Everything about Homeopathy totally explained
Homeopathy (also homœopathy or homoeopathy; from the Greek
ὅμοιος,
hómoios, "
similar" +
πάθος,
páthos, "
suffering" or "
disease") is a form of
alternative medicine first defined by
Samuel Hahnemann in the 18th century. Practitioners select treatments according to a patient consultation that explores the physical and psychological state of the patient, both of which are considered important to selecting the remedy.
Claims for efficacy of homeopathic treatment beyond the
placebo effect are unsupported by the collective weight of
scientific and
clinical evidence. Common homeopathic preparations are diluted beyond the point where there's any likelihood that molecules from the original solution are present in the final product; the claim that these treatments still have any
pharmacological effect is thus scientifically implausible While advocates point to positive results reported in high-
impact journals as evidence for its efficacy, the number of such high-quality studies is small, the conclusions are not definitive, and duplication of the results, a key test of scientific validity, has proven problematic at best. The lack of convincing
scientific evidence supporting its efficacy and its use of remedies without active ingredients have caused homeopathy to be regarded as
pseudoscience;
quackery; or, in the words of a 1998 medical review, "placebo therapy at best and quackery at worst."
Homeopathic remedies are generally considered safe, with rare exceptions, although homeopaths have been criticized for putting patients at risk by advising them to avoid
conventional medicine, such as
vaccinations, anti-
malarial drugs and
antibiotics. In many countries, the laws that govern the regulation and testing of conventional drugs don't apply to homeopathic remedies. Current usage around the world varies from two percent of people in the
United Kingdom and the
United States using homeopathy in any one year to 15 percent in
India, where it's considered part of Indian
traditional medicine. In the UK, the
National Health Service runs five homeopathic hospitals, and in the 1990s, between 5.9 and 7.5 percent of
English family doctors are reported to have prescribed homeopathic remedies, a figure rising to at least 12 percent in Scotland. In 2005, around 100,000 physicians used homeopathy worldwide, making it one of the most popular and widely used complementary therapies.
History
18th-century medicine
At the time of the inception of homeopathy, the late
1700s, mainstream medicine employed such measures as
bloodletting and purging, the use of
laxatives and
enemas, and the administration of complex mixtures, such as
Venice treacle, which was made from 64 substances including opium, myrrh, and viper's flesh. Such measures often worsened symptoms and sometimes proved fatal. Hahnemann rejected such methods as irrational and unadvisable. Instead, he favored the use of single drugs at lower doses and promoted an immaterial,
vitalistic view of how living organisms function, believing that diseases have
spiritual, as well as physical causes. (At the time,
vitalism was part of mainstream science; in the twentieth century, however, medicine discarded vitalism, with the development of
microbiology, the
germ theory of disease, and advances in
chemistry.) Hahnemann also advocated various lifestyle improvements to his patients, including exercise, diet, and cleanliness.
Hahnemann's concept
Samuel Hahnemann conceived of homeopathy while translating a medical treatise by
Scottish physician and chemist
William Cullen into
German. Upon ingesting the bark, he noticed few stomach symptoms, but did experience
fever,
shivering and
joint pain, symptoms similar to some of the early symptoms of
malaria, the disease that the bark was ordinarily used to treat. From this, Hahnemann came to believe that all effective drugs produce symptoms in healthy individuals similar to those of the diseases that they can treat. This later became known as the "law of similars", the most important concept of homeopathy. The term "homeopathy" was coined by Hahnemann and first appeared in print in 1807, although he began outlining his theories of "medical similars" in a series of articles and monographs in 1796.
Hahnemann began to test what effects substances produced in humans, a procedure which would later become known as "proving". These time-consuming tests required subjects to clearly record all of their symptoms as well as the ancillary conditions under which they appeared. Hahnemann saw this data as a way of identifying substances suitable for the treatment of particular diseases. Hahnemann believed that large doses of drugs that caused similar symptoms would only aggravate illness, and so he advocated extreme dilutions of the substances; he devised a technique for making dilutions that he believed would preserve a substance's therapeutic properties while removing its harmful effects, proposing that this process aroused and enhanced "spirit-like medicinal powers held within a drug". He gathered and published a complete overview of his new medical system in his 1810 book,
The Organon of the Healing Art, whose 6th edition, published in
1921, is still used by homeopaths today. Because of medicine's reliance on unscientific
blood-letting and other untested, 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.
In the early 19th century, homeopathy began to be criticised.
