Homeopathy Query

Homoeopathic medicines are prescribed most effectively when they suit the peculiar, strange, rare, individual symptoms/state of the patient. This might include mind symptoms but does not need to. It is a misconception that homoeopathic prescriptions must take into account mind symptoms. It is more correct to talk about General symptoms rather than Mind...mind being a subset of the Generals.

General symptoms are things such as Appetite, Sensitivity, Sleep, Sexual Appetite, Thirst, and other things that affect the whole person rather than just one part.Mind symptoms are often the most peculiar and individual part of a person however, and when they are striking and unusual you will often pay attention to them. I use the Mind quite frequently in clinic, but in preference I look for the thread that connects Mind, Emotion, Body, Pathology.

When you make a prescription based on the General State you will get a much better level of improvement than if you base your prescription on common local sympoms (such as mouth ulcers or migraines). Improvement will be deep, long-acting and extend over the whole person.

Prescriptions based on local symptoms have a low rate of success when the general state is ignored. Even if they palliate the local symptoms, the improvement tends to be shallow, short-acting and rarely makes the person feel any different in themselves (in their general sense of well-being). These kinds of prescriptions might make the person feel quite well for just a few days, even a week or two, but invariably they will relapse and the medicine will have no further effect. At times, after being palliated, the original symptoms will come back worse than before (just as they do with Orthodox medicine).

Having said that, those kind of prescriptions still have their place - for treating True Acute illness, for palliating patients who are in an emergency situation, or for treating cases where the pathology has become very localized (I often refer to the energy of the case pooling in specific bodily locations). Cancer is an example where pathological prescription may actually be necessary to cure the patient at all.

Another thing to remember, is that the pathological symptoms are part of the case, and will reflect the larger picture. A skilled practitioner could feasibly perceive the deeper state through these symptoms, although to be sure you should examine all levels. Some of the new methods use a 'circular' form of case-taking where you start at the pathology, move to the generals, then back to the pathology, all the while looking for one state refelected everywhere. A remedy that matches this state will cure with great power and efficiency.

Dear Brisbane Homeopath,
Your explanation is superb.
Thank you very much for explaining Homeopathy in a right sense.

This might be a bit long-winded, but it isn't really a simple question.

There are two types of disease - Acute disease and Chronic disease. Acute disease is caused by external factors (accidents, poisons, infectious epidemics etc)and if left untreated will resolve itself or kill the patient.

Chronic disease is caused by internal factors and will not usually resolve unless treated. Unlike diseases that come from the outside, they do not vary depending on the weather or the environment. Chronic disease is a kind of 'stuckness', where a specific set of reactions occur regardless of what is appropriate to the situation. When the reactions are appropriate it is not disease.

So a person with chronic disease might have a number of things they are affected by (heat, dust, standing a long time etc) but these things will always be the same, and the degree they are affected will be out of proportion. A person who is healthy will be affected by anything that is too much to resist, but it will pass away without trouble and the reaction will be reasonable for the situation.

Sometimes people develop their disease early in their life and stay that way until cured (or they die). Sometimes people only develop their disease when a specific event triggers it. Sometimes a traumatic event is so powerful the person's initial disease (state) changes to a new state.

So primarily the presenting state would be the most important one, but the history of the patient will help to flesh out the picture more fully. We look at the whole life of the person to identify those events that are triggers for the disease, since they may only happen at particular times in a person's life. A person affected by the heat of summer, who comes to you in winter, will not talk about that sensitivity unless questioned. A person who is sensitive to the loss of a lover, may not have yet had the experience in their life.

Where there are two states that are clearly very different in the patient, you will usually see that one of those began at a clerly definied time in their life (often around an event of some type). In this case you would treat the latest state first, and wait to see if the older state reappears (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't).

A person may have a chronic disease, but go into an acute which has different characteristics (because of something external) which requires a new remedy. Giving the remedy for their normal state often produces a general improvement but doesn't help the symptoms that have recently developed.

However, just to make it even more complex, sometimes people stay in their chronic disease even during an acute. It does make case-taking a challenge, and certainly requires a great deal of patience and care when interviewing the patient.