Homoeopathy is a holistic medicine; the holistic approach to medicines takes a wider view of illness, a wider view of the causes of diseases and the ways in which people express their illness individually. Homoeopaths do not treat physical, emotional, mental or even spiritual illnesses separately, but regard them as intimately connected since all are aspects of whole of the patients suffering.

When starting Homoeopathic treatment, the patient may not realize the relevance of some of the questions being asked. It may appear that the homoeopath is interested in maters, which have little to do with the particular complaint about which the patient is most concerned. Symptoms of illness are evidence of the body’s natural and automatic efforts to heal itself and these clues are used to guide them when prescribing a homoeopathic remedy. In Homoeopathy more of these clues are used than in orthodox medicine, so a patient may be asked questions about all sorts of apparently minor deviations from health and about character and personality traits, in order to arrive at a clear understanding of the whole picture of the patients state of health. Before prescribing, the homoeopath wants to have a complete overview of the patient. The first consultation can take as long as two hours because the remedy prescribed for that individual patient is not merely for his or her disease but for the person’s whole state.

This fundamental principle of homoeopathy that of individual prescription explains why two people with apparently same illnesses may be treated with a different remedy. In other words, two patients may have headaches but the way they have it i.e. the type of pain, location, cause, etc. can be different, the way they cope with life can be different and so on.