Just how this natural practice works is elusive, but many say it's helping them heal.

Dianne Williams was in a terrible car accident in 1994. She suffered multiple fractures and had severe bruising all over her body. Williams knew how painful the comeback from such trauma could be; at the time of the accident, she had been a physiotherapist for 14 years.

Yet when Williams became discouraged with her rate of recovery, she did not rely on mainstream, allopathic medicine; it was homeopathy that pulled her out of her slump. She'd come across it while researching treatments to help her own patients, and almost immediately, Williams claimed she noticed a marked decrease in the swelling, bruising, and pain caused by her injuries. "It was almost magical," she said.

Homeopathy is a system of medicine that uses natural remedies to stimulate the body's healing powers. Murray Feldman has been a practitioner of it for 30 years. Today he is an instructor at the Vancouver Centre for Homeopathy (120–3195 Granville Street), where he has worked since 1994. Feldman explained that a homeopathic remedy is produced through what is called the "law of similars". In the 1790s, Feldman explained, a German physician named Samuel Hahnemann began to experiment with the administration of different substances to healthy and sick people. Hahnemann's conclusions formed the basis of homeopathy, which today is practised around the world, particularly throughout Europe and in India.

"We use very, very small amounts of a substance that is highly diluted," Feldman said. "And we give it to a person when they come with similar symptoms that [the substance] would produce in a healthy person."

Homeopathic practitioners try to examine every symptom and change in the body that has occurred since a person became ill or injured. Then they go to a list of "provings" to find a substance that produces the same changes when given to a healthy person. Next, Feldman explained, that substance is diluted–one part to 99 parts distilled water, with the procedure being repeated until the desired potency is reached. Generally, potency is determined by the intensity of a person's symptoms. It is a technique that can be used to treat a wide range of ailments, Feldman said, with remedies depending on each person's symptoms. Some are more common than others, however, such as the plant gelsemium, which is often prescribed for the flu.

Williams was given an oral dose of arnica, a common homeopathic remedy, which is derived from a flower commonly found across Europe, and that was all she needed. There was "an almost miraculous reduction in bruising", she said. "One dose was enough to get me through the first few weeks of that event without repeating it."

Laurie Dack is a colleague of Feldman's and has practised at the Vancouver Centre for Homeopathy for the past 20 years. Dack said that she loves homeopathy's focus on the relationship between the body and the mind. "What is amazing is that the homeopathic paradigm allows you to see that," she said. "It allows you to administer an energetic medicine that stimulates the whole system so that it can right itself."

The dilution process used to make a homeopathic remedy leaves almost no trace of the original substance, Dack conceded, which can make homeopathy's success stories difficult to understand. "It doesn't really, on a scientific level, make sense," she said. But one way that homeopathy could be explained, she continued, is through recent investigations into the possibility of memory in water molecules: "that the kind of imprint of a substance is held by water". Dack pointed out that the concept received some mainstream-media attention after the 2004 film What the #$*! Do We Know!?, which attempted to connect aspects of science and spirituality.

Both Dack and Feldman admitted a complete understanding of how homeopathy works remains elusive. "I don't think there are many conclusive explanations for that," Dack said. "But the fact is that people have been getting better for hundreds of years."

Williams returned to homeopathy many times after her accident. She has since taken homeopathic remedies for fevers and nausea, and has received regular treatments as a means of reinforcing general health.

"It's more about enhancing the self on a holistic level," she said. "It's mental, psychological, and physical." Williams admitted that she has had her doubts about homeopathy. "It seems really flaky, it doesn't make sense. But darn it, it works."