Homeopathy understands that symptoms are simply the body's way of expressing an imbalance in the mental, emotional and physical energies. They are the bodies attempt at addressing the imbalance and must not be ignored - they are the guidelines for the homeopathic prescription. To understand the homeopathic prescription, it is necessary to differentiate between acute and chronic illness. Acute illness is characterized by a latent period, a period of intensification and a period of decline. Chronic illness, in contrast, has a period of progress but no decline, and there is no tendency towards recovery without proper treatment.
Acute prescriptions are less complicated than chronic ones.
As an example, an isolated case of diarrhea with the specific symptoms of profuse, offensive, painless, gushing stools with jelly-like mucus, worse in the morning, better lying on the abdomen, calls for the remedy Podophyllum. The homeopathic prescription in chronic illness is much more complex. Classical homeopathy recognizes that there is but one disease and one imbalance - in chronic illness the body will show this imbalance on all levels. The prescription of a single remedy is addressed to the essence of the problem. For example, the patient may present the same chief complaint of ongoing diarrhea, but during the initial consultation the homeopath finds the patient to be very restless, fastidious, obsessed with order and preoccupied with many fears.