Why not homeopathy to cure coronavirus?

The whole world is inflicted with the dreadful coronavirus or the Covid-19 pandemic. World over people are locked down and even if they step out for a while, it is not without a mask on the face and a sanitiser bottle in the pocket besides maintaining social and physical distance to safeguard themselves.

Neither the World Health Organisation (WHO) nor any of the vaccine companies are in a position to spell out for certain as to when the curative or the preventive medicine in the allopathy system could be made available. Then, can we explore the possibilities in other branches like homeopathy, which has been time tested, accepted, accessible and available.

Homeopathy is a system of medical practice that originated with the work of the German physician Dr Samuel Hahnemann who discovered that patients with certain diseases could be cured with substances that produce similar toxic effects. For instance, cholera could be cured with a dose of arsenic, red fever with a dose of belladonna etc.

According to homeopathy, as in other systems, diseases are broadly divided in to two types: acute and chronic. Acute disease has three stages: Prodromal, Progress and Decline. During the Prodromal stage the disease-causing agent, either bacteria or virus enters the body and reacts to produce some visible variations in the system. During the Progress period, body symptoms become infectious and problems get aggravated. Patient becomes bedridden for days with loss of sleep, loss of appetite, suffer with headache, body pains, pains of different nature, burning, pricking, squeezing, cutting, tingling etc. In the final stage, the Decline stage, patient becomes slightly active, his appetite gets stimulated, starts getting sleep and body pains disappear. Otherwise sometimes due to high infectious problem the patient may succumb to death.

Diseases are either individual, sporadic, epidemic, endemic or pandemic depending on its spread population wise and area wise. Coronavirus was originated in China's Wuhan laboratory and spread to Italy and the rest of the world within a short period, killing thousands of people and affecting lakhs of people, and hence it is a pandemic. It is a respiratory virus which spreads primarily through droplets generated when an infected person coughs or sneezes or through droplets of saliva or discharge from nose.

There are different systems of medicine available in the world like allopathic, homeopathy, Ayurveda, Unani, naturopathy and Siddha etc. According to qualified homeopath practitioners and experts in the branch, for viral diseases, other than in homeopathic system, there is no other medical system which is having medicine to counteract the Covid-19 disease. As the virus is highly dynamic in nature, it is only a dynamic dose of medicine that is required to be administered to control and cure the disease.

Vaccination has to be invented to cure the disease according to allopathy. But the entire homeopathic system as it is, adheres to the principle of vaccination but in a safer mode. Homeopathy is dynamic and vaccination is crud form in proving its usefulness. The main principle of vaccination is the proactive induction of a protective immune response by mimicking the natural interaction of an infectious pathogen like bacteria, viruses, etc. with the human immune system. It may have unforeseen side effects also. Allopathic medicines attempt to alleviate the symptoms of disease by attacking and affecting the natural defence of body whereas the homeopathy embraces the body's natural response system either by encouraging the symptoms of healing or attacking the root cause of the illness. Homeopathy in a way considered as best when it comes to safe and sound treatment as it is devoid of any kind of side effects, according to Dr Vallabhender Reddy, former professor in Homeopathy and a practicing physician.

He says that, homeopathic therapeutic law of cure is absolutely scientific and is justified by the process of observation, induction, deduction and experimental verification. Allopathy does not feel the necessity of discovering a therapeutic law of cure. It makes use of any approach whatever it thinks best adopted to the case in hand. Homeopathy adapts the method of dynamisation of drugs. This was discovered by Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy.

In homeopathy, common salt (Natrum Mur), red chilli (Capsicum), onion (Allium Cepa), zinger (Zingiber), metals like gold (Arum met), silver (Arg met), tin (Stanum met), copper (Cuprum met), snake poisons such as cobra venom (Naja), rattle snake (Crotales horridus), sarukuku snake (Lachesis) etc, are used. Even though all these medical materials used, there is no material drug preventing in high potencies. Simple dilution causes only a minute rise in potency energy and it is left to successive taps to release the energy at each stage. They are, however, able to do this only up to certain limit.

All the medicines in Homeo Materia Medica are well proved and clinically verified on hundreds of people and then only they are included into the book. And all the medicines are proved at various potencies for the use in the various conditions of the patients, said Dr Reddy. Viruses are dynamic and hence action on the human body that we apply also should be dynamic in nature to cure the disease. Dynamic drugs are available in decimal and centesimal potencies according to the susceptibility of the individual and according to the stage of the disease potencies can be increased or decreased.

Dr Vallabhender Reddy has been practicing homeopathic medicine since 1970 and completed 50 years of experience in using homeo medicine in various epidemics like chikungunya, dengue, chicken pox, swine flu, viral conjunctivitis etc. He said that when in 1979, parts of the Rayalaseema districts in the then AP was affected by Japanese encephalitis epidemic, homeopathy was given a chance to control the disease. Group of doctors who studied the case, found the symptoms of disease were similar to symptoms of Belladonna medicine. All the children affected were recovered from the complications of Japanese Encephalitis by using Belladonna. Similar situation when repeated in 1981, 1984 in Hyderabad, Mahbubnagar and Warangal, homeopathic doctors were posted to control the epidemic who cured it with success.

Prime Minster Narendra Modi, speaking on the need and benefits of holistic healthcare and alternative medicine in India said that, homeopathy was helping people towards wellness. The Ministry of AYUSH has reiterated the use of homoeopathy. Advisory was sent to the Chief Secretaries of all States and Union Territories on 6 March.

Against this background and when homeopath doctors are expressing the confidence that given a chance, they would be able to contain the coronavirus, with homoeo preventive and curative medicine, why not they be given an opportunity to do so?

(The writer is Chief PRO to the Chief Minister of Telangana. Views expressed are personal)