Homeopathy: from the Greek words homoios (“similar”) and pathos (“suffering”).
Homeopathic medicines have been prescribed for centuries by medical doctors and trained homeopaths to help alleviate a wide range of both acute and chronic health complaints. Classical Homeopathy is a powerful system of natural medicine that uses potentized dilutions (micro-doses) of a variety of natural substances prescribed according to the Law of Similars, otherwise known as the ancient “like cures like” principle, to stimulate the body’s own healing ability.
A few of the more common conditions successfully treated with homeopathy include:
- Childhood illnesses
- Difficult menstruation
- Hot flashes, sleeplessness and other effects of Menopause
- Colds and Influenza
- Sports injuries
- Stings, bites, bruises
- Chronic cough
Here in North America homeopathy fits extraordinarily well in areas that western medicine has trouble addressing such as colic in newborns, anxiety and night terrors in young children, hormonal imbalances, viral recurrences like cold sores, chronic skin ailments, and conditions with no known cause like Reynaud’s syndrome. Homeopathic medicines can help you cope with diagnosed chronic disease, stress, and anxiety alongside most other treatments. You do not have to be off other medications to start homeopathic treatment, though it is often helpful.
How does Homeopathy Work?
Medicines prescribed homeopathically act as a catalyst by stimulating the body’s own self-healing mechanisms and defenses, offering a holistic medical approach that addresses illness on the mental, emotional and physical planes. Treatment is individualized for each patient. The medicines are non-toxic, non-addictive and safe for people and pets of all ages. Homeopathic medicines can usually be taken alongside other prescribed drugs. Although homeopathy’s principles are older than Hippocrates himself and have remained unchanged since Samuel Hahnemann formulated them in the early 1800’s, modern physicists are just now discovering through scientific experiment, the mechanisms behind the cure. If you are interested in reading some of the medical and scientific studies being published go to ExtraordinaryMedicine.org
A Visit to my Homeopathic Clinic
Homeopathic practitioners do not consider each symptom separately, but rather treat the patient as a whole and each person as a unique individual. In our consultation I will inquire about all of your health issues, not just the main complaint, in order to be able to identify the one remedy that best matches all of your symptoms. In this way, homeopathy re-orients the body and mind as a smoothly functioning system, one part not separate from the other. I can then also guide you with nutritional and lifestyle advice to help you maintain your health and achieve your life goals.
In non-acute cases, the first visit to a homeopath involves a detailed interview of your specific case, and can take several hours. I will listen carefully to each of your symptoms, ask many questions about your lifestyle and history, and then take more time to research your case before prescribing your remedy. The medicine aims to address your chief complaint along with other symptoms you may have so that a gentle and lasting cure can be achieved. Once I know you and your history I can also treat acute injuries and illnesses quickly according to the condition, and provide appropriate follow-up care. Whether you are managing a long-time chronic illness, or just want to do all you can to keep your family well, I am ready and willing to be a part of your health care support network.
A Short History of Homeopathic Medicine
Samuel Hahnemann was a brilliant and curious European medical doctor in what is now Germany during the late 1700’s, a time when the physicians ‘cures’ consisted of harsh poisons, bloodletting, application of leeches, and other barbaric methods. Dr. Hahnemann, who was fluent in 7 languages, was translating an article about Peruvian Bark (quinine) and its ability to heal malaria. He was curious about how it worked, and began experimenting. He found that taking large doses of Peruvian Bark brought on all the symptoms of malaria, and he wondered whether giving small doses of the same substance would cure it. In other words he applied the ancient law of similars –“ like cures like”- to quinine and malaria, and found it very effective. He discovered that diluting the medicinal substance to a micro-dose reduced side effects and made it more effective. This he called ‘potentization’, and thus began a lifetime of discovering and testing the healing properties of plant, mineral, and animal substances on healthy volunteers, and the cataloguing of hundreds of homeopathic remedies. Virtually any condition was evaluated and treated homeopathically, based not on a specific diagnosis but on the total symptom picture of the patient, including their mental and emotional state.
This complete, safe system of gentle medicine spread throughout Europe, then to North America by 1825. It grew so popular among doctors in the U.S. that the Homeopathic doctors organized the American Institute of Homeopathy in 1844, three years before the American Medical Association was formed. Homeopathy was then and remains today a rational, scientific alternative to debilitating, depletive and invasive ‘therapeutics’ in over-use by conventional medicine.
In 1859 homeopathy was the first system of medicine to be regulated in Ontario. Women’s College Hospital in Toronto began under the direction of the first female doctor in Canada, Dr. Emily Howard Stowe MD, who attended the New York Medical College for Women, a homeopathic institution in the city of New York.
As orthodox medicine improved surgical techniques and did away with its more horrific practices, and with the advent of miraculous drugs such as sulfa and penicillin at the turn of the last century, homeopathy fell out of the mainstream, though homeopaths continued to practice quietly throughout North America. In the last 25 years homeopathy has seen a huge increase in popularity. With the resurgence in patient awareness of the deeper meaning of health as not just the absence of disease, and as people search for safer methods of cure rather than palliation, homeopathy has re-emerged as a rational health care choice in the Western world. The treatment is painless and effective and extensively used throughout the world, including India, Africa, many European countries especially Britain, Greece, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and many countries in South America, including Cuba and Brazil.
Today, Homeopathy is the world’s most frequently used medical modality of complementary and alternative medicine according to the World Health Organization. Homeopathic medicines are less expensive than many other drugs. Because these natural remedies are not patentable, they pose a substantial risk to the pharmaceutical companies who might otherwise make huge profits.
In April 2015 the province of Ontario completed the long process of re-regulating Homeopaths, requiring every practitioner to be licensed by the province once again. Homeopathy is included in the Regulated Health Professions of Ontario. Many insurance companies are now able to include Homeopathy in their extended health care benefits plans.