ABSTRACT: Since vaccine therapy is an Homoeopathic principle one might ask why Homeopaths generally object to its use?

The reason is two-fold. One is the manner of administration which is mostly parenteral and that is not the usual route of entry of natural disease in most conditions. In Homoeopathy the administration of medicaments is always by mouth. Secondly, it may also be a question of doses.

(Papers of the Transnational Conference: "THE HOMOEOPATIC REMEDY-NON-MEDICINE. A PROPOSAL FOR RECOGNITION" - Rome 12th and 13th december 1988).

Historical background

Concern for health is probably as old as mankind itself.

In the ancient mythology of India there is the story of the churning of the oceans (samundra manthan) in an attempt to get the elixir of life (Amrit kumba) shown in pictures as contained in a pot held by Dhanvantari, the Indian God of Medicine.

In the well preserved ruins of the Indo-Gangetic civilisation of some 5,000 years ago there are houses with attached bathrooms, well laid out water supply system and elaborate system of drainage, not only for the houses but for the whole city. One huge drain is 6' in diameter.

Hospitals for men and animals were established from 4th cent. B.C. not only in India but even in neighbouring countries and this is mentioned by Mogesthenes, a Greek who visited India in 300 B.C. Medico-legal autopsy was done in time of Chandragupta's reign (327-297 B.C.) and there was a register of births and deaths and notification of infectious diseases.

These speak for the sense of sanitation and social medicine in those times.

In Western mythology it is Hygiea, the daughter of Aesculapius (1200 B.C.), who has been worshipped as the Goddes of Health and this subject has been named after her as Hygiene.

By the first century B.C. the centre of civilization shifted to Rome, where it is my privilege to stand today. The Romans borrowed their medicine largely from the Greeks but were a more practically minded people with a keen sense of sanitation. They made fine roads, brought pure water to all their cities through aqueducts, drained marshes to combat malaria, built sewerage systems and established hospitals for the sick.

As for recent history the credit for birth of public health concept goes to England around 1840. The evils of industrial revolution and the spread of infectious diseases led to the rapid growth and development of public health. Surprisingly it was the spread of Cholera from Asia which acted as an impetus to this development and so Cholcra has been called the "Father of Public Health".

Although the idea of social medicine was first mooted by Neumann of Berlin in 1847 it was only during the second world war that the term came into wider use. In fact when I Graduated in Medicine in 1945 the subject was still called Hygiene and the Post Graduate qualifications still go under that name or Public Health. In the past, and to a considerable extent still, in the teaching and practice of medicine, the interest had become too much focussed not upon the individual as a person but upon some particular part of him that was functioning imperfectly; not upon the prevention of disease and promotion of health but upon the treatment and cure of diseased states; not at all upon the remote social causes of disease but solely upon the immediate effects upon the individual.

Thus medicine was not rendering to society its greatest possible service, since preventable discase and untimely death which medicine sought to control were as common as they had ever been. For the third countries this has been highlighted in a thought provoking article in the Lancet of 1976 (pp. 1012-1013) - D. Morley writes the following under the caption "Diseases, Palaces for the few:"

"Although three-quarters of the population in most developing countries lives in rural areas, three-quarters of the spending on medical care is in urban areas, where three-quarters of the doctors live. Three-quarters of the deaths are caused by conditions that can be prevented at low cost but three-quarters of the medical budget is spent on curative services, many of them provided for the elite at high cost....

Teaching hospitals, or "Disease Palace", and the specialist approach to health care that such institutions foster, have over the past 20 years hampered progress in health care in developing countries. Such teaching hospitals do not train the type of health personnel required: they do not act as referral centres, nor do they undertake the type of research that the community which supports them requires..."

It is a sad commentary on the mistaken aims in medical practice - instead of prevention of disease at low cost the emphasis has been on treating patients that have fallen sick from those diseases at much higher cost.

A W.H.O. publication mentions that the objective of social medicine is to secure the health of the population.

Its tasks are outlined as follows:

1) To assess the health status of the population and its

development.

