The Great Flu Pandemic of 1918-19 killed more people than any other outbreak of disease in history. It is believed that between 50 and 100 million died from what was then known as “Spanish Flu”. Extraordinary. It most often killed those in the prime of life, and it killed with extraordinary swiftness, often ripping the lungs apart.
Newspaper reports from those years provide a grim picture of the carnage caused by the pandemic. “Death itself would come fast… reports were common of people who toppled off horses, collapsed on the sidewalk…We have had a number of cases where people were perfectly healthy and died within twelve hours…One robust person showed the first symptoms at 4:00P.M. and died by 10:00P.M..” For those serving in the military, the impact of the pandemic was catastrophic. The captain of the World War I troop transport ship the
Leviathan would report “The burials at sea began…The transports became floating caskets.” Death rates in military encampments were equally horrific.
There is new genetic research showing that the deadly outbreak of 1918-19 was a strain of avian or bird flu.
Most bird flus are not deadly killers. However, in 1997 a new and worrisome bird flu, H5N1, was detected in Hong Kong. Since that time, the spread of H5N1 has accelerated. Infected birds have been reported in approximately 30 countries in Asia, Africa and Europe, with human cases reported in Asia, Europe and the Near East. While troubling mutations of the virus have recently been detected, this bird flu has not yet acquired the ability to pass from human to human, a stage that will make the virus extremely dangerous. Nonetheless, it’s a killer. Fifty percent of all humans infected with the virus to this point have died from severe respiratory distress and other complications.
Human infection with avian influenza viruses: a timeline
Avian influenza viruses do not normally infect species other than birds and pigs. The first documented infection of humans with an avian influenza virus occurred in Hong Kong in 1997, when the H5N1 strain caused severe respiratory disease in 18 humans, of whom 6 died. The infection of humans coincided with an epidemic of highly pathogenic avian influenza, caused by the same strain, in Hong Kong’s poultry population.
Extensive investigation of that outbreak determined that close contact with live infected poultry was the source of human infection. Studies at the genetic level further determined that the virus had jumped directly from birds to humans. Limited transmission to health care workers occurred, but did not cause severe disease.
Rapid destruction – within three days – of Hong Kong’s entire poultry population, estimated at around 1.5 million birds, reduced opportunities for further direct transmission to humans, and may have averted a pandemic.
That event alarmed public health authorities, as it marked the first time that an avian influenza virus was transmitted directly to humans and caused severe illness with high mortality. Alarm mounted again in February 2003, when an outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza in Hong Kong caused 2 cases and 1 death in members of a family who had recently travelled to southern China. Another child in the family died during that visit, but the cause of death is not known.
Two other avian influenza viruses have recently caused illness in humans. An outbreak of highly pathogenic H7N7 avian influenza, which began in the Netherlands in February 2003, caused the death of one veterinarian two months later, and mild illness in 83 other humans. Mild cases of avian influenza H9N2 in children occurred in Hong Kong in 1999 (two cases) and in mid-December 2003 (one case). H9N2 is not highly pathogenic in birds.
What can Americans learn from the Pandemic of 1918-19 that could guide us now? Were there any treatments that helped stem the tide of that killer? A recent comprehensive epidemiological study of some 61,000 confirmed cases of Spanish Flu from 1918-19 by Canadian physician Dr. Andre Saine, shows that patients treated with a form of medicine called homeopathy had death rates of 0.7 percent compared to death rates in the untreated and from conventional care of 30 percent.
So what is homeopathic medicine, how does it work and could it be used again?
Homeopathy is a 200 year-old system of medicine based on a law of nature first discovered by Hippocrates and others. That law states that substances able to produce symptoms of disease can cure those exact symptoms in a sick person. The medicines used in homeopathy are FDA approved, non-suppressive, non-toxic, gentle and inexpensive. The system itself is unlike any other system of medicine known to man. In fact, sophisticated new research released by the material science labs at Penn State University in 2006 and 2007 is just beginning to explain its extraordinary potential.
There is solid epidemiological data to suggest that homeopathy’s success in 1918-19 was not an aberration. Medical case records from deadly epidemics throughout the 19th century of cholera, diphtheria, yellow fever, typhoid, malaria and other infectious diseases repeatedly show that homeopathy was a very effective system for treating disease evidenced by mortality rates a small fraction of those seen in untreated as well conventionally treated patients.
So the question is – could homeopathy help again? Could it help prevent the massive loss of life anticipated by the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization from the next pandemic?
Epidemic disease tends to have a rather fixed nature. The symptoms of each individual epidemic are often fairly uniform across the population. For homeopathy to be used effectively as a tool should an outbreak threaten, qualified homeopaths will need to be called to the bedside of a small number of patients afflicted with this strain of the flu. The symptoms of each case will be carefully recorded with attention paid to distinguishing or unusual characteristics of each case (i.e., whether the cough is dry or wet, the specific nature of any pains, the side of the chest most effected, the conditions that make the symptoms better or worse, the nature and time of chills and fever, etc., etc.). Armed with this information, homeopathic physicians will be able to identify a small number of medicines effective for treating the vast majority of cases in any full scale pandemic.
On of the great problems facing conventional medicine is the amount of time required to identify and manufacture drugs capable of helping manage a deadly outbreak of flu. Homeopathic medicine is very different. The drugs needed for any outbreak of infectious disease are already available and can be manufactured quickly in quantities sufficient to treat large numbers. The manufacturing process is sophisticated, but uncomplicated.
According to the CDC and the World Health Organization, millions are at risk of dying should a pandemic strike again. With no effective conventional medical weapons now available – perhaps homeopathy will have the opportunity to save lives.
For more information about homeopathy and the flu, contact the National Center for Homeopathy in Alexandria, Virginia (http://www.nationalcenterforhomeopathy.org/). This non-profit organization is the organizing body for homeopathic medicine in America.