Strange Rare Peculiar Homeopathy Podcast

Why would an experienced homeopath and educator decide to go back to nursing school?

After more than a decade of practicing and teaching homeopathy, Kelly Callahan is taking an unconventional path. She joins Denise and Alastair to share what led her back to school, what she's discovering about nursing and healthcare, and her vision for bringing homeopathy into primary care in her rural Maine community.

Along the way: the surprising similarities between nursing and homeopathy; the importance of medical knowledge and critical thinking; evidence-based practice; informed consent; client safety and professional accountability; and what happens when the way homeopathy is practiced begins to move beyond its established principles.

Kelly also shares her experiences with homeopathic provings, her approach to experiential education, and how studying another healthcare discipline is giving her a new perspective on the work she's been doing for years.

Read It Yourself

• Law and Ethics in Complementary Medicine: A Handbook for Practitioners in Australia and New Zealand — Michael Weir
• Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica — James Tyler Kent, Hepar Sulphuris Calcareum
• Organon of Medicine — Samuel Hahnemann, Aphorism 1 and its footnote

Mentioned in This Episode

• New IAH Publication: Case Report Documents Sustained Improvement in Cerebellar Ataxia Following Homeopathic Treatment
• Academy of Homeopathy Education — Postgraduate Homeopathy Programs
• Homeopathy Help Network (HHN) — Virtual homeopathy clinic

About Kelly Callahan

Kelly Callahan is a registered homeopath who has been in private practice since 2011. She began teaching homeopathy at her alma mater, Baylight Center for Homeopathy, in 2016, bringing her background in experiential and individualized education into the classroom.

A 2013 graduate of Jeremy Sherr's Dynamis School of Advanced Homeopathy, Kelly also contributed to the team behind the Repertory of Mental Qualities. In 2016, she launched 1M: A Homeopath's Podcast, producing episodes for five years and connecting with homeopaths around the world, including Denise Straiges and Alastair Gray.

That connection led to her joining the Academy of Homeopathy Education faculty in 2019, where she continues to teach and work with students in the classroom and clinic. Now pursuing nursing education, Kelly hopes to combine her experience in homeopathy with a broader role in primary care.

Visit Kelly's website — Concentric Healing

Strange Rare Peculiar is a weekly podcast with Denise Straiges and Alastair Gray of the Institute for the Advancement of Homeopathy and the Academy of Homeopathy Education.This season, we’re focusing on truth—what it means to Aude Sapere (“dare to know”) in homeopathy today. 

From Hahnemann’s original insights to modern practice, research, and education, Denise and Alastair bring more than 50 years of experience to conversations designed to help you question assumptions, return to the sources, and deepen your understanding of homeopathy.

🎧 Ready to go deeper?

• Study homeopathy professionally → academyofhomeopathyeducation.com

• Access affordable virtual homeopathy care → homeopathyhelpnow.com

• Support the future of homeopathy → advancehomeopathy.org

• Join the practitioner-generated research network (PGRN) → advancehomeopathy.org/pgrn

Recording from Paris, Denise and Alastair explore the remarkable final chapter of Hahnemann's life, from his unexpected relationship with Mélanie d'Hervilly to their busy homeopathic practice and the controversies that followed his death.

Along the way: a visit to Hahnemann's grave at Père Lachaise Cemetery; the exhumation and identification of his remains; Mélanie's reputation and her contributions to homeopathy; the fate of the sixth edition of the Organon; and historical accounts that offer a fascinating glimpse into the Hahnemanns' daily lives.

Drawing on contemporary letters, biographical records, and an eyewitness account of a visit to the Hahnemanns' Paris practice, Denise and Alastair revisit a story that may be more complicated—and more human—than the version we've inherited.

Go Back to the Source

• Official Account of the Exhumation of the Body of Hahnemann at the Cemetery Montmartre, and of Its Removal to Père Lachaise — The Homoeopathic Physician, August 1898, Vol. XVIII, No. 8.
• Samuel Hahnemann: His Life and Work, Volume II — Richard Haehl.
• In Search of the Later Hahnemann — Rima Handley.
• The Life and Letters of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, Chapter 71 — Thomas Lindsley Bradford. Includes Anna Cora Mowatt's account of visiting Hahnemann and Mélanie in Paris.
• Organon of Medicine, Sixth Edition — Samuel Hahnemann. Online text includes the fifth edition translated by Robert Ellis Dudgeon and the sixth edition translated by William Boericke.

