One often wonders how did the old time doctors prescribe, particularly in the pre-antibiotic days or in the days when penicillin was only starting to be used.
Dr. Dorothy Shepherd, like the rest of us, was initially skeptical that Homeopathy, particularly in its common use of "infinitesimal" doses, but after a revelation in using it, doubtingly, on herself, and after resolving to undertake a deep and serious study of it, including study with one of the great Homeopaths of that era, she ended up using it, again and again, in preference to the more conventionalized and standardized treatments espoused by the Allopathic school.
This is a real doctor prescribing for real patients with real illnesses, some of them quite serious ones, and her triumph in caring for these patients, and her successes are here documented so that we, people of the future, can see for ourselves.
Nearly lost by the logical positivist neo-fundamentalism which has subverted the theory of modern medicine, along with its specious arguments about "placebos", misdirections and wrongful insistence on elevating questionable lab testing over actual doctor-patient experience, Shepherd has left a record which is now being rediscovered by many. It is a record which points the way to a humanistic system of medicine, holistic, individuated, and anathema to the pharmaceutical and corporatist reductionism inherent in the philosophy of "one pill for all" and "one vaccine for many".
The triumphs of modern medicine, now tempered by the emergence of chronic illnesses, random paralysis and other neurological deficits, and the rise of drug resistant strains of bacteria along with other serious developments, now give rise to a re-examination of alternative systems, such as Homeopathy, along with a new interest in scientific research as to the mechanism at the base of its obviously powerful curative effects. This research could potentially be one of the major breakthroughs of the new century. Dr. Shepherd's book is one of the beacons illuminating that possibility.