Peter Gold Oral History, 2020/12/02

Self-description:
“I am currently the senior staff person for the American Institute of Homeopathy. The American Institute of Homeopathy is the oldest medical society in the United State, predating the American Medical Association by approximately 3 years. I have served the homeopathic community in a variety of capacities over the past 15 or so years. Helping the National Center for Homeopathy, The Academy of Veterinary Homeopathy, The Canadian Academy of Homeopathy, and other organizations—particularly with respect to research, communications, and outreach. I’m a biologist by training. I have been involved with homeopathy since the late 1990s, very extensively. I’ve trained to better understand homeopathy. I actually spent 15 years training in the field. So, I understand the practice of homeopathy very well.”

Some of the things we discussed included:
Having anticipated a pandemic in his lifetime
Creating a data repository of homeopaths to log case studies and collect data on treatments practiced for COVID-19; data-sharing and algorithms for treatment
Determining which remedies are better than others, the individuality of the body in responding to treatment
Feeling confident that he could treat his own COVID
Comparisons between the USA and France’s management of the pandemic
Restrictions in Connecticut
Optimism in the early stage of the pandemic that homeopathy would become more widely accepted
Samuel Hahnemann and the origins of homeopathy; like-cures-like
Comparisons between today’s experiences of health care professionals and those during the 1918-1919 flu, and in cases of yellow fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and cholera
Allelopathic paradigms and their rejection of the principles and practices of homeopathy
Running webinars to teach allelopaths about homeopathic treatments for COVID-19
Connections between physical, emotional, and mental health
Mother dying of COVID in a nursing home, not being able to see or treat her

December 2, 2020 14:08

Kit Heintzman

Peter Gold

Kit Heintzman

audio

English Health & Wellness

English Home & Family Life

allelopathy

bereavement

biologist

case studies

Connecticut

COVIDpositive

death

family

father

fear

forprofit healthcare

health

healthcare

history

history of medicine

holistic

homeopathy

natural medicine

nursing home

parent

Samuel Hahnemann

treatment

webinars

homeopathy

holistic

treatment

remedy

international

nanomedicine

death

loss

fear

01/22/2022

02/27/2022

01/27/2023

12/02/2020

Kit Heintzman

Peter Gold

Avon

Connecticut

United States of America

Audio

English

00:49:59

Some of the things we discussed included:
Having anticipated a pandemic in his lifetime
Creating a data repository of homeopaths to log case studies and collect data on treatments practiced for COVID-19; data-sharing and algorithms for treatment
Determining which remedies are better than others, the individuality of the body in responding to treatment
Feeling confident that he could treat his own COVID
Comparisons between the USA and France’s management of the pandemic
Restrictions in Connecticut
Optimism in the early stage of the pandemic that homeopathy would become more widely accepted
Samuel Hahnemann and the origins of homeopathy; like-cures-like
Comparisons between today’s experiences of health care professionals and those during the 1918-1919 flu, and in cases of yellow fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and cholera
Allelopathic paradigms and their rejection of the principles and practices of homeopathy
Running webinars to teach allelopaths about homeopathic treatments for COVID-19
Connections between physical, emotional, and mental health
Mother dying of COVID in a nursing home, not being able to see or treat her

Kit Heintzman 00:03
Hello, would you please start by telling me your full name, the date, the time and your location?

Peter Gold 00:19
Can you hear me?

Kit Heintzman 00:21
I can. I just couldn't hear you. But I can hear you now. Can you still hear me?

Peter Gold 00:26
I'm hardwired to the internet. So you've been your signal keeps coming in and out?

Kit Heintzman 00:31
That seems likely.

Peter Gold 00:36
But I got to ask the question again, we'll try again.

Kit Heintzman 00:38
All right. Would you please start by telling me your full name, the date, the time and your location?

Peter Gold 00:45
Yeah, my name is Peter Gold. The date is December 2. The time is 2:08pm. Eastern Time and the location. My Location is Avon, Connecticut.

