Homeopathy: Treating Cause,
Not Symptoms
by Herbert Rothouse, R.Ph., M.S.
Research Grounds Hypotheses
The word "homeopathy" comes from the
Greek words homeo
and pathos,
meaning
"similar" and "suffering", respectively.
From the time that Dr. Hahnemann coined
the word 200 years ago, homeopathy has
been maligned and vilified, and
homeopaths have been charged as liars
and frauds. All this occurred in spite of
200 years of therapeutic successes. What
is it about homeopathy that arouses these
passions? What are the doctrines and
therapies that, even today, defy comprehension? What
secrets of nature did Dr.
Hahnemann tamper with?
Dr. Hahnemann was a careful investigator.
His years of study of the ancient texts
reaped a generous reward. He found his
answer in the writings of Hippocrates:
Through the like, disease is produced, and
through the application of the like, it is
cured.
Over the next 5 years, with the help of
medical students and friends, Dr.
Hahnemann tested his remedies and
developed the principles that remain intact
today. In 1810, when he published his Organon of Medicine
he presented to the
world a new and audacious notion of
healing called homeopathy.
Homeopathy is based on the existence of
an innate healing energy that promotes
and protects our health. This energy
initiates our defense mechanisms in
response to adverse conditions and then
controls and guides the natural healing
process. Because of this energy, the body
has the ability to heal itself. Dr.
Hahnemann called this energy the "vital force". This vital force is the agent of cure.
What homeopathy does is to treat the
individual according to his or her own
discomforts by pushing the organism in
the same direction the vital force is trying
to go. Conventional medicines
tend not to be
healing, curative agents. In fact, many
modern medicines can actually retard
healing and alter the nature of the disease
to make it more difficult to treat. What the
body needs are the favorable conditions to
affirm its restorative powers that through
negligence or indifference created an
environment for disease to flourish.
Homeopathic remedies assist the
attenuated vital force to promote any self-healing.
Modern Medicines Do Fail
Three to five percent (depending on what
study one reads) of all hospital admissions
are the result of some adverse
drug reaction (ADR) or an iatrogenic
(physician-induced) disease. From more
than 30 million annual admissions,
more than 1
million are caused by some physician-prescribed medication.
Treating Cause -- Not Symptom
No person, ever, has died from a
homeopathic remedy, but many have been
cured. Where the weakened organ needs
assistance, it is the homeopathic remedy
that initiates recovery. Paracelsus said:
"The remedy restores the health, thus the
illness departs."
Homeopathy does not actually concern
itself with a germ or a bacterium or the
names of diseases because homeopathy
does not treat a disease. Disease is, after
all, a combination of disordered functions
that overcome an individual when the
internal energy is disturbed and the vital
force is compromised. What homeopathy
does is to treat the individual according to
his or her discomfort. For example,
homeopaths treated cholera successfully,
long before it was known that the actual
cause was a bacterium. During the 19th
century, there were seven severe
epidemics in America, the most serious in
1832. The death rates in the regular
hospitals were five times those of the
homeopathic hospitals. The same results
were found overseas. In London, in 1854,
following an outbreak of cholera,
Parliament authorized a commission to see
which treatments were more effective.
What they found was that whereas the
regular hospitals had a death rate of 59
percent,
the homeopathic hospitals had a rate of
only 16 percent.
What homeopathy treated was not cholera
but headache, malaise, diarrhea, anorexia,
icy coldness of the body, convulsions,
staring eyes, sunken face, and so on.
These symptoms pointed to a homeopathic
remedy, which was most often camphora
or Veratrum album.
These are remedies that
often give healthy people headaches,
diarrhea, and other symptoms typical of
cholera when ingested during homeopathic "provings", the so-called Hahnemann
clinical trials. These provings were
designed to ascertain the symptoms
caused by the remedies so those
symptoms could be sought in the patient's
history and assure that the correct
remedy was chosen.
Even earlier, in 1812, while in Paris, Dr.
Hahnemann treated scarlet fever using
only belladonna. With no knowledge of
streptococci, he treated only the red hot
skin and the feverish, yet thirstless, state.
Realizing that belladonna caused the same
symptoms, it was, following his theory,
the
obvious remedy.
