Customer Reviews

Homoeopathy in Epidemic Diseases

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This book has been known for decades and the esteemed physician, Dr. Dorothy Shepherd, makes explicit claims about the possibility of treating epidemic disease with Homeopathic methodologies and treatments. In addition, Shepherd also outlines the possibility of utilization of Homeopathic remediation as an active agent for prophylaxis for certain epidemic disease. She gives, for example, explicit example of her utilization of various Homeopathic remedies for simple, dramatic, and apparently, effective treatment of cases of whooping cough in children. And she goes on to mention her attempts, apparently successful, to utilize Homeopathic remedies for the prevention of whooping cough.

It is long overdue that claims of this kind get the scientific attention and studies that they deserve. The peremptory dismissal of such claims on merely theoretical grounds, subsumes a non-existent level of knowledge and does little more than assuage the ego of the armchair scientist, pseudo sceptic and doctrinaire anti-alternative medicine crusader, eager to write the next "best" seller about how it is all nonsense and that people like Dr. Shepherd were out to "fool" everyone.

A more rational approach to these cases is to acknowledge the long experience and dedication of the Doctor, admit that some sort of curative effect is likely operative rather than descend to the easy and non-thinking paternalization of placebo claims, and then begin to organize and call for the proper scientific analysis of what could potentially be a major medical breakthrough. That such a breakthrough might prove anathema to vaccine manufacturers and "guardians" of "conventional" medicine, is of no consequence and no influence on the potential of the preventative and curative medicine which Shepherd proposes.

Until that scientific analysis is done, the ideas and practices proposed in the book will remain a tantalizing and intriguing possibility, still utilized by those with the courage to step into the realm of the unknown, and still disparaged by those who lack that courage.