophylaxis in preventing disease during epidemics and pandemics. I wanted to see if there was research that could demonstrate the ability to use homeopathy in epidemics/pandemics. If so, what type of research and can it be recognized as valid. If it is not, why not? I explored and gathered information, interviews with practitioners, charts, essays, population studies and Random Controlled Trials. These helped to see the various levels of ability for homeopathic remedies to be used to prevent infectious diseases in a laboratory and in actual contemporary populations. However, these studies are in contrast within the prevailing paradigm to do with how homeopathic remedies work. Since there is an underlying disbelief in the idea that highly diluted substances could work, there is a difficulty in accepting the studies that demonstrate success for homeopathic remedies.
Introduction:
Can homeopathy help for prevention of disease in epidemics or pandemics? I have been using Dr. Isaac Golden’s (2007) homeoprophylaxis (HP) program for children in my homeopathic clinical practice for 7 years. However, when clients and others ask for the scientific evidence, my reference to historical accounts of the use of homeopathy during actual epidemics doesn’t always seem to satisfy them. As I am questioning what is science and what is knowledge, I am also unsure. The purpose of this essay is to identify and come to an understanding of the idea behind using homeopathy for the prevention of illness in epidemic or pandemic diseases and addressing whether there is valid demonstration of the successful use of homeopathy for epidemics/pandemic diseases. Ranging from historical references, Random Control Trials (RCTs) and population studies, and provings; are these sufficient to demonstrate the premise that homeopathic treatment can be used to have an impact on infectious diseases? Are there factors limiting the research or use of the information generated?
Important aspects of this essay defined:
According to Webster’s online dictionary (2013), Epidemics and pandemics refer to an outbreak of an infections disease where many people are affected in a wide geographic area. A pandemic is the same except it is affecting a larger geographic area that can occur beyond borders of one region or even country. The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann explains in the Organon (1996), that homeopathy is most simply defined as a medical art relying on two main principles being the law of minimum dose and the law of similars. Homeoprophylaxis is the use of homeopathic remedies to prevent ahead of time a specific disease. A homeopathic remedy proving is a collection of observed and recorded signs and symptoms conducted according to the instructions outlined in Hahnemann’s (1996) Organon. The material medica is the resource where these provings and other useful sources are compiled for organized reference of each remedy’s therapeutic uses.
How did the use of homeopathy for epidemics start?
Dr. Samuel Hahnemann and homeopaths inspired by him and his writings in the Organon have seemed to make good use of homeopathic treatment to help people who have succumbed to infectious diseases or to help prevent them from succumbing to them. It was Hahnemann’s discriminating observation in 1789 that began the exploration of prevention of disease with homeopathic remedies. In his Lesser Writings (1852), he first described his experience preventing Scarlet Fever by giving them all doses of Belladonna in addition to the members of the family who had contracted it. Using the principles of homeopathic medicine combined with knowledge of homeopathic remedies from provings or other material medica resources has granted the use remedies homeoprophylactically.
Physician’s records:
Historical references of hospital reports are one way a direct comparison can be made between homeopathy and non-homeopathic treatment. In the chart below compiled by Navab (2012), numbers of patient deaths in hospitals are compared to allopathic numbers of deaths. In these reports the rate of success for homeopaths in specific hospitals is shown as a mortality rate of less than 10% for the treatment of scarlet fever, cholera, typhus fever, pneumonia, yellow fever and Spanish influenza. The mortality rates for the conventional doctors of the time (termed allopaths) are over 10% for each of these diseases. The treatments the allopaths had for the 1918 flu were limited to aspirin or acetylsalicylic acid according to Billings (1997) compared to what is available now. It is also very plausible that the results in charts are simply lower for allopaths because the allopathic medicines used between 1798 and 1918 were not as sophisticated as the ones in the present.
Year Location Disease Treatment by Homeopathy Treatment by Allopathy Treatment with No Medicine 1799 Königslütter, Germany Scarlet Fever Mortality <5% 1830 ~ ‘31* Russia Cholera Mortality 11 %Reported by Imperial Council & Foreign Ministry of Russia. Mortality 63 %Reported by Imperial Council & Foreign Ministry of Russia. Not recorded. 1830 ~ 1832 Vienna, Prague, Hungary and Moravia Cholera Mortality 7 %Reported by Dr. Kath, appointed by King of Bavaria. Mortality 31 %Reported by Dr. Kath, appointed by King of Bavaria. Not recorded. 1836** Vienna Cholera Mortality 33 %Lead Homeopath in charge was Dr. Fleischmann Mortality 66 % 1847 Ireland Typhus fever Mortality 2 %Lead Homeopath in charge was Dr. Joseph Kidd Mortality 13 %Lead Allopath in charge was Dr. Abraham Tuckey Not recorded. 1847 England Typhus fever Mortality 2 % Mortality 13 % Mortality 10 % 1848 Edinburgh, Scotland Cholera Mortality 24 %Reported by Edinburgh Dispensary. Mortality 68 %Reported by Edinburgh Dispensary. Not recorded. mid 1800’s Austria Pneumonia Mortality 5 %Lead Homeopath in charge was Dr. Fleischmann Mortality 20 %Lead Allopath in charge was Dr. Dietl Not recorded. 1853 ~ 1855 South of America Yellow fever Mortality 5.4 %Lead Homeopaths in charge were Dr. F. Davis and Dr. W. Holconibe Not Available. Not recorded. 1854 London, England Cholera Mortality 16.4 %Reported by Royal College of Physicians. Mortality 59.2 %Reported by Royal College of Physicians. Not recorded. 1878 New Orleans, USA Yellow fever Mortality 5.6 %Special Commission reported the statistics. Mortality 17 %Special Commission reported the statistics. Not recorded. 1918*** Pittsburgh, USA Spanish Influenza Mortality 1.05 %Reported by Dean, Pittsburgh Hospital Mortality 30 %Reported by Dean, Pittsburgh Hospital Not recorded.
In the 1800’s and early 1900’s when homeopaths were working as physicians within the medical system of society of the day, they had access to a statistically significant number of patients. Because these reports were created centuries ago, the information is open to interpretation. Reading the information in the chart above, different people will have different perspectives on the information presented depending on a person’s prior knowledge, beliefs and filters that can affect the conclusions (Fuller, 2003). A person educated in homeopathy (presumable already believing that homeopathy works) might ask ‘what remedies did they use?’ while a person not knowing homeopathy might simply ask the question ‘how’.
