The Homeopathic Treatment of Influenza

Review

This book review is reprinted with the permission of the National Center for Homeopathy

Reviewed by Maria T Bohle

Influenza. What is the big deal? If my attitude before I read this book was typical of today's thinking, we have been lulled into a false sense of security Imagine a disease so virulent that a strong, healthy young man in the prime of his life gets a sore throat in the morning, presents himself to a clinic because he is feeling slightly "out of sorts," and is dead by evening. Or, a "healthy" person boards a bus or train and is dead before reaching his destination. Now, multiply these true stories by thousands of cases and we have a small insight into what happened during the influenza pandemic of 1918, a pandemic that may have been responsible for 50 to 100 million deaths.

Wow! If a lethal flu hit my home town would I (as a fairly new homeopath) be ready for it? I am sure homeopathy could help, but would my skills be up to handling something like that? How about my family and friends who live hundreds of miles away? Is there information I could send them that would help them in a flu crisis situation? Information that could help them find the right remedy to use to save their lives?

Yes, yes, yes. Sandra Perko's book, The Homeopathic Treatment of Influenza, surviving influenza epidemics and pandemics past, present and future with homeopathy, is a treasure. The book is easy to read and easy to understand whether you are an experienced homeopath or just an interested reader. Best of all, with even limited knowledge of homeopathy, this book can stand alone as a source of information and aid to successful prescribing.

The first section of The Homeopathic Treatment of Influenza is de voted to the history of influenza. We are treated to a well-documented literature search of historical records, newspapers, and recorded accounts of the flu as it was happening. Perko pays special attention to the symptoms, how those symptoms manifested, and treatment protocols-information of critical importance to the homeopath-yet information still quite interesting to the lay read The author includes flu complications, the symptoms of pneumo nia, mortality figures, and autopsy results. She defines the neces sary terms so we can all understand them when used in context. For instance there is a section that defines and describes the differ ent kinds of fevers: hectic, intermittent, etc.

We also learn about treatment options (e.g., rest and diet), dangers of high fevers, what to look for, etc. There is a list of herbs that can be used to help with fever control (herbal teas) and hydrotherapy. This is all in the first 133 pages.

The rest of the book is indeed devoted to the homeopathic treatment of influenza. Homeopathic medicine had an impressive success record treating the flu. And Sandra Perko makes that information available to anyone who will take the time to read this book.

There is a Repertory Section that is easy to use. Did the flu come on fast or slow? You will find a convenient list of remedies to help narrow down your selection. Then find the "main complaint" of the person with influenza-is it nausea, headache, high fever, eye symptoms, bone symptoms, etc.? After each "main complaint" is a list of the most used homeopathic remedies along with their keynotes, Write down the most indicated remedies and move to the next dominant symptom easy enough, even for our non- homeopathically minded relatives.

Once you are finished with the narrowing process you can confirm your remedy choice with the Influenza Materia Medica. This is one of the nicest features of the book, over 220 pages, where remedies are presented in alphabetical order. This is where you ca refine your choices to a single remedy.

At this point in the remedy selection process I would typically reach for the materia medicae of Burnett, Gibson, Blackie, etc.-but she does it for us in the most wonderful detail with actual quotes from an impressive list of some of the century's homeopathic greats-which helps to elucidate the characteristics of the remedies and bring them to life.

For example, under Rhus tox there is a half-page of keynotes, followed by quotes from Borland, Castro, Dewey, Farrington, Jouann, Kruzel, Lilienthal, Morrison, and Nash.

In my opinion, this is a most valuable book that would appeal practitioners, interested home-homeopaths, students, and scholar,, Perko has very credibly supported homeopathic theory and prac tice and made it understandable, as well as introduced us to man, capable and competent homeopathic authors of books that the average lay person would not have on their library shelves.

When the flu hits, this is a book that you will want in hand. I wouldn't be without it!

This review was reprinted from Volume XIX, Issue I, Winter/Spring edition of Simillimum with permission from the Homeopathic Academy of Naturopathic Physicians.

Reviewed by: Neil Tessler, ND, DHANP

"Two children die of flu in Colorado" screamed the headlines, the fifteenth front-page article on the flu in the previous three months. In the meantime, around thirty-five thousand North Americans die of the flu every year, shots or no shots. When so many patients come in sick from flu shots, highlighting the shrill and orchestrated media madness of recent years, my reaction to the avian flu scare has been understandably skeptical.

Even after attending the Boiron sponsored Homeopathy and Avian Influenza conference in November, I still did not gain very much understanding about the nature of the supposed beast, though it was an interesting and useful meeting. So it was quite a surprise to read Sandra Perko's thorough discussion of the Avian flu in the new edition of her Homeopathic Treatment of Influenza. She presents the conventional argument that the threat is grave and serious, but is this in fact the reality? The avian flu scare has had many analogies to the flu vaccine terrorism of recent years. Is there a connection? Perko does not address such issues as the Rumsfeld/Tamiflu money trail, though the depth of information she does offer is considerable.

