What Is Homeopathy?
Maybe someone you know uses it. Maybe you personally use it. Maybe someone suggested it to you once and you had no idea what they were talking about! Maybe you thought it was a made up word? Well, rest assured that homeopathy is indeed a real word and an actual medical system practiced worldwide. Homeopathy is considered unorthodox medicine, or CAM, especially when comparing it to today's modern medicine. Here's a little information on how homeopathy came about and the type of medicine it is.
Hahnemann And Homeopathy
Homeopathy started around 1814 thanks to its creator, Samuel Hahnemann. Hahnemann received his medical degree in 1779, but spent more than the first decade of his career as a physician struggling financially. Homeopathy first became a thought in Hahnemann's head when he began taking daily doses of cinchona (aka quinine). This habit caused him to develop mild malaria symptoms. This discovery led him to believe that if a healthy individual took medicine designed to cure a disease that person did not have that they would instead develop the symptoms of said disease. Therefore, the same medicine that can create the disease within a healthy body could cure the disease in the body afflicted by it. His discovery and process resulted in a phrase many have heard, "like cures like", also referred to as the "principle of similars".
Samuel Hahnemann
Homeopathy VS Orthodox Medicine
In the 19th century, orthodox medicine was often "crude and ineffective, consisting largely of potentially dangerous polypharmacy, purging and profuse bloodletting." Homeopathy was safe, "simple, easy to understand, and centred on the patient as a whole and not on pathological lesions", comparitively. The amount that Hahnemann insisted on diluting homeopathic remedies and the process of "potentization" (shaking the preparation violently during the dilution process) was considered among orthodox physicians as " sheer nonsense." Hahnemann claimed that through the use of homeopathy, he "could cure all or virtually all diseases".
The Establishment Of Homeopathic Medicine In North America
The end of the 19th century saw one of the first institutions devoted to homeopathy, the American Institute of Homeopathy. In 1903 the American Medical Association invited homeopaths to join their group. A few decades later, under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1939, homeopathic remedies were then allowed to be sold on the open market.Since the 1960's and 1970's numerous countries have seen a revival of homeopathic use, especially the USA. In 2002 in the USA the number patients that used homeopathy rose by an estimated 500% in only the prior seven years. The ten most common diseases treated by homeopaths are: asthma, depression, otitis media, allergic rhinitis (hay fever), headache and migraine, neurotic disorders, non-specific allergy, dermatitis, arthritis and hypertension.
References:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1676328/
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Hahnemann
