Interview of Alain Naudé, translator of the Organon of Medicine, conducted by Greg Cooper by mail in March, 2010

Greg Cooper: What are the most important qualities of character that a student of homeopathy should have?

Alain Naudé: The most important qualities of character a student of homeopathy should have. Well, these are the same as the qualities a human being should have:

integrity (sincerity, truthfulness, humbleness, a real desire for the good of others, the refusal to advance oneself to the detriment of anybody else).

intelligence (facility in understanding not only information but situations, relationships and human beings, not only intellectually but at deeper more subtle levels).

maturity (experience sometimes bestows maturity, but not always).

most important of all, love and compassion, without which nothing else has any meaning.

GC: Could you describe the method of Hahnemann, according to the Organon which you translated, and compare it to the method of Kent, which many homeopaths use?

AN: The homeopathy of Hahnemann and Kent are the same, not different "schools". Kent had unlimited reverence for Hahnemann and merely developed his teaching along the same lines and according to the same principles he had established. So there are not, and there cannot be two different methods - only one.

GC: Are there any teachings of Krishnamurti which may be useful to homeopaths?

AN. Homeopathy belongs in a spiritual, vitalistic view of life and it is therefore in perfect harmony with the basic tenets of all the great religions and the aspirations of all the great heroes who live to protect nature, animals and man and life.

GC: What were some special contributions of Pierre Schmidt to homeopathy? What would he like us to remember him for?

AN: Pierre Schmidt was a worthy, brilliant student of Drs Gladwin of Austin, two of Kent's most illustrious pupils, and of Sir John Weir, a great English homeopath. He was able to synthesize all the strands and aspects of classical homeopathy into one coherent, indissoluble doctrine. This methodology applies the law of similars, a natural unchanging law of nature. The law dictates and determines the methodology, not the other way around. So we have no choice or leeway or preference in the way we practice homeopathy. Our only choice is to obey the law or not. Innovation, inventiveness and originality are not involved.

GC: When a client has many health issues, what general guidelines can you give as to when to prescribe using the local symptoms and when to prescribe using the mental/emotional/general symptoms?

AN: Whenever we prescribe, whether for a chronic or an acute condition, we take into account all the symptoms (mental, emotional, physical). All these symptoms are connected because they all belong to one patient, and they are that patient. They are not separate from him. One patient, one disorder underlying all the apparently different symptoms. Our task is to discover the unity of the patient's condition and the one remedy that would reproduce that same pattern on a healthy person. It is the sameness between two totalities (the patient's totality and the remedy's totality) which cures the patient because he has only one organism and there is a no room in it for two almost identical sets of symptoms.

The Organon very clearly states the law and the methodology applying it. There cannot be different "schools" of homeopathy any more than there can be different "schools" of the decimal system.