Homeopathy is not a placebo treatment. In fact, infants and animals can be successfully treated.

What do we need to treat?
As Samuel Hahnemann, the originator of homeopathy, wrote in the essential treatise on homeopathy,The Organon, the physician must strive to “clearly perceive what has to be cured in disease, i.e. in each individual case of disease.” (Third Aphorism)

The work of the homeopath is to observe, consider, reflect, and then finally determine what the underlying disturbance, the energetic “underlying wrinkle in the cloth” might be. The goal is not to remove the symptoms but to remove the deeper disturbance that results in symptoms. As a homeopath I have had the experience of taking the case of a patient and feeling that the patient might not be consciously aware of the underlying problem from which the physical or emotional symptoms spring.

The patient not the disease
The idea that we are treating a unique individual and not a disease or diagnosis is key to understanding classical homeopathy. This is one way that homeopathy differs significantly from allopathic medicine, in which the physician looks for a pattern of symptoms in order to make a diagnosis and then gives a medicine for that diagnosis.

For example, a person comes into my office with the complaint of allergies. Although I am interested in the nature of the allergies I cannot find the correct remedy based on information about the color and quality of the mucous or the itching or sneezing. Perhaps the person speaks with hesitation and has a sense of fearfulness, while another person with allergies could have a feeling of loneliness and isolation and a third sufferer of allergies also complains of mental fogginess and lack of concentration. Sometimes the patient is a young child and the allergic symptoms are accompanied by sleep disturbances, restlessness, or behavioral problems. Each will need a different remedy to address the source of irritation in their economy. One might need a remedy associated with fright while another might require a remedy that addresses a deep grief.