High-Impact Homeopathy In a Dominican Community
By Douglas Brown, CCH, FNP, RSHom(NA)
Synopsis: Most of my homeopathic experience consists of treating Americans with considerable resources, including access to a variety of health care services. A recent trip to an isolated mountain community in the Dominican Republic gave me a glimpse of the potential for healing that homeopathy holds for the majority of the world's people, who manage to live without resources we consider necessities.
Homeopathy can provide deep perspectives on cross-cultural experience. My eyes were certainly opened in new ways when I had the opportunity to treat residents of a small mountain community in the Dominican Republic. This 10 day trip was inspired by my desire to get to know the family and community my now 20 year old daughter had first adopted in 2002 when she volunteered with the organization Amigos de las Americas.
I have long had an interest in meeting and working with people whose experiences were shaped by a life so different from my own. Knowing the power of homeopathy to heal with so “little” material, it also makes sense to me that homeopathy should become the ally of the world’s poor, and not just the prerogative of the rich, the royal, the better-educated, and the more fortunate.
The drive from the airport in Puerto Plata to Lago azul* was hair-raising. We had been met by Rafaela, Emily’s Dominican Mom, and Kelli, a young man who owned the “guagua” (privately-owned pick-up truck used for public transport) in which we made our way from the bustling tourist center on the north coast, towards the little settlement nestled in the mountains close to the border with Haiti. As cars and pickups veered into the opposing line of traffic to pass, and motorcyclists, unhelmeted, carried impossible loads of both human and non-human cargo around us, Kelli kept us laughing with jokes while he veered around potholes, pedestrians, and slow heavy trucks with wheels that looked that they might fall off.
We left not only the congestion of the north coast but also the pavement, and rattled and banged up the 14 km rutted dirt road that lead to Lago azul, Kelli became more serious. So many young people were leaving Lago azul for lack of opportunity there. A school educating farmers in organic, sustainable methods had been closed when a change in government resulted in a cutting off of funds. The difficult, sometimes impossible drive on the unfinished road posed huge obstacles to marketing the produce and crops laboriously teased from the earth.
Synopsis: Most of my homeopathic experience consists of treating Americans with considerable resources, including access to a variety of health care services. A recent trip to an isolated mountain community in the Dominican Republic gave me a glimpse of the potential for healing that homeopathy holds for the majority of the world's people, who manage to live without resources we consider necessities.
Homeopathy can provide deep perspectives on cross-cultural experience. My eyes were certainly opened in new ways when I had the opportunity to treat residents of a small mountain community in the Dominican Republic. This 10 day trip was inspired by my desire to get to know the family and community my now 20 year old daughter had first adopted in 2002 when she volunteered with the organization Amigos de las Americas.
I have long had an interest in meeting and working with people whose experiences were shaped by a life so different from my own. Knowing the power of homeopathy to heal with so “little” material, it also makes sense to me that homeopathy should become the ally of the world’s poor, and not just the prerogative of the rich, the royal, the better-educated, and the more fortunate.
The drive from the airport in Puerto Plata to Lago azul* was hair-raising. We had been met by Rafaela, Emily’s Dominican Mom, and Kelli, a young man who owned the “guagua” (privately-owned pick-up truck used for public transport) in which we made our way from the bustling tourist center on the north coast, towards the little settlement nestled in the mountains close to the border with Haiti. As cars and pickups veered into the opposing line of traffic to pass, and motorcyclists, unhelmeted, carried impossible loads of both human and non-human cargo around us, Kelli kept us laughing with jokes while he veered around potholes, pedestrians, and slow heavy trucks with wheels that looked that they might fall off.
We left not only the congestion of the north coast but also the pavement, and rattled and banged up the 14 km rutted dirt road that lead to Lago azul, Kelli became more serious. So many young people were leaving Lago azul for lack of opportunity there. A school educating farmers in organic, sustainable methods had been closed when a change in government resulted in a cutting off of funds. The difficult, sometimes impossible drive on the unfinished road posed huge obstacles to marketing the produce and crops laboriously teased from the earth.