The homeopathic physicians had the same or similar access to clinical surroundings and tools available to the allopathic physicians. During the 1918 Influenza in California, Elsa Engle was a nurse practitioner using homeopathic remedies under instruction from Dr. Engle. As Malthouse (2010) wrote from an interview that was conducted by Frances Kalfus in 1992, the then 97 year old Elsa Engle explains their success at Hahnemann Hospital; “They all had about the same symptoms. You didn't have to do anything else but give them a bottle of Gelsemium, followed with a bottle of Eupatorium perfoliatum... In five days practically all of them were well”. Gelsemium and Eupatorium perfoliatum are homeopathic remedies that are still commonly used for influenza. The CBC report (Puri, 2009) explained to viewers during the many homeopathic clients were turning to the remedy Gelsemium that was “used extensively during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918” for the H1N1 flu. However, with information or data and its style of presentation, each person will come to a different conclusion depending on prior experiences and beliefs. In order for something like homeopathy, because it might be in contrast with a strong belief, even the highest quality of research won’t suffice to change that belief despite what a study shows. Rutten (2008) describes the problem that “Prior beliefs are updated in the Bayesian process, but the first prior belief has a special position. This first prior belief is very strong, we need to consider how strong and why. It is in fact paradigmatic and might not be susceptible to Bayes’ theorum”. Perhaps only a strong personal experience (seeing is believing) might be the only thing that can change a strong prior belief.
RCTs Japanese Encephalitis (JE):
Looking at two Random Control Trials (RCTs) in a clinical laboratory where studies were done with the infectious disease Japanese Encephalitis (JE) and doses of the homeopathic remedy, Belladonna. The authors Bandyopadhyay et al. (2010 and 2011) found statistically significant success showing that Belladonna is effective in preventing disease indicators. This is a chart from Bandyopadhyay et al. (2010) showing decreased viral infection found in the Choriallontoic Membrane (CAM) of unhatched chicks dosed with Belladonna in the four different potencies of 3, 6, 30 and 200;
For the RCT done on suckling mice by Bandyopadhyay et al. (2011), average survival rates of the infected suckling mice treated with Belladonna 200C daily for 14 days had almost double the survival rate than those not treated with Belladonna 200C. 47% survival rate for untreated mice versus 79.24% and 80.60% for the Belladonna treated mice for 7 and 14 days. In the discussion of this successful study, the authors Bandyopadhyay et al. (2011) state that homeopathic practitioners have historically been using the homeopathic remedy Belladonna for the prevention of JE without any RCT experimental proof of how it works and therefore there is further need to test how it is that the homeopathic remedy Belladonna has showed an ability to prevent JE. This study has successfully shown a specific outcome. However, the question of the properties of Belladonna that made it work is what the authors chose to recommend as required further study.
Population Studies: Swine Flu in India:
In India 2009 a Swine Flu patient study involving 23 Homeopaths and 1146 patients was conducted by Mathie et al. (2013) which took a set of previous agreed upon (by the Centre for Clinical Research of Homeopathy (CCRH)) group of symptoms defining Swine Flu by Homeopaths working in government approved health centres in India. The Homeopaths agreed to record their results in a formatted excel chart between October, 2009 and February, 2010. The most frequently prescribed remedy that helped the patients as the primary care for the Swine Flu was Arsenicum album; the very same remedy that the CCRH had identified as the as a prophylactic Genus Epidemicus for this pandemic. Results like this can tempt the enthusiast to proclaim at this as proof that homeopathy can be used in epidemics.
However, the overarching challenge in demonstrating the proof that homeopathy can be successful for epidemics and pandemics through research and information is that it contrasts the current prevailing paradigm. To express this idea Rutten (2008) quotes Vandenbroucke (2001) “Accepting that infinite dilutions work would subvert more than conventional medicine; it wrecks a whole edifice of chemistry and physics”. With this in mind, the work shown in this study could present to different conclusions to people with different prior beliefs. If accepting the validity of homeopathic remedies is not a possibility within the belief system than accepting this study as successfully demonstrating that homeopathy can help in epidemics is also not a possibility.
Leptospirosis in Cuba:
A study by Bracho et al. (2009) was conducted with 2.3 million people in Cuba. The population above 1 year of age was given two oral doses of the Leptospirosis Nosode in the 200C and 10M potencies with an interval of 7-9 days between doses. Then ten to twelve months later, they were given another two oral doses of the 10M potency 7-9 days apart. These homeopathic remedies were administered by approximately 5000 Cuban public health system personnel using five drops (250-300 µL) under the tongue (sublingually) 20 minutes away from eating or drinking or smoking. One year of comparison between the area that received doses (the Intervention Region, IR) and the Rest of the Country (RC) showed a significant decrease of cases of Leptospirosis in the IR. This study looked at the numbers generated by the same institutions that are responsible for managing epidemic disease diagnosis and prognosis in Cuba (the national weekly report based on provincial data generated by the Trend Analysis Unit from the Minister of Epidemiology of the Ministry of Public Health of Cuba). According to Bracho (2009) their prediction of number of cases of Leptrospirosis was 111-461 in the Intervention Region in the most precarious 3 week period (weeks 47-52 of 2007 because of number of days between the start of the increased rainfalls and infection rates) when only actually 38 confirmed cases showed up. This was a reduction of 91.8% to 65.8% in the IR. Despite that there were increased risks of Leptospirosis infection that year due to extreme rainfall in October-November in the IR, the annual number of cases decreased by 84% while in the RC there was an increase of 21.7%. The authors conclude that these findings lend to a high degree of confidence that using homeopathic remedies to prevent disease in populations is a useful tool for epidemics and pandemics.
This study shows successful implementation of homeopathy for a population during an actual epidemic and demonstrates that homeopathy is successful in preventing illness during epidemics or pandemics. Whether this study will model a way that homeopathy can show success in preventing disease amongst a population for epidemic or pandemic disease outbreaks is still in question (Roniger, 2010). The positive aspect of this study is that there were millions of Cubans who willingly experienced homeopathy by taking those remedies in compliance with their predominant health professionals. As Rutton (2008) points out, changing towards a belief in homeopathic medicine might require a turning point such as a personal experience. What that has been shown to do is “We may accept evidence that we did not accept before. We may abandon the first prior, rearrange and re-interpret the evidence and then the process of sequential updating can start”. That way a previous belief that contradicts the idea that homeopathic remedies will not continue to stand in the way of some possible data or information being presented in research of various types.
