This multi-part Clinical Homeopathy Program is the result of over forty years of investigation into European homeopathy. Although I was introduced to homeopathy several years prior, it was only after I discovered the existence of the French approach to homeopathy that I was able to fully understand its usefulness in both acute and chronic diseases. My first contact with the French school of homeopathy was through the books of these homeopaths written at the beginning of the 20th century. I was brought to this revelation through a personal need.
In 1965, I was living in my native country of Belgium, the northern, Dutch-speaking region. In 1956 I had been introduced to a limited component of the German approach to homeopathy. This approach used complexes made of low and very low dilutions. Although it brought me some relief, it was ineffective in curing my current problems which were grave and chronic. I desperately needed help. I was dying from a chronic infectious disease and could not tolerate the allopathic drugs given to me. I believed my only hope was homeopathy.
Because I believed it was the answer to my problems, I tried to find more information about homeopathy. Although an avid reader, I did not know where to look, as homeopathic books were not available in regular bookstores. However, one fateful day in 1965, I came across several books written by French homeopaths in an unusual little bookstore in Antwerp.
This exposed me to a completely new perspective on homeopathy. Here the authors spoke about different principles and approaches to cures. On my first visit to that bookstore, I found a curious little book written by Dr. Albert Leprince that had a paragraph about “draining” remedies and their use in removing toxins from the body. When I began using a drainer complex which I formulated myself, based on this writing, I started feeling better for the first time in decades.
After my first successful discovery in my book search, I returned to the bookstore and found the “classical” works of French homeopaths Dr. Leon Vannier and Dr. Henri Bernard. Dr. Vannier was already deceased at that time. However, I spoke with Dr. Bernard in 1971, who was at the time living near Bordeaux, France. It was then that I realized that this man had made the greatest contribution to homeopathy since Hahnemann. He understood Hahnemann better than any other homeopath, and at the same time, was familiar with the contemporary scientific discoveries in biology that are important to the comprehension and future of homeopathy. He made more contributions to the understanding of chronic diseases than any other homeopath since Hahnemann and, in a way, completed Hahnemann’s approach to the theory of miasms (an inherited condition that predisposes the person to disease). He also developed a new approach to constitutional typology to greatly aid in homeopathic diagnosis and prescribing.
It took me a long time to see the connecting line running from the approach of Hahnemann in homeopathic practice when he was living in Paris, to the insights of Dr. Bernard and his Constitutional Typology. But it was well worth the effort.
The initial consequence of my study was a cure for my threatening, very urgent physical problems. A complete cure for my entire body was realized only after I studied the nature, diagnosis, and treatment of chronic diseases for over ten years.
A second result was that I started writing about an integrated clinical approach for curing chronic disease with homeopathy. The concepts had never been publicized by French authors, for reasons I can only guess. One of the reasons may be that no French homeopath was able to grasp the importance of Dr. Vannier’s and Dr. Bernard’s work. Another reason was that this approach was different from what Hahnemann laid down in his Organon, and perhaps the reason that Dr. Bernard was not followed by his peers.
Today we know that even Hahnemann, after moving to Paris, changed his approach from that outlined in his earlier writings. He started seeing patients more often, giving them different remedies, without doubt, because he himself had discovered that chronic diseases need to be approached differently from acute diseases.
If I look back on my learning process, I remember one book that said it all, albeit in a less explicit and more practical way than Dr. Bernard did. The title of the book was Les Tuberculiniques, written by Leon Vannier in 1946. The author explained a completely new approach to the cure of a chronic disease with homeopathy. The approach includes detoxifying remedies, remedies for the different states of the patient, and remedies for the different phases of the disease. Since that book, nothing else has been written about an approach to a chronic disease. Although Vannier was apparently only targeting tuberculosis in his book, he laid down the rules for all chronic diseases, although he apparently didn’t realize that when he was writing the book.
In the same vein, when I went through the Repertory of Dr. Boericke, written in 1927 in the United States, I discovered that the remedies he indicates to fight chronic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and arteriosclerosis, are exactly the same ones used by the French schools yet today. The problem with Boericke’s work is that he did not speak about his methodology. He did not reveal a methodology that deviated from the “classical, one remedy” approach nor a theory about his prescribing for the treatment of chronic diseases. This leads me to believe that his approach, based on the experience of several generations of homeopaths in his family, was only experimental.
I hope that homeopaths will discover that true modern science, especially biology, and immunology, will be of great help in the development of homeopathic cures for the chronic diseases that plague most individuals in our contemporary Western society. My wish is that through your study of this program, you will be an instigator and promoter of this concept of continual evaluation and study of homeopathy based on modern science. I trust that you will come to understand that the only true way to overcome both acute and chronic disease is in a non-toxic way and that homeopathy is a key element.
Luc Chaltin, ND, DIHom
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