Homeopathy Health Dictionary

A system of complementary medicine.

Homeopathy involves administering minute doses of medicines which, in a healthy person, would be capable of inducing symptoms of the condition that is being treated.

A system of medicine founded by Hahnemann at the end of the 18th century. It is based upon the theory that diseases are curable by those drugs which produce effects on the body similar to symptoms caused by the disease (similia similibus curantur). In administering drugs, the theory is also held that their e?ect is increased by giving them in minute doses obtained by substantially diluting them.

Almost two centuries old, it is a system of medicine in which the treatment of disease (symptom pictures) depends on the administration of minute doses (attenuations) of substances that would, in larger doses, produce the same symptoms as the disease being treated. Homeopaths don’t like that “disease” word, preferring to match symptoms, not diagnostic labels. Although by no means harmless, homeopathic doses are devoid of drug toxicity. Many practitioners these days prefer high, almost mythic potencies, sometimes resorting to a virtual “laying on of hands” to attain the alleged remedy. When M.D.s used homeopathy frequently (turn of the century), there were violent battles between low potency advocates and the high potency charismatics. Some preferred low potencies or even mother tinctures (herbs!), which I find quite reasonable (naturally), such as Boericke. Others sought ever higher and higher potencies, tantamount to dropping an Arnica petal in Lake Superior in September and extracting a drop of water at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River the following April. Kent and Clarke were such homeopaths. Philosophically, to me, we are all surrounded in a subtle tide of unimaginably complex pollutants and organochemical recombinants...all low and middle potency homeopathic attenuations...our milieu itself is Mother Nosode...how can we be expected to respond to elegant but unimaginably subtle influences when our very bones radiate a low-potency gray noise. If you have no idea what I am talking about, just consider it a family argument.

A system of medicine based on the theory that a disease should be combated by giving drugs which would produce symptoms of the disease in an otherwise healthy individual.

(homoeopathy) n. a complementary therapy based on the theory that ‘like cures like’. It involves a belief that conditions may be treated with a tiny dose of a substance, so diluted as to be indistinguishable from pure water, that in larger doses would normally cause or aggravate that condition. A second principle is a process of dilution and shaking known as ‘succussion’. Homeopathy was developed by a German doctor, Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843), in 1796. It was described as ‘scientifically implausible’ by the UK’s Chief Medical Officer in 2010 and is not recommended by NICE. —homeopathic adj. —homeopathist n.