Conclusions:
In this essay I’ve brought to attention various types of demonstrations of the use of homeopathy for epidemics and pandemics, including some that are the accepted standard for medical science. Using these examples it seems to be possible to demonstrate the specific success with RCT studies, population studies plus historical records on the use of homeopathy during epidemics/pandemics. As Bracho says (2010) it is also possible to conduct further studies with a significant level of confidence that homeopathy will prove itself as a valid way to address the health of populations during epidemics/pandemics. However, the criteria required in order to conduct this type of research isn’t always easily available to homeopaths in various parts of the world. So far it seems that there is a facility in Cuba that has opportunity to do this plus certain homeopaths in certain clinics of India are also already established for these types of studies.
There are challenges to the understanding and acceptance of use of homeopathic remedies for epidemics and pandemics. Part of it lies within the current paradigm that predominates. The disbelief that highly diluted substances such as homeopathic remedies could have a therapeutic action is the paradigm that limits the acceptance of studies on homeopathy despite their success in showing specific outcomes. With a prior acceptance of biochemical medicine combined with an expectation that homeopathy would act in the same manner, there is not a certain type of research that would qualify to change that disbelief that homeopathic remedies work because the prior belief is too many steps away from the new belief. It is recommended from this overview that any further studies to address the ability to use homeopathy for epidemics and pandemics should acknowledge that whether the reader concludes the study acceptable or not has to do with the challenge of the paradigm surrounding how homeopathic remedies work.
REFERENCES:
Bandyopadhyay, B. (2010) Decreased intensity of japanese encephalitis virus infection in chick chorioallantoic membrane under influence of ultradilutions of belladonna extract. American Journal of Infectious Diseases 6 (2): 24-28.
Bandyopadhyay, B. (2011) Suckling mice of “belladonna 200” fed mothers evade virulent nakayama strain japanese encephalitis virus infection. International Journal of Microbiological Research 2 (3): 252-257.
Billings, M. (1997) The Medical and Scientific Conceptions of Influenza. Last accessed December 16th, 2013 at http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/fluscimed.html
Bodman, F. (1975) The quest for specifics. British Homoeopathic Journal. 64 (1): 30-39.
Bracho, G., Varela, E., Ferna ́ndez, R., Ordaz, B., Marzoa, N., Mene ́ndez, J., Garc ́ıa, L., Gilling, E., … Campa, C. (2010) Large-scale application of highly-diluted bacteria for leptospirosis epidemic control. Homeopathy 99, 156-166. doi:10.1016/j.homp.2010.05.009
Fuller, S. (2003) Kuhn vs. Popper. Duxford, Cambridge, UK: Icon Books Ltd.
Golden, I. (2007) Vaccination & homeoprophylaxis? A review of risks and alternatives (6th edition), Canberra: National Library
Hahnemann, S. (1996). Organon of the medical art (6th Edition) edited and annotated by W.B. O’Rielly. Redmond, Washington: Birdcage Books.
Hahnemann, S. (1852) Lesser writings of Samuel Hahnemann last accessed Dec 2, 2013 at http://books.google.ca/books?id=YwTZzl_fk74C&dq=lesser%20writings%20by%20samuel%20hahnemann&pg=PR7#v=onepage&q=lesser%20writings%20by%20samuel%20hahnemann&f=false
Mathie, R., Baitson, E., Frye, J., Nayak, C., Manchanda, R, and Fisher, P. (2013) Homeopathic treatment of patients with influenza-like illness during the 2009 A/H1N1 influenza pandemic in india. Homeopathy 102, 187-192. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.homp.2013.04.001
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Roniger, H & Jacobs. (2010) Prophylaxis against leptospirosis using a nosode: Can this cohort study serve as a model for future replications?. The Faculty of homeopathy 99, 152-155. doi.10.1016/j.homp.2010.06.004
Rutton, A. (2008) How can we change beliefs? A bayesian perspective. The Faculty of Homeopathy 97, 214-219. doi:10.1016/j.homp.2008.09.007
Vandenbroucke, JP & de Crean. (2001) Alternative medicine “a mirror image” for scientific reasoning in conventional medicine. Ann Intern Med 135, 507-513
Webster’s online dictionary. Last accessed November 23rd, 2013 at http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/epidemic
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Dysfunction at Wikipedia on Homeopathic Medicine by Dana Ullman www.twitter.com/HomeopathicDana
/Dysfunction at Wikipedia on Homeopathic Medicine by Dana Ullman www.twitter.com/HomeopathicDanaPosted: 10/10/2014 10:05 am EDT Updated: 10/10/2014 3:59 pm EDT
In April, 2014, I had the happenstance to run into Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, on the streets of Vancouver. I was there to lecture to a group of medical professionals, while he was attending the TED talks. I expressed my appreciation to him for creating Wikipedia. I also then expressed concern to him about the "unencyclopedic" tone and information in Wikipedia's article on homeopathy. He then encouraged me to express my concerns in writing, and this is that response.
It may surprise and even shock most people to learn that, according to the Washington Post, the two most controversial subjects on Wikipedia in four leading languages (English, French, German, and Spanish) are the articles on "Jesus Christ" and "homeopathy."
Because I know that you want Wikipedia to be the best modern resource of reliable information, my intent in writing is to show you where Wikipedia is falling below your high standards, and in fact, Wikipedia's article on homeopathy is providing strongly biased, inaccurate information. This strong bias is a symptom of a deeper problem at Wikipedia in select articles on topics that challenge dominant medical and scientific worldviews. After reading the below body of scientific evidence on the subject of homeopathic medicine, I hope that we can engage in a dialogue that will help reduce the amount of misinformation that pervades certain subjects, such as homeopathy.