2) To assess the sanitary conditions of the environment.

3) To work out methods and means leading to the promotion of the

health of the people and the prevention of the health

disability, and infirmity.

4) To organize medical care and rehabilitation for the whole

population.

5) To control sanitary conditions in the environment.

6) To control the birth rate in order to secure the harmonious

development of the population.

No. 1, 2, 5 and 6 are non-controversial and common to all systems of medicine.

In fact Hahnemann, as a pioneer in this field, wrote a number of articles published in "Friend of Health" (Hufeland's famous medical journal of the time) in the years 1792-1795. Preventive measures and medical care as mentioned in No. 3 and 4 above can be viewed differently by the Homoeopaths and Orthodox physicians and are discussed later.

The latest term applicable to this field of social medicine is community Health. Under this it is sought to bring together all the available health services (eg. medical care, mother and child health and family planning services, environmental sanitation services, laboratory services, disease control programmes, health education) within the reach of the people.

The main thrust of the orthodox school in prophylaxis is the use of vaccines for different infectious diseases.

The usual schedule recommended by the health departments in India is as follows:

IMMUNIZATION SCHEDULE

________________________________________________________________

Age Vaccine No. of doses Disease

________________________________________________________________

Pregnant women

16-36 weeks TT 2 Tetanus

Infants

3.9 months DPT 3 Diphtheria

Whooping cough

Tetanus

Polio 3 Poliomyelitis

BCG 1 Tuberculosis

9-12 months Measles 1 Measles

18-24 months DPT 1(booster)

Polio 1(booster)

4-5 years DPT/Polio(booster)

Beyond 5 years TT/Polio(booster)

Optional Typhoid, cholera - others if required

Give one dose, if vaccinated previously.

To this list may be added Mumps and German Measles given alongwith the Measles vaccine (as MMR) in some countries. Then there are the special vaccines for Meningitis, Rabies and some more and the latest to be made in India is for Japanese encephalitis.

Vaccine therapy is a partial acceptance of Homoeopathy because the same principle of similar or same is applied. The writings of some of the workers in this field are worth noting.

Emil von Behring (1854-1917), one of the founders of Immunology and Serum Therapy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was aware of its close doctrinal relationship to Homoeopathy. He maintained that:

"In spite of all scientific speculations and experiments concerning smallpox vaccination, Jenner's discovery remained an erratic boulder in medicine until biochemically thinking Pasteur, devoid of all classroom knowledge, traced the origin of this therapeutic boulder to a principle which cannot be better characterized than by Hahnemann's word, 'Homoeopathic'.

Indeed, what else causes the epidemiological immunity in sheep vaccinated againist anthrax that the influence previously exerted by a virus similar in character to that of a fatal anthrax virus? And by what technical term could we more appropriately speak of this influence exerted by a similar virus than by Hahnemann's word: "Homoeopathy".

(Brian Inglis, The Case for Unorthodox Medicine (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1965), 84

Sir Almreth Wright, the foremost high-priest of Vaccine Therapy is believed to have once said, "It is Homoeopathy, I know it, but I have found it out for myself". Another vaccine expert affirms that "Hahnemann's Organon is the most up-to-date text-book on vaccine-therapy in existence".

In recent times I am told a renowned immunologist of the Sloane Keetering hospital has said that, "Homoeopathy is the father of immunology".

Since vaccine therapy is an Homoeopathic principle they ask why do the Homeopaths generally object to its use?

The reason are two-fold. One is the manner of administration which is mostly parenteral and that is not the usual route of entry of natural disease in most of the conditions. In Homoeopathy the administration of medicaments is always by mouth. Secondly, it may also be the question of doses.

Homoeopaths assume that bringing about an artificial suppression of susceptibility to infectious diseases in this manner may result in a shift of the centre of gravity of illness of the immunized population to a different, and perhaps deeper, level.

This is very difficult to prove, but we have evidence for such a shift, based on the emergence of new 20th-century illness such as Legionnaire's disease, Reyes' Syndrome, Toxic Shock Syndrome and AIDS. In their language it has been put that repeated vaccinations produce a condition similar to "Hahnemann psychosis" which again is responsible for many chronic, obstinate and incurable diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, warts and condyloma, even cancer and so on.

