The Acute Consult

As homeopaths we seek to cure our patients on physical, mental, and emotional levels. Each treatment is tailored to a patient's individual needs. Homeopathy is generally a safe treatment, as it uses medicines in extremely diluted quantities, and there are usually minimal side effects. Another benefit of homeopathy is the cost of treatments; homeopathic remedies are inexpensive, often a fraction of the cost of conventional drugs.

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Homeopathic prescribing differs in general from allopathic medicine in its tailoring of remedies to the patient's overall personality type and totality of symptoms, rather than to the disease. Whereas a conventional physician would prescribe the same medication or treatment regimen to all patients with the common cold, for example, in a homeopathic session I would ask detailed questions about each patient's symptoms and the modalities, or factors that make them better or worse. As a homeopath I might prescribe six different remedies for six different patients with the same illness. In acute prescribing homeopathy, consultations are briefer compared to constitutional homeopathic prescribing. A session will last between twenty minutes and a half hour in total.

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Homeopaths classify symptoms according to a hierarchy of four categories for purposes of acute prescribing:

• Peculiar symptoms. These are symptoms unique to the individual that do not occur in most persons with the acute disease. Homeopaths make note of peculiar symptoms because they often help to determine the remedy.

• Mental and emotional symptoms. These are important general symptoms that inform the homeopath about the patient's total experience of the disorder.

• Other general symptoms. These are physical symptoms felt throughout the patient's body, such as tiredness, changes in appetite, or restlessness.

• Particular symptoms. Particular symptoms are localized in the body; they include such symptoms as nausea, skin rashes, headache, etc.

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During homeopathic case-taking, I will evaluate the intensity of the patient's symptoms, assess their depth within the patient's body, note any peculiar symptoms, evaluate the modalities of each symptom, and make a list of key symptoms to guide the selection of the proper medicine.

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Then I will send a prescription to the client with proper instructions of dosing and potency. I offer to keep in touch for over 24 hours as the acute incident passes and we correspond mostly by email.