Homeopathic Thoughts for Coronavirus (COVID-19)

In December 2019, a Canadian artificial intelligence company called Bluedot specializing in epidemics around the world by tracking billions of travelers and translating tens of thousands of newspapers in sixty different languages each day picked up on the signs of a burgeoning epidemic in Wuhan China. To be sure, epidemics ravage all over the world all the time, as I write this, there are 560 000 people with Dengue fever in Central and South America but we don’t pay attention. Obviously, Coronavirus-19 took the cake.

In early January, in Wuhan China, doctors began to notice a higher number of patients coming in quickly developing severe respiratory distress. DNA sequencing revealed that this coronavirus, causing severe bilateral pneumonia, had a genetic sequence unknown to scientists and therefore probably made humans not immune to it. That naturally rang alarm bells up and down the corridors of Establishment Medicine and political powers. Coronavirus-19 started to make the news.

Decisions to control the spread of the disease were quickly put in place, most stringently in China while we, in the West looked complacently. A few countries took immediate action. Spooked by the SARS epidemic in 2003 my patients in Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong reported very quick governmental actions. Russia, which so far has fared well, closed its nearly three thousand miles border with China, right away. Taiwan immediately instituted wearing a face mask instituting a purchase system based on birthdate to avoid the crunch. Social distancing and other measures were imposed right away. To date, it is the most exemplary country, limiting their cases to about two hundred with two deaths.

Looking from afar, rumors started to go around that this coronavirus is not much of a big deal, “barely flu” people continue to say. There are some facts to suggest that to be true. This year, thirty-five million people were infected with the flu and it has killed over thirty thousand Americans. This corona so far has infected less than four hundred thousand people and killed less than sixteen thousand people worldwide. So yes, comparatively it is not nearly as much of a problem as the yearly flu or an Ebola epidemic. So, what gives? Why such an extreme reaction to this one, with literally entire countries shutting down?

It is clear that this virus is highly contagious, Columbia University conducted a study concluding that 86% of people infected don’t even know it. That same 86% is responsible for 80% of the severe infection. So the personality of this virus while highly contagious is rather mild on healthy people yet very opportunistic in people with a compromised immune system, most particularly the elderly though the younger American population seems to be affected at a higher percentage than the rest of the world possibly pointing to the ravages of an over-medicated population. By comparison, the 2003 SARS epidemic was not nearly as infectious, with barely a handful of cases outside of china/Hong Kong/Taiwan region but with a death rate averaging around 15% according to WHO. This is probably one reason why Occidental countries did not pay much attention at first.

What this high contagion rate triggered in the minds of people dealing with it was the sheer number of medical equipment needed to recover patients. At first, it was thought that up to 20% of the patients would require a ventilator. At that rate, no hospital can cover all of the patients. From there a doomsday scenario began to play in the minds of those on the “frontline”. A friend of mine was literally speaking of “bodies piling up in the street of New York”. The reports out of Italy and Iran, the first countries to deal with it outside of China confirmed the catastrophic scenario and this is how we arrived at entire countries on lockdown. Established medicine would not be able to deal with the onslaught. Medicine is an extremely top-heavy industry, incapable of moving quickly.

Meanwhile, homeopaths, acutely aware of the amazing results of past epidemics, began to network around the world to find specific symptomatology associated with this new virus. It took several painful weeks to know more than “fever, pneumonia, and cough”, far too broad for the precise science of homeopathy but little by little cases revealed “Sticky expectoration” “Asphyxia, death apparent, as if drowning” “Smell and taste diminished” ‘respiration impaired in old people” This picture, you will agree far more humanistic, revealed several possible homeopathic remedies: Antimonium tartaricum, Bryonia, Sticta started to make the talk of what is termed the “Genus Epidemicus” (G.E), or the root remedy for this epidemic. Experience has taught us that during an epidemic, out of 8000 homeopathic remedies currently available, a mere half dozen to a dozen will come to prominence and out of that dozen one or two will constitute the G.E..

For example, during the 1918 “Spanish flu epidemic”, the remedy Gelsemium sempervirens became the Genus Epidemicus and records show that tens of thousand lives were saved as opposed to the catastrophic convictions of Established Medicine methods of bloodletting and mercury that created the hecatomb we know. To this day, in cases of common flu, Gelsemium remains a “go-to” remedy. By the way, the references to the 1918 flu epidemic are wrong. The nature of the 1833 epidemic is closer to this one than the Spanish Flu.

