Homoeopathic Medicine

General Information on Homoeopathic Medicine

Homoeopathy (Home-e-op-path-y) is an exceptionally safe form of medicine which treats the whole individual. It is equally concerned with aiding recovery from ill health and maintaining good health, and like all forms of medicine - even those which use powerful drugs, advanced technology and surgical techniques - relies for it's effects on the body's own powers of self-regulation and self-healing.

Since its development over 200 years ago, Homoeopathic Medicine has benefited millions of people, young and old, from all walks of life, in countries all over the world. It was the German physician and chemist, Dr Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) who brilliantly drew together the principles of homoeopathy. Dr Hahnemann had become disillusioned with the medical practices of his day and while translating a medical text on the treatment of malaria, he disagreed with the author and so decided to experiment on himself. By taking substantial doses of the crude form of Peruvian Bark (Cinchona Bark from which quinine is derived), over a couple of days, he brought out similar symptoms to those of malaria, which disappeared as soon as he discontinued taking it. Dr Hahnemann described the effects as follows: My feet, finger tips etc. first grew cold, I became exhausted and sleepy, then my heart began to palpitate and my pulse became hard and rapid. I had intolerable anxiety, trembling prostration in all my limbs, then throbbing in the head, flushing of the cheeks, thirst and, in short, all the ordinary symptoms of malaria.

Hahnemann was able to attest to the resemblance as he had, in fact, suffered from malaria when he was younger. He concluded from his experiment that the bark overpowered and eradicated the intermittent fever chiefly by exciting a fever of short duration of its own. In an article on venereal disease he said that mercury (commonly used in the treatment of syphilis) had a counter-irritant action on the body. He referred to its most developed form as mercurial fever and remarked that mercurial fever was similar to the symptoms of syphilis, although he had not yet pronounced the homoeopathic principle.

He first alluded to the homoeopathic principle in an article in 1796 in the leading medical journal in Germany. In this article he wrote that in choosing a remedy, one must imitate nature and employ in the disease one wishes to cure, 'that medicine which is able to produce another very similar artificial disease'. From this time onwards he became increasingly occupied with the construction of a system of therapeutics based on this principle. This dedication and enthusiasm are understandable for suddenly there was no longer any need to conduct haphazard experiments on patients. If all the known drugs and many more could be 'proved' on healthy people then the resulting drug pictures would supply specific and accurate indications for their use. One would simply have to match a patient's symptom picture with an appropriate drug picture. In this way he established the first principle:The Law of Similars, or Like cures Like.

The word 'homoeopathy' (also spelt 'homeopathy') comes from the two Greek words, omeos meaning 'similar' and pathos meaning 'suffering'. A Homoeopathic Medicine is one which produces the same symptoms as those the sick person complains of, and in doing so, sharply provokes the body into overcoming them, by stimulating the curative, healing and reparative powers of the body into action. Like may be cured by like', is also expressed as similia similibus curentur, is the basic principle of homoeopathic therapeutics. Thus homoeopathy means "to treat with something that produces an effect similar to the suffering". The opposite therapeutic approach is used by 'conventional medicine', which is defined as a system of therapeutics in which diseases are treated by producing a condition incompatible with, or antagonistic to the condition to be cured or alleviated.

Homoeopathy is a natural form of medicine - it seeks to assist Nature rather than fight against it, to assist the body's own healing powers rather than override them. The 'disease' is not only the virus or the bacteria - these are merely the organisms which move in when the body's defences are low. The fever, the inflammation, the diarrhoea, the headache - these are not the disease either, but the body's attempt to return to normality.

Homoeopathic Medicine takes into account that every person is different, therefore the same medicine, the same diet, the same general advice does not necessarily help everyone with the same health complaint. Accordingly, homoeopathy has the most flexible system of medicinal prescribing of any system of therapeutics.

The four most common reactions from taking a Homoeopathic Medicine are; 1) The patient gets better. Do not repeat the medicine whilst improvement is still occurring. 2) The patient improves for a time, say an hour or more (in acute conditions), to a few days (in more long-lasting, chronic complaints), then either stops getting better and the picture becomes more or less static, or begins to slip back again with the same symptoms. In this case, your prescription has worked and now is the time to repeat the same medicine. 3) The symptoms get slightly worse after taking the medicine. This is a common reaction to the effect of the medicine and you should wait and expect to see an improvement over the next few minutes or hour or so, depending on how severe the illness is. The more vigorous and acute the illness is, the quicker things change. So in a lingering dermatological condition (for example, eczema), you might have to wait several hours to days for a response to a medicine, whereas in a delirious, high raging fever, you would expect to see changes within 1 to 15 minutes. 4) No effect. Often the first change is that the patient begins to feel better in themselves but still has all the symptoms. This is a very important sign of a good response and must not be overlooked.This reaction is more often seen in constitutional treatments. You should wait and look for other improvements to follow.

Homoeopathic Medicines are not exclusive to homoeopathy. For example, quinine is used in the treatment of many forms of malaria, in both homoeopathic and conventional medicine. Similar medicines include digitalis, salicylic acid, gold, and colchicum. Orthodox medicine also employs dilutions of allergens (the allergy-causing substances) to treat the allergies themselves, and injections of the actual virus to stimulate an immune response in the case of immunizations.

Clinical experience over the last 200 years, shows that Homoeopathic Medicine is comparable in effect to many commonly prescribed drugs, without most of the side effects.

Although Homoeopathic Medicine can act very swiftly in treating acute conditions, it requires careful self-monitoring and a willingness to stick to a course of treatment for the more chronic ailments. The prize is higher vitality and greater resistance to all disease processes.

Safety

Effectiveness