User:Kittycataclysm/sandbox/homeopathy

"It was founded by Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), who grew up in Meissen in Germany, received his medical degree in Erlangen in 1779, and died a millionaire in Paris in 1843."

"Hahnemann believed that if a patient had an illness, it could be cured by giving a medicine which, if given to a healthy person, would produce similar symptoms of that same illness but to a slighter degree."

"his famous aphorism, ‘like cures like’, which is often called the ‘principle of similars’; and he cited Jenner's use of cowpox vaccination to prevent smallpox as an example."

"homeopaths like to stress that they practise ‘holistic medicine’"

"medical treatment was to a large extent crude and ineffective, consisting largely of potentially dangerous polypharmacy, purging, and profuse blood-letting."

"Classical homeopathy was therefore seen by its supporters as an attractively safe system, simple, easy to understand, and centred on the patient as a whole and not on pathological lesions."

"Hahnemann diluted his medical preparations to such an astonishing extent that if one assumes that that the substance he employed was completely soluble, by only the fourth dilution the ratio of the medicine to the solution would be 1:100 000 000."

"Hahnemann insisted that homeopathic medicines retained their therapeutic power provided you shook the preparation violently during the process of dilution—a process Hahnemann named as ‘potentization’ by which every homeopathic medicine not only retained or even increased its therapeutic power, but persisted as a ‘dematerialized spiritual force’."

"Hahnemann claimed that by his methods he could cure all or nearly all acute diseases."

"Today the ten most common diseases treated by homeopaths are (in order of frequency) asthma, depression, otitis media, allergic rhinitis (hay fever), headache and migraine, neurotic disorders, non-specific allergy, dermatitis, arthritis and hypertension."

"If you rely on the personal experience of patients, there are a large number of people who will claim, usually with great certainty, that they had been cured or at least helped by homeopathy when orthodox medicine had failed."

"The system is easy to understand and seems safe. The long consultation is, per se, therapeutic"

"If a visit to a homeopath happens to be followed by a remission or the total disappearance of a disease, homeopathic medicine gets the credit."

"One of the early trials, carried out in 1835, is astonishing because it was very close to a double-blind, randomized controlled trial, undertaken with great care long before the mid-twentieth century when most of us believed that such randomized trials were first devised and carried out. It showed, incidentally, that homeopathy was ineffective"

"Some homeopathic practitioners argue that carrying out randomized controlled trials is an appropriate activity for orthodox medicine but inappropriate for homeopathy, where effectiveness should only be judged by patient satisfaction."

"It refers to a school of medicine first developed by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843)"

"homoeopathy is eminently falsifiable and has, in fact, been falsified many times"

"Homoeopathic remedies can be produced from virtually anything. Plant material is often employed."

"High potencies, which dilute the mother tincture beyond D24 (or C12), do, in all likelihood, contain no molecules of the original substance [avogadro's number]."

"In classical homoeopathy (Hahnemann’s original version), prescriptions of remedies are highly individualised. Each anamnesis is an extensive, time-consuming process—the homoeopath considers the patient’s situation well beyond her bodily symptoms. Accordingly, two patients with identical conditions, for instance, the common cold, will not necessarily receive the same remedy."

"in clinical homoeopathy, the patient’s condition determines the remedy. Accordingly, two patients with identical conditions would be prescribed the same homoeopathic medicine."

"homoeopathy posits that substances diluted beyond Avogadro’s limit can have therapeutic effects above placebo. This proposition suggests that a non-existent substance can cause the body to heal itself, which contradicts basic natural science and is, hence, wildly implausible."