Treating the Whole Person or Holistic Healing

We are not just a collection of parts to be fixed as doctors treat us but ALWAYS operating as a whole person ALL of the time.  In other words medicines are chosen that treat the whole person and not just the part.  This may seem strange to grasp and yet doesn’t it in fact make total sense?  Do we leave our sore throat on the desk of the physician as we leave the doctor’s surgery?  Or our arthritic knee behind.  No, every single tiny function of our body operates as a WHOLE, all of the time.  You cannot treat one thing and not affect the rest.  That is why pharma drugs are so dangerous as for example, in treating a cancerous tumour, the medicine will affect and disturb the other systems of the body.

We are all energy beings.

The electricity in our bodies transmits messages to all parts/systems of the body. Illness is caused when these messages are not getting through. All systems of the body are communicating with each other at all times. Water is a great conductor of electricity and it transmits the electrical current. This is how homeopathic mediums work – by communicating a current/pattern/frequency of energy via the whole human body to jump start the body’s own inherent healing mechanisms.

Homeopathy treats different sorts of people with distinct characters and personalities as well as different physical looks and natures. It individualises each person treating their diverse pattern of symptoms looking at them AS A WHOLE.

Is it not true that no two people are alike?  That every person is unique?  This is why you could line up 20 people with asthma and they might all need a different homeopathic medicine. There are in fact about 250 homeopathic medicines for asthma but the correct one for each person must be selected taking into consideration such things as what makes the condition better or worse, what time of day it comes on, whether the person is hot or cold, worse for damp, need fresh air or prefer the windows closed and so on.  You would be amazed how each person’s symptoms are so different and yet they have all been diagnosed with asthma.

After homeopathic treatment, careful analysis is taken of the Direction of Cure of the patient’s symptoms. Constance Hering was a converted skeptic of homeopathy. As a young man in Germany in the early nineteenth century, Hering had been assigned the task of reviewing Homeopathy because his medical mentor (a fervent anti-homeopath) had been asked by a publisher to write a book exposing homeopathy as unworthy. Having been given this task, Hering conducted a detailed study but concluded the opposite from the requested results! He was the first to talk about the Law of Cure which says that symptoms are cured from above down, from the inside out and in the reverse order of their appearance. This has stood the test of time in clinical experience. A simple example would be after a curative remedy is given for eczema all over the body, we would see the eczema start to move down and when it is only on the ankles, we know it is nearly cured.

The other very important point about homeopathic treatment is that very often the appearance of an illness stems back to an important event in the life of the patient such as a shock, fright, loss or grief suffered by them. The homeopathic practitioner will always enquire whether there was a life changing event that severely affected the patient. It is extremely common to find that the onset of a condition coincided with a major event. The homeopath will select a remedy that corresponds to the way the patient reacted to that event, mentally, emotionally and physically in order to clear the state which caused the illness. In other words you treat the cause, to remove the effect.

Examples of remedies for people who have undergone severe shock would be the following: If a person becomes very tired after a shock it would be Phos. Ac. when they become indifferent to their surroundings and loved ones. If they are just sitting there, not moving, staring in front of them, not speaking – it would be the homeopathic remedy Opium. If they become terribly restless and anxious it would be Aconite.  Arnica is for shock when people say they are fine, when they are obviously not.  Ignatia would be in floods of tears, hysterical, slamming doors and telling people to go away. Platina would be very proud, angry and indignant.  These are all possible ways people can react from a shock and homeopathy must treat the individual.  The trick is to work out how people are behaving and which one they need!

Homeopathy works on fixed principles that correspond with the Laws of Nature.

The body has its own intelligence. That is why the human race has survived. When a baby is conceived, Nature chooses the best genes from both parents in order to create a stronger, healthier human. If the parents are both taking drugs of any kind, whether legal or illegal, the health of the baby will be compromised.

Doctors should look at Nature in order to study disease. Doctors and scientists would find all the answers and instead of going against it, learn from it. They really need to study health first before they study disease. There is only one true science and that is the science of Nature.

The human race has survived because we all have an innate healing power in our bodies. In homeopathy for example, this is called the Vital Force. Homeopathy stimulates the vital force to heal the body, through like for like (using a potentised substance that would cause the symptoms but in a tiny dose acts as a catalyst for healing).

