Antimonium Tartaricum as a Possible Homeopathic Prophylactic Remedy in the COVID-19 Epidemic.

The current COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) epidemic has proved challenging due to its high impact on physical and mental health. According to Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, in an epidemic the most severe symptoms of the clinical condition presented by the population in question should be the basis for selecting the medication that is as similar as possible to them, and which should be administered to individuals who have been exposed to the disease but have not yet developed it. This medicine is called the genus epidemicus. This study aims to demonstrate the reasoning used to propose the homeopathic medicine Antimonium tartaricum (Ant-t) as a genus epidemicus in the COVID-19 epidemic. It was decided to develop the reasoning based on the respiratory symptoms described in the epidemiological bulletins presented by the Health Surveillance Secretariat of the Ministry of Health of Brazil, as these symptoms are the most serious of the disease. After repertorization, it was confirmed in the Materia Medica that Ant-t has a high degree of similarity with these respiratory symptoms, including the most serious situations, of COVID-19. Homeopathic Ant-t is thus a possible prophylactic genus epidemicus in the COVID-19 epidemic; further studies are needed to test this conclusion.

Pharmaceuticals and modern statecraft in South Africa: the cases of opium, thalidomide and contraception.

This article provides a history of three pharmaceuticals in the making of modern South Africa. Borrowing and adapting Arthur Daemmrich's term 'pharmacopolitics', we examine how forms of pharmaceutical governance became integral to the creation and institutional practices of this state. Through case studies of three medicaments: opium (late 19th to early 20th century), thalidomide (late 1950s to early 1960s) and contraception (1970s to 2010s), we explore the intertwining of pharmaceutical regulation, provision and consumption. Our focus is on the modernist imperative towards the rationalisation of pharmaceutical oversight, as an extension of the state's bureaucratic and ideological objectives, and, importantly, as its obligation. We also explore adaptive and illicit uses of medicines, both by purveyors of pharmaceuticals, and among consumers. The historical sweep of our study allows for an analysis of continuities and changes in pharmaceutical governance. The focus on South Africa highlights how the concept of pharmacopolitics can usefully be extended to transnational-as well as local-medical histories. Through the diversity of our sources, and the breadth of their chronology, we aim to historicise modern pharmaceutical practices in South Africa, from the late colonial era to the Post-Apartheid present.

Private and institutionalised patients' use of homeopathy in the early nineteenth century.

Medicine underwent a major crisis in the 18th century and several approaches, including homeopathy, were formulated to fill the void left by the fall of traditional Galenic medicine. While most of the literature deals with the reasons doctors had to shift to homeopathy, the patients' views became the focus of increasing scholarly attention along the past 20 years. In this article I present and discuss the current knowledge about the socio-demographic characteristics and medical complaints of patients who sought homeopathic care in the early 19th century in both private and institutional settings. The results show that not only patients from the higher and more educated classes sought homeopathic care, but a considerable number of individuals from the middle and lower strata did so too, even though they also had access to conventional hospitals. As to the clinical complaints, the reasons to seek homeopathic care were the typical ones for any general practice or hospital in the period considered.

Death by homeopathy: issues for civil, criminal and coronial law and for health service policy.

Homoeopathy has a significant clinical history, tracing its roots back to Hippocrates and more latterly to Dr Christian (Samuel) Hahnemann (1755-1843), a Saxon physician. In the last 30 years it has ridden a wave of resurgent interest and practice associated with disillusionment with orthodox medicine and the emergence of complementary therapies. However, recent years have seen a series of meta-analyses that have suggested that the therapeutic claims of homeopathy lack scientific justification. A 2010 report of the Science and Technology Committee of the United Kingdom House of Commons recommended that it cease to be a beneficiary of NHS funding because of its lack of scientific credibility. In Australia the National Health and Medical Research Council is expected to publish a statement on the ethics of health practitioners' use of homoeopathy in 2013. In India, England, New South Wales and Western Australia civil, criminal and coronial decisions have reached deeply troubling conclusions about homoeopaths and the risk that they pose for counter-therapeutic outcomes, including the causing of deaths. The legal decisions, in conjunction with the recent analyses of homoeopathy's claims, are such as to raise confronting health care and legal issues relating to matters as diverse as consumer protection and criminal liability. They suggest that the profession is not suitable for formal registration and regulation lest such a status lend to it a legitimacy that it does not warrant.

Traditional ecologies of the opium poppy and oral history in rural Turkey.

Cultivated in the Eastern Mediterranean region for millennia, the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) was profoundly significant in the economies, ecologies, cultures, and diets of the peoples of many towns and villages of rural Anatolia. When the United States compelled Turkey to eradicate cultivation of the plant in the early 1970s in order to diminish the flow of heroin into America, farmers were obliged to deal with not only changes in their incomes but also profound changes in their relationships with the land and the state. Although Turkish officials later allowed production to resume in a highly controlled manner for pharmaceutical purposes, significant socioeconomic and ecological dimensions of Turkey's poppy-growing communities were forever changed. Interviewing now-retired poppy farmers, I employ oral history as my primary source of historical evidence to reconstruct these past ecologies and associated social relationships and to give voice to the informants.

"Poppies are democracy!" A critical geopolitics of opium eradication and reintroduction in Turkey.

