Homoeopath’s Role in Community Medicine

Dr.Shivaprasad K

Community Medicine in relation to Organon of Medicine
Community organized efforts for  maintaining, protecting, and improving  the health of  the people. It involves motivating individuals and groups to change patterns of behaviour as to take such action including seeking medical care, as would enable them to achieve optimum health.

Shift from a diagnosis and treatment of individual illness to one of community diagnosis and treatment.

Community Diagnosis is based on Age, sex distribution, Birth rate, death rate, infant mortality rate, maternal mortality rate, child death rate, perinatal death rate, still birth, neonatal, post natal death rate.

The incidence, prevalence, and attack rates of the more important diseases of the area. Information on a wide variety of social and economic factors.

Focus is on identification of the basic health problems of the community.

Needs as felt by the community are listed according to the priority.

Community Treatment

• Level of the individual
• Level of the family
• Level of the community

Improvement of water supplies, immunization, health education, control of specific diseases, health legislation are examples of community health action.

Multidimensional Health

• Philosophical
• Cultural
• Socioeconomic
• Environmental
• Educational
• Nutritional
• Curative
• Preventive
• Rehabilitative

Health Sickness Spectrum

• Positive Health
• Better Health
• Freedom from Sickness
• Unrecognized Sickness
• Mild Sickness
• Severe Sickness
• Death

§ 4 : He is likewise a preserver of health if he knows the things that derange health and cause disease, and how to remove them from persons in health.

§ 5 : Useful to the physician in assisting him to cure are the particulars of the most probable exciting cause of the acute disease, as also the most significant points in the whole history of the chronic disease, to enable him to discover its fundamental cause, which is generally due to a chronic miasm.

In these investigations, the ascertainable physical constitution of the patient (especially when the disease is chronic), his moral and intellectual character, his occupation, mode of living and habits, his social and domestic relations, his age, sexual function, etc., are to be taken into consideration.

Aphorism 78
Always go on increasing and growing worse, notwithstanding the best mental and corporeal regimen, and torment the patient to the end of his life with ever aggravated sufferings

for the most robust constitution, the best regulated mode of living and the most vigorous energy of the vital force are insufficient for their eradication.    Fn 76

F.N. 76 : During the flourishing years of youth and with the commencement of regular menstruation joined to a mode of life beneficial to soul, heart and body, they remain unrecognized for years.

Those afflicted appeal in perfect health to their relatives and acquaintances and the disease that was received by infection or inheritance seems to have wholly disappeared. But in later years, after adverse events and conditions of life, they are sure to appear anew and develop the more rapidly and assume a more serious character in proportion as the vital principle has become disturbed by debilitating passions, worry and care, but especially when disordered by inappropriate medicinal treatment.

Aphorism 73

Acute Disease

• Individual
• Sporadic
• Epidemic

Acute Miasm

• Recurrent
• Non recurrent

Aphorism 74, 75, 76

• Artificial Chronic Diseases
• Management

Aphorism 77

• Pseudochronic Diseases (Inappropriately named Chronic Disease)

Aphorism 100,101,102,103

• Case Taking in Epidemic diseases
• Treatment through

Genus Epidemicus
Preventive Medicine – Hahnemann’s view and modern correlation

Dr. Hahnemann again refers to homoeoprophylaxis in the 6th Organon of the Healing Art in aphorism 73, footnote 73b that discusses acute miasmic disease. Here he discusses his use of Belladonna for prevention of scarlet fever and Aconite for roodvonk (purpura miliaris). Dudgeon reported in his Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Homoeopathy the experience of ten allopathic doctors who gave Belladonna to 1646 children who were exposed to scarlet fever of whom 123 contracted the disease, which is under 1%.. The normal attack rate in unprotected children was as high as 90%.

In The Chronic Diseases Hahnemann wrote that he used Bryonia and Rhus tox as specific remedies during an epidemic of acute typhus miasm in 1813. Hahnemann treated 180 cases and only lost two patients. The mortality rate of the orthodox doctors was 30%. These acute specifics represents early *genus epidemicus remedies* chosen by the totality of the symptoms of many persons suffering the same infectious disease. Vide page 33.

 “— the entire and complete image of the typhus fever reigning at the time could only be obtained by gathering together the symptoms of all, or at least of many of these patients.”

 This group picture of an acute miasm provides remedies that have both curative and prophylactic qualities. These homeopathic “specifics” were not chosen by the name of the disease alone, but rather, by the grand totality of the symptoms of the entire epidemic in a greater number of people.

The effectiveness of Homoeopathy in acute epidemics was again confirmed during the great influenza pandemic of 1918. The Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy, May 1921 reported the following data. Dr. T. A. McCann of Dayton, Ohio recorded that in 24, 000 flu cases treated by orthodox medicine the mortality rate was 28.2% while those treated homoeopathically was only 1.05%. The Dean of Hahnemann College who collected 26, 795 with similar results supported this figure. (Some History of the Treatment of Epidemics with Homeopathy by Julian Winston.)

Hahnemann continued to study the actions of the miasmic diseases on the population and postulated that the suppression of these miasms would lead to new virulent strains, more complicated forms of social diseases and new complex chronic disorders. He suggested that the inner affects of the miasms will continue to mutate into deeper chronic degenerative states, which includes autoimmune diseases and immunodeficiency disorders that are incurable by orthodox medicine. His prediction that the universal suppression of infectious disease will lead to more virulent infections and more complex chronic states has come true. The abuse of antibiotics and antiviral agents has increased resistance and helped to create increased susceptibility to new virulent stains of microorganisms.

Dr.Shivaprasad K
Professor and H.O.D.
Organon of Medicine & Homoeopathic.Philosophy,
Fr.Muller Homoeopathic Medical College,
Deralakatte, Mangalore, Karnataka – 574160