Intro
to Homeopathy Pt. 1
© 2006
by William Peters
What Is it?
There are two main kinds of medicine. The one most of us are familiar
with is called allopathic medicine. the term allopathy means 'Different
Suffering', and uses medicines which produce different effects than the
disease it is used to treat. I call allopathy N2
D2
medicine as doctors typically follow a Name
the Disease, Name
the Drug approach.
Homeopathy means 'Similar Suffering' and relies on medicines which
produce the same effects as the disease. This system of medicine was
developed by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann as a result of observations he made
while working as a medical text translator. He was translating an
article about the use of quinine to treat malaria. At the time, the
prevailing thought was that quinine worked because it tasted bitter.
Hahnemann didn't think that sounded plausible, so he took quinine to
see what would happen. The quinine gave him the symptoms of malaria,
even though he didn't actually have the disease. This observation lead
him to the discovery that like cures like -- similar suffering -- and
homeopathy was born.
Most people think that the heart of homeopathy is the 'infinitesimal
dose', the way the medicinal substances are highly diluted. However
this is not true, and even the purest classical homeopaths didn't
always use high dilutions of substance. The heart of homeopathy is
matching the effects of the drug to the patient's symptoms. This is not
the same as matching the drug to a specific disease.
Diluting the medicines was originally done in an attempt to alleviate
side effects. Some of the early drugs were highly toxic, both for
homeopathic use, and allopathic use. For instance, mercury was often
prescribed 100 years ago for the treatment of the common cold, and for
the treatment of syphilis. It worked, but the patient often suffered
the debilitating effect of mercury poisoning. In fact, the use of
mercury as a cure-all lead to the term quack, which is short for the
german word 'quacksalber', or today in America, we would say
quick-silver meaning mercury.
The Proving.
The substances used for homeopathic healing have always been tested on
healthy human volunteers, usually med students, to find out what
effects they cause, and thereby what disease symptoms they will cure. A
large group of people are given the drug to take over a few weeks time.
This is called 'proving' the drug. Each volunteer keeps a diary of all
the effects the drug has upon him, IE: changes to his health, including
his emotions, mental ability, physical symptoms, what part of the day
they occur in, which side of the body they happen to, what conditions
the prover had which improved, and things which make the symptoms
better or worse. At the end of the trial period, the results from all
the provers is combined, common elements are noted, and things which
only happen to a small portion of the group are assumed to be from some
other influence. In this way, a picture of how the drug affects a
typical person emerges. The results of the provings for all the
substances tested are then compiled in a book called the Materia
Medica where any drug available can be referenced.
The Materia Medica is an indispensable tool for the homeopath, but
there is another tool which he needs. It is called a Repertory. The
Repertory is a book with almost every possible symtom of illness that
had been seen, cataloged by areas of the body, and then more detailed
descriptions under that. With each classification, there is a list of
every drug which produces that symptom when given to a healthy person.
Prescribing.
To use these tools, and prescribe a drug for a patient. A classical
homeopath will take the case history, and examine the patient (a very
lengthy process... typically 1 to 2 hours), and find all the key
symptoms the patient has. Then by consulting the Repertory for each
symptom, and recording all the drugs that produce each symptom, the
homeopath can work out which of all the drugs produces a match to the
most important symptoms of the patient. After having done this, the
homeopath then looks up that drug in the Materia Medica to verify that
the picture of the drug matches the symptom picture of the patient.
Before computers, this could have taken several hours in itself. Thanks
to the computer, the drudge work of the Repertory can be fully
automated saving the practioner a lot of time. Of course, after gaining
experience, the homeopath gets to know the drugs well enough that he
doesn't always have to rigorously do the Repertory work. He just knows
the drug picture when he sees it in a patient. If the homeopathic
physician does not match the drug as closely as possible to a patient's
exact symptoms, it is not homeopathy,
regardless of how the drugs were made!. Also, a homeopath will never
prescribe combinations of drugs or multiple drugs at the same time, as
there would be no clear picture of the drug combination. One drug at a
time is the rule.
My first experience.
The first experience with homeopathy, and indeed my first experience
with any form of alternative health care, happened in the early 90's.
