Interview of Dr. Luc De Schepper - part 1
by Greg Cooper -
October, 2004.
© 2004 Minimum Price Books
If book sales are any indication, Dr. Luc De Schepper is one of the most influential homeopathic doctors of our time. He has authored 12 books on homeopathy, acupuncture and holistic health care, including his latest, Achieving and Maintaining the Simillimum, which teaches the most difficult aspect of homeopathy - how to stay on the right course in the arduous road to curing a chronic patient.
Dr. Luc De Schepper  |
Dr. Luc has medical licenses in Belgium and the United States; an Acupuncture license in Holland and California; and a Ph.D. in Acupuncture from the International Society of Acupuncture in Paris. Dr. Luc has received the Diploma of the British Institute of Homeopathy (D.I. Hom.) as well as the Certificate of the Hahnemann Academy of North America. He is fluent in four languages and is a renowned lecturer in the fields of acupuncture and homeopathy.
Dr. Luc is the founder of the Renaissance Institute of Classical Homeopathy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has seen over 200,000 patients in 29 years of practice, and in recent years has treated them exclusively with homeopathic remedies in LM potencies.
I first contacted Dr. Luc in May, 1994, when I bought some of his first homeopathic book on Musculoskeletal Healing. Now, after selling loads of his books each year, I contacted him by email with several questions (in black) and he supplied the answers (in brown):
GC: Dr. Luc, before we talk about your most recent books and activities, tell me how it is that a medical doctor, trained in Belgium, breaks out of conventional medicine first to Acupuncture, then to homeopathy, and now uses exclusively homeopathy with the lesser known LM potencies? What is the nature of the energy that has driven you from the beginning and led you through these stages to your present situation?
Dr. Luc: It took me only two months out of medical school to realize that "conventional" allopathic medicine was not going to be my cup of tea. As was the custom for every practitioner, I replaced a physician on vacation for 14 days. I saw the same patients on Mondays, another set on Tuesdays, the next set on Wednesdays, etc. While I appreciated the closeness with people during these house calls, I realized I was just prescribing their usual meds, taking their blood pressure and for the rest I was a welcome social diversion. Doomed with the prospect of falling into mental inertia, I went to a book store in Belgium, looked up alternative modalities, and was on my way the next month to Holland to the Dutch Doctor’s Acupuncture Society, a three year course in Amsterdam. Since I was equally close to Paris, my tubercular nature drove me to Paris at the same time to follow the French school. The rest is history. Already exposed to homeopathy at that time, I have never stopped studying even up till today.GC: What is the biggest challenge you have had to overcome?
Dr. Luc: It certainly was not my doubts or the eagerness of my patients to have found an alternative. As usual it is the human Ego that creates jealousy and envy: "Why can he do something that I can’t do?" My increasing success in practice early on, raised loud dissenting voices of my colleagues who went so far as to threaten their patients to refuse to see them if they continued consulting me. It did not help: by the time I left Belgium in 1981 (getting married to an American citizen-that’s what women can do), I had one of the biggest practices in Belgium. At that point and now, my colleagues who used to call me a "quack" were pursuing studying alternative modalities themselves.GC: I noticed in the July/August 1998 issue of Homeopathy Today, it was reported that you gave a benefit-seminar and raised over $14,000 for the National Center for Homeopathy. As well, you frequently travel, on your own, to help relieve the suffering of poor people in third world countries. At first glance, these activities seem to be costing you a lot of time and money, but how would you describe their effect on your life and on the community? 
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Dr. Luc: Even before I entered medical school, I dreamed of making a difference for the poor in third world counties. Marriage and children postponed these desires but the moment I arrived at a point in my life that my children were taken care of, I could finally turn to what I cherish the most: offering help to those that never receive help. Besides donating money to the NCH, I organized another afternoon of introduction to homeopathy to my patients, raised another $15,000 and donated the money to build a clinic in a poor rural area in India. With just this amount of money, a clinic was build and operated for a whole year just on this budget. It stimulated me to get involved even more personally and I have made trips to South Africa and Kenya where I was teaching in several places and treating the poor in villages. Maybe it is little what I can achieve as an individual, but don’t say that to those whose grateful eyes will be forever in my heart. There is much to do, I have little money, but I tell my children, "I am deducting it from your inheritance!" After all, they are taken care of. I know that for the rest of my life, I want to dedicate my efforts to introduce homeopathy to third world countries, especially those that pharmaceutical companies have no interest in because the people are dirt poor! Fertile ground to introduce effective and cheap homeopathy! |
GC: Can you recall for us your most memorable case, perhaps a case that will ingrain the value of homeopathy in our minds? Why did it move you so?
