Direction of Cure

Direction of cure

Normally the self-healing system within us is so reliable that we are surprised if a cut or bruise fails to heal promptly, or a cold lingers for more than a week. Yet to see this healing capacity as comprising solely of a chemical defence system is to ignore the greater life energy that animates, maintains and protects us all while we are alive.

Homeopaths have observed that this "vital force" organises our protection and healing in a logical and predictable way. For example, as someone is healed symptoms always move from the innermost organs of the body (those most vital to life) to the outer organs. Less critical symptoms, that have been suppressed in the past, consequently tend to resurface.

Wisdom of the body

This principle is practically illustrated in the relationship between childhood eczema and asthma. Eczema is often treated conventionally with powerful steroid creams, but these have the effect, not of curing, but of "burying" the problem more deeply. After treatment the patient's skin symptoms have been removed, but all too often, asthma symptoms develop in their place.

The problem has just been moved to a deeper and more serious level.

A homeopath would expect to see a reverse of this process, so that successful treatment would usually involve the eczema reappearing briefly at some point, as the vital force retraces its steps towards health.