Homœopathic Links 2017; 30(01): 066-067
DOI: 10.1055/s-0037-1600119
Book Review
Thieme Medical and Scientific Publishers Private Ltd.

The Best Family Homeopathy Acute Care Manual: A Pictorial Guide to First Aid and Acute Therapeutics

Reviewed by,
Robert Medhurst
1   Australia
› Author Affiliations
Further Information

Publication History

Publication Date:
23 March 2017 (online)

Kate Birch is a U.S.-based homeopath, educator and therapist who has written several books dealing with various aspects of homeopathy. This latest book is an acute care manual that, the author states, has been written for those with little time to read up on the medicines that might be required for acute situations.

The book is divided into three chapters. The first is devoted to the author's interpretation of the background to homeopathy, and it is covered quite well. The second is taken up with remedies and their indications for first aid, fever, ear infections, upper respiratory tract infections, colic, vomiting, diarrhoea and acute mental and emotional issues, with a repertory overview for each. These are accompanied by discussions on the condition itself, pointers on remedy selection, dosage and associated issues related to the specific clinical condition. The remaining chapter contains materia medica notes on the recommended remedies and a useful table summarizing some of the pointers to the remedies.

Typically, self-help books on homeopathy either have an excess or a deficiency of information. An excess can often delay treatment and a deficiency can often leave the reader with too little information on which to confidently prescribe. Either of the situations is clearly problematic and I thought I would put myself in the place of a user to see if either problem arose with this book. I placed myself in the situation of the layperson experiencing acute anticipation anxiety and used the book to select a remedy. There was no subject index at the front or at the back of the book that would direct me to a specific page, and I therefore turned to the chapter entitled ‘Mind and Emotions’. On the first page of the chapter, I found a list of five remedies that the author had recommended for anticipation anxiety, three of which were in bold type. In my acute state of anxiety I then had to wade through six and half pages of introductory discussion on mental and emotional issues before I found the section on anticipatory anxiety, after which I found potential salvation in the form of a paragraph's discussion on each of the previously mentioned five remedies. After a quick scan of each paragraph, I felt that I had enough information to select a likely solution to the problem and could then check the remedy in more detail in the materia medica section. Confirming that I was on the right track, if I had not already done so, I needed to work out the remedy dose and potency. I found a brief discussion on these eight pages later. The volume of information was about right, but the information I needed to deal with my problem was difficult to find.

The value of an acute care manual lies in its capacity to provide information quickly. Without a subject index, the user would have had to have read though the book first and known where to find the relevant information, before being able to use it as the author intended.

One other issue that is worth mentioning is the reference to potentially lethal diseases. For example, the book refers to the homeopathic treatment for meningitis. This is a book for laypeople and while it may be beneficial to provide this advice where no other form of treatment is available, I was not able to find any guidance from the author about the need for urgent medical attention that must be sought at the same time as using the book or preferably prior to it. Nor was there any discussion on the risks inherent in a layperson diagnosing serious diseases.

If you have some experience with homeopathic self-help books, you will no doubt be aware that there are quite a few of them around, and the title of Kate Birch's book makes it clear that she feels that hers is the best in its field. While I do not necessarily agree with her on this, apart from the issues mentioned above, I found this to be a well-written and informative book that would act as a valuable resource in the homeopathic management of most short-term, self-limiting diseases.