An Example of Acute Homeopathy (Part 1)

The following is a real life example of homeopathy in action. Names and/or gender have been changed to protect the innocent (nudge, wink).

So you may be wondering how to put this homeopathy together and get something useful from it. After all, it would be a fairly worthless mental exercise if you couldn’t benefit from its truly wonderful properties. So let’s take a case, an acute case.

Let the sick guy sing…

Applying homeopathy to an acute (short lived) illness is pretty straight forward, but there is always room for a few rules. The first rule is to let the patient explain their sickness… in their own words. You as the practitioner should zip it at this point… no joke. There is a great tendency to sympathize with a sick person and fit your own version of pain, cough, sneeze, whatever, into the discussion. Focus on THEIR words and act as if you have never experienced their illness, so you don’t have a clue as to how it may feel.

If you are stuck with one of those “I ain’t sick, nuthin’ wrong here” kind of guys (patients) and you can’t budge even the most simple of symptoms out of him, mention that it sounds like a case for the enema bag. That will usually “loosen” up some symptoms and reasons not to bring out the ole red bladder. A couple of “and what else is wrong?” questions should get the rest of the pertinent symptoms to gush forth (so to speak).

Write like the wind…

While you are listening intently to his exhausting list of symptoms (hopefully a lengthy list), don’t even think you can remember it all… write it down. In fact, list it like you are going to the grocery store to find these symptoms. Then, later organize that list from most important to least important symptoms (even the non-important). Yes, you will find that his eyebrows have not grown back from that last barbeque pit incident, but that “symptom” has nothing to do with this recent bout of illness.

But, that is not a problem here. This brow-less one seems to catch every illness known to man and a few that haven’t even been thought up. Either way, document even the most annoying rant from this poor sick soul.

Our Grill-flaming expert expounds on the expanding pressure just center of his body; an annoying fullness triggered by that last espresso. Well, even Backyard BBQ Bob can dance the barista lombada with the best of them. Lucky for us, he goes on and on just to make sure we realize that he is experiencing real pain. The kind of pain that takes some complaining: extreme manly complaining.


Retire to your fortress of solitude, super-homeopath…

Find a quiet little hide-away far from the moans and groans of your latest victim (um, I mean, patient) and settle in for the duration…

Now the analysis begins. What? You say analyzing is not your cup of tea? Well, if you can use a dictionary, you are good to go on this part too. Simply pick up your repertory and find all of those pesky little symptoms that you listed from the last part.

What repertory? Well, a good start would be the “Boger-Boenninghausen Repertory” (aka, Boenninghausen's Characteristics and Repertory and from now on described as the B-B). At about $30 shipped and a bit north of 900 pages, it is well equipped to keep you riveted for some page-turning excitement (not). Well, it lists most of the symptoms you are likely to come across in repertorizing the BBQ King’s latest illness. You just have to figure out where those symptoms are listed and go to town. And like any good tool, it takes some getting used to. With every little cold and cough, you will eventually get over its hefty bulk. A few key bookmarks (say 20 or so) won’t hurt either.


Listing the rude bricks…

I had a four year old homeopath (honorary degree from Wikipedia U.) consult with me on a case once and discovered that the symptoms listed in the repertory were called “rude bricks”. This may be because the important symptoms can sneak up behind you and hit you on the head. No one knows for sure. For the sake of accuracy, we will call them “rubrics” instead.

Now how I describe a particular symptom may not be the same way Mr BBQ describes his symptoms. I may say that I have a pain in the upper part of my stomach and he might say that he has a pressure kind of ow-ee in his epigastrium. The way symptoms are described in the B-B repertory or rubrics is as generic as it gets, but you do need to know some body parts and their official names. And you need to be able to translate bbq-speak into repertory-speak. So Barbi-Meister is correct in locating and naming the upper part of the abdomen, the epigastrium (lucky for us). Don’t worry, there are only a few of these “doctor” names for common body parts and you will survive learning them with a quick look at any book on anatomy or just checking Allopathy-for-less magazine online when you get stumped.

By the way, a book on anatomy that cost some poor medical smuck $250 is readily available used from half.com or Ebay for pennies on the dollar (I found one almost new for $4). Invest in one and you won’t need to crank up the Google thingie. By the way, we used to use these things called books before Google came along and they still work quite well no matter what you may have heard.

So what do our rubrics tell us. We open the B-B and look for the section on Epigastrium.

Symptom from BBQ Man/ Remedy listed in B-B

BBQ: Pressure in the upper abdomen (epigastrium)
B-B: Epigastrium pressure pg 524: ARS, CARB-V, CHAM, CUP, NAT-M, NUX-V, PHO, PUL, RHUS-T, VER-A

BBQ: Pressure triggered by espresso…
B-B: Aggravations after coffee pg527: CHAM, NUX-V

BBQ: Excessive manly complaints of the pain
B-B: Complaining (excessive) pg532: NUX-V

BBQ: Catches unknown illnesses (all the time)
B-B: Hypochondriasis pg532: NUX-V

BBQ: Flame-broiled eyebrows
B-B: No known symptom No known remedy

As you may note, the most common remedy that is seen in all four of the symptoms is NUX-V (red font for the homeopathically-impaired). This is how it is done (basically). The one remedy that covers the most symptoms wins! Well, not all the time, but here it does… Yippee!

NUX-V is the abbreviation for Nux Vomica… poison nut, “Quaker’s buttons” and it contains among other things, strychnine. Its poisonous properties are well known in controlling pests and use in homicides. And, no matter how much we may gladly imagine the use of the original crude material, we are resigned to give our suspecting Starbucks fanatic the extremely diluted homeopathic variation to affect a cure.

By the way, all the remedies in the B-B repertory are abbreviated. This is to make it easy to remember these Latin-ized, poly-syllabic word conflagrations. Anything to make it easy is alright by me.

Give your $.02 (of remedy)...

We now open our little case of remedies… yes that case of the top 50 or 100 remedies that you purchased some time ago. No? You didn’t get that $150 case of remedies yet? That set that will last most of your lifetime? What are you waiting for? Are you waiting until you get sick? I don’t think Fedex delivers that fast, but it’s up to you to be prepared. For those that are ready with your bottles of remedies, you take one little tiny pillet from the NUX-V bottle and tap it into the cap… walk briskly over to the unsuspecting grill-eyed patient and drop it cleanly into his hand. Bottoms up! He will probably stand deer-eyed and shocked that a tiny pill could do so much (or is that a late night infomercial for Extendz)… anyway, I digress. Synchronize your watches, for within an hour that distrusting look of confusion will vanish from the face of BBQ-Man as fast as he normally finishes the last beer in the fridge. Yes, the bewildered patient will experience some quick relief indeed. And all without the poopy-go-squirt bag you would have had to use before. The End.


Oh, for those that noticed this was Part 1- IT IS Part 1 of 1. And, yes this really did happen… except, it was a capucinno, half fat, mocha, latte, grande, chile-piqueno.