When I was first introduced to homeopathy, my comment was 'I don't believe in that sort of thing'! I was in pain at the time, and there may have been a few additional expletives connected to it! And my mind, then, was as closed as the homeopathy denialists are now, and who write into this blog so often. So perhaps there is hope, even for them!
But why does homeopathy heal? And why is it able to do so with such safety? It is not what most of us have come to know about medicine through our experience of conventional medicine.
First, it works by supporting our body, not by opposing it. It seeks to trigger the self-healing mechanisms we all have. When we are ill, our bodies strive to make us better - and it does so in many ways, some of which we do not understand. All natural therapies do this, in their own way. In fact, it is only conventional medicine, and its drugs, that seeks to 'second-guess' what the body is seeking to do - with its 'anti' this or that drugs, with its 'inhibitors' and its 'blockers'. This is how most conventional medicine labels most of it drugs. They unashamedly set out to fight the body. And this is what causes the adverse reactions, and creates the diseases, and kills so many people each year.
Second, it works through the principle of 'treating like with like', the very basis of homeopathy. It seeks to match the symptoms of our illness with a remedy, and triggers the body into a stronger, more powerful healing reaction. Homeopathy has been testing this hypothesis for over 200 years, and it has never been found wanting. The hypothesis was known by the Ancient Greeks, and it probably goes even further back, into pre-history.
Hahnemann started the process of cataloging the symptoms of various substances, and these have become our remedies. Actually, the cataloging began before Hahnemann, with the herbalists, and their knowledge of the healing activity of common plants and herbs. And the remedies used 200+ years ago are still with us, and indeed are still amongst the most used homeopathic remedies.
So where is this knowledge?
The knowledge of homeopathy is are written up in our Materia Medica, vast tombs clinical experience and information, built up over the years, first by 'proving' (healthy volunteers taking a substance, and observing the effects it has), and supported thereafter by the clinical practice of many skilled and dedicated homeopaths during the last 200 years. We know the remedies work, because we have used them for such a long time. We know what patients each remedy will help because we of our knowledge of the sort of symptoms they can treat.
Perhaps if I had been given a homeopathic Materia Medica all those years ago, and seen the vast amount of work and skill that went into their creation and development, my skepticism would have been more easily assuaged! So perhaps, for anyone searching for a more effective, and safer medical therapy, but who remains unsure, the best advice I can give is that you should look at one, and, like me, be amazed at the vast accumulation of clinical experience that are contained within them.
What the homeopathic Materia Medica also does is to dismiss the criticism that homeopathy is no more than placebo. If it was only this there would have been no need for the study of remedies to have been taken to such lengths!
Homeopathy denialists often ask us - where is the proof that homeopathy heals? The answer is - it is all in our Materia Medica.
See
www.homeopathyheals.me.uk