Dr. Luc: Among those 200,000 and plus cases, I could cite numerous cases that overjoyed me, moved me and earned me the respect and love of my patients. I loved seeing children, knowing how much their lives would be changed for the better. Don’t you think mothers were grateful when after 35 rounds of antibiotics in 5 years for ear infections, I managed in a couple of months to stop that recurrence forever? Just that would be enough for me to compensate me for all the hard labor in my life. Obviously there is the whole slew of ADD, ADHD, ODD, and "incorrectible dangerous" children that turned out to be normal after correction with the simillimum. One case that still sticks to my memory was the case of a 33 year old lady, who at age 19 had a head trauma, which lead to a series of serious delusions. They came to me after having seen 44 different doctors. I managed to cure her in about one year’s time. And what about those innumerable depressed cases, where I could give quality of life back? But most of all, in my thirty years of practice, I have met with my own number of failures, which made a far deeper impression on me than my successes. These failures were priceless experiences because they forced me to explore other views and modify my approach to find the simillimum for my patients. What I could not resolve five years ago, I can now. What I cannot resolve today, I hope to be able to unriddle tomorrow. The solution: continued study and dedication to mankind.GC: Who is your favorite modern homeopath? Why?
Dr. Luc: There are few. Vithoulkas for his dedication and the suffering and personal attacks he had to go through. David Little for his studiousness and practicing true classical homeopathy for the poor in India for so many years. And Andre Saine for being a homeopath who also bases his practice on the application of our Laws and Principles and is not afraid to back it up with facts.GC: Favorite 'old' homeopath? Why?
Dr. Luc: I have admiration for a lot more of the old masters. Hahnemann above all for obvious reasons; Hering for his dedication and unbiased observation which changed the face of homeopathy; von Boenninghausen for giving us a great analytical method, so little known among modern homeopaths; Adolph Lippe for being a staunch supporter of true homeopathic medicine; I love Elizabeth Hubbard, Margaret Tyler and Dorothy Shepherd, three female homeopaths, who always were practicing at the forefront of homeopathy. But Dr. Pierre Schmidt of Switzerland has a special place in my heart for his intelligence, his wide approach to other modalities and the numerous successes in his practice. He was first in his medical school, a proof that often homeopathy is mostly understandable to the most intelligent and flexible physicians. "Aude sapere," "Dare to know," is a credo every physician should follow! Pierre Schmidt was a star among the homeopaths!GC: Do you have a favorite non-homeopathic book?
Dr. Luc: I can’t remember when I read my last novel; that must be ages ago. I truly love biographies, true adventures, battles of WWII, the battle between the Boers and the English and books about true suffering in this world. And all the books of Carl Jung! They brought me immense joy and education in introspection of the human shadow side, as well as my own. Suffering is an everyday fact of life for 90% of the people. Reading about it moves me and directs my life aspirations to bring the little I can do to relieve the suffering of people.GC: What changes have you seen in the homeopathic community since you first began practicing, and how do you feel about the way it is going? Has anything happened in the homeopathic community that has upset you?
Dr. Luc: The "changes" I have seen in homeopathy are in fact nothing new. The great masters I mentioned before had to struggle with the same issues as we do today: the bastardizing of true homeopathy, the infecting of pure homeopathy with speculations and nonsense. The main reason for that is that most practitioners look for easy ways to practice homeopathy, based on the allopathic model with its "protocols," which requires little thinking. Let’s face it: There is nothing easy about homeopathy! It requires dedication, hard work, little financial rewards but enormous personal ones! Of all the modalities I studied, internal medicine, neurology, and acupuncture, homeopathy is by far the most challenging! What makes me upset? Those new aged self appointed gurus who call Hahnemann an old senile and the Organon, "an old dusty bible." Those homeopaths who try to convince us that they found a new improved method, experimenting on patients, but only show their lack of profound study of the Organon and Chronic Diseases as Hahnemann already did what they exclaim to be "new." Worse, it was rejected by Hahnemann, but nevertheless, these modern gurus will say, "But Hahnemann did it too!" And those homeopaths that teach "protocols" in cancer cases to an audience that is not familiar with the true laws of homeopathy and is therefore seduced to apply these dangerous techniques on unsuspected patients. I do not expect that anything will change in the near future. Human nature is lazy by nature, and using those brain cells to its maximum capacity is given to few. In spite of all this, true homeopathy will always survive while the speculative methods will only be a foot note in the history of homeopathy, if that at all!While practitioners have their own responsibilities, the pharmaceutical industry will do anything to suppress homeopathy. In my opinion, homeopathy truly has a chance only in countries where pharmaceutical industries have no interest because there is no money at all. This is fortunately or unfortunately still the case for millions of people.
