Begabati (Burke) Lennihan RN, CCH: “Your Natural Medicine Cabinet”

The author of “A Healer in Every Home” has now produced a second book called “Your Natural Medicine Cabinet”. Both books attempt to bring homeopathy to a wider audience.

The author begins the book with her personal story of working in a health food store in Boston and introducing people to natural medicines. She writes in a way that reflects the whole idea of the book: simple, informal and eminently accessible. It is a pleasure to read and the whole introductory chapter gives an excellent introduction to the possibilities and challenges of exploring natural medicines and homeopathy in particular. In fact, as the book is read, the author gives many recommendations and hints on a wide variety of health resources, beginning with diet and foods, expanding the book into much more than just another homeopathic remedy book. The food section is particularly amusing as she explores the infinite variety of food theories and diets, sympathizing with the confusion of people who may feel the need to resort to “Coke and pizza” from frustration.

Her recommendations on many subjects are excellent and give ample information for people to explore further for themselves. It is a wealth of material. Even as a fellow natural medicine practitioner, there are many resources and book recommendations I knew nothing about.

As the author begins to explore how to treat many basic conditions she still embraces a broad stroke of options, integrating homeopathic options with many other natural remedy choices.

For each condition, listed alphabetically, she creates various sections, from Quick Fixes, Ongoing Care, Preventing Recurrence to Lifestyle Support. Using this structure she is able to give clear and simple guidelines for a wide range of natural solutions for many conditions. As with the many homeopathic books addressing clinical conditions, there is the similar challenge of which remedies to recommend and how much detail to go into and the author keeps it very simple. Perhaps a few more remedies could be mentioned occasionally, e.g., when treating coughs or ʼflu but as the saying goes, “Less is often more”.

Part Three of the book discusses Stocking Your Natural Medicine Cabinet and gives a wide range of homeopathic and herbal medicine options. A few more single homeopathic choices could have been given that are commonly found in most kits. However, she does give a lot of information on Cell Salts. She gives a nice overview of the themes/symptoms for each remedy, making the information eminently accessible for people new to homeopathy, including stories of the remedy working. It is in the same style as the rest of the book: simple and accessible.

Part Four discusses How to Use Homeopathic Medicines and in one part, she tells a hilarious story of when a security guard admonishes her for putting the remedies through the X-ray, knowing that they are homeopathic remedies, as opposed to strange white tablets that could be drugs. She gives an excellent overview of how remedies work and how to take them and offers a list of homeopathic books for more research.

Part Five is called Your Support System and gives a good overview of all the support and options available for optimizing your health, including finding a good homeopath. Finally there is a section titled Notes, References and the Fine Print which gives more information on some of the subjects covered in the book, which is excellent for people needing to know more.

The vision of the author was to find a way to allow people to have easy access to homeopathy but to do so within a larger context of Natural Medicine. This is why she didnʼt use the word homeopathy in the title. As she states: “the inclusion of other modalities is to make it plausible that itʼs not a book about homeopathy, itʼs a book about natural home health care, and it ‘just so happens’ that at least 80 % of the time, the first thing to reach for is a homeopathic remedy.”

In conclusion, the author has taken the model she developed for her first book and expanded it considerably in the second book, doing an excellent job in empowering people to take more control of their health. She weaves homeopathy into a broad scope of natural healing options and helps to demystify it for those interested in finding out more. She writes in a very appealing style and this book is an excellent contribution to oneʼs homeopathic library and a perfect book to have available in oneʼs clinic.