From A Homeopath’s Viewfinder

IN a given situation, where one finds a hair in a bowl of soup, broadly four different types of human reactions occur. The first flies into a rage and throws the soup at the waiter. The second expresses disgust, shrugs it off, and leaves the restaurant. The third begins crying because bad things always happen to him. The fourth looks at the hair, picks it out and goes on eating. For many it may look like a humorous pantomime but for a skilled homeopath they are typologies – characters that fit into certain remedies.

Remedies, as homeopaths learn to realise them, step forth as personalities. For a homeopath this constellation of “body and mind types” haunts them everywhere they go – restaurants, trains, queues. They become creatures of temperaments – mental or physical. They have likes and dislikes craving and aversions, sensitiveness to meteoric conditions as well as to human interaction. They realise their terrors, real or imaginary – their strange obsessions.

Homeopaths acknowledge certain groupings of bodymind symptom patterns that a person has and which correspond with the sensitivity of a particular homeopathic medicine. The word “symptom” here is most broadly defined as any sensation that is discomforting or that limits a person’s physical or psychological functions. Homeopaths also enquire into factors (which homeopaths call “modalities”) that seem to aggravate or ameliorate these sensations. In addition to prescribing on these factors, a homeopath may utilise information about the person’s body type, temperament and disposition, and behavioural tendencies to determine the appropriate medicine.

There is, for instance, the “phosphorous type,” the “sulphur type”, the “arsenic type,” and the “natrum mur type”. Each of these typologies refers not only to a type of medical problem, for instance, but also to those factors that make it better or worse, other physical symptoms which may be related to it, various past or present symptoms and diseases, food cravings or aversions, sensitivity to temperature and weather, energy levels at varying times of the day.

Over the years many schools of homeopathic practice have come into existence. Some adhere strictly to the original principles laid down by Hahnemann while others have explored different methods of utilising homeopathic remedies Homeopathy is a rigorous discipline that demands both years of immersion and a commitment to its philosophy. Choosing a single remedy that is the most appropriate in any given situation can be very difficult. It depends on the practitioner’s understanding of which symptoms are the most significant.

Through a homoeopath’s viewfinder the set of most distinct, individual symptoms and also that are truly characteristic of the patient, form the basis of “constitutional prescribing”.