Pams Dedicated Homeopathy Website

Pam Muller is a practicing classical homeopath. She has her clinic at Brushwood Studios.

Exerpt from article in Kenmare News 2007

Homoeopathy- a brief explanation by Pam Muller Dip. Hom. Med. Reg IHM

Winter, and again coughs, colds and sore throats bother us. We have our favourite symptom relieving cures, hot toddies, echinachea drops, vitamin C, and non-prescription drugs. In an effort not to get sick, we are seeing people making more life style changes; moves towards natural good foods, exercise, not smoking etc.

Homoeopathy can treat disease, both acute and chronic when it occurs, but it also offers the chance of protecting a person’s health. It is also excellent in first aid situations, and before and after surgery to maximise rapid healing.

What is less widely known about homoeopathy is that, if used properly, it can support a person’s constitution, enhancing the immune system, the person becoming less susceptible to opportunistic micro-organisms.

Along with the general improvement to one’s health, homoeopathy can also work to cure emotional and mental ailments; e.g. pre-menstrual syndrome, hyperactivity and antisocial behaviour, anxiety and panic attacks, and it can also relieve depression.

As with acupuncture, homeopathic medicine works by stimulating the person’s life force to enable the free circulation of life energy in the body and mind. It works with natural forces through the Law of Similars (like cures like), whereby a medicine that would cause symptoms in a healthy person, cures those symptoms in a person who is actually sick.

This natural law was mentioned in the writings of Hippocrates 2500 years ago. In 1790 the remarkable German physician, chemist, multi-linguist and classical scholar, Samuel Hahnemann re-discovered this phenomenon and spent the remaining 53 years of his life putting it on a reliable scientific footing. It is not just a theory but is based on over 200 years of actual experience. The old great homeopaths cured serious epidemic diseases like cholera, typhoid, scarlet fever, whooping cough and influenza. With the current fear of micro-organisms’ increasing resistance to drugs, this is surely a comforting thought.

Because classical homoeopathy employs the use of the law of similars we have a form of medicine which is safe for all ages and is devoid of “side effects”. The unique pharmaceutical preparation of the remedies, in which a minute amount of the medicine is used (in fact it is the energy latent in the medicine which treats the person’s life force), results in gentle and effective cures.

Homoeopathic medicine does not suppress symptoms and does not disturb or make sick normal physiology the way large doses of drugs do. An added benefit is a gentle but powerful rise in a person’s energy and sense of well being which accompanies the use of the correctly prescribed remedy.

Not only are people the grateful recipients of homoeopathic remedies, it is used on birds and animals, in particular dairy cows and race horses, and of course domestic pets, by homoeopathic vets.

What can you expect from a visit to your homoeopath? The initial consultation takes 60 - 90 minutes . Follow up sessions take 30 - 45 minutes. You will be asked many questions which enable the homoeopath to build up a symptom picture upon which your individual remedy will be prescribed.

“Introduction to Homoeopathy” courses are available: including 12 first aid remedies and more about homoeopathic theory and practice - at the Homoeopathic Clinic, near Sneem for groups of 6 to 10 people.

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Interview with Pam Muller - May 2009

What is your first love?

My husband Etienne and my children,

I mean where your interests lie in regard to work and philosophy?

I would have to say then that my first love lies with learning about and working with the laws of nature.

That is a noble goal. How do you achieve this?

I am very fortunate to live in a place of great natural beauty which is unpolluted and lush, with a variety of plants and animals, both indigenous and imported. Living in the countryside one feels closer to nature because one feels the seasons and notes the changes throughout the year, so one begins to get a feel for natural rhythms and balance in nature. I also love cultivated gardens and parks and I’m one of those people who notice a weed growing in the pavement when I visit a city and cheer it on.

I am very interested in the health and well-being of the whole human being, spiritual, mental, emotional and physical. If we were to properly reflect natural law we would live out our lives, through all the phases, creatively, with energy, inner peace and equilibrium.

There are many wonderful forest, hillside and coastal walks in this area. I have for many years been interested in the plants growing around the place. Some of them edible, others poisonous, some medicinal, and all with their own unique place in the scheme of things.

Yes, I see this is reflected in the themes you depict in your artwork. How does this relate to your interest in medicine though?

When my children were younger we used to go walking and picking berries and nuts and mushrooms and various leaves for salads. It was fun. As they got older these walks lessened but I continued the interest and decided to do a course in herbal medicine. This was a one year course and, doing it, I realized I might actually be able to follow my long standing interest in homoeopathy, which I had put on hold while my children were growing up.

Why homeopathy in particular? What is it about homeopathy that makes it different to other disciplines?

Homoeopathy works by re-establishing the person’s natural physiological robustness and vitality. Very often the organism, be it human, animal, plant or even an entire ecosystem, needs only a gentle stimulus to move in the right direction to start the healing process of cure, by restoring the flow of life-force in the organism.

Herbal remedies work by changing the chemical balance in the body, and although natural, are not the same as homoeopathic remedies in that they are material in their form rather than being immaterial energy.

How is this achieved?