Sir John Forbes, physician to
Queen Victoria, said the extremely small doses of homeopathy were regularly derided as useless, laughably ridiculous and "an outrage to human reason". Professor Sir
James Young Simpson said of the highly diluted drugs: "No poison, however strong or powerful, the billionth or decillionth of which would in the least degree affect a man or harm a fly." Nineteenth century American physician and author
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was also a vocal critic of homeopathy and published an essay in 1842 entitled
Homœopathy, and its Kindred Delusions. The last school in the U.S. exclusively teaching homeopathy closed in
1920. and insisted that it was always part of the "living whole".
Law of similars
Hahnemann observed from his experiments with
cinchona bark, used as a treatment for
malaria, that the effects he experienced from ingesting the bark were similar to the symptoms of malaria. He therefore reasoned that cure proceeds through similarity, and that treatments must be able to produce symptoms in healthy individuals similar to those of the disease being treated. Through further experiments with other substances, Hahnemann conceived of the "law of similars", otherwise known as "like cures like" as a fundamental healing principle. He believed that by inducing a disease through use of drugs, the artificial symptoms empowered the vital force to neutralise and expel the original disease and that this artificial disturbance would naturally subside when the dosing ceased. In 1828, he introduced the concept of miasms, which he regarded as underlying causes for many known diseases. A miasm is often defined by homeopaths as an imputed "peculiar morbid derangement of our vital force". Hahnemann associated each miasm with specific diseases, with each miasm seen as the root cause of several diseases. According to Hahnemann, initial exposure to miasms causes local symptoms, such as skin or venereal diseases, but if these symptoms are suppressed by medication, the cause goes deeper and begins to manifest itself as diseases of the internal organs. The underlying imputed miasm still remains, and deep-seated ailments can only be corrected by removing the deeper disturbance of the vital force.
Hahnemann's miasm theory remains disputed and controversial within homeopathy even in modern times. In
1978,
Anthony Campbell, then a consultant physician at The Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, criticised statements by George Vithoulkas claiming that
syphilis, when treated with antibiotics, would develop into secondary and tertiary syphilis with involvement of the central nervous system. This conflicts with scientific studies, which indicate that penicillin treatment produces a complete cure of syphilis in more than 90% of cases. Campbell described this as "a thoroughly irresponsible statement which could mislead an unfortunate layman into refusing orthodox treatment".
Preparation of remedies
Dilution and succussion
In producing treatments for diseases, homeopaths use a process called "dynamisation" or "potentisation" whereby the remedy is diluted with alcohol or water and then vigorously shaken by ten hard strikes against an elastic body in a process called "succussion". Hahnemann thought that the use of remedies which present symptoms similar to those of disease in healthy individuals would only intensify the symptoms and exacerbate the condition, so he advocated the dilution of the remedies. During the process of potentisation, homeopaths believe that the vital energy of the diluted substance is activated and its energy released by vigorous shaking of the substance. For this purpose, Hahnemann had a saddle maker construct a special wooden striking board covered in leather on one side and stuffed with horsehair. Insoluble solids, such as
quartz and
oyster shell, are diluted by grinding them with
lactose (
trituration).
Three potency scales are in regular use in homeopathy. Hahnemann created the centesimal or "C scale", diluting a substance by a factor of 100 at each stage. The centesimal scale was favored by Hahnemann for most of his life. A 2C dilution requires a substance to be diluted to one part in one hundred, and then some of that diluted solution is diluted by a further factor of one hundred. This works out to one part of the original solution mixed into 9,999 parts (100 × 100 −1 ) of the diluent. A 6C dilution repeats this process six times, ending up with the original material diluted by a factor of 1,000,000,000,000. (100 × 100 × 100 × 100 × 100 × 100, or 100
6). Higher dilutions follow the same pattern. In homeopathy, a solution that's more dilute is described as having a higher
potency. Higher potencies (that is, more dilute substances) are considered by homeopaths to be stronger and deeper-acting remedies.
Hahnemann advocated 30C dilutions for most purposes (that is, dilution by a factor of 10
60). A popular homeopathic treatment for the
flu is a 200C dilution of duck liver, marketed under the name
Oscillococcinum. Comparing these levels of dilution to
Avogadro's number, one liter of a 12C homeopathic remedy created from diluting 1 liter of 1
molar solution contains on average only about 0.602 molecules of the original substance per liter of the 12C remedy. Similarly, the chance of a single molecule of the original substance remaining in a liter of 15C remedy dose is about one in 1.7 million, and about one in 1.7 trillion trillion trillion (10
36) for a 30C solution.
