Homeopathy is a holistic system of medicine founded by Dr Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, who revealed this beautiful healing art to the world in 1810 in his book, Organon of Medicine. It has certain fundamental therapeutic principles.
Homeopathic remedies are tested on healthy people in highly dilute potentised form, so that we can discover their healing properties. This gives us a database of information about the therapeutic qualities of the remedies. An ill person seeking to become a healthy person visits a homeopath who studies their symptoms and looks for a homeopathic remedy that matches their state as closely as possible — Similia similibus curentur, or ‘Let likes be cured by likes.’ This is the central precept of homeopathy. The job of the homeopath is that of match-maker. Get to know the healing properties of remedies. Get to know the person seeking healing and marry the two that are most similar together.
If that doesn’t make good sense to you, let’s dig deeper and go to the next principle, which is to use the smallest possible stimulus to initiate a healing response. Any substance can be turned into a homeopathic remedy by the processes of trituration, dilution and succussion. Well, the question arises, why go through so much trouble? The answer is to make the remedies safe, to eliminate toxic side-effects, to cause the substance to become infinitely small, so that it can get into every cell of the body and do healing work. In the same way as an infinitely small virus can impact the body and cause disease, an infinitely small dose of a homeopathic remedy can impact the body and restore order and health.
Another principle is infrequent repetition. What’s the point of that? The point is that we do not interrupt a dose that is active and doing good work. We allow the healing process from each dose to unfold, and we only repeat if necessary, and if symptoms that got better begin to relapse.
I hope you are a little intrigued. Homeopathy is intelligent medicine. Homeopathy is divine medicine. Homeopathy is effective medicine and homeopathy is safe medicine. It is also loving and responsive medicine. We respond to people’s suffering with effective means of allaying it.
At the turn of the last century a quarter of the doctors practicing medicine in the United States were homeopaths, and there were over one hundred homeopathic hospitals and 22 homeopathic medical schools in the country. The American Medical Association [AMA] forbade homeopathy to be taught in the universities. Now four, or five, generations of doctors have come and gone out of service, and the brilliance that is homeopathy is not known by them, and if the word is known at all, it is only in a close-minded and prejudicial way.
Hence, we have the state of medicine that is practiced in the United States. There are absolutely magnificent things about Western medicine, such as the wonderful hospitals, diagnostic ability, surgery, and the men and women who do good work every day to relieve the suffering of sick people; but, when it comes to the treatment of chronic disease all of us can do better.
There is room in the world for all systems of medicine to be practiced. As it stands Western medicine is a materialistic science that compartmentalises people, and no longer has a holistic view of the human being. The focus is on mass medicine instead of individualised medicine. There is also a lack of knowledge about how to prepare medicines, so that they are gentle and without side-effects.
Homeopathy is another worldview. Most people are suspicious of and uncomfortable with what they are not familiar with, so it is unlikely that their minds will be open to investigate an unfamiliar therapeutic system. That is fine, everyone has a right to be themselves and to stay in their comfort zone. For those who do have an open mind, a curiosity to investigate something new, they will find their efforts rewarded by the greatness that is homeopathy.
Let’s wake up to what is precious, but has been neglected and forgotten, in certain countries, so that we have good tools to improve the health of ourselves and our loved ones. This is a brief introduction to what homeopathy is about. I hope it inspires you to learn more about this beautiful healing system.
