Herbal Remedies

Homeopathy (“home-ee-AH-pah-thy”), taken from the Greek words homeo – meaning similar, and pathos – suffering or disease, also known as homeopathic medicine, is a form of health care that developed in Germany and has been practiced in the United States since the early 19th century. Homeopathic practitioners are commonly called homeopaths.

In Homeopathy, a key premise is that every person has energy called a vital force or self-healing response, similar to Chi as discussed earlier. When this energy is disrupted or imbalanced, health problems develop. Homeopathy aims to stimulate the body’s own defense mechanisms and processes so as to prevent or treat illness.

Treatment involves giving very small doses of substances that, according to homeopathy, would produce the same or similar symptoms of illness in healthy people if they were given larger doses. In other words, treating like with like. Treatment in homeopathy is individualized (tailored to each person). Homeopathic practitioners select remedies according to a total picture of the patient, including not only symptoms but lifestyle, emotional and mental states, and other factors.

Research studies on homeopathy have been contradictory in their findings. Some analyses have concluded that there is no strong evidence supporting homeopathy as effective for any clinical condition. However, others have found positive effects from homeopathy. The positive effects are not readily explained in scientific terms.

The history of homeopathy dates back to the late 1700’s where Samuel Hahnemann, a physician, chemist, and linguist in Germany, proposed a new approach to treating illness. This was at a time when the most common medical treatments were harsh, such as bloodletting, purging, blistering, and the use of sulfur and mercury (known today as strong and deadly poisons). At the time, there were few effective medications for treating patients, and knowledge about their effects was limited.

A Bit of History

Hahnemann was interested in developing a less-threatening approach to medicine. The first major step reportedly was when he was translating an herbal text and read about a treatment (cinchona bark) used to cure malaria. He took some chinona bark and observed that, as a healthy person, he developed symptoms that were very similar to malaria symptoms. This led Hahnemann to consider that a substance may create symptoms that it can also relieve. This concept is called ‘similar principle’ or “like cures like”. The similar principle had a prior history in medicine, from Hippocrates in Ancient Greece – who noted, for example, that recurrent vomiting could be treated with an emetic (such as ipecacuanha) that would be expected to make it worse – to folk medicine.
Hahnemann tested single, pure substances on himself and, in more dilute forms, on healthy volunteers. He kept meticulous records of his experiments and participants’ responses, and he combined these observations with information from clinical practice, the known uses of herbs and other medical substances, and toxicology, eventually treating the sick and developing homeopathic clinical practice.

Hahnemann added two additional elements to homeopathy:
A concept that became “potentization”, which holds that systemically diluting a substance with vigorous shaking at each step of dilution, makes the remedy more, not less, effective by extracting the vital essence of the substance. If dilution continues to a point where the substance’s molecules are gone, homeopathy holds that the ‘memory’ of them – that is, the effects they extend on the surrounding water molecules-may still be therapeutic.

A concept that treatment should be selected based upon a total picture of an individual and his symptoms, not solely upon symptoms of a disease. Homeopaths evaluate not only a person’s physical symptoms but her/his emotions, mental states, lifestyle, nutrition, and other aspects. In homeopathy, different people with the same symptoms may receive different homeopathic remedies.
Hans Burch Gram, a Boston-born doctor, studied homeopathy in Europe and introduced it into the United States in 1825. European immigrants trained in homeopathy also made the treatment increasingly available in America. In 1835, the first homeopathic medical college was established in Allentown, Pennsylvania. By the 20th century 8 percent of all American medical practitioners were homeopaths, and there were 20 homeopathic medical colleges and more than 100 homeopathic hospitals in the United States.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, numerous medical advances were made, such as the recognition of the mechanisms of disease: Pasteur’s germ theory, the development of antiseptic techniques, and the discovery of ether anesthesia. Homeopathy was among the disciplines negatively affected by these developments. Most homeopathic medical schools closed down, and by the 1930’s others had converted to conventional-allopathic medical schools.
In the 1960’s, homeopathy’s popularity began to revive in the United States. According to a 1999 survey of Americans and their health, over 6 million Americans had used homeopathy in the preceding 12 months. The World Health Organization noted in 1994 that homeopathy had been integrated into the national health care systems of numerous countries, including Germany, The United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Mexico. Several schools of practice exist within homeopathy.

Over the last 10 years, the United States has experienced a noticeable move in the addition of homeopathic medicine to many peoples’ regular health care regime.

(Portions of the information on Homeopathy were taken from NCCAM, National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, a division of the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.)