Commonly, critics of homeopathy, as well as homeopaths themselves, attempt to illustrate the dilutions involved in homeopathy with examples. Hahnemann is reported to have joked that a suitable procedure to deal with an epidemic would be to empty a bottle of poison into
Lake Geneva, if it could be succussed 60 times. Another example given by a critic of homeopathy states that a 12C solution is equivalent to a "pinch of salt in both the North and South Atlantic Oceans", One third of a
drop of some original substance diluted into all the water on earth would produce a remedy with a concentration of about 13C.
Another common illustration involves comparing homeopathic dilution to dissolving the therapeutic substance in a swimming pool. One example inspired by a problem found in a set of popular algebra textbooks states that there are on the order of 10
32 molecules of water in an
Olympic-size swimming pool and if such a pool were filled with a 15C homeopathic remedy, to have a 63% chance of consuming at least one molecule of the original substance, one would need to swallow 1% of the volume of such a pool, or roughly 25 metric tons of water.
For further perspective, 1 ml of a solution which has gone through a 30C dilution would have been diluted into a cube of water measuring 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 metres per side, which is about 106
light years. Thus, homeopathic remedies of standard potencies contain, almost certainly, only water (or alcohol, as well as sugar and other nontherapeutic ingredients). Homeopaths maintain that this water retains some "essential property" of the original material, because the preparation has been shaken after each dilution. Hahnemann believed that the dynamisation or shaking of the solution caused a "spirit-like" healing force to be released from within the substance. Even though the homeopathic remedies are often extremely diluted, homeopaths maintain that some healing force is retained by these homeopathic preparations. In the last ten years of his life, Hahnemann also developed a quintamillesimal (Q) or LM scale diluting the drug 1 part in 50,000 parts of diluent. A given dilution on the Q scale is roughly 2.35 times its designation on the C scale. For example a remedy described as "20Q" has about the same concentration as a "47C" remedy.
Not all homeopaths advocate extremely high dilutions. Many of the early homeopaths were originally doctors and generally tended to use lower dilutions such as "3X" or "6X", rarely going beyond "12X". The split between lower and higher dilutions followed ideological lines with the former stressing pathology and a strong link to conventional medicine, while the latter emphasised vital force, miasms and a
spiritual interpretation of disease.
Dilution calculation
α. Calculation of numbers of molecules in dilutions » Number of
moles in initial solution = concentration (
M) x volume (
L)
Also
» Number of molecules in initial solution = number of moles x
Avogadro's constant
Therefore, for 1 L of a 1 M solution
» Moles = 1 × 1 = 1 mole
Molecules = 1 × 6.02×10
23 = 6.02×10
23 molecules
The 10-fold dilution required to reduce the number of molecules to less than one per litre is 1 part in 1×10
24 (24X or 12C) since:
» 6.02×10
23/1×10
24 = 0.6 molecules per litre
Coverage in the mainstream press
The
BBC's
Horizon and
ABC's 20/20 broadcast programs described scientific testing of homeopathic dilutions that were unable to differentiate these dilutions from
water.
Provings
In order to determine which specific remedies could be used to treat which diseases,
Hahnemann experimented on himself and others for several years, before using remedies on patients. His experiments didn't initially consist of giving remedies to the sick, because he thought that the most similar remedy, by virtue of its ability to induce symptoms similar to the disease itself, would make it impossible to determine which symptoms came from the remedy and which from the disease itself. Therefore, sick people were excluded from these experiments. The method used for determining which remedies were suitable for specific diseases was called "proving", after the original
German word "Prüfung", meaning "test".) A homeopathic proving is the method by which the
profile of a
homeopathic remedy is determined.
During the process of proving, Hahnemann used healthy volunteers who were given remedies, often in molecular doses, although he later advocated proving with remedies at a 30C dilution, The lengthy records of self-experimentation by homeopaths have occasionally proven useful in the development of modern drugs: For example, evidence
nitroglycerin might be useful as a treatment for
angina was discovered by looking through homeopathic provings, though homeopaths themselves never used it for that purpose at that time.
The first recorded provings were published by Hahnemann in his 1796
Essay on a New Principle. His
Fragmenta de viribus (1805) contained the results of 27 provings, and his 1810
Materia Medica Pura contained 65. 217 remedies underwent provings for
James Tyler Kent's 1905
Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica, and newer substances are continually added to contemporary versions.
