Homeopathic Health

A Beacon Woman Finds Solutions in Alternative Medicine that Bring Healing Home

by Jack Sine

Seven years ago Mary Kerr had serious health problems in her family.

“Both of my daughters were very young and both had serious asthma,” she said. “They would be on Albuterol and steroids for up to 10 days and they would be bouncing off the walls. When I held them I could feel their hearts hammering away. We had every single machine under the sun. It was awful and I hated it, but what do you do when your kids can’t breathe? We kept going to the doctor for treatment and it always worked, but the medicine never attacked the cause of the asthma, just its symptoms. A few days or weeks later, they would have another attack. Every cold turned into bronchial asthma. With all those steroids their livers would be shot by the time they were 20. It was a vicious cycle and I didn’t know what else to do.”

Then one day when Mary was out gardening, a neighborhood girl came by with a small plastic bottle in her hand.

“I asked her what it was and she told me it was her homeopathic remedy,” Mary said. “I had never heard of homeopathy before and Meghan was too young then to explain it to me, so I just filed it away for future reference. Not long after that I was invited by her mother to a party she was having for her homeopath. Everyone there was into homeopathy either as patients or practitioners, so I started asking questions and was intrigued by the answers I got. The most important thing they told me was that homeopathy treated the whole person and eliminated the actual cause of diseases. I thought, ‘If this stuff really works maybe it can help my girls’ asthma permanently.’ I was so desperate that I would try anything as long as it didn’t hurt my children, so I decided to give it a try.”

Unexpected results

She called her neighbor’s homeopath and made an appointment for her oldest daughter who had the worse case of asthma.

“He had explained that the first meeting would take about two hours and he would be drawing a detailed profile of my daughter so he could identify the homeopathic remedy that most closely fit that profile.

“I made a lot of notes and got all of her medical records together and
went to the session,” Mary said. “He asked a spectrum of questions about her health, what she enjoyed most, what she was afraid of, what she did and didn’t like to eat. It was very thorough and took the full two hours. Every remedy has a ‘remedy picture’. The task of the homeopath is to match that picture up to the profile of the patient. When it was done, we had a remedy: silica. I asked him what it was and he said a dilution of a common mineral. I know I must have looked skeptical because he went on to explain that there were more than 3,000 remedies that are dilutions of naturally occurring substances, mineral, vegetable, and animal. I gave my daughter the remedy in the form of tiny milk sugar tablets saturated with the silica dilution and we went home.

“We didn’t have long to wait,” Mary said. “The next morning when my daughter woke up her sheets were dry. It was the first time she hadn’t wet the bed since she’d been toilet trained. And I had forgot to mention the problem to the homeopath. I called him right away and asked him how he knew to prescribe a remedy for bed wetting when I hadn’t told me about it. He very patiently explained once more that he wasn’t treating one problem, he was treating the whole child and all of her problems, bed wetting being one.

“As for the asthma, it didn’t go away immediately. Both girls had a couple more attacks, but they were mild and didn’t require seeing a doctor. Then there were no more attacks. It’s been seven years now with no more Albuterol and steroids and my life and the girls’ have been so much better.”
Self education

But that wasn’t the end of it. Before long Mary was studying homeopathy along with her neighbor in New York City. Because of family obligations she was only able to complete one year.

“But I didn’t let that keep from studying,” she said. “I got hold of a lot of books and kept studying. I’m not an official homeopath, but I’m good enough to treat my family. I have my husband and kids all on holistic remedies and I just took my brother Dick’s case. And if I ever have a problem, I’ve got my neighbor right across the street to consult with. She just finished seven years of study and is about ready to start up shop as a homeopathic consultant.”

How homeopathy works

Many people think that homeopathy is related to herbalism while others think it is a New Age fad. Neither is correct. The principles of homeopathy were discovered Germany in the late 1790s by a physician and medical researcher named Samuel Hahnemann. He was disturbed that the medical knowledge he was taught and the medicines he used actually did more to harm his patients through side effects than to cure them. He finally closed his practice and started a search for a more efficacious form of medicine. To support his family he translated medical books. In one book a Scotch physician praised the bark of the chinchona tree in relieving the symptoms of malaria (Chinchona bark was the original source of quinine). Intrigued by a medicine that actually worked, Hahnemann obtained some and tried chewing it. He soon developed fever, chills, and sweated profusely – the symptoms of malaria. The symptoms soon passed, but Hahnemann had an idea that would expand into the science of homeopathy. He reasoned that if that which cures sick people creates the same symptoms in a healthy person, then he might have discovered a way to identify effective remedies. He called it The Law of Similars, and it is the basis of all of homeopathy. Soon he was giving his friends and colleagues solutions of various animal, plant, and mineral material and asking them to carefully write down any physical or emotional changes. By taking these notes and comparing them, Hahnemann was able to list the common symptoms experienced by the people who had taken one of his sample remedies. Then, by matching the symptoms of a sick person to the symptoms a specific remedy created in healthy people, he was able to prescribe a remedy that actually healed.
Since the first remedies developed by Dr. Hahnemann, the homeopathic pharmacopoeia has grown to nearly 3,000 remedies. Homeopathy continues to thrive in Europe and India. In the United States, it was the dominant form of medicine in the 19th century.  But in the 1900s it all but disappeared when the Congress gave the right to license homeopaths to the AMA. Today, it is making a strong comeback with several schools operating across the country.