What is a Constitutional Remedy!

A constitutional remedy is the main remedy that will benefit the patient most. But, there is more to it than what meets its description.

- Dr George Vithoulkas

The question whether a constitutional remedy exists for every individual was raised quite early on in the homeopathic literature by Dr Samuel Hahnemann, MD, the founder, himself when he stated that in order to cure completely and permanently you needed to find the ‘deeper’ indicated remedy according to his theory of chronic miasms.

The meaning of such expression was never clear in the homeopathic sense and before one can talk about a constitutional remedy we should define what we — in homeopathy — really mean with this expression.

Many times in homeopathic gatherings one hears the question “What is your constitutional remedy?” or even worse when somebody asks a supposed expert “What do you think is my constitutional remedy?” Such ideas have degraded homeopathy and given it an air of magic or superficiality that our science does not deserve.

I will not go into the different types and descriptions of several authors defining the meaning of this word before or after Dr Hahnemann, but I will rather stick to the most practical and applicable meaning of it in everyday practice.

THE DEFINITION

According to such an understanding, a remedy can be defined as constitutional when — by virtue of its symptomatology — it covers the basic chronic or acute symptomatology of the person throughout his life; in spite of the fact that such a person may suffer, in different stages of their life, from different nosological entities like otitis media, lumbago, sciatica, bronchitis, or psoriasis, the indicated remedy remains always the same.

If we accept such a definition as correct then experience, from every day practice, shows the following.