Evidence of the strong bias against homeopathy and against an objective encyclopedic tone is evident throughout the article. I will first focus on the second sentence of the first paragraph of the article and the 6 references which purport to substantiate these claims:
Homeopathy i/ˌhoʊmiˈɒpəθi/ (also spelled homoeopathy or homœopathy; from the Greek ὅμοιος hómoios "like-" and πάθος páthos "suffering") is a system of alternative medicine created in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann, based on his doctrine of like cures like, according to which a substance that causes the symptoms of a disease in healthy people will cure similar symptoms in sick people.[1] Homeopathy is a pseudoscience[2][3][4] and its remedies have been found to be no more effective than placebos.[5] [6]
References from Wikipedia's article on "Homeopathy":
Hahnemann, Samuel (1833). The Homœopathic Medical Doctrine, or "Organon of the Healing Art". Dublin: W.F. Wakeman. pp. iii , 48-49 . "Observation, reflection, and experience have unfolded to me that the best and true method of cure is founded on the principle, similia similibus curentur. To cure in a mild, prompt, safe, and durable manner, it is necessary to choose in each case a medicine that will excite an affection similar (ὅμοιος πάθος) to that against which it is employed." Translator: Charles H. Devrient, Esq. ^ Tuomela R (1987). "Chapter 4: Science, Protoscience, and Pseudoscience". In Pitt JC, Marcello P. Rational Changes in Science: Essays on Scientific Reasoning. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 98 (Springer). pp. 83-101. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-3779-6_4 . ISBN 978-94-010-8181-8. ^ Smith K (2012). "Homeopathy is Unscientific and Unethical". Bioethics 26 (9): 508-512. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8519.2011.01956.x . ^ Baran GR, Kiana MF, Samuel SP (2014). "Chapter 2: Science, Pseudoscience, and Not Science: How Do They Differ?" . Healthcare and Biomedical Technology in the 21st Century (Springer). pp. 19-57. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-8541-4_2 . ISBN 978-1-4614-8540-7. "within the traditional medical community it is considered to be quackery" ^ Shang A, Huwiler-Müntener K, Nartey L, et al. (2005). "Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study of placebo-controlled trials of homoeopathy and allopathy". Lancet 366 (9487): 726-32. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)67177-2 . PMID 16125589 . Evidence Check 2: Homeopathy - Science and Technology Committee , British House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, 22 February 2010, retrieved 2014-04-05
Is Homeopathy Really a "Pseudoscience"?
Wikipedia asserts that "Pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status."
The "editors" at Wikipedia have deemed homeopathy to be a "pseudoscience" even though randomized double-blind and placebo controlled studies that have been published in many of the best medical journals in the world have shown efficacy of homeopathic treatment for many common and serious health problems (below is a partial list of such studies):
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: Frass, M, Dielacher, C, Linkesch, M, et al. Influence of potassium dichromate on tracheal secretions in critically ill patients, Chest, March, 2005;127:936-941. The journal, Chest, is the official publication of the American College of Chest Physicians. Hayfever: Reilly D, Taylor M, McSharry C, et al., Is homoeopathy a placebo response? controlled trial of homoeopathic potency, with pollen in hayfever as model," Lancet, October 18, 1986, ii: 881-6. Asthma: Reilly, D, Taylor, M, Beattie, N, et al., "Is Evidence for Homoeopathy Reproducible?" Lancet, December 10, 1994, 344:1601-6. Fibromyalgia: Bell IR, Lewis II DA, Brooks AJ, et al. Improved clinical status in fibromyalgia patients treated with individualized homeopathic remedies versus placebo, Rheumatology. 2004:1111-5. This journal is the official journal of the British Society of Rheumatology. Fibromyalgia: Fisher P, Greenwood A, Huskisson EC, et al., "Effect of Homoeopathic Treatment on Fibrositis (Primary Fibromyalgia)," BMJ, 299(August 5, 1989):365-6. Childhood diarrhea: Jacobs, J, Jimenez, LM, Gloyd, SS, Treatment of Acute Childhood Diarrhea with Homeopathic Medicine: A Randomized Double-blind Controlled Study in Nicaragua, Pediatrics, May, 1994,93,5:719-25. ADD/ADHD: Frei, H, Everts R, von Ammon K, Kaufmann F, Walther D, Hsu-Schmitz SF, Collenberg M, Fuhrer K, Hassink R, Steinlin M, Thurneysen A. Homeopathic treatment of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a randomised, double blind, placebo controlled crossover trial. Eur J Pediatr., July 27,2005,164:758-767.
Jimmy, can you name ONE other system of "pseudoscience" that has a similar body of randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled clinical trials published in high-impact medical journals showing efficacy of treatment?
It is more than a tad ironic that this first paragraph in the Wikipedia article on homeopathy references only one article that was published in a peer-review medical journal. This one article by Shang, et al. has been thoroughly discredited in an article written by Lüdtke and Rutten that was published in a leading "high impact" journal that specializes in evaluating clinical research. The Shang meta-analysis is highlighted on Wikipedia without reference to any critique of it. The fact that there is no hint of any problems in the Shang review, let alone a reference to the Lüdtke and Rutten article that provided evidence of bias, is itself a cause for concern.
The Shang article is also the primary reference used by the widely ridiculed "Evidence Check" reports issued by the Science and Technology Committee of the British House of Commons, which also conveniently omits reference to the severe limitations of this one review of research. Further, the "Evidence Check" was signed off by just three of the 15 members of the original committee, never discussed or endorsed by the whole UK Parliament, and had its recommendations ignored by the UK Department of Health.
It should be made clear that the Shang meta-analysis was co-authored by M. Egger who is a well-known skeptic of homeopathy and who wrote to the Lancet that his hypothesis before conducting the review was that homeopathy was only a placebo effect. Readers were never informed of this bias.
The meta-analysis by Shang evaluated and compared 110 placebo-controlled trials testing homeopathic medicines with 110 testing conventional drugs, finding 21 homeopathy trials (19%) but only nine (8%) conventional-medicine trials were of "higher quality." Lüdtke and Rutten found that a positive outcome for homeopathy would have resulted if Shang had simply compared these high quality trials against each other. However, with some clever statistical footwork, Shang chose to limit the high quality trials to only 8 homeopathic and 6 conventional medical trials, a result that led to a "negative" outcome for homeopathy. Lüdtke and Rutten determined this review as biased for its "arbitrarily defined one subset of eight trials" and they deemed the entire review as "falsely negative."