My daughter Emily meets her Dominican brother’s baby
While I was prepared to see poverty, I was struck with just how poor people are. Wooden shacks with dirt floors. Children with no shoes or shorts. People standing by the road, or by their houses, seemingly just passing the time, or perhaps just waiting for something to happen. People carrying huge loads on motorbikes held together by coiled wire, or on their heads, or selling fish out of a box on the back of a motorscooter.
When we finally reached Lago azul, my shins were bruised from pressing into the dashboard, and my body sore from being bounced into the passenger door and seatback a few too many times. The sun had already gone down, so the full beauty of the surroundings would not be appreciable until the next day. At the moment I just took in the incredible beauty of a night sky undiluted by electric ground light or obscured by cloud cover. Lago azul somehow partakes of the clarity and purity of that night sky, as well of the material emptiness of deep space.
As I was shown into my room, Rafaela pointed out the bucket under the bed that I could use if I needed to pee at night. There was no electric light, and to reach the bathroom I’d need to find my way outside to the bathroom entrance. Besides, running water ceased at night, so the toilet wasn’t particularly functional during those hours. This was something new to get used to!
Rafaela had written by email that she was suffering from a worsening chronic back problem, with associated loss of strength in her arm. Her request for help with that inspired me to come with homeopathic medical kits, generously provided by Michael Quinn, owner of Hahnemann Labs. Since Rafaela often tended to her sick neighbors with herbs and teas and advice, I thought she might have some use and interest for these kits should I leave them behind, with some teaching materials.
En route, however, I wondered whether I had over-estimated the level of interest. Was it fair to leave such a large number of medicines with her, when knowledge of how to use them is so difficult to achieve? Was it right to have asked so much of Michael Quinn, who had without a moment’s hesitation agreed to donate the kits, if they did not get much use?
Whatever anxieties or insecurities I indulged in on my incoming flight were quickly forgotten after two days in Lago azul. After treating Rafaela she began bringing neighbors, family members, and friends to see me, and before long the family’s tiny living space was filled with people waiting for “una consulta”.
Since homeopathy recognizes that physical symptoms and disease on the one hand, and mental and emotional experience on the other, are but two different aspects of a single underlying state of being, a homeopathic inquiry into the background of a disturbance in health cannot help but provide a deep window into the life experience of the patient. So my consultations over Rafaela and Alexandro’s kitchen table, and in the homes of my less mobile patients, allowed me to understand at a much deeper level what it means to be born, grow, and live there, then I would have had I just remained a guest and a friend.
My week-long work immersion in Lago azul demonstrated just how much people with severe, untreated health problems, in places where health resources are scarce or non-existent, can benefit from homeopathic intervention. A few examples:
A neighbor who worked as a hairdresser complained of pain in her mouth and gums of three days duration. She presented with swelling of the right mandible, and exam revealed a probable dental abscess. Because of the strong amelioration from occupation and from firm pressure, and her dreams of work, I gave her Bryonia. The pain and swelling were completely gone within two days.
An 8 year old boy was brought by his mother because of pain, swelling, and immobility of his right arm. A week earlier he had wounded his upper arm with a fragment of glass. Now examination revealed a cellulitis. The arm was very warm to the touch, tender, and swollen. Twelve hours after a dose of Apis 200c he appeared about 50 percent improved. I repeated the dose again, just before leaving the community.
One evening, as I was getting ready for bed, a man knocked on our door asking for my help. A diabetic mother who had recently been discharged from a regional hospital was slipping into a coma.
