A state of alert reaches us from the United States about the emergence of a new viral pathogenous agent which is responsible for the first form of canine influenza. It is the first time that the equine virus H3N8 infects another species of mammals other than the horse. The virus is not correlated with the common agents of human influenza or with the virus H5N1 of avian influenza. No cases of human infection have been reported. The risk is low but, considering that dogs live in close contact with human beings, the experts’ worry is justified. Some epidemiologists feel that the jump from one species to another may have happened already before January 2004. In Florida the national epidemics of canine cough (infective tracheo-bronchitis) took place in 1992, 1999 and 2003; in those years a high percentage of dogs affected presented symptoms referable to canine cough but then died of hemorrhagic pneumonia, not a common happening in the case of infective tracheo-bronchitis. In 2004 in Florida 22 greyhounds were struck by the virus and 8 died of hemorrhagic pneumonia. The post mortem examination revealed a serious pulmonary hemmorhage.

As has already been stressed, the permanence of dogs inside our homes requires particular attention; it is necessary to discover an efficacious weapon in order to defeat the hemmorhagic pneumonia induced by the virus H3N8 which could be transmitted from dogs to human beings.

Following the dictates of classical homeopathy, applicable also to animals, and by crossing the listing rubrics in the Repertories which consider influenza, pneumonia and pulmonary hemorrhage caused by the latter, it is clear that there are only two remedies which could be “highly suggestive” for the treatment of hemorrhagic pneumonia caused by the virus H3N8 in dogs. These two remedies are: Calcarea Sulphurica and Sulphuricum Acidum. Reading the proving of the single remedies in the medical book of Doctor Clark, only one remedy appears which could be “highly suggestive” and specific for the treatment of hemorrhagic pneumonia caused by the virus H3N8: Sulphuricum Acidum.

Doctor Clark describes in his “Materia Medica” the proving of Sulphuricum Acidum which for similarity can treat: ecchymosis, hemorrhage, influenza, pneumonia, prolonged hemoptysis, cough with hemoptysis, profuse pulmonary hemorrhage and the subsequent collapse. In the Repertories influenza, pneumonia, pulmonary hemorrhage during pneumonia, etc. can be found in the rubrics. Not wishing to re-write a book of homeopathy only in order to indicate the “highly suggestive” homeopathic remedy for the treatment of hemorrhagic pneumonia caused by the influenza virus A which infects human beings dogs also, I would advise anyone who wishes to understand how I identified the remedy, to read the book “SARS, a proposition for its treatment” in which the modus operandi of classic homeopathic medicine is described.