Repertory
A compilation of reports of many homeopathic provings is known as a
homeopathic materia medica. In practice the usefulness of such a compilation is limited because a practitioner doesn't need to look up the symptoms for a particular remedy, but rather to explore the remedies for a particular symptom. This need is filled by the
homeopathic repertory, which is an index of symptoms, listing after each symptom those remedies that are associated with it. Repertories are often very extensive and may include data from clinical experience in addition to provings. There is often lively debate among the compilers of a repertory and interested practitioners over the veracity of a particular inclusion. The first symptomatic index of the homeopathic materia medica was arranged by Hahnemann. Soon after, one of his students
Clemens von Bönninghausen, created the
Therapautic Pocket Book, another homeopathic repertory. The first such Homeopathic Repertory was Dr. George Jahr's Repertory, published in 1835 in
German and then again in 1838 in English and edited by Dr. Constantine Hering. This version was less focused on disease categories and would be the forerunner to Kent's later works. It consisted of three large volumes. Such repertories increased in size and detail as time progressed.
Treatments
Homeopaths generally begin with detailed examinations of their patients' histories, including questions regarding their physical, mental and emotional states, their life circumstances and any physical/emotional illnesses. The homeopath then attempts to translate this information into a complex formula of mental and physical symptoms, including likes, dislikes, innate predispositions and even body type. The goal is to develop a comprehensive representation of each individual's overall health. This information can then be compared with similar lists in the drug provings found in the homeopathic materia medica. Assisted by further dialogues with the patient, the homeopath then aims to find the one drug most closely matching the "symptom totality" of the patient. There are many methods for determining the most-similar remedy (the
simillimum), and homeopaths sometimes disagree. This is partly due to the insurmountable complexity of the "totality of symptoms" concept. That is, homeopaths don't use all symptoms, but decide for themselves which are the most characteristic. This subjective evaluation of case analysis relies on knowledge and experience of the homeopath doing the diagnosis.
Some diversity in approaches to treatments exists among homeopaths. So called "classical" homeopathy generally involves detailed examinations of a patient's history and infrequent doses of a single remedy as the patient is monitored for improvements in symptoms. While "clinical" homeopathy involves combinations of remedies to address the various symptoms of an illness.
Homeopathy uses many animal, plant, mineral, and synthetic substances in its remedies. Examples include
Natrum muriaticum (
sodium chloride or table salt),
Lachesis muta (the venom of the
bushmaster snake),
Opium, and
Thyroidinum (
thyroid hormone). Homeopaths also use treatments called
nosodes (from the
Greek nosos, disease) made from diseased or pathological products such as fecal, urinary, and respiratory discharges, blood, and tissue. Homeopathic remedies prepared from healthy specimens are called
Sarcodes.
Some modern homeopaths have considered more esoteric substances, known as "imponderables" because they don't originate from a material but from
electromagnetic energy presumed to have been "captured" by alcohol or lactose. Examples include
X-rays,
sunlight, and
electricity. Recent ventures by homeopaths into even more esoteric substances include
thunderstorms (prepared from collected rainwater). Today there are about 3,000 different remedies commonly used in homeopathy. Some homeopaths also use techniques that are regarded by other practitioners as controversial. These include
paper remedies, where the substance and dilution are written on a piece of paper and either pinned to the patient's clothing, put in their pocket, or placed under a glass of water that's then given to the patient, as well as the use of
radionics to prepare remedies. Such practices have been strongly criticised by classical homeopaths as unfounded, speculative and verging upon magic and superstition.
Isopathy
Isopathy is a therapy derived from homeopathy and was invented by Johann Joseph Wilhelm Lux in the 1830s.
Tautopathy
Tautopathy is a practice of
alternative medicine that's similar to homeopathy in that it uses very diluted substances to treat illness. However, tautopathy doesn't rely on the "law of similars", as homeopathy does. According to practitioners of Tautopathy, dilute solutions of lead and arsenic can cause the body to secrete excess amounts of these toxic metals.
Flower remedies
Flower remedies are produced by placing flowers in water and exposing them to sunlight. The most famous of these are the
Bach flower remedies, which were developed by the homeopath
Edward Bach. The relationship between these remedies and homeopathy is controversial. On the one hand, the proponents of these remedies share homeopathy's vitalist world-view and the remedies are claimed to act through the same hypothetical "vital force". However, although many of the same plants are used as in homeopathy, the method of preparation is somewhat different, with Bach flower therapies supposedly being prepared in "gentler" ways, such as placing flowers in bowls of sunlit water, and so on. There is no convincing scientific or clinical evidence for flower remedies being effective.
