Spotlight on Homeopathy
Spotlight on
Homeopathy
by Mary Aspinwall
We hear a lot these days about “stress” and how
it causes illness. It is certainly true that symptoms are
like the red emergency warning light on the dashboard of a
car. They are there to highlight some deeper dis-ease that
needs addressing. However, the dis-ease that each person experiences
is unique to them and it is important to realise that one
person’s stress might be another person’s delight.
Successful Homeopathy depends on fully understanding each
individual’s dis-ease and removing it. Then they can
return to a state of ease and harmony, where those warning
symptoms are no longer necessary.
Generally, if people are allowed to talk freely, they will
keep coming back to the issues they find most difficult or
distressing, highlighting the same point in many different
ways. To see how this works in practice let’s look at
two, very different, individuals, who kindly gave me permission
to refer to their cases.
A young boy came to see me and was critical of my consulting
room saying it was messy (to be honest, it’s not that
bad!). He liked to keep his own room very tidy and hated it
if anyone moved anything out of place. He didn’t enjoy
visiting friends and had a very strong desire to stay at home,
where he kept to a very strict routine of his own devising.
He loved to eat eggs, but they had to be cooked for a very
precise number of seconds or he didn’t enjoy them at
all. The theme running through everything he said was his
strong need for structure in order to feel safe and protected.
Even the eggs he so loved represented a safe, protective structure.
His many disturbing physical symptoms responded beautifully
to a dose of Calcerea carbonica, made from the lining of the
inside of an oyster shell, another naturally occurring example
of security.
Compare this to a case of a teenage girl who visited me with
extremely violent menstrual pains. The cause of her dis-ease
was almost the exact opposite. She had a horror or routine
of any kind. It would make her feel suffocated and trapped.
She hated tight clothing, especially around the neck, for
the same reason. She loved to be in company, to talk, to dance
and generally have fun. The funny thing about her period pains
was that they came before menstruation and disappeared almost
as soon as the period began, as this represented a type of
release. The pains completely went with one dose of Lachesis
(extremely diluted venom of the Bushmaster snake). Lachesis
is particularly well-suited to people who hate to be constricted
in any way.
Homeopathy = Greek for “similar suffering”.
System of medicine based on fact that if a substance makes
a healthy person ill, it can also make a person who is ill,
in a similar way, get better.
Examples
Apis (made from bee sting) treats angry red, hot swellings.
Coffea (coffee) treats over-excitement and sleeplessness.
Alium Cepa (onion) treats hay fever.
History
2000 years ago:
Hippocrates identifies two types of medicine ‘contraries’
or ‘similars’.
‘Contraries’ use the opposite suffering (‘antipathy’
in Greek) to restore wellbeing, for example, a laxative eases
constipation. Hippocrates noted ‘contraries’,
over time, make the original problem worse, then more medicine
is needed. Most people who’ve taken antacids or sleeping
pills would agree. Hippocrates favoured the use of ‘similars’.
They already had a long and successful history in traditional,
herbal medicine.
200 years ago:
A German doctor named Samuel Hahnemann noted quinine protected
people against malaria. He took some himself and found that
he got all the symptoms of malaria. It cured malaria because
it could produce malaria-like symptoms in a healthy person.
Hahnemann was thrilled by this “Eureka” moment
and spent his life testing diluted substances on volunteers,
carefully recording their effects. This work continues today
with well over a thousand substances already tested and new
ones being introduced all the time.
Homeopathy has its roots in traditional herbal medicine,
but with three major improvements:
1. the original substance is only used in an extremely diluted,
safe form .
2. any substance, not only plants, can be used.
3. all substances are tested on human volunteers to see what
symptoms they produce.
Fact or Fiction?
Homeopathy is one of the most contentious areas in holistic
medicine, with opinion polarised into two camps: those who
think it is scientifically impossible for homeopathic medicines
to work and those who know from direct experience that they
do work even it there isn’t a verifiable means of explaining
how, as yet.
Whilst scepticism is healthy, ignoring empirical evidence
from hundreds of thousands of people who attribute their return
to health to Homeopathy isn’t. After all, the healthiest
of minds tend to be open ones…
© Mary Aspinwall
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