Many people in the US are unaware of the existence homeopathy.  It is  natural, holistic and an alternative to conventional medicine.   Few people know about it's long history or how it works.

HISTORY OF HOMEOPATHY:  Samuel Hahnemann, a German doctor, developed homeopathy in the late 18th and early 19th century.  As a young doctor, he had become disillusioned with the cruel and ineffective medical treatments of his time (blood-letting, purging and poisonous drugs).  Hahnemann gave up his medical practice to look for a more effective form of treatment.  After years of research he discovered the homeopathic principles and developed the system of medicine.  Homeopathy rose to prominence in Europe after Hahnemann's successful treatment of victims of the great typhus epidemic in Leipzig that followed the Napoleonic campaigns.  In 1831, the reputation of homeopathy increased further as cholera swept through central Europe.  The mortality rates for cholera varied between 2.4% and 21.1% for homeopathy verses 50% or more for the conventional medicine of the time.  Far ahead of his time in other ways,  Hahnemann stressed the importance of disinfection, cleanliness, ventilation and quarantine.  (Pasteur's germ theory of disease had not yet been discovered.)  Homeopathy continually out performed conventional medicine in all the epidemics.  During the terrible Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 the mortality rate of conventional medicine was 25 to 30% and that of homeopathy was less than 1%.  (This last statistic should be of interest to the Center for Disease Control today).

In the 1820s, homeopathy came to the USA.  It blossomed in America in the 1860s through the 1890s.  Homeopathy had been perfected, by this time,  to the level a true system of medicine.  It was being used to treat all forms of illness.  At it's peak in the US, there were 22 homeopathic medical schools, 56 homeopathic hospitals, 13 lunatic asylums, 15 sanatoriums, and 9 children's hospitals.  Actually, the first medical society in the US was the American Institute of Homeopathy founded in 1844.  By 1900, 20 to 25 percent of all the physicians in the US, in urban areas, were homeopaths.  Few people are aware that homeopathy had such prominence in the US.

So what happened to all of those American homeopaths?  Well, you might imagine, there was great competition between homeopathy and conventional medicine in the US.  The AMA, founded in 1846, decided to forbid its members to consult with homeopaths.  State and local medical societies were told to purge themselves of homeopaths and their sympathizers.  In 1910, the Carnegie Foundation and the AMA issued a study on medical education called the Flexnor report.  This report recognized the benefits of  modern medicine and did not recognize homeopathy at all.  So, modern medicine received the foundation funding and government support and homeopathy was left to it's own devices. It declined quickly.  Few homeopaths entered the ranks in the US or Canada from 1910 to 1960.  In Europe, India, Latin America and Australia, however, homeopathy continued and to this day, it is a viable form of alternative medicine in those countries.

We are seeing a resurgence of interest in homeopathy, today.  Conventional medicine is not able to address many of the health needs of US citizens.  This is particularly true of chronic illnesses, both physical and mental.  People desire  natural medicines which do not have serious side effects.  There is a desire for holistic medicines which treat the whole body/mind/spirit of the patient.  Homeopathy fits these conditions perfectly.

Great advances have been made in homeopathy in the last 20 years.  It is even more effective now than it was in it's early days.

HOW DOES HOMEOPATHY WORK?  Many people confuse homeopathy with naturopathy, acupuncture, herbology, nutritional supplements or oriental medicine.  Homeopathy is a separate, unique and complete system of alternative medicine.  Homeopathy is based on the principle of "like cures like" or the "law of similars".  This principle states that a substance that makes you ill can also cure you: anything that can produce symptoms of disease in a healthy person can cure a sick person that has similar symptoms.  A good example of this principle is coffee.  The homeopathic remedy, Coffea, is used to treat nervousness and insomnia - the same symptoms one can experience after drinking too much coffee.  Onion (Allium cepa) is another example.  Onion is used to treat allergy and hay fever in cases where the patient has tears and profuse nasal discharge.  These symptoms are just what someone would experience after peeling onions.  Coffee and onion are two simple examples, but thousands of other homeopathic remedies cure complex illnesses by the same principle.

In order to find out what each remedy is capable of curing, it is tested in a "proving".  The proving starts with two groups of healthy volunteers.  The first group is given the unnamed substance and the second is given a placebo.  This is a double blind trial, so neither the provers nor the conductor of the proving know what substance is being tested.  All of the symptoms experienced by the provers (mental, emotional and physical) are noted in detail and are written in the Materia Medica.  Many books  of  the Materia Medica contain the symptom pictures of all the proven remedies.  Homeopaths, then consult the Materia Medica to select a remedy with a symptom picture very similar to the symptoms expressed by their patient.  If the remedy is a good "match" a cure will result.

