Dr. Edward Bach and Homeopathy
Homeopathic research
His research into vaccines was going well, but despite this Dr Bach felt dissatisfied with the way doctors were expected to concentrate on diseases and ignore the whole person. He aspired to a more holistic approach to medicine. Perhaps this explains why, not being a homeopath, he took the offer of a post at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital.
Once there he soon noticed the parallels between his work on vaccines and the principles of homeopathy. He adapted his vaccines to produce a series of seven homeopathic nosodes. This work and its subsequent publication brought him some fame in homeopathic circles. People began to refer to him as ‘the second Hahnemann’.
The flower remedies
Up to now Bach had been working with bacteria, but he wanted to find remedies that would be purer and less reliant on the products of disease. He began collecting plants and in particular flowers – the most highly-developed part of a plant – in the hope of replacing the nosodes with a series of gentler remedies.
By 1930 he was so enthused by the direction his work was taking that he gave up his lucrative Harley Street practice and left London, determined to devote the rest of his life to the new system of medicine that he was sure could be found in nature. He took with him as his assistant a radiographer called Nora Weeks.
Just as he had abandoned his home, office and work, Dr. Bach began to abandon the scientific method and its reliance on laboratories and reductionism. He fell back instead on his natural gifts, and allowed his intuition to guide him to the right plants.
Over years of trial and error, which involved preparing and testing thousands of plants, he found one by one the remedies he wanted. Each was aimed at a particular mental state or emotion. He found that when he treated the personalities and feelings of his patients their unhappiness and physical distress would be alleviated naturally as the healing potential in their bodies was unblocked and allowed to work once more.
To review the works of Dr. Bach, please visit the Bach Centre site at https://www.bachcentre.com/centre/drbach.htm