In a sarching analysis doubts are being cast on the effectiveness of the immunizations in regard to incidence, severity and mortality rate, inspite of all the publicity for it.

There is also raging controversy that when the route of administration is different between the inoculation and the natural disease there can be damaging results in the system. It would be seen that out of the immunizations for children only for Tetanus, Diphtheria and Polio, when attenuated live virus vaccine of Sabin is used orally, the same route is used as in the case of natural disease. For all the others a different route has been used.

This bypasses certain tissues and organs connected with immunity and implants the virus, which implantation may be life long, in the cells. This can be fraught with far reaching deleterious consequences that are still not fully known. Also as a result some diseases are shifted to an older age group that are less able to tolerate the illness.

As regards such effects of vaccines causing cancer and other chronic diseases it is appropriate to recall what Prof. Robert Simpson of Rutgers said in a 1976 seminar for science writers, spoonsored by the American Cancer Society:

"Immunization programs againist flu, measles, mumps,

polio, and so forth, may actually be seeding humans with

RNA to form latent proviruses in cells throughout the

body. These latent proviruses could be molecules in

search of diseases; when activated, under proper

conditions, they could cause a variety of disease,

including rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis,

systemic lupus erythematosus, Parkinson's disease, and

perhaps cancer".

Any risk vs. benefit analysis of immunization is necessarily incomplete, owing to a lack of information about the total effects of a given immunization.

"Adeguate models already exist for predicting and explaining what sorts of chronic disease are likely to result from the chronic, long-term persistence of viruses and other foreign proteins within the cells of the immune system.

It has long been know that live viruses, for example, are capable of surviving or remaining latent within the host cells for years, without continually provoking acute disease. They do so simply by attaching their own genetic material as an extra particle or "episome" to the genome of the host cell, and replicating along with it, which allows the host cell to continue its own normal functions for the most part, but imposes on it additional instructions for the synthesis of viral proteins.

Latent viruses of this type have already been implicated in three types of chronic disease, namely:

1) Recurrent or episodic acute diseases, such as herpes,

shingles, warts, etc.

2) "Slow-virus" diseases, i.e., subacute or chronic, progres-

sive, often fatal conditions, such as kuru, Creuzfeldt-Jacob

disease, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), and

possibly Guillain-Barre syndrome.

3) Tumors, both benign and malignant.

In any case, the latent virus survives as a clarly "foreign" element within the cell, which means that the immune system must continue to try to make antibodies againist it, insofar as it can still respond to it at all. Because the virus is now permanently incorporated within the genetic material of the cell, these antibodies will now have to be directed againist the cell itself.

The persistence of live viruses or other foreign antigens within the cells of the host therefore cannot fail to provoke auto-immune phenomena, because destroying the infected cells is now the only possible way that this constant antigenic challenge can be removed from the body. Since routine vaccination introduces live viruses and other highly antigenic material into the blood of virtually every living persons, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that a significant harvest of auto-immune diseases must automatically result".

An additional problem is the one of contamination of vaccines with foreign elements i.e., residuals from organ tissues of animals in which the virusea are grown, mercury-based preservatives and other micro-organisms accidentally introduced into the vaccines. All told, the remote consequences of vaccinations, those occuring months or years later, have never been properly evaluated.

The most controversial is the Pertussis vaccination. In 1900 more than 450 per 100,000 infants in the U.S.A. died from pertussis during the first year of life, or 12.2 per 100,000 total population. By the late 1930's prior to widespread immunization for pertussis, the mortality rate had fallen to 2 per 100.000 population.

The complications from pertussis vaccination include central nervous system damage, convulsion and, in infants, a strange screaming phenomenon.

It has been held that the risk of brain damage from the DPT vaccine far exceeds the present risk of death or permanent damage from whooping cough or even, in some places, the change of contracting it.

