It’s 5pm on a Friday night, your child has started vomiting and you have only one or two Arsenicum pilules left.
It’s a long weekend, your youngest has an ear infection, and you realise you forgot to replace the Chamomilla drops. You pull it out and there’s maybe one or two drops left in the bottom.
You’re away at a bach, and you left the Hypericum behind – but someone just crushed their fingers in a door and is screaming in pain.
It would be easy in these situations to freak out, despair, and resort to methods you haven’t needed to use with homeopathy there to support you – hugs and hoping it will get better by itself soon, and allopathic treatments. But there is something you can do.
If you have ever been in one of the above situations, or if you just like to be prepared, here is what you need to know, so you can still treat homeopathically even when you don’t have the right remedy or are about to run out of it.
First of all, the single pilule left.
Take a clean glass, add water and the pilule. Take a spoon and stir the water several times, then give a spoonful of the water. The remedy can be kept at room temperature for up to 24 hours, or place the glass in the fridge (ideally labelled and covered) and you can use it for up to one week.
It usually takes time to dissolve the pilule, but don’t worry you can use it straight away after stirring – the pilule is the carrier and the remedy coats the outside, so by stirring you are moving that remedy into the water.
The second scenario, your liquid remedy has all but run out.
As long as there are drops of liquid, you can top this up.
If you wish to continue to use the remedy for longer than a week you need to add alcohol, my preference is vodka, but brandy is fine too. I could teach you how to calculate how much alcohol, but what you really need to know is add about a quarter of the bottle size – so for a 10ml bottle you want about 2.5ml or half a teaspoon. Top up with water – preferably spring water or filtered water. After doing this, succuss the remedy – after putting the lid on, hit it firmly against a surface ten times – if it’s just one it is fine to do this against your hand, but if you’re doing more you will want to use a table top or other surface – Hahnemann used a bible.
You can now use the remedy.
Note – this has changed the potency- if your previous remedy was 30c this is probably now closer to a 31c- but it’s not exact.
If you don’t have alcohol, no problem. Just treat it like the water above, and keep in the fridge for up to a week, and then replace it.
The alcohol you add may be stronger or weaker than the commercially prepared remedy, so don’t be surprised if it tastes different. If it is stronger it won’t affect how the remedy works, just may make the person taking it pull a face.
Finally, not having the remedy you want when you need it – this may be something you have in your kit, but you don’t have it with you, or it could be a remedy that is new to you and suggested by a friend or your Homeopath, and you can’t get it when you need it.
The solution to that is what we call a paper remedy.
Take a clean glass of water and a piece of paper.
Write the name of the remedy and the potency on the piece of paper (ie Hypericum 30c) and place this under the glass of water. The writing all needs to be under the glass, so you could look down through the top and read the remedy. Leave it there for a minute or two, then treat this like scenario one, take a teaspoonful as a dose. Keep it at room temperature for 24 hours or in the fridge for up to a week.
The first two follow accepted homeopathic principles that have been used for 200 years – dissolve and stir, and dilute and succuss.
The paper remedy is a bit more of a mental leap, especially if you have a conventional background. This is working on energy, and the power of intention. It utilises the innate intelligence of water and its ability to absorb information from the world around it. I highly recommend looking into the work of Veda Austin – she has a particular technique of photographing ice crystals, and has incredible photos of ice that has formed in the shape of a picture it was placed on top of. Not just one but hundreds of photos, and now others are using her techniques and getting similar results. If her 30 seconds of a petri dish of water on a picture can get the water to freeze in the shape of the picture, then several minutes on top of a remedy name is much less of a leap of faith.
I have seen the paper remedies work too often to dismiss it, and if you’re skeptical but desperate, my suggestion is try it – the worst that can happen is nothing, and the best is that you may just have improvement in the condition you are needing help with. Normal homeopathic principles apply- if the symptoms don’t match the remedy picture, the remedy will not work, but a well chosen remedy will work quickly. Use it like any other remedy – repeat dosing as needed, when the symptoms change stop the remedy.
I hope you don’t need to use any of these strategies over the Christmas and and New Year period, but you feel a bit more prepared for anything – it just makes me think I need to add pen, paper and an unbreakable clear acrylic cup to my emergency kit so I can make any remedy at any time.