While governments and medical authorities around the world are scrambling to muster adequate supplies and facilities as well as develop effective therapies to cope with Covid 19, homeopathy is a therapeutic resource with a 200-year-old track record that is largely being overlooked.

Only a few years after publishing his work on the principles of homeopathy in the 1790's, Samuel Hahnemann gained great acclaim for his successful treatment of an epidemic of scarlet fever with the homeopathic remedy Belladonna…

1).  What services do you provide your clients? 

My primary modality of treatment is constitutional homeopathy.  That is, prescribing a deep acting homeopathic remedy based on the state of the entire person being including their history, symptoms and characteristic physical, mental and emotional attributes.  

In conjunction with that, I also use diet and nutritional supplements and botanical medicines as adjunctive treatments.  In addition, I practice a diagnostic technique called 'Autonomic Response Testing' (ART) that taps into the autonomic nervous system to gain information about toxicities and infections that are often chronic and overlooked in conventional medicine.

Nothing is more emblematic of the desert than the cactus and having just moved to the high desert of Northern New Mexico, it seems only fitting to discuss the homeopathic significance of Cactaceae family of plants.  Of course, there are many types of cacti, about 1750 species, only a handful of which - some 7 or 8 - are used in homeopathy.   

 Of these the best known to homeopaths at least, and mostly commonly prescribed is the Cactus Grandiflorus, the Nightblooming Cereus.  Others include Anhalonium lewinii (Peyote), Carnegia giganta (Saguaro), Cereus Bonplandii (Harrisa bonplandi, Queen of the Night), Cereus Serpentinus (Snake Cactus) and Opuntia vulgaris (Prickly Pear, known in Mexico as 'Nopal').  No doubt, contemporary homeopaths have conducted experiments (or provings in homeopathic jargon) on other varieties, but the above-mentioned are included in the standard materia medica.

 In August of 1988, my wife and I along with our 3-year old son arrived in the village of Saxtons River, VT to settle into a new life in a somewhat ramshackle house rented from a cousin.  Only two years removed from the jungle villages of Sri Lanka followed up by an interim stay in Connecticut, we arrived with few belongings save our clothes, some tag sale furniture and kitchen items, my wife's sewing machine and my professional equipment - a treatment table, acupuncture needles, along with about one hundred large glass jars full of Chinese medicinal herbs.

One of the most common and potent ways to denigrate a human being or a group of human beings is to identify them by a disparaging label.  To achieve its intended effect, the label, if chosen well, need not be complicated or creative.  It must merely serve two purposes: to quickly conjure up in the listener's mind a negative image or association and, just as importantly, to put in place a barrier that hinders meaningful communication.