We are very pleased to inaugurate a new Townsend Letter column on
the clinical use of homeopathic medicine. We'd like to give you an overview of our practices
and to share our plans for this and future columns. We are naturopathic
physicians specializing in classical homeopathy, our main mentors being George
Vithoulkas and Francisco Eizayaga. Although we adhere to classical homeopathic
principles, we have great respect for many areas of holistic medicine and make
nutritional recommendations to all of our patients, based on naturopathic and
Ayurvedic principles. We use herbs when indicated, offer lifestyle suggestions,
and many of our patients also choose to see us for counseling, hypnosis,
fasting and cleansing. This gives you an idea of our theoretical foundation. We
find homeopathy to be the mainstay of our treatment and generally base our
therapeutic rationale on traditional homeopathic principles of healing.
In this column we intend to present clinical cases treated successfully
with homeopathy. In addition, we plan to share Materia Medica information on
the remedies used and also to include homeopathic principles of case analysis.
We are happy to receive any feedback from readers and colleagues as to what you
would like us to share with you.
We recently gave a presentation on the use of Ayurvedic body typing to
help con-firm classical homeopathic prescriptions at the International
Conference on Holistic Medicine and Healing in Bangalore, India. There we
were asked about any success we have had in treating hyperactivity, often
considered to be quite difficult to treat by both orthodox and holistic
medicine. We would like to start our column with this very challenging case of
hyperactivity which responded beautifully to a single dose of the correct
homeopathic remedy.
M.G, aged 5, was brought to us on l/20/89 by his foster mother, a
long-time patient of ours with a chief complaint of maladaptive behavior. He
had been under her foster care for four months and at a child care center for
emotionally disturbed children since age two. He had been removed from his
parents' home by Children's Protective Services due to drug problems, violence,
and neglect. At two and a half he was placed in a foster home with his younger
brother for five months where he was described
as "demonic", violent and abusive. His voice would take on different qualities
like dis-tinct personalities. In the next foster placement with a minister's
family, his younger brother was adopted but he was not, which he was unable to
understand.
His biological father, who had become remarried to a Native American woman with
four childten, then took him for seven months, during which time he was
physically and emotionally abused. During one beating he was left with a large
open wound on his forehead, the scar of which still swelled and pulsed when he
was under stress.
This was followed by five successive placements before he arrived at the home
of our patient. The day he arrived there, he" demolished" one of the bedrooms
for three hours. Soon after she had him placed in a regular kindergarten.
M. presented in the office with bright red hair and very physically
active. His foster mother described his usual behavior as follows. He
screamed, scratched, cursed, threw objects, fought, and bit regularly, all of
which behaviors seemed to be out of his conscious control. He frequently became
violent and tried to pull out his foster mother's hair. (At this point in the
interview, M. was smiling mischieviously.)