Homeopathy

In terms of treating an ailment, Homeopathy is perhaps the only medicine which starts from the opposite end! While most medicines seek to destroy the virus (or other cause) of illness, Homeopathy begins by looking for cures through the study of symptoms.

Samuel Hahnemann (1755 - 1843), a German physician, gave up conventional medicine to work as a translator as he was disillusioned by the medical practices of the day. While translating Dr. William Cullen's 'A Treatise on Materia Medica', he was puzzled to note that quinine was listed as an effective treatment for malaria because of its astringent properties. Quinine was anti-malarial and astringency had little to do with malaria. Hahnemann started taking low doses of quinine and noted his reactions to it: He developed symptoms of malaria even though he did not have the disease! He thus believed that it was quinine's ability to cause the symptoms of malaria that made it such an effective treatment for the disease.

He then used tiny doses of substances that produced the same symptoms in volunteers as experienced by a patient. He thus established the first law of Homeopathy - "like cures like." An explicit example of this could be as follows: When a patient complains of vomiting and diarrhea, s/he might be treated with an extremely high dilution of a poisonous plant called the thorn apple - a tiny bite of that plant causes vomiting and diarrhea.

The word Homeopathy is derived from the Greek homoios (Lit. "similar") and pathos (Lit. "suffering") - roughly translating to "like cures like." The most unique factor of this system is the dilution of the dose - the more the dose is diluted, the more powerful is the remedy.

Homeopathic remedies typically are applied today to treat practically all chronic and transient conditions such as arthritis, colds, asthma, flu, allergies etc.

The medications are made from plants, minerals, animal products, or chemicals diluted many times over, usually in water, sometimes in alcohol. It is the unique process of dilution that is to be understood to understand the concept of Homeopathy. A "one in hundred" means that one drop of an extract is placed in ninety-nine drops of water or alcohol and shaken vigorously for an extended duration. A drop from the resultant solution, is then mixed with another ninety-nine drops of water or alcohol and shaken vigorously. This process may continue twenty, thirty or more times. The resultant solution could be more than a billion times more dilute than a stamp on the face of this earth!

It is this extent of dilution that also makes Homeopathy the most safest medication on earth. Most non-Homeopathic practitioners would claim that the remedies are essentially water and act only as placebos. What they cannot explain is how they cure stubborn allergies in young children, who are not susceptible of being 'psyched' into believing they are being cured!

The remedies come in the form of small pills, tablets granules powder, or liquid, which should be taken a half-hour before or after eating and drinking anything. There are over 3,000 homeopathic remedies, which are usually referred to by their abbreviated names. Remedies are prescribed one at a time and may change as symptoms clear.

Antidotes

If you are taking a course of Homeopathic remedies, you should know that the effects of the remedies are affected by a range of substances that include coffee, alcohol, tobacco, minty flavours, perfumes and perfumed cosmetics, strong smells, strong oils. These may safely be avoided when depending on Homeopathic remedies.