Minutus

Hi Irene,
Re this below--
Do you mean remedy made from the herpes "vaccine*, or did you mean from
the "virus"?
Shannon

I know you explained this in the past, but--what lead you to use "loss
of vital fluids" rather than e.g. swelling of abdomen, or similar?
Shannon

The one used for cats is actually the one made from a combination
vaccine for four different cat flu diseases.
I use the 1996 version, and not a new one. (Intentionally)
One can use any of the options for prevention of course, as the Law
of Similars does not apply in revers and anything close to the
problem will prevent the problem illness AND anything similar.

But the 1996 (old and similar non-identical) remedy in 30C has
amazing results to stop a starting infection or even one that is in a
very active state (but NOT the resultant chronic cases that occur if
the original one is suppressed with drugs)
So extrapolating from cats to elephants:
* There is no vaccine option in elephants for this disease, so one
has no option to make a remedy from vaccine material, unlike in cats,
where there are several options (various years' remedies, and various
combinations with viruses that produce similar symptoms, in a group).
* One would need to use some kind of viral material to make a remedy
for prevention in elephants, and ANY potentized viral material would
most likely do, such as culture or diseased tissue from an affected
elephant etc. In fact the SAME virus that causes non-lethal topical
issues in African elephants is the one that causes systemic issues in
Asian elephants. So it would be easy to get some material with the
virus (to use to make remedy) as a large percentage of African
elephants have the superficial herpes issue.
* An elephant already infected is IMO unlikely to respond to such a
remedy - so prevention would need to be a separate approach with
remedy - from the approach taken with actual disease. (One could try
a potentised remedy such as in 200C or more during illness, it
wouldn't hurt to try, but it is unlikely to meet the Law of Similars
as well as it does in cats, if at all. That cat one is an exception
rather than the rule.)
* For an ill elephant I think we need a few remedies that are "genus
epidemicus", PLUS if possible, the ICT remedy for the elephant in
question, to keep things on hold while one seeks and obtains the best
individually matched simillimum.
This is my approach in FIP where I am often lucky if I have 24 hrs to
get things under way - an d time is of the essence.
It can be inordinately difficult to get the right remedy chosen, and
sent to the right animal in the right place in the time available in
an illness which can kill overnight. One has to have some way to play
for time.

So I'd advise the elephant keeper to always try to know and have
handy, the ICT remedy for the elephant, and to use the 30C remedy for
the virus prophylactically, AND to ensure a balanced immune system
and not one skewed to Th-2 excess.
That should prevent most cases if not all, and then act fast to match
a homeopathic remedy if/when needed while using these backup options.

I'd also request that a few affected elephants have cytokine anaylsis
done so as to know which ones are abnormally low in this illness. It
might be that some immune system supplements or products can be of
help as well - but one needs to know what cytokines are out of whack
and in which direction. (Moducare, Interferon and Ronkoleukin-2, and
transfer factor, all come to mind as options ONLY if the cytokine
skewing indicates one or more specifics among these.)

There are lots of other options one can add to the arsenal to help;
Elephants being herbivores, can make use of herbal options that
carnivores etc can not use, such as for strengthening blood vessel
walls to prevent leaking, and such as for strengthening the heart to
handle the illness better.

I'd be inclined to use a multi-faceted health-building approach, with
homeopathy at its core.
I want to go see what the notes I wrote from the research, might
point to in the repertory..............
but it is late - so soon...........

Namaste,
Irene
--
Irene de Villiers, B.Sc AASCA MCSSA D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom.
P.O. Box 4703 Spokane WA 99220.
www.angelfire.com/fl/furryboots/clickhere.html (Veterinary Homeopath.)
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt one doing it."

Hi Shannon -

I have always found it best to look for the cause of the swelling
rather than the fact of the swelling.
Swelling can have far too many different causes and the remedies that
work are those that have swelling from the right cause.

So a remedy that suits swelling of abdomen because it is full of
worms, or because local tissues are irritated and edematous, will
never fix a cat with FIP where the abdomen is swollen from leaked
blood plasma.
So "Loss of vital fluids" being the reason for the swelling of
abdomen, and for the consequent starvation symptoms, is the right
rubric.

In the elephants, I predict the same will be relevant:
Their heads and limbs swell - not from local blows or arthritis or
some such, but from leaked vital fluid.
And the lassitude in elephants is due to pericarditis and leaking
atrium, not muscle weakness as in cats - and THAT cause - the
pericarditis/heart leaking cause of the lassitude - also is relevant
IMO for remedy selection. (In cats the lassitude is due to starvation
and muscle atrophy.)

This is where I feel it pays to understand the pathology of the
disease - (one can easily look it up on the internet) - it points to
the reasons for symptoms that are too general to be helpful, such as
swollen abdomen or lassitude.

That's how I see it:-)
Namaste,
Irene
--
Irene de Villiers, B.Sc AASCA MCSSA D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom.
P.O. Box 4703 Spokane WA 99220.
www.angelfire.com/fl/furryboots/clickhere.html (Veterinary Homeopath.)
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt one doing it."

Thanks for this information, Irene. Nice to know someone's researching this disease.
Years ago I encountered a desperate case of a man who'd had a herpetic infection in the brain. He was in his 40s, yet had lost all memory except for a brief slice from his late teen years. He could recognize his father, but not his wife or children. Absolutely zero short-term memory. He thought he was 17 and that there was nothing wrong with him.
At the time, we were camped in the wilderness and I could do very little for him. His foreign-born wife, who was overwhelmed by the task of caring for him and her little children, was about to return with him to her native country, where I imagine he was institutionalized. A sad situation all around.
Peace,
Dale

Hi Dale,

It's a very nasty illness and after a few hours of studying symptoms
from about 8 cases i found written up for Asian elephants (I did not
work on the African one) and looking up rubrics etc on Radar, I can
not narrow it down too much after all. The problem is that although
there is a lot of scientific/medical data on symptoms the elephants
had, there is none of the kind that does the final remedy
determination - namely the mind symptoms.