Kit Heintzman 00:59
And do you consent to having this interview recorded, digitally uploaded and publicly released under a Creative Commons license attribution noncommercial sharealike?

Peter Gold 01:10
I do consent. Yes.

Kit Heintzman 01:14
All right. Could you start by introducing yourself to anyone who's going to be listening to this might? What might you want someone listening to understand about you and position that you're speaking from?

Peter Gold 01:26
Okay, great. I am currently the senior staff person for the American Institute of homeopathy. The American Institute of homeopathy is the oldest Medical Society in the United States predating the American Medical Association by approximately three years, I have served the homeopath community in a variety of capacity capacities over the last 15 or so years helping the National Center for Omi up the academy Academy of veterinary homeopathy, the Canadian Academy of homeopathy, and other organizations, particularly with respect to research, communications. And outreach. I'm a biologist by training. I have been involved with homeopathy since the late 1990s. very extensively, I've trained to better understand homeopathy is actually spent 15 years training in the field. So I understand it's the practice for me up the very well. And I think that pretty well covers it.

Kit Heintzman 02:56
Alright. What have been some of the most significant issues on your mind since March 2020?

Peter Gold 03:05
Great question. So one of the things I have focused on in my career and homey up the is the is history of medicine. In particular, I have been quite fascinated with the epidemiological evidence around different modalities and their effectiveness during deadly epidemics, particularly in the 19th century. One of the things that has struck me is perhaps the most interesting is, is how well, homeopaths seem to do throughout those deadly periods, as compared to ordinary medicine and other practices of medicine. Very low mortality rates as compared to those other modalities and very low mortality rates when compared to those who who went without treatments. So the untreated as well as those treated by other modalities didn't do as well from a mortality standpoint as those treated with homeopathy. So that got me thinking March rolled around, that being my background, a worldwide pandemic breaks loose. And it occurred to me that it would be a good time to engage the international homeopathic community to see if we could track how homeopaths were faring in the pandemic, how their patients more importantly, were faring during this pandemic, at all stages of the disease. And so I set up in March for the American Institute of homeopathy, a an automated data collection tool that was built from scratch that would allow us to capture key information about the individual's treated by how many paths and we in in creating that tool sought to capture as much information as we could about the patient.

Peter Gold 05:05
And the course of the disease, the severity of the disease, the symptoms of the disease, as it were, you know, individual to that to each patient. We see homeopaths see all diseases, as you know, an individual expression, not a, a global expression of disorder. So each part each patient is treated individually. And so we created this tool and have been tracking the work of about 200, roughly 200 homeopaths around the world who have been treating patients at various stages of the COVID-19.

Kit Heintzman 05:53
And what have you been finding if you have anything to share at this moment?

Peter Gold 05:59
A number of things one, to our great satisfaction, we have found that patients treated at any stage of the disease, treated homeopathically respond very well. And very quickly, that we've identified, you know, when you start out, there are hundreds of remedies that could be given to anybody for whatever problem they might have. It's, again, it's an individualized form of medicine. So we look at the, at the symptom profile of the patient, the characteristic seeking the characteristic symptoms of the patient. So at any in any pathology, there are common symptoms that so if if you and I have the flu, we have some sort of generalized common symptoms that are unique to that particular syndrome. But then there are characteristic symptoms, your your bronchitis might be expressed with a cough that gets much worse in cold air and is particularly severe when you lie on the right side. And, you know, if you if you if you were to speak or sing or you know, do any number of things, you know, that your your symptoms would be worse, in my case, I mean, might be much worse, in a warm room, I might be, you know, thirst lists during during my bronchitis, I might, you know, notice that when I'm coughing, I have tremendous head pain, with the cough with motion. So I'm more I'm worse when I move, whereas the other patient was much better at rest, and so on, so forth. So what we do is we seek to understand what's characteristic about each patient's expression of disease.

