They say my mother cured two deaf children one day back in the 1970s. She had a reputation as an intuitive homoeopath, someone who could readily home in on the correct remedy by asking a few questions and then consulting the Materia Medica, the bible of homoeopathy compiled by Samuel Hahnemann, its founder.

The children lived in the same building, several floors below, and had been under treatment with my mother's little white pills for some weeks. One day their mother excitedly rang our doorbell — there had been a crash in their kitchen and both children had turned their heads towards the sound. It is said that from then on they gradually got better and eventually completed regained their sense of hearing.