excerpt from:
"Confessions of a Homeopathic Heretic"
Melissa Assilem
Heilkunst 1.1, June 1999

Why do we have to defend our own methods to the point of endless division instead of celebrating diversity? Diversity is the springboard from which innovation comes. Diversity brings evolution, and evolution keeps our profession alive, as it must change as our culture changes.

I understood that one remedy was to be given at a time, but knew that we had remedies like AAA (Aconite/Ambra Grisia/Argentrum Nitricum, a formula used a great deal in the U.K.) and others that we used in emergencies. How could they work, and why was it okay to do that and at the same time be told "Give only one remedy at a time?" To be named a polyphamacist was to be cursed in one’s profession, so we didn’t refer to these compounds as compounds but merely by abbreviation; AAA was never named "Ordeal Compound". Are we not deceiving ourselves?

I have a hobby of collecting words, and after I started writing this article I found this one: noegenesis.

Noegenesis: "the production of new knowledge from sensory or intellectual experience."

It was so synchronistic, as the next part of my story is about a noegenetic experience.

The first time I mixed remedies together was for a woman whose healthy breast had been removed by mistake during breast cancer surgery. She had refused to have her cancerous breast removed by further surgery and was trying to heal from both the cancer and the shock, fury and indignation of her ordeal. She was taking hundreds of supplements and herbal mixtures and said she couldn’t cope with many more pills. I would have given her Arnica, followed by Staphysagria, followed by Opium. She needed all three and probably lots more. (This was not a central delusion kind of case.) I decided to mix the remedies together. She knew little about homeopathy, but she was a lurker on one of the homeopathic on-line groups and I was afraid she might tell someone of my heresy, so I called the remedy Starop.

She returned three weeks later so very much improved, more energized and renewed. She had searched the homeopathic literature and had called various pharmacies to get more of the remedy. No one knew of this mysterious remedy. So I explained that it was a mixture, which did not phase her in the least. She just wanted some more...

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