I feel it's our responsibility to such patients to move past an overgeneralized declaration that our treatment is absolutely incompatible with their current regimen, and carefully examine the manner in which allopathic medications affect the picture of disease available to the homoeopath and the process of healing invited by the homoeopathic precription. Of course, it is certainly easier to treat homoeopathically without the interference of other treatments. When patients trust their ability to discontinue conventional medication without dangerous or unmanageable results, this is generally preferable to attempting to overlap approaches. I am impressed at how rarely my patients fall into this category. Those who do, I encourage to stop their current medications well in advance of beginning homoeopathic treatment, both so that I have the full advantage of viewing their unsuppressed symptom picture, and so that we are not confused as to whether an increase in their symptoms is do to homoeopathic aggravation or discontinuation of palliative medication.
Allopathic treatment can complicate homoeopathic management at three junctures.
First, it can alter and complicate the original case, making it difficult to find the patient's simillimum. Second, it can interfere with the process of healing invited by homoeopathic treatment. Third, it can mask or obscure the symptoms of the patient, making it difficult for us to know whether there is a healing response to our prescription. All we need to do when this is the case, is to ascend the potency scale as the case demands - from the crude doses used allopathically to the homoeopathic potencies intended by Constantine Hering when he introduced this remedy, which was only later taken up by allopathic practice. It is unusual, however, that an allopathic prescription is similar to the disease of the patient.