Homoeopathy

What is Homoeopathy?

Homoeopathy is a system of holistic medicine which is safe and effective and works by stimulating an individual's vital energy - that force which animates each living thing.

Why Choose homoeopathy?

	Homoeopathy is effective and completely safe. There are no side effects.
	Homoeopathic treatment can be useful whatever your diagnosis or problem.
	Homoeopathy does not seek to suppress or hide symptoms but to cure them. Whilst this is not always possible - it is rare when homoeopathic remedies do not at least help.
	Homoeopathic treatment seems to strengthen the immune system as a whole and therefore make its users far less susceptible to illness. Patients become much less prone to coughs and colds and, with long term homoeopathic treatment, less prone to more serious conditions too.
	Homoeopathy involves no harming or experimenting upon animals.

Like cures Like

Homoeopathic treatment uses a remedy made from a substance which, in its crude form, would when given to a healthy person, produce very similar symptoms to that being suffered by the person who is unwell. For example, when we peel onions, our eyes water. Similarly the humble onion (allium cepa) is a remedy that might be prescribed for hayfever symptoms characterised by runny eyes. Knowledge of 'like cures like' has been known since the very earliest times. There is evidence of this in old Hindu scripts and in the writings of Hippocrates and Aristotle. However it was the German chemist and physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755 - 1843), who is credited with being the true founder of Homoeopathy because he worked out how to make and prescribe the medicines. Indeed, he formulated a whole philosophy of health and disease which still forms the cornerstone of homoeopathy today.

Samuel Hahnemann

"Less is More" or the Magic of the Minimum Dose

Homoeopathic medicines are known as 'remedies'.

They are made from a variety of substances; many from plants and minerals. Hahnemann discovered that the greater the dilution of the original substance, the stronger was its power, providing that the diluted substance were shaken vigorously. The greater the dilution, the more the remedy has to be shaken or 'succussed'. Even low potency homoeopathic remedies contain less than a molecule of the original substance.

This means that homoeopathy can harness the curative properties of plants and other substances which in their crude form may be toxic. The lack of the original substance in homoeopathic remedies perplexes many scientists and doctors as they do not see how the remedies can possibly be curative.

Homoeopaths, in keeping with the findings of modern physics, suggest that what remains in the medicine is some kind of pattern or 'memory' of the original substance. But most homoeopaths are less concerned with how homoeopathy works than the fact that it does work and can often cure conditions which conventional medicine cannot.

"Wholism" or the Totality of Symptoms

Remedies work on emotional, mental and spiritual levels as well as on the purely physical.

People taking homoeopathic remedies are often surprised at how much better they feel in themselves, how their moods, for example, might change for the better. Or they may notice that things that previously frightened or worried them, no longer have the same power to do so. In order for the homoeopath to arrive at the right remedy for you, he or she will want to know everything about you, including your family history, your dreams and a host of other information which may not appear to be related to what you want treated.

This is so that the remedy that most closely matches your picture as a whole, can be found. It also alerts the homoeopath to remedies you may need in the future as remedies tend to operate in 'families'. The detail required in homoeopathic prescribing explains why you need to allow between one and two hours for your initial consultation.

Thus homoeopathic prescribing is very specific and individual. Ten people may go to a homoeopath complaining of headache and each may be prescribed a different remedy, this is because they are ten different people with ten different types of headache!

Direction of Cure

Briefly, this homoeopathic rule states that when cure is taking place, disease moves from the inside of the body to the outside or from the most important organs to the less important ones.

For example, the link between eczema and asthma has long been noted. If an asthmatic child who previously suffered with excema is treated homoeopathically, the eczema may temporarily return as the asthma disappears.

So sometimes patients experience a temporary reappearance of old symptoms or an aggravation of existing ones during homoeopathic treatment. Such experiences are mild and short-lived.

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