For a veterinarian attempting to make the transition from the orthodox paradigm to homeopathy there are many challenges. These include: looking anew at the concepts of 'health' and 'disease'; trying to assess mental and emotional symptoms in a patient who cannot speak our language; dealing with the emotional reactions of those who do not share the same knowledge or experience. The first part of the book is devoted to examining the fundamental concepts which together provide a foundation for veterinary homeopathic practice, and how they may be understood from a modern perspective. This is followed by an investigation into some of the most common remedy states encountered in practice, with guidance on how to recognise them in an animal patient; not only by how they present outwardly, but also by accessing those elements of the patient that would otherwise be considered as hidden. Finally the author investigates the personal experience of practising veterinary homeopathy.

There can be little doubt that ‘homeopathy works’. For all the controversy surrounding the nature and effect of homeopathic medicines, the clinical outcomes and improvement in wellbeing achieved by homeopathic treatment are consistently good. In many instances they defy the expectations of conventional biomedical treatment, and demonstrate the remarkable extent to which our minds and bodies are capable of self-regulation and self-healing. In this book, Dr Jeremy Swayne unpacks the therapeutic ‘black box’ of the homeopathic method. He describes in detail a process of clinical enquiry and observation that is essentially entirely conventional but that casts a new light on the dynamics of illness and healing. His analysis does not depend upon any a priori assumptions about the activity of homeopathic medicines, but insists that both their effects, and the contextual aspects of the therapeutic process that homeopathy exemplifies and that is so important in all medicine, demand fuller investigation. The implications for the future of clinical practice and medical science are truly profound.