In fact, this is a valuable book that deserves to be owned and reviewed by all practitioners as a homeopathic resource and to gain some perspective on the modem issues surrounding influenza's epidemic potential. Sandra Perko has been practicing homeopathy and clinical nutrition for almost thirty years, including serving as the Director of the South Texas Education Center for Homeopathy. She is also the author of Homeopathy for the Modern Pregnant Woman and Her Infant.

In approaching the subject of influenza Perko takes up the task most seriously. She goes into the history of the flu and flu pandemics right up to the present with a lengthy review of the famous Spanish flu epidemic. She covers a range of social and epidemiological issues, including cross-species viral "jump" and vaccination. All of these discussions are fascinating reading.

The second section of the book has several major features. First it is a detailed discussion of the major stages, symptoms, symptom complications, and various natural treatments for the flu. She discusses herbal and hydrotherapeutic treatment protocols. She also offers the opinion of a number of homeopathic authors on the prevention of the flu.

The homeopathic section is enormous. She begins with lists of remedies and relevant indications categorized according to the predominant system that is affected. She then offers a detailed discussion of the influenza indication of sixty-eight remedies, adding the thoughts of several specific authors regarding each remedy. She has a separate section for remedies pertaining to complications of the flu, particularly pneumonia, postinfluenza complications and remedies of convalescence. The majority of these are referenced to one author or another.

The last section of the book is an up to date discussion of the rise of avian flu and the specific reasons that it is causing a great deal of alarm. It is a hair-raising tale of how a combination of modem farm practices, cultural habits and the overuse and abuse of medications is spawning viral monsters in the avian world that have the very real possibility of one day devastating the human one. Along the way, she discusses a number of relevant issues pertaining to children, vaccination, antiviral medicine, etc. This is a very valuable book that will be of great value to any practitioner seeking to gain in their understanding of the issues and acquire a handy guide to the tools for natural and homeopathic treatment.

In the following section, Sandra discusses the possible cause of the current H5Nl avian flu:

Although there are a number of strains of avian influenza, which pop up from time to time throughout the earth, H5 N 1 is truly the "Typhoid Mary" of all bird flu. It is the one that causes the most fear among the world's virologists. It is the one that commands the constant nervous world monitoring by the CDC and WHO. It is the one that stands alone as having the ability to cause a worldwide pandemic to rival the infamous 1918 Spanish Flu. This strain was believed confined only to other fowl - that is, until 1997, when a Hong Kong boy died from a highly pathogenic strain of H5NI believed to have been contracted directly from a single infected duck. This alarming event triggered the immediate slaughter of almost the entire population of Hong Kong's poultry industry.

Even though this extreme action was successful in heading off a dangerous chain reaction, it by no means put an end to this virus. Since that first momentous case in 1997, country after Asian country has been battling the now infamous H5NI bird flu. As of February 2005, Vietnamese officials reported that their latest outbreak of avian influenza was finally showing signs of abating - this after recording its ninth bird flu fatality in only two months. Despite stringent efforts throughout Asia, and the destruction of over 100 million chickens, ducks, and geese, United Nation 's Food and Agriculture Organization representative, Anton Rychener, cautioned that the virus is not likely to be easily eradicated. "What is happening this year (2005) is not an outbreak," he warned. "It is an endemic recurrence of a disease that is here to stay." The most logical question then is: What caused this frightening situation in the first place? What change in the avian ecology of Asia is possibly responsible for allowing a here-to-fore impossible viral jump from birds directly to humans, producing this new horrendous viral threat?

A disturbing disclosure that appeared in the summer of 2005, may point to the possible cause. The World Health Organization (WHO), on June 20, 2005, formally asked China to "explain a new report saying authorities encouraged the indiscriminate use of a poultry antiviral drug that may have given rise to the resistant H5N 1 strain of bird flu." Apparently, Chinese farmers, since the late 1990's had been widely using the antiviral drug amantadine in their flocks' water sources in order to suppress bird flu outbreaks. Roy Wadia, WHO spokesman, warned, "Any misuse of drugs, and especially antivirals which are key in the fight against pandemics would be very disappointing indeed." Later that month, The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) strongly warned China that they could expect serious consequences for all Asian countries if they did not stop the misuse of this considered effective bird flu drug intended only for humans. FAO's representative in China, Noureddin Mona, said, "If poultry farmers continue to be provided with amantadine, and the virus becomes resistant in birds, the drug would be useless in future human cases of avian influenza."

Unfortunately, due to this astonishing and reprehensible unchecked practice by Asian farmers, this situation appears to already be a reality. Labs in the United States, Hong Kong, and England, have been zealously testing the H5N I strain's susceptibility to several antiviral drugs, and the findings so far are not encouraging. Initial genetic tests indicate that the anti-influenza class of drugs, namely amantadine (Symmetrel) as well as rimantadine (Flumadiine) demonstrate H5NI resistance. This, at a time when Vietnam had just announced that 6,000 chickens in the south of that country had become infected with the flu strain, and Indonesia had confirmed its first human case of the H5N1 bird flu.

