About Homoeopathy
Homoeopathy is a system of medicine devised at the turn of the 18th century by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann.
It is based on the principle of like cures like. The patient’s remedy is selected by a process of comparison.
Many drugs exhibit a phenomenon known as hormesis: that is to say when a micro-dose is administered it has the opposite effect on the organism to the effect of a larger dose. Smalll amounts of stress make bones grow stronger; treating phobias with small but increasing exposure to what is feared cures the phobia, a vaccine will make your immune system stronger, allergies can be treated by gradually increasing the dose of the allergen and so on. What is happening is that the treatment is stimulating the body to heal itself.
Homoeopathy leverages the same principle: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Consider the example of Belladonna, deadly nightshade. This is a beautiful but very poisonous plant. Its Latin name which translates as beautiful lady derives from its effect on the eyes. It dilates the pupils and in the middle ages was used to make a woman more attractive. Its active ingredient is used today in eye examinations. If swallowed in large doses it causes a high fever, redness and swelling of glands, a skin rash, nausea and in extreme cases delerium. Now these symptoms are found d in a large number of inflammations and in fact any sudden illness which ends in ‘itis’ is likely to respond to a micro-dose of belladonna. If it is what homoeopaths call ‘ the similar remedy’. That is to say, if administered to a healthy person it causes symptoms which mimic the totality of symptoms in the patient.
Totality encompasses physical, mental, emotional, constitutional and historical symptoms. Homoeopathy is truely holistic. It can be used when the conventional diagnosis is uncertain and when the patient suffers from more than one conventional disease. The principle of totality means that the homoeopath is always treating the patient not a particular disease.
If the first and second principles of homoeopathy are likes cures like and totality of symptoms the third key principle is that of the minimum dose. Homoeopathy leverage the phenomenon of hormesis. Homoeopathic remedies are prepared by a process of serial dilution and succussion ( vibration) to concentrations which in many cases are at or below molecular levels. Complete reliance is placed on the ability of the body’s immune system to recognize and react to the smallest amount of the medicinal substance, even in fact to the memory of where that substance was.
Homoeopathy holds that the more dilute a remedy is the more potent it is, at least in terms of its ability to stimulate the body’s healing processes. Less is more.
The consultation lasts about an hour. The first part is just like you would have with a regular doctor. You describe the problem in as much detail as you can, the what, where, when and character of the pain or disability. And maybe the homoeopath might make a surface examination, say for a skin problem. And at some point might go through a head-to-toe itemised questionnaire to make sure nothing is missed.
But then the homoeopath will ask for much more detail about what you were doing when the problem started, even if it was years ago. Also he or she will be interested in what times or day it is better or worse, and what behaviours you adopt to make it better, like walking in the fresh air or going to the seaside, really! The homoeopath is interested in what makes the pain better or worse and also what makes you, as a person, feel better or worse.
Of course he will be interested in any medicines you are taking too. These might be contributing to the overall situation.
The homoeopath is trying to build a complete, holistic 'picture' of you and your situation to understand why it is that you are not thriving in your environment.
Samuel Hahnemann
The German physician, Samuel Hahnemann is generally credited with being the founder of homoeopathy. Born April 1755, died July 1843). The wiki article is very good. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Hahnemann
Conventional medicine of the time was a pretty brutal affair, often doing more harm than good. Being one supposes of a sensitive disposition Hahnemann retired from practice and earned his living as a chemist and translator of learned university, academic research articles and the like. While translating one such article on chinchona bark and malaria by William Cullen, Hahnemann decided to counter Cullen's claim that chinchona was effective against malaria because it was an astringent substance. Hahnemann argued that there were dozens of other astringent substances which did not help malaria, so there must be another reason. Out of curiosity he dosed himself with chinchina (quinine) and noted that he experienced the very same symptoms you would in malaria; alternating chills and fever, diarrhoea, delirium and so on. In a great intellectual leap he hypothesized the healing principle : "that which can produce a set of symptoms in a healthy individual, can treat a sick individual who is manifesting a similar set of symptoms."
This principle, like cures like, became the basis for an approach to medicine to which he gave the name homeopathy
Hanhemann and his friends verified his hypothesis by systematically testing the effects of natural substances in his native German flora and fauna on healthy people and created the first Materia Medica database of 'provings' which were used to select homoeopathic remedies and successfully treat illnesses, thus converting the hypothesis into a theory of medicine.
