The pandemic has changed many minds about contemporary allopathic medicine. People across the world are switching to complementary medicine such as Homeopathy, Ayurveda and Unani medicines. Homeopathy has been documented to be effective in global pandemics in the past, including the deadly 1918 Spanish Flu and the Cuban epidemic. Doctors who included homeopathic treatment as a complementary medicine saw significantly fewer fatalities than those who relied on allopathy.
World Homeopathy Day
World Homeopathy Day is being observed today to mark the importance of the mysterious practice of Homeopathy which has been suppressed by Big Pharma for decades. April 10 is the birth anniversary of the founder of Homeopathy, Dr Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann.
Interestingly, India has a different approach. The medical system has been officially recognised in our country through the Homeopathy Central Council Act, 1973. The practice has been absorbed well into our traditions.
In fact, Homeopathy is an essential component of the Ministry of AYUSH formed by the Indian government. AYUSH was earlier known as the Department of Indian System of Medicine and Homeopathy (ISM&H), which was created in March 1995. ISM&H was renamed as Department of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) in 2003, with focused attention for the development of education and research in Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy.
The Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia Committee (HPI) was established in 1962 to lay down the standards for Homoeopathic drugs. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare releases the standards in the books Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia of India.
Homeopathy and CSR
Corporate social responsibility in India has largely ignored this medicinal system in healthcare programmes. One exception is Bajaj Auto. As a part of their CSR, Bajaj Auto has set up a Homeopathy centre in Pune. The Prana centre has been distributing vials of Camphor 1M as an immunity booster. Not only has Bajaj Auto distributed this medicine among employees, police personnel in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad have also been administered with this preventive medicine.
The company’s head honcho Rajiv Bajaj believes that Homeopathy could increase the immunity of the human body to fight COVID-19 infection. Rajiv Bajaj put his claims of Homeopathy’s immunity-boosting properties to test 10 years ago during the Swine Flu epidemic. Bajaj Auto had administered a homeopathic remedy to all its employees in Pune. According to the MD, not a single person among the 50,000 who were administered the preventive medicine contracted swine flu.
What are the principles of Homeopathy?
The word ‘Homeopathy’ is derived from two Greek words hómoios (similar) and páthos (suffering). Natural diseases are treated with substances that produce effects similar to the suffering. The key principle of this medical approach is similia similibus curentur.
The father of medicine, Hippocrates famously said, “Through the like, disease is produced and through the application of the like it is cured.” The system was propounded by a German physician Dr. Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann. The main principle of Homeopathy is similia. Another principle Indivilidualisation speaks of a holistic approach to health, disease and treatment by taking the physical, mental, social and spiritual levels of the patient into consideration.
This concept is now emerging even in biomedicine as personalized medicine. The concept of prescribing medicines having an exceedingly low quantity of original medicinal substances is called the theory of minimum dose. This is emerging as Nano pharmacology.
Another advantage of homoeopathic medicines is that they don’t have any known side effects. In allopathy, drugs are aimed at one area of the body such as the gut or the kidneys but they can have adverse side effects on other areas of the body. Homoeopathic medicines are not employed against one particular area or organ of the body. The remedy is chosen because it matches as closely as possible with the totality of symptoms of the patient, so side effects don’t occur.
