Dr. Jawahar Shah is a Global Homeopath

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He is himself in the field for 45 years. And he is a fifth-generation Homeopath! Dr. Jawahar Shah may be a leading medical practitioner in Mumbai, but his fame extends far and wide globally, and with good reasons. He has also been an academician, educationist and more—nothing less than a missionary to spread what he stresses is a science par excellence.

Having conducted over 500 seminars across 22 countries—he has visited the US 14 times—he is also an author and has articles published in journals across the globe. He has also devised the largest Homeopathic database and Decision-Support System, HOMPATH, which is used in over a 1000 Homeopathic medical colleges and institutions in the world. What’s more, he has launched the world’s largest online Homeopathic treatment portal, Welcome Cure.

HOMPATH is the largest Homeopath software in the world with 10 million permutations in symptoms. It is also an integral part of 150,000 practitioners’ clinics across over 175 countries, directly influencing people to give better prescriptions, all for the goal of a healthier community.

Ask Dr. Shah how he thought of this and he smilingly replies, “I was visiting the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in US as part of the international team at the Washington session of the World Cancer Congress. I was also an Observer at the Center. This was in the 1980s and I came across a small yet very engrossing book on the role of computers in Medicine. I thought I must do something in that direction! Soon, I invested Rs. 3 lakh in a huge CPM-based machine and developed this software along with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). But after a while, TCS thought it was commercially not viable. So I took over. HOMPATH is now in its 14^th version, including a mobile version that is independent of the necessity of a network!”

Dr Shah believes only in the present and in looking ahead. He and his team had organized a 3-day Global Marathon Webinar last year with 72 hours of continuous lectures online. “We had 65 teachers, and over 28000 doctors and medical students from over a 100 countries had registered,” says Dr. Shah. The subject was: ‘Practical Homeopathy which can be applied to your practice’.

Dr. Shah has received appreciation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his contribution to India’s AYUSH (the Ministry of indigenous medical sciences) sector and was also a part of the COVID-19 task force of the government of Maharashtra. He had also created an app specifically for COVID-19 Integrative Management.

But Dr. Shah does not believe in resting on his past success – he tries to outdo himself with each passing day. As he puts it, “A retirement age of 55 or 60 is pure nonsense. This is the age when you have the right mix of experience, energy and enthusiasm and that means that age is just a number and it’s all in the mind. That’s the age when you have learnt from mistakes and can start communicating and fulfilling responsibilities to society. Engineers, teachers and doctors, for example, are at their peak creativity. I believe in working until my last breath!”

One mission Dr. Shah has in Indian society especially is the empowerment of female homeopaths so that they can have a perfect work and home balance. He also has made it his personal mission to offer guidance, mentoring and the right tools with support from the start for young homeopaths to practice with confidence and achieve positive results in their careers.

“Homeopathic practice is an art,” he smiles. “Despite a sound base in theory, practical therapeutics is the key to get the right medicine for a patient. In Homeopathy one has to study the minutest details. A dozen patients with the same chief complaint might need 12 different medicines! Only deep study yields results, like how the Australians studied every move of the Indian cricket team and won the World Cup!”

The honors that Dr. Shah has received are manifold. He has bagged the Jury’s Award for seeing over 10,000 patients in the remotest areas of Tripura through Telemedicine. He is also the first homeopath to receive the Medscape India Award, 2012, for Excellence & Exemplary Service in Homeopathy. A member of the Indian government’s Advisory Committee of Central Council of Homeopathy (CCH), he is now pursuing a Doctorate (Ph.D.) on an interesting subject: ‘Drug Proving.’

He has been winner of the Dag Hammarskjold International Award for Alternative Medicine in 1989 in Switzerland, the Dr. Samuel Hahnemann National Award 2011, and the Exemplary Service award in Homeopathy at the International Homeopathy Conference.

Coming to the fairly-prevalent resistance to Homeopathy, he says, “In fact, Homeopathy’s founder, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, has done the best-ever classification of diseases, like Chronic, Acute, Sub-Acute, Mental, One-Sided and so on. But we must differentiate between what can be treated rapidly and effectively by us and where a different system of medicine is ideal, like intususceptions or acute cardiac ailments. At the same time, our system works fabulously in several acute diseases, and if only palliatives can ease pain in an advanced incurable disease, our drugs perform miraculously better than even narcotic analgesics.”

He wryly adds, “The biggest problem is that people are not aware of the power of Homeopathy. Or they have closed minds. One has to have an open mind like a child has. One of our pioneering homeopaths, Dr. Hering, was an allopath appointed by the government to study and criticize our science. When he began studying and experimenting with our drug potencies (dilutions), he was converted, became a giant in our field and did magnificent work, including writing books.”

What about the prevalent misconception that homeopathic medicines that are highly diluted have no medical effect and are merely placebos?

Laughs Dr. Shah, “Can I be honest? There have always been lobbies against this wonderful science. But all I ask is, if our medicines are merely placebos, why don’t the skeptics try out certain medicines in the way I suggest? They will soon be convinced of the power of our medicines! Remember, our medicines are given on the principle of Similia Similibus Curentur (medicines cure what they can cause). Like Dr. Hering was convinced when he took a Homeopathic drug repeatedly and lost his sense of smell!”

As for the dilutions, Dr. Shah informs that an eminent team of doctors are now conducting deep research with advanced electronic microscopes at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). “They are doing some fantastic work and have proved that there is molecular activity in our potencies. And let’s think: Can we see our mind, which can theoretically travel to the moon and back in seconds? So how can we see our dilutions when they work wonders at the psycho-neuro-endocrine levels?”

About his future ambitions, Dr. Shah candidly says, “If you really want to enjoy life, keep taking up new challenges and avoid stagnating. I would like to be like a little child who wants to explore something new. I have always done that since I set up my practice!”

Importantly, Dr. Shah stresses on the importance of having hobbies to express inner emotions and not “go dry” and lose interest in life and work. “Relaxation is vital!” says Dr. Shah. “My father was one of the greatest philatelists. I have a great interest in Notaphily as I collect notes with numbers matching birth-dates or anniversaries. I have thus used these notes and compiled pictorial books on names like our Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Lata Mangeshkar, Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan, and am planning one on Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai who has transformed his country. I make just two copies, one for the celebrity and the other for my personal collection, and the joy and appreciation on their faces is my reward!”

Music is another hobby for Dr. Shah and he concludes, “We cannot manage human beings with one system of medicine alone. We should also harness Music, Dance and Art so as to help patient recover completely and very fast. We doctors of various disciplines must work in synergy, in one direction of health and not against each other!”