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Homeopathy is a
therapeutic system which has been used for over 200 years.
It works on the principle that 'like treats like'. An illness is treated
with a medicine which could produce similar symptoms in a healthy person.
The active ingredients are given in highly diluted form to avoid toxicity.
Homeopathic remedies are virtually 100% safe.
Homeopathy is successful in treating a wide range of conditions, often
after conventional medicine has failed. Homeopathic doctors use
history-taking, examination and investigation, just as all doctors do.
Prescribing is based on all aspects of a patient's condition. The
patient's personality and lifestyle are important. Homeopathy integrates
well with conventional medicine.
Homeopathy is a therapeutic system. Its principles differ from those of
conventional medicine, as does its approach to the patient and to the
concept of ill health. However, it cannot replace all other forms of
health care. It can be used as the treatment of first choice in a wide
range of conditions and can be a useful addition, or "complement" in other
situations, for example, to support good recovery after operations.
The concepts of disease and healing which are described in homeopathic
books are quite similar to modern scientific concepts. Homeopathy
emphasises the importance of treating individuals as individuals and of
understanding the whole person as opposed to only understanding a single
"diseased part".
The body has many complex health-maintaining defensive mechanisms. The
immune system is an essential part of this, but other factors also have a
role to play. If these mechanisms fail, then we sustain damage or wounds
which then have to be repaired. Homeopathy works by stimulating both the
health-maintaining and the repair mechanisms.
Homeopathic medicine was first described by Dr Samuel Hahnemann (1755 -
1843). Hahnemann was a German physician who was dissatisfied with the
medical therapies and theories of his day. As he was translating a book by
the Scot, Cullen, on medicines and their uses, Hahnemann challenged the
ideas about how such medicines might work. This led him to take the
substance himself so he could experience and describe its effects on a
healthy human being. Repeating this type of experiment with other healthy
volunteers (these experiments were called "provings") led him to observe
and describe the basic principles of homeopathic medicine.
The first observation was that the symptoms of an illness were identical
to the symptoms experienced by a healthy individual who had been given a
drug which could treat that illness. Although this is quite the opposite
of the way conventional doctors use drugs, there are some modern drugs
which work on exactly this principle. Digoxin, for example, can both cause
and cure heart irregularities. His second observation arose from his
desire to minimise the harmful effects of the drugs which doctors were
using. He did this by repeatedly diluting and succussing (shaking) each
medicine to reduce its potential to poison and cause harm. What surprised
him in his use of these preparations was that the more stages of dilution
and succussion the drug had gone through, the greater its potential to
cure quickly and harmlessly.
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