Homeopathy treats the whole person in a holistic way – dealing with physical, mental, emotional and even spiritual levels. The aims of homeopathic treatment are to treat people with a ‘safe, gentle and effective [therapy], using easily comprehensible principles’. (Samuel Hahnemann, founder of the
homeopathic therapeutic system, 1833.) Some of these
principles are:
- ‘Like will be cured by like’
[that is, remedies which can bring about symptoms in a
healthy person – say, red spots and a high temperature, with
a searing headache – can be used to remove those same
symptoms in a non-healthy person with those symptoms].
There have been two
principal ways of dealing with illness and lack of well being
through the centuries:
- One is allopathy – represented by the established medical model – where an illness is assumed to have distinct signs and symptoms which can be easily classified. Regardless of the individual involved, the illness is assumed to take the same form, and medicines to deal with it are used on the basis of (usually) identifying a disease-producing entity such as a bacterium or virus – and overcoming it with a drug or treatment with opposite characteristics. So, a fever would be treated with a drug designed to reduce and remove fever. Conventional medicine tends to treat only one part of the person, the part which is most unhealthy or causing most problems.
- The other way is
homeopathy (Greek: ‘homoios’ – similar; 'pathos' –
suffering.) This means to treat symptoms with the agents
capable of bringing about those same symptoms in a healthy
person. All of an individual’s symptoms are noted – not just
those associated with one particular disorder – along with
other preferences, likes and dislikes, mood, energy and so
on. The homeopath will then try to match those particular
symptoms to one of the many thousand of remedies available.
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- The ‘minimum dose’. This means that, once a remedy is identified, the smallest quantity possible will be given with the idea of stimulating the body’s own healing abilities. (The smallest quantity will, nevertheless, vary from person to person and depending upon the particular illness being treated. It may mean taking one tablet once, or it may mean taking several remedies over a course of months or even years – it depends on the person, and the condition being treated.)
- ‘Susceptibility’. Homeopaths
have observed that one person with, say, ‘flu, will have
very different symptoms and preferences from another with
‘flu. It is quite likely that – were 6 people with ‘flu to
walk into my homeopathic practice, they would each walk out
with a different remedy, based on their particular picture
of symptoms, and how they were experiencing them. All of
them would have been treated for ‘flu, but there might not
be one single symptom they all had in common, as each person
has an individual response to illness. Your own pattern of
susceptibility will vary according to many factors – your
age, your family history, the job you work at, and so on. I
will try to build up a picture of who you are, including
your susceptibility, and prescribe accordingly.
The fundamental idea of homeopathy is to
empower people to take control of their health and improve the
quality of their lives by stimulating and using the body’s own
healing abilities. |