It is based on the principle of like cures like. The patient’s remedy is selected by a process of comparison.
Many drugs exhibit a phenomenon known as hormesis: that is to say when a micro-dose is administered it has the opposite effect on the organism to the effect of a larger dose. Smalll amounts of stress make bones grow stronger; treating phobias with small but increasing exposure to what is feared cures the phobia, a vaccine will make your immune system stronger, allergies can be treated by gradually increasing the dose of the allergen and so on. What is happening is that the treatment is stimulating the body to heal itself.
Homoeopathy leverages the same principle: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Consider the example of Belladonna, deadly nightshade. This is a beautiful but very poisonous plant. Its Latin name which translates as beautiful lady derives from its effect on the eyes. It dilates the pupils and in the middle ages was used to make a woman more attractive. Its active ingredient is used today in eye examinations. If swallowed in large doses it causes a high fever, redness and swelling of glands, a skin rash, nausea and in extreme cases delerium. Now these symptoms are found d in a large number of inflammations and in fact any sudden illness which ends in ‘itis’ is likely to respond to a micro-dose of belladonna. If it is what homoeopaths call ‘ the similar remedy’. That is to say, if administered to a healthy person it causes symptoms which mimic the totality of symptoms in the patient.
Totality encompasses physical, mental, emotional, constitutional and historical symptoms. Homoeopathy is truely holistic. It can be used when the conventional diagnosis is uncertain and when the patient suffers from more than one conventional disease. The principle of totality means that the homoeopath is always treating the patient not a particular disease.
If the first and second principles of homoeopathy are likes cures like and totality of symptoms the third key principle is that of the minimum dose. Homoeopathy leverage the phenomenon of hormesis. Homoeopathic remedies are prepared by a process of serial dilution and succussion ( vibration) to concentrations which in many cases are at or below molecular levels. Complete reliance is placed on the ability of the body’s immune system to recognize and react to the smallest amount of the medicinal substance, even in fact to the memory of where that substance was.
Homoeopathy holds that the more dilute a remedy is the more potent it is, at least in terms of its ability to stimulate the body’s healing processes. Less is more.
The consultation lasts about an hour. The first part is just like you would have with a regular doctor. You describe the problem in as much detail as you can, the what, where, when and character of the pain or disability. And maybe the homoeopath might make a surface examination, say for a skin problem. And at some point might go through a head-to-toe itemised questionnaire to make sure nothing is missed.
But then the homoeopath will ask for much more detail about what you were doing when the problem started, even if it was years ago. Also he or she will be interested in what times or day it is better or worse, and what behaviours you adopt to make it better, like walking in the fresh air or going to the seaside, really! The homoeopath is interested in what makes the pain better or worse and also what makes you, as a person, feel better or worse.
Of course he will be interested in any medicines you are taking too. These might be contributing to the overall situation.
The homoeopath is trying to build a complete, holistic 'picture' of you and your situation to understand why it is that you are not thriving in your environment.
Samuel Hahnemann
The German physician, Samuel Hahnemann is generally credited with being the founder of homoeopathy. Born April 1755, died July 1843). The wiki article is very good. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Hahnemann
Conventional medicine of the time was a pretty brutal affair, often doing more harm than good. Being one supposes of a sensitive disposition Hahnemann retired from practice and earned his living as a chemist and translator of learned university, academic research articles and the like. While translating one such article on chinchona bark and malaria by William Cullen, Hahnemann decided to counter Cullen's claim that chinchona was effective against malaria because it was an astringent substance. Hahnemann argued that there were dozens of other astringent substances which did not help malaria, so there must be another reason. Out of curiosity he dosed himself with chinchina (quinine) and noted that he experienced the very same symptoms you would in malaria; alternating chills and fever, diarrhoea, delirium and so on. In a great intellectual leap he hypothesized the healing principle : "that which can produce a set of symptoms in a healthy individual, can treat a sick individual who is manifesting a similar set of symptoms."
This principle, like cures like, became the basis for an approach to medicine to which he gave the name homeopathy
Hanhemann and his friends verified his hypothesis by systematically testing the effects of natural substances in his native German flora and fauna on healthy people and created the first Materia Medica database of 'provings' which were used to select homoeopathic remedies and successfully treat illnesses, thus converting the hypothesis into a theory of medicine.