In summary, pertussis is one of the most controversial immunizations with relatively frequent adverse reactions and relatively low effectiveness for an illness which was already on the wane before the vaccine's widespread use.

Medical historian Dr. Harris Coulter brings considerable evidence to highlight the dangers in his book: "A Shot in the Dark".

There are two excellent articles giving details of what is mentioned here in brief:

1. "The Case Againist Immunizations" by Dr. Richard Moskowitz,

M.D.

2. "More About Immunizations" by Nicholas J. Nossaman, M.D.

both of U.S.A.

PROPHYLAXIS IN HOMOEOPATHY

Hahnemann, (1755-1843) the founder of Homoeopathy, was one of the first to appreciate and use medicines for prophylaxis. In 1799 when Scarlet Fever was fatally epidemic in Konninglutter he found that Belladonna covered the symptoms. He used it both for treatment of patients and as preventive for contacted and it never failed and remains a classic example to this day.

It has been that similar disease or similar remedy satified the susceptibility and establishes immunity towards that disease. In other words the law of Similar (Similia Similibus Curentur) is also the law of prophylaxis.

Over the years three different methods have emerged in Homoeo-Prophylaxis i.e. immunity againist disease conferred by a drug of like symptoms:

1. Nosodes and Specific Remedies.

2. Genus epidemicus.

3. Constitutional remedies.

Preference between these has varied with different authors and under different conditions.

NOSODES AND SPECIFIC REMEDIES

Nosodes (homoeopathic preparations from diseased matter or pathogenic substances including micro-organisms and viruses) are like vaccines but differ in mode of preparation and are invariably administered orally. These features make them free from side effects that may occur in conventional vaccine therapy, as mentioned earlier.

When a disease follows the same pattern in every case and all the cases are everytime covered by the same remedy it becomes the Specific Remedy preventive for that disease in the same way as Belladonna for Scarlet Fever.

A list of some of these is given below:

DIPHTHERINUM for Diphteria

MORBILLINUM " Measles

PULSATILLA " German Measles

VARICELLA " Chicken Pox

PAROTIDINUM " Mumps

TUBERCULINUM " Tuberculosis

INFLUENZINUM " Influenza

MENINGOCOCCINUM " Meningitis

BELLADONNA " Scarlet Fever

LATHYRUS SATIVUS " Poliomyelitis

IGNATIA BEAN " Plague

CAMPHOR " Cholera

HYDROPHOBINUM " Rabies

TETANO-TOXIN " Tetanus

PERTUSSIN " Whooping Cough

TYPHOIDINUM " Typhoid

BELLADONNA " Japanese Encephalitis

HIV NOSODE " AIDS

Some authors have even claimed:

MEDORRHINUM for Gonorrhoea

SYPHILINUM " Syphilis

PSORINUM " Psora

The use of these has been termed homoeopathic immunization.

The nosode prophylaxis is safer as it eliminates the risk of anaphylaxis, serum-shock and severe allergic reactions and is not complicated by any side or after-effects.

The theory of minimum infection producing immunity and maximum infection causing diseased forms the basis of immunology. Homoeopathic medicine may be acting as hapten and produce antibodies. Hapten can be anything other than antigen and includes drugs.

Nosodes prepared from the respective disease products are considered best for immunization. Because they contain the "simple substance" or the dynamis of the organisms responsible for specific diseases and as such they excite both the cellular and humoral antibodies.

Over the last 150 years claims have been made by man of integrity about the efficacy of some of these measures. However, there have been no controlled studies in the laboratory and the trials have not been statistically evaluated to be fully convincing.

Another problem is that at times different people claim a preventive effect for different remedies so there is no unanimous opinion. Under the circumstances we cannot utilise these medicines on a mass scale for immunization. A subsidiary complexity is that the potency selected and the repetition have not been uniform, once again making it difficult to propose to the government or any health agency about its trial.

GENUS EPIDEMICUS

In an epidemic the Homeopaths closely observe a number of cases of disease that they see initially. The signs and symptoms collected from such group of affected individuals gives the true disease picture of that epidemic. The medicine then selected on the basis of the totality thus framed becomes the genus epidemicus, which is considered to be the real curative as well as prophylactic remedy of that epidemic.