As I made my through the crowd of people gathered around the patient’s bed, my heart sank. The woman could only moan, indicating a headache. She was covered with a cold perspiration. More strikingly, she had moderate edema in both upper and lower extremities, indicating either kidney or heart failure. I was dismayed to learn that nobody in the community, including the young doctor posted there by the government, had any way of checking her blood sugar, let alone any access to a simple chest x-ray. She was on a fixed daily dose of subcutaneous insulin, and the papers from the hospital the family eagerly presented to me were nothing more than laboratory orders: not a single test result. Auscultation of heart and lungs demonstrated just a few faint rales in the right lung base, suggesting but not proving that the kidneys were more likely in trouble than the heart.
When sugar on the tongue failed to produce any improvement in her mental status I had to come to terms with the likelihood of a hyperglycemic coma. The doctor, who had now also arrived, could offer nothing but the suggestion that she try to send her off the following day back to the hospital. I personally wasn’t sure she would survive the night. After questioning family and community members, I discovered that the patient had developed Type 2 diabetes along with depression after her husband had killed her brother. I also observed that while her room was crowded with concerned family members and neighbors, her husband seemed aloof, in a different part of the house.
With this information only I selected Natrum sulphuricum 200c. I gave her a single dose, and hoped for the best. The following morning I found her sitting up in bed, fully conscious, and pain free. More importantly, her edema was reduced by 80 percent. She had urinated frequently during the night, and was now fairly comfortable.
Why Natrum sulphuricum? The most worrisome and striking physical sign was the edema, which suggested the sycotic miasm. (One aspect of Sycosis is excess, such as excess fluid). The feeling in Natrum sulphuricum, as described by Rajan Sankaran and others, is scorned or disgraced by the person with whom she has a primary relationship. There is also the rubric Perspiration, during Headache. It was, of course, an educated guess; yet one which may have saved her life.
In another case a soft-spoken 52 y.o. campesino (poor farmer) complained of chronic neck pain related to a deviation in his spine, as well as chronic heartburn. He traced his neck pain to an incident in which he was sharing a heavy load with a team of workers, and suddenly had to shoulder all the weight by himself. He felt angry and mortified; what particularly angered him was that they received the same pay as he did. In spite of his anger, he said nothing, but developed this chronic neck pain. He described himself as humble, and appeared both very mild-mannered yet dignified. Within two days of receiving Staphysagria 200c his neck and stomach pain were both much improved. Staphysagria is one of the first remedies to consider when the patient’s symptoms relate to a sense of mortification with suppression of anger.
A 69 year old woman complained of attacks of pain in her upper abdomen. She had eaten almost nothing in several days, and complained that she has been living alone (very unusual in a rural Dominican community) for 20 years. “Since my first husband died and my second husband is a good-for-nothing I have to do everything by myself”, she said. She also complained of sensitivity to sun and heat, which gave her headaches, especially if she was annoyed with someone. After two daily doses of Natrum muriaticum 30c her abdominal pain resolved and she began eating normally. Natrum muriaticum was selected because of the deep-seated grief and disappointment in her marriages, the intermittent nature of the symptoms, and the sensitivity to sun and heat.
I don’t know the results for most of the nearly 50 patients I treated as I was in the community for only one week. Many will only receive their remedies when a package I have sent reaches the community some weeks from now. How will a teenage girl confined to her wheelchair, wracked with up to 15 convulsions a day, which have robbed her of the ability to walk and speak, respond to her dose of Cicuta? How will the 12 y.o. girl who lost most of her hearing and her ability to talk since an extremely high fever when she was five years old respond to her dose of Pyrogenium? To find out and treat additional community members I hope to return this summer, and will let you know, si Dios quiere (if God so desires, as the Dominicans would say).
If you, the reader, are a homeopath, you may be struck by how simple, clear-cut and straightforward these cases appear. Unlike our typical cases in the USA, patients have not had long histories of suppressive allopathic treatment, nor the education, psychotherapy, or sophistication to compensate or disguise their core experiences. For me the most difficult aspect was working in Spanish, as these rural Dominicans often spoke in a way that was unintelligible to me! Rafaela, our host, was my frequent interpreter from Spanish to Spanish!
