Customer Reviews

Herbs & Influenza: How Herbs Used in the 1918 Flu Pandemic Can Be Effective Today

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With the specter of a major influenza pandemic on the horizon, this book is a timely review and update on therapeutics for this sometimes-lethal disease. Even if today's bird flu does not evolve into a major killer as feared, seasonally epidemic influenza remains a serious disease throughout the world. Abascal's book looks back to the 1918 epidemic, the worst influenza epidemic in recent history, which killed millions of people worldwide. During that epidemic in the U.S., both homeopaths and herbalists claimed a better survival rate than that achieved by physicians of the day. Abascal's review of Eclectic herbal materia medica goes beyond the standard Felter and Ellingwood texts, and includes dozens of references to articles in the Eclectic Medical Journal. A primary source for the book is a survey of Eclectic remedies used during the 1918 Epidemic - the survey was done by the Lloyd brothers pharmaceutical company in 1919. She also includes historical and contemporary naturopathic and herbal sources. The fifteen most commonly-used Eclectic remedies are described in detail. About half of these, including four of the five top herbs, are Class IV low-dose toxic botanicals or other strong herbs generally not available to the non-physician herbalist. She also covers twenty more herbs covered in somewhat less detail. The relevance of this book for the clinical practitioner is four stars out of four. It is sure to broaden your thinking about materia medica and tailoring treatments to the presenting symptoms in the various stages of flu, including fever, muscle pain, headache, and respiratory complications.

This book is a great, relatively quick read. After a brief overview of influenza itself, including interesting thoughts about cytokine storms and herbs, Abascal launches into the fascinating history of the Eclectic physicians and their experience during the 1918 influenza pandemic. The fascinating history of the period and the surprising data on efficacy of herbs for this deadly epidemic are well worth reviewing. The details discussions of the herbs are excellently done, brief, too the point, yet fascinating and looking at sides of these herbs largely lost and ignored. This is not another book heralding the same tired herbs for influenza discussed in the current literature. This is a powerful, fascinating review, useful to patients and clinicians alike. I learned a lot from it and believe many others will also.

This book by Kathy Abascal is a lucid survey of the nature of influenza, of current efforts to develop flu vaccines and antiviral drugs that would be efficacious in both seasonal epidemics and pandemics as well as strategies for decreasing transmission of the virus. But Abascal goes far beyond this in presenting a unique and well documented review of the use of herbal treatments in France and in the United States. In fact, by far the greater part of the book deals with these herbal remedies and their use not only in the 1918 pandemic but also in regular practice. Of necessity, with the notable exception of data from a French hospital study in 1918, the evidence for the efficacy of herbal treatments is largely anecdotal. Authors of published reports were primarily adherents of the so-called Eclectic school of physicians who, in addition to having a knowledge of herbal medicines, appear to have been unusually aware of the variety of symptoms and sensitive to their progression in each patient.
While Abascal deals with some 35 herbs, about six were most widely used. Among these were Gelsemium sempervirens (yellow jasmine), Eupatorium perfoliatum (Indian sage), and Aconitum napellus (aconite or wolf's-bane). The limited availability of these herbs (both with respect to quantity and to knowledge of their proper use) would preclude their having wide applicability in a pandemic. But it is easy to imagine and to argue for the advisability of planning modern clinical trials during seasonal epidemics to determine their efficacy. It would then be a further (and not inconsiderable) step to determine what compounds are effective in ameliorating the miseries of "the flu".
This is a book worth reading and pondering. The references alone are worth the price.

When I got sick with the 2009 H1N1 flu I read this book. I wish I had read it sooner. The information, based on the 1918 H1N1 pandemic, is eerie especially with such similar symptoms experienced then and now. I immediately stopped taking all the western medicines and switched instead to herbal and homeopathic remedies and immediately felt the difference. I would recommend this book to anyone. It should be included in every family library and the herbs listed in it should be stocked in every household to be used with care and knowledge when sick with the flu. I personally believe the knowledge contained in this book could mean the difference between life and death should a deadly pandemic hit or those with already compromised immunity get sick with a plain old seasonal flu.