The Law of Similars Read Online Free PDF

seems to be involved with memory and emotion and self-preservation.
    And so here are the aromas that conjure for me the beginning of the end: Lavender, because that was the oil she put into the diffuser. A match at the moment it's lit. And vanilla, because that was the fragrance of her body lotion, and we made love that morning when we were through burning the original notes.
    Of these three, of course, it is the smell of a match that comes back to me most often. From late September through April, I am likely to have a fire burning in the woodstove throughout the weekend, and many weeknights when I return home from work.
    Nevertheless, at least once a month I find myself wandering down to the Burlington waterfront and visiting a store there that sells essential oils. The proprietor knows me now, and the moment I walk in the door, she will prepare a small glass vial of peppermint oil for headache relief. It's all I ever buy from her.
    But she is aware that I am drawn to the smell of lavender, too, though of course she doesn't know why. And so while we are chatting, she will pour a small puddle of lavender oil into a clay bowl that sits in a wrought-iron holder on a glass counter, and then light the burner beneath it.
    And I will lose sight of this woman's face as she speaks, and the sound of her voice--more soothing than a massage--will become an ambient hum, curtained from me by the invisible mist made from hot oil.
    I am still not sure whether the aroma is a punishment or a blessing. It probably doesn't matter. I am drawn to it, and to the memories that it triggers.
    Sometimes, Carissa viewed her mural as a litmus test for new patients, a way of seeing how receptive they'd be to her work. Men, she knew, were more likely than women to have trouble with it when they'd first come to see her, and businessmen were especially likely to be dubious.
    In her experience, if the mural made the patient a little edgy or uncomfortable, it usually meant that he was suspicious of the very premise of homeopathy, and unsure as to why he was there. Perhaps it was too great a leap from what he was used to. Perhaps it demanded too vast a willingness to accept the idea that everything he knew about medicine and healing might be wrong--or, at least, inappropriate. Clumsy. Unsuitable for some kinds of disease.
    Often, she said, those doubters became believers. Like the CPA in the Octagon two floors below her. Or the Burlington developer, the fellow responsible for bringing chain stores the size of airplane hangars to the cow fields six and seven miles southeast of the city. And, certainly, Richard Emmons: advertising executive, asthmatic, and father of two.
    But, equally often, Carissa saw people--frequently men who had come to her at the insistence of wives or lovers or friends--who remained absolutely unwilling to give what she did half a chance.
    And that usually meant that even if they took the remedy, it didn't work. Or, if it did, they'd attribute their recovery or the abatement of their symptoms to something else. A conventional remedy, perhaps, or a change in their diet. Sometimes, they'd simply assume their bodies had healed themselves because the time was right.
    When Carissa became wearied by the most profound skeptics, she'd wonder why she was even bothering to practice in Vermont at all, and she'd imagine how different her life would have been had she hung out her shingle in Paris.
    After all, France--most of Europe, in fact--regards homeopathy as a commonplace alternative method for treating a disease. You walk down almost any street in Paris, and there's the perfectly square, blinking neon cross: the word Homeopathie above it, Herboristerie below it. There's the butcher, the baker, that store full of chocolates. There's the homeopathie.
    They're just drugstores, of course, everyday pharmacies. But that's the beauty of it. They look just like any drugstore in America, except the packaging for the products we use all the time seems more