Beyond the paucity and superficiality of the data that now represent the vast majority of hypothetical communication on the internet, the overwhelming majority of websites that provide information on homeopathic remedies actually report stereotypes, caricatures, and sketchy and trivial descriptions of the real indications known to a homeopathic doctor for each remedy.
If one wanted to and could attach the classic package insert to a homeopathic remedy, it would have to contain a very long and detailed list of indications, very different from what we commonly read for a conventional drug. In addition, it should be noted that, under Italian law, homeopathic remedies are subject to a so-called “simplified registration”, which does not allow any package leaflet to be attached.
Homeopathic literature, consisting of hundreds of texts and so-called repertories, is the guide for homeopathic doctors in both diagnosis and treatment.
Unlike the conventional medical model, which is ideologically dispensed as the only possible one, the main interest of a true homeopath is not only the presumed disease in the nosographic sense, but above all HOW that specific person becomes ill.
The conventional medical model deals with the manifestations of a disease in homo sapiens, in the largest possible majority of people who respond positively to the same drug.
The homeopathic model focuses primarily on how the various disorders present themselves in a specific patient: it is not concerned with a non-existent average Italian, but with that particular person, the particular organisation of their disorders, and their individual way of expressing them.
It is unlikely that two siblings with the same disease would be prescribed different conventional drugs, while it is almost certain that they would not be suggested the same homeopathic remedy.
If, instead of the correct definition of “non-conventional medicine”, we wanted to stoop to that of “alternative” (so dear to the imprecise meta-information of most of the media), in the age of “guidelines” and “protocols”, Homeopathic Medicine is primarily “alternative” to this perspective, only secondarily to the fact that we use homeopathic remedies instead of synthetic drugs.
The most orthodox schools of homeopathic thought start from the assumption that our literature is an accurate reference to the objective and subjective reality reported by the patient. One of the foundations of the Method of Complexity is that the data in homeopathic literature can only be translated into information after the relationship between patient and doctor has been tested and the effectiveness of the therapy has been proven.
Alfred Korzybski’s wonderful metaphor, clarified by Gregory Bateson, recognises that “the map is not the territory”: the data in medical literature are and always will be only indices, more or less accurate. A homo sapiens, and especially that homo sapiens, is something else entirely. No text, no treatise, can describe the reality of their illness better than those who experience it. Only after serious homeopathic training is one able to make sense of a jumble of seemingly disconnected or simply narrative symptoms and descriptions.
The consultations that follow a homeopathic treatment are an excellent opportunity for patients to learn more about themselves, and for doctors to learn a great deal more about their patients and their illnesses.