Peter Gold 08:02
But here, we look at what's unique, what's characteristic, and we find a remedy that that has produced similar characteristic symptoms, when given to a healthy volunteer. So you start out with a lot of remedies, you don't really know what to expect, we took a hundreds and hundreds of cases, I think we're up to close to 1000 cases taken now, in this database. We've identified about five homeopathic remedies, it seemed to allow homeopaths to provide relief in about 70% of all cases. That remaining 25 to 30% of the cases require other remedies. But there are five remedies that we've identified that are, are sort of the common remedies to look at it when when when one has a COVID 19 confirmed patient in front of us. And of those five, there is probably one or two in particular that are, are more likely than the rest to be helpful. And so that's what we've seen so far, a cluster of five remedies that are helpful and about 70% of the cases, a number of other remedies that are helpful, the balance of those cases, quick resolution of symptoms, a significant reduction in post COVID-19 syndrome cases, reduced mortality, virtually no hospitalization required for any of these patients, etc, etc, etc. So very, very interesting response, not inconsistent what we saw through history in the great flu pandemic of 1980 1919 epidemics of yellow fever, cholera, diphtheria, Scarlet Fever So on and so forth through the 19th century, epidemic disease seems to respond quite well to the properly selected homeopathic remedy.

Kit Heintzman 10:09
How does one properly select?

Peter Gold 10:13
So as I mentioned a moment ago, COVID-19, the syndrome is, it's similar to any other sort of disease syndrome in that there are things that are common to somebody who's got COVID-19 Just like there's things that are common to people with flu, and you have a headache or you have a sore throat or you have body aches. What we what we do in homeopathy is we seek to under to go deeper. So we ask the patient a lot of questions to better understand how their as an individual expressing their disease. So as I said earlier, how you express how your body reacts, when you have contracted bronchitis is different than how my body is, is going to cope with that problem. And so, is we, we evaluate the patient we we carefully observe, we carefully question to understand, Okay, what's what's, what's unique? In this case of COVID, that kit is presenting to me, is she, you know, particularly worse on motion is she is she is she, you know, febrile at a particular time, is she unusually thirsty or thirst lists during, you know, some phase of the of her, you know, the the of her, you know, either fever or chills or whatever, does she you know, our, has there been a marked change in her emotional state, you know, so yeah, so it's physical, emotional, mental, we look at all those dimensions to try to understand, are you sleeping differently? Is your appetite change you craving something, you know, etc. And from that we were able to garner, we usually can find, without too much difficulty if the cases will take in five or six things that characterize your expression of your COVID-19 infection. And based on those characteristic symptoms, we then jump into a computer program that searches the homeopathic remedies, homeopathic remedies have been tested against healthy volunteers. And we know the characteristics of the remedies based on the symptoms that they produce when those remedies are given to healthy volunteers and what's called proving. So I know that you know, phosphorus or bryonia, or Seneca, or aconite or whatever produces these type these particular characteristic symptoms. And if I see a patient with similar characteristics, I can have a high degree of confidence that that homeopathic medicine is going to have a helpful effect on the patient. It's it's it's a it's a law of nature we refer to as, like cures like it's been known.

Peter Gold 13:31
Hippocrates, talked about it at great length in his writings. As a method of cure. Hahnemann who founded homeopathy, discovered in his translation work, he was a physician and a chemist, brilliant scientist. And in his day, he discovered that, that things that caused a set of symptoms can also cure those symptoms. He tested his theories for many years, he then began to publish about it. Hence, was born this notion of like cures like something that can cause disease can cure it. And so when we see a COVID patient in front of us, we find those characteristic symptoms, we match it to a remedy using a sophisticated computer program, we administer the remedy. And, you know, the administration of the remedy is a little bit complex in the sense that you know, what potency, we give how frequently we give it again, that's individualized. But once we've once we've identified a remedy, it's given to the to the patient, and then we await a response. We monitor the patient for a response to that remedy. And in the case of COVID-19 patients, we've seen that the properly chosen remedy has provides relief to the patients that have been treated on a very rapid basis.

Kit Heintzman 15:02
What do you remember about what what you first heard when you first learned about COVID-19?