By reducing the number of studies, Shang created convoluted logic that enabled his team to avoid evaluation of ANY of the above high quality studies that were all published in respected medical journals. Further, 7 of 8 homeopathic studies only tested one homeopathic medicine for everyone with the similar disease even though one of the primary tenets of homeopathy requires individualization of treatment. Many other extremely scathing critiques of the Shang research were published in the Lancet shortly after publication, including the exclusion of one high quality homeopathic study due to the questionable assertion that the researchers could not find a study in all of conventional medical research that treated patients with polyarthritis (arthritis that involves five or more joints).
Skeptics typically assert that the above high-quality studies published in high-impact medical journals are simply "cherry-picking" the positive studies, and then, they begin cherry-picking studies that had negative results. However, skeptics of homeopathy fail to differentiate good, sound scientific investigations that are respectful of the homeopathic method and those that are not. Just because a study was conducted with a randomized double-blind and placebo controlled method does NOT mean that the study gave the appropriate homeopathic medicine for each patient or even each group of patients. This ignorance is akin to someone saying that antibiotics are ineffective for "infections" without differentiating between bacterial infections, viral infections, and fungal infections. Ironically, skeptics of homeopathy consistently show a very sloppy attitude about scientific investigations.
What the Most Comprehensive Review of Homeopathic Research Found...
Skeptics commonly assert that various meta-analyses verify that homeopathy doesn't work and that homeopathic medicines are equivalent to the effects of a placebo. These skeptics typically chose to ignore various meta-analyses that were published in highly respected medical journals and that show positive benefits from homeopathic medicines. Skeptics also ignore the largest and most comprehensive review of research ever conducted...one that was funded by the government of Switzerland.
It is useful to know that the Shang/Egger meta-analysis was funded by the same Swiss government's Complementary Medicine Evaluation Program that also funded a much more detailed and comprehensive review of clinical research, preclinical research (fundamental physio-chemical research, botanical studies, animal studies, and in vitro studies with human cells), epidemiological evidence, and cost-effectiveness studies.
This more comprehensive Swiss government-funded report found a particularly strong body of evidence to support the homeopathic treatment of Upper Respiratory Tract Infections and Respiratory Allergies. The report cited 29 studies in "Upper Respiratory Tract Infections/AllergicReactions," with 24 studies having a positive result in favor of homeopathy. Six out of seven controlled studies that compared homeopathic treatment with conventional medical treatment showed homeopathy to be more effective than conventional medical interventions. When the researchers evaluated only the randomized placebo controlled trials, 12 out of 16 studies showed a positive result in favor of homeopathy.
Ironically, the Shang/Egger meta-analysis acknowledged that there have been at least eight clinical trials of patients with acute infections of the upper respiratory tract and that there is "robust evidence that the treatment under investigation works." And yet, Shang/Egger assert that this limited number of trials is inadequate for evaluating homeopathy, while at the same time they assert that eight other trials provided unquestionable evidence for damning homeopathy (it should be noted that Shang/Egger somehow determined that some of the studies on respiratory infection and allergy were not "high quality," even though numerous other meta-analyses have unanimously defined three trials by David Reilly as high quality (two were published in the British Medical Journal and one was published in the Lancet).
In actual fact, although some meta-analyses have had a "negative" result, there have also been a significant number of meta-analyses that have had positive results, including this partial list:
Linde L, Clausius N, Ramirez G, Jonas W, "Are the Clinical Effects of Homoeopathy Placebo Effects? A Meta-analysis of Placebo-Controlled Trials," Lancet, September 20, 1997, 350:834-843. Although a later review by some of these authors found a reduced significance, the authors never asserted that the significance was no longer present. Further, two of the lead authors of this article provided a very sharp critique of the Shang, et al. review of research (2005). Also, both Linde and Jonas wrote to the Lancet after the Shang/Egger article was published and asserted that the Lancet should be "embarrassed" by their publication of this article and the accompanied editorial (Lancet, 366 December 17, 2005:2081-2). Kleijnen J, Knipschild P ter Riet G. Clinical trials of homoeopathy. BMJ 1991, 302, 316-23. Of the 22 best studies, 15 showed positive results from homeopathic treatment. The researchers concluded, "there is a legitimate case for further evaluation of homeopathy." Jacobs J, Jonas WB, Jimenez-Perez M, Crothers D, Homeopathy for Childhood Diarrhea: Combined Results and Metaanalysis from Three Randomized, Controlled Clinical Trials, Pediatr Infect Dis J, 2003;22:229-34. This metaanalysis of 242 children showed a highly significant result in the duration of childhood diarrhea (P=0.008). Kassab S, Cummings M, Berkovitz S, van Haselen R, Fisher P. Homeopathic medicines for adverse effects of cancer treatments. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2009, Issue 2. Taylor, MA, Reilly, D, Llewellyn-Jones, RH, et al., Randomised controlled trial of homoeopathy versus placebo in perennial allergic rhinitis with overview of four trial Series, BMJ, August 19, 2000, 321:471-476. The BMJ published an editorial in the issue in which this study was published asserting, "It may be time to confront the conclusion that homeopathy and placebo differ...... This may be more plausible than the conclusion that their trials have produced serial false positive results" (This week in the BMJ. Homoeopathic dilutions may be better than placebo. BMJ 2000;321:0). Jonas, WB, Linde, Klaus, and Ramirez, Gilbert, "Homeopathy and Rheumatic Disease," Rheumatic Disease Clinics of North America, February 2000,1:117-123.
Is Homeopathy Really "Implausible"?
The third paragraph in the Wikipedia article continues to show both strong bias against homeopathy and inaccurate information.
Homeopathy lacks biological plausibility[10] and the axioms of homeopathy have been refuted for some time.[11] The postulated mechanisms of action of homeopathic remedies are both scientifically implausible[12][13] and not physically possible.[14] Although some clinical trials produce positive results,[15][16] systematic reviews reveal that this is because of chance, flawed research methods, and reporting bias. Overall there is no evidence of efficacy.[12][17][18][19] Continued homeopathic practice, despite the evidence that it does not work, has been criticized as unethical because it increases the suffering of patients by discouraging the use of real medicine,[20] with the World Health Organisation warning against using homeopathy to try to treat severe diseases such as HIV and malaria.[21] The continued practice, despite a lack of evidence of efficacy, has led to homeopathy being characterized within the scientific and medical communities as nonsense,[22] quackery,[4][23][24] or a sham.[25]
Ironically, the article makes reference to articles written by known antagonists to homeopathy (such as E. Ernst and K. Atwood) that have not even been published in peer-review scientific or medical journals. Reference #10 by Ernst was published in "The Skeptical Inquirer," a magazine that is not listed in Index Medicus or any other respected scientific indexing service, and reference #11 by Atwood wasn't even published in a magazine but at a website. If and when any person tried to edit the article on homeopathy in any way in which homeopathy is presented in a positive light and makes reference to a "magazine" or a "website," that person would be laughed off of Wikipedia, and yet, the editors of the homeopathy article allow and even encourage the use of inappropriate skeptical references (according to Wikipedia's usual standards).