Historical scholarship in traditional geopolitics often relied on documents authored by states and by other influential actors. Although much work in the subfield of critical geopolitics thus far has addressed imbalances constructed in official, academic, and popular media due to a privileging of such narratives, priority might also be given to unearthing and bringing to light alternative geopolitical perspectives from otherwise marginalized populations. Utilizing the early-1970s case of the United States' first "war on drugs," this article examines the geopolitics of opium-poppy eradication and its consequences within Turkey. Employing not only archival and secondary sources but also oral histories from now-retired poppy farmers, this study examines the diffusion of U.S. antinarcotics policies into the Anatolian countryside and the enduring impressions that the United States and Turkish government created. In doing so, this research gives voice to those farmers targeted by eradication policies and speaks more broadly to matters of narcotics control, sentiments of anti-Americanism, and notions of democracy in Turkey and the region, past and present.

Poppies for medicine in Afghanistan: lessons from India and Turkey.

This study examines India and Turkey as case studies relevant to the Senlis Council's 'poppies for medicine' proposal. The proposal is that Afghan farmers are licensed to produce opium for medical and scientific purposes. Here it is posited that the Senlis proposal neglects at least three key lessons from the Turkish and Indian experiences. First, not enough weight has been given to diversion from licit markets, as experienced in India. Second, both India and Turkey had significantly more efficient state institutions with authority over the licensed growing areas. Third, the proposal appears to overlook the fact that Turkey's successful transition was largely due to the use of the poppy straw method of opium production. It is concluded that, while innovative and creative policy proposals such as that of the Senlis proposal are required if Afghanistan is to move beyond its present problems, 'poppies for medicine' does not withstand evidence-based scrutiny.

The "Table of mineral classification" by Oscar Nerval de Gouvêa: mineralogy and medicine in Brazil.

Oscar Nerval de Gouvêa was a scientist and teacher in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, whose work spanned engineering, medicine, the social sciences, and law. This paper presents and discusses a manuscript entitled "Table of mineral classification," which he appended to his dissertation Da receptividade mórbida , presented to the Faculty of Medicine in 1889. The foundations and features of the table provide a focus for understanding nineteenth-century mineralogy and its connections in Brazil at that time through this scientist. This text was Gouvêa's contribution to the various mineral classification systems which have emerged from different parts of the world.

A short history of the development of homeopathy in India.

Homeopathy was introduced in India the early 19th century. It flourished in Bengal at first, and then spread all over India. In the beginning, the system was extensively practised by amateurs in the civil and military services and others. Mahendra Lal Sircar was the first Indian who became a homeopathic physician. A number of allopathic doctors started homeopathic practice following Sircar's lead. The 'Calcutta Homeopathic Medical College', the first homeopathic medical college was established in 1881. This institution took on a major role in popularising homeopathy in India. In 1973, the Government of India recognised homeopathy as one of the national systems of medicine and set up the Central Council of Homeopathy (CCH) to regulate its education and practice. Now, only qualified registered homeopaths can practice homeopathy in India. At present, in India, homeopathy is the third most popular method of medical treatment after allopathy and Ayurveda. There are over 200,000 registered homeopathic doctors currently, with approximately 12,000 more being added every year.

Hong Kong homeopathy: how it arrived and how it connected with Chinese medicine.

Translated as 'Shunshi Liaofa' in Mandarin, homeopathy received considerable attention from local physicians, thanks to Dr Heribert Schmidt who shared his views on the similarities between this western medical therapy and Chinese medicine during his visit to Hong Kong in 1954. Considered widely as non-scientific and superstitious, Chinese medicine was pushed to the periphery during the 1950s. On the contrary, adopted by western advanced countries, homeopathy was generally regarded as scientific and reliable. Schmidt's acknowledgement of the scientific roots of Chinese medicine excited many traditional therapists. The purpose of this paper is to trace the history of how homeopathy was introduced to Hong Kong and discuss its relationship with scientification of Chinese medicine.

[A short history of anti-rheumatic therapy. I. An introduction on traditional and drug treatments]. / Piccola storia della terapia antireumatica. I. Una premessa sulle terapie tradizionali e farmacologiche.

The origins of anti-rheumatic therapy are very old and mainly related to the use of traditional, sometimes extravagant, treatments, as a part of folk medicine. Spa therapy has long been used for the treatment of rheumatic diseases, as well as, in later times, physical treatments, including electrotherapy. Drug treatment has developed beginning from substances of vegetable origin, such as willow and colchicum extracts. Then it has been spread out through the chemical synthesis of compounds with specific action and therefore more effective, owing to the great development of pharmaceutical industry.

["A completely new global situation?" Homoeopathic publishing and modern world in the 1950s and 1960s]. / "Eine völlig neue Weltsituation"? Homöopathische Publizistik und moderne Zivilisation in den 1950er und 1960er Jahren.

This explorative paper analyses the Allgemeine Homiopathische Zeitung (AHZ) in the 1950ies and 1960ies, paying particular attention to how the homoeopathic physicians who published there commented on modernity in medicine and society. Toxicology, endocrinology, cybernetics and neural therapy were discussed by them as possible links with biomedicine. Modern civilization was mainly portrayed as pathogenic, but sometimes that very fact was seen as a chance for homoeopathy. Also, many authors of the AHZ had a positive view on some aspects of modern medicine and technology. The paper ends by discussing possibilities for further research in contemporary history based on journal publications by homoeopathic doctors.

The concept of miasm--evolution and present day perspective.

This paper reviews the circumstances in which the concept of miasm evolved and how subsequent developments in medicine have improved our understanding of the cause of diseases. It concludes with an emphasis on the need to further refine the homeopathic concept of disease.