Page 26 - Spring 19

IAVH President Edward de Beukelaer
Dear All,
Thinking about exchanges we have in the IAVH board in
relation to homeopathy, integrative medicine, conventional medicine, alternative medicine, comple- mentary medicine and the meaning of these terms and their definitions, I am going to come back to the general theme of my last newsletter.
I recently read an article (and sadly cannot remember
rather than modern science and is then not necessary in full agreement with modern medical knowledge. Colloquial medical speak is a habitual way of speaking about medicine. It is easier for the medical profession to go along with it: I think many do without realising they just go with the flow.
Do we need to worry about the perceived differences between homeopathy and
homeopathic views are really just part of our prescription technique. Is it not possible that some of the terminology we use to describe the state of our patients makes this difference look more important than it really is? I am sure it is possible (or certainly will be so in the future) that some of the modern knowledge will align perfectly with homeopathic thinking about health and disease once we have found the language for this. Note that we also use the same terminology of modern medicine for the diagnosis of
where I read it), where somebody examined the modern medicine? the patient. That does not seem to make a d’ifficulty to
explanations we adhere to in order to differentiate ourselves from conventional colleagues. This person argued that we, the homeopaths, may well create an artificial difference between homeopathy and modern medicine. He argued that these differences do not need to be there. Let’s try and examine this in this letter.
Before I go further, I think it is important to make a difference between modern medicine and conventional medicine. Conventional medicine according to the definition of conventional is related to medicine by custom or habit: what the population (including clients/patients and the medical community/politics) tends to think and do. With this comes the colloquial medical speak, which also more often goes by convention
Of course, there is the matter of technique: discussing and training in relation to how to best practice homeopathy. But there are techniques for all the things we do in medicine even within modern medicine. There is the technique of surgery, there is the technique of intensive care, there is a technique of cognitive behaviour treatment, anaesthetics, etc.
What seems to make the biggest difference and sets us apart is our homeopathic way of understanding, explaining or viewing illness and health: the way we converse in homeopathic circles about this. It seems to me that we need to have this original view to be able to prescribe successfully. Therefore, these original
practicing homeopathy.
Should we really see ourselves to be different from our colleagues? Is that going to help us and homeopathy forward?
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