Veterinary use
The idea of using homeopathy as a treatment for other animals, termed
veterinary homeopathy, dates back to the inception of homeopathy as Hahnemann himself wrote and spoke of the use of homeopathy in animals other than humans. In the
USA veterinary homeopathy is used by
veterinarian members of the Academy for Veterinary Homeopathy and/or the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association. The FDA hasn't approved homeopathic products as veterinary medicine in the US. In the
UK,
veterinary surgeons who use homeopathy belong to the
Faculty of Homeopathy and/or to the
British Association of Homeopathic Veterinary Surgeons. Animals may only be treated by qualified veterinary surgeons in the UK and some other countries. Internationally, the body that supports and represents homeopathic veterinarians is the
International Association for Veterinary Homeopathy. The use of homeopathy in veterinary medicine is controversial, as there has been little scientific investigation and current research in the field isn't of a high enough standard to provide reliable data. Other studies have also found that giving animals placebos can play active roles in influencing pet owners to believe in the effectiveness of the treatment when none exists. The proposed rationale for these extreme dilutions – that the water contains the "
memory" or "vibration" from the diluted ingredient – is also counter to the laws of
chemistry and
physics. Critics cite the lack of viable scientific studies for the effectiveness of homeopathic remedies as evidence that they're not effective and that any positive effects are due to the placebo effect. Critics also contend that homeopathy is inherently dangerous, because homeopaths offer a false hope that may discourage or delay proper treatment.
High dilutions
The extremely high dilutions in homeopathy have been a main point of criticism. Homeopaths believe that the methodical dilution of a substance, beginning with a 10% or lower solution and working downwards, with shaking after each dilution, produces a therapeutically active "remedy", in contrast to therapeutically inert water. However, homeopathic remedies are usually diluted to the point where there are no molecules from the original solution left in a dose of the final remedy. Since even the longest-lived
noncovalent structures in liquid water at room temperature are only stable for a few
picoseconds, critics have concluded that any effect that might have been present from the original substance can no longer exist. Furthermore, since water will have been in contact with millions of different substances throughout its history, critics point out that any glass of water is therefore an extreme dilution of almost any conceivable substance, and so by drinking water one would, according to homeopathic principles, receive treatment for every imaginable condition.
Homeopathy contends that higher dilutions (fewer potential molecules in each dose) result in stronger medicinal effects. This idea is inconsistent with the observed
dose-response relationships of conventional drugs, where the effects are dependent on the concentration of the active ingredient in the body. This dose-response relationship has been confirmed in thousands of experiments on organisms as diverse as nematodes, rats, and humans.
Physicist
Robert L. Park, former executive director of the
American Physical Society, has noted that "since the least amount of a substance in a solution is one molecule, a 30C solution would have to have at least one molecule of the original substance dissolved in a minimum of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of water. This would require a container more than 30,000,000,000 times the size of the Earth." Park has also noted that "to expect to get even one molecule of the 'medicinal' substance allegedly present in 30X pills, it would be necessary to take some two billion of them, which would total about a thousand tons of lactose plus whatever impurities the lactose contained". The laws of chemistry state that there's a limit to the dilution that can be made without losing the original substance altogether. This limit, which is related to
Avogadro's number, is roughly equal to homeopathic potencies of 12C or 24X (1 part in 10
24). More recent controlled clinical trials on homeopathy have shown poor results, showing slight-to-no differences between homeopathic remedies and placebo.
Meta-analyses, which analyse large groups of studies and draw conclusions based on the results as a whole, have been used to evaluate the effectiveness of homeopathy. Early meta-analyses investigating homeopathic remedies showed slightly positive results among the studies examined, but such studies have warned that it was impossible to draw firm conclusions due to low methodological quality and difficulty in controlling for
publication bias in the studies reviewed. One of the positive meta-analyses, by Linde, et al,
In 2005
The Lancet medical journal published a meta-analysis of 110 placebo-controlled homeopathy trials and 110 matched conventional-medicine trials based upon the
Swiss government's
Program for Evaluating Complementary Medicine, or PEK. The study concluded that its findings were compatible with the notion that the clinical effects of homeopathy are nothing more than placebo effects.
Since homeopathic remedies at dilutions higher than about D23 (10
−23) contain no ingredients apart from the
diluent (water, alcohol or sugar), there's no chemical basis for them to have any medicinal action. Newer randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials using highly-diluted homeopathic preparations also fail to find clinical effects of the substances.
