Swine Flu Ping Pong Irish Potao Famine Benjamin Disrali

Dear Editor,

Yes, it’s me again; “Concerned Citizen.” Most concerned, in fact. I just read your latest newsletter article on swine flu and nearly had a fit!

Pigs, birds and man; all locked in some great cosmic conflict! With homeopaths holding the thin “red” line!

First we had mad cow disease; and I like beef. Then bird flu; and I like poultry of all types. Now swine flu; and I have been known to eat my way through a herd of porkers in one sitting. Last night I tried to do the shopping at the supermarket but had to flee, screaming out the door like a madman. The meat section suddenly transformed before my eyes into a petri dish, cooking up all sorts of abominations. I tell you, I’m a nervous wreck! Later on I found out they were only cooking sausages, but at the time…….

Anyway, my youngest daughter, (stranger than strange since birth), read the swine flu article also. She believes its the natural order rising up against us due to global warming. She’s a vegetarian, and pointed out that man has nothing to fear from the gentle fruits and vegetables. These hold no threat to man’s survival, she argued. I didn’t have the heart to tell her about the great potato famine that nearly wiped out the Irish.

So, what’s my point I hear you ask? It’s this. If the shape of the swine flu ping pong ball keeps changing shape as it zaps back and forth between pigs and us, how on earth can homeopaths possibly come up with a way to treat it? Is this one you lot should abandon to the drug pushers from Roche?

Signed: More than Concerned Citizen

Dear Concerned Citizen,

Wash your mouth out with soap!

Didn’t you read the section in the swine flu article about the problems with antivirals?

Please don’t think that we homeopaths will be “abandoning” suffering humanity to the tender mercies of the antivirals any time soon – not when risks such as delirium, psychoses, hallucinations, suicides, and serious respiratory problems are associated with them. In our opinion these drugs should only be used as a last resort, especially when there are so many safer options available.

To answer to your closing question, can homeopathy help with a rapidly mutating virus? Absolutely! One of the biggest strengths of homeopathy is that it can be used even when it is still impossible to diagnose the disease or name the virus.

Homeopathy is a symptom-based approach to treatment. It focuses on the person and their response to the disease rather than on the disease itself. While disease names or viral strains might be nice to know, they are not essential, or even highly important for homeopathic treatment.

What is important is that the unique symptoms of the sufferer are known. These symptoms hold the key to the remedy needed by that person for their health problem. This also means that if two people have the same disease but their symptoms differ, they may need very different remedies.

Furthermore, no matter how rapidly the virus mutates, symptoms will still be present, shouting for what is needed by that particular individual. They may appear in different combinations in different people but they will still be present, showing us what is needed homeopathically, if only we look and listen. To see this in practice, just refer again to the treatment section of the Straight Talk about Swine Flu article.

Orthodox medicine finds itself flat-footed in this area. Before it can prescribe an antiviral such as Relenza or Tamiflu it needs to have a disease name of influenza – and the person could be dead by then.

To produce a vaccine for a bacterium or virus, it has to first know its name and strain – but even then it will take 6 months before small amounts of the vaccine start to roll off the production line.

In contrast, homeopaths can name the most likely remedies needed for the disease within minutes of the symptoms being known. It can also produce large amounts of these remedies to meet world needs within days.

Can you see why the homeopathic approach is one of the quickest and best options during the early (and even later) stages of a disease like swine flu?

Just to conclude, I notice you mention the Irish potato famine in your rather remarkable letter. You may be interested in a book written by Francis Treuherz in 1995 called Homeopathy in the Irish Potato Famine. Among the many fascinating points it touches on, are:

1. The success of homeopathy against typhus, fever, and dysentery that followed in the wake of the Irish potato famine. You may or may not be surprised to find that homeopathy was remarkably successful compared to the orthodox treatments of the day.

2. Fascinating accounts from Dr Joseph Kidd, a homeopathic medical doctor who successfully treated sufferers in the above epidemics and then went on to be the homeopathic doctor of Benjamin Disraeli when he was Prime Minister of England.

3. Personal accounts from Benjamin Disraeli on how homeopathy enabled him to be Prime Minister by treating his severe asthma and other health complaints when no other medicine could.

4. The symptoms treated by potentised potato blight, Solanum tuberosum aegrotans (the homeopathic remedy prepared from the blight of those days). Sol-t-ae – to which it is abbreviated for obvious reasons – is capable of treating conditions such as irritability and quarrelsomeness; headaches and sinusitis; offensive body odour; rectal prolapse; muscular aches and pains and sciatica.

Several years ago Fran Treuherz was kind enough to make the text of this book freely available on the web for anyone who was interested. To read it just visit http://www.homeoint.org/books/treuherz/index.htm and click on the individual chapter links.

Well, dear Concerned Citizen, I hope we have given you some idea of the breadth and depth of homeopathy. As for your emails, please keep them coming! They often have us doubled up with laughter and we would sorely miss their unique perspective on all things homeopathic if they stopped.

Kind Regards,

Fran Sheffield (Homeopath)