In the same way that Wikipedia's editors have inappropriately deemed homeopathy to be "pseudoscientific," they have also deemed that homeopathy lacks "plausibility." The definition of plausibility is: "having an appearance of truth or reason; seemingly worthy of approval or acceptance; credible; believable."
The journal, Langmuir, is the journal of the American Chemical Society, and in 2012, they published an important article that provided a plausible explanation for the actions of homeopathic medicines. First, they verified using three different types of spectroscopy that clearly showed that nanoparticles of six original medicinal agents persisted in solutions even after they were diluted 1:100 six times, thirty times, and even two-hundred times.
Avogadro's number predicts that none of the original medicinal agents would have ANY persisting molecules of the original medicinal substance would remain after 12 dilutions of 1:100. However, the scientists describe reasonable and even predictable factors that lead to the persistence of nanoparticles after their multiple dilutions. The scientists note that the use of double-distilled water in glass vials leads to varying amounts of silica fragments that fall into the water, as much as 6ppm. The vigorous shaking of the glass vial creates bubbles and "nanobubbles" that bring oxygen into the water and that increase substantially the water pressure (William Tiller, PhD, the former head of Stanford's Department of Material Science, estimated this pressure to be 10,000 atmospheres).
Ultimately, this increased water pressure forces whatever medicinal substance is in the double-distilled water into the silica, and every substance will interact with the silica in its own idiosyncratic way. Then, when 90% of the water is dumped out, the silica fragments predictably cling to the glass walls.
When skeptics of homeopathy reference Avogadro's number as "evidence" that homeopathic medicines beyond 24X or 12C have "no remaining molecules left," they are simply verifying their own ignorance of Avogadro's number because this widely recognized principle in chemistry does NOT account for the complexities of the silica fragments, the bubbles or nanobubbles, nor the increased water pressure. In fact, any serious scientist or educated individual who asserts that a homeopathic medicine is "beyond Avogadro's number" has no ground on which they stand. And yet, Avogadro's number is prominently a part of Wikipedia's article on homeopathy.
Despite the obfuscation throughout Wikipedia's article on homeopathy, in actual fact, the homeopathic pharmaceutical procedure called "potentization" is a clever, perhaps brilliant, method of creating nanoparticles of whatever substance is originally placed in the glass vial. Even more compelling is the significant and growing body of evidence that nanodoses of medicinal agents have several benefits over crude doses of the same substance, including enhanced bioavailability, adsorptive capacity, intracellular accessibility, increased ability to cross cell membranes and even the blood brain barrier, and of course, a substantial better safety profile.
The creation of nanodoses actually increases various characteristics of a substance's properties. Once a substance has an extremely small size but has larger surface area to volume ratio, the nanodose properties create increased chemical and biological reactivity, electromagnetic, optical, thermal, and quantum effects. Further, the idiosyncratic properties of nanomedicines reduce the required doses by orders of magnitude and predictably reduce toxicity.
In light of the above, it is stunning and shocking that Wikipedia's article on "Nanomedicine" has no mention of homeopathy, which rightly is deemed to be the original nanomedicine and nanopharmacology. At a time in the history of medicine and science in which the field of nanomedicine is becoming increasingly accepted and respected, Wikipedia seems stuck in the 20th century, or perhaps the 18th century. It is not surprising that there is an international and inter-disciplinary journal that focuses on the power of extremely small doses in various biological systems, not just medicine.
Given the above, it is no longer accurate to consider homeopathic doses to be "implausible." Wikipedia's article on homeopathy asserts otherwise, deeming homeopathy to be "biologically implausible" (cited by a non-peer review magazine, called "The Skeptical Inquirer," that is not listed in any scientific indexing service), "a sham" (cited at a website!), and running "counter to the laws of chemistry and physics" (what is interesting here is that the article cites an article in the journal, "Homeopathy," and yet, whenever a positive statement or clinical trial or basic sciences trial is published in this same journal, the Wikipedia editors claim that this journal is not worthy of a citation).
Further, just one of the theories of how homeopathic medicines work has been described as the "memory of water." The Wikipedia article refers to this concept as "erroneous" without any acknowledgement that it is inaccurate to assert such a black-and-white statement. It is more accurate to say that this theory is "controversial" because there is, in fact, evidence of a "memory in water," as both verified by the above research on nanoparticles remaining in homeopathically potentized water and as evidenced by research conducted by the French virologist Luc Montagnier who discovered the AIDS virus and who won the Nobel Prize for doing so. Dr. Montagnier has not only published research that provides evidence of this "memory of water," he was interviewed in the prestigious journal, Science, and on July 5, 2014, the French government's public television station showed an hour-long documentary entitled "We Found the Memory in Water" ("On a retrouvé la mémoire de l'eau")
What is shocking about Wikipedia's article of homeopathy is that there is NO reference to this Nobel Prize winner or to his interview in one of the most respected scientific journals in the world today or any reference to French government's documentary on this very subject. Obviously, the people who are editing the homeopathy article have a profound bias.
Numerous people have sought to improve Wikipedia's article on homeopathy, but they have been blocked or prohibited from editing the article. In my case, I was blocked from editing any article to do with homeopathy because I was deemed to have a "conflict of interest" due to the fact that I am a homeopath. Ironically, no medical doctor is prohibited from editing on any medical subject just because she or he is a medical doctor! Further, the bias against homeopathy and against any positive evidence for homeopathy is so strong that the vast majority of the articles from the high impact medical and scientific journals are not referenced or described in the Wikipedia article on homeopathy, while there are numerous low-level references to websites and to non-peer review magazines that populate Wikipedia's article.
