188 British Homceopathic Journal

Homeopatia, the quarterly journal of the Hom0eopathic Association of Argentina, con- sists of several pages of advertisements by hom0eopathic pharmacists, book reviews, reports on national and foreign work and a ques- tion and answer section. The following three items appeared in the journal between 1985 and 1987.

Hom0eopathy and AIDS B. VIJNOVSKY General discussion of the causes and symptoms of AIDS. What can homceopathy offer? Although homceopathic treatments are tailored for the individual patient, not the disease, Dr Vijnovsky points out that we are dealing with an epidemic caused by a known agent and affecting many people with similar symptoms. Looking for analogies in the Organon, the author sug- gests that AIDS is an acute febrile epidemic disease as described by Hahnemann. In additon to the mental, general or particular symptoms exhibited by each patient, many symptoms of AIDS can be found in the repertory such as fatigue, fever, night sweats, weight loss, diar- rhoea, etc., as well as rare cancers which are not in the repertory. The author uses 'wounds which fail to heal' for immunodeficiency. The follow- ing group of medicines is obtained: Arsenicum album Carbo vegetabilis Sulphur L ycopodium Nitric acidum Calcarea carb. Phosphorus Muriatic. acidum

All these are polycrests with the exception of Muriatic. acidum. The author concludes this ten- tative discussion by underlining the need for finding treatments applicable to hitherto unknown diseases.

Editorial Homeopatia 1985; No. 343:414-5

Present and future of hom~eopathy F. X. EIZAYAGA A discussion of the decline of homeeopathy in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the factors contributing to its revival and future development.

Dr Eizayaga attributes the decline of hom~eopathy to circumstances which included Hahnemann's own rather aggressive attitude towards many of his .fellow practitioners. After 1821, possibly as a consequence of his isolation in Kothen, a certain fanaticism in his medical ideas led to his rejection of other philosophies

and opinions. Both during and after Hahnemann's life, homceopathic practitioners in Europe and America contibuted their own mystical, religious and philosphical elements to the so-called 'homoeopathic doctrine', and even to this day many reject the existence of disease as a clinical entity, the existence of infection and the need for clinical examination and diagnosis.

Homceopathy is accused by orthodox medi- cine of having a non-scientific attitude to disease, health and therapeutics and of dis- regarding research. In addition, some homceopaths tend to rely on a few polycrests and fail to use the materia medica adequately, preferring to take the easy way out. All this led to the almost complete rejection of hom0eopathy by the official medical teaching and research institutions and public health bodies.

Homceopathy is nevertheless experiencing a revival due to serious professional practice and increasing regard for scientific research on the part of homoeopaths. This has led to improved

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commumcatlons between homoeopaths and allopaths and better opportunities for education and training.

Dr Eizayaga concludes by pointing out that the future progress of hom0eopathy must rely on the developments in other medical fields as well as on its own specialized research output. An increase in the number and quality of the teach- ing centres is also of paramount importance.

Homeopatia 1986; No. 348:228-31

Animal experiments in hom~eopathy M. GATTARI A body of work spanning almost twenty years on the biological action of infinitesimal doses of ' medicines on guinea pigs and rabbits. The work included a study on the use Ledum and Hyper- icum in preventing tetanus in guinea pigs (November-December 1960), the effect of an infinitesimal dose of anticoagulant on humans and pregnant guinea pigs (September-October 1963) and the allergic reaction against a highly diluted substance. Results are not given.

In addition, the paper describes the attempt by Dr Gattari to repeat a study of Nat. tour. 30,200 and 1000c in pregnant guinea pigs carried out by G. B. Steam and published in the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy in 1925. However, 30 of the 45 experimental animals were stolen, so Dr Gattari continued the work with 15 animals only, deciding instead to carry out a comparative study with the drug Endoxan.

Volume 77, Number3, July 1988 189

Results included 1 stillbirth out of a total of 39 births for the control, and seven stillbirths from a total of 25 births from Nat. tour. 30,200 and 1000c. No conclusions were drawn by the author, who, however, stated: 'Despite the lim- ited scope of the experiment, I wonder whether I would dare repeat this work on pregnant women.'

Horneopatia 1987; No.351:182-7

Effect of Gelsemium on urinary excretion in rats C.R.S. NETTO, R. A. LOPES and M.R.P. PANELLI These are preliminary results of a Brazilian study involving the administration of potencies of Gelsemium sernpervirens to male Wistar rats. The rats received water and a commercial feed mix 'ad libitum', but for a week before the start of the experiment they were also given water through a gastric tube connected to a 20 ml syr- inge so that they became used to the experi- mental procedures.

The rats were divided at the beginning of the experiment into two groups. Group I was given water (5% of the body weight) and Group II 0.2 ml of Gelsemium 3c, 6c, 12c or 30c. The urine produced in 90 min was collected at 30 min inter- vals and measured. The results for each po.tency were averaged and the differences between con- trol (water) and each potency of Gelsemium were verified by the Student t test. A significant increase in urine excretion at 30 min was observed in the rats given Gelsemium 6, 12 and 30c, but as the authors fail to give details of the number of rats involved in the study, i.e. whether there is only one or several rats in each experimental group, it is not clear whether t h e results could represent normal variations in urin- ary output between individuals.

Pesquisa homeopatica 1986; No.2:21-6

Abstracts from English-language journals by Dr N. J. Pratt, French-language journals by Drs D. Cado-Leclercq and E. Callebout, German-lan- guage journals by A. R. MeUss, ~ aia d both Por- tuguese and Spanish-language journals by Dr Erika Hagelberg.