But this is an evolving situation, and with time more distinguishing symptoms are coming to the fore. For example, we are finding out that the cough is dry and the nasal passages are also dry in 95% of the cases. Homeopathic remedies we deem “wet” can, therefore, be eliminated. It also appears that pneumonia most commonly starts in the right lung and moves left. Solely, left-sided remedies can be eliminated. Also, COVID-19 causes a lot of shivering and profuse cold sweating, in that sense, it shares some similarities with malaria. This is why Dr. Didier Raoult, a highly prolific French scientist with over 12 000 scientific papers under his belt, declared Chloroquine, an anti-malaria medication the medication of choice. That “logic” really rubbed the medical establishment the wrong way but given the situation, the one with the louder voice wins.

Concomitant to the above symptoms of shivering and cold sweats, a state of total collapse, so much so that the patient can’t even turn in bed also emerged from Dr. Aditya Kasariyans in Iran. An intense need to lay down all the time with zero energy to get up. These additional symptoms, including bi-lateral pneumonia, compelled Dr. Kasariyans assisted with Dr. Sankaran in India to very successfully prescribing Camphora officinalis in about two dozen patients. At this moment, it is the better remedy but as I mentioned there are others and while the nature of an epidemic is to affect large amounts of the population in broad sweeps overwhelming individual sensitivities, each case should still be looked at individually for maximum results. It is my opinion that this still a good one, though given the characteristics of Camphora Acidum and Lobelia purpurascens are also strong options. Jeremy Sherr who out of Africa is in contact with homeopaths and has knowledge of over 70 ongoing cases doing extremely well with some of the above remedies. For myself, I have put most of my patients on some weekly prophylactic dosing. These are meager numbers indeed, but in places where homeopathy is widely practiced the results are startling. In 2007, the Cuban Ministry of Health instituted wide-scale Homeopathic prophylactic measures against Leptospirosis, a disease of epidemic proportions after hurricanes, to 2.3 million Cubans in four different regions. Several studies were conducted following this experiment, one led by Dr. Bracho reported a “large reduction of disease incidence”. In 2008, the same process was repeated prior and after the hurricane season going door to door delivering homeopathic prophylactic, the results were again astonishing, caseload went from 38 cases per 100 000 per week to 4 cases per 100 000 per week. In effect, homeopathic prevention experienced an 84% reduction in infection while the untreated regions saw a 22% rise in the disease. Since then, Cuba has instituted homeopathic prevention for other epidemics such as Dengue fever and Influenza. Speaking of large populations taking homeopathic remedies to protect themselves from an epidemic, the Ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy) of India on January 28 recommended to its 1.2 Billion Indian population to take the homeopathic Arsenicum album as a prophylactic. My patients in India tell me that there is great networking of this among the people themselves. To be sure, this was not claiming a cure or treatment, just a possible prophylactic, yet it received great backlash from the Western press. Time will tell us if this helped.

These numbers can be repeated here, right now in the U.S. as one homeopath with a nurse can treat hundreds of cases a day due to the ease of delivery of the remedy to patients. During the 1918 Influenza epidemic, Dr. Frank Wieland of Chicago wrote: “In a plant of 8 000 workers there was only one death. Gelsemium was practically the only homeopathic remedy used”.

Dr. H.A. Roberts of Connecticut had 30 physicians respond to his request for data. They reported 6.602 cases with 55 deaths, which is less than a 1% mortality rate while the Established Medicine rate was 30%.

Dr. A.B. Palmer of Seattle treated approximately 500 cases which included pneumonia, he only lost 2 cases.

Dr. F.A Swartwout of Washington had 11 homeopathic physicians report 3 600 cases of Influenza with only 6 deaths.

I have a PowerPoint presentation with figures for the Typhus Fever epidemic of 1813, the Cholera epidemic of 1830 -1832 as well as 1849, 1854 in London, 1892 in Hamburg. Yellow fever of 1850, diphtheria in 1862, Polio in 1957. The same or even better can be done now, but the gravest problem is that we are not at the table because of Established Medicine dogma.

My Experience with Patients

I received several cases, and one, in particular, became extremely interesting because it reveals the underbelly of Established Medicine. It reveals what we have allowed happening, namely our freedom to think and our freedom of choice has been usurped for dogma.

