Who Is The Guinea Pig?
When I wrote my PhD in medicine in the late 1970s, I worked for part of the time at the cancer research center of the time-honored University of Heidelberg in Germany. Every day I took care of the rats, mice and other animals that were used for experiments with ever new substances which were studied as to their potential to create or heal cancer. An incredible number of animals are being used in such research. I do not want to describe what I have seen other than to mention that those memories still torment me. The silent screams of huge numbers of animals are part of all medications that are being prescribed in medicine. Even cosmetics are being tested on animals. With every drug you have to use, please send a prayer of gratitude to these tortured beings that suffered and died for us.
Did you ever wonder how homeopathic remedies are tested? Guess what: We are our own guinea pigs. Since the beginning of homeopathy about 200 years ago, all homeopaths test remedies on themselves. Everybody who wants to become a homeopath has to partake in such an endeavor. We call it a proving. Healthy people take a homeopathic remedy in an overdose without knowing what they are taking. The effects of those remedies on the provers are being scrutinized and studied. Homeopathic remedies are highly energized and extremely diluted. They do not have side effects that need to be avoided, they have effects that need to be understood in order to use them in treatments.
In homeopathy we treat diseases with remedies that in their crude form, before being prepared as remedy, create symptoms that are similar to those experienced by our patient. Like cures like. It is like fighting a prairie fire in sending an artificial fire in its direction, the two fires meet and collapse.
In the provings, we experience pains and feelings that the sick person might experience. It gives homeopaths a deep understanding for what a patient might go through, an understanding based not on learned book knowledge but on experience. Provings not only increase our understanding of a patient, our grasp of a remedy. One of the greatest benefits is the opportunity, with our own deliberate suffering to contribute to the healing of people we might never meet. Provings are a magnificent opportunity to simultaneously expand our own awareness and to contribute to something bigger than our individual selves, we contribute to homeopathy and the millions of people finding healing in it.
With every remedy I prescribe, I give thanks to all the people that have given of themselves to the development of a treasure of thousands of remedies. Yes, we are our own guinea pigs and like in real life we sometimes carry scars from what we have gone through. Whoever is taking part in a proving is also a scout, a trailblazer on the path of healing. As such we carry our scars with gratitude and pride.
Do you have a friend or relative that you care about and who is facing a health challenge? Tell him about homeopathy. Pass on my email address. It might change his / her struggle to a path of healing.