Homeopathy

Some patients may find these ideas to be modern, but homoeopathy 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 homoeopathy (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 that can sometimes cause side effects or addiction. The way of similars, the homoeopathic 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 patient to sleep naturally.

Homoeopathic remedies cannot cause side effects and it is not possible to become addicted to them. This is because only a very minute amount of the active ingredient is used in a specially prepared form. Your homoeopath will give you a homoeopathic medicine or remedy that matches your symptoms as you experience them. This also takes account of you as a person — your individual characteristics emotionally as well as physically.