Can you tell us a little bit about homeopathy?
Well, I can tell you how I got into homeopathy and why this is important to me. I started practicing medicine about 20-plus years ago. I discovered after three years that no matter what I would do in some cases, I still wouldn't get satisfactory results, even though I applied everything known in the current state of medicine. So I was looking for some alternatives, and one of those possibilities came out when I went to a conference in Las Vegas, where I was one of the visitors of the presentation that talked about homeopathy and how to apply it to horses. So I was pretty impressed with the presentation and, of course, the results that were spoken about.
Dr. Darko Mladenovic
Animal Wellness Clinic of Tamarac
I still wasn't convinced, so I decided to ask the presenter how come she was actually into homeopathy and how she discovered it. She seemed to be a very knowledgeable regular doctor of veterinary medicine. She told me about a story of when she got sick and was diagnosed with a chronic condition that there was no known cure for, even today and that she had to live with that. She didn't accept that and decided to look for an alternative. She came in contact with a homeopath, and after one visit and session, he prescribed a remedy that took her problems away. So that kind of got me curious about this modality. What is homeopathy? So I went to research further. My next stop was the International Veterinary Homeopathic Congress, which I also visited and thought about. I asked the same questions to one of the lecturers. How come she decided to go for homeopathy, and the story was similar.
So this person went to the orthopedic surgeon, who told her there was no cure, and she had to live with a current condition and constantly take medication, but she didn't accept that. The same thing happened. She went for one session and got one remedy that took care of that problem. That got my attention. So I started researching what homeopathy is and what it does and discovered that it was established by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician back in the 1700s-1800s. He discovered that by diluting some of the current time medicine, the medicine becomes stronger, and they could start calling the remedies. Mind you, the more you dilute, the stronger it becomes, which doesn't make sense to many people, but that is the essence of homeopathy. If you would like to have your dog or cat treated with homeopathy, please let us know, call us, and we'll discuss it.
If you still have other questions and you'd like to reach out to us, you can call us directly at (954) 722-2100, you can email us, or you can reach out on social media. But please do reach out, and we'll get back to you as fast as we can.
What is Homeopathy?
Homeopathy started about 200 years ago with a discovery by a German doctor, Samuel Hahnemann. Wondering why quinine was useful in malaria, he took the medicine himself and found that, given to a healthy person, it temporarily produced the symptoms found in malaria. When given to a malaria patient, however, it was curative. Homeopathy means literally to “treat with a similar disease.” Its central principle, “Like cures like,” contrasts with other medical approaches.
The term allopathic means to “treat with other than the disease” and is used to denote the standard medical approach of today, which attempts to counteract symptoms. For example, a patient with diarrhea may be given a drug that slows intestinal motility. To better understand how homeopathy works, it helps to consider two aspects of a disease. First, there is the immediate cause, such as a bacteria, virus, toxin, or internal immunological activity. Second, there is the patient’s response — their reaction and defenses, such as fever, inflammation and discharge. These are the body’s attempts to eliminate pathogens and toxins and to heal the tissue. While homeopaths do not ignore immediate causes, such as infection, their primary focus is on the patient’s attempts to respond and heal. Their aim is to strengthen the patient’s defenses and shift the balance in favor of recovery.
Dr. Hahnemann found that substances could be used to stimulate healing by applying the principle of “like cures like” in very specific ways. He would give the patient a substance that would gently nudge their system in the direction of the “disease”, reproducing the same (or almost the same) syndrome or whole set of particular symptoms in a mild form.
He found this to be a very effective way to stimulate their natural defenses. It is almost as if the patient’s defenses cannot distinguish between the natural disease and what the similar substance is doing. Thus homeopaths fine-tune the use of medicines to enhance the patient’s own attempts to overcome the disease.
In this manner, homeopathy employs hundreds of substances that have all been thoroughly studied as to their unique effects on body, emotions and mind. Some of these are common herbs; others are from poisonous plants; some remedies are made from toxins and venoms. Homeopathic pharmacists carefully prepare these many substances in a time-tested manner that enhances their usefulness while minimizing potential harm. They carefully dilute them to eliminate toxic effects, at the same time shaking or grinding them in a way that energizes their helpful effect. This use of a dilute similar substance is somewhat similar to the use of vaccines or to the method of allergy desensitization.
In summary, homeopathy stimulates the healing process through temporarily establishing an artificial disturbance of health with medicines. This disturbance, when similar to the disturbance caused by the disease, makes the body work harder to get well. The healing changes that follow are the result of this stimulation. While simple in theory, this process requires skill and experience, particularly in chronic conditions. The homeopathic doctor carefully evaluates the changes that occur after use of each homeopathic medicine. In this way, the patient can be guided to recovery of their health over the weeks or months necessary for the body to repel the disease and regrow damaged tissues.
by Richard Pitcairn, DVM, PhD Pitcairn Institute of Veterinary Homeopathy