Introduction

The Bowel Nosodes are a series of homeopathic remedies made fromhuman intestinal flora, developed firstby

Dr. Edward Bach

and continuedby John Patterson and his wife,Elizabeth from 1920 until 1960.These remedies were used chiefly inBritish Homeopathic practice but after some years of neglect they are gaining more favour, especially now withthe issues of allergies and antibiotic damage prevalent in today's patients.Their field of action is much broader than their name suggests, withindicating symptoms arising from the whole system rather than just thebowel.Bach discovered that certain non-lactose fermenting bacteria were moreprevalent in the stool of sick people thanin healthy people. This led him to typethese bacteria and investigate their connection with pathology. Up until thispoint, these bacteria had been ignoredeven to the point of being unnamed andgenerally regarded as harmless.At the time there was an exponentialgrowth in the investigation of bacteriaand their association with disease. It wasconventional medicine's new frontier,pioneered by

Pasteur

and

Koch

,much as genetics is today.Homeopathy was in the shadow of the apparent success of the newwonder-drugs, antibiotics so it is nosurprise that this influencedHomeopathy which, through

Swan

,was already making extensive use of nosodes in association withHahnammanian miasmatic theory.Bach came to identify the bacteriathat he had discovered with the

Psoric miasm

.Initially, Bach created conventional vaccines from these cultures andadministered them to patients. However, after reading

The Organon

whileworking at the London Homeopathic Hospital in 1919 as housepathologist and assistant bacteriologist, he was struck by the connectionsbetween conventional vaccine theory and theHomeopathic Law of Similars and sought to linkthe two disciplines.It was then that he began administering thevaccines as

potentised nosodes

to hispatients orally and over a period of ten yearsgathered clinical data from 500 cases which heclaimed demonstrated a 95% rate of improvement with their use.

Page 1 of 19

Dr. Edward Bach John Paterson

The Hom

opathic Bowel Nosodes

"Inside our own bodies, we are outnumbered nine to one"

Year Project for the Irish School of Homoeopathy.

Mark O'Sullivan, June '07

www.homeopath.ie

In 1928 Bach left London on aquest to discover new naturalcures which led him to Mt. Vernonin Oxfordshire and thedevelopment of the

Bach Flower Remedies.

A further innovation intheir own right.

John Paterson

, who had assistedBach in his research, continuedthe work after 1928. He refinedthe discoveries and their clinicalindications, added more remedies,formulated theory and guidelinesfor using the remedies in practice.He potentised the diplococcicintestinal bacteria, similar in nature to Gonorrhea, associated it with the

Sycotic Miasm

and successfully used this

Sycotic compound

to treat theGI's Gonorrhea during the war. After his death in 1955, his wife

Elizabeth

continued the work for nine years, collating clinical data, makingpresentations and writing papers.Throughout this work, neither Bach nor Paterson saw the bacterium asbeing the

cause of pathology

but rather a concomitant or reflection of it.Paterson saw the bacteria as the scavengers of disease and their presence in the stool as being of constitutional significance. Thedisordered vital force of the patient alters their susceptibility and theintestinal flora changes in accordance with this. Contrary to theconventional perspective, Patersonregarded large amounts of non-lactose fermenting bacteria in thestool as being a positive, healthy signthat the patient was eliminating themsuccessfully and found that this wasthe case after the administration of thepatient's

constitutional remedy.

Non-lactose fermenting bacteria notare not unequivocally pathological

per se,

some of which serve usefulfunctions in the breakdown of complexcarbohydrates.

They can make adiseased situation worse

in that theytend to impair the assimilation of food,acidify the environment of the gut, making it more habitable for parasitesand fungi and less so for healthier, more symbiotic bacteria. They alsoproduce more toxic substances as wastes such as Hydrogen Sulphideand histamines and even perforate the gut wall as they proliferate.Insufficient nutrition and assimilation are part of these remedies' picturesas a result as well as the presence of other parasites such as yeasts andworms.Lactose fermenting bacteria in the gut, such as

L.acidophilis, L.casei

and

Bifidobacterium

have a broad spectrum of benefits, which will be outlinedin more detail below.

Page 2 of 19

Paterson's conclusions at the centreof this page, were reached after extensive research into the

effects of homeopathic remedies on bowelflora

. He noticed that when a patientundergoing treatment wasexperiencing improvement and feltbetter in themselves, the amount of pathogenic bacteria yielded in their stool increased.From the conventional point of view,this meant the patient had a disease and should not be feeling better atall.

It contradicted the germ theory of disease

espoused by Pasteur and others. Paterson concluded that the germs in the stool were theresult of the action of the vital force of the patient as stimulated by theremedy administered. The patient was eliminating harmful germs as partof a curative process as his vital force strengthened.By this logic, Paterson was able to

map out the relationships

betweenthe specific non-lactose fermenting bacteria that had increased in thepatient's stool to the remedies that had been administered. In this way,each one of the Bowel Nosodes were assigned associated remediesarising from clinical experience, removing the need for homeopathicpractitioners to have the stool samples of their patients examined.The remedies associated with each bowel nosode are listed with thedescription of each one of these remedies below.

Case Strategy

Paterson suggested the followingindications for the use of the BowelNosodes.I.

New Case:

For a patient who has notreceived homeopathictreatment the indicted remedyshould be given and not thenosode.Where a tricky choice lies between a number of different remediesand most of those fall within those associated with a BowelNosode, the nosode may be given.

II.Old Case:

For a patient who has undergone homeopathic treatment for awhile and is no longer responding satisfactorily, a study can bemade of their clinical history and the nosode associated with mostof the effective remedies administered may be given. Even if thereis no movement in the case after the nosode, the patient'sresponse to subsequent remedies will be more beneficial.

Page 3 of 19

Directions on the use of the Bowel Nosodes