Some years ago, in my pre-homoeopathic era, a horse bit me
on my bum. And I mean hard, she meant it! The bruising was
impressive, over a large area up my back and down my leg
and the pain made it uncomfortable to sit down. The
discomfort lasted a good two weeks. A different picture
from this bite....
 
Imagine, for a moment, the picture of an angry horse about
to attack - head up, neck stretched out, ears flat, mouth
open, teeth bared and lunging forward, about to strike.
 
That’s how my mare Pippa normally behaves towards a horse I
look after. She really doesn’t like her and lets her know.
The other horse easily gets out of the way. She’s used to
it.
 
I, on the other hand, am not used to such treatment! But,
that’s what I experienced this weekend! Well, I know I
wasn’t really the target of Pippa’s attack, I just got in
the way.
 
And when there’s food involved, Pippa is really aggressive
towards the other horse.
 
For some reason I decided to clean out the pantry. (I’m not
noted for my eagerness to clean). I found a couple of
packets of bread sticks, which had gone stale.
 
Now horses love bread and wheat products, and I hate waste,
so out I went into the paddock. Give the horses a treat I
thought, not realising it would be me in for the treat...
 
I fed Pippa first then went over to the other mare, not
realising Pippa was following me. Before I could feed the
horse, my right elbow was clamped! And how! I yelled out,
more in shock than pain and my arm was released.
 
It took me a few moments to realise what had happened. I’d
like to say that I hurried back to the house and my bottle
of Arnica, but I didn’t. I know from experience that it’s a
good thing to treat such injuries quickly, but I also know
from experience that the remedies work.
 
There was no real pain (pain takes a while to develop after
shock), just a slight grazed and bruised feeling in my arm
and a weird sensation in my hand.
 
I took a dose straight away and waited to see what would
develop. Nothing did. The weird sensation went away as did
the bruised and grazed feelings. Another dose followed
after about 10 minutes. I repeated the dose a couple of
hours later when I felt the grazed feeling return. And I
took another dose before bed, just in case. Four doses
altogether.
 
No bruises developed, I never experienced any pain, and I
wasn’t even mad at Pippa....
 
As a practitioner I have access to high potencies (or
strengths) and I chose a high potency for the extreme
situation. You can’t buy potencies higher than 30c easily,
over the counter. But that just means more doses would be
required. Probably every five minutes for four or so doses
for the horse bite, then less frequent.

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Here are a few other tales about Arnica-
 
A man with dyspepsia had so lost his strength he had to
give up work. Years and many drugs later he visited a
homoeopath who wanted to know when the dyspepsia had
started. On being told that it had come on after a kick in
the stomach from a horse, he was given Arnica. It wasn’t
long before he was back at work, with no dyspepsia.
 
A woman with depression and chorea consulted a homoeopath
who found this had started after she had been knocked off
her bicycle and was unconscious for 24 hours. A few doses
of Arnica rid her of the hangover from the concussion.
 
A woman had taken Arnica for a fairly minor physical injury
and this had healed up nicely. Then an old scar on her hand
flared up, and pus oozed out. The scar was from a bad cut
from broken glass she had sustained at a party 18 years
ago. So she squeezed the pus and out popped a small piece
of glass... that had been there 18 years....
 
A ten year old boy in hospital after a head injury was
still in a coma ten days later. After receiving a dose of
Arnica he came out of the coma the following day.
 
A ten year old girl had broken her arm after falling off
her pony. Since then, she remained fearful of being hurt,
not daring into the playground. A year later she was
diagnosed with appendicitis (severe abdominal pain and a
high white blood cell count). After a few doses of Arnica,
the pain stopped completely, her white blood cells returned
to normal and she kept her appendix. Her behaviour returned
too, to how it was before the fall.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
This lovely poem was written by Phyllis Speight, who wrote
a little book called Arnica.
 
 

Arnica is made from the plant Arnica Montana also known as
Leopard’s Bane or Fallkraut. It is a member of the
Compositae family.
 
Keynotes for using Arnica are;-

• any injury minor or serious, including concussion (cause)
• overwork, over tired, over use of muscles
• bruised feeling
• fears being approached
• post operative pains, post dental extraction
• can’t get comfortable, even a soft bed feels hard
• mothers in labour and post birth
• jet lag
• shift workers who can’t sleep
• first sign of a cold

 
I strongly suggest you immediately purchase one (or two or
three) bottles of Arnica, if you don’t already have some.
 
You can obtain the book Arnica by Phyllis Speight from
Random House Publishing at
www.randomhouse.co.uk

That’s it for this time. See you next week.

Madeleine