Peter Gold 15:11
I have, I've studied that 1918 1919 pandemic, extensively, as I have other epidemics that were treated homeopathically. And as it began to emerge, I have long felt that in my lifetime, there would be a pandemic that that matched, if not exceeded the great pandemic of 1918 1919. So as it began to emerge from Asia and spread, I felt that this could be a moment for homeopathy to emerge, the homeopathy has, has almost since its first moments, faced strong opposition from other medical paradigms. And now there's really one dominant medical paradigm, it's an allopathic model, or an allopathic paradigm, it is, as a result, suppressed in the United States aggressively, and efforts to suppress it around the world have been equally aggressive, although probably in the United States, those that have sought to suppress it have had a greater effect. But so I thought, Leo, maybe this will be a moment where homeopathy can, can, as an adjunct to ordinary care, provide humanity with some relief from the horrible mortality rates that we witnessed in 1918 1919, that lives could be saved, that economies could be saved, that, you know, suffering could be reduced. And so we, you know, with some anticipation got ready, and once it was clear that this is going to be a full scale pandemic, where as I said, we very rapidly the American history of homeopathy, I believe, was the first one to create a data collection effort that was international. So we launched on March 23, to collect data, and it continued to do so to this date.

Kit Heintzman 17:25
How is that data being shared?

Peter Gold 17:29
I share it through an international network of homeopathic organizations. And have since the beginning, that sharing goes both ways. There are other groups that are collecting data as well, in Asia, and in Europe that share their data with us. A number of papers are being published, that look at these various efforts. And there are several and in final stages of publication now in various journals. And one other small piece of this a, an algorithm was developed, that would allow non how many paths to perhaps use homeopathy to treat patients. And that algorithm was turned in to a a piece of software that is downloadable to any PC, and people can plug in the symptoms that they're seeing in their patients. And it the algorithm recommends the most likely remedy, though not necessarily the correct remedy. And that, you know, it's really focuses on those five most likely remedies that we have seen in our research. So it does not, for instance, if you're a case that might require Lobelia, you're not going to that this algorithm is not going to tell you a little Billy, is that the remedy you need it's it's going to look among the five remedies that are most commonly deployed, employed with patients to see if if if the the symptoms you're seeing in your patient in front of you right now might happen to gain some benefit from from using one of those five remedies there. So it's it's internationally shared. You know, we have been aggressive in our communications about this in the sense that we've held webinars, poorly early in the in the pandemic, when the medical community was flat on its back in fighting for survival. People dying at high rates, particularly in United States and in Europe. In tried to provide our allopathic colleagues with the basic understanding of what was required to use homeopathy and invited them to to, to to call on us.

Peter Gold 20:04
Sadly, not much of that happened. But we did work to provide that information. Regardless of of that final outcome, we wanted to be as helpful as we could be when there was no vaccine, very few therapeutics, people were dying, horrific deaths suffer of suffocation very similar to the deaths people experienced in the 1918 1918 Sorry, 1918 1919 pandemic, people would be seemingly fine the beginning of the day and in suddenly become severely ill, and passed quite quickly. And when their lungs were examined, they were, you know, there have been tremendous hemorrhaging. And so it was different, but it's the same in its in its catastrophic effects. So we just, you know, we were, we were ready to help and in and we continue to have our faith and homey up the reinforced because the patients that we have treated as a community have done extremely well. And even people in in severe final stages of COVID-19, could be recessive, stated, with the proper homeopathic remedy, which was quite, which was, which was quite the right word, we were, you know, we were very pleased to be able to help a fair number of patients who were in very late stages of COVID instead of in severe distress.

Peter Gold 21:41
And so we were gratified, I guess is the word to see that our system could help people even in the, in the worst condition.

Kit Heintzman 21:54
Are you able to talk about some of the medical practices that you've been using that you've been finding productive?

Peter Gold 22:06
So, again, it's if any, any home and a lot of these homeopaths probably the vast majority, I'd guess, 80%, maybe 90% of the people involved in this project are licensed medical professionals, MDS, primarily here in the United States and in Europe and Asia.

