[back] Spanish flu Aspirin

Spanish flu and Aspirin

From a homeopath in Germany................

I can give a short example (quoting from a lecture I gave in 2004 about 'Homoeopathy and epidemics' at the LIGA congress):
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B. The influenza pandemic (1918 - 1923)

'Influenza':  in winter: 18th century: 'influenza di freddo' - influence of the cold

Nearly one century later, the devastating influenza pandemic that had its origin in Kansas killed more than 20.000.000 people. Here again, the records of homoeopathy proved to be successful again:

Dean W. A. Pearson of Philadelphia collected 26,795 cases of influenza treated by homoeopathic physicians with a mortality of 1.05%, while the average old school mortality was 30%. The remedies mainly used by American homoeopaths were Gelsemium, Eupatorium, Bryonia, Ferrum phosphoricum.

The symptoms of this terrible disease appeared in the following order:
- head ache, not localized
- burning in the eyes
- complete prostration
- chills, not better by warm blankets
- sleep restless
- muscle pains and headache
- discoloration of face: brownish, violet
- coughing of blood
- discoloration of feet: black
- gasping for breath
- bloody saliva
- death

The patients were in fact drowning as their lungs started to fill up with with water.

The disease could be well controlled by the remedies mentioned above (Extremities, pains, during fever  - this rubric was one of the guides to the remedies), unless the patient had taken Aspirin. Then it could get difficult or nearly impossible to treat the patient homoeopathically.

J. Winston quotes from an article entitled "Homoeopathy In Influenza - A Chorus Of Fifty In Harmony" by W. A. Dewey, MD:

"There is one drug which directly or indirectly was the cause of the loss of more lives than was influenza itself. You all know that drug. It claims to be salicylic acid. Aspirin's history has been printed. Today you don't know what the sedative action of salicylic acid is. It did harm in two ways. Its indirect action came through the fact that aspirin was taken until prostration resulted and the patient developed pneumonia.
 -Frank L. Newton, MD, Somerville, Massachusetts

Aspirin and the other coal tar products are condemned as causing great numbers of unnecessary deaths. The omnipresent aspirin is the most pernicious drug of all. It beguiles by its quick action of relief of pain, a relief which is but meretricious. In several cases aspirin weakened the heart, depressed the vital forces, increased the mortality in mild cases and made convalescence slower. In all cases it masks the symptoms and renders immeasurably more difficult the selection of the curative remedy. Apparently aspirin bears no curative relation to any disease and it ought to be prohibited. -Guy Beckly Stearns, MD, New York"