It is no secret that farmers the world over, for years, have routinely used antibiotics in their poultry feed in an effort to keep down bacterial infections in their flocks. They also routinely vaccinate whole flocks against various avian viruses. This, in spite of virology experts warning that "such vaccinations - done in hopes of saving farmers' livelihoods - could, at least theoretically, increase the danger of a mutation occurring if the virus succeeds in resisting the vaccine." If the Asian farmers' use of the relatively new antiviral drugs in combination with antibiotics and vaccines eventually proves to be the "ground zero" cause of the deadly H5N1 bird flu, then the world is in deep medical trouble indeed. it's anyone's guess what eventual consequences will result from the continued "medical messing" with the bacterial and viral environment of the avian and mammalian species.

Part social study, part history, part epidemiology, part homeopathy, this is a vast, informative, practical and highly readable discussion of one of the most common illnesses that effects humanity. One that-we have perhaps taken too lightly before now.

This book review is reprinted with the permission of the Homeopathic Academy of Naturopathic Physicians

Reviewed by Peter Wright, ND, DHANP

The literature of homeopathy can generally be divided into a handful of categories. Most of the books in our library can be categorized as works of materia medica, repertories, therapeutic handbooks, casebooks, introductory books, explorations of theory, or histories. Dr. Perko's book on influenza cuts across categories to provide a multidimensional view of this extremely prevalent illness. She is sounding an alarm which we would do well to heed. The common influenza virus, often thought of as a nuisance "bug" producing passing discomforts and time loss in the workplace, has a nasty habit of periodically morphing into something far more deadly.

The book begins with an account of flu in history, with special attention to the global influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, which killed more than twice as many people throughout the world as had died in combat during the First World War. Homeopathy's spread in the early 19th Century was due in large part to its efficacy in treating the epidemics of infectious disease in that era. Allopathic approaches were hardly more helpful for flu patients in the l9l8 pandemic than they had been for victims of typhoid fever and other raging infections in Hahnemann's day. That pandemic, ac cording to Perko,"will stand in history as the greatest failure of allopathic medicine in the twentieth century." (Ironically, the vastly more successful results which were documented by American homeopathic clinics and hospitals did little to reverse the decline of homeopathy's fortunes in this country.) The book is replete with direct quotations which vividly convey the intensity of the times.

Perko goes on to explore the biology of the influenza virus, a wily shape-shifter whose mutations and cross-species jumps will almost certainly continue to foil efforts at control through vaccines. The reader is left with little doubt that we can and should expect to see another planetary outbreak of virulent and highly contagious influenzal infection.

The second part of the book focuses on treatment. Perko describes her primary purpose as offering the homeopathic community a basis for "a preliminary influenza 'pandemic response plan."' The role of fever, and measures to address hyperpyrexia including hydrotherapy, dietary recommendations, and herbal medicines, are described, and the critical importance of bed rest is emphasized. Various contemporary and early 20th cen tury authorities are quoted in regard to preventing infection with homeopathic medicines.

Well over a hundred pages are organized in the typical therapeutic handbook format, in which the characteristics of remedies for predominant symptoms such as chills, pharyngitis, coryza, myalgia, gastrointestinal complications, etc. are contrasted. For me as a reader, this section broke the momentum which had developed in perusing the previous narrative por tions of the book. As the author herself notes, moreover, utilizing this format without considering each case in depth may be misleading, and lists of remedies for isolated symptoms cannot be considered complete or defini tive. Although the absolute reliability of the therapeutics format is ques tionable, on the other hand, the practical utility of such guides, particularly in acute situations, is clear. Remedies to prevent infection are also discussed.

The subsequent portion provides keynote indications, directly quoted from leading authors, for 68 remedies for influenza. The book closes with a consideration of medicines for flu-related pneumonia and for delayed convalescence and "never well since" post-influenzal syndromes. Sources for remedies are appended; the detailed table of contents makes up for the lack of an index.

As I write this review the influenza season is in full swing. Some people are dying of it, but not in huge numbers, and for the most part the victims are the old and infirm. The infection will run its course unevent fully for most patients; most of those who seek competent homeopathic care will tend to recover faster, with fewer complications. Sandra Perko's timely wakeup call reminds us that this virus is an agent subject to frequent and unpredictable changes, and has proven itself capable of causing rapid death to multitudes, including the young and healthy. As homeopaths, we are privileged to posess the means to confront the threat of another influenza pandemic: proven medicines in potency, and matrices of vital information, of which this disturbing and inspiring book is a prime example.

SIMILLIMUM
Spring 2000, Volume XIII, No. 1