Homeopathic Prophylaxis: Safe and Effective

What we do to prevent illness, or disease, is called preventative medicine, or prophylaxis.

Homeopathy has a long history of preventative therapy. Picture this. Dr Samuel Hahnemann [1755-1843], MD, the founder of homeopathy, achieved remarkable results in the prevention and also treatment of a major scarlet fever epidemic, a brutal form of ‘strep’ throat, which swept Germany in 1802, just six years after homeopathy’s official discovery.

Hahnemann was also the first physician to emphasise the value of preventative medicine, long before vaccines came into existence. He was the first too to formulate the idea that a person attending on a small pox patient acquired lifelong immunity against the illness.

Not many people would, however, know that Hahnemann was the first physician ever to prepare Hydrophobinum, a homeopathic medicine, made from the saliva of a rabid dog to treat hydrophobia — a condition caused by the bite of a mad dog. The illness presents itself with a pathological fear of water. He was, in other words, the first medical pioneer to think of ‘immunisation,’ when Louis Pasteur, the founder of vaccination, was only eight years old.

A Chronological Review

• Following Napoleon’s stunning defeat in Russia, in 1813, withdrawing French troops carried an epidemic of typhus fever through Europe. When the epidemic hit Leipzig, Germany, Hahnemann treated 180 cases of typhus. He cured all but two, representing a 1 per cent mortality rate. Conventional physicians reported a 30 per cent mortality rate.  
• In 1854, when cholera broke out in London, the mortality rate for patients under allopathic care was 59 per cent. The mortality rate for patients under homeopathic care was only 9 per cent.

• The influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 is still remembered for its devastating death toll. Considered the worst epidemic in US history, with 600,000 people dead, the deadly flu also took away the lives of 30-40 million people worldwide. The Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy [1921] reported that in Dayton, Ohio, US, the overall mortality rate of flu patients was 28 per cent, whereas in 26,000 cases of flu treated homoeopathically, the mortality rate was just 1 per cent.

• According to The Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy, during the iniquitous outbreak of meningitis in Brazil, in 1974, 18,640 patients were given the homeopathic nosode [prepared from diseased tissue], Meningococcinum, as a preventative. Just 4 cases of meningitis were reported in this group. On the contrary, 6,340 people, who formed the control group, and did not receive any treatment, developed 32 cases. The homeopathic efficacy was evident.
• Over 2 million Cuban citizens at high risk in a leptospirosis epidemic, in 2007, were given preventative oral homeopathic medicine.  Researchers found that there was a significant decrease in the incidence of leptospirosis in the group that received preventative homeopathic medicine. 

The list is only indicative, not exhaustive.

Homeopathy: Evidence-based Medicine

In the light of homeopathy’s impressive clinical record in preventative care, it is not surprising that some people think of vaccine therapy to be somewhat similar to the homeopathic principle — ‘what can cause, can cure.’ In reality, this is just not the case.

Homeopathy follows the principle of similars. A ‘suitable’ homeopathic medicine that matches the symptom-picture of the individual or patient, and not just the illness alone, is given in homeopathy. In vaccine therapy, the same vaccine is given to everyone.

Vaccines, as you’d know, are preparations of a weakened, or killed, micro-organism. They are tested on animals. They are evidenced to cause several adverse effects, some of them serious.

Homeopathic medicines, on the other hand, are tested on healthy human beings [provings]. Homeopathic medicines, which are given in minute doses, do not cause, or trigger, side- or toxic effects.

For long, homeopaths have successfully used Anthracinum for anthrax, Pertussin for whooping cough, Diphtherinum for diphtheria, and so on — much before conventional vaccines came into use.