In November 2024, I flew from home in Asheville to Edinburgh, Scotland, for the Faculty of Homeopathy’s hundredth anniversary conference. (The organization is based in the UK.) I had no idea there would be 300 delegates from thirty countries attending and little idea how bitter the late autumn wind would be.
After soothing out the tangles of transatlantic travel, I finally arrived at the hotel in Edinburgh at the same time as Lisa Amerine, ND, president of the Institute for Homeopathy, in the United States. I saw her superb presentation at the 2024 NCH conference about which remedies to carry when vacationing in the wilderness.
The hotel staff in Edinburgh was deferential to Lisa and promptly showed to her room. As I waited for my room, I bided my time well and had a delicious lunch: decaf coffee (nice and hot—not burnt tasting), a Scottish parsnip-and-apple soup with a side of bread and butter.
The first day of the conference it was 17.6o Fahrenheit. I felt fortunate that the hotel was just around the corner from the grand 192-year-old building where the event was held, the Surgeons Quarter.
Edinburgh is significant in the history of homeopathy. William Cullen (1710-1790), a medical school graduate of the University of Edinburgh, inspired Samuel Hahnemann’s initial interest in homeopathy. Other notable University of Edinburgh graduates include Frederick Quin (1799–1878), one of the first homeopaths in England; William Henderson (1810–1872), who practiced in Edinburgh in the 1840s; and Robert Ellis Dudgeon (1820–1904), who became a teacher of homeopathy and translated works of Hahnemann into English.
As an associate member of the Faculty of Homeopathy, I chose to be in its membership committee. I greeted ten people from the United States and Canada, and one person from Brazil.
During the conference, I met up with Karen Hooten, a homeopath and RN who lives in Edinburgh and who helped organize the conference. I’d met Karen online but not in person. She organizes a quarterly meeting of RN and APRNs from all parts of England.
With Karen was Elaine Hamilton, RGN, BSc, and homeopath. She introduced herself, and it took me a moment to remember I’d met her online a few times. Elaine is a nurse practitioner with a great deal of experience in homeopathy, and she is the only international member of the American Homeopathic Nurses Association. She talked with such familiarity that I could only smile—even though I didn’t understand every word spoken in her Scottish accent. I invited Elaine to speak at the HNA’s monthly meeting in December 2024. She riveted the attendees with stories about her experiences as a nurse and homeopath. For thirteen years, Elaine worked on an organic farm where homeopathy was used in the management of animal herds. She was an advanced practice nurse at the NHS Centre for Integrative Care, in Glasgow, for sixteen years using homeopathy and mistletoe therapy. Today Elaine works as a homeopathic nurse with the charity Homeopathy UK, practicing homeopathy at a grassroots level in Dumfries and Galloway.
After the conference, the return home to Asheville was more of the same problems with airlines as there were on the way to Scotland. As many readers are likely to know, this past October Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina hard, and there was still much recovery going on. So, even worse than airline travel, it was also chaos that I returned to. But we still persevere every day.