Peter Gold 22:28
You know, we tried to track any other treatments that they might have been using to treat their patients in the in the majority of cases, overwhelming majority of cases, the homeopaths homeopathic physicians who were treating patients used only homeopathy to do so. There were no other modalities deployed or employed. And, you know, if the if the patient was taking some medications prior to seeing that physician, that homeopathic physician, that data was recorded. So we know in the database, you know, what were the comorbidities? What other drugs was the patient taking at the time? Are there any supplements that were given? So we have all that data in our data set, but for the most part, when when somebody arrived for treatment with a homeopathic physician for COVID-19, they were only given homeopathic remedies as their as the method of treatment?

Kit Heintzman 23:32
What would be some examples of those remedies?

Peter Gold 23:37
Well, so here's the challenge, you know, in any, in any description, homeopathy, the the thing that folks want to know is, you know, they'll read a case and it'll be very complicated. And it might be it might be in an ammonia case, or it might be who knows what, you know, but something something dramatic and that was when what was the remedy? What you know, because the mindset that we've all grown up with is that you know, you give X for for pathology, Y, you know, there's there's, there's one size fits all in it, but I'm so happy to list the remedies that were most commonly used with the caveat that just because these were really helpful with the majority of cases doesn't mean that they're helpful in every case, because they're definitely not bryonia album was the witch made from a plant is one of the earliest remedies discovered by Hahnemann was as proven to be extremely helpful across the globe. Sometimes in a in an epidemic or pandemic. You see that in Europe, one set of remedies would be particularly helpful in you know, different set of remedies might work.

Peter Gold 24:52
In Asia, or let's say the United States, some one one, you know, a number of remedies are very helpful in the Northeast but in In the West it seems a different set of remedies might be helpful that's and at times due to the fact that you know mutations produce slightly different variations in in in viruses causing the kind of havoc this one cause but anyway, we found the brownie was probably helpful in more cases than any other remedy.

Peter Gold 25:25
And I will hold on a second I just got a call up the list tips I give you an order of their helpfulness what we saw so give me just one second and then by that pulled up

Peter Gold 25:57
okay, so frown yet was number one, our Seneca album is the second most often used. Remedy, just Semyon was the next in line followed by pulsa Tila and finally, phosphorus.

Peter Gold 26:20
Now, there'll be other there are other, you know, as I said, there are other cases that had produced, you know, we require different remedies, but bryonia, in our Seneca more, were you in jail, Semyon, were really the dominant trio with brown, you being the leader of the pack by a fair margin.

Kit Heintzman 26:41
And are those all internally administered?

Peter Gold 26:44
Yeah, so homeopathic remedies are given most often in the form of a pellet, that they can be given in a liquid form as well, where you dissolve the pellet in some water.

Peter Gold 26:57
One of the things we're learning about homeopathy there, labs all over the world that think 13 or 15. Now, in total, and in Russia, France, Italy, India, and the United States, that are finding that every homeopathic remedy at every potency level, have distinct nanoparticles in them, that are unique to that particular remedy. So what we're really doing is administering the first known form of nanomedicine, when we practice homeopathy, and more and more the literature is reflecting that. So each one of these pellets is embedded with nanoparticles of the original medicinal substance. And they're taken orally, either in pellet form, or as I said, dissolved in water in in teaspoon doses, the frequency of the dosing dependent upon the patient the severity of the case, if you have a case, that that is a sending an acute case, that is that where the severity is ascending rapidly, you're going to dose more frequently. And, and, and higher potencies. If you've got a if you've got a case that's less severe, you would likely dose you know, less frequently in in the pathology or the potencies could be a little bit lower on the on the scale, but so pellet or or in solution was the method of administration, but always orally.

Kit Heintzman 28:24
Can you tell me what health means to you?

Peter Gold 28:31
Freedom from

Peter Gold 28:36
That's a great, that's a great question Is it health is is is freedom from symptoms that impair my intellectual emotional and physical mobility

Peter Gold 28:51
So you know, the goal of homeopathy in any modality, I would assume is, is to give people freedom from those from those things that would impair their full expression of their potential.

