Disclaimer: Any views or advice in this weblog should not be taken as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, especially if you know you have a specific health complaint. Prescribed medication should not be stopped or varied without conventional medical advice. Please remember that homeopathic remedies and other health measures should be individually-selected to match the whole person, not just the unwelcome symptom. For chronic, severe or long-standing complaints, or if you are pregnant, elderly or on orthodox medications, seek professional advice rather than self-prescribing.

I’m just back from three days at the Society of Homeopaths’ annual conference, held at Leicester University: I’d been invited to speak to trainee homeopaths and qualified practitioners - which was a huge honour - but despite my past experience as a solicitor and law lecturer, and more recent experience teaching at the South East College of Homeopathy, I was pretty nervous beforehand.

We see quite a few musicians, singers and actors in the clinic, as well as business executives, so I’m quite often asked to help with anxiety issues, including performance nerves. Generally speaking, whether the ordeal is a driving test, a visit to the doctor’s or dentist, a presentation or other public speaking event, a gig or stage performance, a wedding or an exam, it’s not too tricky to find a homeopathic remedy to help to settle pre-event nerves.

Unless there’s an underlying chronic state of anxiety, treating a simple and short-lived episode of acute anticipatory anxiety is usually fairly straightforward. This is because it’s usually quite easy for a patient to describe how their acute anxiety is making them feel, making the homeopath’s job much easier. For example, before my talk, I had wobbly legs, a shaky voice and felt as though I had trembling hands. I also felt weak with my anticipatory anxiety, so I took a dose of Gelsemium 30c from my kit – this remedy can help with all these symptoms, and I know from past treatment by my own homeopath that it suits me well (it’s one of the remedies I was prescribed to help me recover from near-paralysis by MS). I wasn’t sure whether the remedy was going to work, because I didn’t take it until just before my talk, but, thankfully, by the time the audience filed in, the shakiness had gone, I was feeling calmer, and I was able to start speaking confidently.

Gelsemium is also known as a remedy that can, in suitable cases, help with adrenal burn-out (from prolonged stress), and with ailments from bad news or shock. Because the homeopathic remedy picture is that of weakness, exhaustion, shakiness and collapse, it can be indicated to help with flu, too: in fact, in the 1918-19 Spanish (bird) flu epidemic, Gelsemium was one of the main remedies used by homeopaths and homeopathic hospitals of the time to achieve their famously low mortality rates.

According to Julian Winston (reported in The New England Journal of Homeopathy, 1998, Vol 7, Issue 1) the following was written by American doctors at the time:
“In a plant of 8,000 workers we had only one death. The patients were not drugged to death. Gelsemium was practically the only remedy used. We used no aspirin and no vaccines.” Frank Wieland MD, Chicago.
“Fifteen hundred cases were reported at the Homeopathic Medical Society of the District of Columbia with but fifteen deaths. Recoveries in the National Homeopathic Hospital were 100%.” E. F. Sappington MD, Philadelphia.
“I have treated 1,000 cases of influenza. I have the records to show my work. I have no losses. Please give all credit to homeopathy …” T. A. McCann MD, Dayton, Ohio.
“One physician in a Pittsburgh hospital asked a nurse if she knew anything better than what he was doing, because he was losing many cases. ‘Yes, Doctor, stop aspirin and go down to a homeopathic pharmacy, and get homeopathic remedies.’ The Doctor replied: ‘But that is homeopathy.’ ‘I know it, but the homeopathic doctors for whom I have nursed have not lost a single case.’” W. F. Edmundson MD, Pittsburgh.
After several years as a homeopath, it still amazes me how versatile homeopathic remedies can be, and how wonderful it is that a straightforward homeopathic remedy can be used for such a wide range of ailments and states, as long as the characteristics of the illness in the patient match the chosen remedy. Facing the audience at the conference on Friday, I was very glad indeed that this is the case!

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