Words: Dr Christine LASCHKOLNIG
The intake of a prescribed homeopathic remedy sometimes causes the so-called initial aggravation, i.e., the suppressed disease symptoms suddenly become acute. If you, or your loved one, take homeopathic treatment, you’d have heard from your doctor about such a possibility. This is just a simple endeavour to explaining its nitty-gritty — for better understanding.
First things, first. In the initial aggravation, everything that has been ‘pressed into’ the body through allopathic treatment with antibiotics, or cortisone, come to the surface.
The disease cannot ‘jump out’ of the body, but leaves the body step-by-step, according to ‘Hering’s Law of Cure:’ “The disease symptoms move and disappear from top to bottom, from inside to outside, from the more vital organs to the less vital organs, and in the reverse order of their onset.” Hence, the initial symptoms appear later in the healing process.
This is also why the hitherto suppressed skin rashes, for example, may return. The acute onset of the formerly suppressed disease is a critical time, a so-called healing crisis, that needs careful assistance. Basically, it’s a good sign that the right remedy was chosen and the body is on its way to cure itself.
After the suitable constitutional homeopathic remedy has brought the chronic disease into its acute state, it is sometimes necessary to soothe the acute ailments with another homeopathic remedy, a so-called complementary remedy. The longer a disease has been masked and suppressed by antibiotics, cortisone and other allopathic treatments, the more intense the initial reaction of the body. This initial reaction does not, however, last too long, or several days at a stretch.
Here are two examples of initial homeopathic aggravation — I recorded in my patients’ own words — after the intake of a constitutional homeopathic remedy. It’d give you a good idea of the essence of homeopathic aggravation and its resolution.
Case-1
Before. Allergy [for ten years] with itching eyes, sneezing, and slight pulmonary involvement.
After. “Every day something different happened: strange things that I couldn’t relate to anything. My lungs felt as if they were getting rid of something.”
“One day later I suffered from stinging headaches. The following day I had orange-coloured diarrhoea that vanished one day later. Muscle pains followed — it stung here and there — like rheumatism. I had the impression that the homeopathic remedy would traipse round the whole body. It checked out the body for garbage and then flushed it out. Now, I am able to enjoy a walk — despite it being the pollen season. Last year that would have been impossible.”
Case-2
Before. “Constant colds with nasal catarrh and sneezing, during the whole winter; repeated bronchitis with fits of coughing; recurring tonsillitis, for the last ten years; and, headaches before menstruation.”
“I still felt anger and contempt towards my mother, although she had died years ago from breast cancer. She was not able to look after me, because she could not stand up to my father, an alcoholic, who ‘repressed’ her.”
After. “The cold initially worsened, but eased after only a few days. The coughing got better, and the headaches before my menses stopped completely.”
“I fell into an acute depression and cried more than before. Trifles baffled me. My hands were as cold as in former times.”
“I had boils like in my childhood. Even my toenails grew in like then. I slept badly. Everything that had happened 30 years ago, when I used to be a child, came up in my mind… Now, my negative feelings about my mother are gone.”
“Instead, my anger suddenly turned against my dead father. I became aware of how much I would have needed him as a child. He had given me nothing; I still get the feeling that I miss something.”
