Homeopathy
Homeopathy is a system of medicine which involves treating the individual with highly diluted substances, given mainly in tablet form, with the aim of triggering the body’s natural system of healing.
Homeopathy is based on the principle that you can treat ‘like with like’, that is, a substance which causes symptoms when taken in large doses, can be used in small amounts to treat those same symptoms.
For example, drinking too much coffee can cause sleeplessness and agitation, so according to this principle, when made into a homeopathic medicine, it could be used to treat people with these symptoms.
This concept is sometimes used in conventional medicine, for example, the stimulant Ritalin is used to treat patients with ADHD, or small doses of allergens such as pollen are sometimes used to desensitize allergic patients.
However, one major difference with homeopathic medicines is that substances are used in ultra high dilutions, which makes them non-toxic.
The principle of treating “like with like” dates back to Hippocrates (460-377BC) but in its current form, homeopathy has been widely used worldwide for more than 200 years.
It was discovered by a German doctor, Samuel Hahnemann, who, shocked with the harsh medical practices of the day (which included blood-letting, purging and the use of poisons such as arsenic), looked for a way to reduce the damaging side-effects associated with medical treatment.
He began experimenting on himself and a group of healthy volunteers, giving smaller and smaller medicinal doses, and found that as well as reducing toxicity, the medicines actually appeared to be more effective the lower the dose.
He also observed that symptoms caused by toxic ‘medicines’ such as mercury, were similar to those of the diseases they were being used to treat e.g. syphilis, which lead to the principle he described as ‘like cures like’.
Hahnemann went on to document his work, and his texts formed the foundations of homeopathic medicine as it is practiced today.
Homeopathy achieved its greatest popularity in the 19th century. Dr. John Franklin Gray (1804–1882) was the first practitioner of homeopathy in the United States, beginning in 1828 in New York City.
The first homeopathic schools opened in 1830, and throughout the 19th century dozens of homeopathic institutions appeared in Europe and the United States. By 1900, there were 22 homeopathic colleges and 15,000 practitioners in the United States.
Because medical practice of the time relied on ineffective and often dangerous treatments, patients of homeopaths often had better outcomes than those of the doctors of the time. Homeopathic remedies, even if ineffective, would almost surely cause no harm, making the users of homeopathic remedies less likely to be killed by the treatment that was supposed to be helping them.
The relative success of homeopathy in the 19th century may have led to the abandonment of the ineffective and harmful treatments of bloodletting and purging and to have begun the move towards more effective, science-based medicine.
One reason for the growing popularity of homeopathy was its apparent success in treating people suffering from infectious disease epidemics. During 19th century epidemics of diseases such as cholera, death rates in homeopathic hospitals were often lower than
in conventional hospitals, where the treatments used at the time were often harmful and did little or nothing to combat the diseases.
Homeopathy fell into disrepute in the early 20th century due to lack of science and the emergence of national health systems in many countries. Since the 1970's researchers have attempted to gain understanding of this system by conducting modern trials.
It has argued that the increased popularity of homeopathy in recent times may be due to the comparatively long consultations practitioners are willing to give their patients, the expense of medical care in some countries and to an irrational preference for "natural" products which people think are the basis of homeopathic remedies.
There are a number of ways to make homeopathic treatments but the science of this points to general ineffectiveness as a cure to illness but more as a result of the placebo effect and the 'help' with emotional and mental stress that accompanies illness and disease.
The scientific community regards homeopathy as nonsense, quackery or a sham, and homeopathic practice has been criticized as unethical. The axioms of homeopathy are long refuted and lack any biological plausibility. Although some clinical trials in recent years have produced positive results, systematic reviews that this is because of chance, flawed research methods, and reporting bias.
Scientists have devised a technique called the Randomised Controlled Trial, which corrects for errors in thinking, placebo effects and other biases. Through these trials scientists have been able to reliably demonstrate that, when all sources of error are removed, homeopathy does not work.
The way homeopathic remedies are supposed to work are not only scientifically implausible but precluded by the laws of physics!