Homeopathy

Homeopathy is a system of alternative medicine based on treating symptoms with substances said to cause similar symptoms in healthy people. Its remedies are often diluted until little or none of the original substance remains.

Similia similibus curentur: The homeopathic principle that a substance causing symptoms in a healthy person can treat similar symptoms in someone ill. This “like cures like” rule supplies homeopathy’s central rationale for selecting remedies.
Samuel Hahnemann: A German physician who founded homeopathy and published its central principles in the early nineteenth century. He formulated the system after questioning the harsh medical treatments common in his era.
Evidence-based medicine: Clinical practice that integrates research evidence, professional expertise, and patients’ circumstances and preferences. Its standards for evaluating treatments differ from homeopathy’s reliance on its own doctrines and practice traditions.
Homeopathic materia medica: A reference tradition describing substances’ purported effects and the symptoms they are said to treat in homeopathy. Practitioners consult these descriptions when matching a remedy to a patient’s reported symptoms.
Potentization: A homeopathic preparation process involving repeated dilution and vigorous shaking, which practitioners claim increases therapeutic power. It is the preparation method meant to make extreme dilution increase, rather than reduce, a remedy’s power.
Organon of Medicine: Samuel Hahnemann’s book outlining homeopathic principles, clinical practice, and the preparation of remedies. This work set out the doctrine and practice that shaped homeopathy’s subsequent development.
Randomized controlled trial: A study that randomly assigns participants to treatment groups to compare outcomes and reduce bias. Trials using this design have tested whether homeopathic remedies outperform placebo.
Homeopathic repertory: An index that organizes symptoms and lists homeopathic remedies associated with them. It offers a structured way to select remedies from symptom descriptions.
Homeopathic dilution: The serial dilution of a starting substance used to produce homeopathic remedies, often beyond the point where any molecules remain. Many remedies undergo dilutions so extensive that ordinary chemistry predicts no starting molecules in the final preparation.
Cinchona bark experiment: Hahnemann’s reported self-experiment in which taking cinchona bark produced symptoms he associated with malaria. Hahnemann treated this experiment as evidence for the similarity principle, though it does not establish that principle.

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