Etat des lieux de l'homéopathie en Belgique - KCE

28 Homeopathy KCE Reports 154
Practitioners consider homeopathy to be more appropriate than allopathic medicine,
particularly for health problems characterised as “chronic”, which biomedicine admits it
is powerless to cure completely because of the state of medical knowledge, for
example 70 .
“Ca veut dire quoi, ‘chronique’, ça veut dire qu’ils ne peuvent pas les guérir, mais ne
peuvent que leur donner des médicaments pour les soulager, alors que bien souvent, on peut
guérir ces maladies par homéopathie…” (Practitioner 1)
• Practitioners who claim that they practise homeopathy as the result of a
‘vocation’ justify their choice by a set of personal predispositions that
prompted them to choose this form of medicine from among other possible
medical orientations, in spite of certain social and contextual factors that
could have influenced their choice
• By contrast, practitioner ‘converts’ have found homeopathy to be a more
exciting and less routine medicine than the allopathic approach they
formerly espoused.
• Both vocationists and converts emphasise the sacrifices they have had to
make to train in a medicine that has many advantages over allopathic
medicine but is rejected by faculties.
3.3.4.2 The different components of homeopathic treatments
Anamnesis
Homeopathic treatment always begins with an initial consultation, lasting up to
2.5 hours, to take the patient’s case history (anamnesis), making it certainly one of the
longest case-taking consultations of any type of medicine.
“Je fais toujours une anamnèse complète : j’interroge le patient sur ses antécédents
médicaux, quels sont les problèmes, sur tout ce qu’un médecin doit savoir avant de commencer
à soigner un patient, bref, j’ai une démarche proche de ce que j’ai appris en Faculté, mais je ne
vais pas aboutir à un remède allopathique.” (Practitioner 2)
However, consultations with paediatric and complex homeopaths d are shorter because
case-taking is more limited.
“Hier duurt de gemiddelde consultatie 20 minuten. Het is wel zo, bij die gevallen, die
meer uitzonderlijke gevallen van zwaar eczeem of zwaar astma, waar er echt dieper moet
gekeken worden, dan is het meestal 40 tot 60 minuten.” (Practitioner 10)
Homeopathic case-taking is structured in such a way as to induce patients to express a
set of elements enabling the practitioner to form a rough picture of each patient and of
their situation at the time of their consultation:
“L’important est de partir de la personne, de ses plaintes, et de son vécu, qui a quand
même de l’importance : on ne tombe pas malade par hasard.” (Practitioner 1)
Case-taking consultations therefore allow patients plenty of opportunity to talk, in
order to induce them to express what practitioners call their “vital sensations”, or
“inner experience”. Meanwhile, the practitioner takes notes, working with his or her
repertories on an open-book basis to seek overlaps between the symptoms identified
and the remedies associated with them.
“Il faut être à l’écoute, et sans préjugés, sans émettre des hypothèses, être avec le
patient tout le temps de la consultation, de manière à rester le plus neutre possible, tout en
essayant d’aller au fond des choses…” (Practitioner 2)
d See below: complex homeopaths use a combination of remedies, whereas unicists seek A SINGLE
remedy.