Posts tagged ‘diagnosis’

In this article, I would like to talk about what a Homoeopath needs to know to be able to help the patient in the best manner possible.

Many patients come to a Homoeopath with a ready diagnosis of the disease obtained from an earlier doctor and expect that once they have given the diagnosis to the Homoeopath, the Homoeopathic doctor should be able to prescribe the required medicine. For Homoeopaths, a diagnosis is important only from the point of view of differentiating peculiar symptoms characteristic to the individual patient, from general symptoms, which belong to the disease diagnosis.

It is important for patients to realize that the Homoeopathic prescription which really helps the patient the most, is one based on the peculiar symptoms of the individual patient, which as a rule, have no direct connection with the diagnosed disease. Hence anything peculiar, queer, rare and strange that the patient has observed (which we call P, Q, R, S symptoms in Homoeopathy) needs to be told to the Homoeopath. Many people refrain from talking about these symptoms, either from embarrassment or from the idea that these symptoms have nothing to do with their main complaint and they want the doctor to focus only on the main complaint. This results in the Homoeopath knowing only part of the problem and makes medicine selection more difficult and usually inaccurate as well. Patients must remember that the Homoeopathic doctor, unlike a conventional doctor, is treating the WHOLE PATIENT, and not just the PART that is ill; hence anything which the patient perceives as ‘not alright’ is important from the point of view of the Homoeopath, even though it may have no logical connection to the main problem which the patient seeks treatment for. It is these very ‘weird’ symptoms that can lead the Homoeopath to a highly successful prescription and rapid cure of the illness.

Patients also need to be very observant about their symptoms and what they suffer from. Homoeopaths need a lot of detail about everything that troubles a patient. For example, if the patient is complaining of backache, the Homoeopath needs to know the exact location of the pain, the type of pain, whether the pain radiates to another location, the factors that increase the pains and the factors that give relief, and also any other symptoms that accompany the pain.

The reason why Homoeopaths need so much detail lies in the fact that the effects of Homoeopathic medicines are tested on healthy human beings, what we call ‘Homoeopathic Proving’. Due to the energy stimulation of the Homoeopathic medicine during a proving, provers develop symptoms (which later when the same symptoms are seen in a patient, the same medicine is capable of curing on the basis of the Homoeopathic law), and because human beings have the advantage of expression (in contrast to animal testing where only gross changes in health can be noted), these symptoms are recorded in great detail, mentioning exactly what the prover is going through. Hence it is clear, that the more completely the complaints are described, the more accurate the ultimate prescription will be and the quicker is the restoration of good health.