Movie Review
Reviewed By: Elaine ‘Snoopy’ Lewis
Hopefully this is the first of many–a professionally done, skillfully produced and polished documentary on the history and practice of homeopathy which recently aired here in the United States on PBS.A gentle, baroque-like, engaging musical sound track underlies the narration in this hour-long documentary. Visuals include graphics as well as real people and places–including Leipzig, Germany–the place of Samuel Hahnemann’s birth. Some of our best known and most respected homeopaths are shown in their offices at work at their computers, or seeing patients or speaking directly to the camera– Miranda Castro, Joe Lillard, Julian Winston, Timothy Dooley and others – espousing the virtues of homeopathy.
Rounds are made of famous homeopathic pharmacies, such as Boiron in Lyons; Helios near London; Washington Homeopathics at Berkeley Springs, West Virginia; just to name a few.
The movie opens with the treatment of a child undergoing a classic Belladonna ear ache: “Without warning, this boy goes from a happy state of play to a state of great anguish, holding his right ear.” (Here we see two of the grand indicators of Belladonna–sudden onset and right sided complaints.)
There was a welcome segment on veterinary homeopathy and organic farming. “Thanks to homeopathy,” said one farmer, “I haven’t given my cows an injection in years!”
In trying to cover such a vast topic in one hour, the documentary, of necessity, had to skim lightly over a subject that cries out for deeper exposition. This is why we need more of these endeavors to follow. As I said to Nancy Herrick at the 2003 NCH conference, while preventing anyone else at our lunch table from speaking, “We need more video! A conference presentation on video tape is not video, it’s audio with pictures, and in fact, it better serves us on audio because it can be played while driving or exercising; video is something else entirely. Can’t the clinics turn on a video camera? Hey, where’s everybody going?”
So, it is my hope that now someone will pick up where “Mystery of Healing” leaves off and go for it!
