** What is Homeopathy? **Basically it a system of treatment of diseases and medical conditions, that are a safe and natural alternative to conventional medicine. It can be used on children, adults and animals. However by law in the UK only a vet can diagnose problems with animals. You can treat your own animals with homeopathy though.
It works on the principle of “like cures like” that is if the remedy was given to a healthy person, it would produce certain symptoms. By matching the symptoms you are suffering to a remedy you can be cured! As homeopaths, we don't use disease labels, rahter we treat the symptoms we find the person has.
Homeopathic remedies are energy medicines, they stimulate the bodies own healing powers
** A history lesson **Homeopathy was developed in the 1700’s by a German Doctor by the name of Samuel Hahnemann. He earned extra money translating various medical books. He translated a book by Edward Cullen called “A Treatise on Materia”
In this book Cullen stated that quinine, purified from the bark of the cinchona tree was a good treatment for malaria (this remedy is called China). Hahnemann experimented on himself and his friends, and found that in the healthy person quinine produced the same symptoms as malaria; shivering, sweating, fever
Hahnemann looked at many texts, and found that the Ancient Greeks had been using this form of treatment for curing everything!!
He built up a knowledge of the actions of various materials (he called it proving), then he started to treat sick people, he questioned the patients about their state of health (among many other questions) and then gave remedies based on this.
The fact that many of the remedies he used were poisons, he had to dilute them. He found that the more dilutions he performed, the stronger the remedy became.
He also found that patients suffering from the same disease, often need different remedies, while there were patients with different diseases who all benefited from the same remedy!
So this is why homeopathy concentrates on the person not the disease.
The name homeopathy actually comes from the Greek homoeo similar pathos suffering.
Hahnemann developed a system of principles which homeopaths use, this was produced in a book called “The Organon of Medicine”
** What are the remedies made of? **Homeopathic remedies are made from a variety of differing substances. The remedies are made from plant, mineral, metal, animal, chemical and what we call imponderables!! (lets not go there in this op!)
The “animal remedies” might be made from things such as snake venom
A homeopath uses a book called the Materia Medica, which contains the information about these remedies, such as the symptoms they cure. There are over 4000 different remedies, with more being introduced all the time.
** Making a remedy **So how are the remedies made.
Remedies come in various strengths or what we call potencies. The higher the number the stronger the remedy. So a 30c would be stronger than a 6c (that’s the easy bit)
When we make a remedy, we get the substance, and titrate it (grind it up) to a liquid form.
Once we have a liquid, we take one drop of this liquid, and add it to 99 drops of the carrier, let’s just say water in this instance. The mixture is then severely shaken and banged (succused) this allows the energy to move.
This dilution becomes a 1c. We then get 1 drop of this liquid and dilute it with 99 drops of carrier, and succus. This than becomes a 2c. The process continues up to the required potency. A professional homeopath might use remedies such 10M or 50M which is the equivalent of 1 drop of the material substance in the Atlantic Ocean!! This potency is extremely strong, and we would only prescribe this sort of potency after a consultation. The fact that this remedy is so strong it could, if not prescribed correctly cause some aggravation (worsening of the symptoms) In homeopathy this is actually seen as a good sign, as it means you are reacting to the remedy.
