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Need of search and research in Homoeopathic

Materia Medica and Medical Philosophy


Dr.Amar Bodhi
Lecturer, Department of Pharmacy, B.R.Sur Homoeopathic Medical College &
Hospital
IntroductionMore than 3.4 billion of the world's most vulnerable citizens are at risk of
contracting Malaria, and each year it claims more than 450 000 lives, predominantly
among children. Malaria has been with humankind for as long as we know. It is a
mosquito-borne disease caused by single-cell parasites, which invade red blood
cells, causing fever, and in severe cases brain damage and death.
The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awards discoveries regarding novel
therapies for some of the most devastating parasitic diseases including Malaria.
Youyou Tu, a pharmacologist at the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences in
Beijing received Nobel prize for her contribution in the discovery of a new medicine
for Malaria. It was the discovery of artemisinin (qinghaosu).
The main treatment for malaria was chloroquine and quinine, but they were
proving increasingly ineffective. In 1967, China established a national project
against malaria to discover new therapies. Tu and her team screened more than
2,000 Chinese herbal remedies to search for drugs with antimalarial activity. An
extract from the wormwood plant Artemisia annua proved especially effective and
by 1972, the researchers had isolated chemically pure Artemisinin.
The effectiveness and mode of action of a single medicine for all cases of
intermittent fever was objected many years back by Hahnemann and that objection
leads to the development of a new method and a new understanding of cause of
disease and its treatment called Homoeopathy.
In the question of the medicinal effect of Peruvian bark, Cullen defended the old
opinion of the efficiency of this remedy through its tonic effect on the stomach.
Hahnemann attacked this opinion vigorously in his notes:
By combining the strongest bitters and the strongest astringents we can obtain a
compound which, in small doses, possesses much more of both these properties
than the bark, and yet in all Eternity no fever specific can be made from such a
compound. The author should have accounted for this. This undiscovered principle
of the effect of the bark is probably not very easy to find.

Let us consider the following: Substances which produce some kind of fever (very
strong coffee, pepper, arnica, Ignatia bean, arsenic) counteract these types of
intermittent fever.
I took for several days as an experiment four drams of good china twice daily. My
feet and finger tips, etc at first became cold; I became languid and drowsy; then by
heart began to palpitate; my pulse became hard and quick; an intolerable anxiety
and trembling without rigor; prostration in all the limbs; then pulsation in the head,
redness of the cheeks, thirst; briefly all the symptoms usually associated with
intermittent fever appeared in succession yet without the actual rigor.
To sum up: all those symptoms which to me are typical of intermittent fever as the
stupefaction of the senses, a kind of rigidity of all joints but above all the numb,
disagreeable sensation which seems to have its seat in the periosteum over all the
bones of the body- all made their appearance. This paroxysm lasted from two to
three hours every time and recurred when I repeated the dose and not otherwise. I
discontinued the medicine and I was once more in good health.
In another place Hahnemann quotes this from Cullen:
I have endeavored to explain in my first outlines of practical medical science that
the bark in this instance acts through its tonic effect on the stomach and I have
found nothing in any writings which could make me doubt the truth of my
statements.
And Hahnemanns remarks in opposition to Cullen:
If the author had detected that the bark had the power of producing artificial
antagonistic fever.. Certainly he would not have held so firmly to his mode of
explanation.
A somewhat similar observation of Hahnemanns is to be found in another part of
the same action:
That in order to cure certain forms of intermittent fever, a kind of artificial fever
must be produced with Ipecacuanha.
This experiment of Hahnemanns with Peruvian bark has already been exhaustively
discussed by homoeopaths and allopath.
Discussion
From, the above argument of Hahnemann, it is clear that he had a different concept
and explanation about the therapy of Malaria. And he developed this concept many
years before the discovery of malarial parasite. He explained different types of
intermittent fever and different manifestations of intermittent fever and the role of
ecology in the manifestation of symptoms and stages of intermittent fever. The

medicines which can produce symptoms similar to intermittent fevers can be


employed as medicines in different intermittent fevers. The effectiveness of a
common medicine for all cases of intermittent fever was denied by Hahnemann and
he proposed the new concept of medication,i.e medicines which can produce similar
manifestation of intermittent fever on healthy human beings may be the
the
remedy for intermittent fevers.
He anticipated the adverse effect of irrational use of Quinine derivative in the
treatment of Malaria ,and the ineffectiveness of unnecessary use of
quinine( irrational use of a common single drug for all cases of intermittent fever)
Large often -repeated dose of cinchona bark, as also concentrated cinchona
medicines, such as Sulphate of quinine, have certainly the power of freeing such
patients from the periodical fits of the marsh ague, but those thus deceived into the
belief that they are cured remain diseased in another way(frequently with an
incurable quinine intoxication without anti-psoric aid) - Foot note 276 foot note 6 th
edition
Thus by the continuous use of aggressive allopathic large dose of mercurials
against syphilis develop almost incurable mercurial maladies, when yet one or
several dose of a mild but active mercurial preparation would certainly have
radically cured in a few days the whole venereal disease, together with the chancre,
provided it had not been destroyed by external measures (as is always done by
allopathy). In the same way, the allopath gives Peruvian bark and quinine in
intermittent fever daily in very large doses, where they are correctly indicated and
where one very small dose of a highly potentised China would unfailingly help (in
marsh intermittents and even in persons who were not affected by any evident
psoric disease). A chronic China malady (coupled at the same time with the
development of psora) is produced, which, if it does not gradually kill the patient by
damaging the internal important vital organs, especially spleen and liver, will put
him, nevertheless, suffering for years in a sad state of health. A homoeopathic
antidote for such a misfortune produced by abuse of large doses of homoeopathic
remedies is hardly conceivable. Foot note 276 6th edition.

ConclusionThe observation and opinion of the committee for Nobel Prize about ineffectiveness
and side effects is interesting.
We as homoeopaths know that Artemisinin will also meet with the same fate as
Quinine. Till the homoeopathic principles of individualization are not followed
malarial diseases will continue to plague humans.

Many medicines with medicinal virtues to combat intermittent fever including


malaria have been proved and available in Homoeopathic Materia Medica, but it
needs more validation and re-proving.
..

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