Nobody has recorded whether the elephants wanted company or wished to
hide, whether they were indifferent or complaining or whether they
were showing anxiety and how they showed it, whether they wanted a
cold or warm place to lie (there is no mention of fever at all in the
ones I read) , whether they preferred lying left or right side or
"sphynx" position (often relevant if the heart is involved), or
whether they had more difficulty with inspiration/expiration, etc.,
whether they lost interest in playing.

In addition there is no clear remedy that has for example, all of
what I'd call the top three illness rubrics, so that makes the mind
and general symptoms all that more important (and I know they are
always critical anyway).
Another challenge is that we do have rubrics for petechial hemorrhage
of the skin, but here we have petechial hemorrhage internally, in the
peritoneum, cardiac area and intestinal tract, and "externally" it is
only visible in the tongue. Likewise we have herpetic lesion rubrics
for external lesions but in this case they are internal in the
intestinal tract, liver and heart.

It is debatable whether we can used the "external" rubrics for
internal versions of the symptom. In fact the virus is mainly
external in its action in the "other" species. That is, the external
herpes symptoms occur in African elephant, caused by the same virus
clade that causes internal havoc lethally in the Asian elephant (and
vice versa though seen individually - the internal effects are
different for each species of elephant and each involves a different
virus).

I'm happy to pass on what I have done, or to add to it if I can get
more information on mind/general areas, but I do not have a contact
person. So maybe someone will chip in on that.

So far, the remedies that look potentially usable can be up to about
30 of them, but there are a few that look better than most (unless
some clear mind/general turns that around).
They are COLCH, ARS, DIG, LYC, and also Lach, Carbo-v and China.
Some of these happen to also be Typhoid hemorrhagic fever remedies
(eg Ars, Carb-v),
and some of them also happen to work for leaked blood plasma in cats
(eg Lyc and China).
Dig of course is a well known heart remedy and Colch covers
pericardial issues very well, Lach covers the blueness with bleeding.
So all of these have more than a little to commend them along with
the main symptoms being present in them.

The first four include the pericardial effusion which is the actual
final cause of death in all cases. Earlier cases might respond to
Lach, Carb-v or China. Still other remedies cover symptoms that occur
in some cases but not others. These remedies cover nearly all the
symptoms that are common to all cases. MIND sx are critical to
choice and are currently missing from my data.

So the suggested remedies are by no means a firm list, and for
example a remedy like Cantharis, quite far down the list (45 on
repping), has an interestingly wide coverage of the unusual
combination of symptoms, plus a few good specifics (eg Generals -
inflammation - tendency to hemorrhagic) where it is the only listed
remedy.

Some rubrics I considered (using Radar 9):
FACE - SWELLING - edematous (main swelling is head, neck and
extremities)
MOUTH - BLEEDING - Tongue
MOUTH - DISCOLORATION - Tongue - blue
MOUTH - MUCOUS MEMBRANE - inflamed
MOUTH - ULCERS
STOMACH - APPETITE - diminished
ABDOMEN - BLEEDING - Intestines
ABDOMEN - COLON; complaints of
ABDOMEN - INFLAMMATION/ - Colon/ - membranous
ABDOMEN - LIVER and region of liver; complaints of/ enlarged liver
CHEST - DROPSY - Pericardium
CHEST - EFFUSION - Pericardium - inflammation of heart; after
CHEST - HEART; complaints of the - Pericardium
CHEST - INFLAMMATION - Heart
CHEST - INFLAMMATION - Heart - Endocardium (endocarditis was mild,
peritoneal effusion was severe)
CHEST - WEAKNESS - Heart
EXTREMITIES - SWELLING - dropsical
SKIN - ERUPTIONS - petechiae
GENERALS - COLLAPSE
GENERALS - COLLAPSE - sudden
GENERALS - DROPSY/ - external dropsy/ - heart disease; from
GENERALS - HEMORRHAGE/ - passive, oozing/accompanied by - weakness;
severe
GENERALS - INFLAMMATION - Internally
GENERALS - INFLAMMATION - tendency to - hemorrhagic
GENERALS - LASSITUDE
GENERALS - SWELLING - inflammatory
GENERALS - TRAVELLING - ailments from (questionable to use but the
illness was often triggered after/during travel)
GENERALS - WEAKNESS - acute diseases - during
So this needs more information to select out a correct remedy based
on mentals, generals and any peculiars being added in.

This is much the way I see things in the Cat illness I work with
where there is blood plasma leakage - there is no real short list of
remedies to choose from in that illness (FIP). Each is individual and
different and the constitutional type seems to partly determine where
and in what order the illness attacks a specific individual
physically, how they respond mentally and which remedy then fits best.

Ideally, one needs the details of a specific case to find its best
matching remedy and my rubrics here might be a partial list of
rubrics to consider - choosing only what fits the case - and adding
what else fits - towards that.

I would definitely stress homeoprophylaxis however as the best
overall approach for the elephants in general. One only needs to
repertorize if that has not been done and an elephant gets ill. If it
were me, I'd keep some o those suggested remedies on hand for in case:-)

If this email is useful to anyone else working on this, please feel
free to forward it accordingly.

Namaste,
Irene
--
Irene de Villiers, B.Sc AASCA MCSSA D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom.
P.O. Box 4703 Spokane WA 99220.
www.angelfire.com/fl/furryboots/clickhere.html (Veterinary Homeopath.)
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt one doing it."

Great work Irene. Jean