It took our readers some time to get over the threshold anxiety of participating in the interactive pages of HO. The Interactive Case Analysis page became quite active after several weeks of quietude. Moderated by Ian Townsend, it drew high praise as a stimulating learning experience. Ian has provided thoughtful feedback throughout, and if you are curious to see the simillimum unveiled, visit Homeopathy Online, Vol. I, No. 1.

Word is spreading throughout the homeopathic community that HO is the "new kid on the block," and I am happy to say that many well established homeopaths have expressed interest in participating and writing for future issues.

There has been a call for a beginners' corner featuring acute cases and educational articles. Several readers have also expressed an interest in veterinary homeopathy and would like to see articles on this topic included in future issues. To all these – your requests have been noted and action has been taken. Even though a number of people have joined our staff, the limiting factor at the moment is still the size of our volunteer staff. Special thanks in this respect go to Jon Haworth and Dan York, who worked long hours together with Katherine Enos in order to move HO into its new, spacious home on the Lyghtforce server.

The featured topic of this issue is vaccination. Its success as a disease prevention measure is widely accepted, so that compliance has become compulsory in some parts of the world. How does homeopathy relate to vaccination? I have talked to many people who use vaccinations as an example of the practical application of the homeopathic principle, similia similibus curentur (let like be cured by like). After all, a small amount of the attenuated pathogen is injected into the body to immunize the person against the disease. Is this not the point at which homeopathy overlaps with allopathy? To answer this, consider that homeopathy matches the present disease state of the patient against the known disease state a particular drug can elicit. The classical homeopathic view is that rather than fighting a disease which the patient does not suffer, one should strengthen the general health of the patient. In so doing the patient's own constitution will be able to prevent contraction of the disease in the future.

Let me use an analogy to bring out the fundamental difference between vaccination and classical constitutional treatment as mechanisms of disease prevention. Imagine that your body is a huge mansion with valuable furniture and a priceless art collection inside. As its owner you employ a security guard (i.e., the immune system) to prevent thieves from breaking in. In order to keep the guard on edge, you stage numerous false alarms and drills. What is going to happen? The guard will become weary, nervous and irritated. A real break-in will probably be mistaken for just another drill and go unnoticed. Or maybe the guard will become so upset that he turns against you. In this manner, vaccinations, which essentially are false alarms to the immune system, may be counter-productive, ineffective, and can lead to auto-immune diseases. An alternative way of securing the house would be to assist the guard in its duty by strengthening the walls, fixing the windows, and putting in new doors and locks. Homeopathic constitutional treatment does just that.

From this angle, a prophylactic use of homeopathy is difficult to justify. Some homeopaths experiment with homeoprophylaxis, but data in this area remains scarce.

Vaccination has been proclaimed one of the big advances in medicine. Statistics show a decline of targeted diseases after a rigorous vaccination program has been instated. Is this information sufficient to warrant widespread compulsory mass vaccination programs? What can we say with our knowledge today about the effectiveness and possible risks of vaccination? Thomas Quak has examined current medical literature and takes a close look at this question from the view of the allopathic paradigm in Vaccinations and Their Side Effects, the Cover story for this issue. Rudolf Verspoor approaches the same question from the angle of a homeopath in The Homeopathic View of Vaccination on the Community Voice page.

David Little contributed this issue's, The Classical View on Miasms, found on the Education page. Hahnemann's theory of miasms is the cornerstone of the homeopathic treatment of chronic diseases. Is it a paradox of medical history, or has it still validity today? Since "the physician's high and only mission is to restore the sick to health . . . " (c.f. S. Hahnemann, Organon, para. 1), how can we use the notion of miasms to find the simillimum? An illustrative case history, A Case of Sycosis, accompanies Little's article.

An ongoing task of homeopathic research is the collection of proving data for insufficiently proved or unproved remedies. Group analysis of closely related remedies provides a powerful tool in making these proving data accessible and understandable. In Investigations into the Psyche of the Spider on the Materia Medica page, Jonathan Shore gives a detailed account of his multi-national proving of spider remedies. You may find it interesting to observe how previously little-known remedies take on distinct personalities and find uses in increasing numbers of cases. The rich symbology of the spider, the web, the thread, and more, gives gestalt to the drug pictures.

To illustrate the danger of classifying remedies as either acute or chronic, consider Stanley Fefferman's Struck by Lightning, on the Case Review page. On the Interactive Case Analysis page, Ian Townsend has another case in store for you. And in Prescribing Complexes: the Highest Ideal of Cure?, Michael Tomlinson, our very own Crocodile, shares his view of combination remedies. This article can, of course, be found on The Crocodile's Opinion page. Last, but not least, Dana Ullman's new book, The Consumer's Guide to Homeopathy, is reviewed on the Reviews page by Betsy Levine and myself.

As always, please don't leave us without sharing your comments and opinions.