Strange Rare Peculiar is a weekly podcast with Denise Straiges and Alastair Gray of the Institute for the Advancement of Homeopathy and the Academy of Homeopathy Education.This season, we’re focusing on truth—what it means to Aude Sapere (“dare to know”) in homeopathy today.

From Hahnemann’s original insights to modern practice, research, and education, Denise and Alastair bring more than 50 years of experience to conversations designed to help you question assumptions, return to the sources, and deepen your understanding of homeopathy.🎧 Ready to go deeper?• Study homeopathy professionally → academyofhomeopathyeducation.com• Access affordable virtual homeopathy care → homeopathyhelpnow.com• Support the future of homeopathy → advancehomeopathy.org• Join the practitioner-generated research network (PGRN) → advancehomeopathy.org/pgrn

Can Hahnemann's Organon be brought into the 21st century without changing the principles of homeopathy?

Jeremy Sherr joins Denise and Alastair to discuss his new Adaptive Organon, a four-year project to make Hahnemann's teachings more accessible through contemporary language, examples, and explanations while remaining faithful to the original philosophy.

Along the way: the four fundamental principles of homeopathy; why the search for the simillimum can keep practitioners stuck on the first prescription; the meaning of cure in Aphorisms 1 and 9; the challenge of interpreting dose, potency, and quantity; and what happens when Hahnemann's roasted pigeons become drive-through burgers.

Jeremy also shares his fascinating project of assigning a homeopathic remedy to every aphorism, the addition of cross-references and a thematic index, and why he hopes the Adaptive Organon will help practitioners rediscover the depth of homeopathic philosophy.

About Jeremy Sherr, PCH, FSHom.

Jeremy Sherr is an internationally recognized homeopath, author, lecturer, and founder of the Dynamis School of Homoeopathy, established in 1986. He has conducted more than 40 Hahnemannian provings and is the author of The Dynamics and Methodology of Homoeopathic Provings, among other works.

Jeremy lives in Tanzania with his wife, Camilla, where they founded Homoeopathy for Health in Africa, an organization providing free and low-cost homeopathic care.

Go Back to the Source

• Organon of Medicine, Sixth Edition — Samuel Hahnemann
• The Chronic Diseases — Samuel Hahnemann
• The Issue of Dose in Samuel Hahnemann's Writings: Quantity, Potency or Entity? — Jeremy Sherr

Explore More

• Dynamis School of Homoeopathy
• Jeremy Sherr's Books

Strange Rare Peculiar is a weekly podcast with Denise Straiges and Alastair Gray of the Institute for the Advancement of Homeopathy and the Academy of Homeopathy Education.

This season, we’re focusing on truth—what it means to Aude Sapere (“dare to know”) in homeopathy today. From Hahnemann’s original insights to modern practice, research, and education, Denise and Alastair bring more than 50 years of experience to conversations designed to help you question assumptions, return to the sources, and deepen your understanding of homeopathy.

🎧 Ready to go deeper?

• Study homeopathy professionally → academyofhomeopathyeducation.com
• Access affordable virtual homeopathy care → homeopathyhelpnow.com
• Support the future of homeopathy → advancehomeopathy.org
• Join the practitioner-generated research network (PGRN) → advancehomeopathy.org/pgrn

You can learn the principles of homeopathy. But when do you begin to understand why they fit together?

While preparing a lecture on Psora, Denise revisited notes from 15 or 16 years ago and realized how much her own understanding had deepened. That sparked a bigger question: can we move from simply doing homeopathy to truly thinking homeopathically?

This episode explores what deeper understanding can look like—and the difference between going deeper into homeopathy and simply adding more to it.

Along the way: Hahnemann’s theory of Psora and chronic disease; miasms in homeopathy; infection and inheritance; the Organon and The Chronic Diseases; the law of similars; potentization and Hahnemann’s alchemical influences; metaphor versus mechanism; and how deeper study can shape the way we practice homeopathy.

