This book review is reprinted from The Homoeopath with permission from Nick Churchill of The Society of Homoeopaths.
The Family Guide To Homeopathy
by Andrew Lockie
Hamish Hamilton
Paperback edition 1990, 400 pages
Reviewed by Terry Oliver
Terry Oliver RSHom lives in Leigh on Sea, Essex.
Many people will not read a book like this! This comment is not intended to reflect the volume of sales.
Dr Andrew Lockie's book has already sold very well in the original hard back edition. Its availability through normal retail outlets and homoeopathic pharmacies, and also by mail order at discount price through a major book club has ensured success. When I purchase self assembly furniture or electrical equipment, my first action is to unpack it and put it all together. It is only when it does not work or fit properly that I might bother to read the instruction booklet.
The opening comment is a fear that many people will use this book in the same way, by turning to the therapeutics section and picking a remedy based on a symptom label, and paying no heed to the pages on homoeopathic philosophy, or directions on how to use the remedy finder on a broader and more constitutional basis.
This is much more than another book on homoeopathy. It is a very comprehensive guide to a more natural approach to living which includes excellent chapters on general first aid and health care. Unfortunately, as a self help guide to prescribing for the family, I feel the author was carried away by enthusiasm in giving details of more than 300 remedies covering conditions, which, as stated in the review extracts on the back cover, range from colds to cancer. Specific remedies are also suggested for schizophrenia, manic depression, brain tumour and many more extremely serious situations.
The therapeutics chapter, Ailments and Diseases, is basically well presented. It starts with a section on mind and emotions followed by sections covering the various body systems and particular problems in men, women, children, adolescents and the elderly. If readers use the book in the way Dr Lockie intends, by combining the therapeutics and mini-repertory information, they have a reasonable chance of finding a remedy which will have some degree of effect, but I wish he had limited the number of remedies and conditions for which he has suggested treatment. Very early in my Homoeopathic training one of my lecturers stated: 'In deep constitutional treatment, a practitioner who prescribes for himself has a fool for a patient.' Is this less or more true of someone with no previous homoeopathic training? Chapter 3 has a very brief introduction to case taking and finding and taking the remedy, followed by a general remedy finder which is extracted from Kent's Repertory, but with no grading of remedies. I found it hard to see the rationale which determined which remedies were included or omitted from certain rubrics.
The book mentions briefly the existence of 'lay homoeopaths' but the reader is clearly advised to consult a homoeopathic physician qualified in orthodox medicine. This is ironic since it is 'lay practitioners', or professional homoeopaths practising on a classical basis, who are most likely to level criticism at this book. The book is sub-titled The Safe Form of Medicine For the Future and this is totally true in terms of there being no toxic effects from taking the remedies. From the point of improving the total health of the patient however, any picking off of individual symptoms is like taking away pieces from a jigsaw puzzle, making it potentially more difficult to find a remedy that really covers the totality of the case.
The Homoeopath Vol.11 No.4 1991