I could easily show over a hundred other sentences in Wikipedia's article that are either errors of fact or that are evidence of bias or spin against homeopathy, but I think that I have adequately and accurately provided you with solid testimony proving serious problems with Wikipedia's article on homeopathy.
I await your reply to this letter which you have requested, and I look forward to collaborating with you to improving the article on homeopathy at Wikipedia as well as in establishing guidelines so that strong bias is minimized throughout your usually excellent website.
Pathological Skepticism
Brian Josephson, Ph.D., won a Nobel Prize in 1973 when he was only 23 years old and is presently professor emeritus at Cambridge University. Josephson contends that many scientists today suffer from "pathological disbelief" -- that is, an unscientific attitude that is typified by the statement "even if it were true I wouldn't believe it" (Josephson, 1997).
Josephson asserts that skeptics of homeopathy suffer from a chronic ignorance of this subject, and he maintains that their criticisms of homeopathy are easily refuted, "The idea that water can have a memory can be readily refuted by any one of a number of easily understood, invalid arguments."
Dr. Luc Montagnier won a Nobel Prize in 2008 for discovering the AIDS virus, and in an interview in Science (Dec. 24, 2010), he similarly expressed real concern about the unscientific atmosphere that presently exists on certain unconventional subjects such as homeopathy, "I am told that some people have reproduced Benveniste's results (showing effects from homeopathic doses), but they are afraid to publish it because of the intellectual terror from people who don't understand it."
Montagnier concluded this interview when asked if he is concerned that he is drifting into pseudoscience. He responded adamantly: "No, because it's not pseudoscience. It's not quackery. These are real phenomena which deserve further study."
Ultimately, at Wikipedia there is a certain substantial body of editors who embody "pathological skepticism" and who do not allow good evidence from high-quality studies and meta-analyses published in high-impact journals to be included into the body of evidence for homeopathy just because they provide a positive spin to the subject. On the other hand, these same editors allow references to non-peer review sources, such as popular magazine and websites, when the information in these questionably valid sources is offensive to homeopathy. Today, Wikipedia's article on homeopathy is a classic example of a biased, off-balance, and non-encyclopedic review of the subject.
Practical Solutions...
Jimmy, I assume that you want your website to be the most reliable resource possible, but it can and will never become one unless you, as the founder of Wikipedia, provide some guidance and guidelines so that information for OR against a subject are fair and accurate. In 2009, at a TED talk, you claimed that Wikipedia's most important virtue is its objective reporting of information; you asserted, "the biggest and the most important thing (about Wikipedia) is our neutral point-of-view policy."
Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, quit the organization several years ago due to serious concerns about its integrity. He maintained:
"In some fields and some topics, there are groups who "squat" on articles and insist on making them reflect their own specific biases. There is no credible mechanism to approve versions of articles...The people with the most influence in the community are the ones who have the most time on their hands--not necessarily the most knowledgeable--and who manipulate Wikipedia's eminently gameable system."
Ultimately, there are indeed subjects at Wikipedia that will probably remain highly controversial no matter what is or isn't said, and it makes sense to inform readers about this issue. However, at present, the article on homeopathy strongly suggests that there is no or inconsequential evidence that homeopathic medicines have biological activity and/or clinical efficacy, and this letter clearly dispels that myth. Objective reviews of both basic science research and clinical studies suggest that there are simply too many high quality laboratory and clinical trials that show positive results.
One solution to dealing with Wikipedia's article is to have two separate sections in the article that present the "skeptics' point of view" and the "homeopaths' point of view." Although one could have hoped that the article would have evolved into this multi-view perspective, there are simply too many anti-homeopathy fundamentalists who have squatted on this article and have made it literally impossible to have any positive or even any slightly positive assertions about homeopathy.
Because this letter proves that Skeptics are incapable of presenting information on homeopathy with even a modicum of objectivity, perhaps the best solution is to enable both viewpoints to be able to express themselves. Some people claim that debate is the best way to understand complex subjects, and therefore, allowing and even encouraging a multi-perspective viewpoint in articles at Wikipedia may be an important and worthwhile change in your website's policies.
I can provide other specific suggestions for helping Wikipedia create a truly neutral point of view if and when you are open to constructive dialogue.
You have now been given strong evidence that Wikipedia is NOT maintaining a "neutral point-of-view" on the subject of homeopathy. My question is to you now is: What do you suggest should be done to rectify this problem?
This letter was also signed by: Michael Frass, MD, Professor of Medicine, Medical University of Vienna (Austria) Paolo Bellavite, MD, Professor, Università of Verona (Italy), Department of Pathology and Diagnostics Paolo Roberti di Sarsina, MD, Observatory and Methods for Health, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy; Charity for Person Centered Medicine-Moral Entity, Bologna, Italy; Expert for Non-Conventional Medicine (2006-2013), High Council for Health, Ministry of Health, Italy Dr Clare Relton, Senior Research Fellow (Public Health), School of Health & Related Research, University of Sheffield (UK) Stephan Baumgartner, PhD, Institute of Complementary Medicine, University of Bern, Switzerland; Institute of Integrative Medicine, University of Witten-Herdecke, Germany Lex Rutten MD, homeopathic physician, independent researcher.