In Lago azul, as in much of the rural countryside of the Dominican Republic, the stage of life is prepared with a minimum of material resources. People grow up with a bare minimum of food and shelter. The unstated but assumed background of life is one of a struggle to keep food in the stomach, a roof overhead, and a shirt on one’s back. Things we take so much for granted, such as running water, hot water, electricity, access to medical care, a paved road, are luxuries to these people.
While I was prepared to see poverty, I was struck with just how poor people are. Wooden shacks with dirt floors. Children with no shoes or shorts. People standing by the road, or by their houses, seemingly just passing the time, or perhaps just waiting for something to happen. People carrying huge loads on motorbikes held together by coiled wire, or on their heads, or selling fish out of a box on the back of a motorscooter.
When we finally reached Lago azul, my shins were bruised from pressing into the dashboard, and my body sore from being bounced into the passenger door and seatback a few too many times. The sun had already gone down, so the full beauty of the surroundings would not be appreciable until the next day. At the moment I just took in the incredible beauty of a night sky undiluted by electric ground light or obscured by cloud cover. Lago azul somehow partakes of the clarity and purity of that night sky, as well of the material emptiness of deep space.
As I was shown into my room, Rafaela pointed out the bucket under the bed that I could use if I needed to pee at night. There was no electric light, and to reach the bathroom I’d need to find my way outside to the bathroom entrance. Besides, running water ceased at night, so the toilet wasn’t particularly functional during those hours. This was something new to get used to!
Rafaela had written by email that she was suffering from a worsening chronic back problem, with associated loss of strength in her arm. Her request for help with that inspired me to come with homeopathic medical kits, generously provided by Michael Quinn, owner of Hahnemann Labs. Since Rafaela often tended to her sick neighbors with herbs and teas and advice, I thought she might have some use and interest for these kits should I leave them behind, with some teaching materials.
En route, however, I wondered whether I had over-estimated the level of interest. Was it fair to leave such a large number of medicines with her, when knowledge of how to use them is so difficult to achieve? Was it right to have asked so much of Michael Quinn, who had without a moment’s hesitation agreed to donate the kits, if they did not get much use?
Whatever anxieties or insecurities I indulged in on my incoming flight were quickly forgotten after two days in Lago azul. After treating Rafaela she began bringing neighbors, family members, and friends to see me, and before long the family’s tiny living space was filled with people waiting for “una consulta”.
Since homeopathy recognizes that physical symptoms and disease on the one hand, and mental and emotional experience on the other, are but two different aspects of a single underlying state of being, a homeopathic inquiry into the background of a disturbance in health cannot help but provide a deep window into the life experience of the patient. So my consultations over Rafaela and Alexandro’s kitchen table, and in the homes of my less mobile patients, allowed me to understand at a much deeper level what it means to be born, grow, and live there, then I would have had I just remained a guest and a friend.
My week-long work immersion in Lago azul demonstrated just how much people with severe, untreated health problems, in places where health resources are scarce or non-existent, can benefit from homeopathic intervention. A few examples:
A neighbor who worked as a hairdresser complained of pain in her mouth and gums of three days duration. She presented with swelling of the right mandible, and exam revealed a probable dental abscess. Because of the strong amelioration from occupation and from firm pressure, and her dreams of work, I gave her Bryonia. The pain and swelling were completely gone within two days.
An 8 year old boy was brought by his mother because of pain, swelling, and immobility of his right arm. A week earlier he had wounded his upper arm with a fragment of glass. Now examination revealed a cellulitis. The arm was very warm to the touch, tender, and swollen. Twelve hours after a dose of Apis 200c he appeared about 50 percent improved. I repeated the dose again, just before leaving the community.
One evening, as I was getting ready for bed, a man knocked on our door asking for my help. A diabetic mother who had recently been discharged from a regional hospital was slipping into a coma.
