The World Health Organisation defines health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’. When I think of true health, I think of a child with plenty of energy, brimming with life. Homeopaths define health further as the ability to adapt to any stressful circumstances that may affect our lives – physical, environmental, or emotional. We may talk about a child’s level of health resonating at a high level, where they have a strong immune system, or at a lower level, where they are vulnerable and susceptible to disease giving us cause for concern.

Homeopathy is a system of natural complementary medicine that has been in worldwide use for over 200 years. Putting the patient at the center of their own healthcare. Homeopathy is a holistic system of medicine. This means that homeopaths take into account all parts of the person in order to treat them rather than just making a prescription based on the specific symptoms of the disease. Homeopathy treats every aspect of life at every level – mental, emotional, and physical. In this way, homeopathic remedies not only alleviate the individual symptoms of the illness that a person manifest, but, deal with the underlying state to ensure that the disease does not return and the person remains healthy. Homeopaths refer to this as constitutional treatment. Two persons can have headaches but depending on their individual state of the complaints, the medicine would be completely different. Thus, homeopathy does not have one remedy for headaches or for sore throat, rather there are a number of different remedies that take into account the whole state of the person during their time of illness.

Homeopathy is based on the core principle that ‘like cures like’ i.e. a substance that can cause symptoms if taken in large doses, can be used in minute doses to treat similar symptoms. The idea that a substance can be damaging in large amounts, but beneficial in small amounts is not new to science, in fact, this concept (‘hormesis’) has been around for decades and is increasingly well-documented in such fields as biology and toxicology. There are even examples of ‘like cures like’ in conventional medicine e.g.

The stimulant amphetamine-based drug Ritalin is used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)Small doses of allergens such as pollen are used to de-sensitize allergic patients. All homeopathic remedies are highly diluted and therefore have no side effects. Hahnemann’s discoveries were a turning point in the history of medicine and since then homeopathy has proved itself a safe and highly effective therapy, to the point where today 450 million people around the world use homeopathy as their principal form of medicine.

The life force, which is frequently referred to as a “spirit like” force and “dynamics” and manifests itself in living things as vitality, is non-material. Instead, we might use terms like overall health, resistance, and immunity in today’s English. A battery or generator would serve as the life force and an electric current would serve as the vitality if you were to imagine a living thing as an electrical device. If you see a spinning top, someone might think of the life force as what keeps it spinning and the vitality as the force that propels objects outward, both of which maintain the spinning top’s balance and uprightness.

The idea of life force is found in many other therapeutic systems, including “vis mediatrix nature” by Aristotle, “chi or Qi” in traditional Chinese medicine, and “prana” in Hinduism. The vitality, which is the body’s life energy, manifests itself when the organism is out of equilibrium.

The organism is prompted by vitality to restore balance by producing symptoms. It was not unusual to view of all living entities as having a vital principle that electrified, coordinated, and brought together the processes of an organism during the 18th century when homoeopathy was developed. Historically, homoeopaths were able to conceptualise the subtler physical, chemical, and biological changes that occur in a sick person using this vocabulary.