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Name:
Homeopathy
Founder:
Name: Samuel Hahnemann
Born: 1755
Died: 1843
Profile:
Originally developed by the German physician, Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), homeopathy is
based upon a principle as that of sympathetic magic: an illness can be cured by the use of
minute quantities of some substance which produces symptoms similar to that of the illness
itself. The motto of homeopathy is Similia similibus curantur, which means "Like
cures like." Thus, for example, to cure a stomach flu you have to take something which
causes fever and something which causes nausea if taken in greater quantities when healthy.
The name itself stems from the Greek roots for "alike" and "suffering."
At the same time, Hahnemann also coined a term for the scientific medicine of the day which tried to treat illnesses by administering substances which had the opposite effect of the symptoms: allopathy, taken from Greek roots for "unlike" and "suffering." Hahnemann derided allopathic medicine, saying that it relied too much on theory and not enough on personal experiences, the same sorts of experiences that had led him to develop his medical system.
Philosophy
Traditional homeopathic treatment is often less about any one illness or symptom and more about
the person as a whole. A homeopathic practitioner seeks to treat the entire person and address all of
his or her problems, resulting in a high and detailed level of interaction between patient and doctor.
This of course made homeopathic treatment very attractive to the average person because the
practitioner would have to pay a great deal of attention to all of the aches and pains and problems
of the patient - the practitioner was somone who would sit down and calmly, carefully listen to
what a person had to say. That itself can often have curative powers.
Homeopathic medicine was also attractive because it offered a complex, coherent system of thought which constituted a sharp alterantive from the reductionism and materialism of orthodox science. Many people were disturbed at the way in which science was moving through the 19th century, always coming closer to the idea that the entire universe is a mindless machine and humans are souless bundles of cells. Homeopathy, however, could not work via mere matter - thus, a spiritual medium had to be postulated. Because homeopathy seemed to work, it was easier for people to believe that the universe wasn't all mere matter after all.
Treatment
The best that can be said for homeopathic medicine is that it is unlikely to produce
any harm itself, beyond the fact that it might cause people not to seek real medicine.
The reason for this is the same reason why it has no medical value: the substances
used, even if they had any medicinal value, are diluted too far to have any
effectiveness. As a matter of fact, Hahnemann argued that the more diluted a substance
becomes, the stronger it becomes.
A typical homeopathic dosage for some substance might be 30X. What does this mean? The basic method of homeopathy is dilution: you start with one part of some herb or substance and dilute it with ten parts water. Then you dilute that with ten parts water, resulting in a ratio of 1:100 of the original substance to water. Then you dilute that again, resulting in a ratio of 1:1000.
It does not take long to achieve extreme dilutions with this method, but a "dilution limit" is reached when only a single molecule of the original "medicine" remains in the prescribed dosage - beyond this point, there is simply nothing left to dilute. To achieve a dosage of 30X, you have to go through the above process 30 times, which means that the final ratio is 1 part "medicine" to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 parts water.
To get just one molecule of the original substance, a person would have to drink 7,874 gallons of the diluted solution - far, far beyond the basic dilution limit. Another common dosage is 30C, which means means that the original medicine is diluted in one hundred parts water, not ten parts water, and this is repeated thirty times.
The resulting ratio will be one molecule of "medicine" for every 10^90 molecules of water - that is a 1 followed by 90 zeroes. But the number of atoms in the entire universe is about 10^80, or a 1 followed by 80 zeroes. This means that such "remedies" being suggested go beyond the dilution limit of the entire universe. Because of such facts, the Consumers' Union reported in the January 1987 issue of Consumer Reports that:
Unless the laws of chemistry have gone awry, most homeopathic remedies are too diluted to have any physiological effect. ...CU's medical consultants believe that any system of medicine embracing the use of such remedies involves a potential danger to patients whether the prescribers are MDs, other licensed practitioners, or outright quacks.
Also Known As: none
Alternate Spellings: none
Common Misspellings: none
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