Before we examine how homeopathic medicine approaches pregnancy, we have to understand how it views health and disease in general. Homeopathic medicine has a unique perception of disease: it is the process whereby an organism is subjected to the assault of a toxic entity, or what we call a morbid agent or an agent of disease. This agent could be a viral protein, a tree pollen, or a toxic chemical. Normally, a healthy body is able to repel a virus or detoxify a poison, but if a system is weakened by fatigue, depression, unhealthy habits, malnutrition, or if the disease agents are very powerful and numerous, they may overrun the resistance of an organism and begin to cause internal damage.
The struggle between the toxic agent and the organism’s immune defences produces symptoms of disease: headache, fever, anxiety, and cough. In acute conditions, an individual’s system is usually able to overcome the disease and eventually expel the toxin. But immune systems that have often been weakened and overworked are not able to completely cure themselves, and a chronic state evolves, in which sick people are able to function, but constantly suffer unpleasant and often debilitating symptoms that drain their vitality and prevent them from enjoying their lives. When people are exposed to a potent poison, such as a toxic chemical or a snakebite, they are given an antidote, which is a specific substance capable of either removing the poison from the body or helping the body to detoxify this poison by converting it into a benign substance. Homeopathic doctors, after studying hundreds of diseases and sick people, found a way to determine how each disease toxin could be antidoted or illuminated by a specific substance found in nature; these substances are called homeopathic medicine. There is one specific antidote for each specific malady.
When an organism falls victim to an infection, the agent of this infection often interferes with the body’s normal cellular processes by producing a biologically active chemical (a protein) that reacts with the host’s proteins and destroys them. Once a sufficient number of vital proteins are destroyed, the body’s functions are altered (depending on the type of functions the destroyed protein performed). Often these proteins are valuable enzymes that catalyze vital biochemical reactions in the body; when the proteins are under attack, these reactions are impeded and, as a result, we experience the unpleasant symptoms of the disease.
Each organ uses each enzyme in different ways, because Nature is very economical and, unlike humans, abhors waste and overproduction. When different organs are affected, we experience a whole range of symptoms from a single disease. Homeopathic doctors study the pattern of these symptoms to determine the antidote for each particular disease. (NB. By the term symptoms we, in homeopathy, usually mean both, the individual subjective feelings and the objective signs of disease.) We have to know the pattern of behaviour, so to speak, of each disease toxin in order to determine the medicine with which to treat it. That’s why we only use one medicinal substance at a time; our studies have shown that each morbid substance needs only one antidote to eliminate it. That is also why we take such careful and detailed histories; we must discern the "signature" action of an invading toxin by deciphering which organs and systems are affected.