Homoeopathy is a holistic medicine; in other words it aims to treat the whole person. It may seem unusual to those used to allopathic (conventional) medicine, where one medicine is taken for a skin complaint, another for a headache, and yet another for sleeplessness.

A common cold, for example, is one virus, which produces a myriad of effects, subtly different in different people. Different people with a cold caused by the same virus may exhibit different symptoms. It is for this reason that each case should be assessed by close and careful analysis of all the relevant symptoms.

EFFECTIVE HOMEOPATHY – FINDING THE SIMILIUM

The Similium is the single substance, which if given to a healthy person would produce exactly the same symptoms as exhibited by the patient.

In addition to the range of symptoms, which must be included in a case to find the right homeopathic remedy, precision is also important.

For example there are nearly 5,000 headaches in the symptom database; a different remedy may be prescribed depending on when symptoms occur, the type of pain, where in the head it is, what may have bought it on, what other symptoms are experienced, etc.

To find the Similium manually would involve looking up each symptom, in detail, and producing a grid of remedies and their correlating symptoms, and from there, seeing which remedies occur most frequently and which are stronger for a given symptom.