If people want to improve their looks, homeopathy does just that.  When you are healthy and well, you obviously look better!  Homeopathic practitioners believe in PREVENTION, having treatment can prevent illness rather than leaving it to the surgeon’s knife. There are thousands of homeopathic medicines which treat every ailment known to man, truly the most wonderful science on this planet.

Many people buy self help books or think they can treat themselves with over the counter remedies.  This is a short term solution.  The reason is as stated above.  You cannot treat individual symptoms without taking into consideration the rest of you!  Only a qualified and experienced homeopath who will spend 1-2 hours taking your full medical history and all of your symptoms can prescribe the remedy that fits best.  In other words if you have hayfever, the homeopath will take into consideration all other physical symptoms a as well as your personality, to come to the correct prescription.  Itchy, watery, red eyes, worse morning and evening would be Sulphur but only if all the other things about you fit the Sulphur picture.  You cannot prescribe for yourself as you cannot take all of it into consideration at once.  So if for example you buy Natrum Mur. for your hayfever (which is also an excellent remedy for this), it may work for a bit if you are healthy but the hayfever will come back, will not be cured for good, because it was not the remedy that fitted best.

The only exception to this rule is in the treatment of first aid and even then it often has to be individualised. An example of when it does not is having a molar removed at the dentist. Firstly you would take Arnica for bruising of the gums, secondly Hypericum for the pain as the anaesthetic wears off (will remove pain completely), thirdly Ledum for injection and fourthly Calendula (the remedy not the cream!) for fast healing of the gums (or any other injury). Symphytum is the great healer of broken bones.

Homeopaths believe that illnesses manifest for three reasons:  firstly they are genetically inherited from our parents, grandparents, forefathers.  Secondly, they can be caused by an traumatic event such as death of a loved one, divorce, job loss – any event that has a serious impact upon the person.  Thirdly they can be caused from drugs taken by our parents (passed onto the foetus) or by ourselves.There is also of course accidents and injury.

Inherited disease can be traced back to one or more of what homeopaths call MIASMS – these are syphilis, gonorrhoea, psora (scabies), tuberculosis and cancer.  We are all a mix of all of these as especially TB, dates back thousands of years.  However one or more of the miasms is uppermost in a person and is an important aspect of the case-taking to determine the appropriate medicines.

So many people are in ignorance of the VAST amount of study needed to become an expert in this field.  Also there are hundreds of homeopathic books only available at specialist bookshops, many printed in India where homeopathy is more popular than orthodox medicine.

Attacks on Homeopathy

After the ever increasing attacks on alternative medicine in the media and in particular homeopathy, once again Professor Edzard Ernst, the ‘first professor of complementary medicine’ (whose qualifications for the job are still in question) discredits homeopathy.  Yet in an interview with Geoff Watts in 2003 entitled ‘A Scientist in the Alternative Camp’, Professor Ernst stated:

“Our family doctor in the little village outside Munich where I grew up was a homoeopath. My mother swore by it. As a kid I was treated homoeopathically. So this kind of medicine just came naturally. Even during my studies I pursued other things like massage therapy and acupuncture.”

“As a young doctor I had an appointment in a homoeopathic hospital, and I was very impressed with its success rate. My boss told me that much of this success came from discontinuing mainstream medication. This made a big impression on me.”

The truth is that homeopathy is getting ever more popular and the drugs companies are putting out their spin in overdrive through their science and media PR operation outlets to counteract this in any way they can.

The reason there is this incessant assault in the press against homeopathy is because Pharma wields enormous power over the media and because the popularity of homeopathy has been increasing due to side effects of modern medicine.  Also, unlike other natural therapies, it is pills and in direct competition.

At leat six million people use complementary treatments each year in the UK, which offers clinically-effective and cost-effective solutions to common health problems faced by NHS patients.

The attacks against alternative medicine sometimes try to imply that it is dangerous. Yet compare the number of insurance claims against natural health therapies to those in conventional medicine. A top insurance company was asked how many claims had been filed against homepathic practitioners and said there had been hardly any, ‘only a couple in the last 10 years’!

