This is, doubtless, the most significant aspect of homeopathy. It takes you to the central theme — what homeopathy is and how it differs from conventional Western, or allopathic [modern] medicine.
Homeopathy looks at symptoms as being the idiom, dialect, or language, in which the body, in illness, speaks to us. The body’s response gives us the cue that a struggle to externalise is on.
It provides us with the prompt that potential damage is possible — once an illness becomes a deep-seated illness. One that may also damage the core of our being.
External Symptoms. Internal Turmoil
It is a simple statement. When we see external symptoms, we can deduce that the illness has not gotten too deep. When symptoms disappear, it is a sign that it has been treated successfully, or entered a new realm, not obvious on the surface, but somewhere deep inside the body.
Conventional medicine thinks of symptoms as the illness, not as the body’s inner response to correct, or heal. Symptoms are, therefore, suppressed, or repressed, in the quickest time possible. Homeopathy, on the other hand, suggests that symptoms are a healthy mechanism — the body’s response to an external invasion.
Homeopathy also takes an in-depth view of these manifestations and treats them with suitable remedies that also cause a similar set of symptoms in the healthy individual [proving].
Principle of ‘Similars’
Homeopathy has a scientific basis. Dr Samuel Hahnemann, MD, the founder of homeopathy, was a man of science — besides being a pioneering physician — who wouldn’t take two plus two for four. His landmark ideas and concepts are as closely allied to modern biomedical sciences as were his meticulous series of experiments on himself, his family, and his followers. This bid fair to his own invention — homeopathy — the outcome of dependable research.
To draw a parallel. The use of stimulants in conventional medicine, in the treatment of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], in children, is based on the law of similars, albeit with a loose knot. Stimulants are often given to restless children to appease their hyperactive states.
Homeopathy treats hyperactivity, not in isolation; it aims to treat individual characteristics, besides symptoms that every child presents in hyperactivity disorder.
For treating hyperactivity, homeopathy will look at restlessness as a general symptom; it would, at the same time, look elsewhere too, because it does not have a single remedy that can work for all hyperactive children.
This is where it differs from conventional medicine in which one medicine is made to fit all, notwithstanding every child’s unique individuality and/or temperament.
Dr Hahnemann’s principle of ‘similars’ also finds representation in conventional allergic elimination procedures. To begin with, the physician suggests a battery of tests to find the probable allergen [allergy-causing substance]. The same allergen is, thereafter, given in considerably small and smaller concentrations, or dilutions, until the allergy disappears.
This is what homeopathy does, right, and achieves — with ‘less is more medicine,’ — gently, and without side-effects.
