Homeopathy Delaware thanks homeopathic practitioner, Afreen Kazi, for her enlightening presentation about first aid remedies at our February 5, 2020 meeting.

The meeting’s attendees ‘brain-stormed’ a list of remedies usually found in a homeopathic first aid kit which would be used for some of the more common injuries and ailments.

In addition to explaining why which remedy would be indicated for a certain injury, Afreen helped attendees differentiate remedies based on their unique characteristics.

Looking at a remedy in this way, as a unique character in a story having to do with trauma or ailments, helps us know the remedy more intimately. When we think about what action word or verb is associated with the remedy, we see it as a dynamic player we can call on to quickly come in and administer first aid. The remedy comes alive for us.

We can do this with two well known remedies for trauma and shock, Aconite and Arnica.

The homeopathic remedy, Arnica montana, is made from a plant also known as Leopard’s Bane and is a member of the vast Compositae family.  Its bright yellow flower petals are notched at the tip and look untidy giving the impression that it has been bashed. Its value as an herbal preparation for trauma was known by the Greeks and Romans.

In Homeopathy, Arnica is known for being the Queen of Trauma remedies and the first one to be called to the scene of an accident were there is blunt injury – bruising, swelling, possibly extensive enough to include shock and hemorrhage.

The person in this Arnica story will feel sore and bruised, as if beaten.  They may also experience physical injury deep enough that they are in shock with a fear of being struck or touched by persons coming toward them.

Both mind and body express the same imbalance, as we see with the person in the story whose physical shock has caused this fear.  Samuel Hahnemann taught us this in the Organon.  This disturbance comes from the level of the life force itself.

As a unique character in this story, Arnica will step in and provide life saving aid, rebalancing their life force and thus the mind/body.

Action words, verbs, closest to the state of a person needing Arnica could be ‘beat’, ‘bruise’, ‘shock’. If this story is acted out as a play with no verbal dialog from the characters, we would see our main character being the recipient of the actions ‘beat’ and ‘bruise’ with the possible associated shock. 

Aconitum napellus, monk’s hood, is a member of the Ranunculaceae family. The entire plant is poisonous in its herbal form but as a remedy prepared by FDA approved pharmaceutical process, it is a safe, healing remedy.

Douglas Gibson in his book Studies of Homeopathic Remedies, recounts it as ” springs vigorously upward to burst into bloom at the peak of summer.”  Aconite’s eye-catching blue blossom is well delineated in the shape of a monk’s hood.  Compared to the rather bashed, dazed appearance of the Arnica daisy, Gibson suggests Aconite denotes sudden strength, swift activity with a suggestion of terror.

If we were to produce a play with a person needing first aid with the homeopathic remedy, Aconite, what would it look like ?  We would see a person experience sudden shock, either metal or physical, where their behavior would be exaggerated restlessness with intense anxiety, feeling frantic. They may feel chilled or quite cold but the anxious restlessness is the feature which is most prominent.

A story could be about someone who experienced sudden traumatic fear, having been in a night time auto accident on a country road where they struck a deer. They took Arnica, knowing it was the most important remedy to use after blunt trauma, and they were better from it for awhile. But upon arriving home their fear would not dissipate such that anxious restlessness took over. They were driven to anxiously clean the house and, at daybreak, to trim the hedge.

This is anxious restlessness that had not been satisfied by Arnica.  Aconite arrives on the scene to save our character in this play putting the life force back in balance, giving ease, rest and recovery.

For more information about remedies for first aid consider the very useful small and light weight book, First Aid Homeopathy in accidents and ailments by Dr. D.M. Gibson. It is a good book to pack in your travel bag.

Dr. Douglas Gibson’s Studies of Homeopathic Remedies is an excellent readable book which gives an interesting panorama of several remedies.

Materia Poetica, Homeopathy in Verse by Dr. Sylvia Chatroux is a delightful book about remedies illustrated with woodcuts from the 18th and 19th century. It will help the remedies come alive for you.

Here is a YouTube link to the National Center for Homeopathy webinar about remedies for first aid.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SEcXjAvuLo

For more extensive information about Homeopathy see the website for the National Center for Homeopathy – https://www.homeopathycenter.org/