Vol. 21 No. 3 June 2001

by Tim Rogers

New arrivals in another country are prone to get diarrhoea through exposure to bowel bugs the local people have become so accustomed to that they are not affected themselves.

Tourists call these diseases Delhi belly, Gippy tummy, Montezuma’s revenge, etc. The culprit is usually a different strain of the bacterium Escherechia coli from that found in the traveller’s homeland.

If the diarrhoea is not very serious, that is not like water, or with much mucus and/or blood, the homœopathic remedy E coli 30c may be given at appropriate intervals according to the severity of the symptoms – from 1 to 4 hourly as long as needed.

Some strains of E coli are found mainly in farm animals, often with no obvious effect of the animal.

Scours in calves and young pigs may often be blamed on E coli infection. Homœopathic E coli 30c can be used to treat them, unless they more obviously need Arsenicum album, Podophyllum, Momordica balsamina or Gambogia, or whatever.

Some very virulent strains of E coli can spread from farm animals to people. In recent times there were two major instances of this that received extensive news coverage – in 1993 hamburgers from the Jack in the Box food chain in America killed four people and sickened over 700; in May last year the town of Walkerton in Ontario, Canada, had its water supply contaminated, killing five people and seriously sickening about 600 others in a population of 4800.

The strain designated 0157:H7 is the worst of the enterotoxigenic forms. In the gut it puts out verocytotoxin, a toxin like that produced by Shigella dysenteriae type 1. The infective dose may be as low as 10 cells.

This strain killed 17 people and sickened over 500 in November 1996 when a cooked meat supplier in Scotland distributed infected products; in August 1996 a major episode in Japan affected some 9600 people, killing about 15.

The very young and the very old are the most susceptible. Giving antibiotics is considered harmful by many experts, as it is conducive to causing haemolytic uremic syndrome, sometimes fatal to children under 5. It is thought the rapid killing of the bacteria causes them to rupture, releasing a rush of toxin with dire effect.

Potentised E coli of any strain may be useful in some such cases; indeed it can help diarrhoea of any sort that resembles E coli infection, even if caused by another organism (such as Shigella). The symptoms are like those of cholera – watery diarrhoea, gut cramp, minor fever, nausea and malaise – so frequently remedies suggested in books for cholera are needed in severe cases.

Homœopathic E coli is a must for the international traveller’s medicine kit.