Homepathy ::

In the United States in the early 1900s there were 22 homeopathic medical schools and over 100 homeopathic hospitals, 60 orphanages and old people's homes and 1,000+ homeopathic pharmacies. Members of the American Medical Association had great animosity towards homeopathy after its formation in 1847 and it was decided to purge all local medical societies of physicians who were homeopaths. This purge was successful in every state except Massachusetts because homeopathy was so strong among the elite of Boston.

What is Homeopathy?

Homeopathy as a science and an art is a medical approach to illness that respects the wisdom of the body. It utilizes medicines that stimulate the body's own immune and defense system to initiate the healing process.

Symptoms are not the disease.

The body speaks through symptoms in an attempt to express how the body is out of balance. Symptoms can be the effort by the body to heal itself. Treating symptoms silences that voice and does not delve deeper into the disruption causing the body to speak.

Homeopathy and the Law of Similar. Like cures like.

It is readily acknowledged that individuals, when ill, have their individual physical, emotional, and mental symptom patterns, even when people have the same disease. A headache is not simply a headache. A headache is expressed with a unique set of symptoms from individual to individual. To treat all headaches with one medicine does not take into consideration these differences.

Homeopathic medicine is a natural pharmaceutical science in which a practitioner seeks to find a substance which causes similar symptoms of the illness when given in an over dose. The overdose symptoms of the remedy are matched with the sick persons symptoms and the remedy is given in very small, safe doses, often with dramatic effects.
This is called the “law of similars”

Immunizations are based on the principle of similars.

Modern allergy treatment also utilizes the homeopathic approach by injecting a small doses of allergens in order to create an antibody response. Conventional medicine also uses homeopathic-like therapy in choosing radiation to treat people with cancer (radiation causes cancer), digitalis for heart conditions (digitalis creates heart conditions), and Ritalin for hyperactive children (Ritalin is an amphetamine-like drug which normally causes hyperactivity).

It should be remembered that although these conventional medical treatments utilize the homeopathic "law of similars", they do not follow other fundamental principles of homeopathy. They are not individually prescribed to the degree of selectivity common in homeopathy, and they are not prescribed in a similar safe, extremely small dose.

Homeopathic medicines are chosen for their ability to match and mimic the symptoms of the sick person and thereby go with, rather than against, the body's effort to heal itself. The beauty of the "law of similar's" is that it not only heals but encourages a respect for the body's wisdom. The "law of similars" is one of nature's laws that, when used well, can be one of our highest technologies.

The Importance of Individualization

The way homeopaths learn what a homeopathic medicine will cure is through the use of experiments called "drug provings". In these homeopathic drug trials, researchers administer doses of a substance to a healthy individual until a reaction to the substance is achieved. The subject is asked to keep detailed record books of symptoms; additional symptoms are discovered through an interview process.

Once it is known what symptoms a substance causes, it then is known what it will influence and cure when given in extremely small, specially prepared doses. Books which list symptoms and the substances that have been found to cause and or cure them are called a Materia Medica and Repertories. Homeopaths now use computers for searching and cross referencing of remedies to improve prescribing to fit the overall picture, not just the parts, of the person to a remedy

Case Taking.
It is essential to take a person's case in great detail in order to be able to give not just an approximate medicine but an individually chosen one. The Homeopath asks many questions about the person's chief complaint, minor complaints, and various other physical and psychological symptoms in order to do this.

Among the questions that homeopaths commonly ask, include: Is there a time of the day you feel best or worst or that any specific symptom occurs? How does weather affect you? How do you feel at the seashore or in the mountains? Are there any foods that you crave or to which feel adverse? What makes you feel better or what makes you feel worse?

It is now known that the geothermal changes can affect brain chemistry and affect physical and psychological states. Negative ions at seashores and mountains can affect states of health. Food cravings or aversions may signal certain metabolic states.

Homeopathy is a highly sophisticated method of individualizing small doses of medicines to a person. The more we begin to understand its principles and methodology, the more we will begin to understand the various subtleties of the human body which presently allude our comprehension.

The Use of Small Doses
Remedies are made from substances found in nature in the kingdoms belonging to animals, minerals and plants. These substances are diluted in very exacting amounts of water or alcohol and potentized by vigorously shaking this diluted substance a very exacting number of times. Evidence of how small doses can actually have increased strength was reported in Science News. (19) A study engaged in by chemists, who work for the U.S. Government's National Bureau of Standards and who knew nothing about homeopathy, noted that when they shook the coupled molecules of nitric oxide, the units did not weaken and break into parts, but rather developed stronger molecular bonds. One can theorize from this research that the homeopathic process of dilution and succussion (shaking) may actually create super strong molecules, perhaps super strong medicines.

Sensitivity of an organism to small doses of certain substances are evident throughout nature. Therefore when the individually chosen substance to which an organism is most sensitive is taken the immune and defense system is catalyzed to begin a curative process.
The resonance of the micro-dose is thought to affect the resonance of the person's vital life force.

Understanding the Healing Process
As we have noted, the human body is a remarkable organism that will go to great extremes to protect itself and survive.

The human being lives on three levels of experience--the physical, emotional, and mental--homeopaths have observed a predictable hierarchy by which any cure of chronic illness takes place.
*On the physical level a skin rash, is not as serious as hepatitis, and hepatitis is not as serious as heart disease.
*On the emotional level, a minor irritability is more superficial than a strong anger, and an intense fear of death represents a deeper, more seriously ill condition than either.
*On the mental level, a slightly poor memory is relatively minor compared to a general state of mental confusion which itself is less significant than a full-blown schizophrenic state.

Constantine Hering, M.D. (1800-1880), the father of American homeopathy, was one of the first to make note of specific ways that healing progresses called
"Hering's Law of Cure."

1. Healing from the inside out.
*A person with asthma may develop an external skin rash as a par of the curative process.
*Someone with a headache may undergo a day or two of fever and sweating as a part of their cure.
*A person with emotional or mental symptoms may experience different and less serious emotional or mental problems or physical symptoms during their curative process.

2. The healing progresses from the top of the body to the bottom.
A person with arthritis in many joints will generally notice relief in the upper part of the body before the lower part.

3. Healing proceeds in reverse order of the appearance of symptoms.
The most recent symptoms one has experienced generally will be the first to be healed. A person may sometimes re-experience symptoms that he or she previously suffered from. They are usually only experienced for a short period of time with a return of significantly higher level of health.

Hering's Laws of Cure are unique, holistic assessment tools that can be used to evaluate the progress of the healing process person over time.

Summary and Conclusion
Homeopathy is a sophisticated medical science which individualizes a substance based on the totality of a person's symptoms. A person's unique pattern of symptoms are all interrelated. Symptoms are recognized as primarily an intrinsic effort of the organism to adapt to and deal with various internal or external stresses. Methods that simply suppress, control, or manage symptoms should be avoided since such therapies compromise the innate tendency of the organism to defend and heal itself. The side effects which these suppressive treatments cause are actually direct effects of the treatment. Homeopathic medicines, on the other hand, are prescribed to aid the organism in its highly sophisticated efforts to heal. Inherent in the homeopathic approach is a basic respect for the body's wisdom; it is thus no wonder that it is a safer medicine.

At a time in our civilization when it is essential to develop practices that strengthen the immune and defense system, homeopathic medicine is quite naturally gaining popularity. Homeopathy embodies the characteristics of a medical science one could hope and dream for in the 21st century...and the best news is that we do not have to wait until the 21st century to draw upon of its benefits.