As I made my through the crowd of people gathered around the patient’s bed, my heart sank. The woman could only moan, indicating a headache. She was covered with a cold perspiration. More strikingly, she had moderate edema in both upper and lower extremities, indicating either kidney or heart failure. I was dismayed to learn that nobody in the community, including the young doctor posted there by the government, had any way of checking her blood sugar, let alone any access to a simple chest x-ray. She was on a fixed daily dose of subcutaneous insulin, and the papers from the hospital the family eagerly presented to me were nothing more than laboratory orders: not a single test result. Auscultation of heart and lungs demonstrated just a few faint rales in the right lung base, suggesting but not proving that the kidneys were more likely in trouble than the heart.
When sugar on the tongue failed to produce any improvement in her mental status I had to come to terms with the likelihood of a hyperglycemic coma. The doctor, who had now also arrived, could offer nothing but the suggestion that she try to send her off the following day back to the hospital. I personally wasn’t sure she would survive the night. After questioning family and community members, I discovered that the patient had developed Type 2 diabetes along with depression after her husband had killed her brother. I also observed that while her room was crowded with concerned family members and neighbors, her husband seemed aloof, in a different part of the house.
With this information only I selected Natrum sulphuricum 200c. I gave her a single dose, and hoped for the best. The following morning I found her sitting up in bed, fully conscious, and pain free. More importantly, her edema was reduced by 80 percent. She had urinated frequently during the night, and was now fairly comfortable.
Why Natrum sulphuricum? The most worrisome and striking physical sign was the edema, which suggested the sycotic miasm. (One aspect of Sycosis is excess, such as excess fluid). The feeling in Natrum sulphuricum, as described by Rajan Sankaran and others, is scorned or disgraced by the person with whom she has a primary relationship. There is also the rubric Perspiration, during Headache. It was, of course, an educated guess; yet one which may have saved her life.
In another case a soft-spoken 52 y.o. campesino (poor farmer) complained of chronic neck pain related to a deviation in his spine, as well as chronic heartburn. He traced his neck pain to an incident in which he was sharing a heavy load with a team of workers, and suddenly had to shoulder all the weight by himself. He felt angry and mortified; what particularly angered him was that they received the same pay as he did. In spite of his anger, he said nothing, but developed this chronic neck pain. He described himself as humble, and appeared both very mild-mannered yet dignified. Within two days of receiving Staphysagria 200c his neck and stomach pain were both much improved. Staphysagria is one of the first remedies to consider when the patient’s symptoms relate to a sense of mortification with suppression of anger.
A 69 year old woman complained of attacks of pain in her upper abdomen. She had eaten almost nothing in several days, and complained that she has been living alone (very unusual in a rural Dominican community) for 20 years. “Since my first husband died and my second husband is a good-for-nothing I have to do everything by myself”, she said. She also complained of sensitivity to sun and heat, which gave her headaches, especially if she was annoyed with someone. After two daily doses of Natrum muriaticum 30c her abdominal pain resolved and she began eating normally. Natrum muriaticum was selected because of the deep-seated grief and disappointment in her marriages, the intermittent nature of the symptoms, and the sensitivity to sun and heat.
I don’t know the results for most of the nearly 50 patients I treated as I was in the community for only one week. Many will only receive their remedies when a package I have sent reaches the community some weeks from now. How will a teenage girl confined to her wheelchair, wracked with up to 15 convulsions a day, which have robbed her of the ability to walk and speak, respond to her dose of Cicuta? How will the 12 y.o. girl who lost most of her hearing and her ability to talk since an extremely high fever when she was five years old respond to her dose of Pyrogenium? To find out and treat additional community members I hope to return this summer, and will let you know, si Dios quiere (if God so desires, as the Dominicans would say).
If you, the reader, are a homeopath, you may be struck by how simple, clear-cut and straightforward these cases appear. Unlike our typical cases in the USA, patients have not had long histories of suppressive allopathic treatment, nor the education, psychotherapy, or sophistication to compensate or disguise their core experiences. For me the most difficult aspect was working in Spanish, as these rural Dominicans often spoke in a way that was unintelligible to me! Rafaela, our host, was my frequent interpreter from Spanish to Spanish!
