Layers
Looking deeper at disease totality
Continuing on from my previous post about the Philosophy of Cure, I’ll now give you a little insight into how a homœopath uses this philosophy during treatment.
Professor George Vithoulkas from The International Academy of Classical Homeopathy, introduced the concept of layers and uses graphs like I’ve drawn below to illustrate his concepts.
When a person comes for treatment, there will be a set of symptoms that are really bothering them and this is the reason they seek treatment. Usually, they will talk about a named disease and talk of these symptoms. The homœopath will try to focus on this, also taking into account the peculiarities of the person as a whole. The first instance may present with a whole bunch of symptoms that don’t really match any one remedy, showing aspects of a few different remedies. This may be confusing for a homœopath to determine which is the best remedy to prescribe. It requires knowledge of looking at the whole picture of a person and the entire medical history, to determine what is best to focus on for the first prescription. So if we look at the little drawing below ...
The first prescription focuses on the purple line, the peaks representing strong symptoms. We see that this purple line has symptoms from “underlying layers” of blue and green. Once the purple remedy is given, many of the symptoms on this layer are removed, and another set of symptoms becomes more prominent. This is when the blue remedy is administered. Again, once these symptoms are resolved, the deeper underlying layer is exposed and the remedy may be unequivocally apparent and it is after this third remedy that the person really feels they are feeling truly healthy now.
Once a person’s health has been improved, when symptoms are present, they are more likely to have the qualifying modalities that homœopaths love to help them determine the appropriate prescription. I’ve tried to give information on these modalities in my remedy picture posts, of which there are quite a few in the archives now.
Especially in modern times when people have been exposed to so many exogenous toxins from the environment and previous drug use, the symptom picture a person presents with in clinic, is almost always confused. It takes more than one remedy to bring about a real change, what is referred to as raising the level of health. A homœopath does not have a magic wand, where one remedy is given and all the troubles are over. It is an active process, requires diligent feedback from the client and has an undefined time-line. Professor Vithoulkas says that you are not truly well until you have experienced a high fever, so the homœopathic therapy needs to continue until this point.
References
Vithoulkas G; The Science of Homeopathy; IACH; 7th Ed; 2014
Vithoulkas G; Levels of Health, The second volume of The science of Homeopathy; IACH; 4th Ed 2022
Very useful post, thank you. As a building surveyor now retired I had the same approach to buildings. Certain defects could be caused by more than one issue, so dealing with something obvious first might be necessary before delving deeper.