Individuality… ?
The “individual” homeopathy – is it really that?
Homeopathy is said to be a very individual therapy. Even the smallest differences between two patients can cause them to be administered different remedies, even though they otherwise have the same complaints.
Imagine if you had eczema on your skin – a very itchy spot – and you were visiting a homeopath. The homeopath would take an anamnesis with you. This would reveal that you are also prone to depression, occasionally have headaches, mild gastritis (inflammation of the stomach lining) and sometimes have asthma symptoms in summer – apparently you are allergic to certain grass pollen. If you are additional afraid of being alone, then Arsenicum album would be the remedy for you. If you had exactly the same symptoms, all that just been mentioned, but being alone does not bother you, but instead of you are afraid of burglars and mirrors, then Pulsatilla would be the remedy of choice.
As sensitively as remedies are prescribed, so precisely is homeopathy adapted to the entire human being. No other doctor can keep up, this remedy is just right for you – only for you.
So much for the good news.
The bad news is that this prescription is completely unrelated to reality. Because, one should ask, how does one know what effect the remedies have?
When selecting remedies, homeopaths are guided by so-calles repertories, i.e. inventories in which it is listed which remedy should be effective for which symptoms. These data were determined in so-called homeopathic drug tests, in which healthy test subjects took the remedies and recorded the symptoms they subsequently experienced. It is assumed that a remedy can cure the symptoms it causes in a healthy person. This is the similarity rule of homeopathy, the basic pillar after which homeopathy was named.
We can therefore say that when taking Arsenicum album
– someone got depression
– someone got a headache
– someone got a gastritis.
– someone was allergic to something
– someone had asthma attacks.
– someone was afraid of being alone.
But were these “someones” the same person? What if the person who was afraid of being alone suffered from shingles? What if the person who had asthma was prone to coercive behavior? Or was the one with eczema suffering from insomnia? The remedy would only be tested in these combinations, not necessarily in the one you have as a patient.
Quintessence: The symptoms that led you to choose the drug are unlikely to have occurred in any of the examiners all together. The individuality of homeopathy is limited solely to the collection of the symptoms in the patient – the individuality of the examiners plays no role at all. If the patient is a small petite temperamental young woman and the examiner is a tall heavy phlegmatic older man – that doesn’t matter at all, symptom is symptom.
Do you notice what a mirage is being built up? The individual prescription on the basis of the symptoms determined in the anamnesis is meaningless. If the anamnesis had any significance for the means choice, then the accompanying circumstances of the examiners would also have to have been recorded during the drug testing and then recorded in the drug picture. But they are not, as you can easily convince yourself. Another contradiction that neither attracts the attention of homeopaths nor seems to disturb them.
But to really talk about the whole burden of life with someone who seems to be interested in it is good, no question. But homoeopaths are not trained for it!
Source Drug pictures: www.homeowiki.org
Picture credits: Gerd Altmann on Pixabay