The Story of the Prague College of Classical Homeopathy

The Prague College of Classical Homeopathy (PCCH) is currently one of the biggest schools of homeopathy in the Czech Republic with more than 150 active students. What is its story and history? Let me share with you my journey towards my lifelong dream which came true – the dream of establishing this school.

My name is Petr Zacharias and I am a homeopath with more than 14 years of practice. I was 18 years old when I first heard about classical homeopathy and since that first moment I have been sure that it is the only thing I want to do in my life. I have never, not even for one second, doubted that it is my mission and this enthusiasm has never diminished. I completely fell for homeopathy! I did not think about anything else and I even had dreams about it most nights. I woke up with it every morning and it was with me every night when I was falling asleep. After I had read all the relevant books available in the Czech language and graduated at a Czech homeopathic school, I still had a lot of questions and my spirit and enthusiasm became even stronger than in the beginning.

At that time I realized that what I was actually missing the most during my studies was practical training with live cases. For this reason, with the help of a few other people, I opened my first practical clinical training, where I took live cases and the patients came for a follow-up every month. There were 6 people in my first study group.

This course quickly became very popular because it was the only one of that kind in the Czech Republic, and the number of students was rapidly increasing. When I was opening the same course the next year, I had 15 students whom I divided into two groups. In 2008, with now 30 students, I remade the curriculum and established a school named the Prague College of Classical Homeopathy.

At the beginning of 2009, I decided to go study abroad, but I had no language skills. In spite of my resistance towards language studies, I started studying English. Every day, I wrote down in English, questions concerning homeopathy for which I did not know the answers. During the one year English training I tried to think in English and I read English books about homeopathy, although in the beginning, only with a dictionary, word by word.

In the summer of 2009, I began my studies at one of the most prestigious homeopathic schools in the world, the International Academy of Classical Homeopathy on the Greek island of Alonissos, where my teacher was Prof. George Vithoulkas. I can say without exaggeration that this course of study was a crucial point in my homeopathic career. Prof. Vithoulkas provided me with significant support in my endeavour, even outside the seminars, and he kept clarifying for me those issues for which I did not know the answers. The study at the International Academy of Classical Homeopathy became something more than “mere” learning homeopathy for me. My strong determination and diligence paid off in my biggest success up to that moment, when I scored the best result out of the whole class in the practical part of the final exam. I cannot describe my feelings from the moment I discovered that. Perhaps it was the huge love for homeopathy and the conviction that this was the reason for me coming there.

The curriculum of the Prague College of Classical Homeopathy is therefore influenced and inspired by the teachings of the International Academy of Classical Homeopathy to a considerable extent. Lectures of the main course take place during weekends and they are divided into several sections. In the first grade, students learn homeopathic theory and materia medica consisting of roughly 120 homeopathic remedies, whereas in the second and third grade, the main emphasis is put on practical training and study of another 40 remedies.

The first part of the practical schooling consists of clinical training where I take live cases and teach students how to analyse them step by step. I explain different techniques of case taking, how to observe the patient and many other skills important for a self-dependent practice. The patients come for regular follow-ups, so students not only can see the effect of homeopathic treatment, but they also learn how to manage cases in the long run, how to evaluate reactions to given remedies and how to cope with acute diseases during chronic treatment.

The second part of this practical training is based on real cases taken by students themselves in their free time. Students then send their cases in a paper form to our lecturer team, so every student has individual supervision and support in this way. For us, it is also a good way to detect mistakes of each student and we can therefore work on the elimination of these mistakes together with a given student. By virtue of this new concept, our students get well prepared for real practice, because they are obliged to work on their cases individually. They have to write case records, repertorise and make a differential diagnosis of the remedies. All students also make follow-up appointments themselves and our lecturers can see their ability to evaluate remedy reactions. In this way, students learn how to determine the next course of action in a case.

Besides these skills, we also teach our students basics of the Radar Opus homeopathic software and we have “homeopathic English vocabulary” lessons as well, giving many of our non-English speaking students an opportunity and motivation to start studying homeopathy from original sources and using international homeopathic software.

In conclusion, the mission of PCCH is to continuously produce graduates who bring professionalism to their practice, help to improve the health of their patients significantly, manage their business in an ethical and economically correct manner and who have a desire for lifelong self improvement and learning.