Go Back to the Source

• Organon of Medicine, 6th edition — Samuel Hahnemann, especially Aphorisms 78, 269 & 284
• The Chronic Diseases — Samuel Hahnemann
• 
  

Strange Rare Peculiar is a weekly podcast with Denise Straiges and Alastair Gray of the Institute for the Advancement of Homeopathy and the Academy of Homeopathy Education.

This season, we’re focusing on truth—what it means to Aude Sapere (“dare to know”) in homeopathy today. From Hahnemann’s original insights to modern practice, research, and education, Denise and Alastair bring more than 50 years of experience to conversations designed to help you question assumptions, return to the sources, and deepen your understanding of homeopathy.

🎧 Ready to go deeper? Join the conversation.

Explore more:

• Study homeopathy professionally → academyofhomeopathyeducation.com
• Access affordable virtual homeopathy care → homeopathyhelpnow.com
• Support the future of homeopathy → advancehomeopathy.org
• Join the practitioner-generated research network (PGRN) → advancehomeopathy.org/pgrn

What are miasms actually supposed to tell us about chronic disease—and how does that information change what we do with a case?

In this episode, Denise and Alastair go back to Hahnemann’s Chronic Diseases to look at what miasms were meant to help us understand, how they can inform a chronic case, and where modern interpretations may have oversimplified the idea.

Along the way: Hahnemann’s theory of chronic disease; psora, sycosis, and syphilis; family patterns and miasmatic themes; larger versus constricted totalities; intercurrent remedies; acquired versus inherited miasms; familial predisposition; and, naturally, a few tangents.

Listener questions take the conversation into what to do when someone can’t remember ever being well, how to use The Chronic Diseases and the Organon as working references, whether Hepar sulph supports the idea that Hahnemann used mixed remedies, how clinical symptoms make their way into the repertory, when multiple remedies may be appropriate in an emergency, and how to think about the Banerji protocols.

Go Back to the Source

• The Chronic Diseases: Their Peculiar Nature and Their Homoeopathic Cure — Samuel Hahnemann

• Organon of Medicine, 6th Edition — Samuel Hahnemann

• Materia Medica Pura — Samuel Hahnemann

Strange Rare Peculiar is a weekly podcast with Denise Straiges and Alastair Gray of the Institute for the Advancement of Homeopathy and the Academy of Homeopathy Education. 

This season, we’re focusing on truth — what it means to Aude Sapere (“dare to know”) in homeopathy today. From Hahnemann’s original insights to the realities of modern practice, research, and education, Denise and Alastair bring over 50 years of experience to conversations that challenge assumptions and invite curiosity.

🎧 If you’re ready to look deeper — beyond trends, beyond opinion — join the conversation and rediscover what homeopathy truly is.

Explore more:

• Study homeopathy professionally → academyofhomeopathyeducation.com

• Access affordable, virtual homeopathy care → homeopathyhelpnow.com

• Support the future of homeopathy → advancehomeopathy.org

• Join the practitioner-generated research network (PGRN) → advancehomeopathy.org/pgrn

Does the “totality of symptoms” mean every symptom belongs in the prescription?

In this episode, Denise and Alastair dig into one of the more difficult skills in homeopathic case analysis: determining which symptoms are actually relevant to the case in front of you.

Sometimes the picture is broad. Sometimes it is surprisingly small. And getting that wrong can cause you to miss the mark.

Through clinical examples—including PCOS, a recurring joint complaint, and a memorable Berberis case—they explore what Hahnemann meant by the totality of characteristic symptoms, why the biggest possible symptom picture is not always the right one, and why good case analysis takes more than simply collecting symptoms.

The conversation also continues a question raised by the response to the single-remedy episode: if cases are more complex today, does homeopathy need different principles—or do practitioners need greater skill in applying them?

Read for yourself:

•Samuel Hahnemann, Organon of Medicine — Aphorisms 3, 5, 6, 7, 26–29, 148 and its footnote, 151, 153, 171, 211, and 269

•Samuel Hahnemann, The Chronic Diseases

Also mentioned:

•Homeopathy Help Now: https://homeopathyhelpnow.com/•Dynamis: https://dynamis.edu/

•RadarOpus

Related listening:

Episode 131: Is It Still Homeopathy Without the Single Remedy?

Strange Rare Peculiar is a weekly podcast with Denise Straiges and Alastair Gray of the Institute for the Advancement of Homeopathy and the Academy of Homeopathy Education.