References:
Max Ehrenfreund, The Science of Wikipedia Flamewars, Washington Post. July 23, 2013. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/23/the-science-of-wikipedia-flamewars/ Shang A, Huwiler-Müntener K, Nartey L, et al. (2005). "Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study of placebo-controlled trials of homoeopathy and allopathy". Lancet 366 (9487): 726-32. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)67177-2 . PMID 16125589 . http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16125589 Ludtke R, Rutten ALB. The conclusions on the effectiveness of homeopathy highly depend on the set of analysed trials. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. October 2008. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2008.06/015. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18834714 Dana Ullman. The Disinformation Campaign Against Homeopathy. HuffingtonPost. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/disinformation-about-homeopathy_b_952967.html Zoe Mullan, senior editor at The Lancet, acknowledged in the publication's press release for this article, "Professor Egger stated at the onset that he expected to find that homeopathy had no effect other than that of placebo. His 'conflict' was therefore transparent. We saw this as sufficient" EHM News Bureau, 2005). The editors chose not to inform readers of this bias. Bornhöft G, Wolf U, von Ammon K, Righetti M, Maxion-Bergemann S, Baumgartner S, Thurneysen AE, Matthiessen PF. Effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness of homeopathy in general practice - summarized health technology assessment. Forschende Komplementärmedizin (2006);13 Suppl 2:19-29. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16883077 Chikramane PS, Kalita D, Suresh AK, Kane SG, Bellare JR. Why Extreme Dilutions Reach Non-zero Asymptotes: A Nanoparticulate Hypothesis Based on Froth Flotation. Langmuir. 2012 Nov http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23083226 Demangeat, J.-L, Gries, P, Poitevin, B, Droesbeke J.-J, Zahaf, T, Maton, F, Pierart, C, Muller, RN, Low-Field NMR Water Proton Longitudinal Relaxation in Ultrahighly Diluted Aqueous Solutions of Silica-Lactose Prepared in Glass Material for Pharmaceutical Use, Applied Magnetic Resonance, 26, 2004:465-481. Bell IR, Schwartz GE. Adaptive network nanomedicine: an integrated model for homeopathic medicine. Frontiers in Bioscience (Scholar Ed) 2013;5(2):685-708. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23277079 Bell IR, et al. Advances in integrative nanomedicine for improving infectious disease treatment in public health. Eur J Integr Med (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eujim.2012.11.002. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3685499/ Bell IR, Koithan M. A model for homeopathic remedy effects: low dose nanoparticles, allostatic cross-adaptation, and time-dependent sensitization in a complex adaptive system. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2012;12(1):191. http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1472-6882-12-191.pdf Roduner E. Size matters: why nanomaterials are different. Chem. Soc. Rev. 2006;35(7):583-92. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16791330 Bell IR, MD PhD, Ives JA, Jonas WB. Nonlinear Effects of Nanoparticles: Biological Variability From Hormetic Doses, Small Particle Sizes, and Dynamic Adaptive Interactions. Dose Response. May 2014; 12(2): 202-232.Published online Nov 7, 2013. doi: 10.2203/dose-response.13-025. Bell. PMCID: PMC4036395. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4036395/ Bell IR, Sarter B, Koithan M, et al. Integrative Nanomedicine: Treating Cancer with Nanoscale Natural Products. Global Advances in Health and Medicine, January 2014. 36-53. http://tinyurl.com/mqe5p88 Armstead AI, Li B. Nanomedicine as an emerging approach against intracellular pathogens. Int J Nanomed. 2011;8(3):188-96. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=(nanomedicine)%20AND%20ARMSTEAD Ullman D. Let's have a serious discussion of nanopharmacology and homeopathy. FASEB J December 2006 20:2661; doi:10.1096/fj.06-1205ufm http://www.fasebj.org/content/20/14/2661.full Dose-Response: An International Journal. http://www.dose-response.com/ Montagnier L, Aissa J, Ferris S, et al, Electromagnetic Signals Are Produced by Aqueous Nanostructures Derived from Bacterial DNA Sequences. Interdiscip Sci Comput Life Sci (2009) 1: 81-90. http://www.springerlink.com/content/0557v31188m3766x/fulltext.pdf Enserink M, Newsmaker Interview: Luc Montagnier, French Nobelist Escapes "Intellectual Terror" to Pursue Radical Ideas in China. Science 24 December 2010: Vol. 330 no. 6012 p. 1732. DOI: 10.1126/science.330.6012.1732 http://www.france5.fr/et-vous/France-5-et-vous/Les-programmes/LE-MAG-N-28-2014/articles/p-20549-On-a-retrouve-la-memoire-de-l-eau.htm Sanger, Larry. Why Citizendium? http://blog.citizendium.org/?p=286
Abnormal measles-mumps-rubella antibodies and CNS autoimmunity in children with autism.
/Singh VK, et al. Show allJournal
J Biomed Sci. 2002 Jul-Aug;9(4):359-64. Affiliation Abstract
Autoimmunity to the central nervous system (CNS), especially to myelin basic protein (MBP), may play a causal role in autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder. Because many autistic children harbor elevated levels of measles antibodies, we conducted a serological study of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) and MBP autoantibodies. Using serum samples of 125 autistic children and 92 control children, antibodies were assayed by ELISA or immunoblotting methods. ELISA analysis showed a significant increase in the level of MMR antibodies in autistic children. Immunoblotting analysis revealed the presence of an unusual MMR antibody in 75 of 125 (60%) autistic sera but not in control sera. This antibody specifically detected a protein of 73-75 kD of MMR. This protein band, as analyzed with monoclonal antibodies, was immunopositive for measles hemagglutinin (HA) protein but not for measles nucleoprotein and rubella or mumps viral proteins. Thus the MMR antibody in autistic sera detected measles HA protein, which is unique to the measles subunit of the vaccine. Furthermore, over 90% of MMR antibody-positive autistic sera were also positive for MBP autoantibodies, suggesting a strong association between MMR and CNS autoimmunity in autism. Stemming from this evidence, we suggest that an inappropriate antibody response to MMR, specifically the measles component thereof, might be related to pathogenesis of autism. Copyright 2002 National Science Council, ROC and S. Karger AG, Basel PMID 12145534 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/12145534/
THE ORGANON by Samuel Hahnemann - An Outline
/THE ORGANON by Samuel Hahnemann - An Outline Provided in tribute to Julian Winston, May 1941 – June 2005. Beloved Editor-In-Chief of Homeopathy Today for 21 years.
It is often said that studying the Organon is fundamental for any successful homeopath. In this series we will glean some Winston Wisdom by revisiting Julian’s outline of this masterpiece.
Paragraphs 1-5 Basic postulates about disease and what healing is about (part 1):
1. The physician’s only mission is to cure the sick; it is not to speculate on the nature of disease. 2. The ideal cure is rapid, gentle, permanent and removes the whole disease in the shortest, least harmful way, according to easily comprehensible principles. 3. If the physician understands what is curable in disease, and understands what is curative in medicines, and understands how to apply the medicines to the disease (according to well defined principles), and knows how to remove the conditions which prevent the patient from getting well, he is a true physician. 4. The need to recognize and remove the maintaining causes. 5. Pay attention to the exciting cause and the fundamental cause (which is usually a chronic disease) including the patient's character, activities, way of life, habits, etc.
Note: The above is only an outline. To comprehend the Organon in its fullness, we recommend that you read the book. The Organon is usually studied by the intermediate to advanced student of homeopathy.
