Homeopathy has proven consistently effective in treating conditions for which conventional medicine has little to offer.

The World Health Organisation has recognised the value of homoeopathy as one of the systems of traditional medicine that should be integrated with conventional medicine in order to provide adequate global health care.

The discipline continues to follow the principle of "like will be cured by like" (“simila similibus curantur”), as documented by Hahnemann. This is known as the "Law of Similars". Remedies are based on substances that would promote symptoms in a healthy person that closely resemble the symptoms of the person who is unwell.

Homoeopathy utilises the process known as ‘potentisation’, where a substance is alternately diluted and shaken (also known as ‘succussion’). While the amount of actual substance decreases with each dilution, to the point where the substance can no longer be chemically detected, the curative power of the remedy increases.

The substance, while no longer present in a molecular state, has imprinted its ‘energy pattern’ on the remedy.

Homoeopathy holds that in the course of a cure, symptoms change from more important to less important body systems, and from the inside of the body outwards.

For example, heart symptoms may ‘move’ to the skin as healing occurs. Symptoms are thought to disappear in the opposite order to their appearance, the most recent being the first to go.

[This article was written by Dr Debbie Smith (M:Tech:Hom). Dr Smith is a qualified acupuncturist and homeopath, specialising in iris diagnosis using high-definition photography. For more information on acupuncture, contact her on (011) 463 8564 or e-mail her.]