I’m not an avid TV watcher, but I know plenty of people who are fans of the TV show The Walking Dead. As you may know, this is a series about humans surviving a zombie apocalypse.

I got to thinking the other day how that show might be different if Hershel (a character who is a veterinarian) was actually a trained homeopath as well?

Let’s imagine that when Hershel left his farmhouse with Rick and the rest of the crowd, he brought his homeopathy emergency kit with him. In pretty much every episode of the show, there would be plenty of times when that kit would be used, but I’m going to look at one group of episodes in particular.

In Season 4, Episodes 1-3, (30 Days Without an Accident; Infected; Isolation), an illness breaks out in the community of survivors who are living in cramped quarters in an abandoned prison. The disease is highly infectious and characterized by flu-like symptoms including fever, weakness, nausea and coughing up blood. Shortly before death, the victims bleed from the eyes and the nose. There is some speculation among the community that the illness might have spread to the humans from pigs that are being kept onsite, but the show also hints at the possibility that it was contracted from exposure to rats. At one point Hershel claims that the flu isn’t directly causing deaths, but rather the concomitant symptoms, such as anemia or hypoglycemia or choking on blood or other fluids, are the actual causes of death.

Among the show’s fans, the general consensus is that the illness depicted in the show is very similar to the H1N1 influenza virus, responsible for the 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic as well as the 2009 “Swine flu” pandemic.

While waiting for a small group that has gone out to search for antibiotics (useless against viral infections such as H1N1), Hershel goes out to collect elderberries (aka Sambucus) from which he brews a tea to help reduce fever and inflammation and stimulate the immune system. While I applaud Hershel’s resourcefulness and wisdom in choosing a local natural remedy that has far greater efficacy against viral flu than antibiotics, if Hershel had studied homeopathy, he would have known the many homeopathic remedies used against the flu.

First, if Hershel had had the homeopathic preparation of Sambucus in his kit, he wouldn’t have had to risk lives by going outside the prison enclosure to collect the plant. A single tiny bottle could have treated the entire prison community. Homeopathic Sambucus is traditionally used when symptoms include respiratory complaints accompanied by edema and swelling, particularly in the legs and feet. Breathing is labored with wheezing or whooping and marked by gasping suffocative attacks at night.

Furthermore, a homeopathically trained Hershel would have been familiar with the efficacy of homeopathy during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. The homeopathic hospitals that treated victims of the 1918 flu pandemic had a mortality rate of less than 2% while the mortality rates in conventional hospitals were 30-60%! The most frequently used remedies during that time were Gelsemium, Bryonia and Crotalus horridus.

A flu calling for Gelsemium would be characterized by symptoms such as extreme exhaustion with a feeling of heaviness. runny nose with watery and irritating discharge, dullness, a slightly flushed and often shadowy face with dusky colored lips, a hot and sticky sensation and appearance to the face that’s countered by cold chills, and muscular aches and pains. The face looks heavy-eyed and sleepy. Tremulousness is nearly always apparent, particularly in the sufferer’s shaky hands. Gelsemium flu is always accompanied by a headache that feels like a tight band around the head just above the ears.

Homeopath Hershel would consider Bryonia if he was seeing a painful dry cough with spasms, relief from open air and warm water, whole body soreness, an instinct among sufferers to restrain head or chest during coughing or put pressure on the sore areas, and short, panting breaths despite a desire to breathe deeply. He would be even more sure if he also saw small quantities of yellow mucus with blood, dusky complexions, irritability and a desire to be alone.

Another doctor character in the show explains that the bleeding from the eyes and nose is caused by pressure building up in the lungs from the infection. Crotalus horridus, a remedy also used in cases of Ebola virus, is characterized by blood flowing from several orifices of the body, bloody sweat, tickling cough with bloody expectoration and great difficulty breathing, prostration with trembling, grinding of teeth, yellow eyes, difficulty swallowing due to spasms and constriction of the throat, edema with purplish, mottled skin, vertigo, photophobia and headache.

The remedy picture for Phosphorus includes flu symptoms with bright red bleeding – especially nosebleeds accompanied by lots of coughing made worse by talking, coughing up bright red blood, craving for cold drinks, and a sense of burning pressure and constriction in the chest.

If Hershel had been familiar with the protocols of the Doctors Banerji in India, he would have first tried Rhus tox 30 alternating with Bryonia 30, every three hours, at the first sign of the flu. I have used this method myself, and it has never failed me.

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If you’d like to be better prepared than Hershel, Rick and the rest of the gang from The Walking Dead, watch for my upcoming course The Survivalist Guide to Homeopathy and check out a few of these articles:

Bioterrorism and Epidemics: Knowing Homeopathy Can Help Make the World a Less Scary Place

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/10/the_walking_dead_virus_the_epidemiology_and_science_of_zombies.html

http://www.westonaprice.org/thumbs-up-reviews/the-homeopathic-treatment-of-influenza

http://www.guerillahealthreport.com/post.php?id=152

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_17729.cfm

http://hpathy.com/homeopathy-papers/homeopathy-allopathy-and-the-1918-influenza-pandemic/