Classical homeopaths work with only one remedy at a time so that the effect of the remedy can be gauged effectively.  The greatest challenge of homeopathy is to find the single remedy out of thousands that matches all the patient's mental, emotional and physical symptoms.  Literally, classical homeopaths treat the "whole person".

Homeopathic remedies can be made from any substance.  Remedies are prepared through a lengthy process of dilution and succussion (vigorous shaking).  The more the remedies are diluted the stronger they become.  Many remedies are diluted far beyond the point where modern chemistry says that there can be any of the original substance left.  This issue is the great stumbling block that modern science can't get beyond.  Though faced with the anecdotal evidence of thousands of cured homeopathic cases by thousands of homeopaths for over 100 years,  scientists continue to say homeopathic remedies can't possible work because they don't contain any of the original substance.  It may just be that science is not mature enough, yet, to explain homeopathy.

So, since remedies are diluted so much and there is little or no chemical substance remaining in them, how can they work?  There may not be a chemically identifiable residue remaining in a remedy, but there is an energetic essence of the original substance.  It is this essence that effects a cure.  Homeopathic remedies do not cure by acting physiologically, at least not initially.  The remedies act as catalysts, stimulating the body's "vital force" to heal itself.  Once the action is taken on the vital force, the physiological processes that need to change begin to change, also.  Degenerated organs regenerate and blood tests normalize.  However, the initial action of the remedy is on the vital force.  Other words for the "vital force" are: immune system, chi or prana.

The vital force is that mechanism that energizes us and keeps us in health.  The vital force produces symptoms to counteract stress as it makes adjustments moment by moment to keep us healthy and in balance.  So, disease symptoms are just the body's way of telling us how it is coping with stress in our lives.  Disease attacks only when this vital force is weakened.  Health, then, is more than the absence of disease.  It is harmony and balance and freedom and a sense of well-being that is resilient in the face of stress.  This is our natural state and the state that homeopathy strives to make available to everyone.

The pattern of improvement in symptoms that is seen when someone is on a good homeopathic remedy follows Hering's Law of Cure.  Hering's Law states that as someone recovers from chronic illness his or her symptoms will improve from the inside out, the top down, and in reverse order from their original sequence of occurance.   Cure proceedes from the most important organs to the least important ( the brain being most important, internal organs next in importance and skin least important).  If a patient suffers from both liver disease and eczema, the liver may begin to heal before the skin does. 

Homeopathy has long been used with great success to treat physical and mental illness.  It takes little imagination to see how this natural, holistic and alternative form of medicine could be very useful in the treatment of:   1. Addiction: drug and alcohol abuse, prescription drug abuse, gambling addiction, eating disorders.  2. Mental Health: Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, mental illness, homelessness.  3. Criminal Behavior: first offense, probation, hardened criminals, sex offenders.  4. Juvenile Crime: learning and behavior disorders, foster care issues, gang behavior. 

Many of the mental health issues mentioned above result from a deep imbalance within the individual's body/mind.  Current medical therapies are not able to correct this imbalance.  After years in 12 step and counseling programs, recovering alcoholics and substance abusers still suffer the life limiting effects of the imbalance that drove them into addiction.  The mentally ill are given drugs that suppress their symptoms but don't cure their illness.  If they stop their meds their illness quickly returns.  The criminal justice system doesn't really rehabilitate anyone.  Rates of recidivism are high.  The chronically homeless often suffer from mental illness as well as addictions.  They are "sheltered" but seldom cured.  Learning and behavior problems in children are treated with suppressive drugs that don't cure the children.  Their illnesses can worsen as they mature into adults and can result in violent criminal behavior.  Foster children are often scarred for life from the "foster" experience.  At 18, when they are released from the program, they are unprepared or incapable of becomming truely successful individuals.  It is said that as many as 80% of prison inmates were foster children. 

Homeopathy is able to correct the deep imbalance that lies at the bottom of many of the above mental health issues.  The homeopathic remedy stimulates the individual's body and mind to bring themselves into balance while permanently eliminating symptoms of illness.  Once freed from the imbalance, people can achieve the successful lives they were born to live.