Page 6 - Spring 20

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happen that we are led to using a type of medicine seemingly contrary to some strongly held homeopathic ideals but which will bring relief to the patient and is adapted to the overall individuality. At the time of the medical decision, and extra level of individuality adds on: the capabilities, experience and limits of the vet.
Are we veterinary surgeons also using homeopathy or are we homeopaths?
I see the struggle of the young vets coming out of vet school finding it almost impossible to use the medicine, they learned, in the consultation room. They struggle between providing a service to the client/patient and practicing ‘perfect evidence based veterinary medicine’ that ticks all the boxes: as if every case needs to be able to result in a peer reviewed publication.
Is there a similar pressure on those using homeopathy? Is
there a culture of ‘we should not use conventional medicine’ or maybe ‘we have to be careful not to cause suppressions’ or not case ‘obstacles to cure? Is it best to be just homeopaths or is it perfectly fine to be a veterinary surgeon who also uses homeopathy?
Of course, theoretically, homeopathy has these endless possibilities of being almost perfectly efficient in many cases. As if we do not need much help from other medical techniques. In practice, the limits of homeopathy are
1 Material: having all the remedies easily available, and
2 Human: the limitations caused by the difficulty of
practicing homeopathy and our individual capabilities.
With this in mind, it may be best, we consider, we practice medicine.
To mitigate the limitations of homeopathy, we have to
make use of other techniques to help patients, either until we find the best possible homeopathic solution or to make sure the patient is as well as possible, when we do not find this solution, or only obtain a partial improvement using homeopathy. There will also be cases, where we can choose to use homeopathy only of course.
Purist may say that when we do this, we can never be sure what homeopathy does or does not. That is true but do we practice homeopathy to better at homeopathy or better the patient?
Of course, improving homeopathy in general is also important for patients in general. But there is a difference between the immediate need of the case at hand and the long-term benefit for all patients. And, with experience and a dose of honesty, it is still possible to gain ‘homeopathic knowledge’ from cases, where not only homeopathy was used.
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