A drop of dog's milk keeps the doctor away

Author: Andrea Glaessner

Feeling timid? Try a dose of dog milk. Hormones making you feel out of synch? A drop of cuttlefish ink will do the trick. Wondering what to get your aunt for Hanukah? Snake venom - the ultimate cure for varicose veins. Homeopathic medicine, one of the many modes of alternative healing arts, is often met with skepticism. But dedicated practitioners such as Sallie Mack of Charlotte, Vt. swear by it. "Over and over again you see it work and you just think, wow, this is amazing," said Mack.

In a lecture at Ilsley Public Library last Tuesday, Mack discussed the history and current practice of homeopathy at length. The lecture was the last of a series covering Healing Arts Practitioners of Addison County in 2008. Julie Mitchell, a medical herbalist of New Haven, organized the series.

"The goal of the lecture series is to attract people from different modalities [of healing arts]," said Mitchell, "With the number of people who are practicing [in Addison County] this is a great way to become familiar with who these folks are and what they do…"

Vermont, in particular, tends to attract alternative healers, explained Mitchell after the lecture. "I think Vermont has always been kind of a hotbed of progressive thinking. But because it's such a low-populated state, the practitioners have a difficult time getting enough clientele."

Indeed, the audience on Tuesday evening was small, yet most of the members of the audience had a demonstrated interest in learning more about homeopathy and alternative medicine.

Developed in the late 1700s by a German physician Samuel Hahnemann, homeopathic medicine was a response to the questionable practices of mainstream healing techniques of the time. When European settlers arrived in Peru, they observed that the indigenous people were not dying from malaria. According to Mack, these natives were still contracting malaria, yet they were using a remedy called Peruvian bark to alleviate malaria symptoms and ward off death. Settlers infected with malaria soon followed suit and many survived the deadly illness.

Eventually, Peruvian bark made its way around the world and fell into the hands of Hahnemann, who, after ingesting the bark, immediately contracted all the symptoms of malaria. Hahnemann thus conceived of the "Law of Similars" - the most fundamental theory of homeopathic medicine that claims that illness can be cured with extremely small amounts of substances that produce similar symptoms in healthy people when administered in large amounts.

For example, Mack explained how when her husband burned her hand on a cast-iron pot, she advised him to run his hand under "the warmest water he could possibly stand." According to Mack, "the heat [of the water] drew the heat out of his hand." Homeopathic remedies often seem counterintuitive, such as using a remedy called "tabacum" to cure seasickness. "You all remember the first time you had a cigarette, how nauseous did you feel?" Mack explained that ingesting small amounts of tabacum, which actually invokes symptoms of nausea works to cure nausea.

Another idea central to homeopathy, Mack pointed out, is that the impact of stress on the body is important "for the continuation of natural life systems."

"In order to have life evolve, we need a little bit of stress to adapt. It's a natural part of our life cycle. Stress is a very important part of all living systems," said Mack. But when we experience too much stress, our bodies become imbalanced. This imbalance, according to Mack, "is just disease."

In her own practice, Mack uses about 2,000 remedies. There are roughly 5,000 homeopathic remedies used in the world today. Most of these remedies are derived from plants, herbs and animals.

When Mack sees a patient for the first time, she conducts a two-hour interview to get an understanding of all the patient's ailments, both mental and physical. In the lecture, Mack described one patient who complained of severe constipation and bloating. In the interview process, the patient eventually divulged some psychological issues that Mack believed lay at the root of the patient's physical grievances.

"It's really important for a homeopath to see the patient in person," said Mack, "I met with one guy who came in and lay right down on my couch. I mean I didn't know the guy at all, but right away, I could tell a lot about him. He's laid-back…his house probably isn't sterile or uptight. These kinds of things help me figure out what remedies to use."

Because the interview process brings out an array of grievances, often from the patient's subconscious, homeopaths have to determine which grievances to address first. According to Mack, "you deal with the darkest, the deepest, the worst complaints first - it's the thing that's really keeping you from achieving the things you want."

Mack's teacher and mentor, Dr. Paul Herscu of the New England School of Homeopathy piqued her interest in pediatric homeopathy. "Kids are great to work because they don't have layers of life experience or a long list of grievances," said Mack.

Mack believes that learning and behavioral disabilities such as Asperger's Syndrome and Attention Deficit Disorder may be alleviated through homeopathic remedies. "We've seen huge increases in the numbers of these kids and [mainstream doctors] are drugging them like crazy," said Mack.

Prior to becoming a homeopath, Mack practiced midwifery for 25 years. She first became interested in homeopathy when she practiced a remedy on her cat suffering from mastitis. "Within 15 minutes she started purring and all inflammation went down," said Mack, "So I became immediately interested, got my own little kit, had a baby 23 years ago, and I always treated him with homeopathic remedies."

Mack switched to a career in homeopathy four and a half years ago. "I've been in a band for most of my life and it was stressful to be on-call all the time. When you got a gig you got to go, so I decided to switch careers," said Mack.

Mack is enjoying her new career and sharing it with others through practice and discussion. Both Mack and Mitchell hope to integrate more members of the broader medical community into the healing arts community to share ideas about healthy living. Though they hold high hopes for spreading the word about alternative medicine, neither Mack nor Mitchell expect to get an American Medical Association (AMA) stamp of approval on cuttlefish ink anytime soon. But skepticism will not hold these women back from practicing their respective arts.

"Whenever you see a medical practitioner, remember that the operative word is that they're practicing," said Mack, "[homeopathy] doesn't hurt, it's not harmful, so why not? That's the beauty of it."