Page 10 - Spring 22

Conventional allopathic medicine seeks to overpower or suppress the symptoms as manifestations of this or that named disease. A homeopath considers the symptoms to be the body’s healthy and appropriate reaction to harmful forces impinging on the organism. Then the homeopath uses the symptoms the individual produces as a guide to the selection of a similar medicinal substance (homeopathic medicine). The medicine will stimulate the life force to direct the body to heal itself. No matter what types or kinds of symptoms are encountered, common or peculiar, or in what rare combinations, they are all manifestations of an internal disorder that is unique and individual to the patient. A holistic point of view recognizes that no one part or organ can be affected without also affecting the body as a whole, including the mental and emotional state. The totality of the patient’s symptoms must be considered; but it is not necessary to name the disease or know all the minute scientific details of the case presentation. The symptoms are not treated; the patient is treated with the best medicine to stimulate the vital force or defence mechanism to extinguish the negative influence and heal the body.
Acute versus Chronic Disease
Acute diseases, illnesses, or conditions are the
befallments, which disturb the health of the body temporarily in a negative way. These conditions include physical injuries of many kinds, and acute fevers or so- called infections from any source within or without. They also include toxic introductions, poisonings, disturbances of growth, poor maintenance of self by nutritional imbalances, parasitic introductions or overgrowth, and the mental and emotional traumas inherent in a rapidly changing world. These conditions can be serious and life threatening or simple and self-limiting.
A great variety of illness and injury present in wildlife, avian, and exotic pet medicine occur. These individuals are always getting into trouble, hurting themselves, escaping, getting in the way of things (cars, human development), eating the wrong things contaminated with chemicals, toxins, GMO’s, being or living in a too crowded environment, fighting, not getting fed or finding adequate food (prey, forage, trace nutrients), or doing what I call unintentionally “trying to commit suicide,” which ultimately gives them some control over their own destiny even though unplanned, without understanding any of the consequences! Many unhealthy man-made situations interfere and intrude into their lifestyles. The short list includes roads, cars, high voltage wires, oil spills, ceiling fans, various cage doors, open windows and toilets, hot stoves, cat or dog attacks, falling, getting caught inside of things, habitat destruction, changes in weather and environmental conditions, and all the other hazards known and unknown in the home, domestic, captive or wild environments. Many caretakers often have no idea that a true acute condition has occurred, or that an acute exacerbation of an unknown chronic disease is at hand.
Wildlife are brought in from their natural world in all types of presentations. A caretaker’s knowledge of what is normal behavior, or what specific requirements are needed, is often so vague that a chronic long-standing
condition continues long unnoticed, up until the moment the so called acute, severe expression of deep-seated disease has become painfully obvious. In so many presentations, the patient’s condition is severe, life threatening, moribund, and often very close to death. When the caretaker is a good observer, and has educated themselves about the species, then regular check-ups and competent chronic care prescribing avoid most unnecessary occurrences of acute illness or trauma. Free roaming wildlife certainly have chronic and acute diseases. In general, their health is excellent, and for the most part their acute conditions are true acute presentations of disease, due to habitat loss or other man-made interference into their world. Their chronic illnesses are seen only rarely, because in the harsh realities of the real free world they succumb to these conditions before they are ever captured and brought in for care.
With pets, there is usually some availability of historical information that is freely given by the caretaker or gleaned along the way. Often the appearance of the critter and all its presenting symptoms already defines the history for the practitioner. There are several well-defined scenarios that you become more than familiar with over time, just as in domestic pet medicine. With wildlife there may be no history available, or only second or third hand information usually surrounding the situation of the animal’s capture. If anything approaches a true MASH type of acute care homeopathic hospital, it is the prescribing done when working with wildlife in the field, especially during natural or man-made disasters (oil spills are one of my worst nightmares).
Many symptoms in exotics, avians, and wildlife are common, and do not help to determine a homeopathic prescription selection. These animals, especially the birds, and other prey animals have adapted a way of looking fit and healthy in spite of their true condition. In other words,
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