This week I’m attending a homeopathy course in Montreal called “Essentials of Acute and Chronic Prescribing” taught by Dr. Andre Saine, ND, FCAH. Dr. Saine is a naturopathic elder who is one of the world’s foremost experts on the subject of homeopathy, and he’s been the teacher and mentor of two of my homeopathy professors, Dr. Francine Burke and Dr. Tim Fior. I’m grateful to have received one of the three annual scholarships provided by his clinic for NUHS students to attend. My friends Alex and Lisa are also here; Alex is my classmate, and Lisa just graduated from the ND program.

NUHS crew with Dr. Saine

Something that Dr. Saine discussed on the first day is that it is imperative to have a solid understanding of the principals and philosophy of any type of medicine you plan to practice because it gives you direction. Our homeopathic education at NUHS is very solid; we spend two trimesters on the principles and philosophy of homeopathy by reading the Organon of Medicine written by Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy. 

Montreal street art

There is no system of medicine besides homeopathy that can take into account literally every single symptom including thoughts, emotions, and sensations. Peculiar symptoms can be repertorized, meaning you can look up the symptoms and find specific remedies that have been proven effective to include in your analysis of the case.

Montreal street art

Here are some examples of peculiar symptoms:

• sweating only from the knees down
• dreams are always very busy, doing complex tasks
• insatiable craving for eggs
• feels as if the entire left side of the body is shrinking

In conventional medicine, and even in naturopathic medicine (if you were to exclude homeopathy from our toolbox), this information is useless. There are no mechanisms that can explain these phenomena. This is why homeopathy is so cool! Everything a patient says, the totality of symptoms, can be utilized in finding the proper homeopathic remedy, and peculiar symptoms are often the deciding factor when comparing similar remedies.