Kit Heintzman 29:09
So what are some of the things you would like for your own health and for the health of those around you in this moment?

Peter Gold 29:18
Again, that freedom from limitation, you know, to be able to fully express my my being in in whatever way you know, I choose to, to move I think that and the same for for those that I care about, you know, and I don't know if I'm answering your question the way you hoped I would, but that's it's that simple. I think it's

Peter Gold 29:58
Yeah, I think it's that simple. It's. It's the it's freedom from from the impediment of physical, emotional and mental destructions.

Kit Heintzman 30:12
How do you think that we could work towards that as a society?

Kit Heintzman 30:20
Achieving that version of health for

Peter Gold 30:22
I? Well, I think it starts in humankind is an it's an extinct species, we we, we claim to value health and yet, you know, to take, keep bringing it back to homeopathy for a moment. If you look at the correspondence between the founders of the AMA, they were organizing themselves with some alarm.

Peter Gold 30:46
After the homeopathic community started, the American Institute of homeopathy, in their organizational focus was in part in large part about exterminating their economic rivals the homeopaths it wasn't because homeopathy was a sham. And they stated this in their correspondence with each other, it was because homeopathy was threatening their individual practices, their practices were, were drying up. individual practitioners were suffering because people were, we're moving away from organized medicine of the 1850s 60s 70s and 80s. And towards homeopathy, because of the success homeopaths were having these deadly epidemics. And in the Alpes, that form the AMA wanted that to stop. So, you know,

Peter Gold 33:19
I am not sure. But that would be that would be my dream that, you know, we could look at that a homeopath could arrive, we were treating people and we are in the earliest stages of treating people outside of Paris. homeopaths were who were elderly, locked in nursing homes, which are killing fields as you know, I lost my mom to COVID, in a nursing home in May, somebody and I was unable to see her at any time I couldn't have gotten her a remedy if I wanted to. That was old, she was locked down. We rate that happened that in some instances in France, there were homeopaths that were leading the medical teams in nursing homes and were able to use homeopathy to save dozens of, you know, desperately sick seniors. And if if, if we'd had an opportunity to present that information, those cases and in in, you know, get gather together as community of of physicians, I think, you know, we could have saved a lot of lives, avoided a massive economic meltdown. And, you know, maybe bought time for our past to develop their vaccines and their other therapies. But anyway, it didn't happen that way. Despite the, the, the death toll despite the economic impact, and it shows again, that that one paradigm has got a lock hold on our thinking and

Peter Gold 35:00
They will like holding our thinking for a lot of reasons, not the least of which they spend a lot of money.

Peter Gold 35:06
You know, to maintain that, that, that hold. But even it had had, we had a different mindset, we I really believe how many out homeopathy and homeopaths could have contributed, you know, adjunct solutions that would have saved the lives of nurses and doctors and their patients, from the very first moments of this pandemic didn't happen. And maybe it'll never happen. But that's, that's I am a bit of an optimist. I am still hopeful that someday, we'll get there.

Kit Heintzman 35:41
You mentioned that you were in Connecticut, what have the restrictions been like where you are?

Peter Gold 35:50
Depends on the time of the year. So as was true for the nation as a whole, we were locked down for the first eight weeks, I would say I don't even remember exactly now, but. And there was great fear from the community, everybody was gripped by this sense that there was this ether, something in the ether that you could catch, you know, it was sort of, with serendipity had more to do with than anything else. And it was a killer. And, and so, you know, I always marvel at the, at the footage, both still footage and, and film footage of the 1918 1919 pandemic and the the Army Medical Corps efforts to, to contain influenza, and it's killing in the in the images of people, both in military hospitals in on the streets in New York and Boston and Philadelphia and elsewhere, wearing masks everywhere, where they went in, in the fear in their eyes. And, and I could only reflect on,