This season, we’re focusing on truth — what it means to Aude Sapere (“dare to know”) in homeopathy today. From Hahnemann’s original insights to the realities of modern practice, research, and education, Denise and Alastair bring over 50 years of experience to conversations that challenge assumptions and invite curiosity.

🎧 If you’re ready to look deeper — beyond trends, beyond opinion — join the conversation and rediscover what homeopathy truly is.

Explore more:

• Study homeopathy professionally → academyofhomeopathyeducation.com

• Access affordable, virtual homeopathy care → homeopathyhelpnow.com

• Support the future of homeopathy → advancehomeopathy.org

• Join the practitioner-generated research network (PGRN) → advancehomeopathy.org/pgrn

Is the single remedy principle foundational to homeopathy—or simply one prescribing style among many?

Claims that Hahnemann supported the use of multiple remedies often point to a brief period of experimentation in 1833. But what happens when you follow the historical record beyond that moment?

In this episode, Denise and Alastair go back to the primary sources: Hahnemann’s correspondence with Boenninghausen, Aegidi’s reported 233 cases, the 5th and 6th editions of the Organon, and Aphorism 273. They trace the chronology, examine the arguments being made today, and ask a bigger question: if the single remedy is removed as a principle, is it still homeopathy?

Read for yourself

• Samuel Hahnemann, Organon of Medicine — 5th and 6th editions
• Richard Haehl, Samuel Hahnemann: His Life and Work — pp. 253–254, https://archive.org/details/b29001742_0002/page/n3/mode/2up
• David Little — “The Double Remedy Experiment of Hahnemann in 1833”: http://www.simillimum.com/education/little-library/homoeopathic-philosophy/fhf/article.php
• James Tyler Kent: Lecture No. 6 on the single remedy (published in 1900); Lecture No. 7 on the minimum dose; “Alternation of Remedies,” Journal of Homeopathics, 1899; “Cure and Recovery,” Medical Advance, 1900; and “The Single Remedy in Practice.”

Strange Rare Peculiar is a weekly podcast with Denise Straiges and Alastair Gray of the Institute for the Advancement of Homeopathy and the Academy of Homeopathy Education. This season, we’re focusing on truth — what it means to Aude Sapere (“dare to know”) in homeopathy today. From Hahnemann’s original insights to the realities of modern practice, research, and education, Denise and Alastair bring over 50 years of experience to conversations that challenge assumptions and invite curiosity.🎧 If you’re ready to look deeper — beyond trends, beyond opinion — join the conversation and rediscover what homeopathy truly is.Explore more:• Study homeopathy professionally → academyofhomeopathyeducation.com• Access affordable, virtual homeopathy care → homeopathyhelpnow.com• Support the future of homeopathy → advancehomeopathy.org• Join the practitioner-generated research network (PGRN) → advancehomeopathy.org/pgrn

If a remedy is in your kit, your software, or your materia medica, do you know where that information came from?

In this episode, Denise and Alastair unpack homeopathic provings—how they are conducted, how symptoms make their way into the materia medica and repertory, and why proving methodology matters.

They look at Hahnemann’s approach, the role of toxicology and clinical confirmation, and the very different kinds of provings used today, including meditation, dream, seminar, and trituration provings.

References mentioned in this episode:

Organon of the Medical Art by Samuel Hahnemann— 6th Edition Wenda Brewster O’Reilly translation

The Chronic Diseases by Samuel Hahnemann

Dynamis provings by Jeremy Sherr: https://www.dynamis.edu/provings

LMHI-ECH Provings Guidelines: https://lmhi.org/proving-guideline

Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia Convention of the United States proving guidance: https://www.hpus.com/

Strange Rare Peculiar is a weekly podcast with Denise Straiges and Alastair Gray of the Institute for the Advancement of Homeopathy and the Academy of Homeopathy Education. 

This season, we’re focusing on truth — what it means to Aude Sapere (“dare to know”) in homeopathy today. From Hahnemann’s original insights to the realities of modern practice, research, and education, Denise and Alastair bring over 50 years of experience to conversations that challenge assumptions and invite curiosity.

🎧 If you’re ready to look deeper — beyond trends, beyond opinion — join the conversation and rediscover what homeopathy truly is.

