03/20/2020
While governments and medical authorities around the world are scrambling to muster adequate supplies and facilities as well as develop effective therapies to diagnose and treat Covid 19, there is a therapeutic resource with a 200-year-old track record that is largely being overlooked.
Only a few years after publishing his work on the principles of homeopathy in the 1790's, Samuel Hahnemann gained great acclaim for his successful treatment of an epidemic of scarlet fever with the homeopathic remedy Belladonna. Hahnemann and his successors went on to effectively treat subsequent outbreaks of scarlet fever as well as other epidemics such as small pox and cholera using carefully chosen homeopathic medicines suitable to the presentation of each disease. It was, in fact, the widespread success of the homeopathic treatment of cholera during a time when other medical persuasions had little to offer that gained homeopathy many converts amongst the medical profession and propelled it to the forefront of American medicine in the mid-19th century.
Homeopathic treatment of epidemics continued into the 20th and 21th century as well: the 1918 Spanish Flu in the United States and Europe, outbreaks of the Bubonic Plague in India, Swamp Fever (Leptospirosis) in Cuba, and AIDS in Africa.
Most relevant to our present circumstances is the success of homeopaths in treating the Spanish Flu, considered the deadliest influenza in history. It struck half a billion people worldwide, killing somewhere from 50 to 100 million of them. It arrived in North America in several waves – the first of which was during the spring of 1918. About a quarter of the population in the United States caught it, and the mortality rate was in the neighborhood of 30 per cent - somewhere over a half million persons.
Orthodox medicine was helpless to treat it, and, in fact, aspirin - the one medicine that was generally prescribed to patients probably aggravated their condition. Bodies piled up in the streets, large X’s were marked on the doors of the afflicted. It was a scene we might associate more medieval plagues than 20th century America.
In contrast to these dire outcomes, homeopaths throughout the United States were having quite different results. One set of data showed that of 6,602 cases treated cumulatively by some 30 homeopaths, only 55, or less than 1 per cent died.1 Another data set of over 25,000 cases from around the country had similar outcomes and mortality rates.
Currently, homeopaths in Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, Iran, India and elsewhere are
sharing their experiences based on the symptoms of successfully treated verified cases of Covid 19 to determine the 'Genus Epidemicus', that is, the remedy or remedies effective in its treatment. We would be wise to avail ourselves of this as well in the United States.
1. “Influenza-1918: Homeopathy to the Rescue”, by Julian Winston, The New England Journal of Homeopathy, Spring/Summer 1998, Vol.7 No.1
