Meet the Expert : Interview with Robert Medhurst
Interviewer | Sandra Grace
Tell me about your background – why did you choose to become a natural medicine practitioner ? I went into partnership with a GP in Sydney in the 1970 ’ s and we started a successful pathology lab . From there I worked in various hospitals around Sydney and was involved in teaching and research in the Medical Faculty at Sydney University . That helped me form the view that orthodox medicine as a system is primarily involved in the treatment of bodies , not people , that mortality and morbidity from medical treatment could largely be ignored , and that it had no real answers to chronic illness or disease prevention . That triggered the search for something better - something that treated human beings as people rather than merely bodies . Natural medicine proved to be an excellent solution .
Where did you study ? The NSW College of Natural Therapies , Southern Cross Herbal School , Nature
Care College and the National Institute of Health Sciences .
Did your education prepare you well for your professional career ? What , if any , were its shortcomings ? These institutions provided excellent foundations for clinical practice . But they were foundations and those of us who emerged from those institutions had to work hard at becoming competent healthcare providers . I ’ d already set up and run two businesses and had studied pathology before natural medicine so I had a bit of a head-start but it became very clear soon after graduating that learning didn ’ t stop just because someone handed you a diploma or a degree .
Why did you choose homeopathy ? I ’ m qualified as a naturopath , homeopath , herbalist , nutritionist and remedial masseur . I was a very enthusiastic herbalist in the early days and made my own liquid herbs to provide to clients . But after a long run of seeing the same clients with the same ailments , and appearing to simply palliate symptoms , I started to wonder if all I was doing was replacing their orthodox medicines with my natural ones . One morning a young mum brought her 6-year old daughter into the clinic with a middle ear infection - this was her fifth episode of otitis media , and rather than provide the usual herbal medicine I blew the dust off my Kent ’ s Repertory and worked up a homeopathic treatment , which turned out to be Pulsatilla . I gave the client a dose to take while she was in the consulting room as she was in obvious pain , and by the time she and her mum walked out of the clinic the pain was gone . That was the last time that little girl suffered from otitis media . The following week an elderly female client with hypertension came into the clinic for a 6-monthly check-up and a repeat of the herbal medicine that I ’ d had her on for over a year . While the herbs had her blood pressure under control they weren ’ t curing the problem because on the rare occasions that she forgot to take them her hypertension returned . Having leant a valuable lesson the previous week I once again turned to homeopathy for help , came up with Lachesis as a treatment , and within a few months she had stable and normal blood pressure with no further treatment required apart from a maintenance regime that I ’ d had her on to start with .
How long have you been in practice ? 40 years .
You ’ ve run five practices during your career . How much - or how little - has your practice changed over the course of your career ? In what ways ? I think most of us start out in practice feeling fairly tense and insecure . Over time though you learn to relax into it and as you do , you notice that your clients do as well . After a few years I learnt to worry less , absorb more about what was
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