Trying for a whole understanding of illness

Press, 31 August 1989, Page 9

Trying for a whole understanding of illness

BETH NOAKES describes some of the alternative therapies available at Novalis House.

An allergic reaction to a drug sent Sue Curtis beserk. She crouched in the corner of a Wellington hospital, unable to recognise her husband or define where or who she was.

At home again in Christchurch, she struggled to look after her children. “But it was like breaking your leg and being told to go on a 10 mile run. I hadn’t had time to get better,” she says.

That was nine years ago, and gradually she coped. But the effects persisted. Sue found difficulty in concentrating and her memory was bad. Eventually, she decided she had had enough. She remembered hearing a talk on homeopathy by Dr David Ritchie, and went to see him at Novalis House. Novalis House stands on a grassy expanse at the end of a South Christchurch terrace of houses. A general practitioner, Dr Ritchie explains the centre’s philosophy: "We’re dealing with more than the end symptoms of an illness. We’re trying to create a whole understanding of why a person is ill.”

Dr Ritchie trained as a GP, then went to Europe to study the principles of Anthroposophical medicine, which were expounded by the Austrian philosopher, Rudolph Steiner, at the beginning of the century.

Any mother know, says Dr Ritchie, that if two children catch a cold, one may have a high fever and get over it in two or three days, while the other has a runny nose for a week. They handle the same virus differently. “We all have different physical strengths and weaknesses,” he says. Equally, where arthritis may be understandable at 60, it is alarming at 30. At Novalis House, healing is a team process. It does not involve a pill for every ailment: it does involve looking at why someone is getting ill at that particular stage in their life, and discovering and overcoming the constitutional weaknesses that have contributed to the illness. Novalis staff include nurses, curative eurythmists, a psychologist, a remedial teacher and an occupational therapist. The patient, too, is an important part of the team. “We do not want patients coming to us passively, saying, ‘Here I am with this illness, make me better’,” says Dr Ritchie. “They need to involve themselves actively, first in understanding the illness, then, in going through a- process of fight-

ing it off. It’s very much a journey, if you like, to change something.”

When Sue Curtis went to see Dr Ritchie, he diagnosed her lack of concentration as a long-term result of her allergic reaction to the drug. “He was really caring about me as a person,” she says. “I’d never seen a doctor like that before.” He treated her with Anthroposophical remedies, based on the homeopathic principle of potentising a substance by diluting it until only its essence remains. He also recommended some curative eurythmy with Therese Holzmer.

Curative eurythmy is a form of movement therapy, with exercises individually designed for each patient. Therese Holzmer explains: “Speech is very alive. When you’re talking to another person something is happening between you. So if you can find movements that can really express the different sounds, the vowels and . consonants, you have living movements that often can work deeply into the human organs and into bodily processes.”

Whatever the theory, the medicine and the eurythmy worked for Sue Curtis. “As I improved and changed, David would start to treat me at a -deeper level,” she says. “It was the real thing that started to change my life. I’ve felt wonderful ever since.”

The therapies available at Novalis House are complementary to orthodox medicine rather than alternative. Dr Ritchie will give insulin to a diabetic child, but will also suggest other remedies to try to strengthen the child’s pancreas. He would not take someone with arthritis straight off anti-inflammatories, but would gradually reduce their use.

“When you’re working on a chronic illness, to change someone’s constitution is going to take time,” he says. “So you may use orthodox medicine to halt the process that’s painful or damaging or whatever. But then the real work goes on to try to change the patient’s constitution so that they no longer need orthodox medicines.”

It is fairly generally accepted by conventional doctors, says Dr Ritchie, that you can remove cancerous cells by surgery but the body’s whole tendency to cancer is still there. He does not claim a cure for cancer. He has, however, had some success with a mistletoe extract called Iscador. It has been widely

researched at university hospitals in Europe, he says, and has been shown to stimulate the immune system, though its effect on cancer has not yet been proved in a scientific sense.

Iscador works in the opposite way to treatments like chemotherapy: rather than killing off all the cells, cancer cells included, it stimulates the patient’s immune system to fight off the cancer. Meanwhile, other therapies can help overcome the person’s tendency to develop cancer. Lorna Hyslop discovered a lump in her breast 2J4 years ago, it was diagnosed as cancer with lymph node involvement. Her doctor started to treat her with Iscador, then suggested she transferred to Dr Ritchie who, he said, knew more than he about the subject. At Novalis House, Lorna was given Iscador and other Anthroposophical medications. Then a bereavement put her into a state of great shock. Dr Ritchie prescribed curative eurythmy, which helped her through the terrors of the letting go process. “There are times when I achieve zero gravity — a tremendously balanced state of mind, soul and body, totally centred and feeling very kindly towards everyone,” Lorna says. “This is one of the lovliest things to come out of Novalis House.”

Eventually, all true healing comes from the spirit, says Lorna. “But at no stage do they bring that up. If you come round to it yourself, well and good.” She is full of praise for the Novalis House staff. “They are the kindest, most non-materialistic people I’ve ever met. It is of no consequence whatever whether one walks into Novalis House covered in diamonds and draped with mink or covered with tattoos and draped with dreadlocks.” Lorna’s tumour, too, appears to have stopped in its tracks.

“I’m 60 now and getting more dangerous by the minute,” she says cheerfully. Children with learning difficulties are a particular concern of Novalis House. The occupational therapist, Robyn Ritchie, and remedial teacher, Elizabeth Craddock, work closely together, as poor co-ordination and poor academic results tend to go hand in hand. “Children with developmental problems take so much more energy to do everything that they haven’t the resources left for thinking,” says Robyn Ritchie.

Glenice Adair’s eldest son, Chris, was perfectly intelligent, but not remotely interested in learning to read. The teachers at his school had no conception of how to help him.

Eventually, Glenice decided that she would rather he grew up well adjusted than with hang ups imposed by pressures to read, and told them to leave the boy alone. He is now progressing, with a great deal of his own effort and the help of a “super teacher” found by his mother. But the process, she says, was “sheer hell.”

When her second son, Mitchell, showed signs of developing the same way, Glenice tried every avenue she could think of. Then she mentioned the problem to Dr Ritchie, who was acting as locum for her G.P. He said he

had a centre that might be able to help Mitchell. It was, says Glenice, "an absolute miracle.” Mitchell has curative eurythmy, and his mother recently noticed him on horseback sitting straight, tall and balanced instead of hunching up and clinging on for grim death. He also has remedial reading and occupational therapy. Robyn Ritchie found that any noise distracted him, that he could remember instructions, but not carry them out, and that he found holding a pencil nearly impossible because of weak muscles. She devised exercises to combat all these problems. Mitchell dashes

along on a scooterboard to collect pieces of a puzzle, he counts or spells words while balancing on a board or throwing bean bags into a circle. As the neurological problems are solved, the learning starts to come naturallly. “That woman is the most marvellous person I’ve ever met,” says Glenice Adair of Robyn. "I just can’t believe it’s so simple.” She, like Sue Curtis and Lorna Hyslop, cites the atmosphere of calm acceptance as one of the most valuable aspects of Novalis House. “We’re under no pressure, and I always felt under pressure at school,” she says. “You

can’t imagine what a blessing it is. It has been an absolute haven of peace for my son.”

There is an increasing number of people, says Dr Ritchie, whom our conventional medical system is not suiting. People like Sue, Lorna and Glenice are not being given answers from a traditional medical point of view, and so they begin to think more deeply, to consider why problems are occurring, to look for alternatives.

“It’s a question of what is health, rather than how to deal with illness. We’re working with people to help them find their way in life,” Dr Ritchie says.