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“I’m hot,” my four-year-old daughter said as she climbed into our bed.
I touched her cheek. Burning hot. I checked her throat. Red and swollen.
I groped my way through the darkness to my kitchen, where herbal potions and homeopathic remedies lined the counter. I scanned the labels. Consumed by fatigue and anxiety, my mind went blank. Which remedy worked best for fever and sore throat? Garlic? Arnica? Isatis?
Frustrated, I stumbled through the house to find my books while my daughter’s screams grew to glass-shattering decibels. I knew the perfect remedy—I had studied homeopathy and Chinese herbs for years—but in this stressful situation, I had less than perfect recall.
“Hold on, hold on.” I plunked my arsenal of home health care books on the bed. My eyes could barely focus, let alone search through five tables of contents to locate a remedy.
I looked at my daughter’s flushed face and glassy eyes and thought that there had to be a better way.
Then the idea came to me. The Remedy Box. Index cards organized by symptom with a corresponding remedy. Quick, easy to use.
When faced with a minor illness, I could go to the Remedy Box and find safe, natural remedies using folk, homeopathic, or Chinese herbal remedies. Most of us have remedies right in our homes—onions, garlic, potato, basil, honey, and lemons—which don’t require a prescription.
With the expertise of a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist, a homeopathic practitioner, and reliable source materials, I have assembled Remedy Cards for over sixty minor illnesses.
The Remedy Box is not intended to replace medical care when it is warranted. The intention is to provide readers with a simple, efficient system of caring for themselves and loved ones in a nonemergency, first aid situation using natural remedies. If however, symptoms persist, seek the advice of a health professional and always contact your health care professional for chronic conditions.
MAKING THE TRANSITION FROM WESTERN TO ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
You will know when it’s time to make the transition to alternative or “complementary” medicine. You’ve had a thorough medical checkup and ruled out a serious condition. You’re relieved, yet your physical problem or problems persist. Various doctors have prescribed various pills. You still don’t feel well. Every doctor you see (there have been plenty) spends ten minutes with you and leaves you more confused. No one has addressed you as a whole person, you feel you are composed of various parts, like a car. A feeling of dissatisfaction prevails. Now is the time to switch to alternative medicine in which practitioners treat you holistically, as a whole person, assessing both your mental and physical conditions.
Many of us, for a variety of reasons, are wary of alternative medicine. This can make the transition difficult. I experienced my first and only migraine the day I took my children to their first visit to the homeopathic M.D. Resistance is normal. Push through it. Find a homeopath or homeopathic M.D., herbalist, acupuncturist, or chiropractor who makes you feel comfortable. Listen carefully, and determine if their information makes sense. Intuition lets us know when a health care practitioner fits our needs. Be selective. You are the consumer. People are people, and there are unscrupulous alternative health care professionals just as there are unscrupulous traditional doctors. I advise a balance between the two. Both disciplines have their strengths and weaknesses.
My rule of thumb is to assess my symptoms or the patient’s symptoms and make my decision accordingly. How high is the fever? How bad was the fall? How intense is the sore throat? Unless the patient’s condition is critical enough to warrant immediate medical attention, I turn to the Remedy Box. If I notice obvious improvement after I administer the remedy, I might wait to call the doctor. But if after a few hours or a day, the symptoms worsen, I call. In the case of a mucousy cold, for example, if there is improvement yet the cold lingers for two or three weeks, I throw in the towel and schedule an appointment with an M.D. If antibiotics are prescribed, I take them. Common sense is the key. Again, there are times when an illness requires the attention of a qualified health care practitioner. Martyrdom serves no purpose in any discipline.
• CHAPTER TWO •
What Are My Remedy Choices?
FOLK MEDICINE
Folk medicine is not based on modem scientific methods. It is healing information passed down from generation to generation. Most remedies are cultural, adapted by people from a particular region or country where the substance necessary for the cure was plentiful. Also a culture's mores dictate the type of folk remedies that exist. The wise man or woman, or medicine man or woman, of the community held the secret cure. Most likely the people who derived these remedies did not know the chemical compounds within the substance that produced the cure. The cure just worked. That was enough science.
Primitive man probably became aware of the medicinal properties of various plants and vegetables by simply observing his environment. In his book, The Herb Bible, Earl Mindell states that “the practice of herbal medicine may predate the human race. Animal behaviorists have observed that many animals instinctively seek specific plants when they are sick.” Perhaps an injured fox rubbed its wound on a particular plant and primitive man mimicked the fox.
The folk remedies included in the Remedy Box use ingredients that are easy to find, for example, cranberries, basil, and honey, and easy to administer, for example, teas, compresses, and creams. I've included Western herbs in the folk remedy category. Although East and West may use the same herb, Eastern herbology ascribes more complex properties to each herb according to the specific Eastern philosophy.
HOMEOPATHY
Modem homeopathy was developed by a German physician, Samuel Hahnemann, in the 1800's. In 1810, Dr. Hahnemann published the Organon of Medicine, the philosophy and principles of homeopathy, and presented it to the medical profession. Homeopathy is formulated on the principle that “like is cured by like”—the Law of Similars. Scholars discovered that Hindu sages in the tenth century knew this law, as did Hippocrates in 400 b.c.
The Law of Similars states that a substance that will produce symptoms when given to a healthy person will cure those same symptoms when they are found in a sick person. For example, when we peel an onion, our eyes sting and start to tear and our nose runs: therefore we may use the homeopathic remedy, allium cepa., which is a homeopathically prepared onion, to treat these same symptoms in a person suffering from hay fever. Homeopathists believe that the symptom a person is experiencing is not the disease itself but the body’s signal that something is wrong. A homeopath takes into account the patient’s symptoms, emotional condition, and health history and uses this information to serve as a guide to, as Dana Ullman, co-author of Homeopathic Medicine explains, “the medicine that can best stimulate the person’s defenses.”
For the purposes of the Remedy Box, the remedies are listed according to symptom pictures, which are precise descriptions of the illness and corresponding remedy. These descriptions are used to treat illnesses symptomatically according to the Law of Similars. If further constitutional healing is necessary, contact a licensed homeopath.
The actual homeopathic remedy is derived from a minute dose of a plant, animal, or mineral substance. Dr. Hahnemann developed a process called potentization which, as Dana Ullman explains, “is a method of diluting substances that kept the toxic properties at a minimum while the potential to cure was magnified.”
CHINESE