Peter Gold 36:59
on on that in the I never thought I'd see a day where people would be masked up, you know that everybody in the population will be right. So we all had to wear masks, we all have a socially distance, there was a great deal of confusion, there was political uncertainty because the President made COVID a political topic. And the, in the in, in efforts to control the spread of the virus into an into political into a political manner. So there are people in the community who were struggling with, you know, what to believe in and who to believe. And to get some people adhering to the, to the restraints in protective orders and others who were ignoring it. So it's very confusing time a very scary time, I would say that. I haven't seen fear like that, and on the largest as larger scale and in my lifetime, but, you know, had I lived in 1918 1919. And I was, you know, said, I've seen this once before. If you look at the old newspapers from Connecticut in 1918 1919 19, they were closing schools, they're closing theaters, they were asking restaurants, not you know, they were telling people to mask up, they were doing all these things. And they were great resistance to that, to those ideas. They were demonstrations against, you know, restraints of freedom and all those sorts of things. So as is always the case, history repeats itself. And And again, what we experienced in in 2020 is very much what the what was experienced here in Connecticut in 1918 and 1919.

Kit Heintzman 38:49
You mentioned sort of the depths of fear that people have been experiencing throughout this pandemic, and in the one of the earliest, earlier 20th century.

Kit Heintzman 39:03
How have you been determining what feels safe or safer for you at an individual level?

Peter Gold 39:09
Well, I'm a bit of a queer duck in that regard. i i as a homeopath, I've I've had a level of confidence that that I could treat COVID Should I contract it.

Peter Gold 39:26
Without, you know, without calamities, you know, that that I was safe, I guess is a way to say that homeopathy would make me would keep me safe. So my outlook was a bit different when I was really watching the whole thing more out of curiosity, as a curious observer, without fear, but I know the people around me, my children and in particularly my friends, my children, again had some confidence because I seem to have this confidence in homeopathy. My friends were you know, there's tremendous anxiety, depression, feeling of despair and hopelessness that I hadn't seen before.

Peter Gold 40:09
But I didn't I personally didn't feel that way I was, I was excited to see what homeopathy could do. Gratified to see how how well patients responded to help me out the incontinent that if I got the disease, I too, would do well, under homeopathic care.

Kit Heintzman 40:31
What kind of research should people in the humanities and the social sciences be doing right now to help us understand this moment?

Peter Gold 40:43
Ask the question again.

Kit Heintzman 40:45
What kind of research should people in the humanities and the social sciences be doing right now to help us understand this historic moment? And the pandemic?

Peter Gold 40:58
Interestnig question. I as a medical historian, which I believe you are, I think it's it's, it's, it's important to understand to try to come to some understanding as to why I come in everything from a homeopathic perspective. But why you got a system of medicine that's been around for 200 years used by about 250,000 physicians worldwide, probably more and a half a billion patients worldwide. Why is it that at no time during this pandemic did people turn in say, they did have a lot of success in 1918 1919. And it wasn't just because they weren't giving aspirin. And they had a lot of success in the 19th century, we know that from from good health records, reliable health records that were taken in places like Philadelphia and Boston in New York, there's something there, we don't understand it. In fact, we can't seem to find an explanation. And yet, it save lives. Why is it that something it potentially is profoundly useful, helpful, inexpensive, could have been distributed on a massive scale in no time at all, would have saved untold numbers of lives and the wreckage of an economy?

Peter Gold 42:31
Why is it that that humankind again, chose to look the other way, or refused, or allow them a dominant paradigm medical paradigm to control the, you know, to, to exert such influence in make all the choices and provide all the therapies? If you think about it, you know, if, if, if we're correct, if hold me up the we could have shortened the duration of of these infections, reduce mortality rate dramatically, and lead to, you know, open economies and free trade and, you know, continuing commerce, you know, all all the, all the casualties of this pandemic could have been avoided, or many of them, many, many, much of the damage of this pandemic could have avoided. Why is it that that, you know, you've got all these folks, 250,000 physicians, France, 95% of the physicians in France, pediatricians and general practitioners use homeopathy in their general practices, their daily practices, how is it that that, that we have this system that was once again completely ignored? Now, I haven't, I haven't thought you know, it's, it's a it's not a profitable modality. You can't make money on the on the you can't make money on vaccines and drug therapies in homeopathy, the the medicines we use are incredibly cheap and readily abundant, easily made and distributed.