In Lago azul, as in much of the rural countryside of the Dominican Republic, the stage of life is prepared with a minimum of material resources. People grow up with a bare minimum of food and shelter. The unstated but assumed background of life is one of a struggle to keep food in the stomach, a roof overhead, and a shirt on one’s back. Things we take so much for granted, such as running water, hot water, electricity, access to medical care, a paved road, are luxuries to these people.
Emily’s Dominican Dad, Alexandro, who with his family hosted us
It is a hardscrabble life, and it gives a ‘salt-of-the earth’ kind of quality to their character. The wrinkles and furrows of what we think of as the aged are easy to find on the brows of the 50 year old. There is a paucity of formal education and reading, a wealth of life experience seasoned with humility, humor, and occasionally bitterness. There is so much sadness (indeed, the remedy Ignatia, well known for its ability to help resolve deep or silent grief, was my most frequent prescription), yet an extraordinary capacity for laughter and joy. Many take solace in alcohol, but more find refuge in the closeness of family, in the ease of visiting with friends and neighbors, and in the hope provided by community organizing and planning for a better future. Many have lost loved ones to death by lightning, accident, or untreated disease, but most continue to dance the meringue and the bachata, and express deep pride at being a Dominican who has, after all, survived to tell their story to those who are willing to listen and share…
If you are a practicing homeopath or student with at least two years of homeopathic education, and would like to accompany me on a future visit to this community, please contact me.
*I have fictionalized the name of the town only in order to protect the confidentiality of the individuals in the cases described.
Doug Brown, CCH, FNP, RSHom is a graduate of Yale University School of Nursing and the Hahnemann College of Homeopathy. He became a homeopath when after 11 years of working with conventional medicine as a Family Nurse Practitioner he remained dissatisfied with its failure to cure chronic disease and with its fragmentation of care. He treats children and adults in Portland, OR, and Walla Walla, WA, and can be reached at (503) 253-6334, or by email at [email protected].
It is a hardscrabble life, and it gives a ‘salt-of-the earth’ kind of quality to their character. The wrinkles and furrows of what we think of as the aged are easy to find on the brows of the 50 year old. There is a paucity of formal education and reading, a wealth of life experience seasoned with humility, humor, and occasionally bitterness. There is so much sadness (indeed, the remedy Ignatia, well known for its ability to help resolve deep or silent grief, was my most frequent prescription), yet an extraordinary capacity for laughter and joy. Many take solace in alcohol, but more find refuge in the closeness of family, in the ease of visiting with friends and neighbors, and in the hope provided by community organizing and planning for a better future. Many have lost loved ones to death by lightning, accident, or untreated disease, but most continue to dance the meringue and the bachata, and express deep pride at being a Dominican who has, after all, survived to tell their story to those who are willing to listen and share…
If you are a practicing homeopath or student with at least two years of homeopathic education, and would like to accompany me on a future visit to this community, please contact me.
*I have fictionalized the name of the town only in order to protect the confidentiality of the individuals in the cases described.
Doug Brown, CCH, FNP, RSHom is a graduate of Yale University School of Nursing and the Hahnemann College of Homeopathy. He became a homeopath when after 11 years of working with conventional medicine as a Family Nurse Practitioner he remained dissatisfied with its failure to cure chronic disease and with its fragmentation of care. He treats children and adults in Portland, OR, and Walla Walla, WA, and can be reached at (503) 253-6334, or by email at [email protected].
Doug Brown, Homeopathic Healing, 833 S.W. 11th Avenue, Suite 216, Portland, Oregon 97205
© Douglas Brown, Homeopathic Healing • 503-253-6334 • [email protected]
© Douglas Brown, Homeopathic Healing • 503-253-6334 • [email protected]