This method first used by Hahnemann for an epidemic of Cholera has been employed by Homoeopaths later in other epidemics and stood the test of time. It also makes it possible for a Homeopath to find a remedy for a new disease even from the existing Materia Medica from its own sound principles of practice.

Mode of action of Homoeopathic Preventive Medicine:

According to Homoeopathic principles any medicine which is capable of producing a set of symptoms in a healthy person is also capable of curing a similar set of symptoms in a sick person. This would be individual prophylaxis.

Genus epidemicus is on the basis of anamnesis of symptoms of the disease in the community. As per this theory when a potentised medicine is administered in a specific number of doses to a healthy person a sort of artificial disease (purely clinical) is developed and is capable of combating the natural disease that is prevalent in the form of an epidemic.

The Genus epidemicus is often very successful both in treatment and prevention, as considered in some detail below for some of the epidemics, but this can be applied only when the epidemic has occured and the initial cases are closely studied and not so much as preventing the occurence unless one depends on the Genus epidemicus of a previous epidemic.

At times the remedy has varied from one epidemic to the next of the same disease.

Let me now share with you the actual experience of some of the epidemics.

CHOLERA

Mr. Chairman, I may be permitted to spend a few minutes in the consideration of Cholera. One of the reasons is that it is important for the history of Homoeopathy. The other reason is that I come from India and most of the pandemics supposedly originated from the delta of the river Ganges in Bengal.

It was in 1832 that we have important recommendations of Hahnemann with regard to its treatment. Time does not permit that I quote to you what he wrote in regard to its origin and spread. In a strangely intuitive way he has perceived the infectious nature of this diease and what he wrote may be considered as one of the earliest writings on bacteriology before the extended use of the microscope and the actual visualisation of the infecting organism towards the end of the 19th Century.

So successful was the treatment of Cholera cases that in many countries, the earlier Homoeopaths were popularly called Cholera doctors. In fact their astounding success in Europe was responsible for removing the ban on the practice of Homoeopathy in many countries.

The strong Tincture of Camphor which was recommended by Hahnemann and popularised by Count Rubini of this country still bears his name.

It may interest the medical historian to know the views of Government Inspector, Dr. Maclaughlin (an allopath) appointed to verify cases of cholera and report on the efficacy of the different systems of treatment then in use in London Hospitals. I give a few extracts from his letter: "You are aware that I went to your hospital prepossessed against the Homoeopathic system; that you had in me, in your camp, an enemy rather than a friend, and that I, therefore, have seen some cogent reason there, the first day I went, to come away so favourably disposed as to advise a friend to send a subscription to your charitable fund... and that I saw several cases which did well under your treatment, which, I have no hesitation in saying, would have sunk under any other".

He concluded by saying that: "Although an allopath by principle, education, and practice yet was it the will of providence to afflict me with cholera and to deprive me of the power of prescribing for myself I would rather be in the hands of a homoeopathic than an allopathic adviser".

The efficacy of those medicines is still great as we have seen in an epidemic in Bengal amongst East Pakistan refugees in 1970-71.

In a recent epidemic in Delhi the Indian Institute of Homoeopathic Physicians took up the task of prophylaxis and at their prompting the State Government directed the Nehru Homoeopathic College and Hospital to also take up this work. More than 100,000 people were given Camphor 30c, one dose daily for 3 days.

As regards Cholera inoculation it is now generally held to have either no effect or very little effect. I think a proper study made in this direction was by a W.H.O. team in Bangladesh and as they did not find it of any utility it was taken off as one of the requirements for international travel.

In view of this evidence I fail to understand why the Health Departments rush in with the vaccine shots whenever there is an epidemic. This wastes precious resources and gives a false sense of security.

In regard to the giving up of the cholera innoculation there was an interesting report which read that "after years of subjecting the populace to cholera innoculation the Health Authorities have now come to the conclusion that the cholera vaccine is no good".