Peter Gold 44:20
And so we are, you know, we are of all the paradigms of all the alternative paradigms with greatest threat to the pharmaceutical industry. I understand all that. But it's still fascinating to me that, that all the bright people in the world in the face of this terrible calamity, never looked beyond the current paradigm with any confidence.

Peter Gold 44:46
So that'd be one thing I'd want to look at what but wondering why why is it the human kind chooses, choose makes the choices it makes, and I would say chooses treasure over over lives all too often. It's pretty, it's maybe an unknowable question to to investigate. But it's, it's fascinating to me.

Peter Gold 45:08
If he has a you're, you're you're, you're a brilliant researcher and a medical historian had, if you had looked at the data that I've looked at, and saw that in epidemics of cholera, diphtheria, yellow fever, Scarlet Fever, smallpox, influenza, etc, etc, you know, all all real good, they'd wipe out entire neighborhoods, all tire families would die in the 1800s, entire sections of a town would just disappear from the from the plagues, it would strike. And yet, in those places where homeopaths were doing their work, nobody was dying, the mortality rates were a tiny, tiny fraction of what they were under ordinary care. And you then discovered that it had nothing to do with you know, it, again, is one of the great arguments that they like to make, in current times as well, guys in the 1800s, were using heroic forms, you know, giving mercury and bleeding and doing crazy stuff that was obviously gonna kill people. And that's why homeopaths did better. But what if you discovered that the untreated did is almost as poorly as those treated with ordinary medicine, and yet again, that people treated with homeopathy didn't die?

Peter Gold 46:33
What would what would what questions would you ask? And I think that's where I am. You know, it's just, if you look at the data, and that's what drives me, if you look at the data, it says one thing, and yet here we are faced with a global pandemic with catastrophic results. Nobody bothered to look at the data that showed there was a different, different path. So that's that those are the questions that I would wrestle with. I doubt anybody will. But that's, that's, that's what I'm fascinated by.

Kit Heintzman 47:04
Thank you so much for your time. My last question is just to ask if there is a particularly COVID-19 esque anecdote from your personal experience that you think casts light on sort of the everyday life under COVID.

Peter Gold 47:24
Can you give me an example of what you mean by that?

Kit Heintzman 47:27
So some people have given examples around zoom birthday parties, weddings, not attended family gatherings, losing work, finding more work, those kinds of things.

Peter Gold 47:43
For me, and I say with some emotion, it's it's losing family members unable to say goodbye.

Kit Heintzman 48:10
What would you want historians who never lived in this moment? So a generation after us to know about that experience?

Peter Gold 48:23
My, what I just said about

Peter Gold 48:25
Loosing a fam, So that's a really difficult question to answer.

Kit Heintzman 48:25
Yeah,

Kit Heintzman 48:57
I

Kit Heintzman 48:57
You also don't have to answer it.

Peter Gold 48:59
Yeah, I would, I would, I would just stay with with the comment that I made if they don't get it based on on the words I spoken. I can't explain it to them.

Peter Gold 49:11
Not to be not to be blunt. But, anyway.

Kit Heintzman 49:19
Thank you so much for your time, is anything else?

Peter Gold 49:24
No, I would. I would love to know more about your work. At some point. This isn't the time to get into it. But I would love to read a paper or two that you've written or understand. I've done some, you know, background research on you and the things that you're interested in, but I I hope someday to be able to read some of your work.

Kit Heintzman 49:47
That's very kind. Thank you.

Peter Gold 49:49
Alright, kid. Thank you for your time.

Kit Heintzman 49:54
Thank you.

Kit Heintzman 49:55
Goodbye.

Peter Gold 49:56
Bye.