HomeopatHic
healingways
meDicine
It’s about the
North prefers, as do all homeopathic practitioners, to
whole patient,
focus on the patient and learn more about their personal
story before prescribing a particular remedy. For instance, she
not just
treated two brothers who were suffering from the uncomfort-
able symptoms of poison ivy. “They were different personal-
the disease ity and body types,” says North. “The eldest son, a confident
young man and conversationalist, was out-going whereas the
younger son was less confident and had a tendency towards
shyness. He had been a colicky baby and still experienced
intestinal gas.” These personality differences led North to
prescribe two different homeopathic remedies. The eldest son
was given Sulfur while the youngest received Lycopodium;
both healed.
Because homeopathic remedies are always for patients
and never for diseases, North treated yet another client
with poison ivy differently. The young woman, with a crusty
splotch of poison ivy on her forearm, was treated with
phosphorous. The arm healed, however when the symp-
toms returned in two weeks, North took a closer look at the
woman’s lifestyle and noted anxiety and concentration is-
by Brigit Ingram
sues. “The need for Cannabis Indica became apparent,” says
North. “It’s a remedy more often indicated for panic attacks,
confusion and depression.
“It is more important to know what
In other words, every person who suffers from poi-
sort of patient has a disease than
son ivy will not be healed by one particular homeopathic
remedy. Just as each patient has his or her own story, each
what sort of disease a patient has.”
homeopathic remedy will have its own ‘picture’ or ‘energy
state’ and this state may include emotional as well as physi-
cal symptoms. Matching the patient’s symptoms to a rem-
D
espite the passage of more than a century, this
edy, which has those same symptoms as part of its remedy
quotation by Sir William Osler [1849-1919], the
picture, stimulates the curative healing process.
father of modern medicine and the author of the first
North’s illustrations are much like Hahnemann’s prov-
allopathic (conventional) medicine textbook, is still meaning-
ings that demonstrated how each of us is unique in our
ful though it is rarely practiced outside the arena of homeo-
responses to a similar health challenge. If, as in homeopathy,
pathic medicine.
this uniqueness is perceived in its wholeness – the whole
Created in the late 18
th
Century by German physician,
story and the whole person), then a healing response can be
Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, homeopathic medicine uses highly
stimulated.
diluted remedies made from natural substances that in their
Homeopathy is challenging to learn and is unlike the
diluted forms cause symptoms similar to those of the diseases
model of allopathic medicine where several specialists are
they aim to treat. According to Hahnemann’s textbook, these
sometimes required to treat one person. “Homeopathic
remedies, which remain in wide use today, follow the “Law
practitioners have to be very perceptive and keenly obser-
of Similars” (like cures like), the most important concept of
vant,” says North, “and they have to know how to ask a lot
homeopathy. In experiments, which Hahnemann referred
of good questions that elicit the answers that help to deter-
to as “provings”, he found that the “sort of patient” was
mine the remedy.”
more important than “the sort of disease” and that a specific
diagnosis in the modern conventional sense, was not par-
ticularly useful and would not necessarily lead to a curative
prescription. Hahnemann published his findings along with a Homeopathy optimizes health and
complete overview of his newly discovered medical system
in 1810. The Organon of the Healing Art, whose sixth edition
proves that the best remedy integrates
(published in 1921), is still used today by homeopathic prac-
mind, body, spirit and nature.
titioners like Mary North.
24
Southwestern Virginia
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