Homeopathy is an effective and scientific system of healing which assists the natural tendency of the body to heal itself. It recognises that all systems of ill health are expressions of disharmony within the whole person and that it is the patient who needs treatment not the disease.
As a new patient, these ideas may be new to you, but homeopathy has been established for about 200 years.
In 1796 a German doctor, Samuel Hahnemann, discovered a different approach to the cure of the sick which he called homeopathy (from the Greek words meaning 'similar suffering'). Like Hippocrates two thousand years earlier he realised that there were two ways of treating ill-health, the way of opposites and the way of similars.
Take for example, a case of insomnia. The way of opposites (conventional medicine or allopathy) is to treat this by giving a drug to bring on an artificial sleep. This frequently involves the use of large or regular doses of drugs which can sometimes cause side effects or addiction.
The way of similars, the homeopathic way, is to give the patient a minute dose of a substance, such as coffee, which in large doses causes sleeplessness in a healthy person. Perhaps surprisingly, this will enable the person to sleep naturally.
Homeopathic remedies, properly prescribed, are safe and can be given to pregnant women, babies and children. This is because only a very minute amount of the active ingredient is used in a specially prepared form.
Your homeopath will give you a homeopathic medicine or remedy which matches your symptoms as you experience them. This also takes account of you as a person - your individual characteristics emotionally as well as physically.
Homeopathic remedies work by stimulating the body's own healing power. This stimulus will assist your own system to clear itself of any symptoms of imbalance. The aim is to get you to a level of health so that eventually you will need infrequent treatment.
Excerpted with permission from the Society of Homeopath's leaflet Homeopathy Simply Explained. For a copy of the full leaflet please contact me. You can also visit the Society of Homeopath's website on www.homeopathy-soh.org