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having a tool that gave them a certain independence and satisfaction.
We were a Training Practice. One of our trainees, having experienced at first hand the reactions of the patients to ‘Alternative Medicine’ subsequently became the Medical Officer the Surrey Area Health Authority. He became a helpful ally.
In the 1980s many doctors were forced out their partnerships because of their homœopathic leanings. I was very fortunate in my partners: although not personally interested, they had good feedback from patients and I was not harming the practice. They let me get on with it.
My day-to-day prescribing continued with the usual mix of antibiotics, steroids and analgesics but with the addition of homœopathic medicine where clear, and only for my personal list of patients; limited only by my knowledge and by time. Arthritis, sore throats, gastro-intestinal problems, hay fever were usually easy to alleviate; in general, the medicines achieved satisfactory results comparable to orthodox medicine. Certainly, my antibiotic prescribing diminished.
I was fortunate that we had a GP maternity unit in Haslemere. It was a privilege to be able to care for mothers in all stages of childbearing from preconception, to attend the birth and to give post-natal care. Featuring strongly were Pulsatilla, Sepia, Caulophyllum and the trauma medicines. A lovely spinoff was the request for a talk to the midwives at the Royal Surrey County Hospital. Our health visitor was an immediate convert when, at her request, a screaming teething infant in her waiting area was calmed by Chamomilla 30c at three short intervals.
Pre-terminal care recalls individual memories where
Arsenicum album and Carcinosin helped suffering; subsequent grieving so often alleviated by Ignatia, Natrum muriaticum and the wonderful Bach Flower Remedies It was joked that I got the BFR from the village pond!.
How many of these minor successes were down to the placebo of a long-term doctor-patient relationships is difficult to assess. The placebo was an essential prescribing practice in old-style homeopathic practice (and in orthodox family practice ). I never knowingly prescribed a placebo and always told the patient the name of the medicine.
There was a little opposition. A surprise that hurt came when the head of a large family that had benefited from homœopathic prescribing courteously requested that I should no longer prescribe that sort of medicine. Having attended a Christian Alpha Course he had learned that homœopathy was the ‘work of the devil’ and he wanted nothing more to do with it. We remained on good terms but thereafter the family received only orthodox medicine.
All the above looks pretty rosy but there were many occasions when my remedy choice did not hit the mark. I had to remember another teaching: “When your remedy fails it not a failure of homœopathy: it is your failure to individualise the patient to the medicine”. There were also errors of judgement. I saw my fill of homœopathic aggravations from such medicines as Nux vomica and Cantharis (potency /frequency problems?). I am certain that the antepartum haemorrhage of a freckly redhead was precipitated by the phosphorus that I had prescribed for her earlier in the day. She and the baby survived the 3 am twenty-five-mile ride to hospital in the days before paramedics. In another case a streptococcal septicaemia resulted from my preference to prescribe homœopathy
instead of penicillin. Again, the patient survived and I learned, AGAIN, to remember the aphorism,” Physician first - homoeopath second”.
I know of two doctors who experienced homœopathy as children in Chiddingfold who give potentised medicines for their own children
All that was 40 years ago. I am fortunate to live on my former practice area and now have a very small private practice. Twenty years after my retirement from the NHS, former patients and their children continue to make contact to ask for advice about homœopathy.
I have lived through the practice of homœopathy being called Fringe, Alternative, Complimentary and in certain practices, Integrated. There was the burgeoning interest in the 1980-90s followed by rapid diminution of interest and retreat by medical doctors as the ‘Sense about Science’, movements funded by ‘Big Pharma’, began to attack anyone bold enough to support homœopathy. Recent advances in micro-immunotherapy have shown that micro-dilutions as low as 10-12 are biologically active (a nod to Robert Hughes) but the similia principle has still to be scientifically validated. Until then, the retreat of medical homœopaths has been followed by an increase in the number of intelligent, qualified members of the Society of Homeopaths in whose minds – in my opinion - lies the future of homœopathy in the United Kingdom
Learning homœopathy has been an investment in my life.
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My personal thanks to Dr Williams, a homeopathic colleague and supporter of various forms of Alternative Medicine and holistic prescribing; and fellow member of the West Surrey West Sussex Homeopathic Group.
Ann Wood