Explore more:

• Study homeopathy professionally → academyofhomeopathyeducation.com

• Access affordable, virtual homeopathy care → homeopathyhelpnow.com

• Support the future of homeopathy → advancehomeopathy.org

• Join the practitioner-generated research network (PGRN) → advancehomeopathy.org/pgrn

Homeopathy has evolved considerably since Hahnemann’s time. The materia medica has expanded, new methods of case analysis have emerged, education has changed, and new questions continue to push the profession forward.

But what can change—and what can’t?

Recording together in Copenhagen, Denise and Alastair return to some of the foundational principles of homeopathy and ask what they mean for modern homeopathic practice. If only one similar disease can actively occupy the organism at a time, what does that mean for the totality of symptoms, single-remedy prescribing, complex disease, and the search for the “simillimum”? And what happens when prescribing moves away from those principles?

From there, the conversation widens: How should homeopathy evolve? What would Hahnemann have done with thousands of remedies available to him? Where is there room for innovation in case analysis, materia medica, provings, and homeopathic education? And before we keep expanding the system, are there parts of what we already have that need to be better understood, verified, or revisited?

It’s a wide-ranging conversation about homeopathic philosophy, prescribing, Hahnemann’s Organon, the history and future of homeopathy—and the difference between developing a system and changing the principles that define it.

References mentioned in this episode:

• Samuel Hahnemann, Organon of Medicine — particularly Aphorisms 26–50 on similar and dissimilar diseases and complex disease, and Aphorism 211 on the role of disposition in remedy selection
• Samuel Hahnemann, The Chronic Diseases
• Constitution and By-Laws of the International Hahnemannian Association (1880)
• AIH Consensus Definition of Homeopathy

Strange Rare Peculiar is a weekly podcast with Denise Straiges and Alastair Gray of the Institute for the Advancement of Homeopathy and the Academy of Homeopathy Education. This season, we’re focusing on truth — what it means to Aude Sapere (“dare to know”) in homeopathy today. From Hahnemann’s original insights to the realities of modern practice, research, and education, Denise and Alastair bring over 50 years of experience to conversations that challenge assumptions and invite curiosity.

🎧 If you’re ready to look deeper — beyond trends, beyond opinion — join the conversation and rediscover what homeopathy truly is.

Explore more:
• Study homeopathy professionally → academyofhomeopathyeducation.com
• Access affordable, virtual homeopathy care → homeopathyhelpnow.com
• Support the future of homeopathy → advancehomeopathy.org
• Join the practitioner-generated research network (PGRN) → advancehomeopathy.org/pgrn

In this episode, Denise and Alastair take on three terms that get thrown around a lot in homeopathy: acute, chronic, and constitutional.

What do they actually mean? How does each one change the way a case is approached? And what happens when those lines get blurred?

They also get into the growing problem of oversimplified prescribing—and what responsibility looks like in a profession that largely governs itself.

Resources Mentioned:

SRP Episode 41: Constitutional Prescribing & Chronic Remedies in Homeopathy
https://academyofhomeopathyeducation.com/srp-41/SRP

Episode 95: Constitutional Remedies in Homeopathy
https://academyofhomeopathyeducation.com/srp-95/

Organon of Medicine, 6th Edition


https://a.co/d/08o6EZfK

The Chronic Diseases
 by Samuel Hahnemann:

https://a.co/d/08o6EZfK

Strange Rare Peculiar is a weekly podcast with Denise Straiges and Alastair Gray of the Institute for the Advancement of Homeopathy and the Academy of Homeopathy Education.

This season, we’re focusing on truth — what it means to Aude Sapere (“dare to know”) in homeopathy today. From Hahnemann’s original insights to the realities of modern practice, research, and education, Denise and Alastair bring over 50 years of experience to conversations that challenge assumptions and invite curiosity.

🎧 If you’re ready to look deeper — beyond trends, beyond opinion — join the conversation and rediscover what homeopathy truly is.

Explore more:

• Study homeopathy professionally → academyofhomeopathyeducation.com

• Access affordable, virtual homeopathy care → homeopathyhelpnow.com

• Support the future of homeopathy → advancehomeopathy.org

• Join the practitioner-generated research network (PGRN) → advancehomeopathy.org/pgrn