Why Homeopathy

I am not very trustful of medical type people. Maybe it started when I was small and I had to drop my drawers to get a shot. Maybe my mother’s dependence on doctors led me to shun them. Maybe I don’t like to be told what to do. Maybe the research I did about vaccinations and childbirth made me doubt whether they genuinely have our best interests at heart. Whatever the reason, I try to tend our ailments with only minimal outside intervention.

I have found an exception. It seems I trust a homeopathic doctor.

We started experimenting with homeopathy shortly after we moved to Vermont because the remedies you can find in certain grocery stores were readily available. I also really like the idea that the remedies will not hurt anything, and you can tell almost immediately whether they will help. As Jason pointed out, the remedies either work surprisingly well or there is a very strong placebo effect.

After a recent exposure to streptococcal pneumonia, I called the homeopath we had visited with during the summer. I think we are a lucky family that is not terribly prone to getting strep, but I did not want my hubris to be our downfall. I did as she suggested, minus the gargling with grapefruit seed extract, and we are so far still healthy. Maybe we wouldn’t have gotten sick or maybe we will fall ill tomorrow, but I know that what we’ve done in an attempt to prevent the illness has not actually hurt us.

If we did fall ill, I would use antibiotics. Despite the necessity of antibiotics when dealing with bacterial pneumonia, I would not be able to shake the fact that these do harm even as they help. And that’s why I’m willing to at least try homeopathy first.