The case is of an 84-year-old lady who was hospitalized with bilateral pneumonia showing on X-ray, not yet diagnosed with COVID-19, the remedy Camphora, because it fits the symptomatology of the case, was given by the family. The five-day fever she had from being suffering from quickly went down, she regained her good spirit, she far less tired; she was getting better quickly. Given that, the family stopped dosing and took leave. The hospital took another X-ray, declared her free of pneumonia, and blamed a careless radiologist on the “mistake” diagnosis. The family called me to say that she was being discharged. “And what about the dosing? I asked. “We stopped” but here is another feature of this COVID-19, fever can come back quickly. I told the family to immediately go back to the hospital, that the likelihood of the fever coming back before getting there was extremely high. She needed to be dosed, now! By the time they arrived, the fever was back and the hospital decided to keep her. Now convinced that she had Coronavirus-19 they turned the family back. No dosing allowed. At 1 AM, I spoke with her doctor giving him a 30-second crash course in homeopathy, while the family was pleading with him to dose. He said she was deteriorating quickly and would probably need to be intubated within a few hours. “Fine, do what you need to do,” I said “but please between now and then give her the remedy, diluted in water, all she needs are a few drops every ten to fifteen minutes. He was moved but his vision of someone turning around quickly was too much for him to process even in such a dire situation doctors follow procedures. He went back in and the next time the family heard from him was to tell them that she was never given the remedy, that she was intubated and in critical care. Literally, giving a few drops of water, that if sent to a lab would not show anything, was asking too much. That was a few days ago and today she is hanging by the thread. The family spoke again to the doctors, begged again to give the remedy. “Giving the remedy is absolutely impossible until she is pronounced “terminal” they were told. If the family was allowed in, the first thing they would do is give the remedy that almost got her out of the hospital, to begin with, and perhaps at that very late stage it will still help, we will see, god forbid they arrive too late.

The question here is why in such an uncharted global situation the Establishment, is absolutely refusing anything else apart from their poor to non-existent protocol and prognosis. Everybody in the hospital is “scared” to do anything different. Nobody is stepping aside and saying “Wait a minute, these people are convinced, people are dying all around, the world is on the edge of a precipice, if not outright falling down the abyss, why not do this for this one person?” Why not? And if this ridiculous idea of giving this remedy in waterworks perhaps it will work for someone else. Why not? Change happens with one first step, why not? Nobody on the inside, asked themselves, why? Is it fear of reprisal? Fear of stepping aside? Yet, we hear the complaints of lack of ventilators, masks, and other equipment, there is no dissident voice, the establishment is the only game in town, no choice, and no one is admitted to the table, not even the family. It refuses, it turns down. We are told, Homeopathy does not work, it cannot work, it is only water. OK, well then if it is only water what keeps you from giving a sip to the patients? There is no valid reason, just dogma.

Each epidemic has its own signature, its own dynamics, its own time and each makes people fall in line like a magnet to iron. It is interesting to note that a feature of Camphora is that of “feeling as if the world is dangerous and there is a need to be in a small word”. Clearly, the reaction of mass isolation mirrors that feeling. This isolation may lead some to what we term, “Mind — Inner rage, as if soon bursting, no room for any emotion, cannot bear anything”. That is the Camphora state of mind, the similarity with the collective is astounding.

This is also a feature of the other epidemic sweeping country, this time far more chronic and long term, Autism; I have specialized in for over 25 years. An illness with the feature of being “in his bubble” where details become of extreme importance such as counting, much like we count each diagnosed case now. Epidemic often reflects the world as a whole, an aspect that medicine as we know it is disinterested in. As it looks through its microscope for a molecule it misses what will always be true of illness: The human experience. After all, that is what takes us to the doctor. Interestingly, some patients have said it is like breathing through a forest fire, which reminds us of what was happening in Australia a few months ago. Others have mentioned the feeling of plugs or tar in the lung possibly reflecting world pollution. Albeit possibly not so useful, it does give a sense that we are part of a larger continuum.

It is of the essence that medicine sheds its prejudices and at least allows convinced and desperate families to have a say. The numbers I presented above are real and anyone of us would welcome the scrutiny. We are in this situation because Establishment Medicine dictates from the simplest idea that masks should be reserved for medical personnel to the current, largely ineffective, and extremely costly treatment sacrificing lives. The entire world is literally at a standstill waiting for this monolithic science to come up with a solution all the while the solution is already here. Belief is not of the essence here. The essence is effectiveness. There are thousands of patients who would gladly take a homeopathic remedy while waiting for the established doctor to perform procedures. No one wants to be in a hospital. Everyone would gladly leave. The opportunity must be given if only to save this seriously broken medical system because even in the best of circumstances, it will take months before basic equipment reaches hospitals, months before an actual protocol is settled upon, and at least a year before any vaccine reaches people which by then estimates of infected people is as high as 80% at which point vaccine is obsolete. Case in point, in 2007, during the H5N1 bird flu epidemic, with a drug already in place, there was only enough of it to treat half of the infected population. No matter how one looks at this, there must be another player at the table.

Originally published at https://homeopathicservices.com on April 1, 2020.