Homoeopathic medicines are basically the life energy of various plants, minerals, metals, animals and so on, in other words some aspect of nature which has been refined to its energy pattern and is used according to what is known as the law of similars, which is a natural phenomenon that has been observed by healers since Hippocrates and likely before him. He mentions this in his writings and was known to cure people by applying this law. The law of similars is that Like cures Like, vis. a substance that can cause a set of symptoms in a healthy person is the very stuff that can cure those kind of symptoms in a sick person. A simple example is the use of the energy of onion to remove the symptoms of a streaming cold, or that of coffee to alleviate sleeplessness. Homoeopathy is the only form of medicine which works by deliberately working with the law of similars.

What do you mean by immaterial substance?

Homeopathic remedies are made in laboratories in a unique way. They start off with a small amount of the crude material and by a process of repeated dilution and succussion (shaking) in definite stages, the substance is refined until the life energy is progressively released. The resulting liquid is used to medicate tablets or pills. There is no longer any chemical molecule of the original substance left. What is present is the life energy of the substance. The level of dilution of the substance varies and different dilutions (or potencies) are used according to the needs of the individual case. More powerful is not necessarily better in the practice of homeopathy. Just right for the purpose of stimulating health is what is preferred, ideally only one remedy at a time.

So where does homoeopathy fit into the scheme of things in regard to the health system?

I think there is a definite movement by mainstream medicine towards encouraging people to change their lifestyle towards more healthy habits. I think this is a good thing and part of taking personal control of one’s health, rather than leaving one’s well-being in the hands of the gigantic medical/pharmaceutical complex, many people are becoming more interested in keeping healthy without using synthetic drugs and using natural therapies instead.

Obviously there is sometimes necessity for acute emergency or surgical intervention. Homoeopathy can benefit these cases in the speed of their rehabilitation, but it is really in the area of chronic ailments that we find we can be of the most use to our patients. Rather than ending up on increasing multiples and combinations of prescribed drugs as we get older, the side-effects of which are detrimental to our quality of life and our health, where we find ourselves every year more run down and decrepit, the intention of the homoeopath is to re-establish the natural order and stimulate the life-force so that, sometimes quickly, sometimes more slowly, the patient improves and moves toward robustness and health regardless of age and disposition.

This relates to all all aspects of the human being too. Homeopathy does not limit itself to the correction of just the body or just the psyche, and so on. When we take a case we cover the entirety of symptoms, mental, emotional and physical. We treat people, not diseases.

What do you mean by that? Surely to treat people you have to treat diseases?

People tend to classify everything and different symptoms of ill health get diagnostic labels we call diseases. We then formulate medicines to attack those diseases, focusing on destroying the germs associated with the illness. The same medicine for the same disease in every person. People though are unique. When I see a patient I am not looking only for a defined disease. Very often someone will come to me already knowing what their problem is. They have the diagnosis already. For all of these named diseases and states they will invariably have been prescribed drugs. They have come to me either because the drugs are not really working or because they are suffering such bad side-effects that the cure is almost as bad as the disease. The normal medical approach to health problems is to fight the disease. The homoeopathic approach is to re-establish a state of equilibrium and robustness in the unique individual that ensures that the disease will find them to be an unsuitable host. In other words to strengthen and free up the flow of the person’s life force so as to make the ground unattractive to the offending germs. Also as I mentioned earlier, we do not differentiate between the mental, emotional and physical or treat these aspects of people separately, so we account for the totality of the symptom picture in all the aspects of the individual and prescribe the remedy in the potency required for the person. Not just for a disease.

When it comes to first aid, bumps and bruises, burns, breaks, shock, and so on, certain remedies are usually applicable in every case, although not necessarily always in the same potency. However when people have been suffering a chronic complaint over a period of time or found themselves to have fallen into a negative state over time then pegging the correct remedy and even the correct potency becomes far more complicated. Two people may come to me with the same basic presenting complaint, both of whom are on the same medication for that complaint, yet, depending of the totality of their symptoms, the differentiating characteristics that are individual to them, I may prescribe different remedies for each of them in different potencies.

So how do you know what remedy to give people?

For hundreds of years now the testing of substances in potentised form has been undertaken by healthy volunteers in organised trials. Healthy people in isolation from one another in blind tests will be given the life energy of a substance for days or weeks. They will begin to observe certain symptoms which they record in detail. The resulting data is compared and recorded. Then these remedies are tried in clinical cases and, if found curative, in time are added to the materia medica and repertories. The homoeopath has to be able to cross reference the symptoms to recognise the appropriate remedy in each case.

Often you may find that a homoeopath will be unable to give you a remedy immediately after your visit. It takes time and thought to repertorise a complex case or a case where more than one remedy seems appropriate.

Can you not just give both?

One has to understand that the law of similars means just that. There are not two things most similar. Another basic principal of homeopathy is the principal of the ‘minimum dose’. We always try to prescribe just the right potency of the right substance in the right repetition to obtain the required effect. Also, If we prescribe only one remedy at a time, we know if that remedy is working. Mixed remedies can be confusing and complicate the next step in treating the patient.

I hear the Royal family use homoeopathy?

Yes, and they live to a healthy 102!

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