The Law of Similars Read Online Free PDF Page A

A headband pulling back blond hair that fell just below her ears. Incandescent green eyes.
    "I need echinacea."
    She nodded and started toward the aisle of dark little bottles. I followed her, my eyes (unavoidably) on her hips. Before I knew it, I was telling her about my months and months of physical unease, vague discomfort, premonitions in the night of profoundly ill health.
    "Have you ever thought of seeing Carissa?"
    "Carissa?"
    "She's a homeopath. Her office is on the green."
    "In the Octagon?"
    "Yup. She's the one with the painted room."
    "Paris?"
    "Right."
    "Usually I only think of the other lawyers in that building."
    "Are you a lawyer, too?"
    "I am."
    "Cool," she said, and I shivered at the realization that this attractive young woman was clearly a college student. What was I thinking, giving her an extra five years? She couldn't be more than twenty! I'd been staring at the breasts and hips of a child! I'd been sharing my midlife night terrors with someone who was not merely fifteen years younger than I was, but who probably drank keg beer and slept happily in a bed the width of a desk blotter.
    I told myself I had to get out more.
    "I have her number," she said when I remained quiet, when I was still standing there absorbing the word cool.
    "I'd like that," I said, and I watched her rip a small scrap from a brown paper bag and scribble a name and a phone number upon it. She handed the paper to me as solemnly as if it were a business card.
    "Carissa Lake," I said, murmuring the woman's name aloud.
    "Yup. Ol' Carissa."
    "How old is ol' Carissa?"
    "Oh, I don't know. I guess she's about your age. You know, mid-thirties. She's my aunt."
    "Your aunt."
    "Yup." After I had paid for the echinacea--as I was dropping the little bottle in one of the front pockets of my suit jacket--this much younger woman extended her hand and said, "My name is Whitney."
    "I'm Leland."
    "Say hi to Aunt Carissa for me."
    "I will. For sure."
    The next day I called Aunt Carissa, and I made an appointment for a consultation. And I was off, crossing the boundaries of conventional medicine.
    Is this how it happens for everyone, is this how everyone finds their first homeopath? I couldn't say.
    But it was clear that Carissa and I were destined to meet, it was clear our paths were going to cross. And it wasn't simply because Bartlett and East Bartlett are small towns in rural Vermont. I wish it were that simple. Almost three thousand people live in the village, and another eight hundred in the hills to the east. Like me, some of them work in Burlington, one of the few settlements in the state to grow into a city. I am never going to meet even a sixth of the people in the two Bartletts if I spend the entire rest of my life here.
    No, if I had not met Carissa Lake because of some malaise or disease or real or imagined unease, I would have met her through the Chittenden County State's Attorneys Office. Had I not already met her--had there not been a somewhat obvious conflict of interest--I might have been the one assigned to her case. Expected to prosecute her.
    It easily could have happened that way.
    Imagine. Leland Fowler, chief deputy state's attorney, cross-examining Carissa Lake, Bartlett homeopath.
    No, I can't imagine that. Even now. Even when I am awake in the middle of the night. Even when I think about what she did and what I did and the things I must someday explain to my daughter. Even then, I cannot imagine the path to Carissa unfolding before me in any manner but the way that it did: Sniffles. Echinacea. A phone number on the scrap of a brown paper bag.

    Chapter 2.
    Number 84
    The patient tells the history of his complaints....
    The physician sees, hears, and observes with his other senses what is altered and peculiar in the patient.
    He writes everything down exactly.
    Dr. Samuel Hahnemann,
    Organon of Medicine, 1842
    .
    Of the five senses, only smell goes first to the limbic system, the part of the brain, including the hippocampus, that