The
Cochrane Library found insufficient clinical evidence to evaluate the efficacy of homeopathic treatments for asthma Other researchers found no evidence that homeopathy is beneficial for
osteoarthritis,
migraines or
delayed-onset muscle soreness.
Health organisations such as UK's
National Health Service, the
American Medical Association, and the
FASEB There have, however, been a number of clinical trials that have tested individualized homeopathy. A 1998 review
found 32 trials that met their inclusion criteria, 19 of which were placebo-controlled and provided enough data for meta-analysis. These 19 studies showed a pooled odds ratio of 1.17 to 2.23 in favor of individualized homeopathy over the placebo, but no difference was seen when the analysis was restricted to the methodologically best trials. The authors concluded "that the results of the available randomized trials suggest that individualized homeopathy has an effect over placebo. The evidence, however, isn't convincing because of methodological shortcomings and inconsistencies."
Dr. Jack Killen, acting deputy director of the
National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, says homeopathy "goes beyond current understanding of chemistry and physics". He adds, "There is, to my knowledge, no condition for which homeopathy has been proven to be an effective treatment."
histamine release by
leukocytes, and
enzyme reactions, such evidence is disputed since attempts to replicate them have failed.
In 1987, French immunologist
Jacques Benveniste submitted a paper to the journal
Nature while working at
INSERM. The paper purported to have discovered that
basophils released
histamine when exposed to a homeopathic dilution of anti-immunoglobulin E, a type of
white blood cell. The journal editors, sceptical of the results, requested that the study be replicated in a separate laboratory. Upon replication in four separate laboratories the study was published. Still sceptical of the findings,
Nature assembled an independent investigative team to determine the accuracy of the research, consisting of
Nature editor and physicist Sir
John Maddox, American scientific fraud investigator and chemist Walter Stewart, and sceptic and magician
James Randi. After investigating the findings and methodology of the experiment, the team found that the experiments were "statistically ill-controlled", "interpretation has been clouded by the exclusion of measurements in conflict with the claim", and concluded, "We believe that experimental data have been uncritically assessed and their imperfections inadequately reported." James Randi stated that he doubted that there had been any conscious fraud, but that the researchers had allowed "wishful thinking" to influence their interpretation of the data. There were 340 cases settled out of court for .
Critics of homeopathy have cited other concerns over homeopathic remedies, most seriously, cases of patients of homeopathy failing to receive proper treatment for diseases that it's claimed could have been diagnosed or cured with conventional medicine. Several surveys demonstrate that some (particularly non-physician) homeopaths advise their patients against
immunisation. Some homeopaths suggest that vaccines be replaced with homeopathically diluted "
nosodes", created from dilutions of biological agents – including material such as vomit, feces or infected human tissues. While Hahnemann was opposed to such preparations, modern homeopaths often use them and there's no evidence to indicate they've any beneficial effects. Cases of homeopaths advising against the use of anti-malarial drugs have been identified. Also, in one case in 2004, a homeopath instructed one of his patients to stop taking conventional medication for a heart condition, writing in his advice, "She just can't take ANY drugs – I've suggested some homeopathic remedies. I feel confident that if she follows the advice she'll regain her health." The patient suffered a fatal heart attack four months later, caused by this stoppage of her medication.
In 1978,
Anthony Campbell, then a consultant physician at The Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, criticised statements made by
George Vithoulkas to promote his homeopathic treatments. Vithoulkas stated that
syphilis, when treated with antibiotics, would develop into secondary and tertiary syphilis with involvement of the
central nervous system. Campbell described this as a thoroughly irresponsible statement which could mislead an unfortunate layman into refusing conventional medical treatment.
Prevalence and legal trends
Homeopathy is fairly common in some countries while being uncommon in others; is highly regulated in some countries and mostly unregulated in others. Regulations vary in Europe depending on the country. In some countries, there are no specific legal regulations concerning the use of homeopathy, while in others, licenses or degrees in conventional medicine from accredited universities are required. In
Austria and
Germany, no specific regulations exist, while
France and
Denmark mandate licenses to diagnose any illness or dispense of any product whose purpose is to treat any illness. Some homeopathic treatment is covered by the public health service of several European countries, including France, the
United Kingdom, Denmark, and
Luxembourg. In other countries, such as
Belgium, homeopathy isn't covered. In
Austria, the public health service requires scientific proof of effectiveness in order to reimburse medical treatments, but exceptions are made for homeopathy.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Homeopathy'.
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