Historical Facts

In view of the highly inaccurate reporting and vitriolic attacks in the  recent press coverage on homeopathy, I would like to point out some little known historical facts concerning homeopathy.

The practice of homeopathic medicine flourished in both Europe and the US during the 1800s and early 1900s and was spectacularly popular with European royalty and the British aristocracy, American entrepreneurs, literary giants, and religious leaders.

John D. Rockefeller referred to it as ‘a progressive and aggressive step in medicine’ and was under homeopathic care throughout the latter part of his life living to 99 years of age.  A strong advocate of homeopathy, major grants of between $300-$400 million he intended for homeopathic institutions were instead used for orthodox medical institutions in the early 1900s, under pressure from his son and his financial advisor, Frederick Gates.  (Source Dana Ullman)

In the United States in the early 1900s there were 22 homeopathic medical schools and over 100 homeopathic hospitals, 60 orphanages and old people’s homes and 1,000+ homeopathic pharmacies.  Members of the American Medical Association had great animosity towards homeopathy after its formation in 1847 and it was decided to purge all local medical societies of physicians who were homeopaths.  This purge was successful in every state except Massachusetts because homoepathy was so strong among the elite of Boston.

The AMA wanted to keep homoepaths out of their societies and discourage any type of association with homeopaths.  In 1855 the AMA established a code of ethics which stated that orthodox physicians would lose their membership if they even consulted with a homeopath.  If a physician lost his membership, it meant that in some States he no longer had a licence to practice medicine.

Drug companies were antagonistic towards homeopathy, collectively trying to suppress it.  The medical journals they published were used as mouthpieces against homeopathy and in support of orthodox medicine.

At an AMA meeting, a respected orthodox physician said: ‘We must admit that we never fought the homeopath on matters of principles; we fought him because he came into the community and got the business.’ Economic issues played a major role in what was allowed to be practised.

Homeopathy attracted support from many of the most respected members of society in the US, such as William James, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Louisa M. Alcott, Mark Twain, former American Presidents James Garfield and William McKinley. In Britain among its supporters were George Bernard Shaw, Charles Dickens, W.B. Yeats, William Thackarey, Benjamin Disraeli, Yehudi Menuhin.  Other famous supporters were Dostoevsky, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Mahatma Ghandi.

Nowadays, celebrities using and supporting homeopathy are many and include among others :  Catherine Zeta-Jones, Tina Turner, Whoopi Goldberg, Pamela Anderson, Jane Fonda, Cher, Rosie O’Donnell, Martin Sheen, the Chilli Peppers, Jane Seymour, Lesley Anne Warren, Mariel Hemingway, Lindsay Wagner, Paul McCartney, Axl Rose, Linda Gray, Susan Blakely, Michael Franks, Cybil Sheppard, Dizzy Gillespie, Vidal Sassoon, Angelica Houston, Boris Becker, Martina Navratilova, David Beckham, Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley, Cliff Robertson, Jerry Hall, Diane von Furstenberg, Ashley Judd, Naomi Judd, Olivia Newton-John, Julianna Margulies, JD Salinger, Blythe Danner, Pat Riley (coach of the Miami Heat).  The list of famous people who supported homeopathy is endless…..

See ‘The Homeopathic Revolution’ by Dana Ullman MPH

The aristocratic patronage of homeopathy in the UK extending well into the 1940s and beyond can be easily demonstrated.  In the Homeopathic Medical Directories there are lists of patrons of the dispensaries and hospitals. They read like an extract from Burke’s or Debrett’s.

(See A History of Homeopathy in Britain by Peter Morrell, Honorary Research Associate in the History of Medicine, Staffordshire University, UK.)

Homeopathy is practised nowadays in countries all over the world and is especially popular in France, South America and India where there are around 250,000 homeopathic doctors! In a recent Global TGI survey where people were asked whether they trust homeopathy the following percentages of people living in urban areas said YES: 62% in India, 58% Brazil, 53% Saudi Arabia, Chile 49%, United Arab Emirates 49%, France 40%, South Africa 35%, Russia 28%, Germany 27%, Argentina 25%, Hungary 25%, USA 18%, UK 15%.

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…..Louise Mclean

Zeus Information Service
Alternative Views on Health

Copyright © Louise Mclean 2008