Brief information: Dr Massimo Mangialavori reports on the clinical symptoms of three remedies he has recently used to treat COVID-19. He makes this preliminary information available in the hope that it may be helpful in these difficult times.
Massimo Mangialavori
- 31 March 2020
Dear friends and colleagues,
for the moment I do not wish to dwell on the extremely difficult situation our country is currently facing on the front line. As a physician, and above all as a homeopathic physician, however, I feel obliged to share my, albeit very limited, experience regarding a small number of cases I have treated in recent weeks.
I am keeping in touch with many patients by telephone or video call. A small percentage of them tested positive for Covid-19; others showed, already in January, symptoms that were unusual for regular influenza.
I would like to make it clear at this point that I never prescribe my homeopathic remedies solely on the basis of hypothetical pathologies or syndromes. I continue to treat my patients constitutionally, because the individual constitutional remedy produces excellent results in most cases.
Nonetheless, I do not want to overlook that Hahnemann himself made a major contribution to the treatment of cholera and deserves much recognition for it. Thanks to his ability to think “systemically” he was able to grasp the nature of that epidemic. Out of acute necessity he transferred his chain of thought and reasoning, taking homeopathic principles into account, to the level of a macro-system. In this macro-system a group of people, all suffering from the same pathology and in need of rapid intervention, were treated as a single “organism”. The need arose, among other things, because there was not enough time to formulate an individualised homeopathic therapy for each patient.
Under these circumstances the concept of the genius epidemicus in homeopathy was born. In this way the homeopathic idea and the efficacy of homeopathic remedies could be multiplied many times over and extended to large population groups. You all know that this approach was very successful in Hahnemann’s time. I therefore wish to try to make my small contribution, although I am aware that my limited case numbers are but a drop in the ocean compared with how many people are currently affected. I am also aware that the majority of patients infected with this virus remain asymptomatic or overcome the infection within a few days even without therapeutic intervention.
You will certainly also know that here in Italy we are not allowed to treat severe cases and have no access to hospitals. Therefore we can best help our patients by supporting them to get through the first phase of this “illness” as well and as quickly as possible.
I have decided to share my hypothetical observations with all those interested. Positive feedback is already coming in from Italy and abroad; at the same time I want to make clear that there are homeopathic colleagues around the world collecting their own observations and obtaining good results.
Above all I want to emphasise and REMOVE ANY DOUBT that I am not issuing a treatment protocol here nor do I have sufficient material at hand to recommend a therapy against the coronavirus.
Attached you will find a letter I sent this afternoon to some of you, in the hope that you will make good use of it and not dismiss me as the foolish homeopath who claims to have found a homeopathic cure for Covid-19.
Below you will find information on my first and preliminary findings. I say “preliminary” because I believe these must still be confirmed. You all know me well and know that I do not like to mix concrete facts with ideas and theoretical considerations.
I present here my limited experience with fewer than 100 coronavirus patients in quarantine, in the hope of providing some assistance in these difficult times. Some are new patients I did not know before and who were treated according to the concept of the genius epidemicus. By contrast, with my long-standing patients who became infected with Covid-19 I first prescribed the constitutional remedy – as I usually do – and only then an acute remedy in cases where the constitutional remedy did not act convincingly.
It is not an easy task to scour the literature of our almost endless materia medica in search of the best remedy for a particular disease. Quite obviously we are all very different and other homeopaths will certainly draw other conclusions.
Here is a brief summary of the following three remedies: Chininum muriaticum, Grindelia and Camphora. My observations are based on the most important clinical symptoms and I am confident that my short summary will give a good overview.
As of 30 March 2020: I am in contact with 95 patients by phone or video. So far 67 patients have recovered (they recovered within 3–4 days and subsequently reported spontaneously that they felt much better; there were no relapses). In 19 patients no response could be observed; in a further 9 patients the response was unclear. No patient developed complications. Of course I cannot say that this result is exclusively attributable to the homeopathic treatment. What I did observe is that these patients recovered fairly quickly compared with other patients who were not treated homeopathically. Naturally there was NO double-blind study.
Chininum muriaticum has so far been my first remedy of choice, with the following clinical symptoms:
- Fever with a rise in temperature in the early afternoon, not responding to the usual antipyretics.
- Weakness is more pronounced in the evening.
- Forehead headache with a pressing pain accompanied by (more or less) severe pain in the eyes – in some the pains resemble a classical neuralgia.
- Dry irritating cough, felt only as an unpleasant sensation in the upper airways.
- Poor appetite and little thirst despite fever. Craving for salty foods. Desire for hot drinks, not for water.
- Victim mentality: they blame others; openly express their anger towards doctors and nursing staff and other sick people. The patient believes they did everything to protect themselves from infection, washed their hands. Blames others for their condition – others did not wash and infected them; believes they were not cared for well enough.
Grindelia robusta is in second place. The clinical symptoms are as follows:
- Feverish attacks with sudden rises in temperature, two to three times within 24 hours.
- Weakness is worst in the morning.
- Pulsing headaches, mainly at the back of the head, improved by sitting up – sometimes with the urge to lie down, although the pain does not allow this.
- Dry cough with the sensation that you must expectorate even though there is no sputum – insists on bringing up a tiny amount of phlegm (which subjectively brings relief even though objectively no change can be detected).
- Coughing fits with a recognisable sensation of suffocation.
- Aware of their fears, cannot distinguish between objective, actual shortness of breath and subjectively perceived breathlessness; fears being rushed to hospital.
- Afraid of falling asleep and of not breathing in sleep; therefore often wants to sleep only with a light on.
- Conjunctivitis, occurring first in one eye and then the other.
- Joint pains, especially in the lower limbs.
- More anxious than those for Chininum muriaticum. Denies symptoms to family for fear there may not be sufficient resources. Knows they are hypochondriacal – cannot distinguish between objective and subjective symptoms.
Camphora (Cinnamomun camphora) is the third remedy of my choice. The clinical symptoms are as follows:
- Persistent fever with a constant temperature that does not seem to change during the day – accompanied by sweating, chills and a feeling of mounting fatigue which worsens with continued sweating.
- Headaches are pressing, from the inside out – tries to counteract this feeling by tightly bandaging the head and trying to apply pressure from outside.
- The cough is less pronounced than with the other two remedies but still seems to exhaust the patient. The cough occurs on deep inspiration, while shallow breathing leads to a sensation of breathlessness that causes concern. The patient therefore breathes more deeply again and has to cough more.
- Breathlessness on the slightest exertion, although objectively oxygen saturation is acceptable.
- Watery and stubborn rhinorrhoea (post-nasal drip).
- Diarrhoea without abdominal pain.
- Oliguria (reduced urine output), perceived as more alarming than it actually is.
- Confusion and anxiety about potentially endangering family members. Convinced that this illness is a profound experience of great importance for the whole course of life.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