It does not prevent introduction of cholera in the community nor does it control the spread of the disease or save the life of the victim.

JAPANESE ENCEPHALITIS

In the past few years we have had in parts of India recurrent epidemics of Japanese Encephalitis, which has been determined to be caused by a virus. According to the symptoms observed Belladonna was determined as the remedy and it was used both for treatment as well as prophylactically. I can say with some satisfaction that the successes were so great that the Health Department of one of the States where it was rampant asked even the Allopathic Incharge of the Health Centre in the area to use it for this purpose. The report says that: "More than ten million children were distributed preventive homeopathic medicine (Belladonna 200).." Three doses a day were given for three consecutive days.

It is reported that no cases occured among this group of children. In one of the epidemics (in 1982-83) the Genus epidemicus was Opium 200. (Information extracted from the Report of Dept. of Indian Medicines and Homoeopathy, Govt. of Andhra Pradesh and C.C.R.H. News No. 11-1987).

MENINGITIS

Time to time there have been epidemics of Meningitis. Acting on the very good results obtained by the use of Meningococcin in Brazil I gave it as a preventive to the children in the families under my care and no cases were reported but my series is rather small.

In anendemic breakout in one area the Homoeopaths were ivolved with its treatment and this work was monitored by the senior Allopaths working in those government hospitals. They certified that they had seen good results and all 77 cases referred to Homoeopaths were cured.

"Then prophylactic doses of Argentum Nitricum 200 were distributed to about 40.000 school children of Sagar City and neighbouring villages. The follow up done after ten days and repeated again after ten days revealed that none of them developed signs and symptoms of meningitis".

(C.C.R.H. News No. 14 - 1988)

A.I.D.S.

The latest scourge in the line of infectious diseases is AIDS. I have already presented papers on the subject and suggested that we might possibly use a nosode made from the blood of a confirmed A.I.D.S. patient or preparations from the affected Kaposi's Sarcoma or from the cultures of the HIV itself.

INFLUENZA

Regarding Influenzinum I draw your attention to a study carried out in New York by Dr. William Gutman. I understand that the results were statistically very significantly in favour of its effectiveness.

CANCER

Whether Carcinosin is in the same category as a preventive for Cancer is a little difficult to say. Here one may mention in general that Homoeopathic constitutional treatment itself acts as a preventive for many diseases, acute and chronic.

PRENATAL EUGENICS

In recent years a prenatal eugenics groups has been active in France and in neighbouring countries of Europe.

This group has been promoting the idea of routinely administering antimiasmatic remedies to pregnant women with a view to removing many of the inherited tendencies taken in its widest sense from the newborn. Homoeopathic doses being subphysiological, as the Americans call it, have no problem in crossing the placental barrier.

CONSTITUTIONAL REMEDIES

As regards Constitutional treatment of the individual it has been claimed that persons strictly following homoeopathic treatment for their illnesses rarely fall victim to any epidemic disease. "Constitutional similimum it the best prophylactic". Here again no controlled study has been made. Besides it is obviously highly impractical because vast populations cannot be given this treatment as a prophylactic measure.

Homoeopathic prophylaxis is not only confined to the few infectious diseases listed above. It covers a very wide field in preventing diverse conditions, for example: Abortion, Anxiety and/or Brain fag before exams, Motion sickness, Recurrent Coryza, Dentition disorders, Haemorrhage after tooth extraction, Recurrent Herpes, Industrial Poisons and Pollutants, Difficult labour, Preoperatively used it prevents complications of surgery, Puerperal sepsis, Recurrent Styes, Recurrent urinary calculi, etc.

For all conditions sought to be prevented any remedy known to produce an identical condition suffices.

Homoeopathy has the potential not only in preventing and treating a variety of infectious diseases but it is useful to tackle the side effects of vaccine therapy.

Because of the diversity of results and varying recommendations I feel that the Homoeopathic fraternity worldwide should consolidate all information for the benefit of humanity. Perhaps this work can be one of the tasks of International Homoeopathic Medical League.