Homeopathy Opened Doors for Saltzman

Susanne Saltzman, M.D., owner of Hartsdale Homeopathy, has 24 years of clinical family practice treating acute and chronic illness in children and adults. Her emphasis is on homeopathic and functional medicine to decrease dependency on pharmaceutical drugs. She has successfully treated thousands of patients through the years for ADD, allergies, anxiety disorders, asthma, autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and Lupus, depression, migraines, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, psoriasis, interstitial cystitis, Lyme disease, menopause, multiple sclerosis, PMS and thyroid disorders.

As a child, she grew up witnessing domestic violence. “I was always very sensitive to the suffering of others and I had a tremendous desire to want to help alleviate that suffering in any way I could,” she recalls. “Fortunately, I loved school and learning, and I escaped the chaos of my home environment by delving into my books and excelling at school. I especially loved the sciences and learning about the human body. It seemed pretty obvious by the time I got to the Bronx High School of Science that becoming a physician would be my calling.”

Homeopathy is a system of medicine that uses natural substances to stimulate the body’s own immune system to heal disease. It is based on the principle of “like cures like”: the same substance that causes illness cures it by varying the dose of the substance. Homeopathy recognizes that every person is unique in the way they express illness. Two people with the same disease may need two completely different homeopathic medicines. Homeopathy also treats the whole person. This means that someone’s mental or emotional characteristics are just as important as their physical symptoms in the selection of the correct homeopathic medicine.

“People ask how I became interested in alternative/complementary medicine 25 years ago when it was still in its early stages. I think my sensitivity as a young adult made me more aware of the arrogance and narrow-mindedness that I often experienced from many of my ‘superiors’ in medical school,” says Saltzman. “When I occasionally met that compassionate, truly competent physician who took the time to sit at a patient’s bedside, listen with his or her full attention and then examine the patient in the gentlest manner possible—and finally—address us students with utmost respect and dignity, I vowed that no matter how exhausted I was from the untold hours of sleep deprivation and training, I would never lose my humanity and aspire to become just like him or her.”

Saltzman received her medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1987. “I was completely disillusioned early on in my training by the non-curative therapies, the disjointed, piecemeal way of addressing disease and the unending barrage of medications that seemed to cause more problems as the patient succumbed to all of the side effects,” recalls Saltzman. “After my internship in psychiatry and medicine at Jacobi and Montefiore hospitals, in the Bronx, I threw up my hands in exasperation and asked the universe, ‘Please, dear God, tell me there is a better way of healing people than this!’”

The following year, while she was home nursing her newborn son, “I happened upon an article by a physician in Mothering magazine who was talking about a 200-year-old system of medicine called homeopathy that was actually healing people without the use of pharmaceutical drugs, says Saltzman. “I was amazed! I decided to take a course in it and I was hooked! I’ve been practicing homeopathic medicine—and then later on functional medicine—ever since.”

Saltzman is also a faculty instructor of Family and Community Medicine at New York Medical College, in Valhalla, where she teaches a course on homeopathic medicine for fourth-year medical students. She is vice president of the American Institute of Homeopathy, the oldest national physicians’ organization in the U.S., established in 1844, as well as current Editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Homeopathic Medicine and a member of the New York Homeopathic Medical Society of the State of New York.

Susanne Saltzman, M.D., practices in Rockland County at 400 Rella Blvd., Ste. 165, in Montebello, NY, and Westchester County at 250 E. Hartsdale Ave., Ste. 22, in Hartsdale, NY. For appointments and more information, call 914-472-0666 or visit HartsdaleHomeopathy.com. See ad, page 8.