GC: Do you have a favorite homeopathic pharmacy, or, what do you see as the relative merits of the different ones?
Dr. Luc: I am only familiar with pharmacies I worked with and apologize in advance for leaving others out. I like the Natural Health Supply in Santa Fe, NM, and Hahnemann Laboratories in California. They produce excellent often hand succussed remedies for the profession.Serious disease-
GC: Some health care providers see homeopathy as 'soft' medicine - something that might have benefit for minor ailments and animals - but when it comes to serious illnesses like cancer, the big guns of conventional medicine are needed. Even among alternative practitioners, only a small proportion count homeopathy as their first line of treatment. A patient will likely receive a different prescription (diet, vitamins, enzymes, herbs, exercise, nutraceuticals etc) depending on which natural health care provider he visits.
We have experienced that even those who use homeopathy for years are not immune to serious health problems. On page 246 of Achieving and Maintaining the Simillimum, you suggest that, when people develop life-threatening diseases while under homeopathic care, it is either the fault of the patient or the doctor, and that homeopathy would prevent these diseases, if it were done properly.
In general terms, what can you say to help a person facing serious disease, so that he can prioritize the vast array of treatment options that he has, and choose the path which will give him the best shot at life, with the confidence that he has made the best possible choice?
Dr. Luc: The issue of treating serious diseases should not be an issue, especially when we can promise a true cure. But most practitioners and alternative doctors will turn to vitamins, injections, etc. I know all about this as earlier in my career I practiced this and studied it. However it is done for the reasons I have discussed before: it is much easier to apply (protocols!) and there is a lot of money to be earned in it (none of these two interested me so I abandoned it). And the layperson and patient thinks that homeopathy is only good for everyday occurrences, like a fall, a bruise, an insect bite, etc. Nothing is further from the truth. We have a 200 year history to prove it. Homeopathy truly can cure asthma, eczema, shingles, heart disease, strokes, etc., all conditions that allopathy "controls," not cures. And a true cure is only achieved when that condition does not recur after treatment. I only have to point to the 25 million prescriptions a year of antibiotics for ear infections in children. Ask those same physicians if they can give something so these ear infections won’t come back? They can’t! Homeopathy can. While allopathy still has to cure the first patient with genetic therapy (a billion dollar research), homeopathy has already achieved it since 1828 when Hahnemann introduced his miasmatic theory. Many diseases these days are the results of a jungle of factors: iatrogenic or doctor’s induced diseases (more people die from allopathic drugs every year than from car accidents); life style and hygiene: this should put a stop to the introduction of vaccinations to Third World countries while spending the same money to improve hygiene and hunger, the first cause of epidemics; and then there are the true chronic diseases, which we need to address according to their causality, genetic factors and symptoms. While I admire anyone studying homeopathy, too few have the time, ambition and perseverance to make it their sole goal. Yet it is necessary, like in any profession, to just do that to become a master in homeopathy. "A patient destined to die will die," so says a Chinese proverb. Even here, homeopathy is the king among the healing modalities to alleviate the suffering of the dying patient! One word of caution: curing a chronic disease takes time! That’s what the nature of "chronic" is. Turn away from homeopaths who promise you a fast cure and turn away those patients "who give you one month to cure their 25 year illness!" Do you think they ask the same from their allopathic physician?To finish these questions with a thought. There are many masters we can learn from. One of the people I most admire is Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist. He practiced as an unconscious homeopath, applying the same principles and guidelines! I wished he had our tools, the homeopathic remedies. But I am grateful to him for his dedication and great insight in the human psyche. For me, he is another true genius like Hahnemann!
End of part 1 of the interview. Read Part 2 .