To Dr. Hahnemann, it was quite clear that
to find the appropriate remedy, one must
get the total picture of the patient. To find
the cure, find the remedy; to find the
remedy, find the symptoms. All
symptoms, even the most trivial, are
important, and sometimes it is the most
trivial that become the most important.
This is because the body can exhibit
disease and sickness in an infinite
number of ways, each representing an
effort to heal. These symptoms are a
direct effect of the cause, sometimes
appearing as a non-beneficial side effect and sometimes
beneficial, as in fever. For example,
Hippocrates wrote: "Fever is a beneficial
phenomenon and it is not to be
suppressed; instead, it is intensified by
the application of hot water and hot
baths."
In today's health arena, it is the symptoms
that are treated as the disease, but in
homeopathy, they only accompany the
disease. The dermatologist will treat skin
eruptions and dermatitis with steroids
without pausing to consider that such
eruptions are, in fact, guideposts to
treating and curing a condition that is still
submerged. Our skin cannot speak, but it
tells us, nonetheless, that there is an
internal problem waiting to be solved.
No matter what part of the body is
affected, it is ultimately the patient who
must provide the critical clues. The
homeopath might ask the most arcane
questions to get a picture that the ordinary
physician would ignore. He might ask, are
you thirsty or not? Do you prefer cold or
hot drinks? Do you desire company, or
would you rather be left alone? Does noise
or music bother you? Depending on the
answers, different remedies are required.
For generalized muscular pain, the
frequent choice of physicians is either
Tylenol 3 (McNeil, Fort Washington,
Pennsylvania) (with 30 mg of codeine) or
Darvocet-N 100 (Eli Lilly, Indianapolis,
Indiana). In homeopathy, before any
remedy is suggested, one must first ask,
"Are you better still or moving about," for
if the pain is less when still, the remedy
might be bryonia, and if the pain is less
on motion, the remedy might be Rhus toxicodendron.
Treatment cannot be a one-size-fits-all
rationale because different things are going
on in the body. Because our eyes cannot
penetrate the skin, we cannot know why
people respond differently, but it is the
difference in response that leads to the
remedy.
Symptoms and Diagnosis
Homeopathy recognizes several categories
of symptoms. The common symptom gives
the patient the most discomfort at the
moment. It is whatever distress brought
that person to see a physician, whether it
be actual physical pain or emotional
stress. The general symptom relates to the
general sense of well-being. Does the
patient feel weak, exhausted, sleepless,
emotionally drained? The homeopath asks,
"how do you feel?" and then listens closely
to the response. It is here that the mental
symptoms are the most important.
There are particular symptoms that reveal
what happens to the patient that is
different at a given place or time. "Does
the condition exist only at a particular time
of day? Is it only when you sleep on the
right side? How do you react to
thunderstorms?"
Finally, there are modalities. Here the
questions are: "What makes your condition
better or worse? Are you better with cold
drinks or hot drinks? Are you better with
the windows open or closed? Are you
better or worse eating, drinking, walking,
standing, sitting?"
Dr. Hahnemann believed that of all
symptoms, the mental symptoms were the
most critical. He looked for the hatreds,
the fantasies, the fears, the dreams, the
patterns of sociability or withdrawal, of
domination or timidity, of irritability or
patience, of arrogance or compassion, of
serenity or internal anguish. The
homeopath looks for the ability to
concentrate, for signs of forgetfulness, delusions, dissatisfaction,
sadness, apathy, depression, and suicide.
He or she must then find a remedy that
parallels the physical and mental signs.
Homeopathy does not label individuals by
a disease. Because each individual patient
is matched by a set of physical and
emotional patterns to a remedy, the
patients are termed "pulsatilla" or
"chamomilla" patients after the remedies
they seem to need.
Recommended book:
Homeopathy
Made Simple
by R. Donald Papon
Info/Order book
More
books on homeopathy.
About The
Author
HERBERT HOTHOUSE, R.PH.,
M.S., lives in Boca Raton, Florida, USA, where he is a practicing
pharmacist and a licensed nutritionist. This article was first published
in the August 1999 issue of The American Druggist in response to letters
to the editor in their May 1999 issue that were critical of homoeopathy.
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