Homeopathic Remedies for the stages of life

Review

Dr Didier Grandgeorge is a respected French Homeopath, with a special interest in Paediatrics. He is Director of Clinical training at the Faculty of Medicine in Marseilles as well as a founder of the Hahnemannian School in Provence. He is active in research and teaching.

Dr Didier Grandgeorge's life clearly demonstrates the role of 'coincidence' in life. He came from a family of engineers and were it not for a hospital stay for a broken leg, he would have continued in that tradition. His disposition to allergies led him to discover Homeopathy, and his fascination with Tintin caused him to travel, as a doctor, to the heart of the West African jungle in Gabon. Here he was introduced to a deeply spiritual culture, people who had a profound understanding of the ways of the universe. Rather than try to convert them to the mechanistic model of Orthodox Medicine with missionary zeal, he chose to listen to their message, their truth and adapt his practice to encompass their beliefs. To paraphrase David Lilley, the universe called to him and he listened with open ears and an open heart. Rather than dismiss his life story as mere series of coincidences, he recognised coincidence for what is truly-God's way of staying anonymous!

On his return to France, inspired by such these revelations, Grandgeorge set up practice, blending his spiritual and religious philosophy, medical training, and homeopathy with the current psychological models. This unique alchemy of ideas is set out in his latest book, in which he traces the evolution of Man from an incarnating spirit to beyond the grave. As such, this book is thought provoking at the least, and will induce a love or hate reaction from its readers, depending on one's view of the world. Although aimed at the general public, it is debatable how well someone who is not familiar with the homeopathic materia medica will understand the book. To fully appreciate it, one needs to be fully conversant with many homeopathic remedies. However, even without that specialist knowledge, his insights into human nature and development are fascinating.

Grandgeorge equates the Freudian developmental phases (oral, genital and Oedipal) with the three Hahnemannian miasms, and then elaborates on this model. Using the Jungian concepts of archetypes and the shadow, he illustrates his philosophy with Greek mythology and Kabbalistic principles. Many homeopaths are recognising the need to incorporate spirituality into their practice and teachings. David Lilley uses Stellar Alchemy, Chaim Rosenthal employs the wisdom of the Kabbalah and Cassandra Lorius teaches homeopathy for the soul. Although all of them speak their individual truth, they recognise that homeopathy transcends formal religion, and that true healing must include spiritual healing. Grandgeorge sums it up eloquently, healing is the quest for 'the Truth, the White Light, Love in its three dimensions'. The Ancient Greeks understood the multi-faceted aspect of Love describing Eros as egotistical love, Philos as altruistic love and Agape as universal love. Yet again the trinity appears: three types of love, three miasms of homeopathic philosophy, and the three primary colours of the prism. In Numerology, three is the number of time and fate-past, present and future; the number of the family-father, mother and child; and the number of birth, life and death. Another coincidence?

Grandgeorge shows how normal development allows for Man to fully comprehend all these dimensions of love, with the ultimate achievement of being able and willing to give and receive pure unconditional love. He also demonstrates how so many of us fail and get stuck in one aspect, miasm or developmental stage.

Despite the gravity of the subject matter, Grandgeorge writes in a light and entertaining fashion. The book is exceptionally easy to read, and full of puns, entertainment and laughter. At the same time, there is great wisdom and knowledge. Suddenly one's understanding of certain remedy patterns is more complete and profound. It whets the appetite to discover more about certain remedies that are not well understood. Following the lead of Louise Hay, many people are beginning to recognise the symbolism of the human body and the patterns of disease. Eczema, for example, often develops when there is an issue about personal boundaries. The skin forms a physical barrier for the body. Eczema can develop in situations where the person feels their emotional barriers are transgressed or violated. This is common story in adults, though in children such a history may be more difficult to elicit. Vaccination may be such a boundary transgression. Grandgeorge puts forward his own philosophy about such symbolism, and enriches it with numerous fascinating cases.

Many of his ideas and concepts are challenging. He flies in the face of orthodox medical opinion regarding vaccination. He condemns the timing of vaccination schedules, denies the efficacy of the BCG vaccine, disputes the wisdom of mixing three live viruses together in the MMR and is vitriolic about the genetically engineered Hepatitis B vaccine. This is enough to make many physicians apoplectic! Yet there is evidence that his views are sound. In 1979, the World Health Organisation study of 260,000 individuals in Southern India, with a seven and a half-year follow-up, demonstrated that there was 'no evidence of a protective effect of the BCG vaccine'. Dr Tinus Smits in the Netherlands also supports his view and publishes his well-researched findings on the internet. Homeopathy is evolving rapidly, moving away from the pathological model that strives to imitate orthodox medicine in its 'one remedy fits all with that disease' approach. Kent revolutionised the profession with his constitutional models, based on his faith in Swedenborg's teachings. This is a book for Post-Kentian homeopaths and those who strive to understand the journey of life.

Marysia Kratimenos

The Royal London Homoepathic Hospital London, UK

This book review is reprinted with permission from Volume 16, Summer 2003 Edition of Homeopathic Links.

Reviewed by Dr. Joseph Rozencwajg, MD, PhD, New Zealand

I am a fan of Didier Grandgeorge; I read all his other books in French, so I could not miss the opportunity to review this one.

Grandgeorge is a classical homeopath and paediatrician with deep roots in psychology and psychiatry. He founded the Hahnemannian School in the south of France. He lives, practices and teaches in Marseille. I had the pleasure to meet him and hear him at an international congress a few years ago. He has a deep, intimate knowledge of remedies. Not the type where you know by rote - everything that is written about a remedy - but the kind where a remedy come to life in front of you when he speaks about it. The kind of knowledge where a remedy becomes a living entity and you'll have a personal relationship with it.

In the first part of this book, Grandgeorge guides us through the human body and most of its organs, describing in his way, the main remedies he has found useful for those organs through his clinical work. At first reading, it might seem like a 'this for that' approach, especially as the number of remedies is limited and we know many other remedies that have an influence on the organs. But what he gives us here is the result of many years of clinical observation with cases, so this is an introduction to another way to look at remedies and their action. And what precision in the remedies! On page 35, Hair, he writes about Chelidonium: 'Chelidonium falls prey to spiritual doubts and develops a bald patch on the crown, just like a monk'. What a way to explain the patchy baldness linked to Chelidonium, what a link to an intimate and unusual concept for what most of us consider a 'small' remedy!

The second part goes from conception to death and deals with most of the events that we encounter during our life, the hurdles, the stepping stones, the changes and the traumas.

Each period again has a link to a few remedies that he has found most useful, and again there are some unusual and mind boggling descriptions of remedies. Page 103, Chapter 14, covering from age seven to puberty, the latency period, he describes Taraxacum as 'the pupil who does nothing unless there is someone behind him, urging him on all the while'. I never imagined I would consider using Taraxacum for a learning problem.

Grandgeorge does not attempt to give an exhaustive description of all the remedies that could be used for each and every event in the development of life. I wish he would do that in a later book, though. What he manages to do is to have us look at remedies through a totally different perspective. He knows what has worked for his patients; he has attempted to explain why it worked and tested the generalisation of his explanations on the following patients, and found them to be correct: that is real experimental science!

Still, this concept could be conceived as a shortcut, so I would not recommend it to students who do not yet have a good basic concept of how to approach a patient. Like Sankaran or Scholten's methods, Grandgeorge's more psychoanalytical and symbolic approach would be more useful to experienced homeopaths.

It is also a book well-written and easy to read, actually quite fun to read, as is most of what Grandgeorge writes.