Format: 15.0 cm × 23.5 cm × 1.4 cm. These two homeopathic doctors working in private practice, Anne Le Fur-Bensoussan and Alain Sarembaud, based in suburban towns around the French capital, offer an original account of homeopathy in the suburbs. These two municipalities are notable for being 'sensitive areas'. Why practise homeopathy there, a medicine so often contested? Is it an effective contribution for these populations? Is it a useful tool where suffering mixes with human distress (loss of cultural identity, feelings of abandonment and alienation), social insecurity and serious illnesses? etc. The authors demonstrate that the 'bet on this homeopathic medicine' is a winning one and that it plays a predominant role here in the care of recurring therapies that are so suffocating and so costly.

Editor's comment:

These two homeopathic doctors working in private practice, Anne Le Fur-Bensoussan and Alain Sarembaud, based in suburban towns around the French capital, offer an original account of homeopathy in the suburbs. These two municipalities are notable for being 'sensitive areas', 'priority education zones'; their neighbourhoods are reputed to be difficult and often non-homogeneous. Why practise homeopathy there, a medicine so often criticised? Is it an effective contribution for these populations? Is it a useful tool where suffering mixes with human distress (loss of cultural identity, feelings of abandonment and alienation), social insecurity and serious illnesses? Does homeopathy carry a particular message? Does homeopathy integrate with other medical and social responses? The authors show that the 'bet on this homeopathic medicine' is a winning one and that it takes a predominant place here in the care of recurring therapies that are so suffocating and so costly. Many answers to these questions are provided through clinical observations by Anne Le Fur-Bensoussan, who confronts these problems daily in the rapidly changing department of Seine-Saint-Denis, and by Alain Sarembaud, an association leader in the Val-de-Marne department.