Homeopathy in Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine

Let us start with the conclusion: buy this book, borrow it, rent it, or steal it, but you need to read it. Absolutely. Definitely.

It explores and details the use of homoeopathy within the settings of the most sophisticated, the most drug oriented (for a good reason) and the most fast changing hospital departments: the emergency room and the intensive care unit (ICU). These are the places where there is no time for detailed histories, family backgrounds and miasmatic elaborations, and also these are the places where you almost need knee-jerk reactions that must have to be correct and to the point the first time. Been there, done that.

The authors have managed this ‘tour de force’ of using well-indicated remedies in that highly stressful setting, increasing significantly the rates of survival and cure under the watchful eye of highly sceptical colleagues, eventually modifying their attitude and making homoeopathy a ‘staple procedure’ in those departments, then managing to publish their results in a convincing manner.

The book starts with the basic explanations of how an emergency department or an ICU functions and how they integrated homoeopathy in them. There are the usual basic introduction to homoeopathy itself, its basic principles and, most importantly, how those principles had to be tweaked to accommodate the special subset of patients and pathologies found on those wards. Almost 30 pages are focused on the pharmacy aspect with insistence on respecting the European legislation about homoeopathic remedies. Another 30 pages succinctly describes what is called ‘the ICU remedy kit’: each of the frequently used remedies is listed by its homoeopathic name, its source, its active ingredients and their effect on physiology, its allopathic indication and its homoeopathic indication.

Then starts the interesting and fascinating part: over 400 pages of interaction between the most sophisticated form of allopathic medicine and classical homoeopathy. Acute, life-threatening pathologies like infectious diseases, haemostasis, cardiovascular problems, respiratory problems, kidneys, digestive system, surgery, intoxications, trauma, medical emergencies, neurological, psychiatric, gynaecologic and obstetrical, urological and environmental emergencies are reviewed. Each of these situations are explained according to conventional medicine, then a general homoeopathic approach with large potential rubrics and remedies is presented, followed by individual cases; each case is described, with clinical findings, laboratory tests and X-rays, procedures done, allopathic treatments given, appropriately chosen rubrics and a short discussion about the choice of remedy, clearly differentiating the closest ones. Approximately 70 different scenarios are given and with each one, a few different cases are detailed. That is a few hundred cases! A short Materia Medica concludes the book.

I have never encountered such a high concentration of quality medicine and homoeopathy brought together with a synergistic outcome that should convince anyone who still harbours any doubt about the value of homoeopathy. Patient's evolution is described in all aspects: biochemical, radiological, clinical and final outcomes.

It could be a bit of a difficult read for homoeopaths without conventional training, as conventional pathology, diagnostics and physiopathology are assumed known, but it is worth the effort, and it is comforting to know that homoeopathy is slowly but surely regaining its rightful place in the treatment of patients, as complicated as this could be.

It seems clear to me that this book is more targeted toward an audience of conventional practitioners to show them not only that homoeopathy does work but also that they have nothing to fear from it and that they should embrace it for the sake of their patients. Isn't that why we spent so much time in medical school?

In conclusion: buy this book, borrow it, rent it, or steal it, but you need to read it. Absolutely. Definitely.

A review of the original German edition of ‘Homöopathie in der Intensiv- und Notfallmedizin’ by Frass & Bündener (2007) by Ralph Jeutter was published in Homoeopathic LINKS in 2009 [Vol.22(1): p53].