Five years before, I had been struck down with cancer and had very
extensive surgery to remove it. I had all of my lymph glands removed
from my abdomenal cavity. The aftermath of that was that for the next
five years, I had constant pain, and was always sick. It seemed no one
could help me, until I visited a health clinic in New Jersey where they
had a homeopathic practitioner. Jane was not even a licensed physician,
she was an artist who had studied with other homeopaths for quite a few
years. Since Jane was not an actual physician, she could not actually
prescribe for me. Instead, she gave me a private 2 hour lesson in
homeopathy, using my own case for an example. After a 2 hour "training
session", Jane pointed me to a drug called Thuja
Occidentalis (Tree of life, or the Arbor Vitae bush).
I took this drug for 2 days, and nothing at all happened. On the third
day however, I got sick, with exactly the same feelings and symptoms I
had right after the surgery. This continued for about 2 days as I
replayed the recovery from the tremendous assault I had endured.
Then.... it was gone! I had finally recovered (as much as possible, I
can't regrow body parts) from a curse that had lasted 5 years. I was
sold on homeopathy!. So I took some classes to learn more.
Jane treated me once more, as I had been prone to pneumonia, and had
contracted it three years in a row. Jane prescribed Sulphur
for me, and it cured the pneumonia quicker than the antibiotics had,
plus I haven't had pneumonia in the 10+ years since.
But how does it work? It makes no sense to take something
which gives me more of what I already have!
What most people perceive as symptoms of illness is actually the
effects of the body's immune system battling the disease. The disease
agent is busy chomping away at your cells replicating itself and
flooding your body with poison, but thats not what you experience. You
experience fever, throwing up, diahrhea, etc. This is your immune
system at work. Vomiting expels poisons from your body as does
diahrhea. Fever prevents viruses from replicating. Swelling is your
body diluting the toxins. The smartest doctor of all is your
own immune system.
All of this internal battle requires energy and strength in your immune
system. By taking a non-toxic substance which produces the same effect
as your immune system does while fighting a particular disease, some of
the load is taken off the immune system and taken up by the drug. This
is akin to bringing in reinforcements on the battle field. The drug
augments the immune system. It is your immune system which ultimately
effects the cure!
One of the beautiful aspects of homeopathy is that it is not necessary
to know what disease a person actually has. It is only necessary to
know the symptom set of the patient. This means that with a little
training in the technique, ordinary non-medical people can do
remarkable things for themselves and their families in the way of
treating ordinary illnesses like colds and flu. I consider it a skill
which everyone should learn for the day when visiting an MD might not
be possible.
Can it cure everything?
No, of course not, but neither can allopathy. In todays's world, we are
faced with diseases and symptoms that were not prevalent when the
original homeopaths did the drug provings. For instance, 100 years ago
heart disease was almost unheard of, and blood pressure was not
routinely checked like it is now. It was not considered important. As a
result, there is no information in the Materia Medica and the Repertory
about hypertension. It is such a shame that homeopathy was all but put
out of business by the AMA. If it had not been, there would have been a
lot more advances in the drugs and techniques available.
Spanish Flu
One of the biggest events which suggest that homeopathy works and works
very well was the Spanish flu outbreak in 1918. At that time, there
were homeopathic hospitals, and allopathic hospitals in the US.
A report to the American Institute of Homeopathy in
1921
documented the dramatic success of homeopathy in the worst flu pandemic
in history. The death rate of 24,000 flu cases under conventional
medical care in that study was 28.2 percent, while the death rate of
26,000 cases treated with homeopathy was a nearly miraculous 1.05
percent. Similarly, many homeopathic physicians each reported treating
thousands of patients with very few deaths.1
In the homeopathic hospitals, the majority of patients were given
gelsemium which increases body temperature, which augmented the body's
own immune response. In the allopathic hospitals, aspirin was the drug
of choice, and aspirin reduces body temperature, effectively working
against the immune system. In the next installments, I will tell you
how to make 'potentized' drugs, the highly diluted and energetic drugs
that homeopaths usually prescribe, and tell you of a shortcut that you
can instantly make use of.
1) Divine
Odyssey
Click
here to go to Part 2